Do you think that life systems should be abandoned in games?

[Cirta]

In the past couple, I noticed an increase in the people saying that live system are always bad and are only something leftover from the arcade only to eat up your coins, make a game artificially harder or longer. Personally, I don't think that's the case... at least not always. Let's take a look at two games, one where I feel a life system is necessary or at least beneficial in some way and another where it is actually useless.

Mega Man (2 for example): Let's say you're at the boss gate and you have two lives left. If you die two times, you'll go back to the menu which will is a punishment since you'd have to do the whole level all over again. Now, let's say now there is have infinite lives. The punishment for dying is to do boss again, a boss that doesn't even last over a minute. That means that you need next to no skill to beat it because if you can try again until you succeed, which will probably be a brute forced win because you can try how many times you want, so really there is no punishment for losing. When a platformer that focuses on start to finish linear levels don't have lives, you don't actually need to be good at it to beat it, just try over again until you fluke it. It's not making the game artificially harder, it's more so making sure you are actually good at the game instead of brute forcing it. However, I believe that a game with a live system should have a ways to gain lives if you are good at the game. Whether that'd be hidden/hard to reach 1-ups, maxing out your score or other.

Super Mario 64: The live system in this game is indeed making the game artificially difficult. That's actually because SM64 is more based on exploration rather than platforming. And even when it features more tricky platforming sections, the stages feature little to no checkpoints. The punishment for having a Game Over is going back to the 1st floor which is bad since it's not making you do a difficult section, it's literally just wasting your time.

The thing that annoys the most about gaming opinions nowadays is that people will call anything that they can't do in a game "artificially difficult" while anything they manage to do "fair". I'm probably guilty of this myself and haven't realized it but I still think it's a problem.

But what do you think about lives in games?

 

[TheDragonFire123]

If anything, WarioWare games (well, the normal modes) are characterised by their strong lives systems (where boss microgames means you can lose at most one microgame per cycle without being life-negative), whereas Wario Land games past II are well characterised by their lack of lives and therefore innovative solutions to punish or reward failure.

But yeah, many genres have pioneered systems that work without lives to the point where many games should consider what positive impact their systems are adding at all. Not to say that all lives systems are bad; WarioWare's works fine.

 

[Cirta]

If anything, WarioWare games (well, the normal modes) are characterised by their strong lives systems (where boss microgames means you can lose at most one microgame per cycle without being life-negative), whereas Wario Land games past II are well characterised by their lack of lives and therefore innovative solutions to punish or reward failure.

But yeah, many genres have pioneered systems that work without lives to the point where many games should consider what positive impact their systems are adding at all. Not to say that all lives systems are bad; WarioWare's works fine.

I wouldn't say WarioWare has a life system. It's even though they are called lives and 1-ups, they behave more like hit points, allowing to continue the continue when you make a mistake instead of sending you back to a checkpoint. WarioWare doesn't have checkpoints anyways so it wouldn't make sens to have a life system.

When I say lives, I'm purely talking about a Game Over that would send you at the beginning of the level and losing a live to checkpoint.

 

[noobmurderer34]

Not all games need a life system, but I can see why they exist, to put something at stake. Whether you game over in Mega Man, or get knocked out of the ring in Wario Land, the punishment is having to play through the level again, and a lot of the time it does just waste time, but as long as the game is clear about what to do I think it's usually enough to motivate the player into learning the patterns instead of brute forcing, and naturally the more you play a game the better you're going to get at it.

That being said, sometimes games will skip having a punishment entirely by having something like a save point before a boss, and the punishment doesn't always need to be wasting time, it could be something like lowering your rank or score, or maybe taking away some items or resources. What if you got to Wily Castle and were saving an E tank for a harder boss on a later stage, but you were about to game over, so you had no choice but to use it? I think it would be cool if, in a roguelite or something, losing to a boss meant losing money you could have spent on items to help fight, and if you wanted to save up for a powerful weapon, you'd be left with no items so it would be high risk high reward

 

[Cirta]

That being said, sometimes games will skip having a punishment entirely by having something like a save point before a boss, and the punishment doesn't always need to be wasting time, it could be something like lowering your rank or score, or maybe taking away some items or resources. What if you got to Wily Castle and were saving an E tank for a harder boss on a later stage, but you were about to game over, so you had no choice but to use it? I think it would be cool if, in a roguelite or something, losing to a boss meant losing money you could have spent on items to help fight, and if you wanted to save up for a powerful weapon, you'd be left with no items so it would be high risk high reward

I agree with that! As long as there are actually stakes to playing poorly, then that's alright with me. I actually like the fact that in Mega Man 2, the game takes away your E-Tanks if you Game Over as opposed to every other Mega Man game. Like this, if you are at zero lives at the beginning of the stage, you actually have a choice between keeping your E-Tanks but dying means it's back to the beginning, or intentionally Game Over-ing giving your more shots at the stage (and also refilling your ammo if in the Wily stages).

People might bring up games like Cuphead where there isn't a life system while still having stakes, but this game doesn't have any checkpoint so dying instantly makes you do the whole stage again. Also the bosses in this game are much longer.

 

[Baker Man]

I'd personally say that lives should be a setting, like it could be a difficulty modifier.
But then again I'd also say it depends on the lives system and the game, a Wario Land styled game shouldn't have lives, but a Mario or Sonic styled game would be fine with them.

Fun fact actually, did you guys know that Five Nights At Freddy's was originally gonna have lives? I assume these lives would've made you restart from night 1 when you ran out