Roleplay jobs with different ages

Help and Feedback Game Design Support
#1

I’m currently working on a roleplay game, where you choose between 4 different ages (baby, kid, teen, adult)

You have the ability to change your age at any time, but my main question I wanna ask is what could I change to my job system.

So if you choose
Baby = can’t get a job/go to school
Kid = is a student, can’t get a job
Teen = default as student, but can drop student for a job. If they quit their job they get put back to student
Adult = starts of unemployed, can get a job

I need thoughts on this system. If you choose adult, get a job, then change to say a baby, you’d lose that job, but if you changed back to an adult you’d be able to get it back. Is this good for user experience? What ways could I go around this, or improve it?

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#3

The player has to be able to change their age any time. Otherwise what if they pick adult, and then later wanna roleplay as a kid or baby?

#5

In my opinion, you should make it so teens can balance both work and school. Perhaps just limit the types of jobs they can obtain, and how long they can be at both school and work each day. As for the adults changing into babies when roleplaying, you can probably just make it so a warning pops up saying they will lose their current job if they turn into a baby. Upon turning back into an adult, they have free reign to choose whatever job they’d like to, even if it wasn’t their previous job.

3 Likes
#6

It depends on if you wish for players to be the ultimate, full controllers of what they do. Games such as the Sims allow for players to control their actions under the condition of aging up (unless you disable it). The general plethora of roleplaying games on Roblox, such as the famous Welcome to the Town of Robloxia, allow for players to do whatever actions they want without constraints.

If you intend for your game to behave like the latter, go for it. As stated above, however, I would include the educatonal element for teens as well. At least in first–world countries, I don’t believe leaving school at the age of fourteen for a job is really a major thing anymore, lol.

It would be interesting if you created a dynamic close to the Sims that monitors the performance of individuals at work and school if you were intending to allow for some influence of the game rules over the whims of the player. Just an afterthought.

Your idea sounds good. Keep it up. :smiley:

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#7

I think that is a simple solution, you can add a Cooldown & A Limit for any Age. I explain…

Limit System

You start has a Baby, and you have to live some minutes has a baby. Also, you can do some missions (Example: Collect the Toys to Gain +100 Live Points. Play with the Teddy Bear to Gain +250 Live Points) and you will have to do that until you get hmmm… Maybe 1000 Live Points?

So, when you get 1000 Live Points, you will be able to be a Kid, and, has a kid, you will have to do some missions like the Baby, until you get 2.5k Live Points? And, another time, when you get the points, you can “evolve” to the next Age.

Ok, now we have a System to “Evolve”, so, when you have reach a new age, you will Save a Value, that says that the player had this age. So, if the player is a Kid or Teen but he want to be another time a baby, he will be able to become a baby.

The Adult will be the Max. “Rank”, and if you have been it, you will be able to choose any Age that you want.

Cooldown System

To prevent this type of thing that you said, you can make a Cooldown System where, if you change of age, then, you won’t be able to have the previous age for 2 - 3 Minutes

About the Jobs

To prevent also the leave and join from a job, make something like, you have to literally, study to have a Job, so when you become an Adult, you will have an Extra Value, that will be the “Intelligence”, and depending of what did you do, if you studied has a Teen, you will be able to get better jobs than if you worked. And this Value will restart everytime you leave from the Adult Age.

#8

Not entirely sure what you want feedback on, so I’ll answer the specific question you asked in your post:

tl;dr: If the player gains an advantage for having a job, they shouldn’t be allowed to switch back to that job willy-nilly

This depends - if getting the job is instant and easy then there’s no problem with them losing it when they switch to an age that cannot work. At most, a warning would be in order to let the user know that they won’t have their job anymore, but other than that the user experience won’t be affected.

However, if getting a job is difficult, or there is some sort of levelling system for the job (e.g. promotions and pay rises) then a player who has invested time into these would not enjoy having to lose all that progress to try out a different age. In this case, you could either let the user keep that job and continue to work if they switch back to adult, or allows them to get the job more easily the next time they attempt it, as well as fast tracking them through whatever system they have.

For example, if a player invests eight hours into a fast food restaurant and get to a “manager” position where they earn more than the starting “line chef” position, then if they switch from and back to the adult age then they should be able to either continue from where they left of, or skip to a stage in between the two positions (e.g. “head chef” or “assistant manager”).

Your choice between these two systems will likely depend on any advantages gained by switching to a role than can’t get a job. For example, if switching to kid and being a student gains you an advantage that offsets the disadvantage of not having a job, then the player should not be able to switch back to adult and get their job back instantly, as this encourages player to switch between ages to gain advantages.

However, if having a job or being a student are purely for roleplay then they should be able to start from where they left off, as punishing people for switching roles here seems unreasonable.

#9

Jobs are based on multiple stat points for a player. So when a player starts, if they start as an adult then they can only work the low paying jobs. To get higher jobs, they’d have to go as kid or teen, go to school and gain intelligence, other skills. Then they can go back to adult to get the higher paying jobs.

No job has promotion, etc.

#10

Would your system have university?

#11

If the progression to get a higher job is studying as a kid or teen then I think that they should be able to keep the job they had as an adult when they switch back. This is because you’re spreading progression across different ages, meaning that the player effectively isn’t playing four distinct ages but one character who switched to progress. That means that progression in each age should remain as they all contribute to the overall progression of the player in your game.

In other words, a player attempting to progress by switching to teen should not be penalised in their adult role by losing their job, and a teen switching to a job should not lose any progress they made in school.

#12

I don’t see any issue with your system breaking user experience. I think that Teens should be able to work a job. Maybe you can introduce a part-time / full-time system where teens can juggle school and a part-time job. Or like the people above have already mentioned, just limit them in the types of jobs they can have. If a player were to try and obtain a job as a Baby, it’ll just give the player a little warning on the age restriction. Really depends on you if you want to warn them beforehand or after.
It would be adorable if you gave Kids the opportunity to earn money by opening up lemonade stands and whatnot. Just an idea.

#13

Changing from adult to kid and back to adult would never lose your progression.If you back to adult from kid you can easily get your old job back. Basically, once you’ve unlocked that job, you have it forever

#14

Sounds like the system you have works then