Thoughts and Suggestions on New Aging Traits

[harrisone16]

Suggestions for changes to new aging mechanics.

Overall I like the new aging traits, I think it makes the game more immersive and interesting. My one complaint is they are a bit samey and don’t force you to adjust your play style all that much. So here are some suggestions to change the traits a bit and add more interactivity with traits and perks.

Lifestyle focuses: currently, lifestyle focuses aren’t that interesting other than providing some bonuses. One suggestion is to make different focuses mitigate certain old age traits. Some suggestions
- Fragile bones mitigated by the Journey focus in wandering (osteoporosis is actually slowed by strengthening your muscles by walking)
- Cloudy eyes mitigated by the Strategy focus in Martial (I’m considering that someone adept at planning and tactics may be better able to deal with progressive blindness or cataracts)
- Withering mind mitigated by Scholarship focus in Learning (reading and study can slow dementia)
- Faltering heart mitigated by the Temptation focus in Intrigue (somewhat self explanatory, the icon is a heart)
- Infirm mitigated by the Duty focus in the Stewardship tree (a bit more out there but I needed one in stewardship, could also be Medicine in Learning)

I also think that certain age traits don’t impact your character enough - the only one that really forces you to pay attention is Faltering heart because stress raises it by one full level. Here are some possible mechanics that could be interesting, if not a bit punishing. All would scale with level of the trait

- Fragile bones: Any prowess or martial challenge has a scaling chance of causing severely wounded or brutally mauled regardless of the success chance of the action (I.e. attempting to intimidate a vassal could cause you to overexert yourself and break a bone)
- Cloudy eyes: Chance to reveal schemes to random guests or couriers by mistaking them for someone else, chance to target a random character when using sway, seduce or romance. Massive decrease to language learning time and success chance.
- Withering mind: At level 2 and 3, lose the ability to plan routes when traveling, the route with randomly include a scaling number of points of interest depending on trait level indicating you are getting lost. Also randomly lose 1 learned language at level 1, 2 at level 2 and 3 at level 3 (cannot lose primary language, or maybe you can idk that might be too much)
- Faltering heart: already has a good stress mechanic
- Infirm: already restricts actions no need for more

It maybe also be worth adding some kind modifier that increases when the aging traits start to appear to the octogenarian and graceful aging dynasty legacies.


Finally I think there should be an abdication option in decisions that’s available if you accumulate too many old age traits. It should only be available if you have 3 or more traits and probably only available if you have a co-monarch.

Just some ideas from a random player. :)

[Dremall]

So my thoughts and criticism on these traits. I like the idea in concept, the execution leaves a lot to be decided. Just because you hit 50, doesn't automatically mean a race to the grave.
Getting the traits is fine, that's not my concern. It's how the game handles it after. Constantly ticking like some sort of doom's day clock in bar form until you eventually succumb.

There is a severe lack of events and interactions to effect this negatively and positively. There are no physician interactions positive or negative that I've come across. Instead of just ticking up annually it should be a roll modified by overall health, traits, lifestyle, weight, etc that influence the roll to see if something progresses or whether or not you manage to maintain.

A Strong, Athletic, martial character who constantly hunts should find it difficult to progress Brittle Bones, not impossible by any measure, but definitely should be hard.

A Lazy, Gluttonous,, etc should be more vulnerable to a lot of these.

Withering Mind goes from horrible to walking corpse. This one should be a constant tick imo, but the severity from onset to completion does need to be looked at and rebalanced.

This needed more time in the oven I'm afraid. I'll probably be keeping this feature off in future playthroughs until it is worked on a little bit more.

[Aetini]

I agree there isn't a whole lot of interaction with it beyond knowing it exists.
For example, heart issues? Oh welp I'm just going to ...try to not get stressed and occasionally pop my stress reducing decisions and avoid going up or down.
Oh fragile bones? I just won't use my character in armies or activities.

I think there should be more events related to it.
For example, you're on campaign and get something related to it or you are on travel. These events potentially worsening them or avoiding worsening them, albeit at a cost in other areas potentially. Off the top of my head an example would be giving a weak hook to someone after they help lighten the issue somehow; in exchange you don't 'over-exert' yourself.

I'm not even sure if there are bars you can *reduce* but that would be a interesting idea too in more rare events.

[Mepho]

I don't think placing remedies for age traits in the lifestyles is a good idea.
You get these traits later in the life of the character, this means you either luck out getting the disease/defect that gets reduced by your lifestyle or you need to drop everything and rush a whole different tree (provided you're not locked in by previous changes) just to somehow reduce the annoyance. It doesn't sound feasible or even worth it to me.

Honestly I think the age traits are just bad, like so many "features" they implemented over the years, sadly, I'm just keeping them off.

[VBigB]

Originally posted by Dremall:

So my thoughts and criticism on these traits. I like the idea in concept, the execution leaves a lot to be decided. Just because you hit 50, doesn't automatically mean a race to the grave.

I’m not really sure why people keep saying this regarding 50 years old. In my experience with many games now since they were introduced the feature, this is really only true for your first ruler or possibly two. After the first couple of generations I routinely don’t get my first age traits until the character is in their 70s (yes there is some randomness). So I suspect health bonus stacking delay the onset. It’s also easier to avoid stress for faltering heart once you have an economy going.

[mutantmuppet]

until 70 - I'd keep that quiet if I was you :) As you will note a lot of us see it hit after 50 and I have had them start with a ruler in his mid 40's. I'm keeping them on for now but agree they need to be reviewed especially as a lot of the time you get hit with them all or a lot of them with no other reason then you are old.

I like the idea mentioned above of your characters traits influencing them and that more interaction around them is needed, especially mitigating them. As I said I seem to get multiple ones at the same time and they usually counter the others mitigating option. Not that mitigation options seem to do much other than move the ticking clock from one year to around 18 months

Was brittle bones really that common in the time period of the game I mean the amount of people in my court who have died from falling over is just crazy

[Mepho]

Originally posted by mutantmuppet:

[...]
Was brittle bones really that common in the time period of the game I mean the amount of people in my court who have died from falling over is just crazy

There's a whole lot of stuff right now that makes zero sense. The frequency of plagues or activities that take almost an year to start and months (if not another year) to resolve, for instance.

Which, imho, would be fine in itself considering gameplay has to triumph over realism to keep the game engaging when push comes to shove, but I also think they went the wrong way applying changes and new features for a long time now which leads to two issues:
- the game becoming more and more gimmicky rather than simulative, but they seem to have abandoned this whole concept completely excusing it with "it's mostly an rpg experience"
- the game losing contact with logic. Knowledge of the game system's SHOULD be king as it is, don't get me wrong, but there are many things that, despite working because mechanics, don't make logical sense.
I understand this kind of games ultimately resolves to a spreadsheet manager, I get the reasons why it's eventualy inevitable, but I don't think the game itself should strive for it.
The changes to stewarship putting a +domain limit on Torturer, of all things, are an example of this. There is a lack of connection between realistic expectations and spreading domain limit over all talent trees. It makes sense under the lense of game balance (arguably, but for the sake of the argument) yet it's complete madness from a logical standpoint.

I really think they are underestimating the logical aspect of how the game plays while overestimating their opinion of balance.

[EL]

PDX needs to see this thread. Great conversation, great ideas. They need to take this into account at least. Good job all.