/v/ - Video Games

Maybe you should come back when you have a whole mind.

>>14965912

Non-Lethal : Enemies can be woken up by other enemies, if discovered, low alert on short duration.

Lethal : If discovered, high alert on long duration.

Any system that diverges from the above is shit.

>still no trigun game where you have to ensure everyone survives via surgical bullet precision and patching up wounded enemies

Here's an interesting take on stealth and lethal vs non lethal.

http://www.dlsite.com/ecchi-eng/work/=/product_id/RE183797.html

going full lethal makes the game more difficult. it increases the alertness of enemies (but not the number, which is fixed) and when you're caught you get a game over instead of simply being thrown into a cell.

however if you go full lethal you can get better at fighting and eventually fight a special enemy at the end. it's been a while since I played it but I think you can unlock one of the endings this way.

you can also finish the game without killing a single enemy

there's also a full english translation. highly recommended

I hate when non-lethal takedowns take the same effort to perform than lethal but grant more rewards/benefits

I liked the way MGSV did it.

>>14971321

Fucking this.

Now sjw's ask for ways to solve conflicts without violence, which is imo very gay. But if stealth games give me the option to pass a level without killing anyone I try to do that. Not because I think that killing is bad, but because it's harder to get pass guards without killing them. Also makes me feel like a ghost.

>>14965912

I like it in theory, but it just renders lethal useless because the penalties of it outweigh the non-lethal approach. The only time you would use lethal is if you wanted to dick around.

In my opinion, non-lethal should only be rewarded if you're able to avoid npcs without detection. Non-lethals like tranquilizers and melee attacks should be risky to be more challenging. The latter would make noise and the former would either be inaccurate or make them unconscious for a random amount of time.

The biggest problems that I have with the lethal vs non lethal debate is the fact that so many options are given for lethal methods, but the game encourages nonlethal methods regardless.

Its probably to late to say this, but seeing a chart about which games encourage which would be interesting so go for it.

>>14967994

Probably the worst implementation of the system was from the nu-Deus Ex games where taking someone out with a lethal move was actually louder than firing an unsilenced pistol, taking someone out with a non-lethal attack could be done with someone standing 3 feet away with no repercussions, and the best part was that most of the non-lethal takedowns were actually noticeably louder than the lethal ones.

Shadow Tactics : Blades of the shogun absolutely expects you to murder guards, at least on a first playthrough. But bizarrely, the optional objectives change from mission to mission - one might have a no alarm badge, the other use a pain in the ass method to cross the river. In any case, I don't think there's any real penalty to killing, even civilians. So this game would go to the far end of the lethal spectrum if a lethal/non lethal chart gets made.

The elephant in the room here is Dishonored. The general discourse when it comes to this game is

>I can't use my cool lethal abilities or I'll be the villain !

>Low chaos restrics the game !

Both of those are only half truths. That is because you can totally kill and still get low chaos. Assassinate the main targets and the most annoying guards along your way ? Low chaos. You only get high if you set out to clean up the map.

The real problem with Dishonored is how it handles the story. For the first four chapters, you're just fine and dandy if you go full lethal, and then suddenly you're treated like the most evil scum on earth for the final mission. It comes out of nowhere, it's jarring, and it's chastising. The idea of getting a darker end if you go lethal is fine, Dishonored just made it a punch in the gut.

Bump

>>14979179

I always thought it was hilarious how you could beat the crap out of someone 2 a few feet from another guard and they wouldn't even notice.

The lethal/non lethal thing gets pretty tiresome at times. I usually prefer normal stealth run where you knockout/kill enemies and trigger some alerts vs complete ghost run where you leave no traces at all.

That way you have the normal run and then the more challenging run. How fun it is depends on the level design and availible options.

>forces you to stealth thought the mission

>at the end of the mission, the game decides to alarm the whole fucking base

>you can decide if you want to go full lethal or non-lethal

>lol your choice doestn matter since at the end of the mission the whole base will blowed up in a cut scene

I just lover when your play style is fucking ignored by the game…

>>14984174

I've been wondering if there's any games where lethal is the good ending and nonlethal the bad ending.

Look at DX:HR for just a minute. The biggest problem with the existing game is that non-lethal gets more experience, more chances/options for side missions, easier stealth, and everyone in the game will chastise you if you so much as step on a bug.

What if the game instead chastised you for leaving people alive? Non-lethal gets to remain the "easy" option from the gameplay perspective, but the story/lore encourages and revolves around killing your enemies. Is there a single game like this?

If OP made a chart about lethal/non-lethal being encouraged in which games, I have a feeling it would be an incredibly one-sided chart with the occasional middleground where it doesnt really matter either way. I think Dante's Inferno was one of the only games I heard of where being the good guy was more difficult and less fun in every way, but I haven't played it myself.

>>15013849

>OP made a chart about lethal/non-lethal being encouraged in which games, I have a feeling it would be an incredibly one-sided chart with the occasional middleground where it doesnt really matter either way.

For the purposes of such a chart, lethal being encouraged would clearly be set at "you're not being punished for it". Disposing of your enemies forever is its own reward anyway, so no particular consequences would be the lethal end of that scale. Or maybe go for a two-axis kind of thing? I'm not sure how that could go. Gameplay reward/story reward?

>DX:HR

The thing about DXHR is that lethal is clearly not intended for stealth, and non-lethal is clearly not intended for combat. Save a suppressed gun, lethal is risky as fuck in stealth since it makes more noise. And aside from that rare endgame gun, you don't have a great many ways to go pew pew and non-lethal. So I think it's not that clear cut, if you go for an action playthrough, non-lethal would be the punishing way to play.

>>15014405

I fucking hated the way Dishonored forced you to hold the sword even if you played non-lethal, it was completely useless and Id rather have a teleport in that slot.

>>15014405

Did people find Deus Ex fun to play as non-lethal? My first time playing I tried non-lethal because I enjoy stealth shit but that game rubbed me the wrong way. Imo many parts felt like they were designed by a completely different studio and they thought it was just a run-n-gun shooter. Not counting the boss fights there were some stealth sections that were tedious as all fucking hell. I couldn't finish it because I got so bored with it.

>>15014405

Deus Ex GOTY would probably go in the upper right. There really aren't any downsides to killing as opposed to non-lethal but the options are definitely there. I think they could have capitalized on that a bit more.

Speaking of, that chart should also measure (somehow) how harshly killing is punished as opposed to nonlethal.

>>15014479

It's true my scale doesn't really differentiate between punishing lethal and rewarding non lethal. No idea how to make the distinction though.

And doesn't Deus Ex OG make Paul flip his shit if you kill even one guard? Gameplay wise there's no real downside but story wise the game definitely cares I'd say.

>>15014472

I personally really enjoyed it, but I get why some people wouldn't.

>>15014430

Technically the sword can be used to lure, but yes, if you're going full pacifist it is a bit of a shame, especially since you need the sword out to do literally anything.

>>15014405

>Mark of the Ninja

The game opens up by saying that finishing levels without killing makes you a better ninja, and you get better ratings on missions by going non-lethal. Granted, towards the end they did their best to make non-lethal as hard as possible, but I'd say it strikes right in the middle where the story pushes you toward non-lethal but the game pushes you toward lethal

>>15014635

Oh, I didn't remember that part. I really just based the placement on the fact that takedowns aren't punished gameplay wise, guess I should replay it.

>>15014635

So I replayed some Mark of the Ninja. There is a no-kill bonus, but really zero kill penalty, and the non-lethal takedown moveset given by the special edition, while really good because the takedowns are silent, fairly long range and automatic, pretty much need you to kill dudes to get any real score. So yeah, while there is some token incentive not to kill, there is generally zero punishment for capping dudes in that game.

>>15014405

It's missing Metro.

>>15020052

I've played metro and I know there's some manner of moral choice going on, but I really don't remember the specifics of lethal/non lethal and the consequences thereof. Could you sum it up ?

>>14971433

non-lethal was borderline overpowered in MGS5

>tranq/stun

>fulton

>repeat until the base is empty

>>15020110

You are forgetting the game-breaking CQC throws that can combo as much enemies as possible

>>15020105

since ammunition is money in the metro going non lethal makes you richer

>>15014405

Hotline Miami 2? The Writer's segments are initially non-lethal, where you can't kill enemies, only knock them out and can't use guns, every time you grab one it automatically disassembles it, however if you mount a knocked enemy and punch him past the knock out point, he'll kill him, do this a few more times and now you're in rage mode, you can use every weapon available but you get less points for kills

>>15022908

>immersive non-lethal non-stealth

SWAT series?

>>15022921

bretty good idea

>>14984174

>For the first four chapters, you're just fine and dandy if you go full lethal, and then suddenly you're treated like the most evil scum on earth for the final mission.

I don't understand people who dislike Dishonored's chaos system. If you kill people, you get more guards (because a killer is on the loose) and more Weepers/Nest Keepers (because you are feeding the rats and bloodflies). And you are punished for it because you just precipitated the fall of an empire by supercharging a lethal plague.

So your choice is, do you press on with just chokeholds and sleep darts or do you take the easy route and risk facing more enemies later on? Do you explore and use up supplies to help people (reducing chaos) or do you leave them be? It's a nice mechanic.

>>15024302

Oh, I do agree the system is fine, it just needed to be paced better. High chaos just kinda hits you hard almost at the very end. If it changed the world and the reactions to your actions more gradually, I'm pretty sure nobody would be screeching about how it's "punishing me for having fun".

It was a fine system, just badly presented. 2's fix was essentially that high chaos isn't that much of a big deal, it mostly changes how your characters talks, which is fine, but they could have just fully realized the system as it was in 1.

I'd like to see a stealth game where a non-lethal takedown is more accurate and isn't an instant "go the fuck to sleep" skill. Non-lethal takedowns that are silent, efficient and effective are fucking hard to pull off even with consistent training. Also I'd like to see a stealth game where everyone's neck isn't made of paper.

Invisible Inc. measures lethal and non-lethal as purely practical applications. Killing guards requires guns, and guns are expensive and require ammo. Killing a guard also sets off their heart alarm, which increases the alert level (essentially the "timer" for the level) on the spot. However, a corpse is never going to bother you again, and later on when dealing with armored enemies it's likely your only means of taking them down are lethal armor-piercing guns. Non-lethal on the other hand is easier since it's done with recharging tasers, but it only knocks guards out for a short number of turns. You can boost this number somewhat with tranquilizer injections, and reset it if it gets low with another zap; stationing an agent on the unconscious body also freezes the time until revival, so if you want a guy to stay asleep a long time you have to tie an agent's hands with them each turn. And if that guard wakes up, he does not shrug off getting tased in the neck by an unknown intruder like in other games; he will immediately break his patrol route and start running around the level randomly hoping to find your agents, creating a dangerous unknown factor.

At no point does the game really give a shit about your lethal/non-lethal choices. There may have been a throwaway line about not wanting to kill the guards because the majority of them are nothing but regular guys doing their jobs (and it's just incidental their bosses are soulless cyberpunk megacorporations that rule the world) but it really doesn't matter how many bodies you leave behind you, just the resources it cost to make them.

>>15024464

You reminded me Invisible Inc was pretty much the only Klei game I haven't tried (excluding oxygen not included) and they've got a solid track record in my book, so I'm going to check that out.

>>15024341

They also tried to ameloriate concerns about lack of choice in non-lethal by adding stun mines and stun grenades which to me was lame. It's just springrazors and grenades retooled for non-lethal. Is much better when they add interesting non-lethal opportunities like putting Laudanum in the vents in The Bank Job. I rarely used the grenades or mines because they're only conditionally useful and fuck with the feeling of being a silent ghost.

>>15024341

there are more differences but you only notice them when replaying the game and paying attention to the details. On dishonored 1 you could stand near guards and hear them discuss your previous missions and how you murdered everyone. DH2 had these small interactions between NPCs that changed depending on your chaos level. For example during the museum level theres a maid who meets up with an officer who is pressuring her into stealing from her boss and says she didn't want to take the risk. On low chaos the officer hugs her and on high chaos he throws her off the roof

>>15027199

There are soporific throwables and I've seen the tooltips mention a headshot with a bottle makes a non-lethal takedown but I haven't been able to pull it off, maybe you need the strength upgrade.

Sure, you can say stun mines are just non-lethal springrazors, but it's funny you should mention ghosting because they added items specifically for that. Non-takedown based NL items and powers, like the stinging bolt, which makes guards flee an area, howling bolts which blind them, Half of Emily's power are useful in ghosting as well - Mesmerize stuns for a duration, and Shadow Walk makes her harder to spot, and Doppelganger can distract guards without counting as a detection. So no, you can't rightly say 2's efforts to support non lethal ghost are token. They did their fucking job on that one.

>>15027495

I admit I don't really tend to spy on conversations. I was looking for a note mentioning a massacre in Stilton's manor after finishing A Crack in the Slab but didn't find one. There has to be one though, right?

>no one's brought up undertale yet

My favorite part was that the game doesn't really tell you about it until the end, it's only really mentioned in one "fight" at the beginning/ Unfortunately that meant locking a lot of the good boss fights behind some really grindy and annoying gameplay.

>>15032258

>The level approach

*The lethal approach

>>15032686

Depends, you definitely have to forgo the time insignia if you want the relics. Pacifist, time and stealth are easily possible all in one go depending on how deep your understanding of the AI and game mechanics are.

>>15032746

By the end of the game I was pretty decent and understood a lot of the quirks, shame the final "boss" was so shit.

>>15032258

That stoneforge mystic is offensive.

>>15032686

Styx is a good game but it's full lethal. Sure, you can just avoid everyone, but it's not really about lethal/non-lethal choice at all.

Shadwen doesn't really penalize for lethal but if the girl you're with sees it she gets sort of spooked, that's really all I can think it does regarding penalties, it may make things go a bit slower for a time since she may run off. Game's kind of spoiled since she's never really in danger and never alerts guards.

>>15033562

I hate equipment decks. They need a specific set of cards to function (eg SOFI and SFM) and then just ended up getting banned anyways. Such a money deck, it annoys me.

I like this game concept uwu

http://designreboot.blogspot.com/2009/10/design-reboot-flatlander-woman.html

>>14965912

Not quite on topic, but anyone here playing a stealth game that offers lethal/non-lethal that isn't going with as much no-touch as possible is gay and a bitch nigger.

>>15034052

Noted, mister badass purist. Sorry I can't give you upvotes.

I do sort of get what one anon was talking about with Dishonored; it waves all these cool powers and gadgets around in front of you but then goes to lengths to show how not-evil the guards are and what an asshole you are for using the half that are lethal.

>>15014405

Thief would probably be farthest left; you're outright prohibited in objectives from killing humans, even though you do get a sword and stuff for dealing with nonhumans like zombies and spiders.

Splinter Cell (the original, not the shitty recent ones) would probably be far right; while you are prohibited from killing during some missions (like when you infiltrate the CIA) and have a fair number of nonlethal gadgets, your handlers have no qualms whatsoever with you killing your way through other missions as long as you don't wing a civilian or get the alarm raised too much. There's no benefit, secret ending, or headpat for going nonlethal either, just bragging rights.

I wish more games made going lethal the harder option. Pacifist should be for weaklings.

>>15035155

It would be a nice design philosophy, but non-lethal is just inherently more difficult since enemies stay in the picture. It requires severe balancing of that fact to make lethal harder. That's what DXHR did.

>Much more noisy, severely harming stealth

>Less XP

>>15035143

Yeah, I know of Thief and Splinter cell, it's just been too long since I played them and I'm not too sure where they would stand in terms of lethal/non-lethal options ratio.

>>15036258

>SC

>player is encouraged to kill

Wot.

>>15036278

Not encouraged, free. There are no consequences to killing in splinter cell. It allows for non-lethal, but it never punishes lethal as long as the bodies are well hidden. The X-axis in this chart refers specifically to punishing the player for killing.

non-lethal is often just easy mode when it should be the other way around

>>15036308

It is usually the other way around, from what world are you from?

>>15036293

Doesn't it score you lower? Or is that just for interacting with enemies at all?

>>15036315

MGS games past 2 are way easier with tranq guns and like others have mentioned you get punished for going lethal in nu-Deus Ex but rewarded for going non-lethal when neither is really harder than the other.

>>15036327

In the later games it does, but there's no consequences in the first game.

>>15032686

Is this game any good? Are you forced to do the sneky stuff all the time? I get tired of it after a white and want to just kill the stuff in my way.

>>15040050

*sneaky

>>15040024

Actually, now that I think about it, I think Chaos Theory was the only one that punished unnecessary lethality, and that was only reflected in the mission rating at the end of an op. But even CT gave you the option of a combat loadout in most missions where you had lots of ammo and lethal gadgets.

>>15002958

That's a big oversight by the devs.

>>15040024

I never actually played splinter cell past the first one so that explains why I remember sneakily killing everyone, thinking it was the stealthiest way at the time. I think it was my first real stealth game actually.

>>15040050

Styx is quite good but you're playing a small goblin up against humans, there is token combat but it's more of a last resort thing. You can absolutely assassinate almost everything you encounter though (except orcs which are invincible).

The games' greatest strength is their expansive level design, lots of verticality and intricacies.

>>15020035

Yeah Spec Ops could have had a really great message but as is the message is stupid because you have no options to not be a murdering asshole other than just turning the game off. Like in the white phosphorous scene they could have just made that into a Serious Sam level worth of enemies so that you don't have to burn up all the women and children and it would have hit harder as a message since it goes from "Well who gives a shit the game won't let me advance if I don't do it." to "Fuck I could have saved them if I was better at the game.". As is the message doesn't do anything as you have to be a horrible person to progress.

>>14979179

The best part of it is that you'd get the nonlethal bonus and then could just put a bullet in the sleeping guard's cranium with no consequences.

>>15036336

>you get punished for going lethal in nu-Deus Ex but rewarded for going non-lethal when neither is really harder than the other

Lethal is actually harder as lethal take-downs make a fuckton of noise for some reason. Which doesn't make any sense as stabbing somebody makes lots of noise but smacking someone with a metal fist is so quiet that you can do it right next to a guy and he won't hear it.

>>15032085

It is a pretty good system, but one that can only work in that game.

>Unfortunately that meant locking a lot of the good boss fights behind some really grindy and annoying gameplay

i think it works, you have to go out of your way to be a cunt, well not just a cunt but a genocidal maniac

Reminder that non-lethal is for pussy soyboys

>non-lethal/lethal

>the only difference is whether you're taking out guards with bullets or tranq darts

This is shit-tier game design, why offer the choice if it's not going to make a difference gameplay-wise? Why don't game devs just have it so the non-lethal/pacifist route is ghosting? That way you would actually have to earn whatever the game does to reward pacifism.

Probably because pacifist routes are specifically done to pander to the crowd of games journalist crowd who suck at vidya.

>>15046940

Depends. Pacifist was originally really difficult and essentially the highest expression of skill in a stealth game, but then it started getting incorporated into game design, and devs decided to balance mechanics so that it was more viable. Once that happened, pacifist runs shifted from a true challenge to just another part of the game, and later to a sort of morality system where endings and such might be determined by your kill vs KO counts.

Ultimately, pacifist is supposed to be more difficult, but some devs go overboard trying to compensate for that and ultimately make it easier.

>>15046940

Ghosting is only technically pacifist. It's choosing not to engage in either lethal or non lethal. It's a third route.

>Probably because pacifist routes are specifically done to pander to the crowd of games journalist crowd who suck at vidya.

That is a very stupid statement.

>>15024390

>Someone edit this gay comic.

In what way?

Encouraging non-lethal usually comes from pussified leftist developers and I purposefully go full carnage in such games. If the game prevents anything but non-lethal when dealing with enemies then I don't play it. I love when the game tries to make me feel bad for slaughtering all my enemies. I imagine the developer crying about his failure to impart his pussy ways onto me.

>>15046940

It used to be that non-lethal meant using a pistol with tranq darts that would only work on the lowest of grunts, and anything wearing a helmet effectively became an impassable obstacle. Lethality was always a temptation, because you could just shot a guard from across the map with a silenced sniper rifle, or break through aforementioned guard's helmet with a penetrating pistol, or whip out a machine gun if you got spotted and the alert went up while you were in a compromised position.

Then they started adding shit like silenced sniper rifles with penetrating tranquilizer darts and silenced bean bag assault rifles with perfect accuracy and there was basically no reason to ever go lethal.

It used to be about some form of self-imposed difficulty but somewhere the tables gt turned and now lethal options are just pointless.

>>15057338

I wouldn't say pointless, definitely the difficulty of non lethal decreased a lot as it came to be regarded as just a viable secondary path, but games that outright discourage lethal are not as numerous as you'd think. Even Dishonored drastically shifted away from punishing lethal in its second installment.