Blurring the age sense.

[Surly]

As time has gone by, and the various Cantrian "senses" (like the death sense) have faded away, it's made me think about possibly the most arbitary of the senses... the age sense.

First, this thread has a sister thread referring specifically to radios. Since I anticipate that suggestion is more likely to be accepted, I didn't want it to go down like this one will!

Right, now the suggestion. I thought first about a randomly generated variable of age when you meet someone, but I think that would place unnecessary strain on the server. Instead, what I thought was the following:

Firstly, lower the starting spawn age. Newspawns should not appear the same at character 8 or 9 years older.

Secondly, Introduce a random age appearance in the x7-y3 bracket. This could be recalculated on the characters spawnday. Say an x7 character has a 1% chance of appearing to be in the y age bracket. x8 have 10%, x9 have 25%, y0 have a 30% chance of appearing still in the x bracket, y1 a 25% chance, y2 a 10% chance, y3 a 1% chance.

The idea is just to blur the lines a little and try to reduce the fact that characters suddenly age 10 years every ten years.

Feedback?

[Piscator]

Wouldn't that mean that a characters apparent age would change every time you look at him?

Anyway, I think the ability to sense a characters age is pretty inexact as it is. Maybe subcategories could be introduced to smoothen the edges ("around x0 years").

I'm all in all rather indifferent about this issue though.

[Dudel]

I'm not too sure about lowing the spawning age to less then maybe 18 and that isn't much of a change so see no point to it.

As for age blurring... I still don't see the point unless you always included the <CANTR CHARDESC> option... which I've found myself doing more... and more... mainly because Cantr doesn't have a point to aging.

Age only "matters" from a social standpoint on certain things but in Cantr those things are common anyway so again... not much of a point.

The ONLY thing I could think off would be something like this...

For people 20-30 it would say, "This person looks between 20 and 40 years old" and from 40-50 you get, "This person looks between 30 and 50 years old" etc etc etc... but that could be more awkward. The gap could be smaller but unless they "bleed over" there is still that "OH you look older randomly... today".

My example would still cause this, to a point, anyway. X|


Edit: Or for 20- whatever you get "This person seems young." and then "This person seems a bit matured" and then further "This person looks older then most" and then you just keep the last one.

[tiddy ogg]

Can't see the point. Except the earlier spawning age - say to 15. That would allow better detection of the newer spawns.
But how is "you see a man in his teens" translatable into other languages?

[grzybi]

In Polish:

'Widzisz jak nastolatek...' (he) and 'Widzisz jak nastolatka...' (she)

or

'Widzisz jak młody chłopak...' (he) and 'Widzisz jak młoda dziewczyna...' (she)

Most of Cantr nations have people in Language Dept. I'm sure that they know how it is translatable

[Elros]

I don't really see the point of this either, and would rather have it stay the way it is now.

[Chasing Dingoes]

the idea of newspawns being younger is interesting. It would bring in social/moral aspects about age differences in dating and there could be age limits on certain projects. It also allows new players to go though that 'i have no idea what i'm meant to be doing' state with slightly more realism if the character is younger. Curious how younger newspawns would be treated upon spawning. Would they be more likily taken under the wing of an older character or shunned as a useless child?

I do prefer spawning at 20. This just caught my attention.

[Dudel]

the idea of newspawns being younger is interesting. It would bring in social/moral aspects about age differences in dating and there could be age limits on certain projects. It also allows new players to go though that 'i have no idea what i'm meant to be doing' state with slightly more realism if the character is younger. Curious how younger newspawns would be treated upon spawning. Would they be more likily taken under the wing of an older character or shunned as a useless child?

I do prefer spawning at 20. This just caught my attention.

Lets not FTO up my Cantr, please.

[Piscator]

Well, I woudn't mind 18 or 15, but 0 would be too much.

[Chasing Dingoes]

the idea of newspawns being younger is interesting. It would bring in social/moral aspects about age differences in dating and there could be age limits on certain projects. It also allows new players to go though that 'i have no idea what i'm meant to be doing' state with slightly more realism if the character is younger. Curious how younger newspawns would be treated upon spawning. Would they be more likily taken under the wing of an older character or shunned as a useless child?

I do prefer spawning at 20. This just caught my attention.

Lets not FTO up my Cantr, please.

Fresh Touring Origination?

[theguy]

the idea of newspawns being younger is interesting. It would bring in social/moral aspects about age differences in dating and there could be age limits on certain projects. It also allows new players to go though that 'i have no idea what i'm meant to be doing' state with slightly more realism if the character is younger. Curious how younger newspawns would be treated upon spawning. Would they be more likily taken under the wing of an older character or shunned as a useless child?

I do prefer spawning at 20. This just caught my attention.

Lets not FTO up my Cantr, please.

Fresh Touring Origination?

Fairy Tales Online, A game supposedly similar to cantr although I never played it but you have to join a birth queue and you get in game parents

[Snake_byte]

Maybe have it go by 5's starting at twenty.

A man who seems around Twenty.
A woman...

...around Twenty-five.
...around Thirty.
...Thirty-five.

[SekoETC]

Why do we have to use the numbers? I think it would make more sense if the ages were relative, like "much younger than you", "somewhat younger than you", "about your age", "somewhat older than you" and "much older than you". The categories would grow broader as your character ages. For people in their twenties, "about my age" would be +/-2 years while in some point it might be +/-10 years. It would also be useful to include "a young man/woman" when "much younger than you" would be an understatement" and "an old man/woman" (or the current he/she is very old) in the other end. I'll try to draw a graph.

[Zisrith]

Why do we have to use the numbers? I think it would make more sense if the ages were relative, like "much younger than you", "somewhat younger than you", "about your age", "somewhat older than you" and "much older than you". The categories would grow broader as your character ages. For people in their twenties, "about my age" would be +/-2 years while in some point it might be +/-10 years. It would also be useful to include "a young man/woman" when "much younger than you" would be an understatement" and "an old man/woman" (or the current he/she is very old) in the other end. I'll try to draw a graph.

I like this idea, if you want to know someone's age you could guess it based on that, or just ask. Much more realistic that way since people have to do that IRL

[Doug R.]

Why do we have to use the numbers? I think it would make more sense if the ages were relative, like "much younger than you", "somewhat younger than you", "about your age", "somewhat older than you" and "much older than you". The categories would grow broader as your character ages. For people in their twenties, "about my age" would be +/-2 years while in some point it might be +/-10 years. It would also be useful to include "a young man/woman" when "much younger than you" would be an understatement" and "an old man/woman" (or the current he/she is very old) in the other end. I'll try to draw a graph.

I like this idea, if you want to know someone's age you could guess it based on that, or just ask. Much more realistic that way since people have to do that IRL

I second this. I also think that strength should be reimplemented so that others can see it, just relative to your own strength (not like it was before, where it was compared to "average"). This means that the whole comparison to average in regards to strength should be dropped. But that's a different suggestion.