Both Hyper Light Drifter (Hyper Light Drifter incentivizes reckless play) and Bloodborne (Aggressive Play Rewarded in Bloodborne Game) manage to incentivize the player to play their respective games in an aggressive way, despite how vulnerable the player character is. In neither games is it a positive thing to be damaged.

They do this by rewarding the player with scarce resources that make the combat easier. The interesting balance is in how the combat must be done difficult without the resource to gain that resource.

I like that this is done without coercion. The player chooses to play aggressively, despite the risks. And by playing aggressively, they are playing the game as the developers intended (Redundancy makes systems stronger). There is no requirement that the game must be played this way - it's only the unspoken built-in reward structures that guide the player toward the emergent play behavior. And all skilled players end up playing this way.

In the real world, this is a akin to how there are tax incentives built into the tax law. Those incentives guide taxpayers to optimize the system, giving the federal and state regions the behavior they were hoping for.

• Habitica Health vs Experience game mechanic HabitRPG Health vs Experience game mechanic
• Hyper Light Drifter
• (Bloodborne #citation)

#toolong