Random tagging ideas (2009-10)

Looking for simple and concise tag names for these.

9, 24, 28, 30, and 34 still need something.
4 needs improvements.

1) Final retaliation - creatures that somehow still can kill the player after or on the moment of their death, related/sub types of this are suicide bombers and the poorly named splitting creatures. This includes things like exploding, releasing deadly vapors, potentially falling on the player character (especially in case of giants), releasing swarms of parasites or whatever inhabiting their bodies, and so forth. Regardless if this is intentional or not.
... examples: Dark Alliance (zombies), any instance of sucide bombers, Xenomorphs (acid blood, some games have them trashing about on the floor for a while which can also wound if you get too close), "glory devices", etc.
= karmiccreatures

2) Instant killers - regardless of lack of instant death and how ridiculously large amount of hit points the player character has, there are still things that can instantly kill them, possibly even ignoring any invulnerability and such. Being eaten whole is one common example, or failing a QTE.
... examples: McGee's Alice
= instantkillers

3) Meeting old characters, their graves, ghosts, etc. This was mentioned in the old thread but nothing was invented for it.
... examples: Nethack
= past characters

4) Self-resurrecting creatures (enemies) - unlike spawning new ones, the old ones return to life unless something is done to them (if anything can). Usually undead. May repeat indefinitely or only few times.
... examples: Zombi, Blood (only the zombies), Resident Evil 3 (nemesis)
= Immortals (temporary?)

5) Single player controlling multiple characters separately, especially when they're far away from each other.
... examples: Space Hulk, Zombi, Head over Heels, and some other games tagged with cooperation.
= separatedprotagonists

6) Separated or split up, the protagonist gets separated from the rest either intentionally or by accident. Including games where player controls more than one character and must go about alone with one.
... examples: Summoner, Jericho, Legendary
= separated

7) Games that ignore effects of moving uphill and downhill or similar. In contrast to games with stamina where this would have changes to stamina drain rate, while others would have effect on movement speed only (slower uphill, faster downhill). The ones that ignore the effects of such should be a minority.
... examples: Alien Carnage
= zerogroundlevelgravity

8) Simulated movement. Related to stamina, but the movement otherwise tries to be more realistic.
... examples: Silent Hill (maybe?), ArmA 2
= life-like motion

9) Group games where the player has no (constant) direct control over his followers. May still have the possibility to give some instructions to them (e.g. tactics, give verbal commands, or similar [instructions, in effect]) or switch which character they directly control. Primarily for real-time games, though also applicable to turn-based games (where the player needs to have less control for it to differ from regular group)
... examples: Star Ocean 3, Mass Effect, Last Remnant (maybe?)
= group-leader, ??? (still able to control others directly needs another)

10) "Active" group consists only of subset of total followers.
... examples: Star Ocean 3, Septerra Core, KotOR 1&2, Mass Effect
= group-subset

11) Mixed high and low tech setting. Swords and guns in same setting with the sword wielders pretty much equally matched with the gunfighters.
... examples: Star Wars, Star Ocean, and plenty of Japanese SciFi games.
= mixedtech

12) Characters are limited to "zones". In old games that functioned on "screens" this was somewhat natural for them, this was followed by games that had small zones that did not conform to a screen. Then there appeared games that didn't have zones, but the characters would still not wander outside their personal zones. This also became a method of cheating since you could back out of the character's zone of operation and shoot/attack it from outside it. This is occasionally done to fight the virtual stupidity, or simply to avoid writing too complex AI.
... RE3 was somewhat exceptional for those playing on consoles exclusively since that was one of the few well known games where a character was NOT confined to a zone. The now deprecated offscreen action partially covered games that broke from this zoning as well.
... examples: Star Ocean 3, Resident Evil games and any other games that have small "room"-like areas from which the characters can't escape unless the plot demands it.
= zonednpcs

13) Any game where you can run about on foot, control vehicles (land, air and space) and possibly ride animals. Multi-vehicular tag covers cases where you mostly move with vehicles and often swap with them, but otherwise it's unusable. There's really no way to differentiate between games where you run about on foot or drive a vehicle exclusively currently either. Even something so simple as side-scrolling platformer says nothing if you're on foot or on Moonbuggy.
... examples: Crysis, Far Cry, Fuel of War, Battlefield, Battlefront, ArmA 2, Grand Theft Auto, Parkan etc. mix on-foot and vehicular activities
= walking, driving, riding, swimming, flying, underwater diving, ...

14) Characters, vehicles etc. getting pieces of them cut off with damage. Especially with holes appearing in them when shot or otherwise penetrated. This is partially covered by dismemberment and damage modeling. Usuallly this is over dramatic damage modeling on biological entities. Sort of like voxel bodies though I doubt they're done with voxels, just slightly more advanced version of the tech used for dismemberment (doesn't only cut things in half).
... examples: several older lightgun zombie shooters mimicked this in a way, Left 4 Dead 2, Wolverine: Origins (for wolverine himself at least)
= softbodies (temporary)

15) Games where death forces the player to load a save or some such and games where this just sends them back to some respawn point (sometimes with a penalty, like xp, gold or some such loss). Permadeath and retrypoints tags cover only certain cases of these. Lives does not really say anything about it either. Some (especially those with lives) allow continuing right from where you died.
= instantretry, retrypoints, retrypoints-rollback, deathpenalty, ...

16) Ability to move environmental objects. Should be two tags, one limited to small objects and the other into both small and large. Possibly third for presence of strangely unmovable fixtures. Possibly counter with something that says there are no movable environmental objects.
... examples: Deus Ex, Prototype, Hulk
17) Environmental object manipulation. Again, may need splitting to small and large. Pretty much same as moving, but the objects have other uses besides changing their location. Possibly merge with #16.
... preferably something that also covers telekinesis.
... examples: Half-Life 2, Penumbra, Twin Sector
= mutablescenery-small, mutablescenery-large, mutablescenery-fixtures, inertscenery

18) Falling on top of characters harms them. Head jumping tag is for method of _jumping_ (mainly from same height) on top them to damage them rather than jumping down on them from somewhere higher. This would be primarily for games where you can't jump on top of them when standing right next to them. Also implies dropping objects on top of them causes harm, somewhat overlaps with #17 due to this (throwing the object at their face likely has same or similar effect).
... examples: Assault on Dark Athena (outright kills the characters), several other games knocks the characters on the floor or slightly hurts them
= bodyslamming

19) Bullets and such that leave from some arbitrary point from the sprite or model instead of from the weapon that fired them. Similarly first person games where the gun is positioned unnaturally at the middle of the screen and cases where they aren't but the bullets still are projected from the middle. Shmups should be ignored as this is practically the standard behaviour for them that seemingly never got any attention.
...examples: Doom, Doom 2, many topdown shooters (projectiles leave from the center of the sprite/model instead of the gun)
= centerprojection

20) NPC/minion shopping. NPCs and possibly even the player character's minions can buy items and such for themselves when they feel like they need them.
... examples: Majesty 2 (minions buy armor, potions and magical artefacts when they feel like they need them and when they have enough cash for them)
= npcshopping

21) Player owns or can own a large houshold with a number of (presumably loyal) retainers and they must manage this to some degree or simply benefit from their existence.
... examples: Baldur's Gate 2(?), Summoner 2, Divinity 2
= estate

22) Creatures or characters that normally instantly would attack the player, but do not. Friendly monsters, so to speak, though not necessarily friendly (could be neutral/indifferent) nor monstrous by appearance.
... examples: Grim Fandango (all the skeletal dead), Dark Alliance (ghosts), Divinity 2 (most ghosts), Fallout series (non-feral ghouls)
= neutralmonsters

23) Group members can die, but as long as even one stays alive, the others can be resurrected.
... examples: most older games tagged with group. Mordor series did a twist for this that your whole party may die, and be resurrected by another group strolling about.
= resuscitation

24) Same as #23, but characters fall unconscious or become incapacitated instead, and come around after combat (usually barely so). They may remain unconscious until healed even after combat.
... examples: More recent games tagged with group. Those marked with multiple protagonists. Some games allow both falling unconscious and dying, though usually enemies do not try to beat up unconscious party members if there are better targets around.
= ???

25) Being spotted causes NPCs to gain a magical ability to know where you are. Especially troublesome in certain stealth games. Also, another contrasting tag for NPCs not gaining such ability. They'll continue shooting where they _think_ you are, but you could already be somewhere far off, or behind their back.
... examples: two first Splinter Cell games are reported to as having the first, while the following games the latter.
= relentless guards

26) Forgetful enemies. After chasing you for a small distance and not seeing you for few seconds, they'll forget that you ever were there and return to their posts or whatever. Especially when this happens inside a high security compound. There's no general alert issued until you've been found nor do they inform others of a sneaky bastard on their premises.
= forgetfulenemies

27) Player has the ability to instantly kill or incapacitate NPCs.
= killingblow, stunning

28) Improbably healthy NPCs, and improbably healthy player character. Common in non-tactical shooters. Characters survive much greater beating than anyone could believe them capable of. Commonly does not extend to vehicles.
= ???

29) Skill/ability/"research" tree. A tree of new abilities which is unlocked either by adv-ptdistr or upgradesystem.
= abilitydependencies

30) Dropped items are completely destroyed instead of appearing in the game world. Usually accompanied by a warning that the item(s) will be destroyed by the action.
... examples: many console RPGs.
= ???

31) Items in the world that can be placed in your inventory can be destroyed while they're in the world. This should not include trash functionality of your inventory. Implies itemdurability. (not including "plot items")
... examples: many roguelikes
= destructible items

32) Items can't be dropped. (not including "plot items")
... examples: many adventure games.
= inventory-indisposable

33) Items you have in the safety of your inventory can be destroyed by external means. (not including "plot items")
... examples: some roguelikes
= inventory-unprotected

34) Player encounters dangers they must evade. Or even flee in terror.
... examples: these are often QTE's
= ???

I'll edit this post directly to add new ones and mark those that have proper tags.

karmiccreatures
This reminds me of the Cuckoos (Chickens) in Zelda games.

multipleseparatedprotagonists
Single player controlling multiple characters

noinclineenergytracking
ignoring uphill/downhill

Group-npcs
non-playable characters can join the player's group (but remain non-playable)

mixedtech
What constitutes mixed technology?
Note, knights (or mounted calvary) and muskets coexisted for a large chunk of recorded history. Brave or smart calvary held the advantage over musketmen (aka: musketeers) or armies armed with arquebus. If the calvary managed to induce the musketeers to fire, they could then charge the musketmen and meet them before they had a chance to reload and fire again. Chances are, the musketmen would be defenseless, having no heavy weapons or armor, since they were sure they had the worlds best weapons and those weapons and ammo for it were heavy to carry by themselves. Several factors determined the best distance for the calvary to wait for the shot from. Range of the muskets; ideally, stay out of it when the first volley is fired. They could bluff by charging into the range just long enough for the musketeers kneel but retreating before the volley was fired. Accuracy of the muskets; The calvary stood a good chance of being missed by the vast majority of shots. Muskets were highly inaccurate. Of course the further within range they got, the more likely they were to get shot. Reloading time; even an experienced team of musketmen were no match for a fast horse. Experience; there were far more experienced horsemen than musketmen. Numbers; there were far more horsemen than musketmen; not because of a shortage of men, but because of the shortage of muskets and abundance of horses; if they didn't kill all the calvary in the first volley they were screwed. Note the calvary doesn't even need many experienced horsemen to succeed in this strategy. Only as many as it takes to charge and kill the musketmen. The rest of the horsemen shot at during the execution of this strategy need only know how to sit on a horse and look like a target. They could even wear shot resistant armor, as much as the horse can stand there with, because it doesn't need to charge. Taking all these factors into account, musketmen alone came closer and closer to become an even match to a calvary charge. But never fully meet up. Note however, that in practice, the calvary charge was rarely used against musketmen.
Problems with this strategy:
Firing at will; if the musketmen did not follow the traditional advance, kneel fire, reload, repeat strategy, the calvary is going to lose some experienced horsemen and will need to be sending in redundant numbers of them to succeed. Pikemen; overconfidence lead many musketmen to go to battle without any support troops. But if they had pikemen, the charging calvay could meet with enough resistance to be delayed long engough for a reload. Then they could fire at close range. Archers or Swordsmen; Pikemen were the worst enemy of calvary. This was proven long before firearms were added to the mix. But, any type support troops for the musketmen turned the odds back to their favor. Archers could fire on the calvary for the entire charge.
Abandoning muskets and using backup weapons; It was good strategy to not totally rely on muskets. The famous French musketeers for instance, carried a light sword (many of them also rode horses of their own).
Countering support troops:
IF the calvary brings bows, or ideally crossbows, they can stop short of the change and fire at the musket men (specifically and accurately at close range), then retreat from the support troops. However, this does not work well if the musketmen's support are archers.
The turning point; Rifles. Accuracy and range tipped the balance to the gun wielders. Ironically, they were invented less than 100 yeas after the arquebus, but rifles wouldn't become common until the 19th century.
But, swords also persisted. Though not the common weapon on battlefields after the 16th century, they still had use as a last resort personal defense weapon. Leaders on the battlefield still carried them and used them. As late as WWII, officers were still issued swords, trained in their use, and used them in battle. Pistols finally replaced them..

zonedcharacters
Characters are limited to "zones"

deathprocedureforced
Upon death, players are automatically routed through a procedure to resurrect, load a previous save, or start again from a checkpoint.

mutableenvironment
Player can alter the in-game environment
movablesenery
Objects in the game with little to no gameplay value (scenery) can be moved.
nonmovablesenery
Objects in the game that would be expected to be movable, aren't. Such as a small potted plant that is as immovable as the brick wall behind it.
nomovablesenery
There are no objects in the game that would be expected to be movable, and aren't.

verticalimpactdamage
A character or object in vertical motion can damage a character or object it collides with.

improbableprojectileorigin
A projectiles path apparently originates from some arbitrary point from the sprite or model instead of from the point expected.

npc-shoppers
NPC/minion shopping

householdmanagement
Player owns or can own a large household with a number of (presumably loyal) retainers and they must manage this to some degree or simply benefit from their existence.

friendlybaddies
A creature is friendly in contrast to its reputation and/or in contrast to the evil behavior of its fellows.

group-lastonerescues
The game lets any surviving member of a group resurect all other members.
goodsamaritan
The player's character or group can be rescued by passers by should they become incapacitated or killed.

permanentlydiscovered
It is impossible for a character to hide again once caught.

forgetfulenemies
Forgetful enemies

adv-branching
Branching advancement. Available skills/abilities/spells/technologies or other properties to advance in, are provided in a branching system whereby advancement in one skill can lead to 2 or more skills becoming available for further advancement.

inventory-droppedforever
Dropped items are always unrecoverable.

inventory-safety
inventory-secure
A destructible item is not destructible so long as it stays in your inventory.

inventory-nodropping
No items can be dropped. They stay in your inventory until sold, stolen, traded, or used.

inventory-unsafe
inventory-unsecured
Items in your inventory can be destroyed by outside forces while still residing in your inventory.

retreat-forced
Player encounters dangers they must evade. Or even flee in terror.

retreat
Players have an option to retreat. That might fail.

retreat-assured
Players can retreat with 100% change of escape.

Err? You mean it's confusing? Unfortunately I couldn't think of anything else that had as broad meaning, and bad karma seemed to be good enough.

Something shorter would be nice.

Err, no.

Sounds good. Though for different purpose than I was looking for (in case this was for #9).

Yes, it's vague. Though your example of black powder firearms is a point in technology when they still had some change, though the musketeers pretty much held the advantage as long as they didn't fire too soon/inaccurately.
Crossbow already made knight's full plate armor useless (though I wouldn't make this a case of mixed tech) even when the crossbow was used by a peasant with only very basic understanding of the weapon (the bolt would puncture the armor and likely kill the knight no matter how well trained and experienced they were). But the intention was generally the major technological changes, such as gunpowder vs melee weapons.

The starting point for the idea was all these sci-fi games where people still used swords despite firearms and even energy-based weapons being everyday items.

zonednpcs rather.

something else

Sounds good, though probably should have scenery- as prefix, makes them appear grouped in tag list when there's more than one used.

Needs to include horizontal, since usually throwing the same object at the person's face has the same effect. However, crashing with a character on top of them without an attack move tends not to do anything in most games. It is related to just now introduced lethal velocity tag.

something shorter would be better.

would rather go with `npcshopping´.

Overlaps with home and multiple protagonists. E.g. Granado Espada.

sounds a bit silly/childish, and isn't really any better than friendly monsters.

need something better.
too vague.

permanent is wrong, commonly these allow becoming hidden again by staying out of the NPC sight/hearing range long enough (usually by turning several fast corners). I was a bit unclear on that, but generally it was for the cases where hiding in the dark no longer helped and similar.

yes...

Sounds like sub-classing. And since usually you take multiple branches, branching itself becomes not so good definition (also which it is always called a research/skill/ability tree).

doesn't sound good.

secure sounds usable also with player's ability to accidentally drop items. safety on the other hand does not suffer from that as much, but is somewhat vague (safety from what? can carry red hot lumps of coal?).

simple, though I'd drop the -ing.

same problems as safe/secure

but it is supposed to be for things even which aren't explicitly forced. just appear ineffective if you try to fight them. it may be that you're forced to fight them later on without having anything that makes the fight easier than the first time (commonly these would have a bastardization of environmental combat in the later encounter). also, how do we distinguish these from indestructible foes?
sounds mostly usable for games with separate combat mode.
sounds useful variation

Possibility of retreat also overlaps with pacifist approach. Several games can be played through without hurting large number of the encountered enemies (even without undue difficulties later on) even if it isn't advertized.

multiplesplitprotagonists
splitprotagonists
separatedprotagonists


(Still on the subject of mixed tech, barely). Not so much the crossbow as the narrow long and often squared tip of the quarrel. If a traditional wide tipped arrowhead style was used on a quarrel, it might just be deflected by plate armor or even stopped by lesser armors. True, the crossbow had power, but so did the longbow. A quarrel tip was better at piercing armors and these types of arrows were effective when fired from a longbow, and to some extent a regular bow, as well as a high-powered crossbow. Also, the pointy longbow ammo has an advantage over a typical crossbow ammo. When fired at the same power the longbow ammo has more range. Note that the first crossbows (Gastraphetes/belly-bows) were not more powerful than a longbow and generally did not use quarrels. Also, crossbows started at about 30 pounds and generally went to about 740. The best longbows bested many low-end crossbows with an average of about 68 pounds and a maximum of 100. The longbow could also fire 5 shots in the time it takes a crossbow to fire 1. and the 68/740 may look like a huge advantage but the crossbow suffers a huge inefficiency that causes vast diminishing returns. A quarrel fired with 740 pounds of force from a crossbow is only 3.6% faster than an arrow fired at 68 pounds from a longbow and the arrow has a longer range to boot. Actually 630 pounds is optimal for a crossbow and is a near even speed match to the 68 pounds longbow. 200lbs was an average crossbow, losses to the longbow for speed and range. To gain the upper hand in efficiency, a crossbow needed to be bigger and heavier. The lightweight longbow was more portable to start with.
Back to muskets. It wasn't until the Napoleonic era that firearms could best bow or crossbows for speed, accuracy and range.
Up to 4 crossbow quarrels or 20 bow arrows could be fired in the time it takes to fire a single musket shot. The musket rapidly losses accuracy with distance when compared to bows and range. An unskilled group of archers, following the lead of a single marksman (replicate the marksman's draw and angle) would hit more targets than An unskilled group of musketmen who replicated the angle of their marksman at the same range. The Native Americans were actually more effective in battling the British than the American Revolutionaries (provided they could lure the British near or into areas with cover. Which the rarely failed to do). By the way, bows have a very high tolerance for dirt and moister. Gunpower and crossbows are easily rendered inoperable by them. However, a notable exception is the all steel crossbow that is not only unaffected by moisture (short term), it can actually be fired underwater at an above water or under water target at a reduced range. A catapult, ballista, or and Trebuchet (especially the Trebuchet) is accurate at any range in the sense that it can place its shot in the exact same position each time. The Trebuchet could be adjusted by an experienced crew to reliable hit a 1 inch target, 1 inch away from the previous hit at 400m. Wind was the only difficult variably in a shot like that.
normal bow: 200m lethal to humans.
Longbow range: 100m penetrates plate, 200m penetrates 1 inch solid oak (shields), 400m is still lethal to humans.
Crossbow range: 250m lethal to humans.
Steel Crossbow range: 300m lethal to humans.
Heavy duty steel crossbow range: 400m lethal to humans.
Musket range: 600m lethal to humans (*IF* it hits any).
Medieval 'cannon' range: 600m lethal to anything it hits.
Catapult, Ballista, Trebuchet: 400m is lethal to anything it hits. (note that operators of these weapons need to watch out for longbowsmen and likewise if the longbowsmen slows down within 400m).
Modern advantages of the bow include: Silent, poisonable, ignition source, does not give away position, operator can change position before the arrow hits it mark, easily untraceable, ballistic trajectory (hit targets behind obstacles), does not set of metal detectors (one of my pastors actually brought home a bow and arrows from Kenya without being stopped).


autodeathaction
autodeathact

sounds a bit silly/childish, and isn't really any better than friendly monsters.
Videogames have always been and will probably always remain a bit silly/childish.

too vague.
Really? The tale of The Good Samaritan describes a helpless man seen and helped by a man who could. The rescuer took him to an inn and made sure that he was fully attended to until his health was recovered. Sound like the situation exactly, if a passing party can to this for a helpless one. There's a 'moral' to the tale which may not apply.


We don't have a pacifist tag do we? I'm not sure its a good idea to have one. While a game allowing a totally pacifist or nokills win (officially or otherwise) is probably rare, it openes up the door to arbitrary 'rules' tags along the lines of swordlesslinkbeatable, nobrakesbeatable, nomagicbeatable. Do we want those at this point?

sounds better. plural is important here to not confuse with separated. But I'm thinking we could consider this case of separated+multiprotagonists since we would still be using multiprotagonists tag anyway with these, and separated doesn't have much other possible meaning that I can think of in combination with multiprotagonists.


No, still not satisfied. Think we need multiple tags for the variations of this.


We would go the TVTropes way of naming tags if we don't try to be even slightly serious with them. And there are plenty of games that aren't silly/childish in general, or at least no more than any other form of entertainment.


Vague, as in, the good samaritan is used in general with anyone who goes out of their way to help someone in need. Does not need to be near death or similar.

Best option (IMO) is to link this with what System Shock ( and BioShock) has when you die and have enabled/reset the medical station thingy on each floor.

For multiplayer games where other players can resuscitate random people, we could simply note that the game has resurrection magic or similar available (I believe the earliest examples are with the group based games like Ultima, EoB, Dungeon Master, etc.). Though even that can be split in half, as I do believe Dungeon Master or EoB had specific locations where you stored the remains of the dead character and they would be resurrected in an instant. While in others, usually the more recent kind, players either have items or abilities that directly resurrect characters.


Been going along those lines myself. Best option would be that it doesn't require going too much out of your way to accomplish, and the game may suggest that it's possible, not some personal challenge (e.g. playing any shooter game through with only the starting weapon). Or, more pronouncedly, playing a game like Doom through without firing a single shot (if that's even possible?). Anyway, even if it is possible, the it clearly is not an approach the game supports at all.

Was thinking of `alternate solutions´ earlier today, may go with it later. But it overlaps with non-linear gameplay somewhat. Still, games are becoming more and more combinations of random genres that old assumptions don't work anymore. For example, you can't assume puzzle games are all impersonal because of things like puzzle quest.

Actually, after more thinking, I find this to be bad idea. multiprotagonists tag can occur in same capacity with separated as other games, though I can't remember ever playing or hearing about a game with such setting. That does not mean no-one will make one, so we need the separatedprotagonists tag anyway.

Due to little participation in throwing in ideas, I'm filling as many as possible of these with temporary names.

3) meet old characters - vague, as it can now seemingly refer to characters from previous games in a series.
7) zero ground-level gravity - not entirely sure if this is correct way to express it, but I suppose it's right.
18) bodyslamming - this actually looks like the real thing, even if it also includes some throws.
21) estate - vague, alternatively this could've been manor, but that's more specific and is currently redirected to mansion.
24) ???
25) relentless guards - describes the behaviour, but may be mistaken for non-stealth cases as is.
28) ???
30) ???
31) destructible items
33) inventory-unprotected
34) ???

The remaining four were still too difficult to give even arbitrary name, or just too numerous (#28) for me to bother.