Skills and age

Started by Shine, November 15, 2002, 12:16:03 AM

Any chance skills are going to be affected by age anytime soon?  I've been finding it wierd that if I play a 35 year old accomplished stonecrafter he's just as likely to fail at an attempt as a 10 year old apprentice just starting to learn.  I'm imagining this is probably a giant pain in the ass to code though.
As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport." - Shakespear-King Lear

If you want to be a thirty year old master, start out as a ten year old and apprentice yourself to somebody.

If I wanted to play an apprentice I wouldn't have posted the question in the first place.  The point is who wants to play a 35 year old with no skills.  Especially since the help file says if you are new you should pick a char close to the middle of the age range.  I'm not saying that at 30 or so you should be an expert at everything but you should be better than you were at 10.
As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport." - Shakespear-King Lear

The reason for the suggestion to play middle of the range is for your stats. It has nothing to do with skills (AFAIK).  Since you know about the skills from an OOC perspective maybe you can make your character concepts fit those constraints. And remember the subclasses are just that, "sub". Meaning your not going to be a master stonecrafter by picking the stonecrafter sub-class. To me it would mean that he is good enough to make some sort of living but definately not a master. If he really pursues that career he might become a master at it.

From the help files:
QuoteSubclasses are intended to round out characters with regards to their primary guild. They are not substitutes for a primary guild.

Disclaimer: All this is just my opinion.

You are missing the point of the original question.  Which is that it makes sense for some skills to be better when you are older and is that ever going to be something that is coded in.  I am not debating whether or not you should start out great at something because you are older.
As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport." - Shakespear-King Lear

I was adressing the following point from the original post:
QuoteI've been finding it wierd that if I play a 35 year old accomplished stonecrafter he's just as likely to fail at an attempt as a 10 year old apprentice just starting to learn.

I was saying you should not find it weird, it was intended that way as far as I can remember when the sub-classes were initialy implemented.

I personally think things should stay as they are.  If all of a sudden being an old man would result in having higher skills, I think you would suddenly find a lot of older plays.  IMO, I think that the population should remain young.  Zalanthas is a harsh place.  Life expectancy is short, and realistically, people would age fast taking the punishment that the world can dish out.  Things seem more right and proper with everyone joining clans and organizations at a relatively young age.

Further, I just flat out don't want to see people get a leg up on skills.  If you want to be a master (or even decent) at something, then I think you should have to struggle through it.  Forcing people to struggle through is a form of self regulation.  A decent thief can cause terrible havoc, and a decent warrior can lay waste to many people.  However, the simple fact that you can't start out decent insures that the people who eventually live long enough to become good are more likely to be playing a realistic character.  True, it is no guarantee of a quality player, but for the most part, any 50 day old player you find wandering around will generally be more realistic about the game then your average newbie.

Yup, with everything that's been said so far.

If it is a critical piece to your character, you could, of course, leave it with the imms to decide and spec. app.
quote="CRW"]i very nearly crapped my pants today very far from my house in someone else's vehicle, what a day[/quote]

Realistically, if you want to make a character with non starting level skills, speial app it.

If the Imms -did- make you better for being older, all new chars would start off at minimum of 50 years old.  This would be uber abused and unbalancing.

If you have a good consept, great!  Email the account asking for a skill boost.

The Imms are a friendly lot, and the worst they can is "No."
For I have loved the stars too fondly to fear the night.~

First off, I consider "game balance" to be worthless in an rp-enforced environment.  After all, a newbie dwarf warrior can kick the hell out of a half-elven merchant, balance?  That's not even discussing beginning krathi, sorcerors, or psionicists... though karma does keep a "balance" of sorts... but that's for a different post.

I'm horribly against implementing the aging + skills process just because of the aforementioned reason of age.  Most people don't live long enough to become -accomplished- anythings, beyond accomplished survivors.  Life is cheap and if you aren't having kids by the time you're twenty, you probably won't live to see them.

I much prefer the idea that an accomplished character is one who has struggled -in game- to achieve what she has been bestowed with.  I remember one good friend of mine who often joked that his char had lived through what most people can't even hope to get away with putting in their backgrounds (GO ENDER!).  The character had all of the skills and scars to show for it, and that was better than any artificial skill increase.

I tip my hat to Ender and Rerinus, old tabletop friends and schoolmates of mine who constantly teach me a thing or two about roleplay.

Lord Templar Hard Nose continues to babble on.

Ok, as one starting out playing a kid... i do see something to the idea that skills should come with age.  I mean I also found IC it can be hard to come up with *why* a kid might have so many skills.

If not done by age, then perhaps skills that are affected by one's background should be consitered.  I mean it might be different for say... how many years one has been practicing.  

And its not only skills... my kid char had adverage strengh and below average agillity... this goes against nature.  Anyways, i just wanted to put in my sids and say you have something there.

Are you saying your too skillful?
If so, pretend the skills don't exist on your skill list or wish up and ask for them to be removed.

As for your suggestion about the Imms manually tweaking skills, I like this idea, and I hear the Imms do it themselves a bit, and you can always right in asking for your skills to be upped and say why (have to have a good reason though). However the problem is, it's a lot of work for the Imms who are busy enough as it is, which is why I hope it doesn't get imp'd.

Furthermore...if a middle-aged man is better at his skills than a young kid, the reverse should also be true - an old man would lose his abilities, as a natural result of the aging process.

I think that would be horrible, and deter anyone from wanting to have a long-lived character. It would also detract from what I consider the primary goal of any character in the game: to live as long as possible.

There's not much fun in "growing old" as a character, from the player's perspective, if the character stops being good at what he does. Yes, it's realistic that this would happen, but thank Tek Armageddon isn't THAT realistic a game.

Keep in mind also, that the young kids with serious skills are PCs, and that the world of Zanthalas consists of thousands of "virtual" people who aren't played by anyone. You can see them in the room descriptions on the streets of Allanak, where you are walking through crowds that don't "really" exist.

I would assume that the majority of children in Zanthalas are normal ordinary kids with little skill other than whining to mom about how hungry they are, and that the PC children are the prodigies.