Ageing and consequences

[KA101]

[quote=“detahramet, post:7, topic:5254”][quote=“Soyweiser, post:6, topic:5254”][quote=“detahramet, post:4, topic:5254”]Perhaps there could be certain mutations to extend or shorten your rate of aging. Considering how short a game tends to last, perhaps we should treat each season as if it were a year, for the sake of this mechanic.

Why not simply reduce the season lenght? Seems strange that suddenly you age at 4x the rate.[/quote]
…because the minimum season length is 17 days, if i recall correctly[/quote]
Oops :D[/quote]

14 days when last I played: one day in DDA ~= one week IRL. Quite a lot of crafting/construction was compressed to that ratio. In general, it helps if the player can accomplish enough of $REALLY_LONG_PROJECT in a game day that xe can step back, check over the work, and think “yeah, I made progress today.”

So though you can expand season lengths to 1:1 DDA/IRL time, that makes the PC extremely fast.

As for the merits of aging: Yeah, I’m thinking trait/mutation at best. IME some chars last into year 2; not that many make it into 3. So I’ll suggest that starting young or old might be neat (metabolism, sleep, healing, maybe stat effects) but I’m not sold on having in-game aging, even with mutations.

(Edited: thing->think, fix grammar)

[i2amroy]

My vote goes against in-game aging. Games just don’t last long enough to justify it, and I don’t see any real reason why people in the Cataclysm should end up aging at 20x the normal rate. Definite down vote.

[Funk]

Im for age as a down perk type thing, it’d give your some random old age trouble i.e. bad back or eyes.

The some mutagens could de age you or age you more, it’d never out right kill you but leave you wreaked.

But in a normal game its unlikely you’d live to really age, by the end of first year you probably sorted base wise.

Really rapid ageing would feel iffy like your playing a mayfly instead of a man, and it makes the lack of decay of the world stick out.

[Cherry]

You can already roleplay any age you want using the traits in the game.

Adding pre-defined age traits is just another version of a profession.

[JSurvive]

[quote=“Cherry, post:12, topic:5254”]You can already roleplay any age you want using the traits in the game.

Adding pre-defined age traits is just another version of a profession.[/quote]

Then we already have Student and Senior Citizen without traits. One can play the game using one of these professions with traits and stats that seem to fit with the chosen profession.

I guess the average lifespan of a character isn’t worth implementing the feature I have suggested.

What would have been wonderful is a real multi-character version of the game, where playing a group of character means more chances to survive longer, developing a community, taking care of younger and older members of the community while fighting for food and against monsters. That’s a bit too much to dream of, I guess.

Anyway, back on the subject: the suggestion isn’t worth changing code, as current options already allow us to play as a Student or as a Senior Citizen. Thanks for the feedback, now I know what to do with my next character

[JSurvive]

It even makes sense, when trying to play as a “true” Senior Citizen, to get lots of points to invest in skills. Negative traits (Bad Back, Bad Knees, at least Flimsy, Far- or Near-Sighted or even both, Poor Hearing… Bad Temper?) give more points, as does reducing Stats (I’d keep Intelligence at a higher value than average, the rest quite lower). Then all the points go into skills, the experience of a long life. Nice!

[Natures_Witness]

Some age related professions or traits might be okay, but DEFINITELY NO in-game aging. Surviving in Cata is supposed to be about strategy and skill; adding some arbitrary, unstoppable kill switch to every character is just broken and rage-inducing.

“Oh wow, through strategy, skill, and luck you’ve survived a really long time!”
“Oops, you’re old now and fall over dead, too bad.”

-throws computer out window-

Just NO.

[Adrian]

i’m voting against in-game aging.
But what about age at character generation? Default at 35 and +1 point for every 10 years older?

[TheGrifter]

When a character in the game drinks as heavily as mine does, you have to wonder their life span.

That’s why I invest in Cataclysm Brand Life Insurance.

Cataclysm does NOT cover zombie attacks.

But it DOES cover:
Cancer, from over-exposure to radiation.

Liver failure, from alcohol consumption along with painkillers.

Skinwalkering.

Chickenwine drinking.

Contracting kuru, from cannibalism.

Becoming a C.H.U.D.

[size=8pt]Warning, Cataclysm Brand Life Insurance pays out in cyanide covered bullets. On sight.[/size]

[Zireael]

[quote=“Adrian, post:16, topic:5254”]i’m voting against in-game aging.
But what about age at character generation? Default at 35 and +1 point for every 10 years older?[/quote]

I’d say +1 for 20 years, but this is a good idea.

[Soyweiser]

[quote=“Natures Witness, post:15, topic:5254”]Some age related professions or traits might be okay, but DEFINITELY NO in-game aging. Surviving in Cata is supposed to be about strategy and skill; adding some arbitrary, unstoppable kill switch to every character is just broken and rage-inducing.

“Oh wow, through strategy, skill, and luck you’ve survived a really long time!”
“Oops, you’re old now and fall over dead, too bad.”

-throws computer out window-

Just NO.[/quote]

Well… you could always add some sort of rejuvination machine or thing somewhere. It is a common enough thrope in SF.

[Inadequate]

I’m fairly certain Cata tech hasn’t advanced to the point of stopping the aging process. Also, this is a really bad idea.

[FunsizeNinja123]

I’m fairly certain Cata tech hasn’t advanced to the point of stopping the aging process. Also, this is a really bad idea.

[John_Candlebury]

[quote=“Inadequate, post:20, topic:5254”]I’m fairly certain Cata tech hasn’t advanced to the point of stopping the aging process. Also, this is a really bad idea.[/quote]

[abbr=Yay! Quote pyramids! ]Yeah

[HunterAlpha1]

[quote=“FunsizeNinja123, post:21, topic:5254”][quote=“Inadequate, post:20, topic:5254”]I’m fairly certain Cata tech hasn’t advanced to the point of stopping the aging process. Also, this is a really bad idea.[/quote][/quote]Remember that CDDA takes places at least 40 years in the future, I’m pretty sure they’re further along in anti-aging technology than we currently are.

[Binky]

I’m actually really not against this idea, but it should be pretty damn slow ageing. Currently we lack any end game goals, and halting/reversing ageing is an interesting one. It’s something the player would definitely want to do something about, and could be given some interesting tasks to complete to get towards it. Although games currently don’t have much reason to last over a few in game years at the very most (due to lack of late game content) I’m sure it’s the developers goal to have games that play out much longer.

I’d suggest that whilst it’s probably not feasible to die of old age in the game (as in, even in a long, long game you’d only age say 30 years), you could suffer some side effects due to being 60 and living a pretty terrible lifestyle (fighting monsters, drinking bleach) and some degradation could take place which you could aim to reverse. Similarly, some sort of disasters/random events could cause you to age/go into some sort of ageing stasis which could have similar effects. I would hate to see ageing being common or something players need to constantly worry about, but it provides such a fertile ground for late game missions that I’m very for it.

Science wise, I don’t think the technology is too far off:

Aging Reversed in Mice: Have Scientists Found Key to Immortality?

Regardless of the scientific truth of that article, as soon as we can clone/make organs we can pretty much keep repairing things forever. Also, first aid kits heal everything, so…

[ted]

Realistically slow aging is almost entirely pointless. Hardly anyone is going to play the same character for thirty years, and someone that attached to their character probably doesn’t want to deal with aging at all. It’s a mechanic that would see no play outside testing.

Unrealistically short lifespan could be fun as a survival resource, like food or water, that’s harder to resupply but depleted relatively slowly and thus unimportant early on. But this would not fit in vanilla, because in vanilla indefinite survival is supposed to be easy if you shirk danger, and the only point of aging would be to force you into danger to find rare medicine or crafting components. It also would be easier to justify as something other than aging; maybe you’re slowly dying from zombie magic, and the medicine reverses the damage.

[Binky]

because in vanilla indefinite survival is supposed to be easy if you shirk danger, and the only point of aging would be to force you into danger to find rare medicine or crafting components. It also would be easier to justify as something other than aging; maybe you’re slowly dying from zombie magic, and the medicine reverses the damage.

That’s not the direction it’s supposed to be going in (as the recent design document states) - it’s supposed to be difficult to survive and have many things that are uncraftable (although you might be able to just scrape by) which need foraged parts, so I think it’s fine to expect, especially with late game.

I agree though that realistically slow ageing would be difficult (until the game got to DF levels of extended play), so it would probably be better to have it as part of a mission/random late game event. Ways of artificially ageing would be interesting, especially if it was mainly late game monsters which you need to prepare to counteract (this is done quite well in the might and magic series).

[ted]

Well, on the one hand, the outline has a survival section that claims survival will be difficult and take a lot of time. The outline also has a progress section that suggests that survival is only the first, potentially short stage of the game, and after that you have time to explore and learn skills. The low-intensity section also suggests that you aren’t obligated to pursue elements you aren’t interested in, and super-intense situations are rare if you do not seek them out.

So to put all that together, there is apparently an early point in the game where you have enough spare time to go exploring, yet can instead avoid exploration and spend as much of that time as desired on survival tasks in safer locations. I think it’s likely that survival will be easy at that point.

[Binky]

[quote=“ted, post:27, topic:5254”]Well, on the one hand, the outline has a survival section that claims survival will be difficult and take a lot of time. The outline also has a progress section that suggests that survival is only the first, potentially short stage of the game, and after that you have time to explore and learn skills. The low-intensity section also suggests that you aren’t obligated to pursue elements you aren’t interested in, and super-intense situations are rare if you do not seek them out.

So to put all that together, there is apparently an early point in the game where you have enough spare time to go exploring, yet can instead avoid exploration and spend as much of that time as desired on survival tasks in safer locations. I think it’s likely that survival will be easy at that point.[/quote]

There’s certainly a point where survival will become easier, but I don’t think it’s a design goal for it to ever become easy or trivial (being a survivalcraft game that would make the game kinda pointless). Food and Water based survival may become easier, but I imagine other things will take up the mantle of making survival more difficult (monsters, poison rain and so on).

Really though, I’m very much for ageing being optional/a late game effect, and definitely shouldn’t be a short term/early game concern.