Aging and Dying

[Vaylgar]

I believe that characters should age and die based on their life expectancy, aka Elves depending on which race is 500-2000+ years. I think time should move on the server at an accelerated time frame but not excessively. maybe 1 year in game time = 5 years in game. As characters get older they start to lose stamina, gain wisdom and intelligence.
depending on race of course. I think characters should age.
I think there should be some things that cause unnatural aging or even the retardation of the aging process, maybe quests? maybe special finds? I think it should be maintained, also I think food and water should be vital to characters performance and health.
Dark elfs
Duregar (Dark Dwarves)
Vampires as part of the undead choice.
maybe even some sort of horde type of player character like a Cambion or something sub-human/demon
Nephalim would be nice
OK ill shut up

[Lachrymose]

Originally Posted by Vaylgar

I believe that characters should age and die based on their life expectancy, aka Elves depending on which race is 500-2000+ years. I think time should move on the server at an accelerated time frame but not excessively. maybe 1 year in game time = 5 years in game. As characters get older they start to lose stamina, gain wisdom and intelligence.
depending on race of course. I think characters should age.
I think there should be some things that cause unnatural aging or even the retardation of the aging process, maybe quests? maybe special finds? I think it should be maintained, also I think food and water should be vital to characters performance and health.
Dark elfs
Duregar (Dark Dwarves)
Vampires as part of the undead choice.
maybe even some sort of horde type of player character like a Cambion or something sub-human/demon
Nephalim would be nice
OK ill shut up

you'd get along very well with rhygar. although i think a 1 year in-game time = 5 years would make aging pointless if by "in-game time" you mean, time you've spent playing the game, not just days passed in the game regardless of whether you've been logged in or not. i had friends that played EQ for years and still didn't have quite 1 full year of in-game playtime.

anyways, i've heard this idea several times (mostly from rhygar ) and i just can't say i like the idea very much, although i do agree that eating/drinking should be important for preventing temporary stat loss, fatigue, etc.

[Rhygar]

Yes? Did someone say my name? O my! Another aging and real death thread. Joy.

Lachrymose is right, I'm very keen for something like that. It's a tricky thing as to what the ratio between virtual time and real time should be.

Everything I write below is based on the assumption that time passes even when you are off line. You can't have it any other way. Otherwise you have huge age discrepancies between characters which would undo the most important benefit; realism.

Sorry, but this is a long post...

Factors influencing length of average life span;
(1) The main concern for many people are that they want character progression.
It's important that the average life span of a character is long enough to give that sense of progression, but short enough that you can experience the time passing in the game.
To bind your various characters together you do need some sort of inheritance system whereby you can carry over skills, money etc. A number of people have pointed out that this defeats the purpose of real death as you are basically playing the same character but with a different face and name. To some extent this is true, but so what? Now you get the benefit of the world changing. The most important benefit is mentioned below.

(2) They don't want to lose that progression through permanent death.
This is a difficult concern to dispel. Yes you will lose that individual. However, I feel a greater sense of progression can be created by moving to a new generation and seeing the virtual world changing.
If you intend to enable players to assume many of the traditional NPC roles (I think this is incredible important to realize the potential of real death), such as tavern keepers, merchants, quest givers, rulers the world will truly come alive. The characters that fulfill those roles will change over time and give a real sense of time passing.

(3) Too many characters will cause individuals to lose their value.
I definitely agree with those that say they do not want to be constantly creating new characters. That would be tedious. However, no one plays a game forever and when you change to a new game that old character does, for all practical purposes, die.
How long does the average player play a game? I don't know. But for arguments sake let's say the game is at its most popular for 5 years before newer games overtake it.
You as a hardcore fan play that game all the five years with some intermittent breaks of a few months (see point (4)). That is 60 months. Let's say you don't want more than 6 - 8 characters during that time. Average life span between 8 and 10 months?

(4) Work, study, travel and other issues force players to break-off from the game from time to time.
You cannot of course accommodate every situation, but it would be reasonable to assume everyone will go through periods of a month or two
when they just can't play. So you want to a life span to be long enough to overcome that.
Go back to point (3) and I think a life span of 8 to 10 months is quite sufficient.

Most important benefit;
There are a number of benefits but I want to mentioned the most important; real motivation for conflict.
Up to now quests were the motivation, but as we all know that has become old hat pretty quickly. Racial differences and gaming philosophy (PK vs anti-PK) feel contrived.
In life we have certain needs which drive our actions. Food, shelter, companionship and the admiration of your peers. This obviously differs from person to person but you get my drift. Game mechanics in a sandbox should operate in such a way that these motivations come to the fore.
I agree with Vaylgar that you should be able to influence your life span. Satisfying those needs should make you live longer and failing in that should make you die sooner.
This will give much more reason for individuals and groups to fight over the control of resources which will give you the means to live longer.
Why are there a million and one guilds in all these games? Because every idiot and his dog thinks he is a leader. If you make player organization essential for survival people will follow effective leaders who can provide the needed resources. And as Traceur wants it will make player co-operation very important.
I'm not proposing that the game mechanics should be made in favour of large guilds. They can be small, but effective. Small groupings (crafting guilds for example) will most probably be working alongside larger empire-type groups - that's the case already.

Am I saying all this should be in MO. No. It obviously will not be. This is just an idea for further progression in the genre.

There are so many other things I should mention as well, but this post is so long already...

[Lachrymose]

hahaha, oh wow. vaylgar, what have you done...?

[Lialith]

Characters vs Avatars...

I think that statement summons my biggest concern up.

Very, very few player can really tell the difference... Most of them just mix them up or arent consequent enough to draw the line between those two concepts.

And well, only those players who really understand the concept of an character contrary to that of avatars and do appreciate them, do like the idea of ageing characters.

so as many avatars you have out there, even pretending they are characters, as many players you have, who dont want their chars to age. ^^

and exactly thats my point. the sad fact is: there are just too many players who do not want to have characters, they do want to have avatars wich they can convert in a certain extend into characters whenever it is convenient for them. (i myself am such a person ^^)

i do not want to be forced into totally realistic rolleplaying 24/7, i do not want to have a tamagotschi effect, not even on an hardcore roleplaying persistent world, although or maby actually because i emphasise realistic and profound roleplaying.

[Rhygar]

Originally Posted by Lialith

i do not want to be forced into totally realistic rolleplaying 24/7, i do not want to have a tamagotschi effect, not even on an hardcore roleplaying persistent world, although or maby actually because i emphasise realistic and profound roleplaying.

I definitely will allow that what I would like would make it a somewhat different type of game. I always bring up real-time versus turn-based strategy games... some people just prefer one to the other. Both are viable though.

We already know some people don't want it and that's fine. Instead I'd like to hear from people what they think we could add to this idea to improve it. In other words let's assume we agree that we would like to see this type of system implemented.

That is not specifically directed at you Lialith, your comment is fair. You just don't like to lose your character. Cool with me. Unfortunately these threads often morph into a discussion why some like the idea and others not, which according to me is a bit off topic. Like I said we all know about those differences in preference already.

So let's rather focus on what would be needed to make such a system playable...

[Itza]

I used to play a MUD where you started young, grew old, and at elder age your stats deteriorated. However, growing old was not the end of the progression, as there was a spell held by high level healers that could reincarnate you to a new body. You just had to die and get reincarnated, and you could also change your race there, and begin everything anew. You kept your old name though, and your progress wasn't really lost if you reincarnated, as even though you started back at young age and level, you then gained experience at higher rate until you met the point where you had reincarnated. Kind of remembering your previous life. It was an interesting take on single character per server and aging system.