We should start out as healthy young 20-somethings, and every year goes by incrementing that, and like at 30, you lose like 1 point from each stat, 40, 2, etc, or some mechanic so once you’re old you end up dying.
Maybe even throw in ‘reproduction’, so when you die you can take over one of your kids or grandkids. Teenagers would learn faster but have lower stats, and could have some random abilities or something. Children would be ridiculously fast and good learners, but be lower stats in everything, but normalize around 20-ish.
Oh and do trees grow? It’d be nice to be able to plant things and have them grow through seasons.
Yeeeahhh, It’s a nice idea and all but I don’t think the game’s is at that stage yet when people play for years. There’s the question of survival, since not everybody can even last for a year in-game, and of the boredom factor, since it’s hard to find anything new to do after just a year of survival. Frankly, if you’ve managed to survive for a year you’ve probably experienced most of what the game has to offer right now.
The “reproduction” aspect is cool though. I’d imagine it only possible with a companion NPC of the opposite sex, with the world still the same but only slightly different. Also, what about an age aspect for CharGen which affects stats somehow?
Farming/planting is something that’s been discussed before, but I’m not sure what consensus on it is.
Just like I said: Not everybody can last for a year in-game, which kind of limits the impact the OP’s suggestion would create. It is to my thinking that only a minority of players can boast surviving for years, unless someone else can prove otherwise.
I’m not saying that it’s impossible to survive for years and have fun during that long period; on the contrary, I do acknowledge that it’s possible. But as of now it’s just that it’s kind of…“limited” and difficult to do. As it stands, the OP’s suggestion kicks in at around 30; 10 years after the initial spawn. Given how the game works now as well as its current content, it’s kind of difficult to think of ways to keep players busy for 10 years with just one character.
Bravo to the ones who’ve managed to keep having afters after years of in game time. I’d love to see what people who have survived for years have done to busy themselves though. I can imagine huge projects (like massive vehicles or town forts), exploring everything, and outright zombie genocide among other things.
Edit: I realize that I may have looked at the trees too much and not at the forest. The details I mentioned with regard to age can be adjusted to a point that it’s balanced in a way that the effects of age would kick in at a reasonable amount of time. Now that reasonable amount of time though, would be up for discussion.
One of the ideas I’d had was players mutating so much that it affects reproductive systems…in particular, insect queens. Wanna have your own hive/hill/converted house?
I’d agree that ageing, growth, and character-succession are all good long-term goals. I don’t think NPCs are there yet. But I like the general idea. As for stat effects, respectfully suggest the traditional mind/body tradeoff, so IN would increase as the physicals fell off.
(Otherwise, it’s just another way the game’s trying to kill you.)
I just kind of made the post as a joke, since I saw someone mention in another thread “oh I set up my base this way and I can survive indefinitely and the game gets boring”. It’d be fun if there were weird “late-game” mechanics, like Nethack has extinction, the bug where in Minecraft the map generation goes awry if you travel for 38 in real life days in a compass direction, or like in Deus Ex where invincible quest NPCs can attack invincible vacuum cleaners with grenades until they run out and are trying to stab it to death.
I think animals need reproduction first, and to be harder to find and give more meat.
Then animals can become extinct, forcing the player to look at alternatives.
Maybe we could have the bulletin board act as a Fast Forward Device, after proving you can survive for a year it will let you skip the next years. But sometimes random events will happen like: Your Weapon Broke! Replace it with the same kind to continue! Or X Animal is extinct! You must find a new food source.
If I recall, people used to survive for years at a time. The issue with having your descendants take over is that it requires more NPC interaction than people might want to provide, especially with the whole sex part. However, you could have a special lab ending involving cloning vats allowing continuation of players. Also, commiting suicide in the evacuation shelter is a cheap but effective way to transfer gear.
When it comes to animal reproduction (or really any sort of sexual reproduction,) animals have to stay alive for quite a while in cataclysm terms to give birth. This would also require keeping track of the pregnant animal for a few in-game months which could become taxing on the system if you had a lot of them.
[quote=“adeathclawtroll, post:8, topic:607”]If I recall, people used to survive for years at a time. The issue with having your descendants take over is that it requires more NPC interaction than people might want to provide, especially with the whole sex part. However, you could have a special lab ending involving cloning vats allowing continuation of players. Also, commiting suicide in the evacuation shelter is a cheap but effective way to transfer gear.
When it comes to animal reproduction (or really any sort of sexual reproduction,) animals have to stay alive for quite a while in cataclysm terms to give birth. This would also require keeping track of the pregnant animal for a few in-game months which could become taxing on the system if you had a lot of them.[/quote]
Can we breed with our clones?