Cooldown

A period of time when an action is not possible to use directly after it has been used.

Games typically provide players with many ways to affect the game state. Not all action possible can however be used all the time, and one way this is done in games is through simply requiring that a certain period of time transpires before the same kind of action is done again. Actions restricted in this way are said to have a Cooldown period, based upon the metaphor of it becoming overheated by being used and requiring some time to cool down again.

Examples

World of Warcraft has Cooldowns linked to many spells, abilities, and powers of items.

Many of the primary attacks that special infected can do in Left 4 Dead series have Cooldown periods associated with them, and this makes players have to consider when to use them.

Using the pattern

Time Limits Stimulated Planning Non-Player Help No-Ops Action Caps Varied Gameplay Downtime

Tools Game Items Installations Privileged Actions

Cooldown can be used to link various Game Items together. Shared Cooldowns restricts not only the use of actions just performed but some set of other actions as well, an example from World of Warcraft being that the use of an Earth Elemental Totem restricts the use of an Fire Elemental Totem for 2 minutes and vice versa (they also have individual Cooldown periods of 10 minutes). The kind of Cooldowns are typically restricted to Privileged Actions since they can work on these without breaking Diegetic Consistency.

Global Cooldowns (also found in World of Warcraft) apply to most of a players actions, and can be seen as adding a minimum Cooldown to all actions except when followed by one of a few specific actions.

Interface Aspects

Game State Indicators

Consequences

The use of Global Cooldowns can be seen as a way of making the gameplay similar to that of Tick-Based Games.

Relations

Can Instantiate

Tick-Based Games

History

New pattern created in this wiki.

References

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Acknowledgements

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