Character lifespan

[verden]

I think about odd things from time to time. The various roleplay vs. character development issues that have plagued PS in particular have always had an odd fascination for me. Without getting into a huge philosophical discussion about permanent character death and lack of it causing stagnation of social development in MMOs, lets just say that we embrace the concept and theoretically implement it.

We first have to determine, I think, an age scale for the characters. Since time does not pass currently, age could be interpreted as a relative number of trips through the DR. Say 0-99. 1 would be oldest. 99 would be a child. 0 is dead. During character creation, various levels could be manipulated to give a character anywhere from a neophyte youngling to an experienced old character. But the number of trips through DR before permanent death was invoked would be reduced accordingly.

So a player could make an extremely overpowered character, but that character would only have a small number of DR trips. The most powerful character that could be made, would only have one DR trip left. The next death would be permanent. It seems that this would lead to players creating characters that were in the top ten percent. A trick would be to create characters that were just powerful enough, without onlly having a single DR trip left.

Perhaps to discourage that, characters in the top ten, or five, or three percent should have duels enabled automatically. Perhaps the scaling should be changed, maybe it should be 0-999 for DR trips. Maybe its a terrible idea all together. And it would definitely need some sort of public graveyard that recorded the permanently dead, and perhaps their deeds. But that discussion is for another time.

Who knows?

[LigH]

As long as the "world time" is still rather inconsistent (somehow "stable" or "looping", more or less), it is hard to define any speed of aging, anyway.

[Taya]

As much as I think it's something well worth thinking about, I'm 100 percent against it due to a number of reasons.

1 - DR trips and age aren't really linked. It doesn't make sense based on the settings as far as I know. A single trip might kill a young person who just isn't experienced enough to handle it, or an older person might have a lifetime experience working with the dark way or be a follower of Dakkru and have had many reasons to go and spend a lot of time there, therefore being more able to navigate their way back out.
2 - Some characters NEED to go to the DR - either for training or for RP purposes.
3 - If you rewrite either of 1 or 2, you invalidate a lot of previous RPs.
4 - The point LigH raised.
5 - If we base age on DR trips, then there's going to be inconsistency based on how often a person plays (same issue if there was a direct age to time played ratio). Several lifetimes worth of game time to one player might pass whereas another person may only log in a few times in that period, or someone might take a break from the game to find they no longer have a reason to play because all the characters their character knew 'aged' and died true death.
6 - True death because a game glitch made me fall through the world x number of times?
7 - True death because I got stuck and /unstick didn't work while there was no GM to move me x number of times?
8 - There would be even fewer people willing to /die for RPs in the DR.
9 - If someone wants to RP as a certain age and to explore that age fully for their character, I feel they should have as long as they wish to do so.
10 - Someone might have spent a really long time planning and building up a long term RP, only to find it can never be finalised or resolved because some of the main players involved aged and died.
11 - Player base would likely suffer for it. Those who level to high levels probably aren't going to want to do that again and, as much as I support PS being a very RP orientated game, I don't think it's good to punish those who invested the time needed to level.
12 - I don't agree that a lack of forced perma-death causes stagnation. People running out of ideas and/or losing interest causes stagnation. Forced perma-death can even cause stagnation in and of itself if the result is that players feel less inclined to invest in a character because they only have x number of lives.

Finally - I make my character's story along with the help of all those I RP with. I want to choose when and if it's her time to die forever. As an RPer and a player I consider myself responsible enough to decide this for myself. If I permanently lost a character I have spent hundreds of hours developing and working with before I feel as though her story is done, I would be leaving PS behind me feeling disheartened, dissatisfied and very disappointed with the game.

(Sorry if this is on the long side or seems at all confrontational. It's not. It's simply an issue I feel quite strongly about. If when I joined PS I had seen that aging was a feature, I never would have joined. If it becomes one, then unless it's avoidable somehow, I believe I won't stay.)

[Cairn]

While I disagree with death being forced, I do think there needs to be some sort of 'time' implementation that is re-inforced ingame. For obvious reasons.

[Rigwyn]

This is a little tricky. Tying the mechanics to role play doesn't usually work out well. Recall the past debates about what is seen versus what the settings tell. Also, few, very few people stick around long enough for age to really matter that much.

If age was to be enforced though, I think I would be more inclined to somehow tie it to chronological time, but that too introduces its own problems both settings wise and mechanics wise.

What happens when people role play their now geriatric elf as if she was a teen because they don't want to be old because this is a fantasy world and getting old sucks? What happens when their friends age their characters the way that *they* see fit? Perhaps some think that growing old and wise is awesome?

[Mariana Xiechai]

As a (sort of) related topic, this is why I no longer play child characters. Why? Because if you want them to grow up in the world of Yliakum, there's a sort of unwritten expectation that as the child ages, the entire server would age. Realistically? That's just not going to happen. As far as most RP, they just ignore the age factor (as silly as that might be) or, further, they age their character according to the years they play. That way they're not playing as an immortal demigod, and the aging process is slow enough that they can enjoy the character without having it die in x amount of months because they got scraggly and old. At the same time, it becomes an issue because some people want to raise their character in the world, and RP their background. The only way I've wound around this personally is to develop a complex backstory and sort of insert the character at the point at which I'd like to RP their current personality and age.

To be honest, there's really no right answer to this one. But I'd have to say the idea of DR trips probably wouldn't work, quoting Taya on a lot of the reasons why.

[verden]

I don't agree that a lack of forced perma-death causes stagnation. People running out of ideas and/or losing interest causes stagnation. Forced perma-death can even cause stagnation in and of itself if the result is that players feel less inclined to invest in a character because they only have x number of lives.

And why do they run out of ideas and interest? Because there is no real risk, and no real reward. Don't be alarmed, precocious Taya, I am actually thinking about this for implementation in a different system. But this concept of risk and reward, I cannot escape it lately.

[Taya]

I know you think things through quite deeply Verden, which is why I took the time writing out a full response.

As for the stagnation issue... Depends on your definitions of risk and reward. I see forced perma-death as a pure negative with no reward. You did present the idea of being able to create more skilled characters at start up (a whole issue in itself I think) on the condition they'd have fewer 'lives' but I don't see this as rewarding. People already RP unleveled characters as though they are leveled and, as long as they play fairly, most RPers I ever encountered seem very happy to accept this. Levels just for the sake of having them doesn't feel like a reward by my thinking.

For me, risk and reward in the game is what happens as a result of my RPed actions, not the result of consequences forced on me by game mechanics. Will my character get in trouble for something? Will a secret be found out? Will the wrong person notice the wrong thing at the right moment to ruin all my character's hopes?

Stagnation is a danger when you run out of ideas for a character, but different people run out of ideas at different points. For some people it takes a day or two, for others it could take years and it happens for all sorts of reasons. Some people just get bored of either their character, the game or the people/plots they have become involved with on that character. Sometimes they RP themselves into a position where they are too safe and there's no longer anything realistic to oppose them and provide risk. But the important issue is that just because the obvious RP routes for a given character have dried up, it doesn't mean they won't open again due to events down the road. If you have nothing to do with a character, you should just RP that they have gone travelling for a bit, then they are not holding you back but you are also not losing them. They can return when it makes sense. In the meanwhile, there are alts. Knowing when it's right for you as an RPer to switch to an alt for a time can make all the difference. You can rest a character without killing them forever.

[And quick edit - show your face sometime and say hello - you are missed!]

[Illysia]

Hmm... Despite the fact that I dislike the revolving door DR, I have to agree with other people here. Definitely a pain to try and introduce true death into the mechanics. There is also the issue of varying race ages, diaboli in some references live only 30 to 40 years but you can't make new ones. And trying to tie mechanics to RP that closely does generally not go well... I would foresee a repeat of the introduction system.

I think, a time lockout and expansion of the DR, so that people could conceivably stay down there for awhile is probably the best bet. If players can get what they need there or there is something of interest down there then that should take care of the revolving door issue.

As for stagnation, I think creating guides for different character archetypes might help, so that people who run out of ideas can go and look for ideas that apply to their character, but aside from that, I don't know. Taya is right it usually comes from running out of ideas and that can happen at any point.

However, as a bit of an after thought, risk reward can scale down and be more effective I think. Disabling a character is probably more useful in that regard. Break a character's arm, then they have to use their off arm to fight. Make them sick an unable to get up the energy to do certain things, give them allergies to certain materials so that the must find alternate ones, and so on. Not all risk involves permanent loss or life changing events. Need for adaptation can provide new avenues for a character as well.

[novacadian]

One possible reward to a recognized time line could be the following proposal.

- Nova

[tman]

I don't see how passage of time would really work in a game like this.  I'm in college and really only have time to play in the summers, so my characters are on a lot during summer months and then don't get played for long periods of time.  I don't want to log back in and find that my character is an old guy now.  Or, equally strange, that he hasn't aged while offline but everyone he knew is super old.

I think the only way for it to really work in a game where player activity is so varied is not to force any character to age.  If a player wants to SLOWLY have their character grow up then I think everyone can accept that.  Sure it may create some logical inconsistencies, but I think its better than the alternative.

As for using the death realm as I timer, this makes no sense to me.  Some players play with a strict no-death mentality and would therefore never age, while others go to the death realm all the time for DW training/quests, or lagging and falling off a cliff, or whatever.  I don't see why there should be any connection between a characters age and DR trips.

Also I'm strongly opposed to permadeath being forced on anyone.  If this is implemented I would probably stop playing.  I'm not going to spend that much time developing a character, creating a backstory, doing quests, training, etc. if there's the possibility that I'll screw up and lose all of my progress forever.  It's just not worth my time.  I'll go do something else.

[Sadie]

   what tman said.