In Super Mario 3D Land for 3DS, some levels were a bit challenging. If you lost a level too many times, you would get a golden leaf which allows you to fly and be invincible to any enemy - pretty powerful stuff. What do you think of giving "bad" players a reward? What do you think of giving them such a huge reward?

It's a feature and part of target audience selection and learning curve planning. But as a concept it doesn't have a place in every game, for example anything with serious take on things (indicated by age rating among other things) or anything that is multiplayer. In brief:

Does it affect player vs player situations in any way? => another unneeded balance issue you don't want players arguing about

Is repeatedly playing bad easier than trying to play good? => promotes cheating and players won't get addicted to progress

Can the feature be abused to skip lengths of the game? => bad players could miss key features of your game

Is it inconsistent with the game world? => illogical rewards (such as skipping bosses) break immersion

Is it inconsistent with the way you reward the player throughout the rest of the game? => players feels cheated and stop investing their time to challenging and time consuming tasks that supposedly yield good rewards

It's a feature and part of target audience selection and learning curve planning. But as a concept it doesn't have a place in every game, for example anything with serious take on things (indicated by age rating among other things) or anything that is multiplayer. In brief:

Does it affect player vs player situations in any way? => another unneeded balance issue you don't want players arguing about

Is repeatedly playing bad easier than trying to play good? => promotes cheating and players won't get addicted to progress

Can the feature be abused to skip lengths of the game? => bad players could miss key features of your game

Is it inconsistent with the game world? => illogical rewards (such as skipping bosses) break immersion

Is it inconsistent with the way you reward the player throughout the rest of the game? => players feels cheated and stop investing their time to challenging and time consuming tasks that supposedly yield good rewards

Thanks. There are many "ifs" to your answer, which means you would probably eventually agree with me that it's a bad mechanic under most circumstances. I was trying to tell this to a group of people but failed.

I much prefer neutral ways of getting back in the game. Going with multiplayer, in The Last Story, you could defeat the other player for more points, run around the board collecting points, or wait until Sudden Death (1-5 minutes left) and defeat the player which gets you a massive number of points. The other player can do the same, but since doing things correctly gets you back in the game especially with the game taking points away from him every time you defeat him, you have a good chance against all but the greatest of players when in a losing battle.

I agree that it doesn't have a place in COMPETITIVE multiplayer, but it's something that isn't so bad for cooperative multiplayer, again based on the target audience and type of game.

I would argue, purely speculatively, that Super Mario 3D land 3DS would be a bad game for such a mechanic. I would think it skews younger (platformer on a handheld) and kids are generally good gamers. I could beat Super Mario 3 with my eyes closed when I was younger, but I have trouble these days.

I think the mechanic has a place in games targetting co-op play between parents and kids (so on PC or console rather than handheld). This way the parent could stay alive and not annoy his kid by dying every 5 seconds when they get deeper into the game. I think by combining the bonus with a "both players need to stay alive" mechanic, you could balance it to keep the game enjoyable for the better player.

target audience selection

Ok I have something that supports this alone.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/13/call-of-duty-red-orchestra-2-interview/

So if your target audience is literally based on another game, you may need to babysit a while for them to reach the level of play you hoped to introduce in the first place.

Mario Kart Wii I thought did this in a decently balanced way. In the Mario Kart series of games, you get items/powerups that you can use to either hinder your opponents or benefit yourself as you are racing. Depending on what position you are in in the race (1st through 12th), you are more likely to get different items.

• Players in 11th or 12th place can get any item, but are more likely to get the best speed boosters (gold mushrooms and 3-packs of shrooms), and have access to some items other positions can't get, like lightning (which strikes every player, stopping them in place so they lose their velocity and acceleration, and also shrinks them down so they are extra vulnerable).
• Players in 9th or 10th can get blue shells, which heat-seek for the player in 1st position, and cause a massive explosion often hitting the people who are neck-and-neck with the 1st position. They also get gold shrooms and 3-packs of shrooms. They also get bullet-bills which can carry you rapidly forward smashing into and tossing aside players in your path auto-driving your vehicle for you.
• Players in the middle ranges get items like red and green shells, often coming in 3-packs. Red shells are are heat-seeking. They also get things like bombs they can lob, and weaker boosters. They only rarely get goldshrooms, and when they get bullet-bills, the distance it carries you is vastly smaller.
• Players near the top (5-3rd) only rarely get 3-packs of shrooms, almost never get goldshrooms, and rarely get 3-packs of shells, usually just getting single shrooms, or single shells.
• Players in 2nd position basically only get single-shrooms, single red shells, single green shells, and packs of bananas (to toss behind you or lob forward).
• Players in 1st position never get red shells, never get boosts, and only get a single green shell or a single banana.

Also, as mentioned, different items have different strengths when used (like boosters, and the duration and intensity of some items used against opponents), depending at which position you are in when you use them.

The idea is that the Mario Kart series is made so people of varying skill levels can play together and still have fun. It is very easy to go from 1st to 8th or so and then fight back to 2nd or 1st. It tries very hard to keep players from being so-far behind that they don't enjoy the play, and it tries to give everyone, regardless of their skill level, an enjoyable experience by keeping everyone still 'in the race'.

When playing Mario Kart Wii, you can see the map of the race and dots indicating every player's position. When playing the game, with skilled and unskilled players, I was impressed by how well Nintendo managed to keep everyone's position relatively close to each other with very very few outliers drastically ahead or drastically behind. This not only makes the game more enjoyable for poorer/newer players (they don't lose 'as badly', and occasionally even place at a decent position), it also makes the game alot more enjoyable for skilled players, by making people in a position below you have better weapons and boosters to keep you challenged.

If you're very very skilled, you can still beat the system and be a quarter of the map ahead of everyone else, but lapping players is usually a rare occurrence, unless you're playing on a smaller map and one of the players is under the age of 10 and driving in the wrong direction.

And it does all this without upsetting (most) players by still being skill-based, and not making it seem cheep or random. When you win OR when you lose, you don't feel like, "the randomness made me lose", because it doesn't feel (and isn't very) random, and even when someone shoots you and you fall behind, you always have the opportunity to get back in the lead (and this time, you're the one the system is benefiting with the better items).

Contrast this with the more recent Mario Party games, where everything feels so probability based (except for the minigames), that you feel like you might as well just flip a coin to decide who wins. (Mario Party isn't made by Nintendo, and the most recent one I played (Mario Party 8) was not very polished and pretty poorly made).

Also contrast this with the Super Smash Bros series, which is very hard-core and almost purely skill-based and played at tournaments - it does little to help out players who are doing poorly, giving a different experience. Super Smash Bros and Mario Kart are very polished and well done games, but Mario Kart is designed to be more accessible to a family of inequally skilled players.

I thought Mario Kart was that way but wasn't sure.

Regarding Smash Bros., I became so skilled at the game, that the people who played me would no longer play me.

I'd get regularily whooped at SSB. But at Mario Kart Wii, only one person in my immediate sphere of competitors would equal or surpass me, and then it'd come to which maps we played to determine which of us would win (whether the map complimented their playstyle or mine).

I'd get regularily whooped at SSB. <_< But at Mario Kart Wii, only one person in my immediate sphere of competitors would equal or surpass me, and then it'd come to which maps we played to determine which of us would win (whether the map complimented their playstyle or mine). ^_^

I'm the opposite, pretty good at Smash Bros. when well practiced, bad at Mario Kart. A bit off-topic but maybe we should start a game group here to play a game online some time. If I had to pick, it would be The Last Story (Wii), although I would have to rebuy it.

Generally I think rewarding bad players in casual multiplayer and single player is a great way to keep the player motivated and create challenge.
Crash bandicoot was known for adjusting the difficulty behind the scenes if a player dies to often, its the same concept. In multiplayer as long as the rewards are balanced it creates a more balanced competition even for less skilled players and in single player it keeps the player motivated to continue going.