Character aging

[Dread_Knight]

Will characters age? Ever so slightly, of course, nothing drastic. But maybe every month, a gray hair or so.

Obviously there would be different gradiants for the different races, ie, humans age faster than elves, but they all age.

But, whether or not they do, do you think it's a good idea? Personally, I think it would only work if there's a permadeath option, because otherwise, you'll just look older and older, but never actually die, so eventually you might end up as a cricket or something.

[DragonsFury]

I can see it now in the local village notice board

***Congrats to DragonsFury who is 100 years old today and still hunting lighties with his walking stick of doom***

Yeah I think chars will age everynow and then. If they give an option for Permadeath then cool (You can accept it or not) there's another MMO called RoT that have chars that age and permadeath to. Way they got it going is after 500 hours your char is classed as aged then die's. Only way to survive is through your child (Many ways to get one but this aint SexEd so lets move along) when your main char is killed via perma death you can A) Create a new char B) Keep playing through your child. But yeah I think char ageing should exist if the player wants it, might be cool.

[Dread_Knight]

Walking stick of Chaos you mean ;)

I know that marriage will be a part of the game...I wonder if they'll include children chars, especially because you're supposed to have a family surname anyway...

But you agree that aging would only be viable if you have permadeath?

[DragonsFury]

Yeah. Ageing shoudl only be possible with a PermaDeath feature. Cause if you live on trough your kids they could have slight advantages such as being able to learn whatever skills you had at a faster rate etc etc etc. If the ability to decide Race and Gender were possible then good idea. So if a Half-Orc and human mate the sex/race can be decided in advance. SO if your human but wanted to change to Orc then you could. But you'd have to mate with a member of the race you wanted to change to. I mean could you see a Human/Orc couple having a Dwarf...Someone's been bad!

[DragonsFury]

Yeah Walking Stick Of Chaos sounds better. I would be lethal with it, any lightie who gets in my way gets a crack upside the head lol. And if marriage is part of the game cool. Would be pointless for me though, the wife would divorce me inside of a week lol.

[Dread_Knight]

Then get HER to play too!

But yeah...of all the games I've ever played that have had marriage, only the weirdest and most socially-deprived ever got married, unless they were married in RL.

**Disclaimer**

This is just what I've found, don't no one take offence, there are always exceptions to the rule, and this isn't even a rule, at that.

[Edited on 9/1/2004 by Dread_Knight]

[DragonsFury]

Man I was talking about any girl I get INGAME lol. For some reason I never keep a girlfriend for long, longest was...2 months and 1 week. (I remember because my second longest was just 2 months and this one aced it by a week). Dont know why that is though, I mean I show respect, kindness and the rest...oh well off to eye up more of my girlfriends friend's.

[Dread_Knight]

Back to the subject at hand...Character aging. Or at the very least, marriage in-game.

[Edited on 9/1/2004 by Dread_Knight]

[DragonsFury]

Yeah, right. Well ingame marriage would have to offer a bonus, i heard somone mention instant teleport to wherever your husband/wife is so if they need help you can aid them. Does anyone want to comment on this?

[Dread_Knight]

Yeah, I heard about that too. I guess it's cool...it would make movement easier in many cases, and it's not something that's likely to be abused, considering how it's marriage, and we all know how most 13 year old boys feel about that. :P

[DragonsFury]

Yeah thats true lol. I wonder if they will put in a fair selection of character interaction macro's :)

[Dread_Knight]

Well, for all that they've said that social interaction is going to be important in the game, I'm going to assume yes. It seems a pretty fair bet that they will.

[DragonsFury]

Good enough.

[Dread_Knight]

I'm looking forward to it, just as long as its not like the Sims or nothing.

[DragonsFury]

Yeah I never reallyed liked The Sims. Though it was stupid. Only games i play aside from MMO's are RPG's like morrowind and BG2 and what have you. What we do to pass time till DnL release eh.

[Coldwind]

i love BG2 :-D

[Dread_Knight]

I don't. Never did, neither.

[DragonsFury]

Why not it was a damn fun game. I musta played it over and over near 1000 time's now, i just keep changing class, weapons profession and what have you. Nothing like going up against the odd's and comming out on top. Thats why we look forward to DnL release :cool:

[Chill_winston]

I agree Character ageing would be very cool, although as you say only really viable with permadeath, a feature which i have not encounterd much but what i have i must say i didnt really like the feature in an Rpg

[DigitalMastermind]

I'm suprised no one's mentioned Realms of Torment yet... They have character aging, player breeding, etc.

[Edited on 3/16/2004 by DigitalMastermind]

[DragonsFury]

I'm suprised no one's mentioend Realms of Torment yet... They have character aging, player breeding, etc.

I did mention it. Look up to very top. Only called it by its short name: RoT. Where do you think I got that information about the 500 hour before 'ageing' info.
Maybe you didnt read the whole thread yes?

[Dread_Knight]

No need to be testy, eh? An acronym is easy to miss. One must be willing to overlook such slips.

[DragonsFury]

I can honestly say I was simply trying to say that someone HAD mentioned Realms Of Torment. If it was taken as anything aside from stating a fact then I am honestly sorry.

[ufokid]

Permadeath would be very unbalancing, but not aging would not be realistic. So you would have to balance out death with children.

Also I do think that I will get an in-game marriage if I can. I will be role-playing as much as possible and I think that a dwarven Grand Master armourer in posession of a large plot of land (which I will be by then :P ) is definately in want of a wife. But ok, about children.

I was thinking of a system something like this: if you're married, you can... perform certain emotes :) that will eventually lead to the wife giving birth. Before the child is born, the parents could choose whose child it would be (I mean technically, who would reincarnate in it after their death) and which race it would have. Of course it would be nifty to make children of elves and humans half-elves. Then your first child would be reserved for you to reincarnate into once perma-death sets in. You would be able to train it in certain skills by taking it out hunting or using it as an apprentice or something. Also a big advantage would be that he would inherit most, if not all, of your stuff. ("This Super-Duper Hammer of Smashful Doominess has been in my family for 4 generations!")

I also thought of something for children that come after both parents already have an heir: if a newbie was creating a new character at about the same time as the child was about to be born, and the character and the child had the same race and gender, the newb could choose to be born as the child. This would have some pros (having parents to care for you and teach you) and some cons (being born in dangerous territory, physically looking like your parents, having to grow up first). I think this would be just too cool. Children that wouldn't get a newb-implant would just grow up to be NPCs.

This whole concept would give marriage a new purpose and would introduce the concept of dynasties to DnL. And thus I end one of the longer posts ever made by yours truly.

P.S.: How do you guys get the image in your sig to be a link? :casstet:

[mokuluaman]

permadeath is crap, i dont want to spend 10 thousand hours on one char only to have him die of old age, thats why we play videogames, they go beyond the boundrys of life.

[Menuuil]

I for one like the idea of character aging. But I think that it should not have to due with how many hours you play, rather the amount of rl time that the character has been alive. Which is too say that instead of being dead after 500 hours of play time the character would die after 4 years of real life. Seeing as DnL always is going and your characters are always active via afk code I would think this would be a more appropriate way of handling aging. With aging thought ultimately comes death, and this is a problem, because after 4 years (or how ever many) most people will have devoted lot of time into their character. So, as to not make them backtrack, I like the idea of letting offspring have the same traits and skills of the parent, once the parent dies of course. How that would work with RP I have no idea. Aging seems like it would be a very interesting part of the game, and a point which most rpgs do not encompass.

Dark and light has a lot of very little things which most other rpgs do not and which add a feeling of reality to the game, and that is what (to me) sets it apart. Aging would just be another addition for me.

[Peter_Holmer]

i doubt aging will be a part of dnl... only maybe up to the age of 40 or so

[DigitalMastermind]

I'm suprised no one's mentioend Realms of Torment yet... They have character aging, player breeding, etc.

I did mention it. Look up to very top. Only called it by its short name: RoT. Where do you think I got that information about the 500 hour before 'ageing' info.
Maybe you didnt read the whole thread yes?

I'm partially blind & I have next to no working memory whatsoever. Live with it, I have to :P

[Giddran]

Character Aging? Aww not so much in it, When trying to get a char strong and it suddenly dies of age and a new weak kid comes out who only takes 1 month instead of 2 months to become even ;)

(That means im against it)

hehe

[lukaz8585]

I think they should age with every lvl. therefore when you were a high level you would be around age 40 in real life. at lvl 1 you should be 18 or something. That would be cool

[Giddran]

That sound better but you destroyed the 1337 number! :P (elite=Leet=1337
etc if anyone dont know :) )