Is way too much player freedom bad?

[CnBlack]

so you know when you are playing a game and you try to shoot your in game companion and you either can't do it or he starts saying stop shooting me but he actually doesn't take any damage or the game makes a mission failed pop up and you restart from your last checkpoint or when the game takes control from the player sometimes to avoid him shooting at some NPCs or whatever
well I am making a GTA game and while working on it I added the mission system to the NPCs in other words i programmed the NPCs to hold the mission system but before that shooting NPCs killed them and so you can do the same with NPCs that hand out missions and I started to play around with that concept I made missions where one NPC wants you to kill another important NPC and when you go to that one he tells go kill the one that gave you the mission WELL i hope that's not complicated and I found it interesting I mean the player can create his own fun so why can't he also choose to kill every last NPC in the game yeah all the missions are now gone but it was the player's choice
MY QUESTION FINALLY
is that gonna be bad for the player? will it discourage them? or will it actually feel liberating for the player to do anything he wants in the game without any type of constraints? I don't know in one way I find it cool and interesting on the other it might hurt players that might kill an NPC by mistake
so what do you think ?

this is still a very early build of the game

[CnBlack]

trying to share the post again

maybe now people can see it and share interesting opinions and thanks for reading

[magesauce]

I think you should allow them to do it, but have the NPCs that give the missions get back up after a few seconds. That way the missions are still available.

[Etherblood]

Allowing your player freedom is good, you have to be careful with irreversible stuff though.

I'll just use an example:
I played a game which did not differentiate between normal items and quest items.
Very early in the game I sold an item which was useless, but the reward of a unique quest.
~6 hours playtime later I discovered that I needed this item for an other quest, but there was no way to get it except wiping my save and starting from scratch.
I was so frustrated that I quit the game and never played it again since.

If your player can make a decision, make sure that:
-he has the possibility to 'fix' it, or
-it does not have any long time consequences, or
-he was well informed about the consequences, or
-he never finds out that there is stuff he can no longer do.

I'm pretty sure I forgot something, but you should get the idea.

[CnBlack]

At 6/10/15 05:50 PM, Etherblood wrote: Allowing your player freedom is good, you have to be careful with irreversible stuff though.

I'll just use an example:
I played a game which did not differentiate between normal items and quest items.
Very early in the game I sold an item which was useless, but the reward of a unique quest.
~6 hours playtime later I discovered that I needed this item for an other quest, but there was no way to get it except wiping my save and starting from scratch.
I was so frustrated that I quit the game and never played it again since.

If your player can make a decision, make sure that:
-he has the possibility to 'fix' it, or
-it does not have any long time consequences, or
-he was well informed about the consequences, or
-he never finds out that there is stuff he can no longer do.

I'm pretty sure I forgot something, but you should get the idea.

I already thought about the differentiating between normal NPCs that you can kill without any type of remorse :P and the important ones that have there storyline that you can follow if you choose to so that should be covered but thanks for pointing it out if you have other interesting points to share about the idea then please do
and again thanks :D

[CnBlack]

At 6/12/15 10:07 PM, CodeCrunch wrote: Play Dark Souls.

I did and it's one of those games I use as back up for this idea :P but thanks for reading and sharing