Playing a game "the right way"

In Fallout 4 its an Apocalypse with literal nuclear weapons but I choose to do stealth in all approaches. In fallout 4 there a secret parts of missions where you can go in stealth but its not visible to players. Using a stealthy
mind set open these paths to me alot.

I could talk about this at length. So I will. Thanks for posting.

Encouraging a play style is a useful tool for a game designer, as is allowing freedom to play different styles. In the right place, either can make your game better. Personally I love a game that takes me out of my comfort zone and gives me something new
to experience.

If your game is fun to play in one specific way and not fun played in other ways, then absolutely you should help players to play it in the right way. I mean, the player is free to play it however they like, but they are maybe not gonna have fun, if players
can't adjust in that situation, then maybe that just isn't the game for them. You know, if you want a slow and contemplative experience, don't play Doom. If you want fast paced and visceral action, don't play chess. It might make good youtube material to see
someone play Fallout without killing anyone, but most of the time, you aren't doing yourself any favours trying to force something to be what it is not.

I think a fascinating example of trying to guide a playstyle is Overwatch. I have played for three years and always like to see what balances they put into updates. The situation right now reminds me of a story from my first job.

I worked in an Italian restaurant. The head waiter told me about the arguments they used to have with customers over steak diane. See we were fairly new and trying to keep things authentic, but a popular and longer established italian restaurant in town
sold steak diane. People would come in, not even look at the menu, and order steak diane. To which the waiter would say "sorry we don't serve that." Anyway, he tells of one customer who lost it. "you call yourself an italian restaurant. Steak diane is my favourite
italian dish, every time I go to an italian restaurant I order steak diane." ahem... Sir... steak diane is an American dish. Believe me, I am half italian, eaten the cuisine all my life and never had I heard of it before.

But by the time I worked there, steak diane was on the menu. Guess you can stick to your vision, or give the people what they want. Sadly the latter is probably the more profitable.

So back to Overwatch. They have a problem they have been trying to fix. Overwatch is a team game, tanks create space and opportunities and protect teammates, healers keep everyone alive, and provide utility like hindering the enemy or boosting allies, damage
players deter the enemy, dsitract them, get rid of flankers, as well as just kill stuff. All roles are stronger when they work together.

Problem is, a large chunk of the player base want to just kill stuff. used to be you would have 6 people on a team and 4 or 5 of them all wanting to play damage. So they put in free for all game mode to give them somewhere to go and just kill stuff. Problem
not solved, so they put in role queue, so you queue up to play one of the three roles and can't swap mid game. games are more balanced with 2 tanks 2 damage and 2 healers, but now damage players complain that wait times are too long (damage queue is usually
like 10-15mins, tank and healer are often less than 2mins). Now they are talking about making it 1 tank 3 damage and 2 healers, but I still don't see it solving the problem. Honestly I don't know how you fix it. I hope they don't give in and make the game
more about just running around killing stuff (and I don't believe they will). The different roles and abilities to suit different people is what makes Overwatch fun in my mind. I don't want it to turn into "who can get more headshots quickest" like how I perceive
some other shooters.

I've rambled so quickly (yeah right) the questions

1. I love Dark Souls and Slay the Spire because I learnt to play them the way they were supposed to play. But I think they do a bad job of teaching how you should play. Dark Souls teaches you by killing you over and over until you realise it is not a hack
and slash game and you should be cautious and methodical. But I hear from a lot of people who started it, never got the message and had a terrible time and quit.

Slay the Spire, I don't think teaches you at all. I had to look up guides online before I could beat it. Runs are 1 to 2 hours and you can mess up real early and not realise for a long time.

I think Prey (the new one) is great at guiding you and giving you choice. At first, enemies are lethal, resources are scarce, but there are plenty of way to run, hide or cheese your way through the game. But it encourages you push through, to explore, to
confront dangers. It does this through all the story elements hidden in the environment, emails and notes scattered about that paint a picture when put together, and all the upgrades hidden at the end of every scary area. The game dangles loot and story to
get you to explore, and your reward is that you become more powerful and better able to cope with the dangers. Yet still you feel you have choice, you can put points into stealth stuff to play stealthy, you can beef up to muscle your way through, or improve
tech to get info and unlock more containers of loot and use turrets to aid you.

2. Both are good in the right place. But maybe a curated experience is my preference. Given the choice I often fall back on established habits. I never pick the stealth path, I always go for lockpicking or hacking, I like shotguns and rifles over snipers
and machine guns. If a game gives you few bullets, I often go melee cus you rarely ever run out of sword.

It's like democracy, giving people choice is great, but people often don't know what they want or what is good for them (sorry, brexit just happened and I am annoyed). A good game designer should know what makes their game fun and help players experience
that, sometimes that means taking away a bit of choice or freedom in the game. (BTW I don't support an intelligentsia led political system, guess it was a bad analogy)

The “right way” to play a game, is whatever way you want that gives you the most enjoyment, personally.

You make a reappy good point woth doom actually, and absolutely had to play doom that way bar a few cheeses with the bfg. I loved that style of gameolay as ot is fast and way over the top.

Halo always has been my go to game for this. I love the playstyle