Retirement

[Constantine]

Hello!
Another topic discussed in Discord.

Basically, in my opinion super old characters become detrimental to the game on many levels. They amass so much wealth and their skills end up so high that new characters have no chance to catch up. Not to mention how powerful they become both in properties they own and contacts/political weight, thus completely overshadowing younger characters and blocking social lifts.
A 100 year old duke is usually a tragedy for a realm.

I actually agree that it is better to let players decide for themselves when to end their character's story.
I also agree that the old system where players were incentivised to retire characters as their daily allotment of hours decayed with age was not great.
Still people will not retire characters consistently if not incentivised properly.

So I suggest that we discussed proper incentives for retirement here.
Mind you, retirement will still be optional so incentives will have to be quite good but not game breaking.
Something like boosts to rare skills (like spellcasting) or cool artifacts.
Retirement should also happen at a non-trivial age. At least 100, maybe more.

Discuss!

[Lancaster]

I think the only way to really incentivize folks without a lot of churn and burn on retiring characters is to have some sort of bonus upon retirement conferred on the next character created. So if I have a character that is 130 years old (shout out to Edvard Perfect II on EC), and retire them, my next character on EC should have some sort of bonus. I like the idea of some sort of unique item, but since those can be stolen or lost due to degredation, I don't know if that's the way we want to go. A boost to skills + h/p would probably be the best, fairest solution, with the idea that the older the previous character, the bigger the boost on the next character.

[Wimpie]

I can get behind the idea that older characters now could be bothersome realms.
Hell, I even have an 'older' (in his 60s I think?) character duke & lord for ages. I can see how that could become a problem.

For me the problem is that it's just not realistic to have 100+ chars around acting like they are 21. People just don't play their old characters as old !@#$s who are barely able to do anything anymore. Because well, the game mechanics don't burden their actions.

As far as incentives go, I think Lancaster summed up some I would have thought of first hand as well:
- H/P boost
- Skill boost
- Unique Item

Depending on what the old character had.

I'm interested to see more 'incentives'. Because I do bbelieve we should encourage people to not play characters whose age is too damn high.

[Glaumring the Fox]

Glaumring is 115 years old and nothing in battle could kill me. I now play as an immortal priest it seems even though itd be nice to have a heroic death. Maybe,

[Zakky]

I think the discussion is heading toward the right direction.

Obviously disincentives we used to have for old characters did not work. Hopefully incentivizing retiring characters will work a lot better.

Transferring a certain fraction of H/P would definitely be nice. Maybe honour gets cut down (to 25%ish?) but P stays the same? Since Prestige plays a little role in most stuff, it might be a good indicator of how prestigious a certain family line is without checking the family's fame and wealth. Also, it might give people some sort of feeling of continuation of their lineages. (Also they don't have to build up prestige back to be able to choose their subclasses again)

Skill boost: Maybe inheriting 2~3 highest skills? Or maybe even allowing people to redistribute skill might not be a bad idea to encourage them from playing a completely different style of character.

Unit: Maybe allow people to keep their existing unit as well? That way, people can keep their captain as well.

Statue or Monument upon retiring: If the retiring character is old enough + has high honour and prestige + high ranking (duke or gov member) maybe upon retiring, you get to build a statue or monument in the current estate the retiring character is occupying. Of course this will be completely optional since some people probably wouldn't want to make one. Also, it would not be possible for characters who own estates that already have one.

[GoldPanda]

Here is an idea from Crusader Kings 2 that we can borrow:

Let the Family/House of each player get its own honor and prestige values. Every time one of your nobles die, their honor and prestige get added to your Family/House's honor and prestige. This is the only way to make your Family/House's honor and prestige increase. The honor and prestige for your Family/House do nothing. They are just for bragging rights and "high score" comparisons.

Existing dead nobles can have their honor/prestige retroactively accounted for, assuming that the game still remembers them.

Possible exploits: People could make a bunch of nobles and then delete them. Maybe make it so that retiring a noble that you've played for less than a month does not increase your Family/House's honor and prestige.

[Constantine]

the older the previous character, the bigger the boost on the next character.

I think this is a really bad idea. We want to incentivise people to retire old characters but your idea gives players reasons to sit on their ancient chars until they're 150.

Possible exploits: People could make a bunch of nobles and then delete them.

Easy to counter if there's a min age when retirement will add H/P to family's score (maybe like 35 y.o.)
Liked the idea overall.

[Medron Pryde]

Maybe have a curve for transferring skills.

At 60 to 80, you get to transfer more skills to the new character.

At 100, the amount starts to drop again.

Incentivizing people to retire before 100.

If this, I would suggest a one month grace period where players could retire their REALLY old characters and get the 60-80 range.  After that, they can still retire and get a boost, just not as much.


And I like the idea of adding a retired characters honor and prestige to the House as a permanent bonus.

That could really work.