Beauty stat

[myst]

OK, I was thinking of how every character in Cantr essentially has everything they need. How can we have a realistic society simulation if thats true? There has to be some motivation.

I got to thinking about the success of clothes. Loads of characters are willing to pay good rates for them, and they serve no purpose. So this is my idea: a beauty stat. New spawns start as "attractive". If you stay outdoors for too long, you become "weathered" and then "wrinkled" or "ugly" (or whatever). By spending time indoors, you slowly build up appearance points to recover your good looks, and are able to become "beautiful". New items might also be introduced to heal points more quickly.

The rate of appearance points gain is increased by being in better buildings, without machinery (so work doesn't make you beautiful), with comfortable furniture. The points are split between all people present to represent overcrowding.

This has NO direct consequences, unlike decreasing food gathering rates (or other suggestions). And you can bet a lot of people will want to look good. It provides motivation to get a job (comes with a roof over the head) and also social climbing (you can always have a bettter house which keeps you gorgeous whilst allowing you to go out for longer). Field workers will not be able to keep highly attractive - so there is another incentive to social climb even if you don't want to get political.

Obviously the numbers would be hard. I'd say that only the catagory should be visible to players. As a guess:

0 to 100: beautiful
-100 to -1: attractive
-200 to -101: weathered
-400 to -201 : skin damaged
-600 to -401 : ugly
-601 or less : deformed

lose 1 point per day outdoors. In buidlings gain 1 point per day (per building quality) in a normal building - improved by 1 point per comfort item, less 1 per piece of machinery there. Gain should be calculated by the hour.

(Yeah, I know very little about the different buildings - I'm thinking mud hut - wood hut - stone building - larger stone building etc as the catagories.)

This would obviously effect how likely people would be to sit around outside and chat.... perhaps encouraging decadence in the wealthy, and the introduction of meeting places, etc. That is a major thing, but not necessarily bad. And obvoiusly, nobody actually has to care how attractive they are.

Is it: a) implementable and b) desirable to everyone? Any changes to suggest?

[Nick]

I dont like the idea, but I will give you this; First original idea I have seen in a long time.

[Molested.Peach. (cky)]

I don't like it either... I don't want to stay in a building to just get nice..

[Lumera]

Not too crazy about the idea, though I'd eventually like to see some kind of descriptions in Cantr. I just don't think the amount of time spent indoors or outdoors working or not working would realistically be able to make a person either 'beautiful' or 'deformed', and I don't know if doing nothing but sitting around emoting is something I'd want the game to so strongly encourage. (though I would like for more people to hang out inside buildings as it's boring now for the characters stuck there, I don't know if this would be the best way to go about it)

Now, I could see all these factors effecting things like skin-tone and body composition, but in that case a healthy balance would be the best thing to shoot for. You may not want to end up sunburnt and rail-thin any more than you'd want to be pale and obese.

Still, that's kind of complicated, and anything with variable descriptions might be more trouble to program than it's worth; right now I'd just be happy with hair and eye colors.

[griogal]

If you stay too long inside, basically doing nothing, besides stuffing your mouth, I think you'd rather get fat than beautiful.

Perhaps better to have randomly determine whether or not you're hideous, ugly, unattractive, average, attractive, beautiful or gorgeous.

At the same hair and eye colour could be introduced.


Perhaps dietary effects as well

[Agar]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

No, not the floaty eyeball thingy from D&D, the person viewing the thing.

Everyone has different ideas of what beauty is, so there for, a beuaty stat would mean different things to different people. Some men like big boobs/legs/butts, some like small boobs/legs/butts. Some women like money, some power, some strength (not the same thing), some women like to dominate, control, or who know what else?

Besides, this is a text based game. If you really want to work up a beauty stat, don't base it on activity. Parse the speech when people talk, and if they use proper grammar, spelling and inflection, they get better looking, if they talk l33t, u no wut i meen, then they get less attractive.

The hardest part about parsing the speech would be implienting them in foreign laungages. Not to mention writing the parsing code. And then, parsing everything would lag the crud out of the server, as it now looks in detail at every single thing everyone says, so no one would want it.

[Sunni Daez]

I kind of fancy the idea of identity features, maybe when you first create your charr. you can choose.such as... blonde hair ,med. length,....green eyes...etc, physical phsique would not work as when you are attacked by lion, it changes your settings from strong to average strength., besides, there has to be something left to the imagination, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so giving an appearance rating would not be right.

[Pirog]

I don't like the idea...especially not based on that people who stay outside gets ugly. That almost feels racist, even though I'm not accusing you of anything.

Agar certainly has a good point about beauty being in the eye of the beholder. (Liked the joke by the way )

I'm hoping that there will one day be character descriptions where people can write their own appearance. (Some things like hair color, eye color, skin color etc. could be randomized when they are created...and the free form appearance might need some form of clearance from the PD to get approved). Then people could make up their own mind about who is beautiful and not.

[NetherSpawn]

I don't think 'how people look' should be implemented until it has some meaning. Now, if the dynamic labeling system were totally different, physical descriptions would be meaningful (as in it takes 5 days of being in the same location for the label to stick, or something of the sort).
Yes, I think we can all agree that beholders are beautiful.
Parse the speech yourself. 133t is a lisp.

[The Sociologist]

OK, I was thinking of how every character in Cantr essentially has everything they need. How can we have a realistic society simulation if thats true? There has to be some motivation.

This is, if I may say, rather similar to my Conspicuous Consumption thread, wherein I made the point that Cantr lacks coding to reinforce the basic drives that human beings possess, and therefore has no developed consumption, and therefore has in effect no real economy. However, the part dealing precisely with the effect of lifestyle choices on appearance was not well received, to put it mildly.

http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3287
.

[Junesun]

As for staying outside makes you ugly... IRL it depends on the culture. Generally, the appearance that means that yuo don't have to work (much) has been considered beautiful in Europe:
- At the time of the Romans, most work was done outside and the rich people took a lot of trouble in order not to get a tan (that would suggest they had been working) - being tanned was considered ugly.
- Nowadays, most work is done in an office, so being tanned suggests that you have a lot of free time and enough money to go on holiday in a sunny, Southern place.
- In modern-day China, being tanned is still considered ugly, probably because white foreign visitors are associated with wealth.

So if you absolutely want to introduce a beauty-factor, I'd suggest making it based on how much that person is working - or simply how rich he is. Note that I'm not talking about absolute beauty here, which has to be determined by every onlooker for himself, but rather just the most basic society convention on what is beautiful.

Btw, a part of the "money is beautiful" thought is already implemented in-game, when you see that people are holding steel or iron items, especially if these items are jewelery and don't serve any practical purpose. The development of gold jewelery is rather unrealistic in that sense, because gold is not widely used as a currency and therefore doesn't mean wealth (as it used to mean in ancient times, when gold jewelery first appeared).

[Pirog]

Junesun>

The development of gold jewelery is rather unrealistic in that sense, because gold is not widely used as a currency and therefore doesn't mean wealth (as it used to mean in ancient times, when gold jewelery first appeared).

Actually, gold can be expensive just because it lacks any other use than making jewlery. Putting work into an object you can only use to decorate yourself should indeed be a sign of wealth.

I like that people nowdays are starting to treath well clothed people with respect and unclothed people with disdain. I haven't seen it before, but I hope more people would start doing it.
If/when children are implemented and opens up from a new form of nobility I would definately like to see kings who refuse to meet persons who doesn't at least wear basic clothes

[myst]

Well, NO positive responses, that must be a first for Cantr! Usually everyone just want to argue

I agree that deformed is a little harsh. However, if you've ever been to somewhere properly poor then you will see what I mean. The "Hill Tribes" in Thailand, for example, have people working in the field all day, with no protection, and the people are all wrinkled and bent backed. That is a product of working too hard with no cover. The better off tribes, who trade etc for some of their needs, are normal looking because life isn't so hard on them. Its a real effect.

The original idea was to have some visible effect of hard work. If the catagories were more moderately named, would that improve people reception of this?

For example:

unblemished (the starting value and the "highest" on the scale)
tanned
heavily tanned
weathered

Clearly, people might want to be tanned. It would take a long time to get to weathered, like years, and would be possible to treat yourself if you didn't want to be.

Whether this idea is the way to do it or not, something does need to be done to inspire people to want to do more than work outdoors naked. It would give an incentive to trade, as well, becuase resource gathering is the only thing that can't be done inside. And it does it in an entirely RP way, which I think is important.

[ephiroll]

I don't think it's a bad idea, just needs alot of work, but being inside or out isn't the only thing affecting appearance, everyone is different. I don't think being inside or outside shoudl be the determining factor, although it does have an affect, but it normally takes many years of hard outside work to make someone look "rough". Other things, such as what kind of work they do (smelting vs. farming) and actions they take part in should be the determining factors. Scaring should also be figured into something like this, if someone gets hacked up to within an inche of their life or tore into by a bunch of animals it's sure to leave scars of some sort.

[DylPickle]

What I was thinking of for a bit was a "talent" system or something. Right now it's hard to get economies and currencies going because anybody can obtain any ressource they want just as easily as anyone else. It's the same deal with attacking things and people. I doubt many people hit at 50% all the time to RP a weak character. I have once, but even then I found myself cheating a hell of a lot.
I think it would be interesting if some people could farm better or worse, build slower/faster, produce better/worse, and inflict more or less damage with certain types of weapons than others.
(sorry if this hardly makes sense, I tired... )