Shattered Kingdoms

Introduction
Nearly all cultures on Earth honor their elders and acknowledge the contributions that they make to society. In politics, popular lawmakers retain their positions late into their lives, becoming respected elder statesmen who may collaborate and endorse younger politicians. In academia, scientists and professors often teach classes for beginning undergrads, but they also work late into life, coauthoring papers with recent PhDs and continuing to act as mentors. In athletics, champions past their prime playing days are often highly valued for their abilities as coaches of teams and mentoring individual talent.

The cultures of Shattered Kingdoms do not currently mirror this aspect of life. SK is rare among multi-player games in that players feel the life of their characters slipping away. Even the longest-lived races live no longer than 3 years. Imagine the outrage this would cause in the World of Warcraft community were it implemented now, or the amazing changes it would create in the community. Such a system encourages detachment from the feeling of your PC as an "avatar" of yourself. Such detachment encourages rapid turnover and enhances the value of young characters.


Proposition
I believe that there is room within the SK universe to expand the value of elder characters, especially among warrior and adventuring classes, but among all classes as well. I would like to see coded, mechanical advantages beyond advanced mental statistic potential.

I have posted this in another thread but I hope that it can be discussed on its own. I like my idea, but I think it's time that we got together as a community and figured out a benefit that can be granted to old characters to encourage playing them to venerability. A 3-year-old elf might seem like an old character, but outside of the SK world, 10-year-old MUDs often have a small group of 10-year-old characters who will never leave and make room for the next generation. If playing a character to the age of 275 is deemed too long for an SK character, then I would suggest lowering the max age rather than encouraging early deletion.

Proposal

Teaching abilities advance with age
-The range of abilities that can be taught expands allowing the most experience characters to share their wisdom of Dual Backstab, Ambush, Holy Word or even Finger of Death.

-The learning-rate of the student increases, requiring less trains to gain the maximum benefit depending on the wisdom and age of the teacher.

-The maximum proficiency to which mentors can teach increases with age, allowing the wisest and oldest teachers to bring their students directly to mastered.

-Reserve the ability to put a timer on these abilities so that a teacher is restricted to teaching a limited number of high-level abilities within a certain time frame. (I wouldn't turn this on until it seemed that the system was unbalancing)

-Reserve the ability to require a certain activity level in the case that players keep old, inactive characters around just to give out free high-level trains. The intent is to keep old characters active, not in a closet.

Benefits
-Old characters of all classes suddenly are in demand.
-Each faction will benefit from retaining elders since it is unlikely that the Hammer's sorceror will be educating the Empire.
-Those who roleplay mentor/student, master/apprentice or knight/squire relationships will gain slight advantages in advancement speed over those who go solo using NPC teachers.
-If significant timers are applied to the ability to teach high-level skills, those with close relationships to elder characters (cohorts?) will benefit more than someone who just wishes to learn and leave.
-It's easier for older characters to gain enough mentor points to allow them to continue to improve. (hopefully we will allow trains into age-tick mental stats by then)

oh, god. Too much blue! Take it away. :/

Me likey

You can ignore the blue part.

C'mon, what's wrong with blue? At least it's not pink.

Yeah, cause any posts done in pink are obviously not ever worth reading.

*Will be the first person to post something relevant to the topic, Huzzah!*

Interesting ideas, however there is one big problem with all of them. They aren't actually perks for the aged character. Simply perks for other people who can learn from the aged character.

There's nothing in those suggestions that would actually make the person who has the aged character want to stick around, they don't really get any benefit. The only people who would want others to play characters well past the halfway point are the people who could learn from them.

EDIT: Aside from the mentor points, but chances are of they're that old, they'd already have more mentor points than they could use anyhow.

I will acknowledge that there are no solo-PK benefits for the aged character, but I disagree with the idea that there are no perks. Whenever you have something that other people want, that is a bonus for you. It is up to you to figure out how to leverage your abilities to gain the advantages you desire. Perhaps you will obtain gold, items, allies or influence, or perhaps you are just the type of person who wants to be the best at something.

Playing a supporting role is not for everyone, but for every swashbuckler or mercenary running around with super-elite enchants and a pocket full of healing vials, there's another player out there who spent literally hours of his or her own time, but for what benefit? The ability to feel useful and valued by your friends, family and allies are what keeps people from abandoning support characters.

This gives the option for aging warriors or characters of any class to take on an excellent supporting role within their chosen communities.

If players are willing to fill this role, I would like to see some high level abilities eventually removed from NPCs (or new, player-only abilties added) to magnify the importance of keeping old teachers and coaches around.

You can never have enough mentor points


I do like this idea, however I think it needs alot of balancing.
I don't like the idea of the most advanced tutors being able to teach directly to mastered.
Maybe a couple ticks into superb but no more.
I'd love for the older mentors to be able to teach Jman abilities (but not past verygood) and maybe even Veteran abilities (but limit it to only being able to teach til the student is good).
This would encourage the student to go find a better NPC trainer, but still allow the teaching of important skills.

As much as I like the idea, I do think there needs to be some kind of reward for the mentor other then the mentor points. As an aged char isn't truly going to need mentor points, except maybe casters to pump into Art/Mana.

TBM

Sypher made my point before I could post it, but he didn't actually go far enough. Not only do the suggestions NOT make older characters more fun to play, the suggestions actually detract from older characters by speeding up the time it takes younger characters to achieve the same level of power. The suggestions are counterproductive to the stated goal. Older characters will only be more valued if it takes MORE time to accomplish the level of training that they have achieved.