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- Napoleon 16m
- SmokePotion 1m
- AdamBlue9000 6m Rolling 526d6 damage against both of us.
- Vulkan 2h
- Ameliorative 46m
- Bruhlicious 7h Deine Mutter stinkt nach Erbrochenem und Bier.
a Mench 40m Doing a bit of everything.
- notloose 6h
And 20 more hiding and/or disguised

UE and Age
Solving a lot of problems with one change

We briefly discussed this on OOC-chat the other day and people seemed to like it so I thought I'd start a more formal discussion here.

We make age an actual selectable date in character creation rather than just a detail you include in your history.

And then, based on your age, character creation changes slightly:

-The younger you are, the less UE you start with, but you get more max UE a day.

-The older you are, the more UE you start with, but you get less max UE a day.

Why? Because it solves whole batch of issues.

-Promotes character variety. No more 90% of characters being world-weary 18-24 year olds.

-Stops immy meta. No longer is an immy just a warm body. Now they can actually be dangerous or useful (beyond the aforementioned warm-body-ness, which is how they're useful now).

-Encourages people to interact and care about immies more. Gangs might fight over a really hot new pledge prospect. An experienced tailor, performer, fixer etc, can instantly shake up the economy.

.-Lets people decide where they want to start, if they want to jump right into a 'circle' and get involved, or if they wanna work up from the absolute bottom. No longer does everyone start from the pits of uselessness.

-Helps new players have a better experience thanks to the above three reasons.

-Stops UE meta. As it stands, if you know when a character immigrated (even just a vague time) , you can get a decent idea of how strong/competent they are. This is bad and makes no sense IC. This change would completely eliminate that.

The only downside I can imagine from this is it might make a few people care less about their characters and perm them off easier, but that already happens, and it's not an entirely bad thing as it keeps new characters cycling in and things fresh. People will still get attached to their characters and want to leave a mark on the city, and we all know success only comes from the connections and rep you build up over a long period of time.

Lastly, I can't offer accurate suggested numbers for this change, since I can't see the full picture like staff can, but the general idea would be something like, a 16 year old getting 2/3rds of the starting UE we get now (UE from character inheritance not included) and 6 UE a day max compared to the 3 we get now.

A 40 year old would get maybe a little over three or four times the starting UE we get now, but only get 1.5 UE per day.

Basically, I'd see that as letting a character start firmly in the midbie sort of area, for the obvious price of slower progress. We don't want instant super solos or anything like that, just competency.

Thoughts?

I don't see why everyone wouldn't eventually shift to the 40 year old with experience to start?
I wouldn't personally, Johnny.

Why wouldn't I just play a 16 year old and bide my time focusing on RP rather than skill use and once I catch up to what a 40 year old starts up, new 40 year old immigrants are gonna be left in my dust as they gain UE 4x slower than me.

Growth speed to me is a much more valuable commodity than starting point.

A lot of the problems you've said this will fix are problems I could still see continuing, just in a different fashion. Gangers already fight over new prospects. Immies can already enter the city super strong, if the player has residual xp from their last character, and we get surprisingly adept immies all the time. That people then fight over.

This isn't a big want from me and it seems like people might be playing only 16 yr old characters or 40 yr old characters if this were to go thru.

I like this idea. It feels fair, and like it would solve a lot of complaints as well. It is generally weird that everyone wherever they're from enters the game at more or less the same level, it feels very gamey and unimmersive. This way, you can decide if you wanna be a tough ass that won't learn much more, or a youngster still brighteyed and curious.
Sorry for doublepost, forgot to add that I legitimately want some sort of mechanic that acknowledges how old my character is.
Yeah, in line with Veleth, I'm not against defining ages or more customization/UE options in char gen. But tying it to age is a no for me at least.
I think it would allow for a better mix of characters as well. As it stands right now, when you come in, you are useless. Do you want to be a solo? Well, you can't because anyone who's been in the game longer than you and has built decently into combat is going to wipe the floor with you. I think it'd be a decent change being able to come in as a somewhat experienced man, who has seen life for what it is and has the skills to prove it.
I believe that you think that now Andromeda, but you'd hit the cap faster if you're someone whose around all the time and gaining faster. That experience will drive you to the opposite end. Over time, it would shift with only new players making the mistake of starting as a youth before suiciding and 'starting right'.
I guess so, I just really like the prospect of getting 6 UE a day compared to 1.5 UE a day, no matter what my starting UE amount is.
@Johnny

Well, that could be addressed by finetuning the numbers to get a nice balance. Mine are literally just made up as guidelines. And some people just like the climb, where others do not. I don't think we'd see everyone go for the big UE starts. I had ideas for also having age-related debuffs/buffs, but that's probably a little too complicated and I wanted to keep things simple.

First of all, age has nothing to do with experience in game terms. There are usually younger characters because that is one of the tropes of cyberpunk and it seems to be popular with the players. Same as a lot of people thinking their are anime characters, not my cup of tea but it is what it is.

I think I suggested more experience in a few town halls, but ultimately the slow drip of experience is design to force people to connect every day and be somewhat active. This is a mechanic that I've seen in place in multiple MOOs/MUDs.

The counterargument is the assumption that if you gave players more xp be it from the start or in their everyday, they would lose interest in the game faster since they would reach 'endgame' status in 6 months to 1 year as opposed to 2 or 3 years and also that they might play more sporadically, instead of being logged in every day.

I feel more XP would make the game a bit more exciting and give people the opportunity of experiencing different characters and different parts of the game, instead of having the same old character for 10 years or whatever because it took them forever to reach endgame and they don't want to lose it and start all over again from almost scratch.

I personally don't care as much about xp anymore, in fact in my years of SD I've never reached the cap and I think most characters don't need to either. What I do think is important is the ability to RP within the themes of the game, sharing your character's story with others and generating conflict (which is the fuel of any good story).

Ultimately I believe that having the right attitude while playing is more valuable than all of the experience in the game.

How about a "short lifespan" character as a compromise? You start with, say, +200 extra UE in chargen, but your max earnable UE is cut down to 540.

(540 UE is 6 months of playing every day long enough to get 3 UE per day.)

In other words, an option to roll a kind of "vacation character" package. Handy for trying out new roles.

Optional - Make short-term characters only rollable after having earned at least 500 UE on your previous character. That way you can't just get the bonus over and over. You have to actually play your short-term character.