PlaneShift
Gameplay => Wish list => Topic started by: Falzaek on January 11, 2006, 01:28:13 pm
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Many MMORPG\'s that hae been around a fe months sufer from \"high level\" or big characters making life dificult for newbs. I have given this some thought over the variety of MMORPG\'s I have played (I assume I can\'t mention names, but there\'s sony\'s one, and the jagex one, as wellas others) And I\'ve come to the conclusion that ageingis the answere. In this case, it seems even easyer to implement, because this game doesn\'t use levels, and atributes can be trained up. My proposal is this: A character starts off as a young, eager adventurer (actual age would vary, humans aroud 16, elves around 100, ect.). At this young age, the characters are impusive, brave and strong! as sutch, their intelligence is lowered slightly (not TOO much, their are plenty of highly inteligent teenagers out in the real world...). as a character is played, the playing hours are logged. the character ages. as it enters early thirties (or racial equivilent) the negitive bonus on thier inteligence is lifted. as the character enters middle-age, they gain a further inteligence bonus and a wisedom bonus at the sacrifice of strength, agility and endurance. This effect becomes more and more aparent until the character dies of \"old age\" permenently. The gap between just new and permenant death would be huge, 70 in-game years for a human, but it would stop charaters becoming \"Uber strong\' and picking on the newbs.
What do you people think?
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I think me saying \"it has been mentioned before\" would have given you a hint that creating yet another thread on the subject, without reading past discussions, is a bad idea :P Seriously now.
Pushing players immediately into a certain age group is also a bad idea. Killing characters after logging in-game hours as a player is also a bad idea.
stages of age/experiece (http://planeshift.oodlz.com/wbboard/thread.php?threadid=3790&boardid=11)
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Personally, I\'d like the idea of aging characters. One idea I had a bit back, was to have permanent death, with some sort of controlled reincarnation system. Most things that result in \"death\" would be changed to severe injuries, where someone would drag your ass back to town, unconscious. However, actually get killed and that\'s the end of it. You could carry dispositions you got in past lives to the next. So, if you got to be a great swordsman for example, your next life would allow you to learn sword skills significantly faster. Thus, while your character died, you wouldn\'t lose your game-play effort. (Not to mention you would already know how to play the game better, but everyone always ignores that fact...) The nice thing about this system, is characters actually die giving some permanence to the system. (I\'d like to see the same for NPCs, too) The DR could be mixed in to allow for more freedom of players, and only advanced healers could resurrect someone out of it. (the portal could be changed to be the gateway to reincarnation) That way, characters could still die, or be on the verge of death, and not be the end.
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yeah, the DR could be mixed ito it, but I don\'t think that characters who have died from un-natural causes should have to be reserected with a VERY powerful res spell, but old age DOES! Also, when a character dies of old age, when he gets res-ed he should loose all his fancy equipment and glyphs, but his age should be ticked back a little (no point being res-ed as a totting old man and asked to go out into the world and seek his fortune, is there?). And as for loggin play-hours, I sad that to make it fair. I mean, if for some reason you can\'t play for a month, then you\'r character shouldn\'t age during that month. It made sense to me.
*edit*
Karyuu? I searched! although there IS a thread on ageing (http://www.planeshift3d.com/wbboard/thread.php?threadid=3790&boardid=11&sid=a536279dcf63c9a487db7839103ece4e) it does NOT mention: loss of strength, agility ect in you\'re old age, or dieing of old age. So I think that this IS a valid thread.
Please avoid posting two or more successive posts before others have replied. Just edit your last post to add new information :) Thanks! --Karyuu
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I\'d personally hate to play a game where I build up a very deep and personal character, only to have him or her suffer a permanent death at some point, be it months or years in the future. Then create another, and have the same thing happen. I know I\'d stop playing.
*edit*
That thread may not mention losing experience/abilities with time, but many others do. You could search for those ;)
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why? itt\'s a great Roleplaying device! and with the possibility of reserection, it could really involve players in the actual roleplaying aspect, and some time in the future, you wouldn\'t have the super-characters taking all the fun out of it for the new characters. I\'ve seen THAT happn in EVERY mmorpg I\'ve seen.
EDIT: Just searched, couldn\'t find anything that combnes ageing with a modification to stats. If you could hyper-link one, it\'d be great.
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Become good friends with an advanced healer?
@ DaveG\'s idea
I haven\'t really thought the idea through much so I can\'t say whether I agree with it but it would add realism to the game. People who wanted to keep their character would avoid dying which is what the character would want if the character was real.
@ Falzaek\'s idea
Instead of penalizing players with an aging system though, I think it might be better to just let the players choose their age as part of character creation. If someone wanted to roleplay an old wise man then they could. If someone wanted roleplay a young arrogant fighter then they could. Their age wouldn\'t necessarily have to increase though.
If the above were to be done then there could be aging potions or spells. You could drink a rare potion that would turn you from an old man or woman into a younger character. Powerful sorcerors could cast aging spells on you during a duel in order to disfigure you.
Eh, just some quick thoughts. I\'m sure they\'re not thought out as well as they could be.
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I see what your getting at, but permanent death is way too harsh. Seriously would you want to get say lvl 99 on crafting, get old, die, wait to be resurected, and restart again, losing all of your lvls on crafting. You would seriously like that? I wouldnt. Although the idea of aging is intriguing, permanent death should not be in place. Maybe, as you age, you could lose physical and/or fighting stats, but, due to an increase in knowledge, your inteligence, magic, and/or job stats could increase, both ever so slightly, maybe like a lvl or 2.
Or at least, if there is permanent death, that you lose 1/3 of your skills. You are placed in a special part of the DR where you must pass dificult tasks (much harder than what is planned for normal death). You can lose mor stats by either staying in there too long or not passing the tasks succesfully or succesfully enough.
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lol i can just imagine me and my friend starting at the same time and the next day my char is 60 and his is 20.
i like the idea but maybe the ageing is very very very very very very slow......like 1/100 of a year old.every 5 hours or so. Maybe close to real like age. But yea getting 99 crafting then dieing would really suck.
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To my mind, any kind of in-game aging would have to be over such a long period of time to be convenient that it would no longer be meaningful.
I do however think that people should be able to start off at different ages, for RP reasons. But I think that you should be able to role-play a 65 year old ninja monk if you feel like it. So really, it would just reduce to aesthetics....
edit: It could also affect reputations with certain NPCs, changing what quests you have access to on some small level.
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@hellios
Real life or close to real life would be too slow, but a 1/10 year every 5 hours is good. that way it takes 50 hours to age a year (of actual real life time. most people that\'s around 25 days playing). but if you start as a long-lived race, like elves or dwarves, then it\'d take ages before you\'re actualy feeling the effects of ageing.
@shadowcast
I love the idea of a special area of the Death relm for people who died of old age! perfect! but I would say a 2/3 loss to magical and job skills is fair enough, and a near-total wipe on combat skills, and a reset of your stats to racial normals plus say, 10%.
@ Goland
I agree that choosng your starting age would be good, but aeing effects would still be in place. It\'s not a cosmetics thing, it\'s a way of preventing un-realistic and unfair buildup of super characters that have been around since day 1 and have done virtualy everything in the book. The old players get bored because they\'ve done everything, and are so powerfull they instantly finish whatever new stuff updates do for them, and the new characters get daunted by the fact that there\'s all these 10-foot dwarves with frost giants for pets wandering around slaying the odd village to relieve the monotany.
@ zanzibar
at a rate of 5 hours to 1/10 of a year, you\'re looking at 50 hours to the year. I think that\'s a nice border line age, as a happy player will play the same charater for several RL years. hopefully this time means that characters are at a nice powerfull stage mid-life, then slowly their leveling rate (yes i know there aren\'t any true \"levels\" but it\'s easyer to say than anyhing else) slows down, then they die of old age, to be transpored into a special area of the Death Relm.
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Originally posted by Shadowcast
Seriously would you want to get say lvl 99 on crafting, get old, die, wait to be resurected, and restart again, losing all of your lvls on crafting. You would seriously like that?
You wouldn\'t really loose it; your new character would then have a heave predisposition towards crafting, and learn it significantly faster. And, you\'re not supposed to like it, in that sense. It makes things more \"realistic\" (I add quotes, because it isn\'t really vaugely real ;) ) and more immersive, therefore better. If death isn\'t just a minor inconvenience, people will act in a completely different way; a more realistic way.
0.002 years/hour is too little. I\'d say a character should become old enough to die in about 120 hours. Assuming we start at 20, and die at 60 (which may be too high for our medevial type world) that gives about 1/3 year per real hour. If you take better care of your body, then you could live to 80 after 180 of gameplay. This sounds short, but I want older players to play through multiple lifetimes. It would make things more interesting. This would also work well if coupled with a child system, allowing players to raise new players. (if starting from a child, you\'d also get more time for that char, so first would be longer)
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Originally posted by Falzaek
I agree that choosng your starting age would be good, but aeing effects would still be in place. It\'s not a cosmetics thing, it\'s a way of preventing un-realistic and unfair buildup of super characters that have been around since day 1 and have done virtualy everything in the book. The old players get bored because they\'ve done everything, and are so powerfull they instantly finish whatever new stuff updates do for them, and the new characters get daunted by the fact that there\'s all these 10-foot dwarves with frost giants for pets wandering around slaying the odd village to relieve the monotany.
- the people who have been around the longest tend to not powerlevel their character
- people who powerlevel their character do stay, but are also known to leave out of boredom
- the general tone of the community is that people who are only interested in having a powerful character don\'t belong in the community
- levelling up a character was made substantially harder not long ago
- it\'s already been proposed that skills require practice or else you lose levels in them
- there will always be characters who are at the top of the ladder
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1/3 of a year to a real hour? no no, way too fast! that means that it takes days to swing you\'re sword! a week to kill a rat! a fortnight to trade with a Merchant! we\'ll have to be very carefull about scale.
And elves, dwarves, dragons and rock giants are longer lived than humans. an elf can quite happily live to 300, and a dwarf to about 150. a rock giant? could well be over a thousand...
Edit
@ zanzibar
I agree, people will always be at the top, but the system of ageing is not suposed to be convinient. in fact, it\';s suposed to be INCONVINIENT! in real life, we all know we\'re gonna die eventualy, right? well, an RPG doesn\'t have that fear, so people don\'t realy roleplay a fear of death that most of us in real life feel quite deeply! if you introduce an ageing system where death with no instant reurn is an eventuality, then people will roleplay quite differently! characters will have a deeper sense of \"reality\" than normal.
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Originally posted by Falzaek
I agree, people will always be at the top, but the system of ageing is not suposed to be convinient. in fact, it\';s suposed to be INCONVINIENT! in real life, we all know we\'re gonna die eventualy, right? well, an RPG doesn\'t have that fear, so people don\'t realy roleplay a fear of death that most of us in real life feel quite deeply! if you introduce an ageing system where death with no instant reurn is an eventuality, then people will roleplay quite differently! characters will have a deeper sense of \"reality\" than normal.
More likely, the RPers will spend less time online to \"save\" their character for RP events.
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in that case, its their problem, isn\'t it? this game doesn\'t need quantity of players, it need squality.
Besides, sutch \"saving\" wouldn\'t work. They\'d still eventualy meet the inevitable, unless they stopped playing altoghether. their total playing hours wouldn\'t change, only the way they spread out their plauying time.
EDIT: and there\'s no sutch thing as an RP event. The whole game is an RP event. If they only RP on special occasios, they\'re not wanted.
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Originally posted by Falzaek
in that case, its their problem, isn\'t it? this game doesn\'t need quantity of players, it need squality.
Besides, sutch \"saving\" wouldn\'t work. They\'d still eventualy meet the inevitable, unless they stopped playing altoghether. their total playing hours wouldn\'t change, only the way they spread out their plauying time.
By RPers, I\'m refering to the quality players.
Originally posted by Falzaek
and there\'s no sutch thing as an RP event.
If you say so.
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a \"quality\" player wouldn\'t be fazed by inevidable death. a quality player would use this as a roleplay device, instead of a penalty. and what the hell do you mean by an RP event? it\'s bugging me, because I could be wrong about the \"no sutch thing\" comment (and I\'m not saying that as in \'i\'m always right\" more a \"i may have made a mistake there... let me fix it\"). but the wole game is (or is ment to be) a roleplaying experience.
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The whole game is a roleplaying experience, but there are actual RP events (quests and the like) run by the GM and RM team, which tend to be more immersive than your usual day in Yliakum.
I still loathe this idea.
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Some people here say we should have agening to improve realism. But you know what? You lie to yourselves or try to trick others.
The whole purpose of this agening is your need to eliminate too powerfull characters. Nothing more.
You write about realism, but you wan\'t the life time to be incredibly low. You don\'t even want to base it on in-game clock. This is not the realism what you are talking about.
From one extreme you lead to another, and there will be consequences which you ignore or don\'t want to see.
Originally posted by zanzibar
More likely, the RPers will spend less time online to \"save\" their character for RP events.
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No, It would HAVE to be based on an in-game clock. And it\'ll take time and effort to find a workable scale. I DEFINATLY would want it to be based on an in-game clock.
Directly @ Nikodemus: chill out, get a beer, relax. No need to get paranoid here.
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*nods in agreement to Nikodemus*
What this idea brings to mind is the turning of PlaneShift into one giant race - who can achieve the most before death, who can be the most powerful, who can \"reincarnate\" back enough times to be a successful master at almost any skill, and etc. This is not the fun that I envision. I don\'t want to play a game where my every second is a countdown to a permanent death of something I have poured my imagination into. I want to relax and have fun at my own pace. And if I do, playing a few hours every week, while my friends play daily, how much sense will it make to see them age faster, while our characters are living in the same world, with the same laws? What sort of realism is this? And if we choose an in-game clock and something happens to the player (illness, computer issues, etc.) and he or she is not able to access the game world for an extended period of time against their will, how much fun will it be to return and see their character age years without any influence whatsoever?
There is a point of realism overkill. We play games to escape reality, our own mortality included. The only permanent death that I want to see is that which is chosen by the players behind the characters. Otherwise, life is too much of a race against time as is.
Please let it slow down sometimes.
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I don\'t think we\'re sujesting permenant death anymore. more like a significant time spent in the lower DR working out how to get out before you expire (RP terms, not real game). as well as a significant loss in combat skills, stats but not so significant loss in job and magical skills (magic because it \"clings\" to you and job because you\'re body \"remembers\" even if your mind doesn\'t)
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Significant loss of combat skills, but not jobs because your body remembers them? Talk to any trained fighter sometime :P They\'ll tell you what their bodies remember.
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overlooked that... maybe just a significant loss of stats (race normal + 10%) and a less significant loss to jobs, magical ad combat skills (say 30% loss). but we agree that the actual AGEING side is good? we seem to be concentrating on death alot here...
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How will it be timed? How many cosmetic \"stages\" will the character go through?
And most importantly, is this really necessary at all? The basic point behind the suggestion, as I\'m interpreting it now, is to make players take the lives of their characters with a greater solemnity - and the main \"fix\" you\'re suggesting is to increase the difficulty of the Death Realm, which is already planned.
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That seems to be a by-product. What I am proposeing is a system where a character slowly ages, and eventualy dies. when he dies of old age, \"Death\" (or wahtever) would prefer to keep him dead, as his time has come, and the character is taken to a very specal section of the death realm, that requires either a reserrection, or a compleation of a series of dificult quests/riddles to go back into the overworld to continue life for another lifetime (this doesn\'t mean the character resets to a young boy/girl but continues on as an old man/women with an extended lifespan). The penalty for coming back to this world would be a loss of stats (normal race + 10-20%) and a low loss of skills (10-20 % loss).
The ageing would be divided as follows:
Adolessense (16-19 human, 90-100 elf, 35-40 dwarf, 400-450 rock giant thingy): -3 on inteligence and wisdom, but a +2 on strength, Aglity, and Endurance
Young Adulthood(20-27 human, 100-120 elf, 40-45 dwarf, 450-490 rock giant thingy): -1 on intelligence and wisdom, other modifiers remain
Adult(28-50 human, 120-155 elf, 46-60 dwarf, 491-511 rock giant thingy): everything evens out to normal. longest time
Old age(51-59 human, 156-160 elf, 61-70 dwarf, 512-530 rock giant thingy): +2 on inteligence and wisdom, -2 on Strength, agility and endurance
Eldar(60-65 human, 161-173 elf, 71-80 dwarf, 531-570 rock giant thingy): +4 on intelligence and wisdom, -5 on Strength, agility and Endurance
Venerable(65-death human, 174-death elf, 81-death dwarf, 571-death rock giant thingy : + 8 on inteligence and wisdom, -15 on strength and agility, - 18 on endurance
Death: death occours at a random time after the begining of the venerable stage. minium 10% of inital age (eg, minimum 1.6 years ino vereability for a human, ect.)
when the charcter comes back from the DR, the aperance remains the same, but young adult and adolessense are abolished, instead the character has an extended adulthood.
Good?
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*rubs her chin* xD A few more questions.
...go back into the overworld to continue life for another lifetime (this doesn\'t mean the character resets to a young boy/girl but continues on as an old man/women with an extended lifespan)
I don\'t like the idea of continuing playing the game (over and over, after the first initial death) with an elderly looking character. Either all of the life stages before the last are really long (you haven\'t addressed the how-will-this-be-timed issue) or the characters will get to choose what stage they want to come back as. Moreover, not all elders (I daresay, not even most) get \"intelligence bonuses\" in old age :P In fact, the majority of them suffer from \"penalties.\"
But again, I am mostly curious about the timing issue of it all.
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think about the mysterious characters of fantasy. gandalf the grey is a good example; he has magicly cheated death, but he doen\'t look like a sprite young man, now does he?
i\'ve edited my post with the apropriate stages now. the actual translation of playing time to game time will require time and effort from the developers, myself, and karyuu (chose them as the For, agaisnt and the people who know the game) IF it\'s decided to be implemented (pleasepleasepleaseplease)
EDIT: \"with age comes wisdom\" to a certin extent. maybe veneralbe could have certin penalties, but eldar and old should keep their bonuses)
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Well, we don\'t really know the actual life-spans of any of the races beyond the human, and even that could be different in Yliakum ;) What I meant in terms of timing is how you are going to measure when it\'s time for the next \"stage of age.\" What sort of in-game clock are you proposing, and if not an in-game clock, then what, and with as much detail as you can manage :)
*edit* And again, I would hate playing an elderly looking character for the majority of my stay here. I\'m sure I\'m far from the only one to feel this way.
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I just don\'t like the purpose of it......
You\'re saying that this should be added to eliminate powered characters.
But I don\'t consider powered characters to be a problem, and any attempt to get rid of them is pointless since there will always be a percentage of characters which are at the top....
I do however think that age should be added to the game, but like I said.... for it to be convenient to people with needs and expectations like the ones Karyuu has, aging would have to be so gradual that it might as well not be there.
It would be better if at character creation, you simply chose the age you started at, and the model for your character reflected that choice.
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Here, I\'ll quote myself
Ahhhh timing. Timing\'s indeed very (imo) hard to play with, I myself let people decide about it. Implementing timing officially would be, imo, an error. Simply because it would lead to that problem you\'re pointing out. While time should be passing unstoppably, no matter if you log on or not in the game, fact is, that characters have a limited expected life time, each one depending on the race, and a player has not to be harassed with that, when he either can\'t or simply doesn\'t want to play the game, as his/her char will become elder without being able to be played due to RL issues or decisions. IOW, a player should be able to live his/her own char as long as he/she considers it. The other alternative could be an individual time counter that stops and continues when you log off/in, but that would lead to timing incongruences (some characters becoming elder at very higher ratios than others of the same race) and even could lead to a very restrictive use of the game (since I don\'t want to waste char living time, I\'d find other ways, to agree with my most known ones to enter the game at certain remarked dates, so I\'m sure that, whenever I log in, I\'d find, surely, something pleasant to do) so, once again, the best choice is to rely in each one\'s mind to sort out this kind of problems.
So, to short it, roleplay allows you to decide how fast your char is growing (there\'s people that roleplays having childs, and then makes them grow, that doesn\'t mean that for the rest, that same time has already passed; although this can be taken as an incongruence, it is not, since a player\'s choice on how fast time should pass for his/her char hasn\'t to affect the rest of the chars)
Where\'s the problem? The problem is on how the DR is roleplayed (not by all players, but some of them) currently, each visit at the DR is normally rp as a death, and come back as a resurrection. As it\'s been already pointed out, resurrecting from death should be really an extraordinary event (call it god intervention, or a powerful sorcerer...) the player has to have enough vision, as to decide if his/her presence in the DR should be roleplayed as being death, or not, because currently the DR seems more OOC than IC to me.
As for the aging states implemented in the game mechanics. I don\'t want the game mechanics to drive or push my roleplaying experience, I prefer to be me the one that drives my roleplay in interaction with the rest of the players.
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\"I don\'t want the game mechanics to drive or push my roleplaying experience, \"
I\'d like to roleplay that my character has the force and can fly like superman too, but I don\'t think it would go over particularly well with anyone who saw me in action.
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I\'m starting to get used to quote myself
once again, the best choice is to rely in each one\'s mind to sort out this kind of problems.
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Originally posted by Nilrem
I\'m starting to get used to quote myself
once again, the best choice is to rely in each one\'s mind to sort out this kind of problems.
Uh, was that in response to me? If so, I don\'t think you really addressed what I said.
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All in all I must agree with Karyuu, Nikodemus and Zanzibar. Hell, what\'s the purpose. Like Karyuu said in the beginning of the thread, I don\'t see the purpose of dying and starting over and dying and starting over even if it can be roleplayed. Believe me, even after only 1 time going thru that cycle I\'d probably stop.
I just don\'t like the idea.
Zanzibar said something tho...Age SHOULD be in the game, but only to be able to choose what age you want to be. If somebody wants to roleplay an elderly character, well that\'s fine.
But aging in game? Hell no. I guess after you\'ve been thru the cycle for about 3 times you get so frustrated you throw your computer out of the window. Or something. Bah. I don\'t know :D
I don\'t want Planeshift to become a race to achieve as much as possible before death. It\'s all about what\'s in your mind. You go as fast and as slow as you want to go; That\'s where the freedom is. If you implement this, there is no deciding about your own pace.
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again zanzibar, you said convieniant :) It\'s not suposed to be conveiniant, and their would be spells and potions aviilable to alter your apearence cometicly, and to reverse the efects of ageing, or revert them to an earlyer ageing stage 9potions of youth).
and you said that its designed to eliminate powerful characters? not realy, I think I\'ve badly stated that. It\'s designed to eliminate super-powerful characters. characters that have got to the point that they wipe out villages without breaking a sweat. this system stops characters getting that big.
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But WHYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!?
Why do they have to be stopped? That\'s the world, that\'s reality man.
And by the way, as long as it\'s perfectly possible for them to roleplay that, it\'s all fine. They put their time in roleplaying, and leveling also. They put their time in it, and it\'s their choice. I think your problem is you think that this game will be like all other MMOs, with loads of PL\'ers, that it will be flooded with uberplayers bugging the newbies. But everybody will be roleplaying...
This wont be just a MMO, it is and will be a MMORPG in the purest sense of the word. Most MMOs calling themselves MMORPG got nothing to do with roleplaying, only levelling. This one is roleplay.
No problem in stopping the high level ones.
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Yes, actualy I\'ll agree with you. I am afraid this may turn into just an MMO, becuase wen version 1.0 is released, there\'ll probably be a huge influx of players, and most of them will be the \"let\'s go bash things and level\" kind. But I also think ageing would be cool.
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It must be possible to keep those people out or to just keep them under control... It\'s always possible that things will turn out the way you fear they will, but let\'s hope not and let\'s do our best keeping the roleplaying high.
EDIT: I must add however, I\'ve beta-tested a load of MMO\'s and played another bunch of them, and I never found myself having troubles with extremely high lvled characters, since mostly they\'re in areas I can\'t get yet till I\'m high leveled myself. So I will need some explanation as to what exactly your problems with these people are..
EDIT: P.S there\'s a typo in your signature, it\'s not \"ganddaddy\" but \"granddaddy\" :D Thought I\'d point it out.
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Dammit!... I hate when threads turn into a giant chat room with people rambling on (and hardly saying anything) for dozens of posts, before I can even get on to respond. There were maybe 3 decent points since my post, mixed in with some reactionary junk. This is not an assault on your being; don\'t get defensive.
I don\'t think a single person here actually understood what I was proposing. After someone has played the game for a couple hundred hours (and don\'t kid yourself, that is allot), which should translate into 2 or 3 months of casual real life time (if it doesn\'t for you...). (Maybe you\'ll only live for 1 if you\'re reckless; maybe 6 if you\'re smart about it.) You are no longer building a character; you have a character, and an advanced one at that. I\'m sorry to say, that MMOs don\'t work well with everyone at the top. It\'s like playing a single player RPG with everyone as the main character; the scales break, and every older player is a god compared to the newer, and things don\'t make sense. It\'s just stupid to have boundless advancement in everything. We\'re trying to create an immersive world, but this sort of thing kills that. Now, don\'t get me wrong, when you die you die, but you don\'t really loose much. You just carry it over in a different way. (one idea to help this along is to have your next life as your child, or something like that, to allow you to maintain friend networks) If we extend things a bit, and allow a normal life to cover 4 months, that works too. It\'s not the time restriction I\'m going for here, it\'s the concept.
Second, and almost more important reason: Death is a joke in every game I\'ve ever played. It might as well not be in it. Because there are no risks involved with anything, there is no attempt to maintain any slight sort of reason in actions. If you could actually die in a dangerous task, that would change how people act drastically. I want to give characters in-game a dose of mortality. It would go a large way to destroying this stupid RP vs. PL junk and create one unified game.
We want to create an immersive game world, not a 3d pen and paper game, and not a hack and slash. I want it to act like what it is supposed to be, and not just like another video game.
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Originally posted by DaveG
Second, and almost more important reason: Death is a joke in every game I\'ve ever played. It might as well not be in it. Because there are no risks involved with anything, there is no attempt to maintain any slight sort of reason in actions. If you could actually die in a dangerous task, that would change how people act drastically. I want to give characters in-game a dose of mortality. It would go a large way to destroying this stupid RP vs. PL junk and create one unified game.
Okay... This is true. In most games it\'s just dying, losing some items and maybe some exp. but what does that matter? I must say you have a point in saying the manner of playing would change drastically when dying in quests or other stuff would have consequences...
But how do you work Death Realm out then? Imagine, a newbie gets in the game, kills a few rats and dies. Now, he\'s sent to the death realm right? But when he comes out, does this then mean that he has to start a new character? Reincarnation? Because new people usually don\'t know the game yet (which sounds logical) so they just hop into dangerous situations, most of them end up in DR in the first 30 minutes of playing.
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Originally posted by DaveG in his first post in this thread
Most things that result in \"death\" would be changed to severe injuries, where someone would drag your ass back to town, unconscious. However, actually get killed and that\'s the end of it.
Get your butt whipped by a monster, and you end up back in town, next to whatever kind NPC/PC dragged your dumb ass back. If you die, you goto the Death Realm, and a fairly powerful mage could resurrect you from it. (harder to do from a natural death due to age/disease) New players wouldn\'t be capable of getting to the places where something strong enough to get them completely killed would be. Now, if they were dumb enough to get their ass kicked and go right back before they fully recovered, then yes, they\'d die and they\'d probably deserve it. Second time around they will play much smarter, because they will have learned their lesson.
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Originally posted by DaveG
Second, and almost more important reason: Death is a joke in every game I\'ve ever played. It might as well not be in it. Because there are no risks involved with anything, there is no attempt to maintain any slight sort of reason in actions. If you could actually die in a dangerous task, that would change how people act drastically. I want to give characters in-game a dose of mortality. It would go a large way to destroying this stupid RP vs. PL junk and create one unified game.
This is absolutely true. I couldn\'t agree with Dave more... in many games, there used to be risk of death - and then GMs took it away (I\'m thinking about Ultima now .. the way they created the \"safe\" world) in one degree or another, and it changes how people travel in the world, how they interact with each other, how they prepare for fighting, how they fight, what they buy, etc.
Most important in my opinion is that it allows people to rely on each other. And whats an MMO without interacting with other people....
Sorry for being totally reactionary - I believe thats the kind of jargon Dave was referring to in the first post. Nevertheless, players have to sacrifice a certain deal of personal gain for uniquity.
~~toad
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Well death sucks in RL so it is understandable that gamers in ps would not take so kindly to death in game.
I am torn .... I think it would be great for the realistic side of the game. Playing one of your children after death would make some interesting role play and create legacy and family history.
On the other hand I would hate to die and never be able to play my character that I have grown to be fond of. I would also hate to lose all of the back ground and history I made for that character. After a couple of deaths I think my attitude might be \"why bother?\"
This is a tough topic. If aging was implimented I would prefer to have a option button to click that says aging off, or aging on. As I type that I think but then that takes the realisim away from what you are trying to create DaveG.
Again this is a tough topic and I am still torn.....
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Originally posted by Falzaek
again zanzibar, you said convieniant :) It\'s not suposed to be conveiniant, and their would be spells and potions aviilable to alter your apearence cometicly, and to reverse the efects of ageing, or revert them to an earlyer ageing stage 9potions of youth).
and you said that its designed to eliminate powerful characters? not realy, I think I\'ve badly stated that. It\'s designed to eliminate super-powerful characters. characters that have got to the point that they wipe out villages without breaking a sweat. this system stops characters getting that big.
But there\'s room in the game for people just like that.... stratification.
I once had a guild war between just me on one side and five guild knights on the other side. bambambambambam, they were all dead. But that\'s fun! That\'s colour! I mean, when you read books like lord of the ring, sword of shannara, etc you see battles with just that kind of thing. I don\'t think there\'s anything wrong with it, as long as it\'s meaningful.
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This sort of system would still allow people to get strong, after carrying dispositions over multiple lives. But, it would require significant effort to maintain.
The other nice thing about this, is it would allow open PvP to be implemented sanely. No one will go around killing people unjustly if they\'d just get killed in retaliation. (possibly by NPC guards/police; an actual prison system would be nice, too) It would allow a sense of urgency to player to player interaction. (though, as I already said, most defeats would result in serious injury, and not death) We could have player villains running around causing havoc, and player heroes stopping them. (and healing/ressurecting those the evil ones maimed/killed) Because very few are likely to ressurect the villains, very few villains would be able to kill freely. (in other words, it wouldn\'t really kill many players) Now, obviously this would require a community capable of maintaining such a balance, but I believe such a thing is possible. (Though, after having to rewrite both the invite spam blocker system, and now the ban system to counter idiots... I have my doubts...) Ideally, it would be possible for players to fight eachother from time to time, but such events should be fairly uncommon.
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I agree. Open PVP with checks and ballances is the best way to do it, with NPC city guards that can zap murderers within city limits, or at least force the player to defend him or herself from the authorities while the target makes a getaway.
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Of course, this all goes into the \"wait 2 years before the engine can handle all that\" bin... but, yeah...
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Genghis Khan never lived 100 years. All the power chars will eventually die and new players will be created. The new players made by the old could be sons or daughters from the dead. Or maybe there is a potion an alchemist could make to keep the dead alive in a spirit form??
as for villains, why coundnt there be a toll that a player would have to collect in the DR and pay it to certain people. Maybe a certain NPC for good chars and different for evil.
And i just relised that if 50 hours was 1 year, what would that do to PS time??
(ex. 2 players start playing at the same time,both being 16 years of age. One plays for 100 hours and becomes 18, and one plays for 25, being 16 1/2.)
that would be strange to travele with someone to Hydlaa andspliting up, then meeting them 2 years later and they havnt even aged.
There could be a ageing system that runs all the time, even if a player is playing or not. It could be a longer age rate, like 1/100 like i said before. So when in RL when people are sleeping then there chars are ageing as well.
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Yes, the fact that not everyone is online at once, and time would pass differently for them is a big problem with this. However, aging regardless of gameplay time would be far too annoying, and would make people feel like they have to play. We don\'t want to pressure people to play. There\'s also the fact that we already have days passing in-game, and that wouldn\'t match up with the years for age... Because of all these things, unfortunately there\'s really no way to fix it. It would just have to be something that we ignore. (like how people magically vanish at will when they logoff...)
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I think that if you want to role-play as the offspring of another character, you should be able to do so as you please without relying on another character to get gradually older.
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This would also eliminate those players whose characters have no taste for offspring.
*edited to add*
Originally posted by DaveG
Yes, the fact that not everyone is online at once, and time would pass differently for them is a big problem with this. [...] It would just have to be something that we ignore. (like how people magically vanish at will when they logoff...)
People magically vanishing isn\'t exactly the same as roleplaying with someone younger than you one day, then several months later find them much older.
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If RPing is to be encouraged and PLing discouraged then rather than basing \'aging\' on time played, why not do it based on how much you fight? Rather than aging, it could be some sort of measure of stress on the body. Once joints wear out or you get hit in the head one too many times then you become a vegetable or croak or something.
Aging is nice and all but looking at it as a whole, if you die then you have to be born somehow. Things may get a little, um, complicated trying to explain and RP birth.
I like Dave G\'s ideas. I just think aging punishes RPers more than PLers as RPers will probably hang with the game longer than PLers who will max their stats and then get bored when there\'s nothing left to level up.
Death should definately have more weight added to it.
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Originally posted by Karyuu
Originally posted by DaveG
Yes, the fact that not everyone is online at once, and time would pass differently for them is a big problem with this. [...] It would just have to be something that we ignore. (like how people magically vanish at will when they logoff...)
People magically vanishing isn\'t exactly the same as roleplaying with someone younger than you one day, then several months later find them much older.
This sort of thing would only be noticeable for people who play constantly, and those who stop playing for long periods.
I guess one way to deal with this is to have a hybrid time system, where time passes for the character without the player, and it is speed up by gameplay. But, that would be a very hard balance to strike. (pretty much the theme of this thread ;) )
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Originally posted by DaveG
There\'s also the fact that we already have days passing in-game, and that wouldn\'t match up with the years for age... Because of all these things, unfortunately there\'s really no way to fix it. It would just have to be something that we ignore. (like how people magically vanish at will when they logoff...)
Where does it say how long a year is in days. Its a totally different world. For all we know 2 days could be a year. But the years should have something to do with the days, not time. We could say 100 days is a year, or, if people want it longer, 365, whatever we feel like. This would add a bit more realism to the game. And for those who normally arnt on, too bad. In RL people take breaks from what they normally do or are famous for doing. Those who dont play are simply taking a break.
IMO the biggest concern is death penalties and the \'rebirth\'. Im also torn. While some of the ideas are good, they still seem harsh, exspecially on newbies, but, at the same time, dont seem harsh enough on veterns.
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Conserning overobsessing about realism: WHY EVEN??
Why do we play games? Because they\'re unrealistic. They break the rules. While were at adding ageing, why don\'t we remove magic? The answer: Because that would take all the fun out of it! Just like ageing. It\'s one of the things we play to AVOID.
Another thing concerning death: Some of us players, you have to remember, are entirely RPers, and some of us are cowards. I for one don\'t want my character to EVER die, and if going through areas containing monsters capable of hurting my character is required to play a game, and death is permanent: I don\'t want to play. I don\'t want to die, and on no games I have ever played death is permanent. Even arcade games allow you to just play again, and most allow you to save your games. If ageing and permanent death are added, you won\'t be finding my character anywhere. \'Cause I won\'t be playing.
Thirdly, ageing causes nightmares for game developers. How to keep things fair. It would send them to an early grave and then... no more PlaneShift. WAAAH!
Erm, ageing scares me and the character I am going to create as soon as the server is back up. But players get bored if there character gets so strong nothing can stand against him. That\'s why I\'m bored of Jagex\'s MMO. Here\'s an idea:
No ageing
DEFINATELY NO PERMANTENT DYING
make the STATS deteriorate over time. If you play for a long time without using a certain skill, you become \'rusty\' and you forget part of what your character learns. So you have to keep practicing to not get out of practice. Like maybe, after 12 hrs of playing after the last time you\'ve used a skill, you lose half a skill point.
note: it was just a suggestion, you don\'t have to kill me...
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Originally posted by defender43
note: it was just a suggestion, you don\'t have to kill me...
LOL. Dont worry you may be criticized a bit, but nobody is gonna kill you. Most people (at least the commen ones) here TRY not to get to defensive with their points and just shoot down others. But hey there are those who do.
Anyways, I do feel partially toward youre way (I would not wanna lose my hard earned character), but death is a serious thing, and should not be taking lightly.
If people went around doing crazy things that most likely make them get killed, to tell the truth, can take the fun out of the game for some RPers. So if not permanent death you at least need harsh penalties on death.
Also there were a few other benefits of aging posted before. Increase in knowledge, wisdom, ect. And in all seriousness, 12 hours is a long time, and half a point isnt much, exspecially to those like me whos characters have a lot of intelligence.
Sorry if you think I sounded to harsh to you.
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high leveled people hmm. Well have o agree first of that in other games I don\'t really have problems with them. They aren\'t with me while I\'m \"killing rats in the sewers\" if you know what I mean and the times I come into contact with them it\'s useeally with a guild for example and they show me stuff I can\'t do myself yet. Have to say I love that like I also love when a GM teleports me to a place you can\'t come through normal ways yet.
As for ingame aging I don\'t see it being realistic if they age 50 years in 1 year RL. People get attached to their characters and to get a good roleplaying feel with it takes time and it would be very annoying for your character to die just as you get the feeling you really know it.
Also aging would be very annoying for the races that have a life that lasts a lot shorter then elves. You die every few month and an elf who lives for centuries hasn\'t had to remake a character since day one and making all races life the same time isn\'t realistic.
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Originally posted by DaveG Death is a joke in every game I\'ve ever played. It might as well not be in it. Because there are no risks involved with anything, there is no attempt to maintain any slight sort of reason in actions. If you could actually die in a dangerous task, that would change how people act drastically. I want to give characters in-game a dose of mortality. It would go a large way to destroying this stupid RP vs. PL junk and create one unified game.
Now, anyone who knows me knows I am a sentimental guy. Afraid to lose anything of mine. I get attached to my characters and love to RP. If I want to RP someone a little brave. But I\'d instead play a coward. Why? Because I AM a coward. I don\'t want to lose my character and if death is permanent, I\'d never go into anything with so much as a RAT!! I mean, I\'m afraid of losing my items/experience as it IS, I don\'t want to lose my character as well.
Sorry if this is too reactionary.
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If there is no death,
Then death would have no meaning.
There would nothing to be scared of, or to hide from, or to be worried about.
It would be boring.
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Raagh, and thus the ultimate aim of the dev team to make the Death Realm insanely huge and scary and dark :)
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If they ever do put permanent death in, please let me know so I can stop playing.
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This isn\'t likely to happen :P There are just way too many people disagreeing.
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One thing is for sure, if not permanent death, there needs to be some penalties for it. Maybe say that when a player dies, everything, items, exp., tria, the works, that he/she got from the last hour or 2 of gaming could be lost. This wouldnt harm newbies too much because rats dont give you much in the first place.
Originally posted by Karyuu
Raagh, and thus the ultimate aim of the dev team to make the Death Realm insanely huge and scary and dark :)
DARK! Anything but the dark! Please no dark, Im afraid of the dark. :)
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I think that whatever items you have equipped should fall to the floor when you die.
It doesn\'t make sense that everything else stays with you,
But it\'s convenient, and realism hasn\'t put a stop to most things in PS.
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Maybe not drop to the floor, because this would make it too easy to aquire rae items, so maybe \'disappear.
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People who own rare items wouldn\'t usually die in crowded public places. Moreover, unless the item is equipped, anything rare should be stored somewhere safe ;)
But it is interesting - bodies disappear, when realistically they shouldn\'t, so why not items. Else we\'d have corpses lying around in various stages of decomposition.
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Originally posted by Karyuu
People who own rare items wouldn\'t usually die in crowded public places. Moreover, unless the item is equipped, anything rare should be stored somewhere safe ;)
But it is interesting - bodies disappear, when realistically they shouldn\'t, so why not items. Else we\'d have corpses lying around in various stages of decomposition.
Well, I for one would prefer that bodies stay until someone moves them.... and that if someone dies, people should be able to loot them for at least something.
Making the death realm bigger is one thing, but there are different levels that death should be operating on....
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I agree, lootable bodies just make more sense. Plus I get a kick out of imagining an NPC yelling \"Bring out yer dead!\" :)
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Originally posted by Karyuu
Else we\'d have corpses lying around in various stages of decomposition.
I\'d kinda like to see that.....if you die in the sewer you might come back to see a rat dragging along your half eaten head....
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Though that would complicate you coming back as yourself, exactly as you were in your physical form. Somehow seeing your dead body lying somewhere is... unnerving. The gods could recreate anything, true, but if you die multiple times and come back multiple times and no one has moved any corpses and there you are lying on the ground, body piled on top of body... too complicated.
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Personally, I don\'t really like the idea of permanent death, let alone losing items when you die.
Someone mentioned something about how permanent death gives a character a sort of legacy and family history, which i like, but it still doesn\'t make me like the idea of dying.
The aging thing doesn\'t settle too well with me either, mainly because I don\'t like having to age in both real life and fictional life. I don\'t really care about the stat bonuses, it sounds all complicated and too much to deal with.
I played Runescape for like, not even a couple hours, because someone decided that I needed to die and I lost my items. Which was my newbie pack D:
Sure, it would be nice to get rid of some of the super-strong characters so you can have a shot at things, but I don\'t really mind them being around (unless you\'re talking Ragnarok Online type of high-level *eyes start glowing with fury*). Without them you\'d have super-powerful monsters killing you off instead.
Maybe it\'s just me, and the fact that I have anger management problems. But going to the DR is good enough death for me (I\'d like to see my various decomposing corpses laying around, though xD). I get pretty mad just trying to get out of that place because it takes so long.
Meh, I probably sound like a sore loser >.>;; *goes back to safety of art thread*
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Well....you wouldn\'t be EXACTLY as you were......I certainly hope I would look different than a decomposing corpse. Anyway...it\'s a silly idea....along with the aging thing I\'ve decided. This is a fantasy world, lifespans are arbitrary. Permanent death couldn\'t exist unless the background behind reincarnation through traversing the death realm was rewritten.
As long as the devs make it so death isn\'t a walk in the park then I\'m happy. Picking your age upon creation and having your appearance reflect it would be great too.
Edit: And equipped items should have a random probability of being lost upon death.
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Back onto aging:
Consider the in-game calendar and in-game hours. Aging would -have- to take these into consideration to make sense, because heck, your character is living in this world and needs to obey its laws, not our OOC real-life clock.
Timing will probably be adjusted later, because I think (most think) that right now the days and nights pass by too quickly. Hitancrias once calculated that an in-game (IG) 24-hour period is 4 real-life (RL) hours - let\'s work with this for now.
The character creation screen lists 10 months with 32 days, so that\'s 320 days in an IG year. 320 days by 4 RL hours becomes 1280 RL hours for an entire year, translating into just about 53 RL days for one IG year. Our one RL year would then have about 6.7 IG years. Take a lifespan of say, 50 years for a medieval human. That becomes ~7.4 RL years. Say someone would start playing a 20-year old character (giving him or her 30 more years to live), and the character\'s lifespan becomes ~4.5 years.
I\'ve already been here for two years, and if I were playing a human, nearly half of my character\'s life would be gone by now. That\'s scary - I feel like I\'ve just begun to understand the depth my character has, after all this time.
Rilar and I have been poking each other about various IG day/night/year increases, and with a few adjustments managed to agree on a system that at least sounds better, and would give a 25-year-old human character 6.6 RL years.
It\'s an interesting proposal:
[22:18:17] i can imagine so many things related to age =)
[22:18:27] it would be just awesome
[22:18:38] spells, potions, effects..
[22:18:39] NPC responses \\o/
But it would really have to be done well. The first thing necessary, however, is a working in-game calendar.
I can\'t argue further :>
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While on the subject of death, to make it more of a punishment, why not prohibit communication amoungst the dead and the living. /tell isn\'t the most believable means of communication to begin with, but talking with someone living while you\'re dead?
It could be interesting once the DR gets bigger. There could be entirely new guilds that exist down there since they aren\'t able to comunicate with the living. /me goes off to think about starting the \"Dead Knights Guild\"
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/tell is a completely OOC command that is used by players, not characters, for coordination, help, and quick OOC communication. Characters only use /tell (or should only use /tell) when whispering as they stand close to each other. Limiting the /tell command in any way would be a blow.
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Sorry, this is off-topic, but continueing what tbvp said: maybe a certain spell can by used by the dead to whisper to the living, like a voice on the wind? Or vice versa, the living asking the dead what to do? Because that would be awesome, like the following:
A wizard and an apprentice were walking through the woods, the wizard teaching the apprentice. Suddenly, a monster attacks and kills the wizard. The apprentice is trying to decide whether to attack the monster and avenge his master, or run and save his own hide. As he prepares an attacking spell, he hears a faint voice on the wind, the voice of his old master, one word: \"run.\"
I think that would be cool.
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Part of the first intention of aging was to get rid of the higher skilled characters in the game. A different approach to this problem is to have a penalty when their skills get too high. Maybe a percentage of their skills goes down at a certain rate, so the more skill they have the faster it goes down. That way they would have to work to keep their skills up.
The best thing to do with aging, in my opinion, is to choose a starting age and be done with it. I would enjoy this game that way much more than aging while playing the game.
On dying, I personally think that there should just be a penalty on skills and some of their trias or whatever they have. There should be no permanent death or losing items.
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Karyuu and me were discussing this topic extensively yesterday. Here is a compilation of our discussion.
Not the purpose of ageing (like preventing players from creating \"uber-chars\" or making the game more realistic) was topic, but the way how to realise ageing. We agreed that ageing itself would be a good idea because it would add many more facets to RP, making PS more unique.
All our thoughts are based on the idea that not ingame-hours are counted but the time since charcreation.
An answer on the question \"what happens when a char gets old?\" could be that age _itself_ doesnt actively kill. It just makes a char very weak with time, (my suggestion now: ) like harsh modificators on the body stats (end, agi, str) and the velocity a char can move.
This will make old chars very fragile and they will easier get killed.
Young people (IG) have a strong will to live, they certainly will find a way out of the DR. Whereas very old people will \"give up\" once they are killed. Which means that they dont get deleted, but they are stuck in the DR because of age. It should be possible, however, to ressurect such an age-stuck person by a mighty spell. Such a spell wont alter their age or their chance not to get killed again, though.
Another point of the discussion was the life expectancy of a char in real life terms. This question is not easy to answer since there are many arguements for a long life and a short life. An arguement for a short life is that there is action. People are forced to make something out of their char lives because they dont have time to waste. But there are also people want to have characters who live forever, as a RL wish which is realised at least ingame.
Another arguement for a longer char life (in RL terms) is that people should have time to adapt. To have time to enjoy without haste, which isnt possible in RL often.
There are some players who plan on having their main char for years, which isnt unrealistic, at least not for PS.
So Karyuu and me agreed on a maximum lifetime of a char of about 5 RL years. There again: maximum lifetime means that the char isnt deleted but that it is very likely that the char gets killed and get stuck in the DR.
The maximum lifetime refers to the average lifespan of a race translated to RL time.
After setting this we tried to calculate down how long a day would be. For this we searched for reference for a ingame calendar and unluckily found two contrary concepts. One is mentioned in the charcreation. It says an ingame year has 10 months ? 32 days.
The other is mentioned on the settings page (http://www.planeshift.it/setting_overview.html) : under \"Measuring Time\". This concept says a year is divided into 4 seasons of which each has 8 periods, which means that there are 24 months. Unluckily in this concept neither weeks nor how many days a month has is mentioned. And as we werent able to ask one of the settings team who could clearify we assumed 10 days per month.
Basing on those two concepts we assumed a dwarf with a life expectancy of 120 years and tried to calculate down.
5 a (RL) = 120 a (IG) for a dwarf would make for a human ~3 to 3.5 years
1 IG year would be 0.0416 RL year => 15.5 days
We agreed that this would be simply too short not only because of the ratio of yearly events to dayly events but also on the felt time. With such a short time there wouldnt be much excitement about yearly events, they would become common, boring.
Because we didnt see ourself able to change those settings, we tried the other way round: to calculate comeing from day/night cycles.
Karyuu refered to a post of Hitancrias who messured the time how long an ingame day currently is: 4 RL hours.
We have been thinking about the problem that people of different timezones want to have day and night cycles when I came up with an old http://planeshift.oodlz.com/wbboard/thread.php?threadid=19758&boardid=11 (http:// [URL)]wishlist-post[/URL] of mine where I propose changeing day and night lenghts. Changeing lengths could solve the problem that people in different timezones want to have day and night. But as this topic grew more and more complicated we chose to assume a fixed length of 8 RL hours for this matter.
We started to calculate with the 10 months x 32 d concept: 320 d x 8 h = 2560h ~ 107 RL days for one IG year.
The other concept (24 months x 10 days) results in 80 RL days for one ingame year.
After thinking about what might be handier we draw the conclusion that 90 RL days (~3 months) for one ingame year should be a good
timing since then people could adopt to changes. Important is also the relation of the frequency of yearly events to dayly events.
Considering that ageing is based on the counting of ingame years, those years mustnt be too long, otherwise ageing would take far too long.
If an ingame year would have many days and the RL length of ingame hours was too long, exactly this would happen: ageing had no real effect. That is why less days in a year and longer RL length of an ingame day are prefered.
In order to set an IG year to ~ 3 RL months (93 d) one ingame day needed to be about 7 RL hours.
After coming to this result we looked whether this fit with the starting point of the ageing system.
With our assumed system we`d have: 120 a (ig) = 31.5 a (rl) which is obviously way too long.
To fix this we came to another variable: racial specific lifespan. I searched for information on this on the settings page but found nothing, so we felt free to assume some data. Considering the medieval part of the world such really long lifespans are very unrealistic, at least for dwarves and humans, enkidukai, diaboli and klyros. Elve-alike and kran were an exception on this. At this point there is also the proposal that Kran were an exception to the ageing system at all. Elves should be included to the ageing effects but due to their very long lifespan there is no point in including them into the \"degration over time\". That means only special spells and other effects which alter their age could make the effects of age visible to them.
In medieval times humans had a maximum lifespan of about 30 years. Due to the \"technology\" this time might be extended to 40-50 ingame years. This lifespan should be realistic for all races which are affected by the ageing system.
A total lifespan of 50 ig years (7 RL hours for 1 IG day) would mean 13 RL years.
With the current ratio (4 RL hours for 1 IG day) it would take 7 years.
Taking the proposal of a variable starting age into account would mean for a (assumed) \"normal\" player who starts at age 15 to 25 a total char life of about 3.5 to 5 years, which might be too little. With the proposed 7 hours RL to day-ratio the lower limit would be at ~6.6 years, which seems to be good as overall solution.
For those players who want to change this estimated lifespan there could be a modificator in form of genetical predisposition in the charcreation like \"short living anciestors\" or somesuch.
To please those who want to be longer in a certain life phase (\"i want to be teenager for 30 years!\" ) it is imaginable to have anti-ageing potions. The effect of such a potion could be a plus in the recent lifephase of 5%-10% of the average lifespan specific for the race. But like most drugs the contrary should happen when taken too often, which i think 3 potions maximum should be good by far. With the +4th potion the recent lifephase should be reduced dramatically.
The lifephases are refering to the post of Falzaek above.
At this point Karyuu proposed to make such potions very rare. That they could be given out through GM quests, sold through mysterious merchants, etc.. After thinking about it this position is better than what I proposed, having them available freely, but to make them very expensive.
Our conclusion: Ageing, done right (especially the timing), has many positive aspects rangeing from NPC replies, skins, personality, to a prevention for too many players becoming extremely strong. Me personally also experienced in other games without such a system that after a certain time there were way too many really powerful players which made the purpose of the game ridiculous as they had no reason to actually play anymore. They just wanted to enjoy their earned items/skills by duelling constantly oneanother or fighting endbosses.
A last sidenote by me: Having players chosen their starting age freely could be implemented this way: One chooses an age, with this a lifephase. The older the lifephase chosen, the more points can be distributed, and also more events can be chosen. The age modifies the stats then. To prevent the stats from going down too far, one has to put many points in them which makes things even to players with young chars.
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I agree with amogorkon that 6.6 years is right for a characters minimum lifespan, but i think that you should be able to have your elder characters be able to train younger characters that you have. That way, you can use them to your advantage instead of just starting over.
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I like the idea you guys had. About the potions though. They should both be able to be made by players, but extremly hard to make. Only very rare plants, which can only be found with very high Herbal skill, are used to make. And only alchemists who are very well trained in alchemy can make them. And if its still to easy then you can have the herbs be \'illegal.\' Of course that might be a setup for a \'black market.\'
Originally posted by Frozen Glory
I agree with amogorkon that 6.6 years is right for a characters minimum lifespan, but i think that you should be able to have your elder characters be able to train younger characters that you have. That way, you can use them to your advantage instead of just starting over.
how can they train your younger chars? Are you going to log on with both at the same time? Heck, why have multiple chars, I never understood it. But, if you mean train other chars (your friends, guild members, for money, ect,) then its a good idea. Would be pretty cool to train them instead of telling them to go to an NPC. Would be another market in this game, evryone raising and lowering prices to stay in business. lol Supply and demand on skills, never would have thought to see the day.
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First of all, I need to reiterate: I don\'t want realism, I want \"realism\". The game is inherently un-realistic; I want \"realism\" in the sense that the world is cohesive, and not full of plot-holes, so-to-speak.
Secondly, yes, you shouldn\'t die due to age alone. There is no such thing as \"dying of old age\". You just get weaker as you age, and get more susceptible to disease. Yes, doing a similar thing in the game would be a good idea.
Thirdly, if we were to add aging (don\'t you love how some of the most popular threads don\'t even start off with correct spelling? ;) ) we want players to actually experience it. 5 years would effectively prevent it. (people who started at AB would not be old yet) 6 months sounds more reasonable. That aside, this part of the thread is beginning to annoy me. (yes, I\'m aware it was the main topic :P ) I\'m thinking a semi-finite aging process would be more reasonable. You start of young (or a child) and quickly age to adult, then slowly age to get old. Your ease of progression would slow (connected to getting weaker) though you could counter that by what I\'ve deemed as \"smart\" playing, aka not getting your ass kicked frequently. You would not get extremely old, thus you wouldn\'t have to die of old age outright. You would be more susceptible to disease, though with \"smart\" playing, you would be fine indefinitely. You\'d only die if you\'ve spent a whole lifetime and still don\'t know how to not get killed. (note that we still have serious injury, in favor of death for most instances) So, essentially old age would just remove some of the safeguards we add for the young to prevent those playing like they do in every generic game from dying. This system would also remove the need to have times sync up with each other, because age would be more vague. (young, adult, old; no crippling arthritis or anything)
(Side note: I like the potions idea. Things like that would go with this well.)
Fourthly, I understand why people don\'t want to lose their characters, and want to keep it \"unrealistic\". They haven\'t gotten bored with that generic aspect of many, many, many, many, games. I have; you will eventually. It\'s like the \"magical\" inventory. (how the hell can you hold so much!) They\'re the easy way out, and make things less cohesive. Yes, things don\'t have to make sense compared to real life, but they have to make sense in the game world. These things don\'t.
Fifthly (yes, I\'m going to keep this up :D ), my original aging idea (not the one up at \"thirdly\" ) had everyone dying at some point, and the point was that everyone would then go through multiple lifetimes. The people against this are the ones against actually playing the game. Now, that\'s not necisarily a bad thing. At some point, you don\'t really want to play the game as much, and you want to just go back to where you were. There is something said for giving the player the ability to choose how they want to play. However, the multiple lifetime approach lets the game have more variety. For example, each life you could pick a different race, starting in a different part of the world, and you would have a different experience. That was the idea. It would allow players to play more of the game, and allow for a larger world, without having to make it possible for everyone to do everything in one lifetime. Not every character should become a god. It breaks the scales, and requires the segregation of players to handle well. (ie. newbie areas and strong player areas need to be well defined and separate)
Sixthly, I would love to see a game with my original idea. It\'s essentially one of the concepts I would consider part of my personal \"dream game\". This is the wish list thread, so I posted it here. It is something that could be done, and could be a fantastic, but I knew from the start it wasn\'t going to be done here. (at least not for a longer time than anything else posted here before) The \"thirdly\" idea is closer to practicality, and I would hope some version of it could be done eventually.
Seventhly, people think they hate the death idea, but they would like it if they fully understood how it would change things. It would produce a drastically different game environment, which is the main reason I proposed it. (no game has attempted such a thing, and I know it doesn\'t sound good on the surface)
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Dave, you think six months is enough to create an in-depth character, form long-lasting friendships, join a guild and rise through the ranks or create one from scratch, and then just leave off for another persona?
...hot damn o_O
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Wait, wasn\'t this already discussed 30x over? Aging, starting at an age past middle age or dying from natural causes sounds great, but it just isn\'t feasible. Give it a rest already people. :rolleyes:
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Originally posted by Karyuu
Dave, you think six months is enough to create an in-depth character, form long-lasting friendships, join a guild and rise through the ranks or create one from scratch, and then just leave off for another persona?
Yes, more than enough, but there\'s no reason long-lasting friendships can\'t go over many lifetimes. Each lifetime you would improve uppon the previous, and probably live longer each time. As I already said though, a version where \"smarter\" players could live forever (or at least significantly longer) is potentially better.
Originally posted by Kixie
Wait, wasn\'t this already discussed 30x over? Aging, starting at an age past middle age or dying from natural causes sounds great, but it just isn\'t feasible. Give it a rest already people. :rolleyes:
Not feasible at the moment, no. Never said it was. ;)
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Originally posted by DaveG
Not feasible at the moment, no. Never said it was. ;)
Not feasible EVER. An online roleplaying game should not contain an aging feature due to the fact the player and character live in different time constraints. There is no way your character can live without you, and still have a fair game equal to all players. With age, inevitably comes death. With death comes the end of a peice of work someone has undoubtedly put days, perhaps weeks of work into. Having that destroyed to keep realism or \"fun\" or whatever skewered little turd of an idea you hope to achieve is blasphemy! HANG HIM FROM THE GALLOWS!
But seriously. To end this pointless rant, I don\'t think this can be achieved fairly. I\'d be nice, but no. :O
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Originally posted by DaveG
Yes, more than enough, but there\'s no reason long-lasting friendships can\'t go over many lifetimes. Each lifetime you would improve uppon the previous, and probably live longer each time. As I already said though, a version where \"smarter\" players could live forever (or at least significantly longer) is potentially better.
Ick. It would greatly complicate things. At least some people would label as out of character the maintaining the same relationship with a person over multiple characters or lifetimes.
The thing is, the only reason for aging over time that\'s been proposed is to make weak people who have grown strong. This is a pointless pursuit, because there will always be people at the top and at the bottom.
It\'s simply better to make skills deteriorate over time if left unused. The thing is, the only skill those who complain are really concerned with is the skill a character has in his or her particular weapons. And it\'s mostly because of the insane amount of damage you can do, thanks to the uber weapons out there.
And that\'s easy to solve! Make it so that better weapons and stats affect things like critical hits, dodging, deflection, and how robust the weapon is -- how much force it takes to break it.
But there isn\'t the code for that in the game yet!
So solution A is going to be in the future once the code is there. But people are asking for solution B and C because they want the percieved problem to go away now, even though this is a pre-alpha.
I\'m all for making the game as good as possible, because I don\'t consider it as a pre alpha. I only half consider myself to be a playtester. I consider planeshift to be a real game, because I use it as such! But at the same time, I think there needs to be better perspective on this....
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Originally posted by DaveG
[...] but there\'s no reason long-lasting friendships can\'t go over many lifetimes.
Erp? Of course that would be horrendously awkward if in future lifetimes people change race, gender, meet at different ages, have a completely different personality, history, etc. Unless all that a rebirth would be is \"Hi! I used to be so-and-so but that was in my past life, and even though I\'m completely different, I\'m really just an extension!\" :P
Each lifetime you would improve uppon the previous, and probably live longer each time.
But improve in what? This is just becoming a race towards skills, and in my opinion, it\'s destructive to roleplay. There is no way that half a year is enough for someone to build a strong character (personality-wise), unless he or she plans things out extremely well before even entering the game. People need more time to adjust to their characters aging, also. We can\'t relate to something dying on us in six months, nor do I think we should.
Way, waaaay against this type of timing :P
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Originally posted by Karyuu
Erp? Of course that would be horrendously awkward if in future lifetimes people change race, gender, meet at different ages, have a completely different personality, history, etc. Unless all that a rebirth would be is \"Hi! I used to be so-and-so but that was in my past life, and even though I\'m completely different, I\'m really just an extension!\" :P
Your character\'s personality might change but your OOC personality doesn\'t have to. Most likely you\'d still enjoy involving the same people in your RPing but in different ways depending on how your IC personality is different.
Aging would be great if it was done right....It seems like one of those things that might be impossible to balance though.
It would be kind of funny seeing different generations running around. When you get old you could yell at the young whippersnappers to get off your lawn (whenever we get around to being able to own houses).
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Originally posted by goland
It would be kind of funny seeing different generations running around. When you get old you could yell at the young whippersnappers to get off your lawn (whenever we get around to being able to own houses).
Which is why I think you should be able to select age at character creation...
Child, Young adult (teenager or early 20\'s), adult, elder (old fogie). That way, you can choose the age which is right for you instead of having it forced on you.
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I think some of us are overcomplicating this.
Ageing has been discussed thousands of times whether in these forums or not and never have we come to a conclusion that everybody liked.
The problem is people do not want to lose their character or have his stats change change. If somebody chooses to become a warrior he shouldn\'t have to think that later on he may need to become a wizard or such.
And then, others believe that if you stay the same age for a while then...well that is slightly against Roleplaying now isn\'t it.
The best solution would be to be able to change your age, maybe we can have it that you do age but you can buy potions to couteract or even reverse the process.
I think that too many people already have backstories that they want to keep to, and that ageing may interfere with many of these.
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Originally posted by goland
Your character\'s personality might change but your OOC personality doesn\'t have to.
Irrelevant, since in Planeshift you\'re supposed to be in character at all times.
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No no and no. Why should players hard earned time go to waist and have to start over again? I know i would leave after i die the first time.
If you don\'t think its fair that oldbies are stronger then newbies then leave the oldbies alone. Remember that there\'s so many skills it would take years for a player to master them all, no matter how much he spends online. There\'s always a weakness to a player even though he seems invincible.
People seriously enough with the \"realism\" cause this is going over the top.
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Wait! Did everyone forget about the Death Realm?! Seriously, just because you \'die\' doesnt mean youre character is gone. They go to the Death Realm, the only difference is that you cant go to the upper world. SO WHAT! When the DR is complete I picture it being extremly huge and almost another world. There still is the fact that we could add resurecting spells to the game. This is gone to far into \'I dont want to lose my character,\' but those who say that must forget about the DR. And if youre gonna say that \'unrealistic\', many religions believe in an \'afterlife\' of some sort. Thats what the DR could potitially be, an \'afterlife.\'
And those of you who keep saying stuff like its never been done before,...umm WHAT ABOUT MOST GREAT GAMES! Its hard to think of a great game that hasnt tried something new and daring, THATS WHAT MAKES THEM GREAT! Civilazation series did something new and daring by letting you control a nation through all history, using diplomacy to win, and using the TBS. The original Final Fantasy was a new and daring move. Heck Square put their whole company at risk by making it. They were bankrupt. But look now, its one of the best selling RPG series ever. Creating a new genre took major risks. Basically, if you want to make a great game, it has to be different. Of course people are gonna complain, because they want what theyre used to. They dont realize how great a new thing could be until they actually see it in effect. So if youre gonna continue to say thats it to risky or whatever, youre a fool.
Also 6 months IS too short, but 6 years Is too long. Id say about 3 or 4 years. You have to understand, people will want to see the effects and not every one plays that long, but nobody plays often enough to create a good character and have fun in 6 months.
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Originally posted by zanzibar
Originally posted by DaveG It\'s simply better to make skills deteriorate over time if left unused.
Wasn\'t that MY idea? Anyways, I don\'t play this game just to level! I love to role-play, and it takes my a LONG time to get a feel for my character, and I don\'t want him to just die on me! And I don\'t like that \"stuck in the DR\" idea either, because it DEFINATELY favors mages, who can resurrect themselves. Warriors, we got NOTHIN\'.
Shadowcast, you forget Civilization is NOT A ROLEPLAYING GAME. You are allowed to save your game, and mindlessly blow stuff up. PlaneShift is not about whether you win or lose, but how you play the game. Also, aging is a constant DETERIORATION, not an improvement, like Civilization\'s progression through history.
Okay, I\'m done.
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Originally posted by defender43
And I don\'t like that \"stuck in the DR\" idea either, because it DEFINATELY favors mages, who can resurrect themselves. Warriors, we got NOTHIN\'.
Of course you shouldnt be able to use it if you are dead, because youre right would be unfair advantages to Mages. I know how you feel, Im a Ranger, I couldnt resurect myself.
Shadowcast, you forget Civilization is NOT A ROLEPLAYING GAME. You are allowed to save your game, and mindlessly blow stuff up. PlaneShift is not about whether you win or lose, but how you play the game. Also, aging is a constant DETERIORATION, not an improvement, like Civilization\'s progression through history.
I wasnt using RP games alone, but was showing some of the greatest series/games being risks. And just because you can save it doesnt mean its not an equal risk. You still have to have people to play it, and something new may attract only a few people at first but it then becomes more popular and spreads. If you dont want to \'risk\' new theings, fine, but then well have just another MMORPG that isnt any more special than the other ones. Thats, IMO, whats wrong with todays games, they dont want to change and thats getting boring.
EDIT: I am gonna propose an idea. It should please most people. 1) We come up with a good system (should be short lifespan so we could get a good grasp on it) 2) Devs code this system 3) Devs put it in a future \'pre-game\' relesase 4) We play with it 5) We discuss it and how everyone liked/disliked it 6)Remove or keep it
With this we will be able to expience and test it. Peoples views may change. Depending on how people liked it we could decide to rmove it or keep it. Game Devs due this all the time, either in a pre-game release or in a games ansestors, heck somethimes even in a different series.
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Aging, if ever to occur, will occur far far far in the future, as DaveG mentioned ;) It\'s as far away as, if not farther than, player-owned housing. Mainly this is for the simple reason that for aging to be interesting, characters have to have a wide variety of things to experience, learn, go through, and own. Right now, aging would suck because so many things aren\'t yet implemented. I\'m quite sure that aging would also suck if implemented a few releases down the way. Perhaps when the majority of other wishlist items or setting features are made available in-game, this discussion will apply more.
Until then, it\'s just a discussion to pass the time ;)
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I realize that its way down the road. But its the fact that we will start to repeat ourselves soon if this keeps up. (I still remember the discussion about the Guilds being charged to create). I wasnt trying to say put it in soon. I meant by a future \'pre-game\' release to be on of the last one, when things are just being perfected, not added. I understand the rest of the stuff should probably be put in first. O well it was just an idea.
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Originally posted by Shadowcast
I meant by a future \'pre-game\' release to be on of the last one, when things are just being perfected, not added.
Well, that\'s the bit I didn\'t quite understand :> There will never be a \"final\" version of PlaneShift, since it will always continuously continue to grow and evolve and expand - so as someone mentioned in another thread some time ago, you can expect a version 100 in several decades (centuries?) :P I presume you just meant something closer to an actual working game though, when you typed \"pre-game release\". But things will always be added, again. Thus this wishlist item, as it will take much of the devs time and concentration, should indeed be years and years in the future :)
In general, discussing aging without even having a working in-game calendar is rather useless.
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I\'m sorry guys, but I\'m at it again...
There aren\'t that many free MMORPG\'s. The only ones I know of are:
Planeshift
Jagex\'s
Artix\'s
And another text-based one.
Artix Entertainment\'s game is not Massively and it\'s certainly not Multiplayer. And it\'s 2D.
The text-based game was the kind of game I admire. The text-basis in a way forces you to roleplay or leave.
Jagex\'s game is 3D, but not nearly as good as PlaneShift.
Origionally posted by ShadowCast:
Its hard to think of a great game that hasnt tried something new and daring, THATS WHAT MAKES THEM GREAT!
PlaneShift is already a new and daring project. Creating a fully 3D world that puts Jagex\'s RPG to SHAME. In their free time.
Reasons it\'s new and daring:
1: The only other \"hobby project\" MMOs is that text-based game I mentioned.
2: The graphics already put Runescape to shame.
3: Without funds, they risk losing their motivation, risking forgetting about PlaneShift and leaving it to rot as they carry on with their daily lives.
4: The world they plan to create is unparallelled in size.
5: No other free MMO allows you to choose your race.
PlaneShift is a new and daring thing. It doesn\'t NEED aging to become great. It IS great. Already. Just think how good it will be when it\'s finished!
(no, I\'m not just being a teacher\'s pet to the staff. :P )
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I thought we were reincarnated every time we came back from death realm, where we are a dead soul--so how could we age, as long as we die before we get old? We get a new body everytime--right?
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Dear god just let the topic die!
:P
That is true, Gripen, but all the same if you don\'t die in a long time you age... problem unsolved
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Ageing encourages diversity and role play...
when your young and fiesty all you care about is the big adventure, bashing monsters for gold,completing quests etc..
As you get older you get slower.. weaker but also Wiser.
Agility and Strength decrease but Skills Wisdom and Craft Increase.
this is an excellent way to shift players into a new paradigm.. from the Fiesty warior to the wise old wizard / alchemist.
as for building up a character only to lose it... that what we do every single day of our lives..
its no greate loss when we realise that we have something to pass on that wisdom and accumulated wealth...
If planeshift really does strive to be realistic providing for marriage and non voilent past times. then we should work towards a system of rebirth.
when a character dies his possessions are passed on to his family...
think of this as an interesting idea..
When you get married you can have children...
you can either marry another character or an NPC..
the children from that marriage..
when you die the player can choose to play one of those children.. with all the inherited possesions + some inherited skills.
if your player gets too old and crusty for your liking you can retire him/her and play as one of their children..
the retired players can be turned into NPCs...
other players may challange these NPCs and duel for experience..
or train from their skills.
It really would add a new dimension of reality to the game
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This is a seven-page thread. Please tell me you read the entire thing before posting ;P
So far you haven't added anything new, instead reviving something made nearly two months ago with repeated statements. This is not recommended.
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i'm all against aging aging and lifespans, making a character all the time is like invincibility in real life. It would become boring!
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I don't want my über-characters dead. Bear the burden.
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to quote the famous movie 2001 A Space Odissy
"I'm sorry dave.. I can't do that...."
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i think we should start as kids and age but not die you can go to the daeth realm and come back again
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The only thing that I want to see die from old age is this very subject.
It's the player's decision at what age their chars are and how long they remain that. There's no way I'm letting that control be taken from me. Might as well suggest fully random char creation (to which I'm just as opposed), which would be absolutely realistic, but fun for the least. As has been said, there is a point where games must remain unrealistic, otherwise they'd cease being games. Otherwise, also ask for magic to be removed, medieval setting removed and set to present time, all races except for humans be removed, and PS being made into a RL sim. Great fun! Wait... maybe I could just, well, not play that sim, since there's no difference to RL... hmmm....
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I'd like to see pointless posts to old threads die...
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I'D like to see this happen people are arguing but i think i can make it work
After you die of old age you have an option Death relm or ghost form.
If you chose ghost form you would not be visible to live players you would look like a see through
form of the dead 20 year or equal you. at the magic shop their are several empty rooms at the bottom room there would be a mage that can see you
right click on him and their would be a special button thats were you would be revived as a young adult
Any problems tell me
BTW you wouldnt lose anything accept weapon class items
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Um... no. Kinda defeats the concept there.
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Many MMORPG\'s that hae been around a fe months sufer from \"high level\" or big characters making life dificult for newbs...And I\'ve come to the conclusion that ageingis the answere...but it would stop charaters becoming \"Uber strong\' and picking on the newbs...
nobody seems to have picked up on this, but aging will not stop the appearance of uber characters in the game.
...an aging character who is aware he is close to death (even assuming the life/death timer has some random factor thrown in) will simply pass his worldly goods onto a friend around that time, and upon resurrection into his child form or w/e he will at least retain his former material power.
so uber characters will always be.
and this aging thing will not work like some of you envision.
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Well then i at least want to see a selectable age to make the game more open to all players imaginations
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Well, the whole point of death is to get rid of the non-material stuff periodically. The material stuff shouldn't be the main factor here. Sure, people will essentially stay strong, but I never really proposed (at least my part) of this idea with that intent. I have nothing against uber characters, they just shouldn't be everyone and not all the time. You should have to start from the begining every so often, even if you get back up to "uber" fast.
That being said, this thread has been beaten to death, and too many people like to have played the game, rather than to play it. Please, if you're not really going to contribute something new, don't post.
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Well, I hope I can contribute a bit.... there was aging and death in the mud I played, but there were also greater and lesser elixirs of youthness.
Lesser were obtained by automatic quest (one random question picked from 17 or 18 to prevent people from having what the NPC wanted
just a second after getting the quest) and removed 3-4 years of age, greaters were given with quest-points (almost half the prize of a quester
task, usually involving 2 hours of adrenaline), and removed 10 years each.
You were gaining about 1 year of "human" age every month, regardless of race (dwarves had *3 multiplier to aging and removing, elves had *8 ).
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In the "Tolkein"iverse, this was somewhat addressed - if you were an elf, your life had no specific bound; if you were a man / dwarf, age affected you.
Of course, Tolkein didn't balance his characters -- elves were generally stonger, faster, prettier, and smarter, lacking only (if anything) a desire to fill continents with their kind. Since an RPG needs more balance, you could restrict elven or similar characters to grow much more slowly, i.e. take much longer to reach normal levels of strength / wisdom, what have you, but the character never weakens.
Also, with human (read "mortal") characters, I don't see death of old age as a good idea - just start dropping the strength and agility after some point, stopping at some point that is weaker than youth, but not crippling. Then you become a wise old man who relies on magic or alliances to fight. The basic idea is that if you like fighting with your fists, you need to play a series of young mortal characters if you are a mortal.
Of course we could decouple the human/elf distinction from the mortal / immortal distinction - if you want to be immortal, you would start with 1/3 of the stats of a mortal, regardless of race, and build stats more slowly, maybe. We've drifted from strict Tolkein, and some drift is inevitable in a game setting.
It also seems like immortals would necessarily have a longer adolescence. So wisdom should grow slowly and the max be connected to age, esp. for immorts?
If old age is going to be in the cards, I imagine it being something like 2-5 years real time for it to take hold. Arguably the death realm could be different for mort. vs. immort and possibly mortals paying some kind of aging penalty for dying - maybe it takes the equivalent of 2 days of real time off your stay in Yliakum?
Sorry if some of this has been discussed - I took everything I was going to write, and removed :-X all the stuff that wasn't weird enough (this is advice for life - remove everything that isn't weird enough ::|.)
Sw.
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As it has been discussed, it's possible for characters who died because of age to not get deleted but remain in the DR.
However, at times I discussed this topic, it was always the question what happens to characters who have died by age but get revived.
One option is that the character becomes actually alive again and all, but will die in a short time again, because of age.
One thing that caught my attention in this thread was the mentioning of ghosts.
It could be an option to get back into the world of the living as ghost/aetherical form, without material inventory or being able to manipulate material things (no pickup/fight...) but being visible for others as the same form/body (i mean mesh and attributes like hair) but with the difference that the body is transparent to 50%.
This could solve several problems at once:
- As it has been discussed in other threads, it's a big problem to make death and resurrection in the same body consistant with the settings, especially if the body got destroyed/burried/etc in any way.
- Players don't want to abandon their characters
- Players don't want stay forever in the DR once they died because of age
It also opens up a whole bunch of possibilities:
- one could have a ghost town (in Kadaikos, or the stone labyrinths..) where ghosts could spawn regularly without problems
- spawning in any other location, it's imaginable to restrict the time a ghost is able to stay in the WotL, for say 3 or more ingame hours
- there could be holy places that can't be entered by aetherical forms like the temples for instance
- they could move through walls
- eventually could jump higher
- all movement could be slower than those of normal beings
Also it isn't that much to program aetherical forms as other suggestions might be.
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The problem with that though would be that some people might not want to lose all their stuff after a certain point. If you think people get mad after wipes now, imagine how they'll feel when wipes become an automatic game mechanic? And it'd be a pain to have to keep getting resurrected over and over. Most people would just make new characters to be "fully functional" again, which would defeat the purpose of keeping the characters around in the first place!
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The problem with that though would be that some people might not want to lose all their stuff after a certain point.
They will just transfer their stuff to another char.
If you think people get mad after wipes now, imagine how they'll feel when wipes become an automatic game mechanic?
People get mad because they are accostumed to the way it is and don't expect a wipe to happen and because they can't take that into consideration while they are playing.
If people can count on their character to die (their skills mainly becoming useless in the WotL, doesn't mean that they are useless in the DR), they will plan more carefully how much time they put into training and PLing. I expect a higher tendency to RP this way.
Most people would just make new characters to be "fully functional" again, which would defeat the purpose of keeping the characters around in the first place!
Not at all. It is only a matter of advantage and disadvantage of the ghost form how people will decide. If the ghost form is appealing enough and regularly available only for those exceptions (people who lost their body or died of age) it can also be seen as special reward and people will try to achieve it.
Whether you create a new, "fully functional" char it's your choice, but that doesn't defeat the other purpose of aging which is reducing the number of maxed out people.
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i think aging is a bad idea and their are many other ways to make roleplaying meaninful eg. guilds that are created have to choose their purpose (military, local enforcment, thiefs, mercenary, body gaurds or protection) thier are many other ways you can make role playing more meaninful simply by giving things purpose eg. guilds, trade, towns evolution yada yada. you just have to make the game function as the world has functioned for many years which is revolving around money, conquering, marketing, diplomacy with different regions controlled by rulers and evolution and growth of towns to cities
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I agree that we should encourage people to do things other than training, but making all the training useless after a certain point isn't the way to do it. If that's the way we wanted it we should just get rid of training/levels entirely and just make PS a chat/RP program... then people could just think of their own ways to simulate fighting. We shouldn't discourage leveling itself, just PLing, which isn't the same thing. In fact, because this is a program we're supposed to be testing, we should be encouraging people to level up occasionally so they can use the different abilities and determine if they are working right! People should be able to get around to using all the abilities that are in the game.
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i think aging is a bad idea
Why?
In fact, because this is a program we're supposed to be testing, we should be encouraging people to level up occasionally so they can use the different abilities and determine if they are working right!
I believe you got something wrong. This is the wishlist, the threads here are not about the NOW but about the FUTURE. And in future you won't primarily be testing things anymore. In future one can also assume that things actually are nearly bug-free and working. The biggest problem then is how to balance everything.
And I foresee that (like in every other MMORPG so far) there will be a strong tendency to non-RP caused by a lot of people who don't know anything else than treadmilling and never heard about actual RP before. If this is not a problem at this moment (although many people think it is), it will be in the future.
Thus we have to have concepts to conter that development before it is self-promoting.
I agree that we should encourage people to do things other than training, but making all the training useless after a certain point isn't the way to do it.
As I said, the stats and skills could still have effects as ghost.
If that's the way we wanted it we should just get rid of training/levels entirely and just make PS a chat/RP program
Sorry for the stupid reply, but: Have you ever played The Sims? Had it any negative effect on the popularity of the game that your chars are supposed to die there?
And people, we are not talking about deleting the chars. Please take into consideration that the DR will be a lot bigger than now, that it could be a whole own world there and take into consideration that there could be a lot of interesting effects related to the ghost-being; plus that it won't be impossible to get back into the world, you were used to.. Being dead practically is a whole different situation that could not only add a lot of interesting aspects (have you ever been dead?) but also balance the gameplay more to RP, not treadmilling.
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No, I haven't played The Sims actually.
Really, the part I'm most opposed to of this idea is the idea that after being resurrected you'll just die again a short time later because you'll still be old. If I don't want to be a ghost, I don't want to have to have someone resurrect me every day. Resurrection should be literally an extra life, which lasts just as long as if you had just created your character.
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I disable aging in The Sims every now and then :) Lets me play at my own pace.
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Resurrection should be literally an extra life, which lasts just as long as if you had just created your character.
That actually could be an idea. One could have a spell of youth which could be used after the ressurrection; or a combined spell "complete restore" for healing, reducing age and ressurrecting at once.. its even imaginable to have an amulet of "eternal life" and stuff like that.. there are a lot of options and possibiilties connected to age and death.
Addition:
I disable aging in The Sims every now and then Smiley Lets me play at my own pace.
:woot: CHEATER! :P
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Sorry for the stupid reply, but: Have you ever played The Sims? Had it any negative effect on the popularity of the game that your chars are supposed to die there?
This may be just as stupid a reply, but are we playing PS or The Sims?
The Sims has quite a different purpose. In The Sims, you basically have an RL simulator, whereas in PS, you have basically an adventure game.
The two may share some aspects, but they're still very different concepts. While in The Sims your objective is to lead a life, in PS it is to experience adventures of whatever sort, not just staying alive.
There are reasons why I (and possibly others, too) play PS but not The Sims.
If aging is player-selectable, then fine. If it isn't, then not fine at all. If ghostness appeals to a player, then that player should be able to attain that without having to go through too much assle. Likewise, if it does not appeal to a player, it shouldn't be forced upon them regardless.
There are reasons why some things, despite being realistic, aren't generally put into games. Additionally, all the talk about age making one wiser really is just soothing mumbo-jumbo. Fact is that age also affects the brain and thusly all your stats degrade as you basically rot away.
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The Sims aging system sucked i always turned it off because you got old to quickly
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The aging we were talking about has two big problems (not taking into account bad feelings about being forced to play in a certain way or ideological disagreement because freeform RP would be reduced, "less freedom for players" etc.):
1. How to determin the time a char gets older?
2. What about race-specific lifespans?
The first problem can be reduced to the question whether online time or RL time should determin the velocity a char ages.
Only online time: if one doesn't play a char for a year, another char which is being played for this time would be a lot older in the end -> not acceptable
Only RL time: If one decides to not play a char for a year, the char might be dead after that, although one haven't played with it -> not acceptable
It is possible to reduce that problem to a decent amount by following case destinction:
case 1: onlinetime < 100h / month => char gets older for 100 (units aren't important here)
case 2: 100h / month < onlinetime < 1000h / month => char gets older for onlinetime
case 3: onlinetime > 1000h / month => char gets older for 1000
With that only a factor of 10 is possible as maximum difference, but still the problem isn't really solved, only reduced.
The second problem is not solvable within this system.
More in detail:
In The Sims, you play a character for a defined lifetime. That means you have a maximum time in RL to play through childhood, adulthood and so on.
If one tries to set maximum lifetimes for races equally, one would have to reduce the lifetime of some races (enkidukai, for example) to a non-acceptable limit in relation to other races.
It is not desirable to take the maximum lifespan as a reason to prefer one race over the other.
On the other side, a player only can play a little window in the chars life per default (who can sit there day and night and play the char from birth to death?).
With continous aging this window is not only too restricting in regards of the game experience (online/RL time may vary too much from IC time) but also leaves too little space for people who want to develop their chars over a long time.
One could also think that aging itself has the other problem that it is not balancable. Taking the CC into consideration, it would be a very big problem to give players the choice with which age to start. Right now one can override those game mechanics. If age actually has a big impact, one couldn't anymore.
However, I said "could think", as I doubt that it is intented to be that easy to override the CC as it is an integral element of the game mechanics.
All chars start per default (now) in early adulthood and that should not be changed as it would create big troubles in balancing (what stats should be reduced/raised for older chars? how many creationpoints additional? what additional events? etc. etc.).
After considering all variables I could think of, I come to the conclusion that continous aging with death in the end is not realisable in an acceptable way.
Instead I propose a different approach, trying to circumvent the problems of continous aging but having the advantages (because of the lot of possibilities) of age itself.
Three stages - child, adult, aged.
All chars start off as adult (like it should be now without circumventing the CC).
It is possible with potions, spells, quests etc. to change the physiological age/appearance, but leaving out the continous aging dependant on online/RL time.
It's possible to have age-specific items/skills/quests with that, without being forced as player to do those quests in a certain time.
One wouldn't die of age anymore, but being ghost could still be an option, for instance if you lost your body in any way or decided to be a ghost, or as quest or even as dream (wasn't there a thread about sleeping and dreaming? *scratches his head*).