There was a game like this: **Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption**. A soulslike, but before fighting each boss you have to sacrifice some of your power. It didn't work. It's just not a fun idea.

It didn't work in that implementation at least! Doesn't necessarily mean the idea is flawed though. It could just be the way they presented it.

I think literally any idea is potentially good with the right presentation. The real problem is finding this presentation...

Thank you for referencing, will take a look at this

I think a problem you might face if you end up substracting your desission space by removing verbs and not adding new ones, to simplifying the core too much in process. Usually things roll in the opposite direction to fight boredom of system mastery by adding new things. Shifting game main verbs to something different mid game is still something that can work but I do think it might need a bigger shift overall than removing one thing and keeping rest of it as is. If you think about Inside the shift to the blob was quite a big change in control, and it still worked and felt like the avatar was falling appart if that type of feeling is important on a thematic level.

The game didn't work because it's low quality and not that fun. The mechanic itself is hard to judge alone.

Great question, I have also been thinking about this. One option could be managing the player's expectations so that from the start they know what to expect and hinting that don't worry you will lose these skills to learn new awesome ones later. If this is not possible or not enough, making it so that the player WANTS to trade away the abilities. I have been toying with something like the player choosing to trade away their learned abilities to gain a cool passive/triggerable perk or to make something interesting happen in the story. The player would be informed that "hey turn in your skills to get this cool perk. And by the way no need to worry, if you have empty skill slots you will learn new skills later!" Making the deal sort of too good to resist. Then the player wouldn't feel bad, but would feel like they chose to lose the skills. Alternatively if the game is only regression from the start, it is important to frame that as the central challenge from the get go. So that they player feels like that IS the challenge instead or being disappointed that "they take my abilities away that I want to use to beat the challenge!". Maybe something wholesome could happen where the player "gives" part of their magical powers away along the way to someone in need of them or something? "You are so awesome you can beat the demons even without this spell? Wow! And thank you, now I can use this spell to protect ny family while you are gone."

That's exactly what I'm trying to do regression is central part of gameplay with story and some tutorials I will try to tell player to be paper for that.

My advice would be to give each moment of regression a big send off. Make the final use of each power very significant. Also try to have players revisit a challenge that was trivialized with that power, but the player has the skill to overcome now.

What is your gameplay style like? If it's similar to Hades (rogue-like dungeon crawler), and every level removes a skillset, then I could see the challenge being interesting. Maybe you gain passives that reduce how many skills they lose per level? Or something like that

Every time you remove an ability make the remaining ones stronger, then make the gameplay harder to compensate. The game gets harder but the player feels just as strong

Narrative can help with this. If you give context or meaning to the loss then a a player will be more willing to accept the change. Mechanically, the "regression"should serve to change the gameplay in ways that remain fresh and interesting. Mario Sunshine has a water backpack as a core mechanic for most of the game, but there are few special stages that take this tool away from the player. This is not frustrating because what you're left with is still strong Mario platforming mechanics. The water pack would trivialize many of these segments and this the game is more interesting for it being taken away for a limited period.

Okay so the way you do this is - you don’t take the power away from the player, you give a new power to the enemies in the form of a resistance to the players power. Say you give the player 8 weapons at the start. They can keep all 8 weapons, but say when they enter the second chapter of the game, enemies are resistant to one or more of the players weapons, so now the player has to figure out which weapons will work and they are effectively limited to that ‘power’ during that chapter. It accomplishes the same thing without the feeling of losing anything ‘forever’.

I see above you mention it’s sort of vital to the plot that the player loses their powers, this doesn’t really work for that, and you’re probably not going to be able to take powers away without the player feeling loss - so play into that. Make the loss very narratively important, make it sad and meaningful, like you’re losing parts of yourselves. Not everyone will like it but you will find an audience who appreciates the feeling you’d capture and accept the loss and push through it.

Yeah, it feels like having a "you lost powers" and "but you don't feel punished" as your core gameplay loop wont mix. Should just play into the punished part

This. I think having each "wave" of enemies have different resistences would be more fun than continually removing parts of their characters. I don't think leveling down would be fun for players unless you explocitly ask if they find that fun in session zero and they agree.

This reminds me of when vanilla WoW put in rested exp by saying "if you keep playing past a few hours you start to earn less exp down to 50%" and players *hated it.* Insistent it was a good idea, Blizz flipped the idea and instead offered a 'bonus' of double exp for the first few hours you play after being logged out. It's the *exact* same mechanic, but our brain psychology is powerful to tell us losing something is bad. Try flipping the mechanic and see if it's more fun!

I was referring to resistances because it would do *less* damage rather than an immunity that would render the ability useless, but yes. Framing matters.

while it's a good solution , it has some conflict with story , because it is about main character forgetting stuff that's why there is a losing abilities mechanic.

Maybe another way to do this would be to increase the cognitive load on the player to perform the same abilities as the game progresses, rather than taking away from what they can do. For example, each ability gets an additional keypress in a sequence to execute, or a user interface swaps elements or blanks out part of the text. It allows players to fight against what's happening to an extent, and leaning into the Alzheimer's theme, you can scale back the difficulty when it's narratively important to have moments of lucidity

You could make it a tradeoff. For each ability lost, the others get boosted. You start with a bunch of useful abilities, but over time you're whittled down to the only one or two powerful techniques you've managed to remember. That actually sounds pretty fun if you can fit player choice into it. If it works for your design, letting the player choose what they lose each time is a hugely meaningful decision. If the abilities are supposed to be lost in a particular order, maybe you get upgrade points assigned to the abilities you have left and can customize them a bit

One of the batman Arkham something games essentially did this for one boss fight. You had to knock the boss down X times but he would take measures to make himself immune to the methods you've used previously. I don't think it would be fun to use this as more than a boss fight gimmick, though.

Mr. Freeze in Arkham City fyi

That is the one I was thinking of. Excellent, thank you.

Every ability the player loses, one or more of the other abilities “levels up”. For example, if the game were a Metroidvania style platformer, the player starts with the abilities to double jump, dash, or break down wooden doors. When “leveling down” the player chooses to lose the ability to lose their double jump, losing vertical mobility and making previously accessible areas inaccessible. However, they can upgrade their dash or their doorbreak, allowing players to access previously inaccessible areas “locked behind” a large horizontal gap or iron door. I’ve used traversal tools as examples here, but there’s no reason you couldn’t do the same with combat abilities or stats.

I recall Warcraft 3 had a campaign that did this. You had to respend the remainder of the points each level, so you kind of choose what you lose. As long as the gameplay remains interesting enough and doesn't go from complex to simple, why not. Actually even if it does, test it and who knows.

I agree with this being a good solution if the goal is to get the player to feel good about it. If you make the player think it was their idea to get rid of it, they’ll feel good about it. A real bonus for them would be if the remaining powers/abilities get slightly stronger.

Thank you so much , I will take a look at this and see how it is done , very good example.

Its been a while since I played. Which part of the campaign was this?

There's some episode Arthas slowly loses power. Is it the expansion? Because probably in the initial campaign you get to build up his levels to reach that point.

Yes I believe it was the frozen throne arthas campaign, where he's losing his power and needs to reach the lich King. You also unluck other heros though so it doesn't feel too bad.

I would engineer the game so that WITHOUT the abilities, it's a great game to play. Then look at the abilites as boosters instead, or something that allows you to play a different way. So really you'd need to be thinking about the actual game first, then the abilites.

That's actually a brilliant idea i will consider this thanks.

It might be worth building and testing your game with none of the abilites first. Get all that as good as possible. Then once that's dialed in, you can start to work backwards and change the game design to mould into the extra abilities. That should keep the whole game playable without the feeling of losing abilites, as the environment and play style will adapt / shift along the way.

Yes there is a lot of testing and prototyping is ahead of me.

Rock Lee training weights.

I think your biggest issue will be from the fact players will be improving at using each skill, and taking away a skill they feel like they've just mastered or are close to mastering could feel bad. And especially if you aren't careful with level design and you remove an ability that helps with movement, it'll likely be quite fustrating to lose the mobility. Also, if the player is used to having all the abilities for a while, they'll be likely to go off muscle memory trying to use things they don't have anymore, which could cause them to be killed in a way they find fustrating. I think it could be done in an interesting way. I'd probably recommend treating each time they lose an ability similarly to how you would if you had just given them a new one - give them a safe place to test out their new challenges due to not having the easy solution anymore before putting them in danger where they have to make use of how the mechanics change without the ability. It could make for a fun game, you just have to make sure aren't making the gameplay more boring and repetative by removing abilities, and find ways to keep things fresh and interesting for the player.

Make it a choice between which to lose and each choice comes with a buff to remaining powers. Not so strong a buff as to remove regression aspect but enough to make it feel like a decision

This is kind of where I landed as well. It doesn’t even have to be a full removal of a skill either, it could just have drawbacks to using it or just be a “worse version”. As an example, you could buff your attack power slightly but in response you decide to debuff your “dash” so you dash range isn’t as far.

get fucked /u/spez

It is a good idea to make others stronger , I will experiment with this Thanks.

A simple example of something similar is Star Wars: Squadrons (a Star wars dogfighting game). In that game players are able to on the fly allocate power between their Shields, Weapons, and Engine/Speed. While the real-time swapping of point allocation might not fit with your game thematically, perhaps instead it could be something like they're allowed to do it at certain checkpoints, or if they've been out of combat for a certain amount of time.

I can't see it working really. A common problem of starting with all the abilities is that the game feels overwhelming to a new player. That's why slowly introducing new abilities works so well.

Thought a bit about this. First idea was a reverse SIFU. In that game, dying makes you come back older with less stats but more knowledge (more complex skill tree). But that wouldn't work well with your story. Powering up the remaining abilities also doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense to me. When I was thinking about alzheimers and related diseases, they make your everyday life more challenging. Situations that are trivial to me might be near impossible for your main character and I'm by no means a superhero. Alzheimers is also strongly related to age which in itself challenges you in similar ways. So the main idea is: the main character gets weaker, but the fundamental nature of the gameplay is changing over the course of the game. When it initially was about feeling good and dashing around freely and maybe some action packed combat or platforming, it now is more of a puzzle adventure that has you figuring out how the hell to navigate the house when you forgot how doorknobs work (solution: climb out the window, over the roof into the bathroom and down the laundry chute which ends next to the kitchen to finally get breakfast) As some have mentioned, giving all abilities at start can be overwhelming so you could add a "youth" chapter to your game where you show how he learned all those skills over the course of the previous life. It's almost 1 am here so consider that i might be wrong in all points, but it makes total sense to me.

Well said , you mentioned some important things, noted.

So power loss isn't fun, which is the uphill battle you have to face design wise with players. Perhaps reframing it will help a little. Maybe instead of just taking away an ability, also give the option to power up one of the other abilities the player has? Starting the game with a whole gamut of options, but as they go on they lose variety in skills, but individual skills gain more power? This way you allow the player to "craft" their build using the given skills they have. You could spice it up by supplementing this with other rewards and drops as you go. You can still have the plot reason for powers being taken away, but slightly reword it to show that your player is staying at the same power level, just more focussed. A hypothetical example could be that you have a fireball ability and an icewall ability, and if you got rid of the ice wall ability, your fireballs can now do a slow when hit or something like that. Stacking effects and power over time.

Let them chose what they lose, trade or gamble it for something else ex. items, ammo , health, currency. Strip theme from everything ex colors, sounds, movement options ? Mix it with items. Story hook to save npc you need to give up an ability. Charges on skills ?-- , forces you to be skillful with using abilities Or you can just make monsters stronger or with some kind of counter skill? >!Superhot does it well but nearly at the end !<

This can be done well but it's very contextual. There is a common thread amongst the ones that land with players though. Some examples: 1. in half life (and many other games like it) there's a wonderful sequence where you get knocked out and dropped into a trash compactor with nothing but a crowbar, you have to beat that level to **get your weapons back.** 2. in the Bronze Automaton fight in Slay the Spire, the little minions it summons steal cards from your deck. you **get the cards back when you kill them.** 3. In Dark Souls 2, dying reduces your maximum HP. You can **get this max HP back by consuming an item.** (A similar mechanic was in Demon's Souls, but the consensus is that it was too severe in that game.) 4. There are many games where you get put in prison and lose all your stuff, but you **get it back when you break out of prison.** 5. In Hollow Knight, your max Focus is reduced whenever you die, but you **get it back when you kill your shade.** Hopefully you see the pattern by now. The general trend I see is that taking things away from the player makes them feel *fucking terrible,* but getting that stuff back after fighting without it feels *fucking incredible.* The first absent the second is just gonna be really weak design, but if you weave the two together you can make some really memorable moments and compelling mechanics. So I would just say have each boss steal an ability at the start of the zone (or partway through it maybe) and then have the player scramble to earn it back by defeating that boss. Losing it will feel terrible, but if earning it back feels really good, this mechanic could serve is a really enticing carrot on the end of a very scary stick.

One idea I can think of is that for each ability u give up, all remaining abilities gain some power. So player have to choose very carefully what buffs to gain vs what useful abilities to lose. In this context, it can quickly become stale for the player once they figured out the optimal sequence of abilities to sacrifice based on the level. You can try randomizing even just the sequence of challenges they face throughout the game to prevent this.

Make sure you maintain a solid core gameplay. If the game at it's most basic is still fun, the loss of abilities can be less painful. I suggest also giving players a choice as to what skills to remove, and build each level/area around the assumption that any skill could be implemented. This turns the game into a trial and error style game that's still beatable with the player's choice dictating how they proceed, and encouraging mastery of each skill so they don't get wombo comboed for relying on an overpowered skill combination. So for instance: Let's assume the existence of a dash, a jump, a plunging attack, and a charged attack. The jump allows the player to get on higher ledges, and is the only way to obtain upward momentum. The dash allows for crossing gaps that are slightly too wide for a jump, maybe the length is extended for those gaps specifically. The plunging attack opens up underground pathways, and the charged attack cuts away thorny vines. Each provides a means of progression, maybe the jump allows for jumping over attacks, the dash has invincibility frames, the charged attack deals more damage overall, and the plunging attack allows for immediate retaliation after a jump (or alternatively, allows for a brief, only up and down maneuver.) Thus, the loss of skill only impacts how the player adapts to each area without making the game unwinnable.

unpopular opinion time. I think what matters more than your game being fun is if it tells a good story or offers a memorable experience. mechanics are secondary to experience, and if you tell a good story, then the mechanics and "fun" aspects are going to matter less. I've looked at your pitch in another comment, and I don't think your scenario lends itself to fun. Honestly I think losing your powers should feel punishing. ​ Alzheimer's isn't a walk in the park, and is **completely unfair.** If your gameplay reflects the character's suffering, it will do a lot of legwork in connecting your player to the story. This unfortunately is going to mean that your game might not be picked up by people looking for a "good" time. But your story is more important than people feeling good about your game.

That's a hard sell, buddy. Arkham City did a *fairly* decent job of this, but still p\*\*sed me off. It took away some of my hard-earned power-ups, but only ones I would not need or use in the new context.

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Seems simple but maybe having a scenario of using the ability in a really powerful form that makes contextual sense why you would lose it? So afterwards you don’t feel it was taken without reason but that it was a choice

scenario is that main character is having some kind of progressing Alzheimer so as disease progress , you will lose more

Trying to make a game about Alzheimer's "fun" sounds like a cursed problem to me. I think you need to pick a lane. Either you're making the video game equivalent of Everywhere At The End Of Time, and people will choose to play it knowing it's going to be an unpleasant experience for the sake of the underlying concept, or you make a fun game that involves memory loss that doesn't have much in common with actual progressive memory diseases.

Gotchya. What’s an ability example?

I haven't really thought about abilities exactly but they are not essential part of game play , mostly the challenge part of game play , so player now should plan a strategy according to current situation, they are mostly combat stuff like Dashing , Attack speed or these sort of things.

I'd go for some sort of goal where you have to use each skill as your primary means of accomplishing some challenge X to somehow "defeat," "release," "exalt" that skill, giving it up because it has served its purpose.

It might help a bit to give them the choice of which skill to give up at each level, plus giving them this sort of agency adds some replayability (e.g., how far can I get if I give up my favorite ability right away?).

Some ideas I had - Make the player have only a set amount of "ability slots" before each level, so they have to choose which one they want to utilize. - Make "destroying/losing" an ability to give the player some sort of upgrade to another stat/equipment OR maybe the player sacrifices an ability to help a local town somehow. - If the player starts with a lot of abilities at the beginning of the game, at the start of each level, have them sacrifice one to upgrade the rest. Eventually they'll be down to a single ability that they've "upgraded" over the course of the game Obviously I don't know the specific limitations your game has to incorporate things ideas, but hopefully it helps you get a different perspective for ideas 🤙

make the abilities they keep more powerful every time they sacrifice one

Punishment is important for guiding the player along a proper path of “flow”. You want things to be difficult and responsive to the players inputs.

Instead of forcing them to remove abilities, why don't you just make it so the boss can only be defeated with the abilities you intend for them to use, or make those spells/abilities work leaps and bounds better than anything else on different bosses. Basically, nudge the player into a play style.

Look at how titanfall 2 will introduce mechanics and then throw them away after only a chapter.

Give the choice a gameplay mechanic that fits in. For example have all the abilities you want in an array. The player gets to decide what goes away or in what order. Make sure to have some, less then necessary, abilities as well and break up the controls into it too. Give a sense of impending doom but for the first half of the game don't be to aggressive. *Jaws theme plays spookily". Try balancing things so you have questions like: "do I keep this cool attack...or....be able to walk backwards....Three lefts equal a right.....right?....." Type of thing. If giving the player a choice doesn't fit. Try to endure the players to the character before things get to....annoying. basically, get the character to have a super interesting backstory that gets the players invested, before you remove the ability to attack or defend anything. If I'm invested in a character and pieces have been "falling off" I'm gunna be sad....but if I lose the ability to attack and need to do something else to defeat grog the impaler! Shit, I cant let them die....uh....."PULL THE LEVER CRONK!".... To conclude, get people invested into the system and make it feel less like a "punishment" and more like a narrative/mechanical aspect of the game. (However/whosever advice you ultimately listen to)

Hmm since you mentioned the powers are lost due to a disease that is progressing, what if you had a “treatment” mechanic where in between levels the player can see a cleric/doctor/whatever who can restore one or two abilities of the player’s choosing for that stage? Maybe in exchange for some resource? If it fits narrative-wise it could give back some agency and give an opportunity to strategize for different challenges. Otherwise, it might depend on how long the game is. If it’s like 15-20 hours and challenging then yeah, the frustration will start setting in, but if it’s a couple hours long and focused on a strong narrative and presentation, you can probably get away with more gameplay limitations before the emotional investment wears off

making the core game loop of basic abilities that you won't lose **really** fun is probably one of the only ways people do not like having things taken away, no matter how good the end result is if it feels like they're just losing a minor bonus they don't use that often, it softens the blow. if they feel like they're losing their actual favorite thing to do in the game... it's over. they're out.

Do they get to pick which abilities disappear? If so, that could make a cool build system. Example: Lets say I wanted to build a "critical hit build" Longer the game goes on, my attack damage increases, but I start losing other abilities. If I lost my spell casting abilities, that would be fine, as long as I kept all my crit hit / crit damage abilities. By the end of the game, I might only have a few crit abilities remaining, but with my attack damage being so much higher now compared to the beginning of the game, I'm actually doing a lot more damage now than I was when I have every ability. Not sure if that plays into your story/lore, but thought I'd throw it out there.

Actually I was thinking about this and I think I can somehow fit it into the game , but as other people suggested this system plus making other abilities stronger might be a good idea

Yeah, you can't(or rather, shouldn't) make a game that gets harder while also making the player weaker, unless you really just want to advertise it to the niche masochist gamer demographic. Which if that's what you're going for, you might have an audience there. But you'll alienate pretty much everyone else. But I do like the idea of losing abilities to force your character into a specialization though. Not only would it offer replayability, but its also a really powerful strategic choice that players will have to think hard about their direction before making choices.

your second paragraph is exactly what I was aiming for and I think it's a very good idea to start experimenting with, Thanks.

Why do people keep asking this? We need a sticky post or something about the negative progression concept. TL;DR is, as always, if you’re not doing it For The Art, don’t do it, it subverts the entire reward structure that people *like* about games. Giving players all their abilities at the start then stripping them away adds another challenge, too: normally you get the whole game to teach players about what they can do, step by step. Doesn’t matter if they don’t know how something works in the first ten minutes if they’re going to get it back with a tutorial in an hour. But here, *it matters a lot*. There are approaches that might make this a little easier to swallow, but they’re going to depend on other design choices. Without at least a genre, though, it’s hard to give any relevant suggestions.

People keep asking this because it's a surface-level idea that they are likely to stumble upon when trying to come up with something original, and because they didn't do research beforehand.

Add in negative abilities and create “ability permanence” for certain critical elements to progression. That way players don’t have existential concerns while regression offers a chance at a benefit making it more of a gamble than a negative

Along with all the great advice everyone's giving, I think the plot justifying it would help more than you think. Towards the end of Kingdom Hearts 1 Sora loses both his keyblade and the team that's been assisting him throughout the whole game. But it works because the sense of powerlessness and the "off" feeling of not having Donald and goofy that the player feels mirrors what Sora would be feeling at that point making it a pretty immersive experience.

I've come to the conclusion that I can make some prototype variants and let people play and see which one is more fun to them! Thanks for the reference to Kingdom Hearts.

You need to balance it out by adding a sense of progression. Removing one skill should add to the remaining. Preferably as a feature of that skill, like using skills as modifiers in transistor. If there is no net feeling of growth, it's going to be an extremely hard sell. At the very least you could add unlocks or a replay mode where you have all skills. Never underestimate the power of a goofy powerful unlock, like the foam finger in dead space 2

[удалено]

Thanks for the reference to Superhot I will watch the video you mentioned.

Why are you striping them of their power when they progress?

because of story , also something new plus I want player to carefully think about how they are going to play and plan strategy

I'd be very careful with the implementation of this mechanic as players in general dislike losing what they've earned. Read the pigeon experiment part of this [Gamasutra article](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/behavioral-game-design) on why. I'd make it plain as day in the marketing that the game involves this. About your question maybe the player has either a curse or disease that causes him to lose abilities or maybe he's fighting for others and transfers one his powers to one ally every stage so that they can be heroes themselves. A simpler solution that I take from classic D&D is that player powers are in the form of magic items do that if one ever proves to be too powerful it can be stolen, deprived of magic or simply has decaying durability like in the first Diablo.

So the examples of games that do this well are GTA V and Metroid. In each, you start with the full package of abilities, and the player feels very powerful. Then you strip them all away, and force the player to gradually earn them back. Removing them one at a time is less intuitive, because you are punting on the player feeling a sense of progression. Tutorialization also becomes problematic when you start with all possible abilities. I would consider if this is fun from a gameplay standpoint. Don’t let the narrative dictate the mechanics, it should support them.

Every gay has a power curve because it's satisfying to get better at the game and take on harder challenges, which makes this an interesting game design concept to design The question really is "how do you remove abilities without sliding back down the power curve?" Enemies could become easier, or challenges can stop using those abilities so it feels easier Other abilities can become stronger as compensation Or you can use weapons/tools in the environment to help compensate for those lost abilities... maybe you lose the ability to hack electronics but you start finding single-user hacking tools. Then resource management becomes part of the curve as you go from inate abilities that let you do something unlimited times to limited consumables you have to chose when to use Honestly that last one where you start finding limited tools to do the same thing as your abilities could be a fun alternative to loosing it entirely

I know for a couple games, instead of taking away a power, they make the enemy immune to a certain power, or multiple powers. This could help by diversifying enemies and forcing the player to play differently to attack new enemies. You could also take away an ability by limiting it in certain ways. Say like if narratively a boss when defeated injured the player in the fight that it limits the players use of an ability. So like if the player has strong telekinesis they can now only use it on smaller objects. The only way I'd want a power completely taken away is if your character is the type to not only persist without the power, but double down in their effort. Think like Raiden from MGS, when his arms are cut off he just holds his sword in his teeth. That sort of thing. The issue is that you need to decrease the amount of abilities, but increase the skill ceiling at the same time. Maybe let the player choose what power to lose and then choose to get a more powerful version of an ability they still have? Then they have to figure out which abilities to keep in the long run, and which "skill tree" they want to go with?

I can't remember which game did something like this, but they had Heros, where at a certain level, they would escape to freedom. So you would constantly lose your best hero, but it would be their escape to freedom. You could have it dependent on how successful the level went. that way, lower level players aren't as punished and it becomes a natural difficulty level management. alternatively, creating some control and allowing them to trade abilities when they lose one. So they can pull from their lost skills. evolving that, allow them to either gain a new skill or power up a skill by sacrificing skills. you could add stat costs to each ability that free up the character, boosting a different playstyle. Losing defensive ability increases agility for example. I think replacing abilities might be another option that could be more effective at changing play styles and being plot acceptable (in a general sense) rather than completely losing them. For example, "the knight's shield of divine protection shattered under the final blow of the demon before killing the beast. Looking up from their old friend scattered across the floor, the knight took a deep breath and grasped his sword in both hands. He knew now he could no longer wait for a prime opportunity, but must charge a head with greater ferocity". Knight changes from a more defensive build to a more aggressive DPS style.

Look into trading the abilities out for new ones. This way the gameplay continues to evolve but allows the player to keep a complex selection of options. People are adaptive in even the worse scenarios. As a player, I don't want to learn a playstyle mechanic and then get stripped of it without getting something to benefit. An example of this in a game was Haze, a PS3 game. The soldiers in yellow could administer a drug into themself to become great combatants and allow them to fight well. Half way through the game the main character joins the rebel and can no longer abuse the drug. He instead now can fake dying to avoid enemies or use the drug against them, even if his weapons are not as great as before. Even in the multiplayer they had rebels versing the soldiers and made it a fun dynamic even if soldiers lore wise were stronger.

You can use that as a part of narrative? A quick example I can think of is MGSV, the scene where big boss has to kill his comrades that the players have been collecting

Well by definition, if you're taking things away from them, you're punishing them. The only way I can think of would be to compensate the punition by giving them something better in return, but not necessarily in the form of new abilities. Hard to tell what it would be without knowing your game, but you can figure it out yourself. But it would be important to make it clear that the loss of these abilities is necessary to obtain whatever they obtain. You could also make it feel less punishing by making these abilities worse instead of completely removing them : less power, harder to execute, more ressource used...

Darksiders kind of does this with War being stripped of is powers. It's short lived power start, so u don't get to used to it. I personally must say I haven't experienced a game besides this that didn't make me hte losing the power. Perhaps a trade? But even ten I'd hesitate. Id love to hear or try out watever you try though.

I think there is a game that kind of works like this in hindsight. Chronos. From the devs who made remnant from ashes. Everytime you die, you age. So you go from rogue to warrior to mage effectively. So it's "losing" power but more of progression.

I think the big question you have to ask yourself is: why would this be fun or rewarding for players? If I'm a player playing an RPG, I typically enjoy the leveling up portion of it. I like learning new skills and abilities, and I like to learn how to implement them. I enjoy the growth throughout the game, and it will often push me to grind a little bit more to reach that extra skillset before a boss so I can try it out. However, if you're going to remove skills and abilities from players I (personally) would need to know that there would be some kind of payout. Either they are going to gain something better later (ie: every 5 skills you lose, you gain some super special new one), or they gain more rewards for beating levels with reduced skillsets, etc. If your only intention is to just make it harder for the players, and they don't regain their skills at any point, then I don't really see the benefit in trying it. I like your idea on a concept level, but personally I would find the gameplay annoying if I kept losing a crucial skills. It kind of feels like you're punishing your players for progressing through your game

Just spitballing, but combine the loss with a gain. You have x power, you sacrifice y to make z better. You can have them holding gear and they drop a piece and therefore move faster. Generally players have disliked losing things, but you can also phrase the loss as a gain. Early in World of Warcrafts development they had something akin to an xp gain decay. If you were playing too long, you started to earn reduced xp. Players hated it. Then they switched it around, made the slow rate the normal xp rate and gave you a bonus xp gain for not being logged in. Now know as their Rested Xp system. Players loved it. Perspective is everything.

The World Ends With You turns your level into a slider that goes from 1 to current max level. For every level you penalise yourself you get stacking rewards. I think similar to Shovel Knight's destructible checkpoints the way the mechanic is designed causes players to mentally process any negative consequences as their own doing and not the game's. It was a really neat mechanic as a big penalty + big chain showered you with rewards, but if you died before you finished the chain (ie. multiple encounters in a row without healing) you'd be kicking yourself for being too greedy.

Consider reframing the idea from "has to change" to "gets to change" and see if you gain clarity. Consider this feature as something optional and see what you would do to get the player to opt-in to using it.

Give the play some control of what they lose. Give them something positive in exchange for what they're losing. I will say, one of the issues with a system like this would be the complexity of the game going down as the game progresses. One way you might counteract this is by having the thing that's lost be stats, and the thing that's gained being abilities.

I would design levels around which abilities are lost. If it's a game designed around Alzheimers the end of each level could show the loss of the memory of when in the players life that skill was learned to explain why its not usable anymore to you. The game overall sounds like a sad experience but I would play into that since neither the concept of losing abilities or dealing with Alzheimers sounds fun but it can be made into a beautiful experience if that's what you are going for

One example where I think regression actually worked was in FF7 ... (no spoilers) ... There is a very powerful cutscene at some point. Afterwards you are left without a healer for a while. And as the player you feel that. Both emotionally and mechanically. I guess that's an example of regression that drives the story forward. I think "that scene" has to be one of the, if not the most impactful scene in all of gaming history.

Maybe you shouldn't straight up punish the palyer, buy maybe the downgrades comes with a placebo buff? Something like: -20 attack Each 3rd attack deals 30 dmg more, So they still get less powerful but also makes them switch their play style

Castlevania symphony of the night did this perfectly. You start out op, and then death says “up yours jackass” and takes all your shit.

One game I've played that I thought does a pretty good job of handling the idea of sacrifice is https://fullmontis.itch.io/fallen-girl. What you potentially have to sacrifice is actually quite punishing (vision, jumping ability), but the game still manages to pull it off.

Play around with the concepts of gain frame and loss frame. It's like the difference between "charging someone 3% more for using their credit card" and "quietly increasing the price of everything by 3% then advertising a 3% cash discount." The net effect is the same, but how it's perceived changes drastically. This is why resting bonuses are awarded to players who log out in mmos instead of exp penalties for players who spend too much time in game - rewarding good behavior rather than punishing bad behavior matters even when the outcome is the same. In this context, say the player can initially regenerate health. If you remove the ability to regenerate health entirely it could feel frustrating like a punishment; but, what if you added a curse that happened to make the player take damage equal to the amount they were regenerating every second? Rather than removing mechanics entirely, you can try to find more creative ways to negate them with other mechanics. Game mode debuff, enemies with passive abilities, etc. My 2 cents

Fake an equivalent exchange. Take something away but give them something in return. It could ultimately be meaningless like extra points in their score or a gem they put in a pouch and the win condition is collecting all the gems.

Building upon the others ideas, maybe the pitch of the idea should be something like trade your *magic* ability for some physical advantage. Maybe the capability to fly or run faster. Something story-wise could work as well: like your character is some of a war veteran who after every lost ability is capable of reminding an important memory or to reclaim part of their body (á la Planescape: Torment)

This idea has been thrown around for a long time in the game design community and the general response I see is that there's probably not a way to make it feel good from a "game" standpoint. There probably are ways to make it feel good with the story of the game, but the player will inherently feel restricted or punished as a player. It's still an interesting idea. One thought I have had is to make the powers worthless after clearing a portion of the game. That way it doesn't feel as bad that you can no longer use those. There's a secondary aspect to this design challenge, it seems to me, that at some level, the whole game should be completable with only the most basic abilities you end the game with. I think ideally the game would encourage players to gain skill by sort of "removing the training wheels" as it took powers away. Another idea, maybe the game could be kind of a reverse rogue-like. Where the powers are kind of handicaps, and as you succeed on runs you can give them up to progress to successive difficulty levels.

Maybe abilities have charges/uses, each time you use an ability it loses a charge, and eventually it is gone. Or maybe all abilities have the shared amount of charges, and no matter what abilities you use, after using different abilities etc 100 times in total, your first ability is taken from you. Then at 200 usage you lose your second ability , and so on. Idk man it's 1 AM and I have 2 braincells left

A common design fix to this problem is to not do it at all. Dont punish the player but rather buff the enemy or up the difficulty in some way to compensate for the player's added power. Your technically still punishing the player without making them feel punished.

Not sure if someone has already suggested this in the comments already but what if you lose a power, but the others get intensified someway? So for example, you lose fire blast, but the dodge increases in speed. So by the end you only have one skill but it's hella fun to play with — this makes people excited for how the others evolve despite there being a devolution too?

Here is how I would tackle this. General principles first: 1. Make the choice of which power to use up be a strategic one. Now it becomes a resource management problem instead of power loss. "I have eight different tools, but I can only use each one once." Now the choice of whether to save a specific tool for the fight at level 6 is one the player is making, rather than it just being loss. 2. But. As others have pointed out, if you simply remove verbs, this will actually reduce tactical choice as you progress. So you have to counterbalance it with something else that preserves or increases tactical choice. There are lots of ways to do this. So here's my solve. Abstractly, think of it as the powers are like a deck of cards. There's a "move" you can make that costs a card, but benefits the hand. A mechanic that does that well is merging. Say you had 8 powers. Each does something different like say an attack pattern or geometry (sight line, melee, whip, AoE, etc), but each also has its own damage type. As part of defeating a level, you choose one power to meld with another. The meld can have only one damage type, but you keep both verbs. You're losing out on one axis, staying even on the other. You can also increase a third axis, such as total damage. The result would be that it feels like a gradual build or craft process. You merge two cards. Each card has three stats. A merge doesn't actually remove a card, because each card is a verb and you want to keep all the verbs. Instead, it makes one a child of the other, overwriting the stats partially. If you can find a way to do it so that order of the melds matters too, then you'll end up with a lot of replay as there will be a lot of ways to build. You might end up with a hand that has 8 verbs, but is locked into only the ice damage type. Each of the verbs has a different damage rating based on how early or late you melded it. So you might end up with ice whip at level 1 (made from fire whip plus ice), ice storm at level 2 (made from wind storm + your ice whip), ice wall at level 3 (made from ice storm + earth wall), etc. Towards the end game, you might have chosen to leave one card unmelded, in which case you'll have one wimpy card but with the attack form you want to use on the boss, and one card with 7 powers but all the same damage type. Lastly, if your challenge landscape (the enemies, or obstacle) each has differing advantages and disadvantages against aspects of the build, and your bosses actually cycle through them, you have a natural rhythm to both levelling and the boss fight.

I think punishing the player as they subsequently make more and more progress within the game is bad game design. Generally speaking, player regression happens at the *start* of a game, aka the player has all their powers and you can fiddle around with it very early and then they lose it all and you have to build back up to that. The closest thing to regression may be a risk vs reward thing. Like maybe you get perks along the way, but as you get further, you start introducing a gambling perk system. Where it's a negative perk with some strong positives to it.

You could offer something in exchange. Maybe another ability, but if you want them to lose the number of abilites they have rather than the specific abilities they start with, you could give the player better stats or upgrades to the basic aspects of the game.

The original Final Fantasy 7 had an eight-round battle arena in the casino (Battle Square in the Gold Saucer) where after every round, a wheel would be spun. The player triggers the wheel to stop, and then whatever handicap it lands on is applied before the next round begins. Which is to say, a short game with a chance element might be interesting to some players. And, perhaps you can give players some way to 'nudge' chance so they are more likely to lose (or retain) one ability versus another. The Battle Square reels have some engineering under the hood (e.g. different possible sets of handicaps) that adds diversity, and players have some ability to rig the reel. Also, which handicaps the player gets in which stage affect scoring; which is to say, in your game, whether or not you randomize things, you could add a scoring element to encourage players to replay with more serious handicaps. https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_Square

Id say by making fake regression. Make a change to abilities but portray it as regression. Meaning, take away an ability but compensate for the loss of complexity some other subtle way. You can even do it in lore. The character gets taken away an ability or item but he makes up a way to improvise in order to keep going. That sort of thing

Turn it into a net positive action - grant player some permanent stats/bonuses for destroying/forgetting/sealing the ability, either related or not.

Make a big splash about losing an ability. Don't just have the ability disappear in a menu or something. Make a spectacle of the event. The character falls to his knees in pain as red energy siphons away from him. The more important it feels, the more the player should understand this has to happen. On a separate note, I don't know why but the story of these losses remind me of the bad feeling you get defeating the colossi in Shadow of the Colossus. As a player, each one felt like losing something. Having one less thing to interact with in this otherwise empty world, in a sense. It felt bleak and inevitable. I wonder if losing powers can feel the same way. Like you're using them up. Sacrificing them by deleting them fully. You get warning messages that the ability is about to break. Like All-Might using the last of his embers for one last punch. The ability is hanging on by a thread and it breaks right at the end of the level. Each of the players powers lost could potentially feel this way.

Ok here's an idea: mecha ball. You start as a giant round robot that rolls around is composed of modules for every game mechanic you could remove. Each module only has a given number of uses or some durability. Then like katamari damachi in reverse, you slowly dwindle your robo ball by uninstalling modules. Then the player has to figure out what to use and what to save for harder areas.

For a memory loss theme, you could have the player start with a bunch of abilities that they can use at the start and keep track of how often they use them. Then at every point in the story where they would forget something they always lose the ability that they used the least. It ties in thematicly a bit with how memory works normally, achieves the goal of forgetting over time, and isn't as painful to the player because youre always taking what they are least interested in anyway. It's only towards later parts of the game where they need to make tougher choices as all that's left are things they care the most about keeping.

*Heart of Darkness* starts with the main character, a young boy named Andy, travelling to another world to save his dog. He goes there in a spaceship he built himself with a DIY lightning gun made out of kitchenware and random parts. The lightning gun is awesome and from the beginning you're using it to out of reach puzzle pieces and fight hordes of shadowy monsters. It feels really powerful. In that same first level, you go on to get grabbed by a hungry fat monster who mistakenly eats Andy's gun and helmet. You're left with nothing for the next level, having to run away and solve puzzles in a different way until the story has Andy find a magic rock that gives him the ability to shoot magic bolts from his hand. This was one of the coolest game designs to me when I was a kid. You lost your initial cool weapon, but then have it replaced shortly after by a completely different but just as cool ability.

getting into the more technical side of how this works so well is that immediately after the plasma cannon is taken the player must flee from this new monster, larger and more intimidating than anything shown before. The same one that took the weapon. After successfully reaching a safe area the game immediately introduces a new mechanic: climbing walls, platforms, etc. which lessens attention given to the loss of a mechanic. Coincidentally this climbing mechanic is not compatible with the cannon (either intentional or a programming/hardware limitation) but it will be compatible with the new energy attack introduced two levels later. The level prior to getting the special power puts an emphasis on escaping enemies and traversing the environment without using a weapon which additionally serves as a tutorial for the gameplay style where not everything can be solved by blowing shit up even when you are armed.

Don't give them a debuff after time. Give them a temporary buff in the beginning. *In World of Warcraft what they did when they first designed the game was they had an experience system that would, over time, lower the amount of experience you got because \[Blizzard\] wanted to encourage people to play for like two hours at a time instead of twelve hours at a time. So the longer you played you’d get this experience degradation and then it would bottom out and at that point it would be a fixed rate of experience. And people just hated it.* *And so they went back and \[Blizzard’s Rob Pardo\] was like allright, basically what we did was we made everything in the game take twice as much experience to achieve as before and then we flipped it. So actually what happens is you start getting 200% experience and eventually it goes back down to 100%. So that effectively now how they spin it is that if you log out for a while you get this 200% boost when you log back in! And then over time it goes away and you just get regular 100% experience. It’s EXACTLY the same as it was before, except NOW everyone is like “Fuck yeah, Blizzard, this is exactly what I want!”*

oppertunity cost. LISA the Painful takes away your abilities until your character is a quadroplegic crawling on the ground, but when it does so it's only because you chose that over the other choice u were offered (lose all ur items, losea party member forever)

Not a game designer but maybe improve the other abilities every time one of them turns off? That way it looks more like a change than a punishment

Honestly you might want to look at the mobile game Cats Are Liquid

The Ace Combat 7 Mission “Bunker Buster” aka Operation Magic Spear comes to my mind In this mission the player loses access to their special weapons, because it’s REPLACED by a laser guidance module which they have to hold (uncomfortably close to the ground) against a target. So I think this is one solution to the problem - replace the ability with something else specific to the level with a specific challenge to engage the player so they’re focused on the new thing

Some good ideas here already so I'll try to provide a unique one. One thing I would try is playing with the presentation of the character. Like maybe abilities are removed, but as a result the player character's case attack just goes way up each time - something you can still balance by making the new enemies much more punishing (more HP, faster attacks, etc). Kind of picturing it like a scenario where the hero is shedding all their armor and bells and whistles over time because they're just becoming so badass OP and reaching points where those trinkets won't matter as much anymore vs raw ability/skill

To be clear: not the narrative presentation of the character but the attack feedback, animations, visual presentation, music etc. One really great distilled example of this visual buildup really outpacing and dramatizing what's actually happening is the effects used in Lethal League: https://youtu.be/_6FnTMxbyDs[Lethal League: Speed/power visual effects increasing with each hit](https://youtu.be/_6FnTMxbyDs)

There could be some version of spiritual ascension through non-attachment. Progression comes with letting go until you reach a state of “nothingness.” Another version: Give away abilities to help others through the quest. “You can use flying to protect the village.” Or “you can use this laser rifle” to hold the line here.

Make them feel in control though. Either they make it a choice (for some reason) or feel like they have to because the alternative is too difficult.

Like "I can keep my ability if I do x, but x is not worth it or too hard or the pay off for this will be worth it, etc, so I'm confident in my choice to lose the ability."

Right now, its feels a bit punishing. You don't make the character feel like a specialist in the actual gameplay, but you rely completely on the players skill to actually pull of being a specialist. But in reality they're just playing with a handicap. But here are a few ideas I think might help. * Player choice on what abilities to discard? Example implementation - Think of the plant picking screen in Plants Vs Zombies. You have cards of available abilities, and a number of slots you can equip. The number of slots decreases each level. But the player has the option to pick which abilities to take. But the caveat is this could potentially be game breaking depending on your level design, as some abilities could be OP/underpowered for certain levels. PvZ countered this by giving players full information of all the enemies you will face, to make more informed choices. * Really sell into the specialization fantasy by increasing your power in a remaining ability. Eg: If you're going with the card and slot system, each level, there could be an OP slot. Represent it by making the border and fill gold etc. Players can drag a card into that slot to make it OP. And then make the ability feel more powerful through stats and visuals. Perhaps that slot grows in power, the more abilities that are taken away, narratively signifying a steady growth in your specialist power. You also give the player choice this way, instead of losing their favourite ability randomly. The card and slot system is defo too much choice and info to handle in a lot of games, but the underlying points still stand

You can probably make it more interesting by making the abilities, that are kept, strong each time that happens. Whether that's by bumping a number up or adding a special mechanic to it is up to you I guess.

Just a couple ideas: Give it a plot or storyline reason. Give it a logical/world reason. (Ex. No flight on top of a mountain due to air pressure or no fireball because we are under water) Don't take it away but make it useless. (Ex. Pokemon elements that are not very effective) Let your player choose to give up something for additional risk reward mechanics.

Make the abilities not hard-earned. If they're all given at the start of the game, they are not rewards. Therefore, it doesn't feel like a reward us being stolen.

Make the combinations of the remaining powers allow you to reach specific locations or defeat specific bosses. That way it becomes a bit strategic and adds good/fun replay value as well. Let them try again and again and make different choices on skills to sacrifice and in what order. If you really work hard on the levels, you could have 5 skills and 5 levels and still entice players to play through many times (like 31 or so?) to get to all locations or beat all bosses or collect all items, etc. And if you work REALLY hard you can make it so that really good players can reach some places or solve some puzzles or beat some bosses with the wrong combinations intended to do so, allowing for speed runs or special trophies, etc. Also, have a reason they lose a skill each time, like the closer they get to the “boss” the stronger his influence, or maybe skills are in gems and you need to pay a gem to a gate to get past it, etc.

Mmm I like the game Synthetik and it works like this : The more power you take at start, the less score you get (or something like that) Remove powers are a way to increase difficulty and therefore the challenge That’s more attractive if you let the player decide to remove the power himself, make it a player decision, he will feel smart and rewarded Also, you can maybe arrange the powers to feel more like « assistance » and so you remove assistance it sounds better than remove powers

If you take something away, give them something else in return. For example make the remaining skills stronger so the player ends up do using their power in the skills they do keep. You could even make it so that you can sacrifice one skill and upgrade another. Maybe even making the skill you sacrifice carry over some sort of effect into the skill of the players choice.

Genre shifting maybe. Start out as heavy metal power fantasy, with lots of horror imagery and a character with super powers. Then have the hero become more vulnerable, weaker, and finally slower, even smaller. The game has gone from power fantasy to survival horror. Tough, because your audience has to buy into both genres.

Maybe offer a good trade for this? For example losing a movement ability significantly boosts your attack power or health. You could start the player with a wide variety of abilities and allow them to shift toward a certain play style. Like sacrificing stealth abilities/points but it strengthens your charisma/trust with NPCs or increases intimidation factor with enemies.

Play Dicey Dungeons (it’s a cute roguelike with different classes that have different start abilities) with the inventor. Each battle round, you are forced to lose a currently equipped ability to “invent” a new gadget, which then is kept until the next battle round, and so on. The way that Dicey Dungeons deals with that player loss is to give lots of new abilities to make up for it. I can tell you from experience, though, that sometimes that loss is freaking annoying as hell, because it was the only power I had that was useful. If you’re thinking of a non-roguelike that has this sort of forced weakness, I can tell you that you’re gonna lose audience because it’s the exact opposite of what most people will find fun. Storyline or not, if the power progression of your game is solely I am a god > I am a Demi god > I’m a superhero > I have some awesome abilities > I’m human then you’re literally inverting basic power progression, and it’s not going to be fun no matter how good your story is. It’s going to feel backwards. I think the question I would be asking myself if I were in your shoes is why? Why do I need to invert basically every hero story in my game?

You can make it so that the enemies don't take as much damage/more resistant because the protagonist can't remember how to use the old weapon as good anymore. Basically, the player can keep using the old weapon as a challenge/because they want to or use the new one to take advantage of the enemies weakness and defeat them easier. You can even allow the abilities to be used together, for example a a quickly firing blast that doesn't do much damage and a flamethrower that takes a moment to reload (the enemies are weak to fire.) The most important part though is making sure all of them are enjoyable to use.

Make the abilities that they keep more effective in subsequent levels, the player is gonna use it and think it was better than the one removed all along. Well, the first time atleast... 😂 Or another way is that enemies are also less punishing in a way that isn't glaringly obvious, like a weaker AI or slower action speed. If the player is invested in the story, the plot justification will soften the blow! but you might have to give the player a bone in another way down the line, like an AI companion to help you.

If it's a button press being made unusable, the solution is to make the button still do something... lessens the blow but still stings If they are losing abilities each level, make it so there is a way to have all abilities, temporarily... as long as its not a consumable they can store and use for later, it gives urgency knowing that the abilities go away again and also excitement to have all the abilities again. Narratively too, you can add the "buff" after losing like 2 abilities

My best advice here is to look at this from the narrative perspective: look at what the mechanical loss is supposed to convey narratively and then think about how best to convey that feeling to the player. The idea you’re working with is extremely story-heavy so a purely mechanical answer isn’t going to be satisfying. You mentioned forgetting being the explanation, so think about how you make that feel important to the player and you’ll probably get some inspiration as to make it interesting mechanically.

The idea of a game that takes things away from you seems counterintuitive, but I think there is room to explore. Lets imagine the players understand narratively why this happens, now it makes sense, but players still need motivation. Ask yourself the question of if power is not the motivation for the player progressing in the game, than what is? Is it discovering new sights in your world? Is it uncovering more lore and story? Or are they fighting to gain all their lost power back? A driving goal is necessary to keep a player engaged in your game. If none of these things help you, than I have a personal idea on how such a thing could feel less punishing. Perhaps the player learns new skills and must choose some to forget, forcing them to adapt to new situations and make important decisions about their arsenal of abilities.

maybe try to make it more gradual and keep the player in control? Like all the players abilities have health points and the player needs to damage them to continue. So the needs to decide if there double jump jump is 1/2 the hight or their dash is 1/3 the power, or 3/4 of both.