There are countless posts about making failure fun, and why it is important. Failure is part of the challenge - if you never fail, there is no challenge, and excitement comes with overcoming challenges.
But the main issue with failing is when you feel like you're not progressing. Failing is part of learning. I died more than 200 times to get the last star in Mario Galaxy 2, but that was ok. I felt like I was getting better, I could clear some passages without thinking after a while. And when I finally got it, I felt like I was a champion.
In other styles of games, your character progression is the main indicator of how strong you are. In modern RPGs, being beaten by an enemy doesn't necessarily mean you lose all the experience you have earned until then, or the items you have looted. When you die in Diablo 3, you lose time (and a bit of gold). You have no experience or item penalty.
However, it isn't exactly fun to fail in all these cases. What's fun is the feeling of progress, not the failure itself. The usual reaction in these cases is frustration at having to start yet another time. Easier said than done however.
What I'm considering doing randomly triggering a kind of "berserker mode" upon death. Instead of immediately dying, the player has a chance to become invulnerable, with increased powers, for a short period of time, before ultimately dying. It could then even become a kind of skill to be improved - it needs to be carefully balanced though, because strategies that revolve around dying could not only be counter to the general playing goals (defeating monsters without being defeated), but also frustrating for the player; even if it's fun, no one prefers dying repeatedly over simply bashing the monsters away.
The "random" aspect is important too. It gives the berserker mode a special feel to it. Or maybe it could be triggered every time, and randomly have special powers. It is still all only ideas, upon which I will iterate.
What do you think? Are you aware of other games that made failure fun? How do they do it?
In Borderlands for example you have a chance upon death to revive if you kill one ennemy in a limited amount of time. Same feature can be found in Guild Wars 2 as well.
ReplyDeleteI like this idea, and it could be declined to suit different types of builds. The player could possibly revive if they heal themselves by a big enough amount, if they kill enough ennemies or inflict enough damage for instance.
ReplyDeleteIn Duck Hunt, it was fun to fail to see the dog laughing at us :D
ReplyDelete