Mortality and Single Character ~ Discussion

[Lefanis]

Really, how many characters currently are 90?  I feel they are rare enough that I am amazed when I meet one.

Check the ruler roster on AT ^^

[Dante Silverfire]

Check the ruler roster on AT ^^

This is the truth.

Ruler of Tara is 91. Ruler of Talerium is 94.

The average ruler age on Atamara is probably 70+.

It has dropped slightly recently. It used to be much higher.

[Chenier]

Old characters have history, they have personalities, background, character.

New characters are bland. They are usually just embodiments of their players, without any proper RP surrounding them. RPs written by their players tend to be cheesy, because anyone can make up anything.

[Dante Silverfire]

Old characters have history entrenched power, they have personalities established friends and enemies, background stuff that is hard for new people to learn about, character.

New characters are bland vital for the game's future. They are usually just embodiments of their players great ways for things to change, without any proper RP surrounding them. RPs written by their players tend to be cheesy different, because anyone can make up anything they bring a new face to things.

Fixed that for you.

Your previous statement was full of statements which just indicate a reason this game is dying.

[Wolfang]

The percentage roll hits and such can be discussed later between the devs or in the open, if it is considered a good idea, but I would rather the attention remain on whether the players think this is a viable idea and whether they would be good or bad to implement in the game?

[Indirik]

Age is about how a player feels but in optimal conditions, from what I have read it would be approx 84 turns per year, or 42 days.

If you base it on the seasonal cycle for the two islands that have seasons enabled (FEI and Dwilight), then you get this: 21 days (3 weeks) per season * 4 seasons per year = 84 days (12 weeks) per year

[Indirik]

I do think that a properly instituted universal mortality system is a good idea. Yes, some players may replace their dead character with a new clone. But not all of them will. I'd wager to say that most players won't do that. And if even half of them don't, then we're 50% better off than we were, right? :)

Anyway, there are some important considerations that need to be addressed to make it a good game mechanic that improves the game, and not just something that kills characters.

The immortality that characters have is important to maintain while the characters are young. People need to be able to play their characters for a decently long time before they have to worry about them dying. A new character dying of "old age" when they're 23 brings no benefits to the game, even if it only happens to one out of 100 characters.

We shouldn't check for death of old age too frequently. We don't want people to have to play Russian Roulette on a daily (or twice daily!) basis. To prevent statistical flukes from claiming too many characters, checks should be made on an infrequent basis. Once a week, or even once a month is plenty.

If this were implemented, it wouldn't be unreasonable to extend it to dying from your wounds getting worse and infected. Kind of like already happens, but remove the cap and just let the *really* bad cases kill the victim. To make sure that too many characters don't die from wounds in battle, the wound healing system will have to be checked to make sure that we don't end up with half the people that get wounded ending up dead from infections. But if we do this, you could end up dying from any wound, no matter how it is received including: getting beaten while preaching, advy getting beaten by a noble, disloyal peasant mobs attacking when you try to hold court, infiltrator knifings...

We wouldn't necessarily want people to just log in one day and have their supposedly-healthy character died overnight with no warning. There would need to be some way for the player to know that their character is getting sick and on their death bed, and will soon die. Some new "terminal illness" status, or something, where they only get one or two hours a turn for the next three or four days, and then die.

[Revan]

Old characters have history, they have personalities, background, character.

New characters are vital for the game's future. They are usually great ways for things to change. RPs written by their players tend to be different, because they bring a new face to things.

Both statements are valid. Ideally you want a healthy mix of both old and new in any given realm.

[Eduardo Almighty]

I like Indirik's idea about mortality.

About clones, I saw some in Avalon named 1,2,3 and 4. Terrible. But I'm not against let people create a new character like a son or another parent coming from the familiar background to try to take the titles and power, it just need to be done by some system, like rebellion (not to take the government, but a certain claim), duel or political support. People will try to do it since, many times, they like the "familiar game", a certain realm or just the history he built around his family in a certain realm or continent. Along mortality, some cultural changes like houses, marriages and strong claims can solve many problems and instigate internal troubles and sparks wars in general.

We can do it with the actual system of guilds, but if you enforce it with some mechanics, people would try it more often to consolidate power and disestablish power around.

I even like the idea of let another player play a son of yours instead of yourself. It's something I'm trying to do for some years with one of my chars.

[Chenier]

Fixed that for you.

Your previous statement was full of statements which just indicate a reason this game is dying.

Seriously? And I get a warning for this as well?

Can people NOT distinguish "new characters" from "new players"?

New PLAYERS are necessary. By definition, they can't be stale wannabe duplicates of past characters, because the players are new. Forcing OLD players to create new CHARACTERS, however, is pointless, aggravating, and stifles RP.

The richest RP is RP that builds upon existing material, not long narratives that a random schmuck pulls out of his ass about various interactions with NPCs he also controls himself.

In the fourth invasion, mortality was brought in for everyone. And lucky us, Enweil was the one targetted by the NPC faction for which the code was the most likely to generate mortality. We lost, what, 12 nobles? It !@#$ing killed the realm. A bunch of doubles eventually came, but it was never the same as before. Slowly, ties reformed between the various families, but never like before.

It was a death blow for Enweil, which has been agonizing ever since, and it is NOT something I would want to happen elsewhere, to other realms. Mortality does not stimulate renewment. It just hastens disinterestedness, because more and more people lose access to the characters they love playing, or enjoy playing with.

I think it takes me at around one year to gain any kind of interest in new characters I create. I doubt I'm the only one that feels this way. And I still miss the characters I lost to death, and I'd much rather have Jean-Olivier or Nicolas back then Jeanne, Stanislav or even Guillaume. And the last two of these went high enough in the ranks to become rulers.

[Anaris]

Seriously? And I get a warning for this as well?

You both did.

Can people NOT distinguish "new characters" from "new players"?

New PLAYERS are necessary. By definition, they can't be stale wannabe duplicates of past characters, because the players are new. Forcing OLD players to create new CHARACTERS, however, is pointless, aggravating, and stifles RP.

I strongly disagree.

As far as RP goes, I find new characters to be the most interesting.

The richest RP is RP that builds upon existing material, not long narratives that a random schmuck pulls out of his ass about various interactions with NPCs he also controls himself.

How does the second half of that sentence have anything to do with the first half? I have never seen any correlation between newness of character and level of interactivity in RPs.

In the fourth invasion, mortality was brought in for everyone. And lucky us, Enweil was the one targetted by the NPC faction for which the code was the most likely to generate mortality. We lost, what, 12 nobles? It !@#$ing killed the realm. A bunch of doubles eventually came, but it was never the same as before. Slowly, ties reformed between the various families, but never like before.

It was a death blow for Enweil, which has been agonizing ever since, and it is NOT something I would want to happen elsewhere, to other realms. Mortality does not stimulate renewment. It just hastens disinterestedness, because more and more people lose access to the characters they love playing, or enjoy playing with.

Frankly, I really don't think you are the best qualified to judge that. You were one of the most prominent members of Enweil before the Fourth Invasion, and, as you say, you personally lost powerful characters to that death. You also, I would say, heavily identified yourself with Enweil as it existed during that period. This is a perfect recipe for bias.

I would also say that if Folcard hadn't been the ruler of Riombara when he was, there was a real chance that Enweil and Riombara could actually have repaired their relations. That means that the turnover that those deaths caused contributed to meaningful change within the realm.

Honestly, Enweil may not be the best example for this anyway, since it's a democracy. The best examples would be realms with long-standing elect-once rulerships and deeply entrenched powers behind the throne (dukes and such).

[Chenier]

You both did.

I strongly disagree.

As far as RP goes, I find new characters to be the most interesting.

How does the second half of that sentence have anything to do with the first half? I have never seen any correlation between newness of character and level of interactivity in RPs.

Frankly, I really don't think you are the best qualified to judge that. You were one of the most prominent members of Enweil before the Fourth Invasion, and, as you say, you personally lost powerful characters to that death. You also, I would say, heavily identified yourself with Enweil as it existed during that period. This is a perfect recipe for bias.

I would also say that if Folcard hadn't been the ruler of Riombara when he was, there was a real chance that Enweil and Riombara could actually have repaired their relations. That means that the turnover that those deaths caused contributed to meaningful change within the realm.

Honestly, Enweil may not be the best example for this anyway, since it's a democracy. The best examples would be realms with long-standing elect-once rulerships and deeply entrenched powers behind the throne (dukes and such).

Guillaume got more powerful in Enweil than Nicolas did. I still had a ton more fun with Nicolas than I did with Guillaume, even if the latter even went so far as to form his own realm and personalize it as I wanted. The turnover wasn't generated by mortality. Handkor survived. The turnover happened because he left on his own, and because Guillaume accepted to give up to give the rest of the realm a chance. Had I wanted to, I could have stayed ruler in Enweil and assured its doom. I was ruler until the Jidington Armistice, after all, and I never stopped contact, and ennobled my advy there as soon as the war started. I am not tied to any particular era of Enweil, for I have played there since quite a while.

And really, elections are meaningless with figures like Handkor. The only times I (or anyone else) got elected ruler while he was there is when he either got wounded/captured at the right time, or when, at the end, he become less active and simply didn't run. A ton of realms have their own "Handkor", that they just re-elect over and over and over, no matter what.

And the "turnover" is really mostly a result of nobody caring enough anymore to campaign. Turnover by apathy, is that really what we seek? Had a chracter from an established family ran against Edriadsomething or other (cool dude, but I cannot remember the spelling) first time he campaigned, I doubt he would have won it. Now we have Valentine, which isn't really turnover either, he's been around for quite a while. Soon, both will have left. The rulers aren't getting replaced, they are just all giving up. The mortality totally destroyed the social dynamics of the realm, and the rest of the invasions destroyed the material strength of the realm, leaving it a hollow shell.

As for history and RP... New characters have yet to achieve anything. They have yet to interact with anyone. No accomplishments, no mistakes, no projects, no aspirations. Everything about them is determined solely by the player behind them, because there hasn't had any IC interactions to affect them. If I cared for stories people pulled out of nowhere, I'd go read a book. But I don't, instead I play a social game. New characters are purely the products of their creators, whereas old characters are the products of their IG environments.

[Perth]

You are trying to solve a social problem with a mechanic. People WILL line up a 2nd character. If you restrict character count, that character will simply not be created until the other is dead. But I can guarantee you that if this were to be implemented, the replacement character would show up in the realm the day after the other one died, and be handed all the titles and other stuff as soon as game mechanics allow for it.

And if we increase those limits further, say raising prestige limits, the replacement character will simply be made and "leveled up" on another island and then immigrated as required.

Players WILL find ways around this.

When a character dies, put 6 month lock on that player creating a new character on that continent. Players who have characters old enough to die from old age will have been around for multiple years and should either already have several characters elsewhere or enough slots to do do so if they wish. By doing this you stop the dead characters from being instantly replaced with new ones, and 6 months (or even 3) seems ample time for things to change enough that they don't simply have their titles handed back to them, and it also forces people to spend some time investing playtime in other continents, realms, etc.

[Revan]

I do think Chenier has a point. The effects of mortality on Beluaterra were too much. Too many nobles died. Completely hollowing out a realms leadership might introduce turnover, but it can also turn previously healthy and vibrant realms into husks. This will be the unintended consequence of reintroduced mortality I think. You're going to lose good characters as well as the bad.

When a character dies, put 6 month lock on that player creating a new character on that continent. Players who have characters old enough to die from old age will have been around for multiple years and should either already have several characters elsewhere or enough slots to do do so if they wish. By doing this you stop the dead characters from being instantly replaced with new ones, and 6 months (or even 3) seems ample time for things to change enough that they don't simply have their titles handed back to them, and it also forces people to spend some time investing playtime in other continents, realms, etc.

So, stop people playing in the realms and continents that they might most enjoy?

[Tom]

In the fourth invasion, mortality was brought in for everyone.

Agreed. We tried mortality and it was an abysmal failure. Unless someone has a concept that goes way, way beyond "make everyone mortal", I'll not take him seriously.