Difference between revisions of "Late Arriving Players"

Revision as of 10:03, 5 January 2011

The designed support to allow players to join play sessions of a game independently of when other players' play sessions start.

It is not always possible to synchronize so that all players wishing to play a game can start simultaneously, most often because people are not willing to wait long enough. To avoid this problem, games can support Late Arriving Players to give players more flexibility in when they have to be present to be part of a game. For asynchronous games or games where you don't know all the people that are playing, it this may be necessary for gameplay to be able to begin at all.

Examples

Gambling games such as Poker and Roulette can quite easily accommodate Late Arriving Players since these consists of many rounds with only one resource changing between them. Similar games but with more complex structures, e.g. Texas Hold'em have difficulties doing so since the gameplay is designed to structure the flow of resources more precisely.

Roleplaying games such as Dungeons & Dragons, Basic Roleplaying, and the Storytelling System implicitly supports players joining the game late since game masters can easily write them into the fictive realities of the games. This is usually necessary for practical reasons since the games span play sessions with breaks of weeks or longer between, and the players willing to play change during periods.

Online games that strive for rather short rounds and many players support Late Arriving Players. Exactly when one can join varies as does the penalties for arriving late: the Left 4 Dead series allows players to join whenever while the Counter-Strike series only allows new players at the start of rounds, before then they can only chat with those players that have been killed; players in the Battlefield series have no penalties compared to existing players respawning while newly arriving players to Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory or Enemy Territory: Quake Wars can be penalized by not having amassed experience points).

For online games such as Ultima Online and World of Warcraft, which supporting persistent game world, Late Arriving Players is necessary since players need to be able to come and go from the gameplay. Games on social media sites, e.g. FarmVille and Mafia Wars on Facebook, need to provide the same functionality to support the movement from the game and other functionality provided on the sites.

Using the pattern

Considering to use of Late Arriving Players is only meaningful for Multiplayer Games for obvious reasons, and the pattern is for practical purposes needed in Massively Multiplayer Online Games. Massively Single-Player Online Games also needs players to be able to start at different times, but if this really means supporting Late Arriving Players depends on how much players can help each other, i.e. how much the games support Non-Player Help since all players see themselves as being the sole player and the other people present are playing their own game.

Tournaments

May be in conflict with Value of Effort Team Balance

Dedicated Game Facilitators Freedom of Choice

Persistent Game Worlds

Asynchronous Games

Player Balance

Player Time Investments

Steadily Decreasing Resources

Unknown Players

The use of Private Game Spaces can make it easier to support Late Arriving Players since other players will not directly be disadvantaged or threatened by newly arrived players.

Diegetic Aspects

Interface Aspects

Narrative Aspects

Consequences

Supporting Late Arriving Players provides one half of the necessary functionality to have Drop-In/Drop-Out in a game.

Late Arriving Players hinders Downtime before game instances have started.

Relations

Can Instantiate

Drop-In/Drop-Out

with ...

Can Modulate

Massively Multiplayer Online Games Massively Single-Player Online Games Multiplayer Games

Can Be Instantiated By

Can Be Modulated By

Possible Closure Effects

Potentially Conflicting With

Downtime

History

New pattern created in this wiki.

References

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