I don't like platform games that have this unlimited live gimmick going on in there. The point of platform games to have lives is to teach the player what wrong he did and how he can improve on it and it also develops the responsibility towards the players that's why getting extra lives isn't such a chore. But when you remove lives and then make it so the player respawns from the beginning, the learning curve is more delayed since checkpoints are out of the question when playing these sort of games.

Now I can understand that games like Metroid, Cave Story, Shantae and other metroidvania games can be excused but these games have energy bars to compensate on the lives. Seriously, I hate games with unlimited lives as it makes the game boring really fast. This is one of the reasons why I didn't enjoy much from Rayman origins and just simply didn't bother to get Rayman Legends immediately (Well one of the reasons is for the price drop but you get the idea.)

Its bad enough that the level design is hard so let alone the levels be hard not this one life gimmick like cut that crap out!!!!!

I don't play many platformers, so take my thoughts with a pinch of salt.

That said, if part of the experience of playing a platformer is learning the tricks of the level, then I'm inclined to argue that having unlimited lives aids that, while having limited lives works against it. With unlimited lives, one can keep trying, learning a little more each time; there's nothing to interrupt the learning process aside from the brief resetting of the level. Conversely, having a limited number of lives may mean being sent back to the main menu every so often, breaking the continuity of one's experience with the level--breaking one's "flow"--and thus potentially interfering with the learning process. If the game allows the player to manually save and load, then the player effectively has unlimited lives, but accessed through the clunkier interface.

(I don't see any reason that checkpoints should be out of the question, although it's quite possible that this is a trend that I've simply missed--as I said, I don't play many platformers.)

... it also develops the responsibility towards the players that's why getting extra lives isn't such a chore.

I'm honestly not sure of what you're saying here. Are you saying that it encourages level designers to be merciful to players, ensuring that they have access to extra lives?

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying unlimited lives make the game harder or easier?

Have you played VVVVVV? VVVVVV has infinite lives with instant respawning and checkpoints every five feet. In doing this, it can offer much more difficult challenges without being aggravating. VVVVVV is a good example of how to increase challenge, without increasing frustration.

[Edit:] To clarify, I'm not bashing death, and I don't always like the idea of infinite lives, but I think there's important game design lessons to be discovered by pushing different mechnics to their extremes. What happens if we make dying very harsh (i.e. permadeath)? What happens if we make dying painless (i.e. instant respawn)? What happens if we add a delay before respawning (like most FPSes)? What happens if the player has a fixed number of lives? What happens if he can find more lives within the game? What happens if the player dies in one hit from every enemy? What happens if enemies do miniscule amounts of damage? What happens if the player has a automaticly recharging health bar? What happens if his health doesn't recharge? etc... etc...

We need to push the mechanics to the extreme, and see what we can learn from the results.

since checkpoints are out of the question when playing these sort of games

Hold on. You cite Rayman, and Rayman has one of the more aggressive checkpointing schemes I've seen.

At least in Legends, the game checkpoints every time you enter a room, and at many arbitrary points for levels without a clear structure of rooms. Except for a few continuous running levels where checkpointing is explicitly disabled to increase the challenge, most levels have checkpoints every few minutes of gameplay.

The problem is not unlimited lives, but restarting from the beginning after dying (or more generally restarting from sparse checkpoints), causing the player to go through a large boring level part before reaching the place where he died and where he can try again.

Limited lives are a means to stop playing: in a coin-op game because you are supposed to pay to play (and play for a time that's strictly proportional to your skill), in a console or computer game because independent successive attempts to beat the game are more meaningful than retrying forever.

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying unlimited lives make the game harder or easier?

Have you played VVVVVV? VVVVVV has infinite lives with instant respawning and checkpoints every five feet. In doing this, it can offer much more difficult challenges without being aggravating. VVVVVV is a good example of how to increase challenge, without increasing frustration.

[Edit:] To clarify, I'm not bashing death, and I don't always like the idea of infinite lives, but I think there's important game design lessons to be discovered by pushing different mechnics to their extremes. What happens if we make dying very harsh (i.e. permadeath)? What happens if we make dying painless (i.e. instant respawn)? What happens if we add a delay before respawning (like most FPSes)? What happens if the player has a fixed number of lives? What happens if he can find more lives within the game? What happens if the player dies in one hit from every enemy? What happens if enemies do miniscule amounts of damage? What happens if the player has a automaticly recharging health bar? What happens if his health doesn't recharge? etc... etc...

We need to push the mechanics to the extreme, and see what we can learn from the results.

I'm saying that unlimited lives make it way to easy.

Here's one issue though. VVVVVV is a puzzle platformer. Having lives on a puzzle game can't work since the game focuses heavily on the puzzle elements. That's why it makes sense for the Wario Land series (not the first one but from the sequel onwards) to not have lives because they focus a lot on the puzzles.

We're talking about basic platformers with no sub genres here. So with that in mind, let me talk about the issues I have with unlimited lives.

In Rayman Legends (or even origins for that matter) there is unlimited lives here. The problem with that is that it destroys two things.

1. Challenge

2. Lack of satisfaction

Challenge because the game works a lot like an emulator. For every section that the player has to restart, there is a restart sequence which restarts from that point making it super easy to just collect stuff and complete levels.

Lack of satisfaction because collecting stuff here doesn't reward the player at all. The only thing the Lums do is to give you currency which unlocks costumes, instead of having them hidden around the levels. Not only that, but the way they are placed is so bad that its not even good game design to begin with. There are numerous times where I miss the lums no matter how good I am and that is a bad thing to do in a platformer in general. You always make the collectibles easy to get as much as possible no matter where you go.

I feel as though that modern platformers are destroying the value of collecting stuff by eliminating lives. Even if the game is easy, lives are something any gamer would like to get easily because when he faces a tough challenge, those lives will come in handy. Another reason that this unlimited lives don't mean a thing is that there is no punishment that the player gets for losing. Punishment is needed inorder to develop the learning curve and losing lives is something that balances both frustration and challenge.

Not only that but there's also lack of having power ups as well. There's nothing else you can do in Legends besides the basics (even that is also underwhelming).

Observe every Super Mario game out there. Why is it so easy to get lives? Because there are bound to be levels that do take some challenge. So the player has a choice. Either go to the previous level to easily get the power ups that are required or complete it the hard core way. This isn't a problem because the player can easily complete the levels in no time at all. Collecting coins means a lot as well. If a player finds a hidden block, he's given a reward which gives satisfaction.

I think (no idea whether that's true, but I think so) that it may be an economic thing.

They've probably done some research and market analysis and concluded (rightfully or wrongly) that by giving people infinite lives, they will be able to sell to a larger audience of "more casual" or "totally casual" players.

Note that this is not a coin machine where the main incentive is to have the players lose their lives so they insert new coins. It's a game where you buy the title, and once you have it, you don't insert coins any more (well, not always true, but anyway). So, getting more people who wouldn't normally be much appealed by your game to buy your game (yes, girls, I'm looking at you) can be a huge increase of revenue.

Now, why they make you restart from the beginning every time, don't ask me why. Maybe because it's just too easy (and boring) otherwise.

Shovel Knight had an interesting mechanic for this. Whenever you got to a checkpoint you could break it to get extra treasure. But as a result you wouldnt be able to respawn there if you died. It added an interesting choice mechanic to platform respawns.

Shovel Knight had an interesting mechanic for this. Whenever you got to a checkpoint you could break it to get extra treasure. But as a result you wouldnt be able to respawn there if you died. It added an interesting choice mechanic to platform respawns.

Not only that but it also had treasure as means of both your lives and as means of buying stuff since getting treasure is so easy and rewarding at the same time.

Lack of satisfaction because collecting stuff here doesn't reward the player at all. The only thing the Lums do is to give you currency which unlocks costumes, [...]
I feel as though that modern platformers are destroying the value of collecting stuff by eliminating lives.

So it seems to me that they copied a mechanic (collecting objects) and removed a mechanic (lives), and didn't sufficiently re-analyze the purpose of the mechanic they copied (collecting objects).

Collecting stuff is an important mechanic, but it doesn't have to be tied to lives - Spyro the Dragon (gemstones) and Banjo and Khazooie (musical notes) both have extra lives but don't tie their collectibles to them, but are still important to collect for other reasons (both Spryo and Banjo tie them to progression and bonus areas).

So collecting items can still be a valuable and enjoyable part of a game, without being tied to lives. So, in itself, the absence of lives does not ruin collecting items. They just can't be crammed in a game for no purpose, but need to be thought out to make it matter to players.

Super Mario 64 did give you an extra life for every 50 coins you collect, but their "primary" purpose was if you collect 100 coins on a single level, you get a star collectible which is the real goal of the game.

Not only that but there's also lack of having power ups as well.

But powerups aren't usually tied to lives either.

There's nothing else you can do in Legends besides the basics (even that is also underwhelming).

I haven't played Rayman Legends, but it sounds like it might just be a poorly designed game, regardless of how pretty it looks. But maybe it's design shines in other areas.

Observe every Super Mario game out there. Why is it so easy to get lives? Because there are bound to be levels that do take some challenge. So the player has a choice. Either go to the previous level to easily get the power ups that are required or complete it the hard core way. This isn't a problem because the player can easily complete the levels in no time at all.

But why should I run through earlier levels ten times in a row, just to get extra lives? How does that improve the game?

I can think of one way it might improve the game: If players are dying alot on a difficult level, subtly teaching them to go back to an earlier and repeatedly do it may regain their motivation and confidence and relax them enough to re-try the difficult level. But this could also be potentially done through other means.

And if I do go through the earlier levels ten times in a row (which I have done on occasion when nearly out of lives), once I get 99 lives, isn't that pretty much the same as saying "you have infinite lives for the next three hours of gameplay"? Once I have 99 lives, dying once again loses its meaning for the next ~80 deaths.

Here I'm going to talk about games in general, not just platformers: In many situations, for many games, I think death should have a high cost. Why I think that, I haven't yet figured out. How high a cost? It varies from game to game. The whole issue of punishing failure in games (whether through death or other means) is a difficult subject for me to think about - I just haven't come to any real resolution in my own head.
The issue is, are we going to punish the player? (which I'm fine with!) If yes, are we going to really punish them with permadeath? Failure = lose the game. Or are we going to water down the punishment to only mildly annoy them? Show them a death screen, teleport them back ten minutes of gameplay, and then continue as normal? We're punishing them by making them replay a part of the game they've already played?

What punishments can we offer that:

• Doesn't merely make them redo a few minutes work pointlessly.
• Isn't something they can easily recover from. It has to actually have COST.
• Ideally, the cost can scale. Small failures can have small cost, large failures can have larger costs.
• Doesn't make them rage-quit. It can't permanently cripple them.
• Doesn't lead them in a spiral of more deaths - it can't take away their strength, making the game harder, making them more likely to die, making the game harder, making them more likely to die, etc...
• Feels fair - "I made a mistake", rather than "the controller was lagging!" (seriously heard someone yell this one time) and rather than avoiding death requiring to precognitive knowledge of the level (bad game designer, no twinkie!)
• Feels like the world in the game is punishing in general (i.e. any theoretical adventurer in this "world" would be equally punished), rather than the game developers punishing you specifically.

I'm probably missing a few other things to think about when designing punishments in games, and some of these are almost contradictory - which is part of the problem. Our goals in punishing the player is almost contradictory to our goal of making the game enjoyable for the player. It's not actually contradictory, because punishment can be enjoyable. But it has to be designed skillfully.

The difficulty with challenge, is different players have different thresholds of challenge they can overcome. To some players, the game won't be challenging enough, and will be boring. To others, the game will be too challenging, and will be annoying. But when you match up the right amount of challenge with the right player skill, it can be very enjoyable. So to make a challenging game, by it's nature, is going to be a game not enjoyable to a large group of people. Still worth making though, for the segment of people that the challenge lines up well for. Now, it's part of a game's job to gradually ramp up challenge to funnel players of many skill levels to the real challenge of the end-game, but even so it'll still be too much for some players, and too little for others.

Further, a player's skill can vary slightly from day to day, if he's having a "bad day" skill-wise. Further still, some days a player isn't wanting as much challenge as other days - he wants an easy relaxing play session. So you can't design a challenge-focused game that fits the skill of everyone. And you can't design a challenge-focused game that appeals to one person all the time.

In addition, challenge doesn't always have to be punished on failure. Sometimes just failing the challenge is fine, with the player being rewarded on success, rather than punished on failure.

Another difficulty I have when I think through punishment and rewards, is something an artist friend pointed out to me. If we reward players with power for overcoming a challenge, that makes the future challenges easier, leading the game in a spiral of increasing boredom. If we punish players by withholding or power for not overcoming a challenge, or taking power away for failing, that makes future challenges harder, leading the game in an upward spiral of increasing aggravation.
We almost need to punish successful players, and help failing players.
But we have to be careful in doing so. Helping players when they are failing can make them feel terrible if they realize they are being helped. We either need to adjust the challenge difficulty to meet them, or adjust their in-game abilities to meet the challenge. At the same time, we're still trying to train the players to grow in their skill to meet later challenges, so we can't just slap training wheels on everything, or they won't grow. Further, making things too easy, and there'd still be no challenge, making the game boring again.

As for punishing successful players, I think they'd be less offended if they realize what's going on - it'd be more of a compliment ("heh, the game thinks I'm too skilled! Yeah I am!"). Even so, I think it should still be disguised as much as possible.

Further food for thought: Dark Souls II: How to Approach Game Difficulty - Extra Credits (I don't fully agree with this - especially the part about players choosing their own difficulty using in-game features; that ruins enjoyment for me in some games, if I can manipulate the game mechanics to be at a challenge level below my skill level, rather than at my skill level)