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>>Why would you design levels which makes it impossible to play in this style, if some people prefer it? Why would you design a level to force a specific play style, even though they might not enjoy it?

For the same reason someone designing a sports car will make the suspension super stiff - because they want to achieve a specific goal with their design. My grandmother would hate driving such a car as it would be uncomfortable for her, but it might be an acceptable trade-off for those looking for a specific type of experience. If you're not enjoying a specific type of game design then it simply means that the game isn't for you - and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Expensive modern cars have an adaptive suspension: you let the driver decide what kind of suspension they want and there is inherent value in that.

The goal of a game usually is to entertain and give the players a great experience. This of course means also you design to avoid certain player strategies like repetitive grinding or things that are most certainly no fun, but for some reason work all the time (think of a fighting game where you can win by smashing the same attack all the time).

However if you only allow for one playstyle without real reasons, you create a game that works well for one kind of player, while everybody else will feel that the game forces them into actions they don't really want to do that way. The game feels off for them.

So if a game designer can allow multiple playstyles at once without big downsides to the main intended one, there is literally no reason not to do it. You can find ways to allow multiple playstyles without sacrificing anything in a game, just like there are films that work for multiple target audiences at once, because everybody sees something else in it they like.

I think these dichotomies are way to present in many forms of design – we think we have to choose one or the other, while we could achieve both if we really tried.

I think the suspension idea fails here, because in the case of run-and-gun vs. cautious, a player that prefers one style will always prefer that style, whereas a driver will sometimes want comfort and sometimes want performance.

> So if a game designer can allow multiple playstyles at once without big downsides to the main intended one, there is literally no reason not to do it.

There's always the downside of extra work, at the very least. Sometimes 'multiple playstyles' is a design decision, but that needs to be the case from the very beginning. And sometimes, the design decision is 'run-and-gun,' and everything follows from there. Games that try to do everything tend to do nothing well.

There's another disadvantage of allowing cautious play: Even players who would be having more fun running-and-gunning may identify (or misidentify) cautious play as optimal play. As a result, you've designed a game that works against itself by incentivizing players to have less fun.

Edit: kaoD said it better than me, in this same post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20663319

Don't you find that just run-and-gun gets boring, you want a change of pace, to choose sometimes to do a section of a [FPS] game stealthily, sometimes dynamic, and sometimes just tank it?

For me, it's good to force a certain style of play sometimes. One of the things I really liked about Deus Ex was that run-and-gun just left you overwhelmed at times, resources or floorplan could force stealth in some sections of the game.

To quote myself: > Sometimes 'multiple playstyles' is a design decision

That's Deus Ex. But it doesn't have to be Doom.

A game forcing you to change tacks doesn't mean the same thing as it giving you options.

And no, I don't necessarily think run-and-gun always gets boring, and you need to add stealth segments, or a car chase, or whatnot. You can keep it fresh without changing the premise, I don't think 'run-and-gun' is so narrow a definition that you need to change the pace entirely in order to keep it fresh. No-one ever levels this criticism at racing games, platformers, Tetris, etc.

I get a bit frustrated when I'm forced to play a stealth section in an action game. They usually feel slow, forced, obviously scripted, and a lazy way of cleansing the player's palate. For it to feel any good, it needs to be a core design principle (see, for example, Metal Gear Solid), not a tedious half-level (before some inevitable scripted scene allows and forces you to exit stealth mode).

This is in fact how most good games work: they force you to change strategies every now and then to avoid boring you to death with one scenario.

What makes the designers intent so sacrosanct? The value of art is in how it is perceived, not the artists' intent. Often, the two are aren't in sync anyway

I also enjoy this style of gameplay. Just because it is considered a cop-out to designers looking to nudge me to be more aggressive or something, doesn't mean its an illegitimate tactic.

Or is this really about creating gameplay that looks exciting to that accursed YouTube crowd?

The problem is not the question of legitimacy for hiding/cover tactics, it's the monotony of them. Lots of players will say they enjoy these tactics and use them continually until they get bored and quit. Then they blame the game designer for making a boring game.

The problem for game designers is that fun is elusive and difficult to produce. It's far easier to make something addictive: use a random reward schedule with levelups, achievements, loot crates, and unlocks. To get the player to have fun requires novelty, learning, and a sense of real accomplishment in the face of danger. Unfortunately, bad level design punishes players for taking small risks and forces them into a monotonous foo (first order optimal [1]) strategies such as corridor camping.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EitZRLt2G3w

The point is to ensure that style of game play isn't more effective. There are cover shooters that encourage potshots from behind cover that are built to make that style of play more fun.

Those sorts of considerations should only come in to play with extreme examples... it's a very heavy-handed approach to designing gameplay. Unless you're trying to make an experience very specifically something -- which I think works only in cinematic situations -- the game should be designed in a way that accommodates multiple playstyles. A lot of people begrudge heavy-handed game-design; it ruins player freedom/agency

I disagree quite a lot - look at Doom 2016. It's a masterpiece of a game and its design does not allow multiple different playstyles. You cannot go and start sneaking around , the gameplay is extremely focused on always being 100% balls-to-the-wall, guns blazing and running around like a terminator from hell that you are. The levels allow different approaches to that style of gameplay, but fundamentally it cannot change. Does it feel like you have no agency over its dozen or so levels? No, of course not.

> look at Doom 2016 […] Does it feel like you have no agency over its dozen or so levels? No, of course not.

My original comment which brought up Doom 2016 in the first place did in fact argue that yes, Doom 2016 gave me no choice in how to play. It continually forced me into arenas where enemies spawned in a circle around me. IIRC, there were no individual enemies to trigger, only arena triggers. It also forced me to melee each individual enemy up close in order to gain any health back, precluding any long-range tactics.

If you want to accommodate multiple playstyles you don't want the most lame unintended one to be disproportionately effective. Forcing an arena fight is fairly easy I think the point of the article was to make multiple playstyles viable or possible have them have varied efficiency across the game so you are encouraged to do different things.

> Why would you design a level to force a specific play style, even though they might not enjoy it?

Personally I enjoy being challenged in my playstyle. I don't particularly abhor arena fights, but I'm a minmaxer by nature so if the game designer leaves the possibility of a boring fight open I will probably take it.

They're just forcing people like me into challenges.

That said, closing doors/drops in 2019 are just lazy design.

And here I was going to post this as the obvious solution that gets you in the thick of it while allowing an escape back to the top. In the context of the post it didn't feel lazy. :(

https://imgur.com/a/z4SvqOe

I also have this mindset. I honestly wish I could suspend it but it's too deeply rooted. in whatever game I play I'll just intuitively find the most OP weapon/skill and ride it til the end of the game.

I greatly prefer this playstyle to more recent designs where every possible choice is so carefully balanced that all decisions do not matter. Put in some seriously underpowered guns that no-one will use! Some routine repeating monsters that stop being a challenge once you get their weakness, some super-difficult alternative approaches that everybody will learn to avoid! Gaming is, to a large part, about feeling smart for very little actual effort.

Also, some players will absolutely get a kick from finishing the game using only that gun that nobody else uses.

Yeah I tend to do the same. In something like half life 2 I’d just hover around a few weapons and use them for 90% of the time even when a better weapon would be more effective against a particular enemy. The more exotic the weapon the more I will save it for a special occasion but that occasion never seems to arrive.

interesting, I actually consider hl2 to be a remarkably balanced game wrt weapons. the only weapons that are really OP are the revolver and ar, but you don't find a lot of ammo for them. that's one of the few games where I actually find myself cycling between all the weapons to find the best fit for the situation.

I agree. Until I got to the end and discovered the super gravity gun. Then I used a cheat to start over with that gun and play the whole game with it. So satisfying

coming from cs and csgo my aim is significantly better than a lot of the people that played halflife 2 so i gravitated toward the guns that rewarded aim more than not. i spend a lot of the time just picking people off with the basic glock pistol by aiming for the head. the revolver is overpowered but reserved for the harder enemies. the mp7 in the game is trash and frustrating to use at all but the closest of battles even though that gun should be more accurate than the pistol when tapping. hell a significant amount of the time I'd just use the gravity gun to kill them.

Most people like to play optimally, but also like fun gameplay, and the gameplay you describe tends to get boring since it is very repetitive and ignores the level and monster design almost completely (explore until you find monster, retreat to safety, attack until everything dead, repeat until game ends).

The majority of people would find that play style very boring (I would've thought everyone, before seeing your comment) and there's a class of problems in game design where the most fun way to play and the most effective way to play diverge. So maybe you have to make some assumptions about what "the most fun way" means, but you do so in hopes that players don't have to feel conflicted about it.

> Why would you design levels which makes it impossible to play in this style, if some people prefer it?

Whatever design decisions are made, there's always tradeoffs. If they really wanted to double-down on a particular style of gameplay they'll want to design everything in the game around that.

Because the designer wants to decide how you experience their game. I prefer things that are more open ended where one can make more choices.

> Why would you design levels which makes it impossible to play in this style, if some people prefer it? Why would you design a level to force a specific play style, even though they might not enjoy it?

Because trying to design a thing that can be used by anyone in any way possible is the recipe for disaster.

I loved Doom and Doom II growing up -- no game has had more influence on this hobby or me as a person. But I never got much into Doom 2016, and I never could put my finger on why -- until now. So thanks