punishing that does not make sense in the context of the game world is an immersion breaker and bad design.

if you shoot a goodguy, cops chasing you make sense. you health going down does not. that's a "bad designer! no twinkie!" if i ever saw one.

you should try to make something not possible due to circumstances that seem wholely reasonable and logical in the context of the game world. so you don't break immersion.

so what you want is an EMP gun, which does nothing to humans, except perhaps with repeated exposure at max power for decades on end. (the whole EM fields and cancer thing - IE don't build your house under high voltage power lines).

I don't want to complain or anything but I do know that there are games that do make you lose health if you do something wrong like shooting the wrong people.

Punishment is something game designers tend to lighten up these days. These days, game punishment is just minimum and isn't what it used to be. Only few of them stand out like Fire Emblem and Dark Souls but their audience is niche so that counts.

Now many platform games don't use the life system which I badly want it back because to them, its pointless.

I know in Metal Gear Solid, if you hit/kill one of the main characters the game, your health will be diminished and it will end if she is killed by Snake. However, in the same game in one of the areas, they disable the use of weapons because in-story it makes sense, but, they could allowed the player to use weapons and just punish them(i.e ending the game or getting caught and having the escape the holding area).

You're talking about Meryl when fighting Psycho Mantis?
Actually, Meryl has her own health bar and attacking her depletes that.
If she dies, it's game over.

When it comes to "punishing" players for kills, the Metal Gear series makes it so that your score gets deducted and getting higher ranks is impossible.

In later titles, such as Peace Walker, you lose Heroism points if you kill the enemies and Heroism is needed to raise your base's reputation and attract high-ranking recruits.

In The Phantom Pain, you no longer lose Heroism for killing enemy soldiers but you lose them for other actions, such as letting hostages die, killing them yourself or have your support chopper destroyed.

Play around a bit with how you want to discourage players from killing but be careful to not make it too tedious or annoying.

Which is the better approach?

It really depends on what type of game you're creating.

I know in Metal Gear Solid, if you hit/kill one of the main characters the game, your health will be diminished and it will end if she is killed by Snake. However, in the same game in one of the areas, they disable the use of weapons because in-story it makes sense, but, they could allowed the player to use weapons and just punish them(i.e ending the game or getting caught and having the escape the holding area).

You're talking about Meryl when fighting Psycho Mantis?
Actually, Meryl has her own health bar and attacking her depletes that.
If she dies, it's game over.

When it comes to "punishing" players for kills, the Metal Gear series makes it so that your score gets deducted and getting higher ranks is impossible.

In later titles, such as Peace Walker, you lose Heroism points if you kill the enemies and Heroism is needed to raise your base's reputation and attract high-ranking recruits.

In The Phantom Pain, you no longer lose Heroism for killing enemy soldiers but you lose them for other actions, such as letting hostages die, killing them yourself or have your support chopper destroyed.

Play around a bit with how you want to discourage players from killing but be careful to not make it too tedious or annoying.

In the first one, if you hit Meryl randomly, she will slap Snake and deplete his health.

In the first one, if you hit Meryl randomly, she will slap Snake and deplete his health.

Oh, forgot about that part.

Reminds me of Resident Evil 4.
If you shoot Luis too much, you get a scripted cutscene where he shoots Leon to death.

In the first one, if you hit Meryl randomly, she will slap Snake and deplete his health.

Oh, forgot about that part.

Reminds me of Resident Evil 4.
If you shoot Luis too much, you get a scripted cutscene where he shoots Leon to death.

Interesting game play mechanics, so punishing the player isn't that uncommon as I thought. It also seems that the dynamic has changed over time.

I don't know if this counts as punishment, but in MGS, after Meryl has been shot down by Wolf, if you attempt to help Meryl(although, even if you could approach Meryl, I don't think you could have helped her regardless), Wolf will immediately lock on and shoot you, to me that indicates that you're not supposed to move forward or help Meryl, if you do, you'll be shot.

Interesting game play mechanics, so punishing the player isn't that uncommon as I thought. It also seems that the dynamic has changed over time.

I don't know if this counts as punishment, but in MGS, after Meryl has been shot down by Wolf, if you attempt to help Meryl(although, even if you could approach Meryl, I don't think you could have helped her regardless), Wolf will immediately lock on and shoot you, to me that indicates that you're not supposed to move forward or help Meryl, if you do, you'll be shot.

But the Luis and Meryl being shot at by Wolf examples are more of a major event.

Those will most likely be scripted if the storyline follows specific events and you don't have an alternate path if certain major characters dies.

If we're going with general gameplay mechanics, then you could just make it so that the players' scores are reduced if they choose to kill human enemies.
But at the same time, make sure the game is created in a way where it's possible to progress without killing human enemies.

Like if you are required to take a key from an human enemy in order to progress don't make it so you can only kill the enemy to obtain the key.
Have alternate means like knocking out the enemy or obtain the item via pickpocket.