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?