Shattered Kingdoms

The bonus from mentor points is probably enough to make playing a long-lived melee character worth it. The only thing is that when a rogue loses the ability to do a 25 str backstab, that's a huge setback. The rogue will of course continue to be somewhat OP, though.

Stat points from mentoring is a huge enough bonus to play a long-lived character. I don't know why everybody seems to forget about that.

Rogues have so many options. Reducing them to backstab is ridiculous, even if it is overpowering.

IDEA 1:
Now bear with me for a minute but, make an age tick by itself nothing but bad. Go to any nursing home and you'll see getting old can be rough. BUT! Maybe a counter could be added in for chars. Something like it counts the number of times you look at a PC, another PC looks at you; the number of times you tell someone something and someone tells or replies to you. And there could be say a cap of the points for every week, to prevent somebody logging on one day and spamming the crap out of this. But this could basically be a nice measure of ones activity and show what characters have people really committed to them, and this would then in turn provide the bonuses everybody is dicussing, such as bonuses to skills and spells, and these bonuses would only come with age/time played. Thus people would be encouraged to actually keep characters for a while, and engage more with others (Heck maybe you could get more points for larger status differences, thus encouraging GMs to be around newbies), while preventing simple spamming for bonuses, and the possibility of incubating a char to get bonus. In this case making a char and then sitting him on the shelf would only lead to an even worse char. So though you might get an age tick, if you kept the char up you could get skill/spell bonuses, and could keep stats from falling as much/raise stats like int and wis.

Along with this, something should be added to let people get a basic idea of the age of the char, although disguises, polymorphs and the like might be able to hide this. Something like under 1/2: young; under 3/4: middle-aged; under 9/10: older; under venerable: elderly; and about to keel over and die: decrepit. That way you could look at that old fart in the inn, and think to yourself, "He's got to be weak as dirt, but is he the kind of guy capable of flat out killing me with one hellishly placed headbutt?"


IDEA 2:
I think that one of the most far-reaching and best things that could be done would be the introduction of the industrious/merchant classes. The basics of this would be a mining/smith class, a farmer/agriculturalist class, an artisan class, and a merchant class, though the more I think about it, the merchant class is probably rather expendable.
-The smith would be a metal and stone worker, able to bring raw metals and minerals from the earth and produce and repair things like heavy armors, weapons, locks and key and the like.
-The agriculturalist would be a producer of wood, paper, leather and the like. He could produce and repair various light armors, clothing, unmagical staffs and wands; be involved in animal husbandry and so sell pets; grow food, build houses and so forth.
-The artisan would be more dependant on the first two for raw materials, but could make treasures, statues, books, altars, magical devices with no magic, such as glass bottles for potions and so forth.
None of these classes would be especially inclined towards magic and so could further promote interaction as say an artisan and and sorceror go into business together to make vials, wands, potions, scrolls, etc. And a craftsman who was part of a religion could probably make some primo goods with the help of his priest.

First off this would help fix the economic situations where high demand goods become hugely priced because there is no competition unless an immortal makes another vendor in a new area. Players would be able help stabilize prices because there would now be real competition. Secondly, this would give players the ability to feel like they've added to the environment, because they literally could now do so. And this could tie in with the age boosts that long lived characters would get, and so you couldn't simply get a 100 hour GM artisan producing some way overpowered object that the IMMS would feel like they need to come down and intervene. With a little work, people could produce insignficant and poor or average quality trash, but with a lot of time and energy, people could produce high quality stuff that folks from across the realms would talk about and want. And finally, this would free up (at least I imagine) at lot needless busy work for IMMs. Need a book? Just go to an artisan and show him what you want. Got an idea for a superamazing weapon? Spend a character lifetime perfecting you craft while being good friends with an old wizened mage, and you can make it yourself. Heck, players could even help build new "areas" as woodworkers and stoneworkers build new homes, shops and temples. And once again, if we're worried about people building stuff that nobody or at least the IMMs don't won't, craftsman would need to be ridiculously good to keep their buildings standing for decades and centuries, as this would ideally tie in with the above mentioned. (Imagine buying a house from some guy, and then having to contact a priest to ress you when your roof falls on you) I can't help but see this as a great benefit for both the playerbase and the IMMstaff.

UPDATE 1:
There could be checks every few ticks or so when charm is being held on a person. So not only would you get a chance to save from the initial spell, but to break yourself free from it once under the spell. Another feature that could be added in could be that if you fail at the spell or if the victim broke free, there'd be a chance that the spell would "bounce back" at the caster, putting him into a drooling stupor, that could very well end his life.

UPDATE 2:
Here are a couple of ways that sling could be improved, and most likely get more people to use the skill. For starters, as many have said, you should be able to sling at targets in adjacent rooms. As it is now, a giant can heave enormous boulders into the next room, but is unable to do so with a much smaller projectile.

And rather than having to use a shovel to dig up stones and then have the shovel wear out after maybe getting four or five stones, the sling skill could be retooled similar to herbalism. The better at the skill you were, the better chance you would notice good slinging stones while walking about, and as your skill and status level improved you would also find better stones, both in terms of durability and damage they could produce.


I can't find what I did with some of my other ideas right now, and this is getting a little long anyway, so I'll just stop here.

My suggestion wasn't to address the degree of impact aging has. Merely that according to the help file on aging, it seems that mechanistically aging is beneficial to caster classes and detrimental to combat classes.

It seems (please correct me if I am incorrect) that the characters that end up logging the most hours upon deletion (posting to the afterlife) tend to be priests and sorcerors. Mercenaries/barbarians that delete frequently seem to be a flash in the pan. They created, leveled quickly, entered PvP for a little bit, were somehow dissatisfied and deleted. If this is the vision for character demographics, then so be it. My suggestion can be shelved to the annals of archive.

I was offering what I believed to be a simple implementation into aging that would be a visible and concrete incentive to keep melee characters around for longer periods of time. It just so happened that I believe the implementation would also be elegant enough that it would likewise promote longevity among caster classes too.

It isn't that I believe that aging is this chasm that cannot be overcome with mentor points. But was simply asking the question of whether it should be a chasm at all.

As I personally grow older, I notice that those who are even senior to myself have a lot of wisdom and experience to contribute. I would argue that, on average, the heights of their individual accomplishment are achieved at middle age. A time when the body and mind is still competent enough to enact what experience has dictated as the "best" way to accomplish something.

I also thought that improving character longevity would increase the epic nature of the game and player retention. I know that in the past, I had a couple characters I had to shelf for a month or two due to real-life restrictions and when I returned, the character landscape had changed so much that I felt little motivation to return.

Since it seemed Dulrik is actively working to improve SK recently (therefore improving its overall appeal), I thought I'd throw my hat into the idea ring. If the idea is not as simple to implement or is not aligned with the overarching vision of SK I understand. If the idea has little merit, I graciously cede to the experience and wisdom of the experts of SK who have much more experience than my spotty record.

As inappropriate as it sounds for the god of Death and Time to say this, I think after giving it more than a moments thought that this is probably a true statement. Mentor points are probably enough. Additionally, there are the exceptions, but most aged characters are just collecting dust on a shelf. I can certainly agree that it would be nice to reward someone for holding onto a character longer, its probably not something large enough in magnitude for Dulrik to plan new code for. People who keep their characters for a long time have benefits they enjoy and they aren't the same for every player. I am glad that some players cycle through characters quickly. It does keep things more interesting sometimes. Both kinds are necessary.

Yes, I am surprised to hear this from you! But while I lean toward the rewarding-old-characters line of thought, I can see the necessity for the short-lived characters as well. Nothing like an Adroan character to shake things up!

I wish there was a facepalm emote.

You and me both, brotha, you and me both.

If I third this, does that mean we can have a vote by acclimation and force viltrax to implement it?

Not until he fixes forumid, brings back the old purple of sk forums and saves all the australians in that particular order.