Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
the most cutthroat of the successful PvP games, with very little in the rules to
prevent players from abusing newcomers.
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Builder model.
This somewhat rare sort of world enables players to construct
things and actually modify the world in which they play. It's a highly expressive
form of entertainment. People get kudos not for their fighting skills, but for their
aesthetic and architectural ones, both intangible qualities.
Avatar Death
In any persistent world that includes combat, you must decide whether it's possible
for the player's avatar to die and what will happen if it does. As in other games, ava-
tar death must be accompanied by a disincentive of some kind or combat will not
be a meaningful part of gameplay. The trick is to find a disincentive that is propor-
tional to the likelihood of the avatar's death. It is a question of balance: If the
avatar can easily be killed through no fault of the player (such as through igno-
rance or bad luck), then the cost of dying—the disincentive—should be low, but if
the player really has to be stupid to get his avatar killed, the cost should be high.
Some examples follow.
PERMANENT DEATH
In the most extreme case, the avatar dies and cannot be resurrected. The player
loses all property that he owns (in which case you must decide what happens to
that property) and must start over from scratch with a new avatar. This makes
sense in games of short duration, but seldom in persistent worlds. Players in persis-
tent worlds put too much time and effort into building up their avatars for you to
ask them to start over.
RESURRECTION WITH REDUCED ATTRIBUTES
Designers commonly penalize the player for letting her avatar die by bringing the
avatar back to life with reduced functional attributes—with less strength or per-
haps fewer skills. In effect, you give the player a bit of a setback in her quest to
grow a powerful avatar. Players find this irritating, so fear of incurring such a set-
back discourages risky play, but the penalty makes a certain amount of sense. If a
gang of club-wielding trolls beats the avatar to death, the avatar ought to feel pretty
lousy for a while when she comes back to life!
RESURRECTION WITH SOME PROPERTY MISSING
Another classic disincentive for dying involves loss of money, gear, clothes, and
other items in the avatar's inventory at the time. How much of his property he
loses and what becomes of it can vary considerably from game to game. You can
also allow players to have a vault in the game in which they can keep items that
they're not carrying with them, and these items can remain safely in the vault for
