Day Jobs Plus

The present

Currently the system runs by accumulating time and badge credits to certain dayjobs. Logging out a hospital earns you time for the Caregiver buff and badge credits. Earn a dayjob badge and the effect and rate accumulated increases. If you obtain two dayjob badges you will be able to gain time or charges to an accolade power by logging out of the areas associated with either badge.


However there are a few problems that arise. I can see that Day jobs are a way of rewarding players and character offline to encourage people not to play 24/7, but in the short-term the rewards logging out of the places can be close to useless.

An example, Law-Enforcer/Arachnos Agent offers an XP bonus upon mission completion, it sounds pretty fair doesn't it? Do a mission and extra XP? But the thing is, it takes time to complete a mission, and more difficult ones take even more time to prevent consecutive wipes. Following the information I've found, it takes 10 days of logging out to accumulate 2 hours of time, that's the same as one minute of day-job bonus for every two hours logged out. How long does a mission usually take, from when you first log in, to reaching the mission door, getting a team together if required and running through the whole mission?

The problem in it's microcosm is that more often than not, the bonus runs out before you complete the mission, or even before you step through the door. Sure you can leave your character in a police-station/arachnos base for 10 days but unless you have other alts to play, that's one character left unusable by day-job accumulation, because not enough time means no reward and wasted bonus time.

This also occurs on many buffs like Caregiver and basically anything that starts counting down the moment you step back in, if you didn't log out long enough you won't see it active long enough to have any benefit. The only day-job that's perfectly designed is the Patroller/Criminal dayjob, where patrol-XP is accumulated but not lost, but USED! Same applies with the Market Transporters and most Day-Job accolade powers, they are gained but not lost if they're not used right away.

Another observation is regard to how day-jobs are perceived whilst online. The roleplaying aspect is that when your character isn't fighting crime or causing it, they're doing a job as a cover or on-the-side employment. Something about it doesn't seem really like a job, it's just something mentioned but never seen. And in some people's eyes, it's not really engaging or exciting, should it ever be.


Every once in a while, the line that distinguishes their day-job and their heroic escapades becomes blurred. Maybe the character working at the hospital is notified that patients have been coming in with some strange disease, or that there has been a big theft at the Vault Reserve (Banker/Thief) and they need someone capable of investigating or solving the problem a way only a superhero or villain could.

For each existing Day-job there will be a new Day-job contact to speak to, access to the contact is available only when the player has obtained their relevant day-job badge, proving them in the roleplaying sense, to be experienced enough to handle the job. The contact will have their own story-arc detailing the crime or problem that is thematic to the day-job they're associated with. When the player has completed their arc, they will be awarded with a 'day-job superior badge' linked with their original logged-out badge.

This day-job superior badge offers similar benefits as the logged-out badge, slightly increasing the bonus is gives as well as the time/charge rate accumulated when logged out. The balancing factor is the difficulty of the storyarc to make the reward fit the risk, in the same way as you needed to have logged out at the same location-type for a total of 21 days for the logged out badges.

Day-job contacts may also give out scanner/newspaper style missions thematic to their day-job, kind of like being able to DO the day-job as opposed to logging out and imagining it. Else the day-job contacts will just congratulate you for a job well done. This feature is mainly to give day-jobs a tangible feel in gameplay as well as an imaginative one.


I sense that this one might have the most controversy because it deals with balancing factors, but I might as well cover it, if only to highlight possible solutions and problems.

A lot of day-job bonuses are time-based, and some even have requirements and restrictions on when and how the bonus is given. Caregiver for +Regen and Pocket D for +Recov bonus are written to only have their effect outside of battle. The aforementioned Law-enforcer/Arachnos-Agent bonuses for XP, as well as the day-jobs associated with Inf. only apply when a mission is completed.

The problems with the time-based bonuses is that if you don't log out long enough, you won't have time to complete a mission which gets you your bonus. As for the outside of battle restrictions it can be debated whether it matters being in or out of battle, or whether the game actually pays attention to either. The biggest problem is essentially the fact that you don't use the bonus, you waste it. From the moment you log in the timer for the bonus is already ticking away and it encourages you to rush in to get the most out of the power.

Solutions for this can involve turning timer bonuses into toggles that become active when YOU want them to. Others include changing the XP-mission/Inf-mission completion bonuses into mission-completion charges. You accumulate charges which are spent when you complete mission instead of trying to rush through one before the clock runs out. Anything that works on the basis of a user opting into a bonus or allowing that bonus to be stored up whilst online is a step in the right direction.

I could also mention getting rid of mission-completion/out-of-combat restrictions but I feel that's generally how the bonuses are balanced and removing them would make them unbalanced. The solutions mentioned above would work much better.

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SUPPORT - IT'S NOT JUST A GROUPING OF ATs
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More Than a Game
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I do agree that some bonuses would be prone to exploitation if they were just toggles, but that's why I also mentioned a piece regarding turning mission-completion bonuses into charges that are spent per mission completion. If you gain one charge and complete a mission it rewards the bonus amount, but do another mission without another charge and you don't get any bonuses.

There is however only one day-job bonus that does persist and that is the On-Patrol XP gained from logging out anywhere. You don't have to toggle it on but it doesn't go away if you don't use it immediately.

I check Paragon wiki and it labelled as 'Auto', signifying it's time-based bonus. I'm not sure myself if this is verified as I haven't gotten the accolade myself, but if it's true then it's not like the tailor discount tokens.

I'm not sure about this actually, while it would be advantageous to choose when to get a bonus reward it kind of complicates things and can be situational. I believe it would be best if all charges are spent each time a mission is completed rather than bring in unnecessary menus after every mission. The only button I'd want to be pressing after a mission complete is EXIT.

Also 20 charges for the Mortician's bonus? That's excessive for a cap based one something that only applies to when you get floored by your enemies. I would've just gone with a maximum of 10 myself, to match the 1 charge per day cap.

The Superior Day-job badge is probably an alternate solution than something to clump together with the rest of the suggestion. If the day-jobs turned all it's bonuses into charges instead of time then this new badge could be completely cosmetic, like a distinction of merit to show you completed the Day-job story arc. But on the other hand, depending on the difficulty of the Day-job story arc, the risk could justify an increase to the bonus effect and rate accumulated for the Superior day-job badge.

Not to mention that this Superior Day-job badge still requires you to have logged out for 21 days in total to even unlock the day-job contact to do their missions, couple that with a long or difficult story-arc and the badge's effect seems reasonable.

use it on my MM. used to get the option to use crafting discount tokens when making a recipe, but I've been going for other day jobs lately, so can't confirm if it is a stackable thing or not. going to guess it isn't time-based though, going on how I'd reached the limit during the time I was playing that toon very regularly, and usually crafting a few recipes a night.

Perhaps it's a text error? I know one or two powers that are mislabelled somehow, like the Tough power regarding whether it resists all or just Smashing and Lethal.