further use of day jobs

(Summary) Add more content to the day jobs (pre and post badges) that offers missions that add up so you can gain access (not buy) to day job specific powers to better round out your character. This would allow for better benefits from the day job than the limited charges or the 2 hour benefit timer that is currently active. (end summary)

Allow missions for day jobs that add loyalty points and allows various rewards (not a currency) as you go higher on the loyalty scale. For example: For "Professor," you do missions that would compliment that day job and earn loyalty point(s) for each mission completion. Missions could be: Find this book, research this event, interview this person of interest, or tutor this student (for the professor path).

While still on the "Professor" example, the first tier would be 25 missions (or 1-25 loyalty points) worth, and stay at 25 (once capped) until you complete a day job arc. Tier two would be 26-75, an additional 50 loyalty points (missions worth), and be maxed until you get the “Professor” badge. After you get the badge, 76-150 (75 points) would be the range for tier three. Tier four would be 151-300 (150 points), but you would need to pick a specialization before progression in the 151-300 range begins (next paragraph). Each tier offers permanent rewards, the lowest at 1-25 and the very rare at 151-300.

After tier three is maxed (on both day job paths), you pick a specialization through a single-player mission. The difficulty of this would be the wait time to get the day job badge(s) to be able to pick a specialty (since there are people that already have all day job badges/accolades). Still on the professor example, on the "Specialization," the mission ends with you picking what you want to specialize in. Since you already have "Professor," specializations you could choose are: Scientist, Physician, Master Architect, and Whistleblower. Options that you are unable to choose would be blocked and have labels stating which day job badge you need to unlock it. There is also an option to pick nothing, and run the mission at a later time if you still need a day job badge to acquire the day job accolade.

Now rewards. The lower 2 tiers (1-75) offer unlockable permanent powers that are associated with that day job (unlocked after you complete a set amount of missions) of the common and uncommon variety (lower potency), tier three have rares (moderate potency), and tier four would be very rare (High potency). In the case of Caregiver or Pain Specialist (hospital day job) you could gain long duration buffs and heals (that you use on yourself/others). All powers that you unlock are below that of the powers that specific archetypes would use. Example: The very-rare heal would be nice to have for a blasters survival, but would be lower than what a heal powerset could do.

The unlocked powers are acquired by going to a day job trainer to learn how to use them. Each path has its specific powers that it unlocks (Scientist, Physician, so on) that are of your choosing to further make your character different. the aoe-heal would be available at tier one and be upgradable through tier four, as would buffs and attacks you would get (to lower the amount of powers you get). At tier 1, you choose the four (or more) powers that you will be upgrading throughout the day job path (not at once). The values would be static and not allow enhancing of any kind (hence tier 1-4).

You start out with one day job slot that you can do missions for until you get to the point where you need the day job badge to go further. Once you pass that point, a second day job path opens so you can pick the complimentary day job path that is used once you reach that level of specialization. Once you have picked your specialization, the second day job path gets cleared (since you don't need to be a caregiver/professor if you became a Scientist). The point of only having one specialization is to keep the player as the MASTER of something, not multiple things. The second day job path is still open for the player to make it to a maximum of 150 in whatever other day job (but not the 2 you had for the specialty). Once the second slot opens, you are restricted to only the complimentary day job missions until you choose your specialization (to prevent a halt of progression). An example of a halt of progression would be to pick two day job paths that don’t make a day job accolade, so you would be stuck at 150 in each day job path and not able to pick a specialty (from the lack of the other day job) but that problem is solved with the restriction to only the complimentary day job only missions.

PVP would get the most restrictions by having all powers locked while in PVP areas, but still get everything associated with “Predator,” “Duelist,” and “Gladiator” day job paths in and outside of PVP zones. All attacks, buffs, and heals that would give a player an unfair advantage would be disabled (yes, PVP is already unfair either way for most).

Minor restrictions, each character can only have 1 specialization and 1 non-special. This would be so people don't have a specialization per build and end up with the games top 3 specializations. Day job paths and specializations can be unlearned, in which they are reset to 0 to prevent abuse of switching to newer day job paths and also lose all the powers that you unlocked. If you unlearn a day job path, you have to go through all the hoops (missions, mission arc to progress further, and single-player mission to attain specialization.) but you would have both day job slots open (if you already unlocked the second one) if you choose to unlearn anything.

another restriction, each badge path (example: professor, and specialized "scientist") puts you on a 1-week cooldown to prevent weekend grinds. To explain in detail, once you reach the maximum before "Professor," (75) the 1-week kicks in, after the week you take on the progression to your max before specialization (150), another week than you can pick your specialization and reach max. When you are on the cooldown, your day job path number is froze until you waited the week (but you can still do the missions, for charity). The second day job path would have its own cooldown so you could work it while waiting for the other day job to finish its cooldown.

For all the long term buffs, they will not stack, only refresh or be replaced with the highest tiered version. You can only have a set amount of the long term buffs active at one time, so they would be droppable by the character and have prompts showing which buff you are getting.

Final explanation: The day job path would better fill in a few gaps (while still needing groups at times) but still allow your character the need to carry inspirations. Each path would better define a character, like if a character wants to make a difference in the fight against the Rikti, the “Vanguard Recruit” day job path would be a start and you could further go on to get the “Mercenary” specialization and gain permanent powers that would help against the Rikti and other opponents you would go against. Since it is a suggestion, all of the info I provided could be different to add a longer progression so a day job path could take much longer (or be level restricted). If you read all of this, congrats! Thanks for your time.

tl;dr, however I'll say that after all the grinding and annoyance of having to deal with the day job system on 2 toons. I really don't want anything more to come of it where I would feel compelled to have to deal with it on all my toons. I think day jobs were a bad idea in the beginning, and it's even worse that they keep adding more of them.

a possible solution would be a reduction of days to get a day job badge, but that would only help if the day job had a worthwhile benefit to wait for (that lasts longer than X charges or the short amount of in-game time) hence the suggestion to have the powers you gain through the day job path (back to the suggestion) be permanent.

I didn't mean for it to be so long, mostly read the summary and decide to read on from that is what I am trying to do (if I drag it past a paragraph) with posts I do.

I remember creating a suggestions thread for a Day-job revamp myself a long time ago. The idea of applicable missions being generated by a day-job and allowing special access to some area or store was touched upon. Though to ease the workload of the devs and players attentions I believe that a single story-arc regarding the day-job in question would be less of a bother and yet still relevant to the issue at hand. Completing said story arc would give the day-job representative reason to give you special access to an area previously unseen, or allow you to purchase temporary powers that would ordinarily be impossible to buy anywhere else.

Another QoL issue was the bonuses themselves not being very easy to use and encouraged rushing recklessly into missions to get maximum effect, the mission-complete DJ-bonuses. Simply put, turning all mission-complete timers into charges, which remain on character until a mission that gives rewards is complete, the bonus gives out the appropriate reward and then one charge is deducted from ones obtained. For the Graveyard/XP-debt day job, one charge would deplete per defeat that would normally incur debt. For more difficult bonuses like adding regen/recov/recharge/resist for certain time may have to have extra coding put in place to tick down only when the character takes damage or uses powers, so non-combat situations don't waste the bonuses.

I agree that some things should be put on a charge basis, the ourobouros reward that gives recipes for a completed mission makes lots of sense to be on a charge basis, But I think some should either be kept on a timer, or maybe award a click power to activate them. For example, the end recovery reward could be a click power that would either last till your time expired, or have multiple charges to use as you saw fit.