ardent red wrote:By new, do you mean an animal that hasn't been checked off yet, or an animal whose region hasn't been entered yet? I suppose you mean the first one, because the icon would never flash after you'd walked all around the age with the latter.
Yeah, the first one, sorry if my wording was confusing! Once you "checked off" an organism, it would have to disable proximety zones for all the other copies of the same organism within the Age. It doesn't matter which copy you use to check off the list, and after it was checked off, finding the rest would be up to you.
This leads to a couple things. One is that, if you know there are five blue lizards in the Age, and you find the first one and check it off, you won't get the flashing to warn you when you are near another one. This is fine, because once you know what to look for, you're on your own to find the others - as Myst players, we're used to searching for hidden things! If you really really want the help finding the others, then just don't check it off; the marker will continue to flash whenever you get near any of the blue lizards.
Secondly, if there is a reward associated with completing the checklist, you'll have people who will get the list, immediately check everything off, and turn it in for the reward. While you
could discourage this through a programming mechanism (ie only allowing an animal to be checked while standing in it's "zone"), my personal opinion is that it's not worth worrying about. If people want to shortcut the system and miss out on all the fun just for a badge/shirt/picture on their wall, that's their problem.
Finally, regarding repeatable play - I definitely like that idea! Maybe the check list is re-settable, and as a player, you can do it again by finding a different individual of each organism to use for checking it off. Or maybe you have periodic, themed lists. Every 1-2 months, you issue a new "Animal Bingo" checklist. The first list is, say, all the Birds in the Age. Then next month is Uncommon Trees. The third month is Reptiles, fourth is Flowers, fifth is maybe a newly implemented and periodic Migration of Butterflies (ala summer/winter Delin), etc. You make these lists available from a location before you link to the Age, and make them mutually exclusive; you can only have one list at a time, though you can pick up any previously issued list (similar to Guild t-shirts). Depending on which list you have "armed" when you enter the Age, it will load only the zones for those organisms. That might help with keeping the zonings from getting cluttered, from a programming point of view.
Just some thoughts...