Difference between revisions of "Death Consequences"

Revision as of 10:36, 7 July 2011

Gameplay consequences, typically negative, of avatars or characters dying.

Games often provide dangerous environments for the avatars, characters, and units that players control. This may cause them to be eliminate from gameplay and thereby make players suffer losses in possible actions and even in losing the entire games. However, games can also provide other explicit Death Consequences, e.g. losing points. These Death Consequences can also replace the elimination as main effect of dying, e.g. making avatars respawn at a different location and with any equipment either lost or remaining at the point of death.

Examples

Death of characters in Tabletop Roleplaying Games generally require players to create new characters. However, several games have ways of countering this, e.g. Dungeons & Dragons have resurrection spells, but these require expensive materials and reduce attributes or levels.

Early Computer Games had no real Death Consequences but instead had a limited number of lives available (NetHack and Rogue are exceptions). This has however generally been replaced with either in various ways allowing players unlimited amount of tries to complete games or having specific Death Consequences. For example, the Team Fortress, Quake, and Unreal Tournament series let killed avatars respawn soon after being killed but without previously gained weapons and armor. The Battlefield series does the same but also reduces the number of tickets from the team that suffered a death. Minecraft respawns players' avatar at the same location every time but gives them a chance to recover lost equipment if they can get back to the location of the death within certain time limits. Players whose characters die in Massively Multiplayer Online Games can usually also recover their loss gear but in Eve Online and Ultima Online other players can steal it; it cannot be stolen in World of Warcraft but instead a penalty to the durability of all gear is applied.

The indie game Deaths saves the location of the ten latest death of all play sessions in the world. Corpses are placed at these locations and are needed to get passed some of the problems in the game, showing a positive Death Consequence.

Using the pattern

, typically done through Ability Losses, Decreased Abilities, or reduced Scores. Ability Losses and Decreased Abilities can be given easy diegetic explanations in games using Equipment such as Armor, Tools, and Weapons by making players lose these when they lose Lives. A specific design issue related to loss of Lives exists when the Lives are linked to Avatars. This is that Spawning of the Avatars needs to be done to reintroduce them into the Game Worlds. The location where Avatars respawns can be the point of death, which provides continuation but may have Player Balance problems since the cause of death may still be present. Avatars may also spawn in random locations in the Game Worlds or by randomly choosing one point from a small set of Spawn Points. Even if Avatars are not respawned where they died, this location can still be interesting to return to if the Equipment lost when dying can be found there.

Decreased Abilities, Ability Losses, and they might lose Ownership of Tools and other items they possess at the time of killing. Other possibilities include forced Downtime or limitations to the number of times a player can respawn due to the use of Lives.

Permadeath are Deaths that directly lead to Player Elimination and Game Over. For this reason this subtype of Deaths is not compatible with Lives.

Deaths can be used as a method of keeping Score in both games with Team Play, as in games with Team Elimination, and without Team Play.

Diegetic Aspects

Interface Aspects

Narrative Aspects

Consequences

Relations

Can Instantiate

with Equipment

Temporary Abilities

Can Modulate

Lives, Player Killing

Can Be Instantiated By

Permadeath

Can Be Modulated By

Ability Losses, Decreased Abilities, Equipment, Scores, Spawn Points, Spawning

Possible Closure Effects

Potentially Conflicting With

History

New pattern created in this wiki.

References

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Acknowledgements

Karl Bergström