Transferable Items
Game Items that can be equipped.
This pattern is a still a stub.
Contents
Examples
The Left 4 Dead series series allows players to hand over health pills, pipe bombs, and other secondary items to each other to ensure that the group as a whole is most adequately equipped.
Using the pattern
Implementing Transferable Items include picking which Game Items should be transferable, what actions makes this possible, and to whom one can transfer them. Since most solutions to this makes the transfer non-diegetically, the pattern can be applied to Resources as well as Game Items and all mentions of the latter below also imply the former.
For efficiency reasons, the system for Transferable Items is typically applied to all Game Items first and then limitations, if any, are imposed. Examples of limitations include Enforced Ownership and only letting those that have the Privileged Ability to use or equip the Game Items to also be given them. The use of Enforced Ownership may at first seem to be fully incompatible with Transferable Items. This is however not the case since the enforcement may only hinder transferral to certain other Characters - World of Warcraft for example lets "soulbound" Game Items be sold to Non-Player Characters or Self-Service Kiosks. This still makes it impossible for other players to access the Game Items since they cannot be sold, and the design solution is effectively a case of Game Element Removal to create a Faucet/Sink system. Using a shared Inventory and thereby implying that only equipped Game Items are actually in a Character's possession, Dragon Age II shows an example of how Privileged Abilities limit how Game Items can be transferred. Here Game Items not usable by a Character due to him or her being the wrong class or not being "Hawke" simply cannot be dragged to that Player Character or Companion.
Enabling Transferable Items is most easily done through letting Agents drop Game Items, possibly as Pick-Ups. Other solutions are implementing support for Trading or Stealing as possible game actions. Nearly all cases require Inventories, and an easy way to implement willing transfer of items (e.g. between a Player Character and his or her Companions) is to provide two Inventories next to each other and allowing Game Items to be dragged between them.
Whom one can transfer Game Items with naturally depend on what actions provides the possibility. Trading may be possible with all Characters but Enemies, while Stealing may be possible from all but create different types of instantiations of the pattern Actions Have Diegetically Social Consequences.
Complete control of transferral may be limited to that between Player Characters, or that between Player Characters and Companions. As mentioned above, some Transferable Items may only be possible to sell to Non-Player Characters or Self-Service Kiosks as a consequence of uses of Enforced Ownership. Avatars may replace Characters in some of the cases, but for all but the most trivial cases of Transferable Items it is required that the participants have the abstract structures of Inventories.
Interface Aspects
Making Game Items transferable through Trading or Stealing typically requires Secondary Interface Screens.
Consequences
Freedom of Choice Cooperation Cordination
Relations
Can Instantiate
Can Modulate
Avatars, Characters, Companions, Enemies, Game Items, Non-Player Characters, Player Characters, Resources, Self-Service Kiosks
Can Be Instantiated By
Can Be Modulated By
Possible Closure Effects
-
Potentially Conflicting With
History
New pattern created in this wiki.
References
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