How many of you would chose to be (*ahem* no better word for it) a lackey if you could start out as the guy in charge? If you could choose to be an ensign or the captain of a ship, would you automatically take captain? I'm thinking about letting players either start as a lowly shuttle pilot in command of their own destiny, or an ensign that can crew out on bigger ships. As a captain, you'd pick your course and what you wanted to do. As an ensign, you'd try to level up to better and better ships. The advantage to being an ensign would be mostly a difference in roleplaying and being part of a dynamically changing world. There would be certain factions, like the military, whose ships you would not have legal access to without working your way up, as well. I may also make the player never able to reach the power of certain factions (again, like the military) as an added incentive. Ensign Redshirt To keep you a hero who can make your own choices, I've got to make you a freelancer. Each ship would be a small town, a microcosm with social challenges, job challenges and a Sims-style needs gameplay making life interesting. You'd level up by earning bonuses, recommendations and loyalty from your fellow crew. Your resources would be gear and time, you'd play mini-games to beat skill tests, try to work your way up the pecking order with your colleagues, and make enough money to keep going and maybe get ahead. Details Ships care about mass and energy. As a freelancer, you ship out "On Account." That means you pay for your food, room and board, with better ships charging you less. In return, you get paid each day with bonuses for doing a better job. If you do well enough, you're kept on; otherwise, you could be dumped at the next port (transfered if in the military). Work work work Each shift you have a list of challenges, some simulated by the management to keep you on your toes-- so there's always a problem. If you're an engineer, the job is physically dangerous; if you're a medic, someone (like those engineers) are always coming in with a problem; if you're security, the other freelancers always have to be watched to make sure they aren't siphoning energy from the ship, gambling, fighting or about to mutiny. For each job you have: An energy budget from the reactor that day and equipment loadout. You gain a bonus for using less energy, and poor job marks for using progressively more and more energy. The Ship Is A Town Your crewmates, the senior staff and the equipment onboard make each ship a unique town. Some have training facilities (that you pay to use-- remember, it costs energy). Some have surly crew that might invite you in on a mutiny. Others might be model ships where you earn your money, build allies who become future contacts, and get a big boost on your way to the next post. Social Butterfly You can backstab your teamates, accuse them or be accused of job failure / incompetence. You can cover for a teamate mistake, which earns you a favor (part of the natural repuation system in the game), or accept someone taking the fall for you. Social gameplay involves building allies and gaining status. You gain status by successful social skill contests (say arm wrestling, winning an argument or singing a ditty) and helping teamates on the job. You have both a status with management and with rank & file which is modified by your rank and the relationship between the two aboard ship (so you could be seen as a suck up). You always know your social rank, which is represented by your reputation overall and a perceieved loyalty with each crewmember. Doing nice things for your fellow NPCs (like loaning them equipment they forgot or energy) charges up their loyalty, while doing things they don't like (like reporting their incompetence or fighting with them) drops it. Your social or actual rank allows you to get help or dodge challenges you don't like, but those with higher rank can impose the same on you. Refusing can save you time or resources, but lower your social standing or get you punished on a regimented ship. The more loyal crew are to you, the more they'll do nice things for you, like help you meet your needs. A Spacer Has Needs! The need to pee is not heroic. So your ship will, baring disaster, automatically take care of your basic needs. You only sleep if you want to level up your skills, and you only eat if you want to change your body's nanotech makeup to resist certain types of damage. That leaves: Focus - Each skill test you do takes some Focus Creativity - You gain skill bonuses and use less energy in exchange for Creativity Rest - Goes down faster the more strenuous the job or longer the skill test Hygiene - Drops due to dirty or strenuous jobs, or skill failure in some cases (causing a fluid leak, for ex.) Enviro - Drops or rises based on your surroundings and any character specific phobias you took in making your character (such as agoraphobia if you're sent on an EVA mission) Sleep kicks in as a needs meter if you're in special conditions, like disaster or red alert; and Facilities can recharge these needs for a price, as can interacting with the right crew members if you level up in the social network. Morale - Skill failure reduces morale, as can talking with negative crewmembers or senior staff who berate you. If any of your needs drop, your overall morale drops. This controls some of your conversation choices, your ability to get critical sucesses, and your progress in the social network. Rewards & Leveling Since mass is a problem, you can't be awarded a +15 LazerSword of Destruction for good deeds. In addition to recommendations, you're awarded templates and particles. Templates are plans for items, and the particles are the special components needed for them. You can always siphon or steal particles and templates from teamates or the ship itself (giving security a job to do). Like a restaurant where the employees steal food, a certain level of theft is culturally tolerated, but the safer way to do it is by rewards. One last note: Competing ships sometimes secretly contract freelancers to specifically sabotage a rival, so you may get an offer to do so for a post that you're on, exchanging reputation for cash. Thoughts? -------------------- Just waiting for the mothership... [edited by - Wavinator on May 22, 2004 3:59:16 PM]

quote: Original post by Wavinator
How many of you would chose to be (*ahem* no better word for it) a lackey if you could start out as the guy in charge? If you could choose to be an ensign or the captain of a ship, would you automatically take captain?

I''m thinking about letting players either start as a lowly shuttle pilot in command of their own destiny, or an ensign that can crew out on bigger ships. As a captain, you''d pick your course and what you wanted to do. As an ensign, you''d try to level up to better and better ships.

I have an idea about this, then the player is creating their character they get background points say 5 and they can get more forever five years they increase their characters starting age by. These background points are used to "buy" their characters past so to speak. There are a list of background choices and there cost, which the player can choose from. These will shape their characters starting condition. For instance perhaps for 5 background points the character can start of having inherited the family ship, or they could spend could spend a lot of background points increasing their starting wealth so they can afford a ship to start with, just to name a few. In this way the character decided how they want to start and it is easier to balance. Heck you could allow the player to buy ranks with background points.

quote:
Work work work
Each shift you have a list of challenges, some simulated by the management to keep you on your toes-- so there''s always a problem. If you''re an engineer, the job is physically dangerous; if you''re a medic, someone (like those engineers) are always coming in with a problem; if you''re security, the other freelancers always have to be watched to make sure they aren''t siphoning energy from the ship, gambling, fighting or about to mutiny.

Will there be numerous organization and positions the character can choose to sign up with? What about mandatory service? For instance if you decided to join the Outer rim defence force, they may have a mandatory two year service contract.

quote:
Sleep kicks in as a needs meter if you''re in special conditions, like disaster or red alert; and

Facilities can recharge these needs for a price, as can interacting with the right crewmembers if you level up in the social network.

Morale - Skill failure reduces morale, as can talking with negative crewmembers or senior staff who berate you

I''m reminded of the energizer in the future world of chrono trigger. Perhaps there could a similar facility on board ships? In five minutes you get the equivalent of a goodnights rest and a days nutrition however you are still hungry. The player could use this to work longer more and try and get a bigger bonus however they suffer a moral or health penalty whenever they use it.

quote:
Rewards & Leveling
Since mass is a problem, you can''t be awarded a +15 LazerSword of Destruction for good deeds. In addtion to recommendation, you''re awarded templates and particles. Templates are plans for items, and the particles are the special components needed for them.

You can always siphon or steal particles and templates from team mates or the ship itself (giving security a job to do). Like a restaurant where the employees steal food, a certain level of theft is culturally tolerated, but the safer way to do it is by rewards.

What if instead of templates, and particles the player is given credit chits as a bonus. These chits can be traded at any faction store, or quartermasters belonging to that faction for things value. For instance you go to the outer rim defence company store which is off limits to civilians and their you can trade your credit chits for templates, or particles, or a laser sword its up to you.


-----------------------------------------------------
"Fate and Destiny only give you the opportunity the rest you have to do on your own."
Current Design project: Ambitions Slave

quote: Original post by TechnoGoth
I have an idea about this, then the player is creating their character they get background points say 5 and they can get more forever five years they increase their characters starting age by.

I was thinking about two approaches here: One, you use points to buy your past and contacts, like you said. This comes out of your total character creation pool (which I have mostly worked out), so you trade stats for rep or skills or psi points.

The other approaches harkins back to the ancient MegaTraveller game: You "roll" for a cluster of years and get a result. Some could be positive or negative, and you would risk bad things happening to your character for a better starting bonus (like that ship you mentioned).

quote:
Will there be numerous organization and positions the character can choose to sign up with?

The positions I can conceive of gameplay for are:
Engineering - Run around and fix things, deal with emergencies, come up with novel solutions to problems
Security - Repel boarders, Siegers, stop crimes / mutinies
Medical - Heal crew, solve plague puzzles, handle emergency surgery challenges
Tactical - Run ship sensors & weapons, make ship stealthy, ferret out stealthy enemies & handle ship to ship combat
Navigation - Steer ship, make FTL jumps, deal with hazards

More boring positions like barkeep or cook get to be handled by bots in this future; if it's at all possible for the player to be a Quark and run their own bar, I'll have to make that independent play.

quote:
What about mandatory service?

This still works with this system, except that you'd get transfered around within a faction and get hunted down if you go AWOL. With better ships, you get better equipment and higher status, but you'd still get the same kind of work. If you're part of the military, you're going to always be fighting Siegers, pirates or another empire (there's no KP duty ). It's just that if you screw up, you get crappier and crappier posts-- one's more prone to mutiny, criminal activity, intrigue and disaster.

quote:
I'm reminded of the energizer in the future world of chrono trigger. Perhaps there could a similar facility on board ships? In five minutes you get the equivalent of a goodnights rest and a days nutrition however you are still hungry. The player could use this to work longer more and try and get a bigger bonus however they suffer a moral or health penalty whenever they use it.

Yes, though I think I'll make this a function of the player's implant that everyone gets at startup, and different nanodrugs. So you could be living on stim packs while trying to get a dying frigate's life support up and stable.

quote:
What if instead of templates, and particles the player is given credit chits as a bonus. These chits can be traded at any faction store, or quartermasters belonging to that faction for things value. For instance you go to the outer rim defence company store which is off limits to civilians and their you can trade your credit chits for templates, or particles, or a laser sword its up to you.

The chits idea does work, and maybe I should add that. The reason why I want to do templates & "rare energy particles" (unless that just sounds stupid?) is I want to create a currency aboard the ship that can be bartered, rewarded and stolen, like gold in a town. The way it works is that the templates allow you to produce an item an unlimited number of times-- as long as you have the hard to comeby particle combination you need and the nano (which is easy to get).


--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

[edited by - Wavinator on May 22, 2004 6:22:07 PM]

quote: Original post by Wavinator
I was thinking about two approaches here: One, you use points to buy your past and contacts, like you said. This comes out of your total character creation pool (which I have mostly worked out), so you trade stats for rep or skills or psi points.

The other approaches harkins back to the ancient MegaTraveller game: You "roll" for a cluster of years and get a result. Some could be positive or negative, and you would risk bad things happening to your character for a better starting bonus (like that ship you mentioned).

Its really entirely up to you. I persinaly find it best for balancing purpose to have seperate pools for each catagory you can spend points on. Ie skills, stats. Of course a common pool you can divded among them all works as well but can lead to lopsided characters, in other words character investing heavily in one catagory, although a solid detailed in game help system can help elviate this problem.

quote:
The positions I can conceive of gameplay for are:
Engineering - Run around and fix things, deal with emergencies, come up with novel solutions to problems
Security - Repel boarders, Siegers, stop crimes / mutinies
Medical - Heal crew, solve plague puzzles, handle emergency surgery challenges
Tactical - Run ship sensors & weapons, make ship stealthy, ferret out stealthy enemies & handle ship to ship combat
Navigation - Steer ship, make FTL jumps, deal with hazards

I supose thats better then having the future based off of steven segal movies where every cook also doubles as a trained commando.

But I can''t help think it would be fun somehow exploring the universe and gain power through your work as a bartender.

As as sided note I''m also reminded of the Anime series Tenchi GXP where its explained the one of the galaxy police''s most imporant jobs was delivering mail.

quote:
This still works with this system, except that you''d get transfered around within a faction and get hunted down if you go AWOL. With better ships, you get better equipment and higher status, but you''d still get the same kind of work. If you''re part of the military, you''re going to always be fighting Siegers, pirates or another empire (there''s no KP duty ). It''s just that if you screw up, you get crappier and crappier posts-- one''s more prone to mutiny, criminal activity, intrigue and disaster.

Yes, after accidently causing my ship to be destroyed causing the loss of a vital cargo, the caused the fincal collapse of an entire planet. I found myself spending the rest of military service in command of an unmanned automated mining station in the middle of the outer rim.

quote:
The chits idea does work, and maybe I should add that. The reason why I want to do templates & "rare energy particles" (unless that just sounds stupid?) is I want to create a currency aboard the ship that can be bartered, rewarded and stolen, like gold in a town. The way it works is that the templates allow you to produce an item an unlimited number of times-- as long as you have the hard to comeby particle combination you need and the nano (which is easy to get).

I see, is this an offical currency or an unoffical one? For instance a player maybe able to get what they need on board ship by trading the moonshine they brew in their quarters but that would hardly be an offical currency.

But it sounds like you want a barter system that is fueled by an offical currency. I guess you could use the templates but they seemed to be the kind of thing more assoicated with engineer class of character, what about the others? Credit chits on the other could be used by any kind of character to trade amongt the crew. You need a new hyper spanner, a few credit chits passed to the quartermaster under the table and its yours.

It just doesn''t seem right to me that all characters would be spending their off time tinkering in their rooms to create new gadgets to trade.

Perhaps you could have say 8 particles, each particle has a number uses, one of which is for use in construction, the other uses would make them desirable for other characters.

So say you obtain 1g of He-3 for having yesterdays lowest energy usage. You could trade it to an engineer to use in a new device, or to a security officer for its strength enchaning properties, a medical officer might be able to exchange it for anyother particle, or you could use it on a device to gain several units of free energy. It all depends on your game.

-----------------------------------------------------
"Fate and Destiny only give you the opportunity the rest you have to do on your own."
Current Design project: Ambitions Slave

quote: Original post by TechnoGoth
Its really entirely up to you. I persinaly find it best for balancing purpose to have seperate pools for each catagory you can spend points on. Ie skills, stats. Of course a common pool you can divded among them all works as well but can lead to lopsided characters, in other words character investing heavily in one catagory, although a solid detailed in game help system can help elviate this problem.

Yeah, I may have to reconsider just because of this possibility.

quote:
I supose thats better then having the future based off of steven segal movies where every cook also doubles as a trained commando.

Well, yeah, in the future with a personality mod chip everybody''s a Steven Segal. (j/k)

quote:
But I can''t help think it would be fun somehow exploring the universe and gain power through your work as a bartender.

There might be space for you to be a kind of hobo traveller trading your talents (uh, in this case mixing drinks?) but as a permanent assignment I just don''t see the gameplay. Notice that in the Star Trek: TNGs that we only see Guinan every once in awhile. And in Deep Space Nine we do see Quark bartending, but 3/4 of the time he''s spying, smuggling, or getting into family-related trouble.

quote:
As as sided note I''m also reminded of the Anime series Tenchi GXP where its explained the one of the galaxy police''s most imporant jobs was delivering mail.

Interesting!

quote:
Yes, after accidently causing my ship to be destroyed causing the loss of a vital cargo, the caused the fincal collapse of an entire planet. I found myself spending the rest of military service in command of an unmanned automated mining station in the middle of the outer rim.

Yes, unfortunately for you (so that there''s always gameplay) this high value mine is always being harassed by smugglers, scammers and the occassional brain-sucking xenomorph-- not to mention Siegers. (Now don''t you wish you''d have sucked up more to that last captain?)

quote:
I see, is this an offical currency or an unoffical one?

I''ve got credits as an official currency, and that''s to buy manufactured goods, the particles (which are unique and called strangematter) and templates (which are just data programs). To avoid mass charges, people carry strangematter stored in thumb-sized little safes and templates in their implants.

Normally, when they get to a base, they spend money to have items they want "fabricated." Since this is a post-apocalyptic universe, the fabricators are high tech Star Trek style replicators that nobody knows how to make but some know how to operate. They take strangematter and nano and punch out whatever''s on the template.

quote:
For instance a player maybe able to get what they need on board ship by trading the moonshine they brew in their quarters but that would hardly be an offical currency.

Ah, right, finished product, too should be tradable.

The fabricators are sort of an easy gameplay gate to control what the player has access to and get them to want to level up for better and lighter stuff. You only have access to low grade templates and strangematter when you start, but later on if you get better rank you can get posts on better ships, which have better templates and more sophistocated reactors.

I do this so that there''s a nice balance between the Star Trek-type utopia, where you can make anything, and a gritty, capitalist universe where you have to fight to come up. Ships normally don''t have fabricators, but bases do. So the economy is partly based on credits, partly on particles and partly on templates.

quote:
I guess you could use the templates but they seemed to be the kind of thing more assoicated with engineer class of character, what about the others?

Well, everyone has an implant and everyone can hold data, so your security guy could get gun upgrades, your medic could get better diagnostic tools, your nav better VR gear, etc. You eventually upgrade to nearly weightless, valuable and multifunctional equipment that costs you nothing to carry around.

So I see this kind of a cycle: Join a ship, get rewarded with templates and strangematter, cash them in at a base, get better stuff, repeat.

quote:
Credit chits on the other could be used by any kind of character to trade amongt the crew. You need a new hyper spanner, a few credit chits passed to the quartermaster under the table and its yours.

Again, this could work, too. You might need to trade up equipment (heh, or maybe you rent equipment from the ship you''re on if it''s commercial, or you''re issued crappy equipment if its military-- so that, in this post-apocalyptic world, many of the freelancers are expected to provide for themselves)

quote:
So say you obtain 1g of He-3 for having yesterdays lowest energy usage. You could trade it to an engineer to use in a new device, or to a security officer for its strength enchaning properties, a medical officer might be able to exchange it for anyother particle, or you could use it on a device to gain several units of free energy.

Yes, I can see this. Some of these strangematter particle, btw, upgrade your character''s primary stats, so you may want to save them for yourself. It takes more and more rare particles to level up as you go, though, but then again, same for fabricating better equipment.


--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

quote: Original post by Wavinator
[There might be space for you to be a kind of hobo traveller trading your talents (uh, in this case mixing drinks?) but as a permanent assignment I just don''t see the gameplay. Notice that in the Star Trek: TNGs that we only see Guinan every once in awhile. And in Deep Space Nine we do see Quark bartending, but 3/4 of the time he''s spying, smuggling, or getting into family-related trouble.

But think of the stories you''d have.

quote:
Ah, right, finished product, too should be tradable.

The fabricators are sort of an easy gameplay gate to control what the player has access to and get them to want to level up for better and lighter stuff. You only have access to low grade templates and strangematter when you start, but later on if you get better rank you can get posts on better ships, which have better templates and more sophistocated reactors.

I do this so that there''s a nice balance between the Star Trek-type utopia, where you can make anything, and a gritty, capitalist universe where you have to fight to come up. Ships normally don''t have fabricators, but bases do. So the economy is partly based on credits, partly on particles and partly on templates.

hmm, so the particles and templates are for use when you return to base. But what about enroute? Seems like perhaps there should be something less valuable to use for day to day transactions on board the ship. Maybe you need to get out of a duty shift or have run out of your "medicine" or perhaps you are just bored and have you want to trade for you cabin mates spare four dimensional chess set.

There should be something to facilitate all this, in this way the officer can rewards crew members with a little bonous for doing a good job, without giving a way something valuable like strangematter.

quote:
Again, this could work, too. You might need to trade up equipment (heh, or maybe you rent equipment from the ship you''re on if it''s commercial, or you''re issued crappy equipment if its military-- so that, in this post-apocalyptic world, many of the freelancers are expected to provide for themselves)

So are you saying when I join a ship I have to bring my own equipment? Thats seems like a rather dodgy job to me. "Experinced engineer wanted, good pay must have their tools"
Generly I would imagine ship of their own supplies and equipment and I shouldn''t have to bring my own. After all I''m working for a proffesional organization their resource would far exceed my own and they''d want to keep things running smoothly, that means have good and reliable equipment on board.



Altough perhaps you might want to consider another kind of ship vagabond transports. These are large old slow ships that travel long distance and carry large numbers of poor and desperate people. A trip on vagabond transport usually takes several months, and have no offical ameneties, because of this it cost virtually nothing to travel just enough to cover food, air and energy rations for the trip and thats it. However for a few more credits passender are allowed to get a room rental permit that allows them to set up a buisness in any vacent room they can find for the duration of the voyage.

A player could book passage on one of these a serve a buisness owner rather then a crew member, perhaps fixing broken devices the people bring or trading possesion around the passengers.

-----------------------------------------------------
"Fate and Destiny only give you the opportunity the rest you have to do on your own."
Current Design project: Ambitions Slave

quote: Original post by TechnoGoth
But think of the stories you''d have.

Maybe as a cheat code? (My friend claims he wants to play a garbage man... *sigh* Methinks I''ll concentrate on core gameplay before even touching that one )

quote:
Seems like perhaps there should be something less valuable to use for day to day transactions on board the ship. Maybe you need to get out of a duty shift or have run out of your "medicine" or perhaps you are just bored and have you want to trade for you cabin mates spare four dimensional chess set.

There should be something to facilitate all this, in this way the officer can rewards crew members with a little bonous for doing a good job, without giving a way something valuable like strangematter.

This is a good point. The whole particle / template gimmick is supposed to be for you to level up. There probably should be a barter mechanic, though, as standard for already manufactured items. You wouldn''t be bringing new mass onto the ship, just trading what''s already there.

quote:
So are you saying when I join a ship I have to bring my own equipment? Thats seems like a rather dodgy job to me. "Experinced engineer wanted, good pay must have their tools"
Generly I would imagine ship of their own supplies and equipment and I shouldn''t have to bring my own. After all I''m working for a proffesional organization their resource would far exceed my own and they''d want to keep things running smoothly, that means have good and reliable equipment on board.

Maybe its a mix of both regulation gear you''re given and your own? Not sure. This makes more sense for more formal ships, like military or corporate.

But you need some reason to keep leveling up with equipment, and not just with skills. Fighters in your typical hack & slash get better equipment. It doesn''t make sense, though, if you were rewarded better equipment to be able to take it with you when you leave to go work for someone else.

Now you''re a freelancer, so like a plumber or trucker, it may not be TOO far fetched that you have your own tools. And your tool loadout may be partly how you can win better jobs.

It''s true that these ships would have more resources than you, but this can be explained away by storyline (tradition or whatever).

quote:
Altough perhaps you might want to consider another kind of ship vagabond transports.

That''s cool too as another type of ship.

I''m sort of stealing the contractor/freelancer idea, btw, from the Dorsai series. In it, everyone had a contract that they bargained and sold to different sides. You could be a military general under contract for one side, then find that your contract''s been sold to some other other side. A central part of the storyline was a fight between an alliance that wanted everyone to have the right to sell their contracts when they pleased (my model) and one that wanted to trade people like chits whether they wanted to go or not.



--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

When I saw the title I immediatly said to myself, being on top is all what a game is about and working your way to that goal. So I would say start as a lackey, but ofcourse your the Wavinator so you made points and stated it to be 3 diffrent kinds of game play options, so I take back what I said at the beginning of the post.
And I cant add anything constructive but the point that it would be interesting to play all 3 the roles as you worked them out, nice ideas, cant add anything you already thought off I think.
And I find it very interesting how you explained the diffrent jobs being REALLY diffrent, which in most games aint really the case. Only thing I could say is making the proffesions really deep, and like I said really diffrent, and make it so you always have plenty to do

So like when youre a medic, you ofcourse first check your patient and see if you can determin what he has with your bare eyes, if that fails you pull out your equipment and search and scan his body for anomalies.
When youve done that you make a rapport of what is wrong and what needs to be done, then you prepare for that task. Then you actually perform the surgery or what it is.
After that you must check on the patient time by time to see if hes still stable after some days, and when hes all good your task on that patient would be over.

So what I meant is that a job, would have to include certain steps to be taken, analyise, evaluate, perform, conlude. Something like that

Hope it was usefull, good luck with your project your coming along great I can see, this is gonna be one hell of a product, good luck and cya

p.s. OW and I did not find this amongst your proffesions but maybe, you did mention allot, but I think that allot of people would like to start a busniss on a big ship or station. But I dont know if you want that to be possible in your game if that would take away the goal of the game, just thought to mention it

[edited by - Jamaludin on May 23, 2004 1:07:49 PM]

To take the level of abstraction of the barkeep role up one more notch, it might be interesting to do a generic "negotiator" archetype, which might include the bottom-level role of kiosk holder and the top-level role of ship''s ambassador. The play style for such a creature would be more on par with the medic, supporting the other members of the cast, slower and more intellectual in nature.

ld

Man, so many long post make my head dizzy!

Personally I want to try going from the highest position I can at the beginning. Then after I beat the game, I want to try a challenge, I would start from the bottom.

Imagine a game where there are 4 levels. If you die you can try from the last level you played, or from a lower level. Why try from a lower level? Because of your score, the lower you start, the more points you have, because you start at 0 points, no matter which level you start in. And since in this game I will post my score on the net, I want it to be the highest, so here there is competition and most important, a reward for starting from the bottom.