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Only Kill Your Players When They Deserve It
For most online games, dying is just part of the system. It's expected. Few people loaded up Counter-Strike the first time and thought, "I'm never going to be defeated" ... and those that did were among the first to go. Truth is, when a game has a feature called "Deathmatch", death is pretty much inevitable for your online alter ego.
That doesn't mean, however, that death is particularly fun.
For instance, I'm playing Aliens Versus Predator 2. This recent Lithtech-powered release has some truly great features to it, but is also filled with the occasional annoyances. One such example is when I was playing as an alien drone, had just chopped up a few victims and was looking to get a quick getaway. Since aliens are equipped with that nifty ability to walk on walls, I hopped on the nearest one and made a break for it.
Apparently going over the wall wasn't what the game designer had in mind. When I hit a small fence-like barrier at the top of the wall, I died.
No warning, don't pass go, alert the next of kin and load (slowly I might add) up that last quick save.
Those silly humans. They attacked me with *guns* - they should have used fences. Apparently fences are the instagib of the AvP world.
Why is this so bad and what does it have to do with mods? Same answer for both questions. It's a step above mere frustration, or that horrible inability to get past a certain point in a game. Players in a game expect a sort of unwritten contract from the game design. They shouldn't need to know all the rules of the game world, because most of them should be somewhat intuitive.
Here's an example of intuitive design: In the original DOOM, there were explosive barrels. They glowed, and generally looked volatile. Sure enough when you shot them, they exploded.
When anyone picked up the Redeemer in Unreal Tournament for first time, they expected it cause something large and dangerous. They weren't disappointed.
Designers can use anything they like to alert the players of their possible destruction. Visual clues like making lava look like lava, jumping sparks of electricity, huge amounts of blackness to indicate those bottomless pits which don't seem as rare in the FPS world as they are in our own. Signs, as in real signs saying things like "Hazardous Materials", aren't necessarily out of place. Audio clues like the sounds of sparks, evil sounding hums or even screams work well. The more devastating the effect an object in a game will have on the player, the more cues they deserve to know to avoid it.
The popular FPS Half-Life is filled to the brim with clues for the player, letting them know what's been electrified, turned radioactive or just teleported in from another dimension.
If players have to spend too much time figuring out what an object is or what it's effect will be on them, they'll probably just end up leaving it alone - usually in frustration. The only exception to this are objects which provide a solution to a puzzle, something that is meant to be figured out. Even then, the player is generally aware that it's a puzzle.
Game designers should consider this even when looking at their HUD displays, user manuals or other direct message to the player. If the player is confused by this most basic level of interaction, the entire game is going to be a lot harder than need be. In the end, add up enough objects that players leave alone in frustration, and there sometimes isn't much of a game left.
Objects that may have disastrous effects on the player need to be handled very carefully in game design. Notice how in the official Unreal Tournament maps, death zones are clear, distinct and usually placed outside of the playing area. Objects within the playing area are generally harmful, but allows the player to escape somehow.
Players should be the ones responsible for their own death, not game design. Through stupidity, lack of ammo, bad aim or just being purely outgunned, a player's death should be his or her own. Realize this with level design, weapon balance, item creation and general game rules - players shouldn't be punished just for playing.
Till next time, be fair to your players, frag often, and beware of unmarked fences.
P.S.-Don't take this as a condemnation on Aliens Versus Predator 2 as a game. Overall, it's an insanely well designed game, blending the look and feel of movies, comics and that horrible feeling you have that maybe that air pipe isn't really an air pipe. An entire rant about a fence isn't a review, it's a column.
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