Merchants Beware of Ashy Sails..
Caspian and team,
You guys/gals are doing an Awesome job!!! Ignore the haters. You and your team are being super transparent and we can't ask for more. Keep striving to make the game as you see it and I'll play the crap out of it. I don't agree with every decision you make but I have faith that you and your team are going to create a game that I'm going to spend waaaaaay to much time in. Stay strong and in the meantime, try not to have an aneurysm. Have a great day!
-Hallvardur
First, thanks @AdamBurrfoot, I second that whatever the game developers do at SBS, I know they're going to come up with an amazing game. And I think all we can do as a community is help add to your list of what creates ideal gameplay. It's up to the devs how they solve/balance those factors.
But what really makes CoE unique in my mind is that every aspect of game play is a choice. If you want a kingdom management game, you can play king, if you want to be a farmer, smith, builder, explorer, scribe, scientist, there's different gameplay aspects to each and farmers don't have to play the scribe game and scientists don't have to be building houses unless they want to it's all a choice. So I think (IMHO) that a lot of the over-reaction has stemmed from the sense that raising heirs is going to become a necessary part of the game that everybody has to play if they want to build a legacy, and I think not everyone wanted to play that game. Some people will love raising heirs and going fishing with their son or whatever, and I think it's wonderful that that'll be possible, but I personally wouldn't be happy if it was a requirement.
In my ideal play experience, I have the potential to live from youth to old age unless my in game deaths shorten my life span. Like Cedric's post above, I think it would be super cool if you could inhabit a somewhat older NPC (20-30 maybe) and they would live longer than normal humans to allow for a full game play. And so maybe you have bards and scholars that have longer to educate themselves and they can grow old and wise (but probably won't fight as much). But again, it's all about options because personally, I want to live my own story, not the second half of a story.
I believe that families are already going to have an invite only option, so I'm not too worried about this, but I want to be able to create a family name that has meaning. You can't just choose to be born a Targaryen or a Lannister, I don't (necessarily) want just any random person to have the chance to slander the name I might create for myself.
Lastly, in my ideal play experience, I want to at least feel moderately secure that when I die my soul will have an heir to inhabit. I think it adds a very cool game dynamic where you can kill a person's family and heirs and that should definitely have major consequences and meaning. But when that maybe leads to the point where they've wiped the family off the map and you have no relatives to respawn your soul and you lose all your inheritance and hard work, that stops being fun for me (not making assumptions, I just don't know how this is going to work and I hope/imagine that's not what's going to happen). Basically if I'm not playing the family raising game, I don't want to have to worry overly about security for my family, having to find a wife and raise children, if I'm not playing that game, I kind of just want my heir to poof into existence (but that's for dev to figure out) I'm just saying in my ideal play experience, there's built in insurance that you'll be able to put your soul into an heir and pass on some of your belongings to him.
@Mr_Awesome, you're awesome. @Caspian, you're also awesome and I love what you're doing and all I really want is to see the game succeed, I hope there's something in all of ^^^ that's helpful in some way. :)
Posted By Balen at 11:39 AM - Fri Aug 12 2016
The amount of entitlement I'm seeing in this thread is pretty insane. I understand that changes will never be popular to everyone, but this is a bit ridiculous. We aren't investors. We aren't getting any "returns" on this product. We essentially gave them money, and our trust, to make this game. If it fails, so be it, but to think you know better than the guy who's put so much effort into this is outrageous. I don't agree 100% with all of the changes, but I'm not the dev and never will be. We put our trust in them to make this game and that's what I'll continue to do until they prove otherwise. Everyone in this community will need to be willing to make concessions on certain game mechanics in order to make the rest of the game(which most of us agree on the core ideas or we would not have put money down) viable.
As someone who has been pretty vocal about coming up with some alternative solutions to the update, I completely agree. To be fair though I think only a couple people are going over the top with threatening pledges. I want to clarify that although I think my idea of children aging slower would really be a good thing and I have pushed it on the forums, I fully understand if they decide not to incorporate it or even talk about it. I simply want to put my idea and others want to put their ideas out in the hopes of helping the dev team find the overall best solution. And this is the time to do that, before they are actually building that part of the game. At the end of the day this is SBS game and I don't think many of us see the new update as a insanely detrimental issue - just some of us had different ideas how it would work.
With some time to think about it, I am thinking who cares? Who cares if someone takes over a 40yo NPC while I take over my 15yo child? Who cares they live to 100 and I live to 60 we are getting the same play time. Although I would like everyone to start between 15-25 that really isn't nessecary and comes down to personal preference provides there aren't metas established. This game is already unequal and if you wanted to be 100 so bad, just pick an older heir. I think people, myself included might be overreacting to the perceived consequences of age, so that is the only thing I'd like to have an answer to: how will I be affected differently if I pick a 15yo vs a 50yo to put my soul into.
Aspiring Lumberjack, NA-W
Posted By Aqueous at 1:23 PM - Fri Aug 12 2016
First, thanks @AdamBurrfoot, I second that whatever the game developers do at SBS, I know they're going to come up with an amazing game. And I think all we can do as a community is help add to your list of what creates ideal gameplay. It's up to the devs how they solve/balance those factors.
But what really makes CoE unique in my mind is that every aspect of game play is a choice. If you want a kingdom management game, you can play king, if you want to be a farmer, smith, builder, explorer, scribe, scientist, there's different gameplay aspects to each and farmers don't have to play the scribe game and scientists don't have to be building houses unless they want to it's all a choice. So I think (IMHO) that a lot of the over-reaction has stemmed from the sense that raising heirs is going to become a necessary part of the game that everybody has to play if they want to build a legacy, and I think not everyone wanted to play that game. Some people will love raising heirs and going fishing with their son or whatever, and I think it's wonderful that that'll be possible, but I personally wouldn't be happy if it was a requirement.
In my ideal play experience, I have the potential to live from youth to old age unless my in game deaths shorten my life span. Like Cedric's post above, I think it would be super cool if you could inhabit a somewhat older NPC (20-30 maybe) and they would live longer than normal humans to allow for a full game play. And so maybe you have bards and scholars that have longer to educate themselves and they can grow old and wise (but probably won't fight as much). But again, it's all about options because personally, I want to live my own story, not the second half of a story.
I believe that families are already going to have an invite only option, so I'm not too worried about this, but I want to be able to create a family name that has meaning. You can't just choose to be born a Targaryen or a Lannister, I don't (necessarily) want just any random person to have the chance to slander the name I might create for myself.
Lastly, in my ideal play experience, I want to at least feel moderately secure that when I die my soul will have an heir to inhabit. I think it adds a very cool game dynamic where you can kill a person's family and heirs and that should definitely have major consequences and meaning. But when that maybe leads to the point where they've wiped the family off the map and you have no relatives to respawn your soul and you lose all your inheritance and hard work, that stops being fun for me (not making assumptions, I just don't know how this is going to work and I hope/imagine that's not what's going to happen). Basically if I'm not playing the family raising game, I don't want to have to worry overly about security for my family, having to find a wife and raise children, if I'm not playing that game, I kind of just want my heir to poof into existence (but that's for dev to figure out) I'm just saying in my ideal play experience, there's built in insurance that you'll be able to put your soul into an heir and pass on some of your belongings to him.
@Mr_Awesome, you're awesome. @Caspian, you're also awesome and I love what you're doing and all I really want is to see the game succeed, I hope there's something in all of ^^^ that's helpful in some way. :)
So I personally believe the new system actually allows for more choice. You now get to choose do I want to be a young gun for my game style or an old coot, you get to choose from literally any NTC in the world that is open as your next character (and heir if you do an heir contract). Because of that... sure someone could murder your family (yay for story) however, there is nothing stopping you from putting an heir contract on someone else's child who is safe from these murdering fiends and passing your worldly goods to them upon your death. So long as its contracted its sound.
The only people putting a familial requirement on chosen heirs is us as players. We are drawing assumptions based off of speculation, instead of sitting back and watching where it goes from here. Trust in the developers to get the game that all of us are passionate about made. :-P
The choices are 100% still there, if anything they just made more choices... Dont want to raise your kids? Dont have them and contract to someone who is raising a bunch of kids for your heirs. Want your own just not wanting to take care of them, marry an NPC or PC who will OR hire someone who wants to specialize in raising children. The game of choice just got choiceier! :-D
Good feedback from there I just felt obligated to try and sure up some of what I view as misconceptions in your post. (Who knows I could be completely wrong, lets see what the devs end up actually putting in place and test it from there!)
"Pledged to the betterment of the Studio and CoE through realistic, open, honest communication about what players can and will do with the mechanics you give them."
Come follow me on Twitch for CoE News and general hangout stuff n things! https://www.twitch.tv/adamrhyne
If you can lock in any ntc as tour heir whether they are a part of your bloodline or not and have them take your name and goods that avoids most of the practical problems surrounding losing everything if your bloodlines all are killed. It does still leave the problem of continuing a bloodline though if you wanted your characters to all have a specific look.
Posted By Caspian at 9:00 AM - Fri Aug 12 2016
Posted By Dekul at 8:33 AM - Fri Aug 12 2016
I take it we brought up some concerns that weren't discussed among the design team and you need time to process them and make a decision?
Or are you just that flabbergasted that we don't all 100% love the new plan?
Neither. There's just a lot to respond to, all spawning from some invalid assumptions. I typed up several answers last night taking different approaches to alleviating the fears, but after about 4 hours I gave up. Primarily because, at midnight, it seemed attempting to make clarifications would result in another 5k word essay.
But, I think I can do it in less. Will try again today.
Keep up the good work! A lot of what we talk about is speculation and with this many people It's hard to make everyone happy, but clarifying why things are the way they are is a great thing to do! Hoping for some more positives from everyone!
Thanks for the response burrfoot, I'm actually not sure I agree with your response. It's true that you could have players acting as sort of surrogate parents via heir contracts and that is an interesting dynamic but I sort of don't really feel like it fully answers my post.
Yes there's a lot more choice when you can possess any of the pre-existing NTCs but my main issue, this is a story based game and I don't want to live the second half of my story. Whatever character you choose comes with potentially major baggage, maybe they're ex-thieve's guild and have assassins chasing them, maybe they're in major debt. I don't know if you can see their whole lives, but even if you can, it seems you're either joining the game as a character with baggage or you get a leg up, maybe you inhabit a hero and you didn't have to put in the work and you get to just start there. I think the way this was supposed to be fixed was that you'd raise your child and get to experience their story and then be excited when you get to become in charge of leading that life instead of watching it develop. Which is genius! A great solution, except you're not making the NPC's choices for them, you're not saying go adventure here, and discover this, whatever they're doing, they've done on their own and for me and I believe other players as well, I want my life to be start to finish of my own design.
I think there are some other problems to be addressed in the dance of dynasties aspect like if the king is murdered and he just becomes his brother and nothing changes (although not up to date with how exactly cassus belli works so that could be non-issue) so I'm probably not the best person to speak regarding that.
Anyway, in summary I feel like permadeath is meant to feel like it's time to start over. Not pick up from a new middle, and I feel like if you play as an NTC I would feel less invested/connected to the world because I'd be living in a story I didn't feel was truly my own with a character I didn't feel like I'd crafted through my own means.
Realizing I didn't really respond to your idea of like an adoption/nursery heir incubator. I think it's a great idea for ways the meta content could be used, some people would probably have problems with it because they want their heir to be their child, and not sure how NPCs would react especially if you're not related by blood, are they still part of your dynasty? Are they in the family group chat? I think it's unlikely adoption will become the main system of choosing heirs unless Caspian said that if you didn't want to play the baby making game then you have to adopt. Which could be a reasonable, realistic response that everyone would have a million new questions about if the current system stays in place.
Oh man, this community is too sophisticated for me. At this point, reading through this post feels like sifting through a George R R Martin book.
Greetings All!
Phew. This is quite a topic. :-) Yesterday night I spent about four hours struggling to answer the questions in this thread in a number of different ways. I really didn't like any of the approaches. So today I'm going to try it a bit differently.
What I've seen from reading over this topic and all the posts is a re-occurring set of questions which seem to all stem from a few assumptions, which once clarified, make most of the concerns disappear. So, let me begin by identifying what I see are the main concerns from this topic (and all posts), and then we'll address each of them.
The first thing I want to address is this idea of a first-life vs. a second life. In both the new and old system, characters live a range of years between 40 and 60 weeks, with the average being 50. This is based on genetics and has nothing to do with how many deaths you have. And again, it's the same in the old and new system.
In the old system, those 40-60 weeks amounted to 70-105 Elyrian years. Add 15 on to that and because every character began at age 15, you were looking at a typical Elyrian lifespan of 85-120 years. This also corresponds with the maximum lifespan.
With the new system, those 40-60 weeks amount to 40-60 Elyrian years. Add 15 to that and you're looking at a default Elyrian lifespan of 55 to 75 years, with the average being 65. What I mean by default is, that's the lifespan you'd get if you started at age 15. That's what 90% of players will do their first lifetime.
That's not unlike our own world. While many people like to think we commonly live to our 80's and 90's, the data suggests that still isn't so. According to the 2010 US Census Data, out of the 308 Million people in the United States, only 53,00 are over 100. Only 371,00 are between the ages of 95 and 99. That's only .1% of the population. There're only 1.5 Million people from 90 to 94, and if I jump all the way down to 80, only about 3.5% of the population is over the age of 80.
Furthermore, the average/mean age of someone in the US is 37. That also happens to be the median. Additionally, the standard deviation ranges from 14 to 60. So basically, most people in the US are between 14 and 60, with some being slightly older but less than 4% being over 80. That sounds... almost exactly like Elyria.
What's throwing people off is, while 55 to 75 (Avg. 65) is the default lifespan because people can begin as an older character it shifts the typical lifespan slightly higher. That is, we expect players to start playing their characters between 15 and about 35 years old (Avg. 25). That means that the typical lifespan is 55 to 75 + 10 years. In other words, the typical lifespan of an Elyrian is actually 65 - 85 (Avg. 75).
How do we know that's the typical? Because that's what we're designing for. Most people assumed there was an incentive to living to 104. There isn't. There're only disincentives for doing so.
As we talked about previously, in the 'younger' years of a life, say, until about 45 years old (note that's 30 years from age 15), your character develops muscle and speed normally. After about age 45, it becomes harder and harder to maintain the same physicality. Your character gets weaker and starts to fail at physical skills.
However, around the same time, they start to develop mental attributes such as reason and focus more easily. Likewise, their Intuition and Leadership increases, while their Persuasion decreases.
So there's a trade-off in the later years of a character, which lasts until they're 75 (note that's 30 years from 45). At that point, stuff starts going bad everywhere. All your stats, physical, mental, and social begin to drop - slowly at first, and progressively faster as you get older. So there's no statistical advantage to living beyond 75. Not coincidentally, that's the average age of our typical Elyrian. Which is to say, most people, on average, will die when all advantages to living are gone.
So you see, people will live, die, and restart between about 15 and 35, live their lifetime to 75-85 and die again, to restart the process over again.
The only reason - the only reason people would want to start as an older character and live beyond 75-ish, is if they had no choice. The only ones that apply to really are the Nobility because they care more about holding onto their titles than they do about their stats.
All other players (maybe RPers, can't forget them), are incentivized to begin as early as possible, to stay under the 75-85 range. Let's get back to our bulleted list.
There was the concern there would be a prime level range. But as we've shown, because stats start to degrade as early as 45 for the physical and 75 for the mental, and characters can live from 15 to 75, they can experience the full range of skills in each lifetime. That said, it's true that it's not in your best interest to start with a 45-year-old if you're a warrior. But, that's true not matter what role you pick. Aside from nobles, it's literally never good to start as a 45-year-old if you can avoid it.
Not sure where this idea came from, but no, we're not forcing players to play in any particular age ranges.
We talked about this briefly above from the perspective of how your skills are affected by your attributes. But there's also the question of how your skills carry over to your soul. It's simple; your skills only carry over for the time you're living in your body. The longer you spend in your body, the more skills you'll accumulate, and the higher your potential in the next life.
No. There was a lot of talk about this, but as we've shown, extending your life beyond 75 provides only disadvantages, and it leads people to want to be able to extend their life beginning earlier, like 35.
But this leads to people playing like madmen, throwing themselves at danger and dying in their 30's, and then buying a spark to extend their lifetime. This enables players with more disposable income to play more carelessly. If those risks lead to better gain, it does provide an in-game advantage to those who have more out-of-game wealth. We're opposed to ever allowing players to buy to extend their lifetime.
Yes. You can make your grandchild your heir. If for some reason you've managed to make it up into the 80's, feel free to skip a generation to get back into the teens.
We believe having your child in-game, being able to teach them, instruct them, guide their learning, etc. builds a closer connection to them - as we said before. However, it's not a requirement. It's perfectly acceptable to have your child, set up their room for them, and then forget about them. Their AI will take over, and since they can't die or be killed, they'll wander around the house, find something to do to occupy their time, etc.
This isn't the Sims. You don't have to ensure their fed or their diaper is changed. That said, if you take the time to interact with them, and guide them, it'll lead to a better-established heir in your next life.
This hasn't really changed much from before. Previously, if you started in Exposition, you had no control over your siblings. You still have no control over your siblings.
After exposition, any siblings you had would remain NPCs forever. Now, someone could become a PC sibling later in life. Cool. More people to help grow your dynasty. Maybe you'll make a life-long friend this way. Maybe you'll make a temporary enemy. Dramatic situations.
Previously, if you had children who you decided would become NPCs, they remained NPCs. Now, all children are NPCs by default and if you want to allow players to join your family, just unlock the child, and other people will join. 'Strangers' can't join your family unless you allow them. The only difference there is that 'strangers' could join your family while your children were less than 18, but not after. Now, you can continue to have strangers join until your children are 52. But, chances are good they'll be siblings by then, not children.
If members of your previous dynasty have their children or grand-children unlocked, they're opening them up for anyone to join... that includes former dynasty members and complete strangers.
Having a view that shows the open positions in your previous dynasties just gives a quicker way to join them. Remember, dynasties are a lot like guilds in other games. If you've got a child unlocked, it's an open invite to anyone - past guild members and otherwise. If you don't want that, lock all the descendants and create an invitation process where you give out NPC codes.
NPC children less than 13 years are untargetable and immortal. This is done to prevent us from being banned in countries where such killing - even of NPCs is prohibited. From age 13 to 15 you can incapacitate an NPC child, but not coup de grace them. After age 15, all bets are off.
Soul binding is intended to be permanent and carry across lifetimes. You marry someone, soul bind, and you're done. When you die, one of you will select the family heir and continue the lineage. The other will join a different family and then marry back into the family.
As for incest, we won't prevent it. but remember, your genetic sampling comes from the same set, but with a chance of mutation. Your mileage may vary.
The plan right now is to limit having children to 45 years old. Post 45, you're too old to have children. This reduces the number of under-age children in the world and encourages players to be mindful of if/when they want to have children.
The final thing I want to touch on, which I've seen several people raise as an observation but which hasn't received enough attention, is that the age ranges we've been working with are sans deaths. The problem is when you talk about the game sans deaths you look past the typical and start talking regarding extremes.
What I mean is, we were talking about the typical life span of the new system as being 65 - 85 (Avg. 75). But that's only true if you suffer no deaths.
The people who are going to be suffering very few deaths are the Producers, who stay comfortably in their settlements. It makes sense that the backbone of the economy, the crafters, would live longer lives. It's also more important they reach 45 years old for the purpose of the mental bonuses, etc.
But as you change roles from Producer to Gatherer, to Explorer, to Champion, the expected lifespan naturally goes down.
A Gatherer, who's out in the wilds a bit, is more prone to bandits, pirates, or other forms of highway robbery. Also, each time they go back to their favorite mine there's a risk that something has moved in. So, a Gatherer might die in-game once per week.
That reduces their expected lifespan down to somewhere around 45 to 60 years, with an average around 53 years. So if they have a child at 40, their kid is just 23 when they die. Easily capable of picking up the mantle and continuing the family business.
Explorers lives are even more dangerous. They're constantly wandering in the darkness, traveling into caves they shouldn't, and going places where nobody has been in quite some time. They may die 3 times per week. As a result, they may only live to be between 35 and 50 years old, with the average being around 43. If they had a child at 25, the child is just 18 when they take over. But as explorers naturally need to be more physically fit, that works out nicely.
Finally, Champions may die 5 times a week. They may live as little as 30 to 40 years. If they have a child at 25 years old, their child will be just 15 years old when they die. Ready to dive head-first into the life of a warrior, like their mother or father.
And again, these numbers are all samples and examples. Your mileage will vary based on your skill level and the choices you make. Not every Champion will die 5x per week.
The takeaway from this is as follows. There's no split lifetime, there's just the one. Everyone wants to live as young a possible. For most people that's never a problem. Under the new system, you'll just go from life to life, playing your parent, then playing your child in a natural circle of life.
In the odd chance that you find yourself without a child, there's plenty of other choices for you to choose from, but in 90% of all cases, the only people who will find themselves in such a situation are the Nobles. And to them, it's less about which character they play next, and more about ensuring the integrity of their dynasty. It is, as they say, the Dance of Dynasties.
Thanks for the response Caspian. I think this clears up a lot of the issues presented in this thread. I'm sure people will have more questions, but getting ahead of it really helps.
If you have the opportunity, there are some noble specific concepts being debated in the early access zone. Picking out one or two to respond to would go a long way.
Very well answered Caspian, and I think all my issues with the update has been settled by this. One question though. You wrote that you don't have any control of your siblings even in exposition. Will there be no way of setting up your dynasty pre-game if you're for instance 8-10 people already wishing to be of the same dynasty, is that not possible?
Thanks for clearing up the confusion Caspian, perhaps when doing things in similar nature asking some of the king teirs backers to read through and ask questions before releasing the final version, they can ask questions to have you edit the doc and clarify before more confusion and speculation occurs. Keep up the good work!
That explanation clears up a lot, and makes me appreciate the change more. I already liked it because it feels like a more relatable lifespan, gives you more time to enjoy and play your character through their life, and there's a better chance you're playing your kid instead of your great grandkid.
Also glad to see the clarification of the soul binding, and incest/the logical approach of how you'll re-marry the same soul after you made your first set of heirs together.
Overall, I feel good about it. :D
Thank you Caspian. Very nice explanation and i hope this answers the questions some have had. I for one am 100% behind you and look forward to seeing your vision become a reality. :)
Epic post Caspian!
I'm so glad I gave you my money and I'll gladly give more.
Yippee ki-yay
