PlaneShift

Gameplay => Wish list => Topic started by: hook on May 18, 2003, 12:25:39 pm

Title: stages of age/experiece
Post by: hook on May 18, 2003, 12:25:39 pm
what if noobies (let say until they gain a certain \"level of experiece\") are children, but later on they become adults
...maybe there would be more stages like:
-child
-adolescens
-adult
-elder
....it wouldn\'t change your abilites (an elder could still be strong!), it would just show your level of abilites and \"experience\" on the outside ...i\'d REALLY enjoy that
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Post by: Axioma on May 18, 2003, 12:34:02 pm
If doing this in a way which would be acceptable (performance, coding, time...) is be possible (i don\'t know, because i have no experience in programming whatsoever) DO IT. This is about the best idea I\'ve found on these boards. DEVS OVER HERE  !!! THIS IS WHERE THE GOOD IDEA IS !!!

No seriously. I think that it is wondeful. But as said before, i don\'t know if it\'s possible to actually implement this in a game. Would someone with some experience in coding, programming explain to me if this is possible ? In the mean time i\'l keep my fingers crossed it is.

What levels would you put in the transitions between age ? so like how many levels would you have to increase to become an adolescent from a child ?

Oh, and just in case you didn\'t notice: i love your idea ^_^
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Post by: elminster on May 18, 2003, 01:11:35 pm
Well, actually I think the character should be a bit more customizable, that\'s all. I am sure this will be done - the devs\' time is limited...
The age should only affect your hair or face. Not your outfit. Maybe your height. But I think appearance, clothes are more important. I would like to see myself with a big red hat, red cape, white hair and long white beard - definitely not how I look now :)

Actually, it would be easy for the human race, but think about the others too - some of them are not even ready at all!

--
Greetings,
E.
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Post by: Fanomatic2000 on May 18, 2003, 01:12:24 pm
Well, when talking about programming anything is possible. It\'s only a matter of time and how experienced you are.
The idea about aging shouldn\'t be too har to do (well, it\'s not harder than make clothes, armor or weapons visible). It\'s just that your character changes appearance when you reach a certain level/gain a certain amount of xp. But how far will you go with the idea?
You could have four transitions or you could have one-hundred, it\'s just that one-hundred transitions would take more time to create.
Black & White used a good aging-system. Your people growed, became older, got diseases (which you could heal) and so on...
Your creature (every god has a creature) grew too and became bigger and his apperance changed in real time (which would be wonderful to see in this game as well).
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Post by: Axioma on May 18, 2003, 01:53:55 pm
yep, thx a lot for the clarification on the coding side of things. Well, i don\'t think more than 4 transitions between ages should be necessary. What does the rest think ? Do this or don\'t ? (i\'ll give i hint it starts with a d)
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Post by: killercow on May 18, 2003, 02:50:40 pm
Well it would be good if you also picked up scars and \'battlewounds\' which would also bring out your experience, and yes it would give you tales to tell.

But one thing...it shouldn\'t be too reliant on just experience it should have to do more on how long you have been in the planeshift world. Just because you have faught thousands of monsters doesn\'t mean your an old man. You could still be an adolescent whos just gone out and put a lot of time into battling the monsters of the beyond but this would not effect how old u r.
It would be interesting to see if you could program in variables such as if you focus alot more on magic, you remain more \'fragile\' and when older more frail. But if you were the hand-to-hand type well you would be a big \'lumberjack\' of a an oldie where your flabby skin would bulge with powerful muscles.  :D
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Post by: beza1e1 on May 18, 2003, 03:05:27 pm
This could prevent players from becoming too experienced/high leveled ... the allmighty wizard, who has killed nearly every dragon and burns an army down in seconds ... just gets old, rusty and can only see 10 feets. After a time he may manage to become such a necromant, that he lives forever, but he is only strong enough to carry his robe.
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Post by: hook on May 18, 2003, 03:06:58 pm
Quote
Originally posted by killercow
Well it would be good if you also picked up scars and \'battlewounds\' which would also bring out your experience, and yes it would give you tales to tell.

But one thing...it shouldn\'t be too reliant on just experience it should have to do more on how long you have been in the planeshift world. Just because you have faught thousands of monsters doesn\'t mean your an old man. You could still be an adolescent whos just gone out and put a lot of time into battling the monsters of the beyond but this would not effect how old u r.
It would be interesting to see if you could program in variables such as if you focus alot more on magic, you remain more \'fragile\' and when older more frail. But if you were the hand-to-hand type well you would be a big \'lumberjack\' of a an oldie where your flabby skin would bulge with powerful muscles.  :D


thought of that too, but that\'d be harder to implement IMHO ...there are two \"aging\" processed in PS ...one is counted from the day you joined (that\'s simple) and the other from the time you spent playing (harder to implement, and has some leaks) ...that\'s why i decided the \"experience\" factor ...when you gather enough skill levels (put together) you become older

i just don\'t like the \"fragile\" bit ...i mean, you\'ll play PS for a loooooong time, until then you\'d be so fragile that although you\'d be very skilled and experienced a simple noob would kill you ...
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Post by: Axioma on May 18, 2003, 03:55:02 pm
Yeah, that would be quite a bummer. Hook what are the leaks you talked about in the aging sysytem, counting only the time you are logged in ? Although it may be harder to implement, it seems much more realistic, no ?

I think it may be possible to make your character look sturdier or thinner according to the strength modifier, but as said, if you gain disadvantages for having played PS for too long, who would even want to play a game like that ?

And what about the aging steps themself ? is everyone ok with the four aging stages hook proposed ?
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Post by: explorer on May 18, 2003, 07:05:47 pm
Yeah, becoming more fragile is a negative for me. That would mean more experienced players would end up making new character every time your old character became weak. So\'d I\'d like to if they just became stronger as they got older. Not uber stronger, but like .004 of a streghth point.
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Post by: hook on May 18, 2003, 07:20:58 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Axioma
Hook what are the leaks you talked about in the aging sysytem, counting only the time you are logged in ? Although it may be harder to implement, it seems much more realistic, no ?


you\'re probably right ...the online time would be ok :]
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Post by: beza1e1 on May 18, 2003, 07:21:14 pm
Hm i don\'t wanted it to be that strong. I only thought the mighty experienced player should be dampened little. The old Wizard would still be powerful. It is just about proportionality.
If he gets very very wise, why not loosing a little strength?
But you\'re right, it would be disappointing if your lovely, powered up super-hero just dies of age ...

There should be a mighty monster called \"Nobody\", then you can end your life and print on your grave \"Nobody killed him\" :-P
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Post by: Badakai on May 19, 2003, 12:29:04 am
I think it\'s a wonderful idea. That way I could play hide and seek without feeling ashamed \'cause I\'m an adult :D

But seriously. The four stages are just fine. And of course the diversity would be great. All those Enkidukai\'s are just getting a bit... the same... ;)
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Post by: Fanomatic2000 on May 19, 2003, 08:37:41 am
Have you ever played a game called \"Mordor II\"?
In Mordor you aged all the time. You started at the age of 16, and then grew until you died (how long you could live varied depending on what race you choosed to be ie. Human  80-100 years   Elf -  1000 years (or if they were immortal) and so on...
When you grew too old you died, but you could still ressurect. You could also find youth-potions which made you younger.
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Post by: hook on May 19, 2003, 11:34:39 am
Quote
Originally posted by Fanomatic2000
Have you ever played a game called \"Mordor II\"?
In Mordor you aged all the time. You started at the age of 16, and then grew until you died (how long you could live varied depending on what race you choosed to be ie. Human  80-100 years   Elf -  1000 years (or if they were immortal) and so on...
When you grew too old you died, but you could still ressurect. You could also find youth-potions which made you younger.


i dunno ...i don\'t like that concept ...i think that a player\'s \"age\" should really show his skills and wisdom ...that was my idea of the \"ageing\" in PS
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Post by: Thynett on May 19, 2003, 11:41:14 am
Yep I do love the idea of making time REALY inflence your character...

About stats evolution I don\'t know yet how it should be implemented, so I won\'t discuss it...

Now about the evolution of your character...

Let\'s say we have those 4 steps : child, adolescens, adult and elder. Devs can also for each character make 3 sizes : tall, medium and small. This last think must be easy to do, since  the 3 of them would have the same proportions, the same stats etc... Tall characters would be 110% as tall as a \"medium\" character, and small ones would be 90%.

The, at the creation of your character, you chose :
- race
- sex
- age
- size.

The evolution is such as described higher in this thread : 4 steps. But on top of that, your character would grow up (just need to change the size), then there would be much more stages without needing to draw hundreds of new character.
A \"small\" child would end up his life as a \"small elder\".




Now about resurection it could be a great idea :) you resurect into a baby, and your new stats would depend on what you were before. If you were very strong you would begin a little stronger than a \"normal\" kid.
(In Ryzom the system works about kids : when people make children, the stats of the children depend on the stats of the parents (I\'m waiting for the beta to begin to learn more about it ;) ) )
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Post by: hook on May 19, 2003, 12:41:53 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Thynett
The, at the creation of your character, you chose :
- race
- sex
- age
- size.

The evolution is such as described higher in this thread : 4 steps. But on top of that, your character would grow up (just need to change the size), then there would be much more stages without needing to draw hundreds of new character.
A \"small\" child would end up his life as a \"small elder\".


the size idea seems nice ...but i don\'t like that age option at the char creation :( ...i thought that noobies would be children, and very experienced players would be elders ...this would be a real help in the game ...you could hire noobies, you could ask an elder player how to get to some place...

i think that the \"age\" should depend on your staying in PS ...and not your idea how old you feel :)

death and resurection? ...well look at it this way: you\'ve played your character for 5 years now (VERY possible in PS!!!) and then you\'d die of age as a rich very wise alchemist that lives in his own castle, married to an ex-assasin girl ....and then you die, BUT don\'t worry you can still resurect and be born again with 5 tiras more in your bag and some limited alchemie skills :] ...well, i wouldn\'t want that to happen to me :]
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Post by: beza1e1 on May 19, 2003, 12:42:06 pm
Two things i don\'t like about this system

I have to start as a kid?

Sorry, currently there are no babys, please try character generation another time would be a annoying message. Or how does this work in Ryzom
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Post by: Thynett on May 19, 2003, 01:28:38 pm
Quote
from hook
i thought that noobies would be children, and very experienced players would be elders


Well to my mind you would choose to begin as a kid. Why ? For the very reason that some would get bored playing a kid.
For my looooooooong experience of RP children (I\'ve been playing kids on T4C for 1 year and a half) RPing as a kid isn\'t that easy. Furthermore, RPing as an ORIGINAL kid is even harder. Most of the time I saw carricatures of children. And those noobs playing kids (I mean people making a bandy-legged child RP) are even more boring to hear than an \"adult noob\".

RP is playing the character you WANT to play, it isn\'t growing up your child to make it strong and intelligent like a tamagochi.

To sum up :
- Some don\'t want to play kids
- I don\'t want to see hundreds of boring kids running everywhere, cause they would destroy the RP of people who REALY want to play kids.
Then you would chose to play a kid when you create your character, but EVERYONE would sufer from time.


Quote
from beza1e1 :
Sorry, currently there are no babys, please try character generation another time would be a annoying message.


if you wanna play a kid and you have no parents yet, play an orphan ;) Call him \"An abandonned child\", and wait for someone to adopt you... Then you delete your character and create a new one, with the name that your new parents gave you :) or you can directely create with the name you have, and say that your baby has a medal with his name written on it... So many possibilities !


Quote
from killercow :
it shouldn\'t be too reliant on just experience it should have to do more on how long you have been in the planeshift world.


You said all that was to be said.

Age has nothing to do with XP. Do athletes get older because they train 8 hours a day ? Of course no, it would even be the opposite. Then getting older everytime you would get 100 XP would be ridiculous. And what about the guy that remains in town to chat around ? He would never become a granpa ?

Then we have only one possibilities : age increases depending on the time since you create your character (then 1 hours IRL = 1 day for your character for example. Then 2 weeks IRL = 1 year for your character)



As a matter of fact, Planeshift is based on a PERSISTANT world, which means that the worls keeps evolving when you\'re not logged in. Then your character is still alive even when you\'re not logged in, he is just \"away\". Then getting older depending on the time you\'ve been logged in is totally opposite to the system of a persistant world itself.


To sum up,
age must only depend on the date of creation of your account, not on XP neither on time playing.





Now what if you don\'t want your character to die ? Well there could be some potions which would make you live longer, some magics, and those are to be discussed :)

(I\'ll go back on the children/regeneration system later on but I\'ve no more time at the moment :) )
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Post by: hook on May 19, 2003, 02:03:00 pm
well i actually DID think that you would begin as a \"child\" ...that would solve quite some problems (read topics on charity and noobie help, etc.) ...plus you wouldn\'t need to actually play being a child, nor wait that someone gives birth to you, and actually the step from a child (which i imagined older then 13!!) to adolescens (older then 18 or maybe even 16) wouldn\'t  be that long
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Post by: Thynett on May 19, 2003, 04:05:05 pm
To my mind the player must be free when he creates his character to choose the age he wants.

And that would solve ALL problems ;)
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Post by: Axioma on May 19, 2003, 04:48:46 pm
True, absolute freedom is nice. But playing as a baby ? I can\'t imagine even being able to do anything at all. You have to learn how to walk, eat, etc... If there\'s anyone who wants to do that, be my guest. I just don\'t think it\'s anything I would do. Like Hook said, i imagined the children at LEAST 13+

I think the system of the ever evolving world of PS is good, meaning your char ages from the time you created your acount.

Furthermore, aging on XP is indeed a little strange (cfr the examples Thynett as given). But i do think that some of your stats should have a reflection on your look. That would help players a lot, even adding a mechanism which is used in the real world all the time. Judging on appearances. Would be nice to have in the game.
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Post by: Thynett on May 19, 2003, 09:01:34 pm
Quote
But playing as a baby ? I can\'t imagine even being able to do anything at all. You have to learn how to walk, eat, etc... If there\'s anyone who wants to do that, be my guest.


Well it\'s all a matter of personnal tastes and temper. Mybe some are still kids even at 20 years old, and they find there a good way to express themselves :p

Believe me, there will be people that will enjoy it (at least I will :p), it would be lovely to seehlidren running all over streets...


Quote
But i do think that some of your stats should have a reflection on your look.


First, strength would develop your muscles. But how do agility, charisma or will change your look ? Furthermore, muscle mass isn\'t relevant of the strength of someone
To finish with, this seems to be to be something complicated to code, since it would deeply modify the way characters are modelised.

That is why your idea was a good one, but it does not seem to be a reasonable one.


There was something proposed here (http://planeshift.oodlz.com/wbboard/thread.php?threadid=2640&boardid=11&sid=b5898dfb916211d5b40e5dc74fcbdec7),  not very far from it, but with only short-term effects : clothes would get ripped and dirty when walking/fighting. And you would need to sew or wash them...


===============================================================================

Now how to make your tiny character evolve ? Very easy ! Let\'s say 1 hour IRL = 1 day in game. Then you have to know the life expectancy of your spicie (human=60, elf=500, kran=1000, enkidukai=50, klyros=40...), and then you have an idea about when your character will die.
(note that 1 hour IRL = 1 day in game means you have 1 year in game in 15 days IRL, or 24 years in game in 1 year IRL, the  you would have time before your character dies)
A random dice roll at the creation of the character can also decide at what age your character will die (between 45 and 100 years old for a human for instance, with a wide majority \"naturally\" dieing at the ge of 55-65)

If you want to keep a young healthy character, or if you want to remain a child forever, you can use potions. Those potions, to my eyes, sould be EXTREMELY hard to prepare (the quest of imortality is supposed to be the ultimate quest of mankind), and should have dangerous drawbacks : getting addicted, poisonned, losing stats etc... (but this is closer from poisonning than from our current subject :p)


=================================================================================

What if your character dies ?

Here\'s just a proposal : he becomes a ghost. And he can choose to reincarnate into a new body. For this, at the creation of his new character, he has the list of his dead characters, he chooses one and he presses a \"reincarnation\" button. He is the FORCED to be a baby (he must find an adoption family before he dies, otherwise he\'ll be orphan). The new character gets higher stats than a normal character, this depending on  the stats of your previous character.

And if you don\'t want to play a baby, you\'ll have to use a \"fast growing potion\" that will accelerate your growth, so that player who don\'t want to play children don\'t get bored by it.

=================================================================================

You talked about ghosts ?

Just a few early ideas :

- ghost can only be seen by and talk to other ghosts, a few monsters and mediums (why not a special skill \"talking to ghosts\" ?)

- why not even create a parallel world for ghosts ?

However these ideas about ghosts aren\'t  essential yet at this early stage of the game, but one can keep thinking about them... (maybe there are already threads about it, and if there\'s not, one should create another thread, with keeping in mind that this idea will very probably be totally dropped later on)
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Post by: Ravencrowe on May 23, 2003, 06:24:55 am
Having different ages is a great idea, it would certainly make the world more realistic.  I find that a lot of games just have a bunch of full-grown adults walking around, where is the variety?  Having low-level characters start at about 13 and then high-level characters seeming to be 50 or 100(human) depending on the type of character (if they were a warrior type, 50, if wizard type, 100) would be a great way to display a character\'s skills.

However, dying of old age - terrible.  Nice thought to limit the uber-ness of a character, but I don\'t want to become a really powerful guy and then suddenly I can\'t use my super skills just because I might die.  There should be an age-and-skill-cap, but no death from it...
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Post by: paxx on May 23, 2003, 09:04:50 am
Cool, so as I become the ultimate master swordsman I die of old age?
 No, it has been discussed and no aging will not be part of Planeshift?it might be in the story line, but it won?t be in the characters. Then again?one day someone can wake up and say we need this?but as of right now No.
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Post by: kyp14 on May 23, 2003, 09:38:05 am
well i guess dats the final word I saw this thread a bit late oh well
Title: Forcing age upon us
Post by: Havena on May 23, 2003, 10:03:02 am
As a Dermorian of 977 years of age, I must say I would be extrememly hesitant to enter these realms as I have, if childhood was forced upon me.

Having any kind of system where all start out young and our age changes in real-time, would greatly cull players\' ability to create in-depth character histories.

It would also dimish appeal to those who in truth are of the older generation of players. They would be unable to enter the game roleplaying a character who is more familar to them (enabling better portrayal) and closer to their heart.
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Post by: hook on May 23, 2003, 10:51:03 am
Quote
Originally posted by paxx
Cool, so as I become the ultimate master swordsman I die of old age?
 No, it has been discussed and no aging will not be part of Planeshift?it might be in the story line, but it won?t be in the characters. Then again?one day someone can wake up and say we need this?but as of right now No.


this thread maybe could have gone a bit too far ...but what about the initial idea? isn\'t that one ok?
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Post by: Thynett on May 23, 2003, 04:25:21 pm
And first of all, will some children be designed ? Or will we be forced to live in a boring serious adult world ?

(I don\'t care playing a child for years, I just want to see children, for all the reasons I gave before :D )
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Post by: cmhitman on May 23, 2003, 04:51:19 pm
I think female characters should have a chance of getting pregnant if they rp a little too much (wink-wink)
then, a character that has choosen to be born in as a child will be placed with her in 9 game months.
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Post by: cmhitman on May 23, 2003, 04:53:04 pm
hook...why are you always trying to clamp down on threads ??
you think you have a god given talent to foresee when a thread has \"gone too far\" or what?
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Post by: Axioma on May 23, 2003, 06:40:04 pm
Oh, be nice for each other ^_^. Too bad though we have to hear like this that aging will be no part of the game period. Bit disappointing, but at least we got an honest reaction...
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Post by: hook on May 23, 2003, 10:30:14 pm
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Originally posted by cmhitman
hook...why are you always trying to clamp down on threads ??
you think you have a god given talent to foresee when a thread has \"gone too far\" or what?


happy now?
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Post by: Zackery on June 25, 2004, 01:56:22 am
Well I think when they are about to die you will battle the monster of death(Of course it will kill you though) and be sent to the under world where you will serve the undead army.
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Post by: Seytra on June 25, 2004, 04:47:25 am
I strongly feel that age is a bad way to represent experience. After all, it realistically does have _nothing_ to do with it.
Furthermore, I dislike the idea of aging being forced upon me, especially if it were independant on my actual online time. It would really s*ck if I go on holoday and my char died of old age during that time, or lost stats or even changed them.

I would love age to be a choice, and that choice would only change your appeareance. This way, of course, you could have the child with uber strength, but what the heck, why not. OK, changing it arbitrarily might be abused for tactical purposes (after all, there are real-life reactions in any of us so exploiting these would be bad), so maybe it should just be left out.
Also, realistically, height would be more important, but then you\'d need to start making your armor fit. If I grab a enki child\'s armor and I\'m actually a big adult Kran, it\'d be hard to wear it...

Whatever, I believe that at some point the realism needs to stop, because otherwise it\'ll be too tedious to have fun in the game. Just like the game time is way faster than real-time, other things must be left out or changed.
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Post by: smoak on June 26, 2004, 04:07:08 pm
i think the option of ages would be good but having your character spontaneously die  dosent sound that great.

maybe the more you play you could have the option of aging your character and then you could chose to have it die and be reborn.
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Post by: mbahleda on June 26, 2004, 08:47:49 pm
I don\'t really like this idea because I don\'t see how it could work in a MMORPG. It is great for a single player RPG though.
 
  The thing that is wrong with this idea is that everyone would start off as kids. At first there would be thousands of kids running around without any adults. To solve this, maybe characters would age fast. But, if characters aged rapidly, then before too long there would be a much greater number of elders than children. If characters age slowly, then there would probably be many more children, especially at first if this idea is implemented into the game. Also, after a long time, wouldn\'t as character have to die of old age?

  This sounds like an appealing idea, but in reality it will probably never work.
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Post by: Spiffy Fox on March 12, 2005, 12:42:05 am
I\'ve played games where your charactor/pets died from old age. I hated it.
Time would be hard to judge properly, in-game, and ages would be odd, as posted before, too many kids, or too many elders.
Time may move too fast, and you die off before you can really get started, or it moves too slow, and you\'re still a kid when you\'re slaying stone giants.
I\'ve seen a sad attempt at role-play of a little kid running around slaying hordes of monsters in another game.

A nice idea for realism, but death from old age, again, I find icky to have in games :P
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Post by: Soulless_Body on March 12, 2005, 04:45:00 am
Man that is the best idea EVER. That would be so cool. When ur a noob ur a lil kid but when ur pro your old. They should put that in!

It would be cool if they did it like they did in FABLE.

GREAT idea!
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Post by: Incenjucar on March 12, 2005, 04:55:36 am
Ageplay gets so blasted annoying when someone does it without some serious RP experience....
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Post by: Kixie on March 12, 2005, 05:50:50 am
Ok this thread was dead for a reason. The bottom line: You shouldn\'t grow for 3 days, then stop for no apparent reason, or the alternative of dying. You\'d have to start a new character every 2 seconds. This isn\'t a boardgame of life people, its a roleplaying game where you play your specific role. You can\'t carry out a role if he magically defies time all of a sudden, or drops dead everytime you get him to a nice level. :rolleyes:
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Post by: Soulless_Body on March 12, 2005, 01:38:00 pm
Who said you have to die? All I want is that you start as a kid then a teen then an adult and Old Man. lvl 1-25 kid, lvl 25-40 teen, lvl 40-100 adult so you are not an old man till lvl 100. Then it stops ageing at an old man. And plus it?s only a game SO you do NOT have to die of old age when you get old?


And if he dose not age AT ALL then he is defying age EVEY DAY! So I do not see your point?


_____________________________________________
And thats why i did not get the sims-2 when it came out. cuz whats the point of makeing and getting this guys skills and every thing up THEN you die of old age?
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Post by: Suno_Regin on March 14, 2005, 01:18:53 am
Think of it this way, when you turn into an elder you will die and go to the death realm due to old age, then when you come back you would die again because you would just be brought back at the age where you would die, that would cause extreme lag and character abandonation, plus I don\'t think girls would like have \"Old Hags\" as characters.
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Post by: Kixie on March 14, 2005, 01:38:01 am
Quote
Originally posted by Soulless_Body
Who said you have to die? All I want is that you start as a kid then a teen then an adult and Old Man. lvl 1-25 kid, lvl 25-40 teen, lvl 40-100 adult so you are not an old man till lvl 100. Then it stops ageing at an old man. And plus it?s only a game SO you do NOT have to die of old age when you get old?


And if he dose not age AT ALL then he is defying age EVEY DAY! So I do not see your point?


_____________________________________________
And thats why i did not get the sims-2 when it came out. cuz whats the point of makeing and getting this guys skills and every thing up THEN you die of old age?


The point is the only plus side to aging would be roleplaying. Nothing more. If you want skills to deteriorate as he ages, fine. But your describing physical appearence through aging. All this does is make cosmetic changes as you progress through the game. But what happens when someone reaches x level and appears as an old man? What if he plays for 2 more years on this MMO and is shown as an old man for a far longer period than he did when he was a low level and was progressing through age normally. It throws off the whole roleplaying this feature gives.

It has too many problems. Also, it creates an imbalance in time which ruins roleplaying. Your playing for 2 hours a day (maybe a bit more or less). Your character is aging in about 24 hours of game time to an age which is much futher than 24 hours. We are playing characters. We interact in real time. Why can\'t we age in real time? Let\'s be realistic and make it obvious that planeshift is only going to have a shelflife a bit further than normal mmos because it is open source. But the fact is that it will be 4-5 years tops. In 5 years, it isn\'t right when your character seems like he\'s 90 and in cryostasis.

The aging has too many problems. You stay at a certain age longer than others, it ruins RP. The game playing in real time. We all interact on the same time frame. These issues make aging a bad design.
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Post by: beekmaster on August 10, 2005, 12:41:20 pm
just a thought, but if you used level taly\'s as an age reference you would-

1- not have people dying of old age because (I assume) it gets harder to level once you reach the higher levels, and because once you reach the top age group you could just stay that way

2- reflect the experience and skill of the CHARACTER, not the ammount of time spent in game.  

3- Differenciate newbies from devs/mods/knolegable people.  If a guy comes up to you with gray-ing hair and a long beard, you know that he has exp and can answer your questions (unlike, say, a bunch of children killing rats in the sewers).

4- set up a subconcious awareness of the superiority of more skilled players (in an RP sense).  Adults (vets) will teach the children (newbies), who in return honor and revere them (or listen to rock music and crash the family car).  and when the old mage in the crooked blue hat walks into town, everyone knows it\'s someone who is filled with wisdom and knowledge.

you could also give the person a choice to age past adult or not (most people would rather look manly and buff than like a wise old sage)

sorry if Im treading over previously mentioned ideas.  I hate zombie threads as much as the rest of us, but I believe this idea has more merit than it has been acreditted with.
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Post by: hramrach on August 10, 2005, 05:14:32 pm
I guess the age should not be something that distinguishes \"noobs\" from \"non-noobs\".
If you need advice how to play the game or control your character, there is the /advice command (or whatever it is called). Maybe it should be more advertised?
If you want to ask how to get somewhere or similar, just try. A \"noob\" might have accidentally gone  there as the first thing they did in-game while an experienced player might have accidentally never visited the place you want to know about.

And after all, you can play a character that lived in his home village for 60 years, and then went to a city (for wahever reason) that is strange and unfamiliar to him.

So I think that the different chracter skins should also look of different age. That way you can choose age for your character.

Many problems of forcing all new characters to be childern and in-game aging were already mentioned.
Maybe you could have the option to age your character manually when you see fit, and buy youth potions as well.
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Post by: Neryam on August 10, 2005, 06:09:42 pm
Hey how about anti-age potions?? As you age (slowly) you can drink some potions and become young again.. :P
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Post by: Externals on August 10, 2005, 07:57:20 pm
Yes but then everyones goal would be to find these already rare anti-aging potions which would then make no sense because every1 would be getting younger then older and vice-versa. Altough, when i started to read this thread, i was real impressed with this idea.. it shouldnt just be tossed out.
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Post by: Kura on August 15, 2005, 08:44:13 am
Quote
Originally posted by Soulless_Body
Who said you have to die? All I want is that you start as a kid then a teen then an adult and Old Man. lvl 1-25 kid, lvl 25-40 teen, lvl 40-100 adult so you are not an old man till lvl 100. Then it stops ageing at an old man. And plus it?s only a game SO you do NOT have to die of old age when you get old?

you should know by now there arent lvls...plus anyway a lvl 100 character should be extremely strong. with magic some tree-huggin old geezer could be, but i would think he\'d be lacking in the physical strength department.

yeah sure it could happen somehow but sounds kinda lame IMO...