Discussion - Dev Diary: Designing Day Jobs Feature
By
Aisynia,
Posted on: 2008-10-09 16:16 in Developers' Corner
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Wait a second...if someone is doing a leveling pact and the other is logged out gaining "rested" xp bonus. Does this eat away at the logged off character's "rested" bonus while the other plays?
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My guess is that it does not. Here's what I think it is:
When a logged off character is earning XP through the Leveling Pact, he'll be getting the "blue bars" due to being "On Patrol." Once he hits 8 days of inactivity, he'll have 10 blue bars (a full level). These blue bars just stay there and do not affect the offline XP he gains through the Level Pact.
When he logs back in (and his partner logs off), he'll have one level worth of double XP, and this amount will be split in half (edit: once he starts getting XP through normal play), thus benefiting the other (logged off) character.
If that's the way the system will work, I see people doing the "only play every other character every 8 days" to get the full benefit of this. Which is, not so big of a deal, IMO. It's just one level worth of double XP and you can only have it once every 8 days. Seems reasonable and limited enough.
Just to put on my badger hat, 30 days per badge when it's not an epic level badge seems a bit much to me. If there were only 2 or 4, and it was something you could do in 2-4 months, then I'd be fine with it. As a badger, it just feels too long to get the set and too long in between badges. I'd really like to see each badge reduced to somewhere in the 10-15 day range.
Also, I'm hoping some sort of arena log out badge is one that's just been left off the sheet rather than not done. One for logging out in the PvP zone bases would also be nice, but understandable if it couldn't be done. (Not all of them are inside, after all.) On behalf of us badger-PvPer hybrids (there are more of us than you'd think!), it definitely felt like something was missing by not seeing either of those there. If they're not in the works already, I hope you guys look into adding them.
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This is the first time that a badge has been awarded to a player for NOT actively accomplishing something.
The day job badges, much like Empath and other Epic badges which encourage days, weeks and months of AFK farming, reward passivity on the part of a player toon. This is, in my mind, a clear break from the concept of badges in the CoX system - it represents a new quantifier in the game. This isn't about what your toon has done. It's about what your toon ISN'T doing - being logged in and being played.
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This is true only if you assume that the devs have not just accepted that the only reasonable way to get empath is by afk farming it.
The day jobs badges seem to say that they don't think that being afk (or even logged off entirely obviously) for badges is all that big of a deal. It may not be what was originally intended but its not an insult to their sense of morality either.
Keen, you're essentially correct, but it's 10 days to get the full benefit, not 8.
I, for one, wish to forgo double experience. I'd rather enjoy the journey to 50. Since debt reduction and XP-curve smoothing, I can already make a new character and take him to 50 within 2 months, whereas it used to take closer to 6. It's actually made me create fewer characters, because I don't feel any accomplishment from levelling them anymore.
Main Hero: Chad Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1396 Badges
Main Villain: Evil Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1193 Badges
Mission Architect arcs: Doctor Brainstorm's An Experiment Gone Awry, Arc ID 2093
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!
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A lot of people seem to be saying, "60 days is fair to earn an Accolade because you get a power at the end of it."
You may have failed to read that you can only use the power a set number of times, and then you have to log out at one of the two job locations that led to that Accolade for 8 days to fully recharge it.
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You are misrepresenting things. The Temp Powers are temp, the accolades are not...you log back at those sites to recharge the powers, but there is no clock involved.
All of the benefits granted from Day Jobs, other than badges and accolades (see below) are temporary or have a certain number of uses before they expire. However, each time a character logs out from the same area, the corresponding benefits are replenished. Most rewards take 10 days of logged out time to reach the maximum benefit.
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Once you own both the Professor and Caregiver badges you will unlock the Physician Accolade. With this Accolade you will be able to earn ‘charges’ for a power that revives defeated allies by logging out from (and back in to) either a University or a Hospital. You will gain the Day Job benefits for both this Accolade and the Day Job benefit associated with the area. Nice benefits!
What is wrong with you people? Seriously, I'm a badger and a year to get all the badges seems fine to me. Let's be honest if you could get all the badges in a month you would still be complaining it took too long. I've got plenty of non-50s to play while my main works on his day-job badges. Even If I chose to play only my main I can still rack up time at work, sleep, etc. it just will take me longer. So what? there are plenty of other badges I'm working on I've yet to "run out".
In closing, quit whining.
Leader of the Insanity Guns
"We rush in where fools fear to tread!"
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Joe Insanity 50 AR/Dev Blaster - Infinity
CykaTek 50 Bots/FF Mastermind - Infinity
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Nor does your job give you any bonuses for not showing up for a month straight.
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The Day Jobs don't give any bonuses for not showing up either.
Both of them give bonuses when you *do* show up for them.
I preface my comments by admitting that I am
a) a relatively new player and
b) someone with experience trying to catch 'em all in various games
The main problems here seem to be...
a- Time required to gain the badges
b- Makes Badgering impossible (Badging? Badgerizing? ... Collecting)
c- Rewarded for NOT playing
d- Double XP as a bad thing.
On the subject of A, I agree, like most others, that it takes a great deal too much time to gain any of these badges. I think the answer is to add playtime without removing badge time. Someone earlier in this thread mentioned something that I will reiterate because I think it's a great idea:
Make the badges still require 30 days, but make a "day" count as 8 hours out of a given 24 hour period, with credits to only one badge each day. That would mean that as long as your character logged out the same place every night when you went to bed, you would get the badge in precisely one month. This seems to be a much better option than just reducing time, and for hardcore badgers it only requires them to a) get some sleep instead of playing for 17+ hours a day and b) take 5 minutes to relocate before signing off. If you're on the game when YOU'RE asleep, and doing something other than chilling in Bloody Bay/Siren's Call/etc, I have no sympathy for you.
On the subject of B, I agree with the idea of "one badge, 31 flavors" that others have suggested, with your day job switching when either job B has gotten more days than job A or you've been doing job B for 30 days without doing job A at all. The Accolades would be awarded based on hidden counter, not based on badges. Note that with this method, the Accolades would STILL take a great deal of time to obtain, but there would be nothing discouraging you from PLAYING during that time.
Back to the subject of it only being a reward for not playing, there should definitely be a LINK to in-game content. For example, you should be able to earn bonus time for your Shopkeeper badge for making money at Wentworths, or you should get extra time for your policeman badge, or whatever it was called, whenever you do police radio missions. The villainside would instead give bonus time for doing missions for Operatives, for example, because Newspaper missions are semi-required wheras police radio missions are easy to overlook.
If, for example, you get +1 cop day per Safeguard mission earned and completed, it would enable people to put in extra effort to be a policeman, while not taking away from the premise that this is what your character does when not around. I think +1 day per 4 missions (roughly an hour of gametime) would work fine, especially coupled with the premise that you can't have more than one day job at a time. The in-game content should ALSO allow you to more easily refill your accolade powers. The point is, this should be a system that says "We're still going to reward you for playing the game... But if you don't want to focus too hard on it, a little bit of effort before you log out will still get you bonuses over time."
And finally, on the subject of double XP... I just want to be able to shut it off or turn it into double infamy or prestige. Far too often, I don't get to finish a mission chain because I outleveled a contact. It's really starting to get on my nerves. Yes, I can go back through Ouroboros, but some of the mission chains are rather long. Yes, I am trying to hit 50 on my main so I can make an Arachnos Soldier, but I find leveling up such an easy, painless process ALREADY that I don't want it to go so fast that I can't finish my storylines. That being said, for those who WANT it, double XP is fine... Just don't force me to commit regular seppeku just so I can be in enough debt to not outlevel my missions.
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On an additional note, can it please be set up so that villains can log out somewhere to have "The Creatures Of Hell Do Not Have Day Jobs" as a day job? I see a lot of demons running around the Rogue Islands, including one of mine, and I feel demon is a full time job.
NPCs: A Single Method to Greatly Expand Bases
Adding to my last comment, an example:
For Physician (red side), you need to earn professor and Pain specialist to get an accolade that let's you resurrect allies.
10 days of Professor credit earns you the temp power of
Random tech salvage drop upon mission complete.
10 days of Pain Specialist credit earns you the temp power of
Out of combat regeneration bonus.
30 days of credit on both gives you the Accolade. That means from then on, you only need 8 days of credit to get the Temp Power. And if you log off at either site, you get your Accolade power recharged.
And I had to edit that post, for some reason I kept typing hours instead of days.
2 points.
1. I find it hilarious that people who engage in activities such as heal farming would complain about earning a badge when inactive being wrong.
2. The solution to their complaints might be possible. If the developers made a collector option that they could click on allowing them to forego all xp, influence, debt removal and other badge credits while playing online, but to get credit for the selected badge they choose to work on. This would allow them to play their favorite main badgehunting toon while still earning credit for this badge the same way they would if logged off. I doubt many would take this option, but it would put to rest any complaints about not being able to both play their favorite character and to get badge credit, and the ability to put their money where their mouth is.
It's a year of not playing lol. My suggestion of logged out until you first see a benefit of each of 12 jobs and then the first accolade earned would still take the better part of a year while actively playing your main and logging it out (if I'm reading this stuff right... and yeah, I'm sure I'm not lol. Come on open beta!).
If you actively play your main (which you would have to do to manage your day job to-do list), these badges would take likely 18 to 24 months to achieve.
This is fine. If you're a day one badger and "gottacatchemall!" you'll still be around then.
Just feels... well... long.
Again: We're not even hands on with it yet. We're just going by what we see and Doomfilling in the rest.
Thank you, City of Heroes, for giving me a superhero social network combined with amazingly smooth game play. Petitions signed with realistic expectations.
And restedXP doesn't really reward someone for being offline. If the person had been online that time earning XP, they would earn a lot more than the person would be making on their bonus. 24 hours for one bar of EXP? It takes me about an hour to earn a bar at level 42 with my primary. The person who is playing those 24 earns a lot more EXP.
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@ points.
1. I find it hilarious that people who engage in activities such as heal farming would complain about earning a badge when inactive being wrong.
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I actually agree with this for some. Then again, try finishing off Empathy and doing this. Some people are still a year or even years away using their current farming techniques from Empath.
Solution: Change empath to 100 million. Anyone with over 500 million healed automatically earns the doctor's day jobs and accolades right off.
Yeah, yeah, wishful thinking...
Thank you, City of Heroes, for giving me a superhero social network combined with amazingly smooth game play. Petitions signed with realistic expectations.
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If you actively play your main (which you would have to do to manage your day job to-do list), these badges would take likely 18 to 24 months to achieve.
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If it would take 12 to earn all of them if you were logged off the entire time, for you to take 18 months you would have to play 6 hours every single day. For it to be 24 months, well...you'd have to be playing 12 hours every single day.
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I'm looking forward to "Day Jobs", because after all, this is an RPG.
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RPG = role PLAYING game
Playing being the major point here. If you gain only for NOT PLAYING it defeats the point of RPG.
BAH! I'm not hunting these badges if I earn one big whoop. I would rather play my character than shelve them X days to get tear gas or a baton.
You can double xp when you play for not playing. Or heres a funny idea in the time you spent not playing you could of far exceeded any bonus and be many levels higher than this bonus would help by actually playing your toon.
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That being said i13 I do like the double builds, shields, kheld help, and improved INV set. But the way this day job is described BLAH!.
YOU DON'T HAVE TO SHELF THE CHARACTER. Even if you somehow find the time to play the same character 4 hours ever single day, it would only take you 5 extra days to earn each badge.
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And restedXP doesn't really reward someone for being offline. If the person had been online that time earning XP, they would earn a lot more than the person would be making on their bonus. 24 hours for one bar of EXP? It takes me about an hour to earn a bar at level 42 with my primary. The person who is playing those 24 earns a lot more EXP.
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Note also that unless I'm mistaken, one bar of double XP is "only" equivalent to half a bar of "extra" XP.
I still see some possible drawbacks with the double XP though.
(for example, increasing the risk of outleveling content, and act to separate two "synced" characters if they tend to spend different amounts of time in-game (with the difference being spent doing things that do not give XP rewards))
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i remember seeing some where that the day job badges were linked to costumes
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Day job badges are NOT linked to costumes.
The day job related costumes are free, unlocked at the start, content in Issue 13.
And the 30 days is what we are initially going with. The values may change in beta.
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Positron the thirty days is cumulative and not consecutive right?
Poison Pill
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Not consecutive.
You can log out for 6 days, play for a couple hours, then log out for 6 more days, and you will have 12 days progress towards your badge/accolade.
As for people worried that this won't get tested during Beta... you forget we have access to Mender Silos, Ouroboros, and the Pillar of Ice and Flame... we can manipulate time. It's a perk.
(For those who do get into beta, you will notice that the "Time to Earn" is DRAMATICALLY reduced, for exactly the reason of testing the rewards and badges. Around the time of Open Beta, the times will be restored to a far less accelerated state, and we can ensure those are working before we go to Live)
Positron
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You're also assuming someone will stick to this and not forget to log out a toon in the right spot. I'm leaving wiggle room in case someone logs out in the wrong spot on accident for a few weeks lol.
Thank you, City of Heroes, for giving me a superhero social network combined with amazingly smooth game play. Petitions signed with realistic expectations.
Good point 
How does the counter work? If I am logged out for 8 hours do I get a 1/3 of a day credit, or do I need to be logged out the full day. I assume it's the first
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How does the counter work? If I am logged out for 8 hours do I get a 1/3 of a day credit, or do I need to be logged out the full day. I assume it's the first
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The counter is based on seconds, so every second you are logged out you are getting credit.
Positron
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Now, because they tied badges to the system, they bring in a completely different set of competing criteria that it now is a sizable barrier to badge completists
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You can't tell people "be a collector, of some stuff." That's incompatible with the collector mindset, and a good game designer should acknowledge the target audience they are targetting.
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Are you sure most collectors are also completists? There can be value to collecting something, without the goal of collecting all of something. I know a lot of collectors who do not and will not ever have all of something and they still seem happy with their collecting hobby, but I do not know enough of psychology to say which way is the best here.
Completists might get alienated by a system where they can't collect it all, but I and all of my SG mates still collect badges here and there, and not just for the powers and other rewards, even though I think we only have one or two completists amongst us (one for sure, but they seem OK with the fact that it will take a very long time for them to complete, and the other I think is a closet completist).
Perhaps the target is collectors, not completists. That may or may not be a good choice, I have no idea if there is even a real distinction, but it seems to me there is one.
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That's me. I like getting badges and I go out of my way to get them when I can, but I'm under no illusion that I'll ever have them all and some of them just aren't worth the time for me to get. I'm fine with that. I don't need them all, let alone need them all right this second! I like that there'll always be another badge to go find. I think I would be disappointed if there ever came a point when there were no more badges to get.
Honestly, I think even the completists would be disappointed if there ever came a time when they didn't have another badge to shoot for. If Positron came out and said "Ok, we've run out of ideas for badges so we won't be adding any more to the game" would there really be people who feel "Ah, now I have all the badges, my character is complete"? What would such a person do with their character at that point?
There will always be new badges added to the game so the 'badge bar' will always be raised. The Day Job system, like the Vet Reward system, is just more overt about letting people see that. Even if they reduced the time to get the current job badges, they'll probably just add more anyway. It's a system designed for Sisyphus.
Gothika (Grav/Kin) Marionette (Ill/Rad) Terra Firma (Earth/Storm) Alana Dale (Arch/Nrg)
Iceblink (Ice/Dark) Fantasia (Mind/Fire) Shadow Minx (Claws/Nin)
--Virtue
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The Devs, I think, intend this to simulate a workplace. You don't (usually) get the top job within a day or two of arriving, do you?
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You also don't pay YOUR JOB to let you be there.
Nor does your job give you any bonuses for not showing up for a month straight. Unless you count a nice pink sheet of paper.
Main Hero: Chad Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1396 Badges
Main Villain: Evil Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1193 Badges
Mission Architect arcs: Doctor Brainstorm's An Experiment Gone Awry, Arc ID 2093