Chapter 21 Questions Exercise

1. How do you plan to deal with the issue of new players arriving in the middle of
a long game? Get rid of the victory condition, or find a way to make sure that players are matched with those of similar ability?

I will get rid of the victory condition when a new player starts.  This will mean they have their own learning period or rite of passage if you will to learn what they can and cannot do.  After they have learned what it is they can do, they then have to define what they will do on their own.  NPCs will be active and present at times and will offer not only training exercises but also practical wisdom of how to do well in the game.

2. What will happen to the gameplay when a player vanishes? How will it affect
the other players’ experience of the game (what they see and hear)? Does it disrupt
the balance of the game? Will it make the challenges easier or harder? Is the game
even meaningful anymore?

            The game will continue to run, regardless of who logs on and off.  Other players will be given a sound and a notice on their screen that a person that they have collaborated with or have seen has left the game for various reasons.  This does not disrupt the balance of the game and does not change the overall challenges already in place.  This does limit the game being a bit in terms of it being meaningful, but it not take away a player’s progress.

3. What happens to the game’s score when a player vanishes? Is the game still fair?

            When the player vanishes/leaves the game their score is intact, for it’s a default mechanism.  Being a permanent record of a player’s progress it would be unheard of to delete a player’s progress fully unless they were deleting their own file and starting from scratch or something happened and they have to start from scratch, which is always a bummer.

4. Does your game offer a player an advantage of some kind for intentionally disconnecting him/herself (whether by preventing him/herself from losing or by sealing his
own victory)? Is there any way to minimize this without penalizing players who
are disconnected accidentally?

            There will be a certain amount of fairness in place, which means that players have to disengage from their current activity if they are disconnecting intentionally.  If they are being disconnected accidentally, their session will end but they will be able to pick up where they left off.

5. In a turn-based game, what mechanism will you use to prevent a player from
stalling play for the other players? Set a time limit? Allow simultaneous turns?
Implement a reasonable default if the player does nothing?

            To prevent a player from taking too long, there will be a time limit that will actually tick down to a defaulted action.  This action can be changed from normal attack to something else such as, time usage, casting a spell or causing an effect to go into play.

6. If you offer a chat mechanism, what features will you implement to keep it civil?
Filters? A complaint system? An ignore system? Or will your game require moderated chat spaces?

            There will be filters, a complaint system, and an ignore feature.  In certain areas there will be moderated spaces that are more public.  People will also have to know what zone they belong in and what is appropriate in terms of what is offered.

7. Is your game designed to prevent (or alleviate) collusion? Because you can’t prevent players from talking to each other on the phone as they play, how will you
address this? Or can you design your game in such a way that collusion is part of
the gameplay, as in "Diplomacy"?

            My game will not so much as alleviate, but inspire collusion.  Collusion will be a key pat of gameplay since players will need to work in a group to get tasks/quests done or to achieve a certain objective and/or progress.