Some Thoughts on Interlocking Drawbacks or Benefits in Games

This is a topic I've thought a bit about, and someone mentioning Wargroove got me thinking about it again. Some examples of what I'm talking about:

Interlocking Drawbacks

• In Wargroove, weakened units trade in combat when possible and lose attack power alongside health. This creates a system where units that engage in trades quickly become dead weight. The options for healing units, in my experience, either weren't that effective or that accessible, meaning units are constantly drained and need to be replaced frequently. I found that frustrating as heck, especially paired with some of the mission design in the single-player campaign.

• In Enter The Gungeon, health and ammo are handled very similarly, with both being primarily obtained through random drops and shops. In addition to that, both are very limited, making them difficult to get. This creates a conflict at the core of each run: You need to hold off on using your more powerful guns for more difficult encounters, which puts you at a greater risk of losing health, something else you have to watch carefully. It doesn't sound bad in theory, but in practice, it's a pain because of how limited resources are. You don't know whether the game is going to give you more health or ammo, so, if you're not great at the game, it's a toss-up as to which you should prioritize.

Interlocking Benefits

• In Dead Cells, you can access a bonus room at the end of an area by killing a certain number of enemies in a row without taking damage. This creates a system with two benefits: it means you took less damage, and you get access to more resources. There are no obvious potential drawbacks to this system, as you have to progress through an area and fight enemies anyway to get through the game.

• In Valdis Story: Abyssal City, you get better rewards for a boss fight based on your performance. Yet again, no drawbacks, as you have to clear the boss fight anyway to progress though the game.

I personally dislike these systems in general. Why make things easier for better players and harder for less experienced players? It's counter-intuitive, yet it's fairly common, especially in regard to implementation of benefits. There are easy solutions to both of these categories, as I see it. For drawbacks, you can decouple, mitigate the effects of, or provide easier access to those resources. You could allow units to merge in Wargroove, providing an alternate way to deal with units on the verge of death, and you could reset health between floors in Enter The Gungeon, changing the priority of health items and allowing for a better balance of RNG to be struck there. As for benefits, those can alternatively be dealt with through optional skill-based challenges the player has to opt into. Going Under has providing just that, where you can take on a challenge and get rewarded based on your performance. The drawback is that you prolong your time fighting and risk taking damage in the process, which is something that could outweigh the potential reward. That's all I have to say. Like anyone's gonna read it, lol.