Mortality and Single Character ~ Discussion

[Wolfang]

As I didn't want to clutter up the 'post one suggestion' thread I wanted to continue this discussion here, as has been suggested by several people, but summed up quite nicely by Indirik's post:

(Why does this forum not have a spoiler function?)

My "one thing" is actually two things that others have mentioned:

1) Forced mortality once your character has reached a certain age. Keep things the way they currently are, until yor character hits, say, 60. Then they become mortal like a hero. And as they get older and older, the chance to die from wounds gets higher. Eventually, *everyone* should die of old age. Start at 80 or so, and have a small, but growing, chance of dying from old age once every RL month. No more immortal characters who will never, ever have any chance of dying.

2) Start the one-noble-per-island rule on every continent. Don't force-deport anyone, just make it so that if you already have an active noble on an island, you can't start or unpause another. Events over time (deportation, death, retirement, pausing, etc.) will, over time, thin the herd. (Yes, this will mean that if you pause both of your characters, you will only be able to unpause one of them.) Combine this with #1 above, and you will sooner than later get to a situation where everyone has one noble per island.

My initial suggestion, to start of this topic, is that MORTALITY could work as such.

If you are not a hero, you remain immortal until the age of 60. After which, from the age of 60 to 70, your character gets chance hits of old age killing him.
Every turn, there is a small percentage of chance that your character dies. Say 0.0005 chance. The chances of dying, after 1000 turns would be 39,3% chance.
From 70-80, a chance of 0.001 => Chances of dying after 1000 turns would be 63,2%
80 years +, a chance of 0,002=> Chances of dying after 1000 turns would be 86,5%

Now these numbers are only an example, and can be lowered or raised as I am not sure how many turns it take for someone to become a year older. It would still be possible for someone to become really really old, but just like in real life, you need to get lucky.

Furthermore, this chance roll of dying should be rolled again everytime a character participates in a battle.

Ex:

Age 73 character. The turn ends and a roll of 0,001 chance of dying happens. If player participates in a battle, this roll occurs again, 0,001. (So you get two hits in one turn of 0,001 chance of dying)


[THIS NEXT PARAGRAPH IS SIMPLY TO DISCUSS HEROES AND HOW TO KEEP THEM IMPORTANT]

Now, Heroes would become more 'redundant' because of this. I suggest a hero gets an 'unit setting' option to Fight to the Death or Fight Until the Last Man, or name it what you will.
This setting will increase the character's CS by a certain percentage, say, 20%. But it will increase the chance of the Hero to die fighting significantly, regarddless of whether you win or lose the battle. This will make Hero character useful, as they can turn the tide of battle, at high personal risk, but it will further allow the players more control over which battles they would rather have their hero characters die in. If you really want your character to die to finish a storyline epicly in a great last battle, you can set this unit setting, it will not guarantee death, but it increases the odds.



The ONE CHARACTER RULE, sort of leans on the mortality mechanic. As the mortality mechanic would increase character rotation in general, we want to avoid that players simply line up a secpond character to pick up when the older character dies of old age, as this would be counter productive against one of the reasons to include mortality for older characters.

There are other reasons that have been mentioned in recent discussion to have a one character rule such as:
- title hogging
- playing both characters as one
- creating in essense OOC unbreakable connections between realms where players have a character in each
- many people just play one character and drone the other
- etc

(note that I am note reqquesting the removal of 2 character per player rule!)

So hopefully the discussion remain on-topic and is constructive.

[Swiftblade]

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. This changes with how easy or hard of a life the player leads. If a bureaucrat has an easy life he could live  5 years real time, BEFORE he even gets a 0.001% per turn chance of death. That is a small turn over, except for already old players.

That also means, that per game year that person has a 0.084 percent chance of death in the first year. In fact he has a 99.5% chance of living till hes 65.

The turn over would be far, far to low to even bother with. You would have to be really REALLY unlucky to die. Not even worth coding unless its a significant chance, like 0.5 or 1 percent per turn for someone over 60.

In my opinion, if you play from a young noble then its anywhere between 4 and 5 years real time before you get to this point. A 2% chance of dying each day is not a far cry. This is 1013 for petes sake, it really should be 40 because life expectancy for nobles was like 35-45, less for peasants. 50 was considered ancient, and we have a ruler in Perdan who is currently 90 in game. People barely live to 90 now, let alone in 1013.

[Wolfang]

Well yeah, the chances can be tinkered with, as I don't know how many turns it takes for a person to grow older. If it's 84 turns per year, the odds can be increased quite a lot

[vonGenf]

In my opinion, if you play from a young noble then its anywhere between 4 and 5 years real time before you get to this point. A 2% chance of dying each day is not a far cry. This is 1013 for petes sake, it really should be 40 because life expectancy for nobles was like 35-45, less for peasants. 50 was considered ancient, and we have a ruler in Perdan who is currently 90 in game. People barely live to 90 now, let alone in 1013.

It's difficult to find good sources for medieval life expectancy, since you really need to know what are the assumptions. We should completely discount child mortality, for example, because the characters start at 16. I found an interesting one that says that in the 13th century, members of the royal family of Wales (which were of similar social classes as most nobles in BM) that reached adulthood had an average and median life expectancy of 49:

http://www.sarahwoodbury.com/life-expectancy-in-the-middle-ages/

We also have to remember that this is a game. What would a 1% chance to die at 19 bring exactly? It would only kill your character before you start to actually do anything interesting with him. I think it would just be aggravating for no reason. I can see the advantages of starting the counter around 50/60 years old, which is roughly 4 years real-time, a reasonable time to create an interesting character story arc with closure.

Also, can we get a statistics of how many characters are 70+ in the game? 90+? I have the feeling it's a very small number, as it should be.

[Swiftblade]

I wasn't saying a 1% chance of death at 19, I was saying if the arbitrary "age of mortality" is 60, then start the 1% a turn then.

[vonGenf]

I wasn't saying a 1% chance of death at 19, I was saying if the arbitrary "age of mortality" is 60, then start the 1% a turn then.

Sorry, I misread. 1% per turn is huge though, you would have less than 50% chance of making it to 61. The date of death should never be known with such precision.

I say at any point, you should have a more than 50% chance of making it for another RL 6 months, so you never get the certainty of a rapid death. You just know you're at risk. You can achieve that with 0.2% chance per day (0.1% per turn). Characters would then have only a 20% chance of making it past 78, and 8% of characters would make it past 90.

[Swiftblade]

Either your maths is off or mine is, because at the age of 77, implying the 0.1% has been applied to every turn for the past 17 ingame years, there is a 146% mortality rate on that. By my reckoning you get 64% chance of living for 6 IRL months, which is roughly 4.5 in game years. You would have roughly a 50% chance of surviving past 66 and a 40% chance by 67. Infact, according to the statistics you shouldn't be able to survive past 72.

I'm not saying thats a bad thing, because 12 ingame years is still 16 months, which is pretty reasonable and would provide the right amount of turn over. Thats after of course, 4ish years of previous gameplay. Setting a "cap" of 5 years and 4 months per character wouldn't be a bad thing really. Of course there are always statistical anomalies so there could be someone who cheats the stats time and time again, even possibly to the age of 90, like how people in real life can get to 120ish even though most die in there 70's and 80's.

To be honest it would nice to be amazed by someones age in this game beyond the "Really? That person has been playing that character, in the same realm for 9 IRL years? Holy Crap" type thing. If someone cheated the mortality rate until they were 90, stats would say they should have died 2 and a half times over. That would evoke the same awe as if you met a 110 year old in real life. Like you could spawn roleplays about "That leader of such and such who just won't die, I wonder why the gods favor him so much".

Also with this mortality percentage you could add a bigger chance of death at the hands of an infiltrator for older people. I mean, I have seen some fit old people, but I just can't see a 90 year old fighting off a 30-40 year old in a sword fight. Not if the younger one is trained to kill. I mean yeah a battle hardened old general may not be easy to take down because of experience, but even someone in there 70's-80's is pretty frail.

[Anaris]

Either your maths is off or mine is, because at the age of 77, implying the 0.1% has been applied to every turn for the past 17 ingame years, there is a 146% mortality rate on that.

Then I suspect that yours is, because a rate like that can never go higher than 100%.

[vonGenf]

Either your maths is off or mine is, because at the age of 77, implying the 0.1% has been applied to every turn for the past 17 ingame years, there is a 146% mortality rate on that.

17 IG years is 17*84=1428 days=3.9 RL years.

I assume you simply did 1428*0.1%=143%. As Anaris said, it doesn't work that way: it doesn't go above 100%, and in fact in never quite reaches it.

The correct way to count it is to consider that after each day, you have a 99.9% chance of being still alive. Then the probability of being still alive after 1428 days is 0.999^1428 = 24%.

To be honest it would nice to be amazed by someones age in this game beyond the "Really? That person has been playing that character, in the same realm for 9 IRL years? Holy Crap" type thing. If someone cheated the mortality rate until they were 90, stats would say they should have died 2 and a half times over. That would evoke the same awe as if you met a 110 year old in real life. Like you could spawn roleplays about "That leader of such and such who just won't die, I wonder why the gods favor him so much".

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

Edit: replaced turns by days as per Indirik's comment.

[Tom]

we want to avoid that players simply line up a secpond character

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.

[Tom]

Really, how many characters currently are 90?

56 characters are 90 or older, 44 of them are not paused.
EC (17/17) and AT (21/15) have the highest counts.

[Dante Silverfire]

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.

I doubt that.

Even still, just make it a rule in the Social Contract. Bam, done.

[Wolfang]

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.

You're right, it wasn't meant to stop them but rather discourage/make it more difficult.

[vonGenf]

56 characters are 90 or older, 44 of them are not paused.
EC (17/17) and AT (21/15) have the highest counts.

56 out of 1815 is 3%, it's not like it's an epidemic. It suits me fine.

[egamma]

Here's the math. a 1% chance of dying means a 99% chance of not dying.

so if you apply that per turn:
.99*.99*.99*.99*.99*.99*.99*.99*.99*.99*.99*.99*.99*.99=86.87% chance of not dying the first week, or a 13.13% chance that your character does die.

And that's only 14 turns! After 2 weeks (28 turns) you have about a 30% mortality rate.