Babies and children

[Pirog]

Meh>

Quitting like unsubscribing you character (can you do that?) I could live with, but I would have a very hard time accepting people killing off their children in the same manner as people do with their grown up ones.

[Jos Elkink]

Well, but asking to be killed is still a small minority of cases, isn't it? I think this should simply be seen as a capital rule breach and should be handled by the PD.

Babies will not have the speaking ability to ask to be killed, by the way ::grins:: - so the problem is much, much smaller here.

[Ecilope]

I think that a volunteer system, making volunteers babies first, would probably keep the problem of suicidal babies in check. It won't be an issue. If you volunteer for a baby character, you're probably going to play it at least halfway seriously.

And after a while, once other people see what the baby characters are like, I really believe they'll jump at the chance to do it too, once the strangeness has worn off. And then everyone will be starting as babies because the RP experience will be tons richer and more fulfilling. There can be family trees, lineages, a whole branch of academia dedicated to genealogy.

I, for one, am DYING for the chance to RP a baby. Even if my character couldn't talk or anything at first, I ADORE the idea of familial relationships forming, people being invested in each other as opposed to just co-existing. Looking out for each others' backs, being selfless. Can you imagine? Parental altruism in Cantr... ahh... *dreamy sigh*

(I guess my real point is, when is this going to be implemented? I'm SO excited about the mere prospect, I come on every day checking to see if the baby option is there, lol! )

- Becky

[Jos Elkink]

But by making is something voluntary, we miss two positive side-effects: 1) that really most population growth will be family based - we will still have a huge load of non-family character; 2) that the value of life will increase (if you play a grownup and he dies, you'll have to start as baby, so you care much more about the life of your grownup).

And I can't tell you when it gets implemented. It's not a professional company, so we don't work with deadlines ... Just like with clothes, it'll suddenly be there ...

[Ecilope]

I don't mean to say that it should stay voluntary. I just think it should start out that way. At least until it becomes familiar, and the benefits become clear. Then there will be much less resistance to the idea of child characters, and a drastically reduced problem with suicidal children.

[Pirog]

I agree with Ecilope.

If there will be enough children to fill the need for new characters you could make it mandatory, but if they are scarce you will still need spawning and then only the people that WANTS to play as children should get the chance.
(This sounds like an order, but it is a suggestion...or was it the other way around )

[swymir]

I still think all spawning should be babies, but your first 2 characters when you sign up should be spawned as Adults. That way we don't scare people off when they join and see you can only do 3 things in the game because you were just born.

Just thinking of others.

[Meh]

The idea is to make it slightly different than in real life: not one baby, sometimes a twin, etc. but make it very common to get 5 or 6 children at once. Then chances are higher that some are actually active players ...

This will also be better as it is likely that reproduction will go much slower than applications to play a baby, especially since the idea is to make it mandatory to start as baby if you want more than 4 or so characters. (Idea is: you can start four characters at 20 y.o. - once you started four of them, you can only start characters at 0 y.o - this way we will have enough volunteers for children, children will become the dominant form of population growth, people that play children until they are grown-up will be more attached to their characters and the hope is thus that people will think a lot less lightly about killing people than they do now. It is fun to have some areas where killings are common, but the current attitude among most characters is a bit bizarre ...)

This is the plan unless the plan has changed.

[XBL]

Maybe this has been mentioned before in the topic, but I don't feel to read the whole topic. Only read the last page.

But how is it going to work, actually? When someone starts (as a baby) someone else in Cantr gets a child. Right? But are the character not pregnant (or however you write that)? Is it just like... oh, someone wants a new character, so this women will get a baby?

And next to that, I believe there are more male characters in Cantr... so this means that women will get A LOT babies.

Jochem

[Ash]

Heh, it would be funny if a man gave birth!

[Pirog]

The idea is to make it slightly different than in real life: not one baby, sometimes a twin, etc. but make it very common to get 5 or 6 children at once. Then chances are higher that some are actually active players

Is that serious?
Cantrians are small, energetic, age fast and will soon be reproducing in speeds you can't imagine...should I start seeing them as rodents?

[sammigurl61190]

Heh, it would be funny if a man gave birth!

If that would happen in real life the population would be a lot smaller because no man would ever do it more than once! XD

[1959 Apache]

I don't think a man would do it the first time either, and I'm a man!

Introducing babies into Cantr must be part of the natural progression of the game. However, not all newspawns should be babies. Let's throw this idea around.

Current players have a choice of spawning as a baby or 20 year old, when creating a new character.
No new player may spawn as a baby, only those with some experience.
The option to spawn as a baby would be dependent on demand for babies. If there are current players who wish to have a baby, they follow a set procedure to 'request' one IC. Requests are filled as other players spawn characters as babies. If no players want to spawn as a baby, no babies spawn, giving the aspect to the game of trying to have a baby and failing. If there were no demand for babies and one spawned, what would become of it? A burden on society? A foster child at best?
The result, would be: only players wanting children would get them, and only players wanting to RP children would do so. That could reduce the possibility of a player spawning as a baby without intending to play one, and letting it die.

Not knowing the slightest thing about programming, I have no idea if that is even possible. It is worth a thought, though.

[Pirog]

I think it should be optional to play children until it can be established that there is enough children to fill the demand. Then everyone could play children...

If everyone plays children there won't be any (or at least very few) people killing their characters off, since they would have to start from the beginning again.

Perhaps it would even be good if there weren't enough children to fill out the demand, so that people would have to wait a while before starting new ones...then people would be a bit more careful with their characters lives.

One problem would of course be with newly started locations, like the Swedish region...there are so few people there that social contact of any kind is scarce, making the process of child birth quite uncommon...and in time that could lead to total extinction, since no new characters can spawn there...but that would be kind of interesting when I think about it

[Sho]

It seems both feasible and reasonable to me. The only question is whether any players would want to start characters as babies if given the choice. What advantages would starting as a baby have over starting at age 20? Forgive me if these advantages have already been discussed. I would expect that most players would not choose to play children, so you would have the opposite problem, people wanting to have children but unable to get them. Of course, this could be another kind of unexplained occurence to give people a reason to join religions (as is being discussed in the General Discussion forum), but it would probably be too imbalanced.