so you know when you are playing a game and you try to shoot your in game companion and you either can’t do it or he starts saying stop shooting me but he actually doesn’t take any damage or the game makes a mission failed pop up and you restart from your last checkpoint or when the game takes control from the player sometimes to avoid him shooting at some NPCs or whatever.

well I am making a GTA game and while working on it I added the mission system to the NPCs in other words i programmed the NPCs to hold the mission system but before that shooting NPCs killed them and so you can do the same with NPCs that hand out missions and I started to play around with that concept I made missions where oneNPC wants you to kill another important NPC and when you go to that one he tells go kill the one that gave you the mission WELL i hope that’s not complicated and I found it interesting I mean the player can create his own fun so why can’t he also choose to kill every last NPC in the game yeah all the missions are now gone but it was the player’s choice

MY QUESTION FINALLY…
is that gonna be bad for the player? will it discourage them? or will it actually feel liberating for the player to do anything he wants in the game without any type of constraints? I don’t know in one way I find it cool and interesting on the other it might hurt players that might kill an NPC by mistake
so what do you think ?

Generally, games try to avoid allowing a player to ruin his own fun. If the missions are a major portion of the game, especially if a few NPC's give out most of the missions, then allowing them to be killed is going to leave the player in an "ok, now what?" situation.

However, if missions are just one choice in a buffet of fun subgames, then sure? why not? The player murders all the story based NPC's, and then goes back to bank heists or forming his own gang to fill the power void or whatever.

Alternatively, you could make killing mission givers a subgame of its own: after the first few NPC's are knocked off, the remaining ones hire body guards, then personal armies, then hole up in highly defensible bunkers. Essentially, you make killing NPC's a content rich, challenging path of its own, so the player is challenged and rewarded either way.

Well you just added so much to my idea and I kinda like it because I want so many NPCs in the game to handout missions so you will always have something to do so that's covered but the body guards and killing subgame makes it more interesting and more dynamic and gives more options and challenges to the player which is my intention with this game giving the player as much freedom as possible but still make it challenging

like you can kill the boss of the family like any other NPC in the game but he has guards he lives in a high security building so in order to do that you need to over go a hard challenge

so yeah this is Kinda interesting thanks for the replay :D

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Is way too much player freedom bad?

Orymus makes a good point. I think it depends on what type of game you are making and what audience you are seeking to appeal to. I really like playing RPGs. I like RPGs where the main mission/objective is clear and I can undertake optional side quests at my leisure. I don't like RPGs that put me smack in the middle of a giant world with little to no direction (Skyrim comes to mind). I quickly feel overwhelmed when there are too many options for what I can do and where I can go. But that's just me. Other players thrive in that sort of environment. Figure out your audience first.

Just to add to Polama's response, the player shouldn't be able to kill important quest giver by mistake as it can and will lead to frustration. Imagine the NPC gives you quest to kill someone and your target runs just past your quest giver. You miss the target and there isn't anyone who could reward you later for that quest. But if you add a challenge to killing quest giver then it may be interesting.

Regarding your title question - ability to kill important NPC in not really freedom, it's game mechanic. Whenever you choose to implement it or not you should provide "things to do" for player. Be it quests, achievements, or just hints of what (s)he can do now or where to go. If you leave players with "what now?" question too early or too often they may get bored quickly.

You mentioned GTA, so let's get it as example. There is always at least one quest on your map where you can go. You may do hundreds of other things, but if you run out of ideas this the hint of what to do next. The same goes for Minecraft - basically game build around freedom that encourage you to do your stuff. But there are achievements that guide you in case you are not sure what to do.

as stated in other replies, "too much freedom" is a matter of opinion, not fact.

my opinion: i like maximum freedom. but it should not destroy game play if possible. instead of not being able to get a quest because an NPC has died, or not being able to kill an NPC because they're required for a quest (skyrim). you should let them kill the npc, who over time gets replaced with a new npc who also has a quest (same , similar, or different).

this method doesn't break quest gameplay by killing off all quest givers over time - they RESPAWN!

it also doesn't resort to hokey BS like "set to essential" characters in skyrim.

deflinek has a good point about having to somehow deal with "friendly fire" accidents where the player accidentally kills an "essential" npc.

also the part about "things to do".

GOALS are the key. as long as the player has a goal they want to achieve - quest related or otherwise - they will remain motivated and engaged.

examples:

playing a pacifist monk in skyrim (no weapons, no armor, no spells, no scrolls). quest are mostly about killing things. thats lydia's job. mostly to get gear to improve for smithing experience points. so goals become things like getting 100 smithing and enchanting, and disenchanting one of every type of magic item. needless to say, since a lot of the action in skyrim is about combat, this can get a bit dull. also, there's no hand-to-hand skill in skyrim due to mass market streamlining. so i'm still working on the "rules" for playing monks. i've just added unarmed hand to hand, and am contemplating daggers, poison, bows, and sneaking - the non-pacifist version of a monk, IE a ninja. and that right there gives me enough goals to get yet a few more evenings of gameplay from skyrim, which i've played to death 100 times over already.

trying the "slave society" strategy in rome2. attack to capture slaves. slave based economy. slave related buildings. i came up with a dominant strategy for total war titles long ago (hint: its really a game about public order management - just like running a real world ancient empire probably was, and if you play the strategic game right, you never have to manually fight a single battle, the odds are always so in your favor), but this gives me a new goal in rome2.

the problem is when the player runs out of goals they CARE about. you may have many "things to do", but if they don't give a s--t about that kinds stuff - well... then you're screwed. they stop playing.

example: skyrim hard coded quests. eventually, you buy all the horse and houses. for every character you play. and you just don't care about getting red eagle's sword for the fourth time with this character, and the 67th time since you first started playing skyrim. that's when you've lost the player.

example: skyrim hard coded quests. eventually, you buy all the horse and houses. for every character you play. and you just don't care about getting red eagle's sword for the fourth time with this character, and the 67th time since you first started playing skyrim. that's when you've lost the player.

I would say a player lost after that is a great success. What can he say to his friends? "Yeah, I don't play it anymore, but man! I've had a ton of fun for last few months!". Failure is a player lost after 2-3 hours because he couldn't discover what game has to offer :)

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Is way too much player freedom bad?

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the question itself is subjective.

What is "way too much" freedom?

(What's "Way too much" for you, probably isn't the same as "way too much" for me)

well what I mean with to much freedom is the game rules that exist rules of the game don't change for specific NPCs they all have to follow the rules in other words no NPCs are beings that can't be killed until I want to be killed in other words if the player hated the an NPC for whatever reason and didn't like doing missions for them they can outright kill them there are concequences for one the NPC is now not in the game there missions are now gone you can't do them but it was your choice what encourged me to do that more are games like Dark Souls where the rules are set and they apply to everything

also this video from Tom Francis the creator of the game Gunpoint

talkd about that but I myself hate AAA games where you Have NPCs that aren't killable for the sake of the story and what

Norman Barrows

said about skyrim now think about this one NPC asks you to kill another important NPC and wanted to give you a big reward and now it's your choice take this cool reward and kill this NPC with his own storyline that you might like or ignore this mission and keep this NPC something like that

okay so basically way to much is just all objects in the game follow the same rules without any specifications and scripted things you get my point :P

Orymus makes a good point. I think it depends on what type of game you are making and what audience you are seeking to appeal to. I really like playing RPGs. I like RPGs where the main mission/objective is clear and I can undertake optional side quests at my leisure. I don't like RPGs that put me smack in the middle of a giant world with little to no direction (Skyrim comes to mind). I quickly feel overwhelmed when there are too many options for what I can do and where I can go. But that's just me. Other players thrive in that sort of environment. Figure out your audience first.

actually I am adding RPG elements for now the game doesn't have a clear goal so it depends on what the player wants in other words you set your objective and make your own story through the dynamic events and through your own decisions as in killing one NPC might actually make another like you and help you and give some objective like rule the Mafia underworld or destroy another Family
it's complicated but I think my audience are people who like to create there own fun like they choose what to do based on what they like yeahh :P thanks for the feedback you make an interesting point that needs pondering :P