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Why you shouldn't have persistent consequences for failure

last updated 2024-08-24

Persistent consequences for failure, such as losing items or max health when you die, are used in a lot of games with a reputation for being "hardcore", like Dark Souls. I'm disappointed that more people don't rail against it, so I'll list several downsides and debunk all alleged benefits of the practice that are brought to my attention.

It's emotionally harmful

Not only will the player be more upset on failure because they've lost more, but they're likely to *regret trying*. "Why did I decide to play this game when I was distracted?" etc (leading to not wanting to play the game except when they feel they're at their best). If they were having a bad day and sat down to recoup with their favorite game, they'll come away far more upset.

Perhaps worst of all, if someone else in real life is responsible for them losing (such as accidentally disturbing them during them an attempt), you can cause interpersonal drama.

In a good game, every time you fail at a hard section you can at least think "Well I got some practice. It wasn't a waste" (Dark Souls is actually a very good demonstration of this feeling whenever the persistent consequences don't apply; Jedi: Fallen Order is a purer example). But that's not true of games that punish you for failure. It's often the case that you'll have truly moved yourself farther away from being able to beat it.

Jedi: Fallen Order review

Disincentivizes experimentation

If they're leaning on a bad strategy as a crutch that only works for the early levels, they're not going to want to try to learn to play better because you'll punish them for doing so. I experienced this with parrying in Dark Souls; it's incredibly powerful but it takes a lot of practice, and during the practice period you'll fare much worse than if you didn't try to parry.

Obviously, you want to encourage players to experiment to see more of what the game has to offer.

Conclusion at the extreme

If the player fails several times, one of the following things will necessarily happen:

Your game only does this up to a certain point, at which point all alleged benefits of the practice are nullified.

Your game allows some sort of grinding or any way to undo the persistent consequences by repeating some disinteresting task (Dark Souls does), and the player just resorts to that. It all boils down to wasting the player's time.

If you don't do either of the above things, the challenge can become effectively impossible and the player is forced to drop the game.

Objections

As of now, the only defense of the practice I'm aware of is "consequences are necessary to raise the stakes; games aren't as engaging when there are no consequences for failure". This is foolish because the consequences in this case aren't really stakes; they're just moving the goal farther away from being completed. The player is still going to beat the boss/level, it'll just take more tries or more grinding to recover the lost items. If you had a challenge where the player only gets one try, and if they fail then the story reflects that failure, that would be actual stakes. But it's not what this article is about.