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 : 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]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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