Up for Adoption

[wulf]

Not only do I believe that I've got an idea worth respectful consideration, I also believe that I'm not the one showing myself up as unimaginative and offensive

From a programming point of view, I'm assuming that the Cantr database holds a list of players, each of whom has one or more characters, each of which has multiple entries in all sorts of related tables. If that's the case, the physical implementation of the suggestion would be no more than 'UPDATE characters_table SET player_id = XXXX WHERE character_id = YYYY'.

Obviously, there's a lot more to consider, which a lot of people short on time (and wanting to reduce their stable) probably wouldn't be able to invest in but it would be a strong statement that Cantr is a character-centric rather than a player-centric world.

Wulf

[Sunni Daez]

I can understand his wanting to, it is hard to give up on a charrie, you put all the time and effort into them, but...It is a bad idea, so, you let a new player take over your Charrie, you explain what drives them, what thier wants needs or desires are....so the new player takes over, sees all the things he has...and uses it to his advantage, turning your well groomed charrie into a pirate, thief, murderer....How would you feel then? Personally, I would rather a well groom charrie die with respect, then have him/her killed .... besides, what repect would the new player have for that charrie they put no time of effort into? Let it be...if you can't play them, let them die with dignity...

[wulf]

I was thinking in terms of "adoption"; analagous with real life, some care would be taken with finding a suitable new player!

Assuming that nothing like this is going to happen, what kind of reasons are there for a character to die. For example, I've got one character who has spent the last two or more years farming pineapples to help his friend recover from injuries. They're in a peaceful part of the world with plenty of food and no serious hostile activity to speak of from other characters or animals.

When he ran out of food a few (RL) weeks ago, I almost let him starve but that really didn't fit his character. How do you let characters die without breaking who they are as much as my adoption suggestion would?

Wulf

[Cookie]

Rubbish, next!

[The Sociologist]

Perhaps no need to say rubbish, but I don't like the idea either...not for mature characters since a single PM, from someone who's after all losing interest, is no substitute for all the memories.

Trading newspawns is another matter.

ADVERT
Seller has a potentially good hunter who punches pigeons for 4 and can kill sheep with a knife, recently in Seatown Forest area, 22 years old, already has wood shield and loaded with stuff (inventory on application). Seeking to trade for an equivalent level-4 pigeon-puncher anywhere on the K Isle.

I've no charries at all there.

[glitterdown]

What's wrong with selling characters?
There's whole games (yes RPGs) built around the idea of the marketability of virtual constructions (www.secondlife.com).

I'm personally always highly intrigued about the concept, and would definately rathter have my characters live on after I gave them up, especially the established ones, then just have them spontaneously keel over. I've also thought a bit about the Real-World value of steel or iron? How many quid/dollars would 40g of either be worth to you?

If a player is interested enough in prolonging the life of his character to have an auction or etc. He/She's probably darn well interested enough to supply the background (i.e. all the old logs and a short synopsis of their character's attributes/motivations). This isn't brain surgery.

[Nick]

Keep in mind Cantr is a society simulator, rather than an RPG.
RPG would be a big class of game that Cantr is similar too, but there are many differences.

And do you know what happens in society? People die. Even if it's not convenient for everyone.

[glitterdown]

I don't deny that death is inevitable, but honestly the amount of death in Cantr is often a bit extreme. Wouldn't you agree? It borders on the numbing.

[Nick]

Are you kidding me?
It's way too easy to survive in Cantr, as it is.
Farm for a day, and feed yourself for 10? I'd like some of this magical soil to grow.... hemp. Yeah... hemp...

[glitterdown]

There's a very large difference between "ease of survival" and "actuality of death." There's honestly 2-4 deaths per day in a city of 50. It's EASY to SURVIVE in college, but could you imagine losing 4%-8% of your classmates PER DAY?

[the_antisocial_hermit]

Most of those deaths though are newspawns that never even stated their names, thus very likely from players that could care less about keeping any characters at all or to continue playing the game. If they don't care about those basic things, then they definitely won't care to spend the time finding someone to take over for them.

I'm sure there's not that high of a rate of the older, more established characters dying off. It's a much rarer thing to happen, and adds to the role-play of the characters that knew that one character well, giving them loads of new directions to go as a result of their grief or lack thereof.

So the rate of deaths isn't really a good argument for the adoption theory. If there were a high rate of well established and either well liked or disliked characters dropping every day, then it might figure into the overall equation. But there really isn't that situation... a player will keep playing their beloved characters of high rapport or they won't. Simple as that.

Now if they should have the choice to hand them over to someone else, I guess that would be their prerogative. As long as there's a choice about it, I don't really care one way or another about something of the sort being started (although I lean more towards not, but that would be the choice I made).