stages of age/experiece

[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?

[Axioma]

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...

[hook]

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?

[Zackery]

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.

[Seytra]

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.

[smoak]

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.

[mbahleda]

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.

[Spiffy Fox]

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

[Soulless_Body]

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!

[Incenjucar]

Ageplay gets so blasted annoying when someone does it without some serious RP experience....

[Kixie]

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:

[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?

[Suno_Regin]

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.

[Kixie]

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.

[beekmaster]

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.