Converting the decision pattern into rules

The summary of the previous two articles I wrote on the decision pattern goes as follows:

If you hide the concequences of the players actions from immediate view, the player won't be tempted to choose both actions via savepoints and savegames. But, if he chooses to reload based upon alusions made post-decision, and these alusions differ, he will be able to verify that his choice likely matters - just not right now.

If you do not allude, show the concequences immediately, and the concequences are shallow, allowing the player to try both will break the game - the player will no longer feel he has any influence, and he cannot consider his choices, former and future, actual gameplay, but will rather consider them out of his hands, and he will cease trying to influence it.

So: When implementing decisions, in a game that allows reloading, these rules apply:

- Always allude to concequences both before and after the player makes a decision.
- The closer to the action you show the concequences, the larger and more impactful the concequences must be.

The second bit also makes sense conversely; if we presume that a decision is supposed to have a big impact on a story, and the full effects of it are something the player might be unhappy with, he should not be "punished" with having to do-over very much.
The psychology here would say that the player should be conditioned to choosing his actions with great care, and that punishment would be effective; but if he regrets a decision enough to discard his current thread and wants to do it over, he is _already_ as into the story as you could want. He cares about the story and the characters. You're not only punishing him for making the wrong decision, but also for caring. The whole reloading thing should be avoided when possible, as a concequence. As such, the player should generally not experience concequences to his actions that there's a high probability he would regret. And if you must take tis route, make a do-over easy.

A couple of examples are in order: in Ultima X you encounter a deathly ill orphaned girl, and you're offered the choice of wether or not to euthanize her. No matter what you choose, the games villain taunts you - either over the fact that you now have the blood of an 8 years old girl on your hands, or that you left one to a slow, grueling and cruel death over the next couple of hours.

Nomatter what the player chooses, the adverse reaction, the long taunting session, and the guilt will likely make him try the other option if he cares about the story and his influence. When he finds out that negative concequences are unavoidable, and that he has only been presented with wrong choices, at the very least he will be glad that he can do over easily. But even then, he is still getting punished for caring about the game world by having to use a lousy interface to explore the concequences; all because some developer somewhere thought it would be a good idea to punish the player with concequences he will be likely to reject nomatter what decision he makes.

In the end, I played through the above sequence 4 times - one euthanizing her, one saving her, and one euthanizing her, then after spending 15 minutes on gamefaqs before I concluded that my first decision was what I really wanted to do, I euthanized her _again_.

- The player must generally not experience concequences he will regret.
- Concequences that the player cannot escape must not be attributed to his choices if he is likely to reject them, and he is able to figure out that there is no way around them

Or, all in one place, the decision pattern in summary:

When implementing a decision, follow these guidelines:

- Always allude to concequences both before and after the player makes a decision. Make the post-decision allusions differ depending on choice made. Exceptions can be made if, and only if, you can be certain that the player won't reject the concequences in favor of a do-over.
- The closer to the action you show the concequences of it, the larger and more impactful the concequences must be. Long stretches are therefore cheaper to make and implement with the same impact. You can even allude to something that never happens if it's the exception rather than the rule.
- For big concequences, the player must not recieve punishment for attempting to figure out all possible outcomes. You would punish him for caring.
- The player must generally not experience concequences he will regret to such a degree that he would be willing to go through anything more than a quick and painless do-over to rectify it.
- Do-overs should happen out of caring for the world, not out of frustration with the concequences.
- Concequences that the player cannot escape must not be attributed to his choices if he is likely to reject them, and he is able to figure out that there is no way around them. There must always be a "right" choice, so to speak.