Hmm how about this, a player has quests, time goes by in the game at a set pace, and depending on when the player completes the quest (or not) affects the outcome.
Of course with this in mind you realize that there is also a possibility of being able to not allow the player the ability to complete the quest successfuly.
I also like the idea of allowing a character to live a normal life along the way, rather than just go on quest after quest, after quest. There are some cases however where this is a good thing though it adds some realism to the game. But most of the time it is overdone.
One other thing why is it that in most RPGs such as final fantasy for example, that things always have to go wrong it gets so boring!
-There''s my two cents!
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RPG character aging, fast or slow?
kressilac:
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Interesting ways to have time effect the character are nice, but what happens if I slepp my life away. Someone will do it just to see if you have planned for death or something when they are 90 years old. If you don''t do something about old age then it can become this sort of trophy. "I played the game to completion and I was 300 years old." If you''re gonna have time effect your game then you either have to make sure your story forces them to complete the game before a reasonable amount of time, or you have to deal witht he inevitable player that wants to sleep his way through your game.(or travel back and forth, or whatever)
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There have been and will always be people who will try to come up with something that a program wasn''t meant for. And have fun with it. I have nothing against that and I don''t think that it should be prevented. It''s a kind of sub-game that some people play. I used to move from race track to race track in Intellivision''s Auto Racing. It was really hard to do because if you crashed (wich happened relatively easily) you were "teleported" to the original track and had to try again. And it was fun!
>>
Interesting ways to have time effect the character are nice, but what happens if I slepp my life away. Someone will do it just to see if you have planned for death or something when they are 90 years old. If you don''t do something about old age then it can become this sort of trophy. "I played the game to completion and I was 300 years old." If you''re gonna have time effect your game then you either have to make sure your story forces them to complete the game before a reasonable amount of time, or you have to deal witht he inevitable player that wants to sleep his way through your game.(or travel back and forth, or whatever)
<<
There have been and will always be people who will try to come up with something that a program wasn''t meant for. And have fun with it. I have nothing against that and I don''t think that it should be prevented. It''s a kind of sub-game that some people play. I used to move from race track to race track in Intellivision''s Auto Racing. It was really hard to do because if you crashed (wich happened relatively easily) you were "teleported" to the original track and had to try again. And it was fun!
Author
quote:
Interesting ways to have time effect the character are nice, but what happens if I slepp my life away. Someone will do it just to see if you have planned for death or something when they are 90 years old.
Yes, there character would die and deservingly at that
too bad. I mean if someone told you that they setup a game to run for 80 hours just to see if there character would die from sleeping, wouldn''t you just laugh at them? I personally would be in hesterical laughter by the time they told me that there character died as well.No offense kressilac
I''m just thinking that having aging will give the game a little bit more character. You know what i mean don''t you?
I love Game Design and it loves me back.
Our Goal is "Fun"!
quote: Original post by Paul Cunningham
Yes, there character would die and deservingly at that
No offense kressilac
I''m just thinking that having aging will give the game a little bit more character. You know what i mean don''t you?
We have had a couple discussions concerning the aging issue... All of us here have agreed that aging would be cool, but have decided not to implement it in our MMORPG. Although I agree that the game would have more character, there is one issue that I keep coming back to:
When the character dies of old age - you have perma-death, which is not good for paying customers... evein if it takes them 5 years of real-time to reach this point. You''ve lost a customer and money.
I''m not a business man... I''m a game designer/programmer, I could care less about this, but the marketing guys are going to hate it. Me as a player, I wouldn''t care for it either.
As for a person playing 80 hours to see if there character would die... I''m laughing out load now, that would be hillarious!
What we have decided to do is to apply aging to our NPCs, this will work in unison with our AI. When a NPC is young you will find him skipping out and going fishing, in his middle years, he may be at the tavern, and in his old age, you may find him... well fishing again
Dave "Dak Lozar" Loeser
Author
Intesting Dak, so your saying that NPC''s will age but the PC doesn''t yeah? That''s a good one!
I love Game Design and it loves me back.
Our Goal is "Fun"!
I love Game Design and it loves me back.
Our Goal is "Fun"!
quote: Original post by Paul Cunningham
Intesting Dak, so your saying that NPC's will age but the PC doesn't yeah? That's a good one!
The reason our NPCs will age is basically for the AI. These *ages* will be states.... (this only pertains to NPCs that the player will interact with in town such as merchants)
Something like:
|->[1]->[2]->[3]->[4]-[5]-| |-------------------------|Each of the numbers represents a *phase* in the characters life.These NPCs will be generated and assinged one of these *phases* These phases are merely states in a FSM and during these states the NPC will do different things. Our primary goal is to create an interesting enviroment for the player. I have been playing UO forever and the same damn merchants that are there now... have been there since I started, which is sad.
This should probably go in the AI section of this message board... which BTW, I just started reading.
Dave "Dak Lozar" Loeser
Edited by - MadKeithV on August 4, 2000 4:53:36 AM
A couple of thoughts on aging...
(1) Aging, well, the passage of time really, could be used in quite a cool manner non-linearly to create "The Quest of a Lifetime" -- ie, the game takes the the player thru the PC''s whole life, or a large chunk of it. This kind of technique is used in movies heaps.. Hurricane is the last one i saw.
(2) This is RPG! Who says old age will lead to death?
- Fountain of youth
- Resurrections
- Life as a ghost, demon, zombie
- People that just don''t die ''cos of a spell or something
When magic is a real part of a world, so is anything else, potentially.
It could be that death is a way of a player "deleting" a character.
And if you think about how different the life of an 8000 year old wizard who lives in the castle on the mountain could be, you''d provide a dynamic experience for dedicated players.
Age could also bring with it arcane magic to terraform, etc.. Give dedicated players limited abilities in changing the gameworld.
Aging adds a more complex dimension to the self-improvement (levelling) process. The aged fighter, however, would have troubles. The aging wizard of course could still be in working order
Thoughts? Mine aren''t too coherent, but hey!
Sam
Space Cadet''s DJ Random, Thinker, and Geek at heart.
(1) Aging, well, the passage of time really, could be used in quite a cool manner non-linearly to create "The Quest of a Lifetime" -- ie, the game takes the the player thru the PC''s whole life, or a large chunk of it. This kind of technique is used in movies heaps.. Hurricane is the last one i saw.
(2) This is RPG! Who says old age will lead to death?
- Fountain of youth
- Resurrections
- Life as a ghost, demon, zombie
- People that just don''t die ''cos of a spell or something
When magic is a real part of a world, so is anything else, potentially.
It could be that death is a way of a player "deleting" a character.
And if you think about how different the life of an 8000 year old wizard who lives in the castle on the mountain could be, you''d provide a dynamic experience for dedicated players.
Age could also bring with it arcane magic to terraform, etc.. Give dedicated players limited abilities in changing the gameworld.
Aging adds a more complex dimension to the self-improvement (levelling) process. The aged fighter, however, would have troubles. The aging wizard of course could still be in working order
Thoughts? Mine aren''t too coherent, but hey!
Sam
Space Cadet''s DJ Random, Thinker, and Geek at heart.
You could also use a Circle of life idea. Or the Nirvana idea... Basically, the player is lowered in status (or race) if they do bad stuff and die, and lifted in life if they do good stuff and die... I thought about implementing this, but I have been busy lately with the Learning Experience instead
-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)
Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)
-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)
Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)
There was a really old RPG by Microprose - Darklands - which had an aging system...when initally starting up your character, u made him older by giving him or her more favourable attributes...and when playing the game, u''r character got older, and as he/she got older, he/she lost attributes, and skills deteriorated, this only happened past a certain point. Age 35 or something...
RealMoD
RealMoD
I remember a... hmmm... TBS called Ultimate Domain that required you to choose jobs for the inhabitants of your lands. They aged and died and got together and had children... It was quite nice to check the houses where a couple had married and were having a kid (although you could only see the stats of the two people living there ).
-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)
Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)
).-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)
Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)
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