Player Aging System

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

Greetings everyone! Now, I must first admit, I am quite new to this wonderful game and community (having only discovered it yesterday), so I apologize for possibly seeming a bit “newbish” with this suggestion.

So, one of the many ideas that popped in to my head as I continued playing this game is, “Why not implement another level of difficulty with player age/aging?”. A player can start at any specific age. Certain ages would have buffs and debuffs to certain stats, and as players get to a specific age (maybe 60?) they may have a small chance to get a single negative trait relating to old age. The older the player gets, the higher probability of them dying of old age starts to settle. I think this optional implementation would add just another level of challenge and darkness to the atmosphere of C:DDA. A race against time, death slowly creeping towards you. This forces players to really think about decisions during the days. Perhaps a challenging feature like this could be “toggled” perhaps within character/world creation.

What gave me this idea was viewing the options for how many days a season could last. That caught my interest, and made me think on how that feature can be expanded upon. Perhaps with an aging system like this, their could be even more that could be implemented on top of this, I think. Though, thinking about it, the coding would probably be a bit difficult I would imagine. Regardless, let me know what you all think of this!

2

Not really much point, honestly. Marloss Man Reborn is one of the oldest survivors and he’s only been around 8 years, and that’s with the short default seasons. It would take even longer for anything to have a noticeable effect on gameplay.

But your suggestion is well-spoken and thought out. Better than most we get here. Don’t worry about it.

3

I want to like this, but the suggestion seems like it would add a pointless cap on game-play, and would be difficult to balance with multiple characters present within the world. Even with short years (like 14 days a season) you would end up with probably 3,000 + days before it runs out. Even the most dedicated players would have a hard time hitting that cap anyway, but it would loom over everything rather annoyingly.

Also, if the timer progresses to far, you can just spawn a new character, and send that character to your old base, and keep playing the game with all the buffs you want from youth.

4

The point is sound imo, but the most effect would be on char creation.

Giving more attribute points to youth and more equipment + skills to middle/older aged ppl.
Or better: Allowing youth to develop their attributes a bit further than olders, but making middle aged survivors cost less points overall.
Would merge well with professions too

5

[quote=“jcd, post:4, topic:11403”]The point is sound imo, but the most effect would be on char creation.

Giving more attribute points to youth and more equipment + skills to middle/older aged ppl.
Or better: Allowing youth to develop their attributes a bit further than olders, but making middle aged survivors cost less points overall.
Would merge well with professions too[/quote] I second this. The suggestion is good, but not for “aging” purposes in-game - like other people said, most characters don’t really survive longer than, what, 3 years? Rather than age to get buffs/debuffs as time progresses (which is not viable because 3-5 years won’t make a huge age difference), get these buffs/debuffs on character creation. You don’t REALLY need to have specific ages in term of numbers, but age “groups” that each receive their own buffs/debuffs or skill/equipment caps.

Say, have 3 main age group:

  • Adolescent (10-20)
  • Adult (20-40)
  • Middle-aged (40-60)

Assign each proffession to 1-3 of these age groups so it makes sense, that way we don’t get 11-year-old kids as police officers or 63-year-old men as elementary school students.

Add a little flavor text. For example:

[spoiler=Flavor Text]Adolescent - Filled with energy and enthusiasm, you lived a typical youngster life building your personality and setting yourself up for a good career to live better later on when you grew up. When the Cataclysm hit, you couldn’t help but feel saddened to know you’re the only one who can take care of you in the lonely days and nights you’re about to face. Still, you can’t deny the feeling of excitement - this is your first opportunity to explore the world on your own and the time to use all the skills you acquired to make survival actually possible.

You could also make it dark and gritty, expressing the fears and doubts of a young adult suddenly being thrown into this mess and having to deal with it on their own. That’s up to you.[/spoiler]

Make the necessary stat boosts/caps. The ‘Adolescent’ age group could have a free Dexterity boost but a cap on Strength, for example. All the age groups should generally have certain caps on stats and skill levels, but each age group receive different limitations. This would add realism and more diversity to the professions, but above all introduce the much-needed stat limits to stop the end-game from being so easy. I’d honestly use being “too young” or “too old” as an excuse to disallow you to get to 20 Strength (or anything else considered absurd by the CDDA community) without any special mutations or CBMs. I don’t care how !FUN! it is, you can have your !FUN! by installing the Hydraulic Muscles CBM (because future), not by creating a superhuman hulk-killing junkie putting all your points into your stats on char-gen.

6

Maybe implement it via a forced trait? Pick one: Adolescent, Adult, Middle-aged, even Elderly.
Oh wait… Actually no “Adult”. Adult would be the default. The rest could be optional traits.

But what should they do?
Adolescents: Increased action, movement, learning speed. Maximum STR 7. -20% hit points. -20% carry weight. Crippling morale penalties for all the horrors. Heightened immune system.
Adults: N/A
Middle-aged: Lowered action, movement, learning speed, stamina. Max STR, DEX (??). All skills start at 4.
Elderly: Greatly lowered, action, movement, learning speed. Max STR, DEX, PER, INT (??). All skills start at 7. -40% hit points. -40% carry weight. Lowered immune system. Forced poor hearing? Greatly lowered stamina. Resistance to morale penalties - old people give less of a f.

The way “All skills start at X” would work is that the skills would cost 0 character points up until the X. (for example)

We’d probably have to disallow certain other traits with each age group.

7

[quote=“BeerBeer, post:6, topic:11403”]Elderly: Greatly lowered, action, movement, learning speed. Max STR, DEX, PER, INT (??). All skills start at 7. -40% hit points. -40% carry weight. Lowered immune system. Forced poor hearing? Greatly lowered stamina. Resistance to morale penalties - old people give less of a f.[/quote] So you’re saying if I decide to be slower, a bit weaker, and have poor hearing I can be an expert tailor, an olympic swimmer, a racing car driver, a wrestling champion, a chef, a skilled computer hacker, a construction worker and a professional survivalist? Sounds like a good trade-off.

No, but without sounding like a complete dick: I don’t think this is very balanced. I agree with the trait limitations but not sure if skipping the entire early-game skill-wise should be an option. Because, let’s admit it, with a skillset like this you don’t really need to keep learning, all you need is a place to set up base at and half-decent gear. Especially when some recipes are auto-learned and skills are required in order to do well regardless of base stats.

I mean, I’m a player who deliberately levels up certain skills like Fabrication and Sewing to skip early-game grind compromising on other char-gen upgrades, imagine having all of them unlocked for you without that much of a compromise at all. Ignoring this being OP I think it just wouldn’t really be fun to play.

8

I think making this into traits that simply lower physical and learning ability would work. They could be profession traits too, like senior citizen requiring the elderly trait or the various student ones requiring the child/adolescent trait.

9

Tweak it a bit. There’s a kernel here which hints at an actual end-game.

Consider this: A time limit. Yes, I know the idea has been unpopular in this community, but it stands to improve the game dramatically by making it into a game rather than just a toy. As bad as things have become, the world has not quite ended. You have X # of years to prevent the apocalypse whereby, I don’t know, extra-dimensional horrors flood the world and difficulty rises sharply to the point of impossibility. The player can prevent this and achieve victory by completing Y task which depends on a number of high skills, rare reagents and so on. It may be possible to complete this task in a few different ways with different combinations of skills. This would permit meaningful speed-runs, and would provide some actual direction for the player instead of their becoming basically invincible and self-sufficient through farming (boring!). Yes, we have monster evolution for rising difficulty, and I understand that the large number of hulks etc in later years make it challenging - but it still seems fairly anticlimactic.