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Comment by kaoD | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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