Aging

[Falzaek]

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?

[Karyuu]

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

[DaveG]

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.

[Falzaek]

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

[Karyuu]

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 ;)

[Falzaek]

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.

[goland]

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.

[Shadowcast]

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.

[Hellios]

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.

[zanzibar]

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.

[Falzaek]

@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.

[DaveG]

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)

[zanzibar]

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

[Falzaek]

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.

[zanzibar]

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.