Discussion - Dev Diary: Designing Day Jobs Feature

well said

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Apparently, I play "City of Shakespeare"
*Arc #95278-Gathering the Four Winds -3 step arc; challenging - 5 Ratings/3 Stars (still working out the kinks)
*Arc #177826-Lights, Camera, Scream! - 3 step arc, camp horror; try out in 1st person POV - 35 Ratings/4 Stars

Was it mentioned if the "accelerated time" for testing the day jobs would still be available in open beta?

Also, after reading most of this thread, this is my impression of what badges mean to people:

"My badge count has to be higher than yours and it has to be higher now."

I bet if influence or IOs were in the info table, people would be going out of their way to bump those up, too. There'd be threads dedicated to "omg inf rewards need to be increased omg."

Badges are nice, but there's a lot more to the game than just badges, especially ones that you will earn eventually for practically doing nothing.

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And, yes, there are people that "can't wait for the badges", and ones that have to have them "now".


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Name them.



Oh, BTW, the Wizard of Oz called. They need their Straw Man back.

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CaptA for one apparently.
I'm sure if you dig through these forums you will see many more based on what I can guess from the implications in his message.

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Please point out where I said I wanted these badges "now". I will be waiting.

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"...freedom isn't a commodity to compromise." -- Captain America, New Avengers #21

Guide to Base Teleporters

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Failing that, change how the rewards work to not penalize normal play. I would consider "normal play" to be at most 9 hours (longest current TF lasts about that long) so people could earn a maximum of 15 hours per day.

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NCSoft does not get money based on how much you play the game. They get money based on how long you subscribe. They aren't penalizing normal play. They are giving constant rewards to everyone who is subscribing.

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They already have a series of badges for this. They are called Veteran Rewards.

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If you're in the game, you still get far better rewards than when not, but now even those who don't have as much time to play are gaining something during every hour.

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Day jobs are not to reward every single hour subscribed. If they were then you would be gaining the rewards while playing as well. Faulty logic on that one.

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If their goal is to reward players for every hour subscribed to the game, then limiting it to a maximum per day penalizes the players who don't have as much time to play.

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I seriously think you've missed the point. Limiting the time lets one day be one day of rewards. As I said above, if the intention were to reward each hour of subscription time, then this system fails. If however it is to reward real days subscription time, then adjusting the maximum time to 15 hours per day would accomplish that.

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Actually, I have stated plenty of constructively possible and realistic suggestions in this thread.

All of which miss the point, which is that it isn't a question of what's technologically feasible. It's a question of what the system is intended to do.

The simple fact is you want the badge system to do something other than what the developers want it to do.

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Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"

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If however it is to reward real days subscription time, then adjusting the maximum time to 15 hours per day would accomplish that.

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Then they would be veteran rewards. They're not.

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De minimis non curat Lex Luthor.

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Because badges are one aspect of the game. Not 5-7 different aspects. You do realize that this question could be rephrased "How is it you are able to separate your arm from other items on your body, but not different types of appendages from each other?" Of course this change of phrase is absurd, but so is the question.

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It's not absurd. Story arcs, task forces, and trials are all missions, but yet they are considered different types of missions by people, each with a different style of gameplay. Should task forces be removed because some people don't like to team, but want to be able to do every mission?

What about this new Mission Architect system that's coming? Even if people could have done all the dev-created missions, there's no way they could keep up with the large influx of player-created missions.

Should we drop the Mission Architect system so players aren't forced to play for unhealthy amounts of time in order to do them all? Or should we tell them, "Hey, feel free to do all the task forces, trials, and key story arcs, but sorry, you won't be able to do every single mission."


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These are great examples of Straw Man arguments. You are setting up questions that are completely unrelated to the topic at hand, for the specific purpose of knocking them down. Logic fallacies.

Come back without them.

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This line of reasoning might be acceptable if they were already in the live game. They aren't there yet. There is nothing for the developers to remove.

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How could Day Job badges be part of the game before Day Jobs were? Now that Day Jobs are being added to the game, some people might want to collect them, and use badges as the mechanism by which to do so.

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Now is the time to correct any perceived flaws, because the developers have shown great (some would say insurmountable) opposition to changing the requirements after they've been introduced. Case in point: Empath.

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But just because you are happy with what is currently available to be collected, that means that someone who wants to collect Day Jobs shouldn't be given the same privilege? The only things that should be allowed are things that are already there?

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You've missed the point again. I've suggested a way to keep the badges in the system, yet limit the penalty for playing. It would not harm players in the least. The badges will still award at 30 days (actually sooner than if the casual players played normally).

At this point I don't think you know what you are arguing about.

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Making a skill system that functions completely independent of the badge system would work.

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How is having them called "certificates" and counted separately from badges not functioning completely independent?

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Still in the badge window, still using the badge system to award. The game doesn't care if what it is called, if it uses the badge system, the game counts it. They've had to recode the vet reward choices not to count.

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Also, after reading most of this thread, this is my impression of what badges mean to people:

"My badge count has to be higher than yours and it has to be higher now."

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You should probably read it again. If that's what you came away with from reading, you've missed a lot of quality arguments, both for and against the badge inclusion and requirements.

Read my suggestion in my sig, for starters. It's not the only argument out there, but it's the one I favor because it can be done immediately and without consequence to players who want all the accolades and day job buff opportunities.

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Failing that, change how the rewards work to not penalize normal play. I would consider "normal play" to be at most 9 hours (longest current TF lasts about that long) so people could earn a maximum of 15 hours per day. They would need to change the reward times accordingly. Finally reduce the time for all the day job badges, even if it was only by 10 days.

It would take 8 months to earn all the listed badges. For someone dedicated enough to do this award a "Jack of all Trades" accolade.

Example:
Each day can accumulate a maximum of 15 hours. Most rewards take 150 hours or 10 Real Life days of logged out time to reach the maximum benefit. Award the badge at the 2nd milestone. After you unlock the reward, you would need 105 hours or 7 real life days to earn again.

Still gated, still taking into account need for balancing reward vs time, but no penalty for playing the game. Those that only want one or two jobs will continue to reap the same reward as much as they want.

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And for an addition or alternate method to really keep badge hunters happy:
Have each day job badge be 3 badges, one for each tier of the gate.

Using "City Official" as an example: After the first ten days, you get the badge with the description saying that you are a "clerk", after the second ten days, the "City Official" badge would say that you are a "secretary", after the final thirty days it changes to "notary". Allow the city trainers to let you choose "clerk", "secretary", or "notary" as a special title (separate from either the regular or badge titles) after you have earned the tier.

With Law Enforcer, it would progress "Officer", "Detective", and "Sergeant". Allow title selection as above.

The accolade "Police Chief" would describe "Captain" which would be available when you get both the 1st version of the City Official and Law Enforcer badges, "Inspector" when you have at least rank two of both groups, and "Commissioner" when you have the tier 3 of both groups. Allow title selection as above.

Lessen the accolade rewards based on what tier was achieved, and you have a decent system.

Badge hunters get the badges quicker, and people have more flavors of jobs to set as their titles.

Seems like a win-win.

Add in a cap on the amount of hours each day equalizing the reward time would be a near perfect system for myself.

Edit:
Oh, and Venture earned what I told him I'd do earlier with his last post.

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And, yes, there are people that "can't wait for the badges", and ones that have to have them "now".


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Name them.



Oh, BTW, the Wizard of Oz called. They need their Straw Man back.

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CaptA for one apparently.
I'm sure if you dig through these forums you will see many more based on what I can guess from the implications in his message.

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"Apparently?"

QUOTE where he said that. Provide a link.

"I'm sure if you dig?" Sorry, no. You made that claim. You get to defend it. Quotes and links please. Thank you, and goodnight.

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"OK, first of all... Shut Up." - My 13-Year-Old Daughter

29973 "The Running of the Bulls" [SFMA] - WINNER of the Mighty Big Story Arc Contest !
- The Stellar Wind Orbital Space Platform

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If you're in the game, you still get far better rewards than when not, but now even those who don't have as much time to play are gaining something during every hour.

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Day jobs are not to reward every single hour subscribed. If they were then you would be gaining the rewards while playing as well. Faulty logic on that one.

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It's not faulty logic. As I said in that very same sentence, you are far more rewarded while playing than not. Without Day Jobs, a player is only rewarded while playing the game. With Day Jobs, a player is still rewarded while playing the game, but now also rewarded while not.

Therefore, it is because of Day Jobs that players will now get rewarded for every hour of subscribed time. I never said the reward every hour had to come from Day Jobs specifically, only that Day Jobs allowed such a scenario to exist.

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These are great examples of Straw Man arguments. You are setting up questions that are completely unrelated to the topic at hand, for the specific purpose of knocking them down. Logic fallacies.

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Nope, sorry, my arguments were completely relevant. You said that you had done all the story arcs, task forces, and trials. Somehow you were able to separate wanting to do all of them from wanting to do all missions in general.

Wanting to do all missions is just as valid as wanting to get all badges. Just because you personally do not care about doing all missions, but do care about getting all badges, you are drawing an arbitrary line in the sand and saying wanting to do all missions is completely different than wanting to get all badges, and therefore my arguments were Straw Men.

That's really a sign of your own bias, not mine.

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Still in the badge window, still using the badge system to award. The game doesn't care if what it is called, if it uses the badge system, the game counts it. They've had to recode the vet reward choices not to count.

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Well, yeah, that's why one of my suggestions was to change things to count them separately. Or, at the very least, count Day Jobs separately. But you didn't like that idea. And if they are counted separately, does it really matter that much what window they're in? Seriously?

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And for an addition or alternate method to really keep badge hunters happy:
Have each day job badge be 3 badges, one for each tier of the gate.

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What are you collecting? Badge counts or the badges themselves? How would this solve anything, because wouldn't people want to collect all of the top tier badges?

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These are great examples of Straw Man arguments. You are setting up questions that are completely unrelated to the topic at hand, for the specific purpose of knocking them down. Logic fallacies.

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Nope, sorry, my arguments were completely relevant. You said that you had done all the story arcs, task forces, and trials. Somehow you were able to separate wanting to do all of them from wanting to do all missions in general.

Wanting to do all missions is just as valid as wanting to get all badges. Just because you personally do not care about doing all missions, but do care about getting all badges, you are drawing an arbitrary line in the sand and saying wanting to do all missions is completely different than wanting to get all badges, and therefore my arguments were Straw Men.

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One is possible the other is not. Each story arc, task force, and trial is a specific thing you can gauge, thanks to the badge system and souvenirs. The other missions have no such mechanism to tell when they are "done". Therefore, straw man, unless you want to remove the badges from the day jobs entirely so you have no record of what you've done.

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That's really a sign of your own bias, not mine.

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I've actually almost completely accomplished the arc/tf/trials blue side, and a large portion red-side. No bias involved.

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Still in the badge window, still using the badge system to award. The game doesn't care if what it is called, if it uses the badge system, the game counts it. They've had to recode the vet reward choices not to count.

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Well, yeah, that's why one of my suggestions was to change things to count them separately. Or, at the very least, count Day Jobs separately. But you didn't like that idea.

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Completely separate. Sometimes mixing things is just a bad idea.

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And if they are counted separately, does it really matter that much what window they're in? Seriously?

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Actually it does matter, otherwise a lot of people here wouldn't be as upset. This should be blindingly obvious.

The fact that it doesn't matter to you does NOT equal that it matters to others.

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And for an addition or alternate method to really keep badge hunters happy:
Have each day job badge be 3 badges, one for each tier of the gate.

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What are you collecting? Badge counts or the badges themselves? How would this solve anything, because wouldn't people want to collect all of the top tier badges?

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Three overlapping badges. The tier 1 badge gets hidden when you earn the tier 2. The tier 2 gets hidden when you get the tier 3. Just like the respec badges.

Yes, some people would want to get all the top tiers for the extra rewards. However this would allow people to earn the badges (if they want) or focus on a specific category of reward, at the PLAYER's choice.

Having the titles able to be chosen at the trainers allows more diverse set of job titles.

All this seems to be a reasonable compromise between having to spend 30 days offline and being able to get the badges quickly. And it does it without removing the badges.

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One is possible the other is not. Each story arc, task force, and trial is a specific thing you can gauge, thanks to the badge system and souvenirs. The other missions have no such mechanism to tell when they are "done". Therefore, straw man, unless you want to remove the badges from the day jobs entirely so you have no record of what you've done.

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So everything that is counted in the game must be completely collectible?

And for some people, getting all the badges is equally as impossible as doing all the missions. They just don't have the time to do either one. So should the devs reduce the number of badges and missions just because they want to be able to collect them all? Or does it just matter that there is enough time for you specifically to get them all?

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Three overlapping badges. The tier 1 badge gets hidden when you earn the tier 2. The tier 2 gets hidden when you get the tier 3. Just like the respec badges.

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So really you are after badge counts then, not the badges themselves. Collecting extra badges only matters if it affects your badge count. If that's the case, then why is not including Day Job badges in the badge count good enough?

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Sorry, but using a openly stated broken badge to compare to is not going to work here.

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[color= yellow]Yellow[/color] part re-added by me. [color= orange]Orange[/color] part highlighted.

There's a reason I added that bolded part at the end.

But you stated that "No other badge in the system does this". To show that as being false one only needs to show one example of the opposite, and there is no need for me, you, Positron, or my neighbor's cat to particularly *like* the other example. It just happens to be the easiest to show the extreme case of the opposite.

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Ok, technically you are right. I should have said that "No other badges in the game are designed to be like this." Even Empath was designed to be done actively healing others. That people have perverted that intention doesn't make what I said false however.

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But Empath isn't the only example (just the most extreme one). How about Damage badges? Mez badges?

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As designed, those badges are supposed to take a long time. I would say excessively so, and have. However they were not designed to be done while away from the game.

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I can agree that there's a difference with respect to how both sets of badges were (presumably) intended to be earned.
Both of them are presumably intended to be earned through "normal" play, and not to encourage people to avoid "normal" play.
However, the Heal/Damage/Whatever badges are earned faster if you play normally *more often*, while the rate at which you earn Day Job badges actually slows down if you play more.

(this isn't how those badges are treated by badge collectors though, and thus not the effect it'll really have on them)


On a slight tangent, I agree that the requirements for some of the epic badges are a tad.... well, bonkers.
I especially do not like that there are villain Accolades that require some of these badges.

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The dedicated badge collectors are probably more likely to keep track of how much longer they need, and change Day Jobs in a timely fashion when the time comes.

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I lolled at the thought of Beef's alarm going off in the middle of the night for him to get up and switch job locations.

It's a bit more likely that he'd just log in as normal, note the new job badge, and log out somewhere else, the same as any other collector.

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Heh.
Well, I wasn't really thinking on the scale of hours, but more like days.

I don't expect everyone to always log on their characters on the "right" day, but I would be surprised if the most dedicated badge collectors do not.

If someone manages to go a year with always logging out at an appropriate location and always switch location in a non-significant amount of time, wouldn't they *be* dedicated badge collectors?

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I think there is a misconception that the devs explicitly want the badges to take a very long time to get. I think it has more to do with how long they want it to take for players to get the day job bonus powers, and to make them not easily farmable.

Personally, I disagree with the time spans for the rewards recieved. I think it would be much more reasonable for them to reward in 10 days, keeping in mind active playtime, rather than 10 days logged out total.

This is the merit I see to the 8 hour counts per 24 hour period idea someone else had. It makes the logged out times not easily farmable, while allowing for the rewards to pop every 10 days without forcing people that want the rewards to change their playstyle.

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It appears that the combined systems of Day Jobs and On Patrol are intended to be biased towards players who spend less time on a given character.

However, if one feels that the On Patrol system provides enough of a bias, one could decrease the degree to which the Day Jobs depend on hours spent offline.


There is a possible technical issue with the alternative you mention though, and it provides a possible answer to the question I posed earlier; If you want a system that benefits everyone the same regardless of how long that character is offline, why design it so that it depends on how long characters are offline?

Because it's as close as you get with reasonable investment.

Determining how many hours you have spent offline is easy, all you need to know is when you logged off, and when you logged on. The only information you need to store is the time you logged off, and that time is already stored. All of this also only needs to be checked at the time of logon.

Limiting the credit you get per day is however more complicated. What information do you store to make this work without any undesirable side effects?



It is possible that the devs feel (or could be convinced to feel) that the Day Job rewards should be given in "total days" and not "effective days spent offline", but that it is not feasible to implement the system this way.


edit: note that I'm not saying that it is not possible to make it work, just that it is much more complicated. You could for instance do something like this:
Add a counter for time credited for LastCurrentDay, and store the date of this day.
When you logon, compare CurrentTime to TimeOfLogoff. For the amount of intervening time that falls upon LastCurrentDay credit the minimum of that time and Limit-Counter.
If any days are completely within CurrentTime and TimeOfLogoff, credit each day with Limit hours.
If CurrentTime falls on another day than TimeOfLogoff, credit the minimum of Limit and the amount of hours that have passed on that day, change the counter to that value, and set LastCurrentDay to that day.

example:
The system credits a maximum of 16 hours per day.
I have spent 14 hours offline on Monday, and logoff at 9pm.
My next logon is on 10am Thursday.

When I logoff on Monday, LastCurrentDay is Monday, and the counter is at 14 hours.
When I logon, it is determined that I spent 3 more hours offline on LastCurrentDay, but since that makes the total reach the 16 hour limit, I am only credited with Limit - Counter = 16 - 14 = 2 hours. If the counter had been at 10 hours, I would have been credited with 3 hours instead.
Tuesday and Wednesday are completely within the time I've been logged off, so I am credited with 2*Limit (16) hours.
Thursday is different from LastCurrentDay (Monday), so I am credited with the minimum of Limit (16) and CurrentTime (10) = 10 hours, the Counter is set to that value, and LastCurrentDay is set to Thursday.


Doable, but *much* more complicated.

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And, yes, there are people that "can't wait for the badges", and ones that have to have them "now".


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Name them.



Oh, BTW, the Wizard of Oz called. They need their Straw Man back.

[/ QUOTE ]

CaptA for one apparently.
I'm sure if you dig through these forums you will see many more based on what I can guess from the implications in his message.

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Please point out where I said I wanted these badges "now". I will be waiting.

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Hmmm...
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I said I wanted these badges "now".

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I win!

(I kid, I kid. I'm with you on this one, CaptA. Not "now," just... in a much more realistic time frame.)

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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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Hey! No creative editing!

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"...freedom isn't a commodity to compromise." -- Captain America, New Avengers #21

Guide to Base Teleporters

I'm down for loving the idea of the day jobs.

Think they are great.

I'd be as happy if they were from 20-35 days, though I think they are fine as is.

I fully expect more day jobs to be added as ongoing thing, so maybe a different tracking system other than a seperate tab in badges would ease the angst.

I hope day jobs would be added more frequently than there is time to do them (ie averaging more than one per thirty days).

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I don't suffer from altitis, I enjoy every minute of it.

Thank you Devs & Community people for a great game.

So sad to be ending ):

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How many Day Jobs can a hero have?
What is this turning into? City of Temp Services?


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The badges represent things you have done, not *what you are doing*

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Also, after reading most of this thread, this is my impression of what badges mean to people:

"My badge count has to be higher than yours and it has to be higher now."

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You should probably read it again. If that's what you came away with from reading, you've missed a lot of quality arguments, both for and against the badge inclusion and requirements.

Read my suggestion in my sig, for starters. It's not the only argument out there, but it's the one I favor because it can be done immediately and without consequence to players who want all the accolades and day job buff opportunities.

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The way I see it is this - there are always going to be new badges. There will never be a complete set, only complete to a certain point - and even then not everyone has the ability to have all of the badges. So really, aside from the powers, what difference does it make to have something now as opposed to a year from now? It's not like the CoX game universe is ending tomorrow and you have to have everything completed before then. The game will be around for a long time. There's plenty of time to earn these badges.

Anywho, that's my opinion and everyone is entitled to their own. Some people have made good points for and against the current system, but really, I don't see a problem either way. If the time requirement is shortened, whoopy. If not, oh well - I'll live.

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