[MUD-Dev] Enforced log out aka "real sleep"

[Paul Schwanz]

From: Brian Hook <brianhook at pyrogon.com>

> So, let me state up front that I think the very idea of limited a
> player's ability to play a game is fundamentally unsound.  It's a
> Bad Idea.

> That said, how do you handle games where you'd like there to be a
> "temporal balance of power"?  Specifically, you want certain
> players to be effective at certain times, and/or you want
> characters to become "fatigued" if they don't "rest" for several
> hours straight (or purchase the appropriate uppers, or whatever).

> Related to this is the idea that characters must "sleep" in-game
> in order to avoid fatigue.  In a single player RPG, this is
> instantaneous (tap the "camp" button, bam, you're good to go for
> another 24 hours).  On-line -- obviously not.  Most games I'm
> aware of just avoid the issue.  So again, I'm curious if anyone
> has come up with something particularly crafty to address this.

I think that this problem stems from the fact that there is no
distinction made between the player and the character.
Specifically, that there is no distiction in regard to time.

Imagine the (hacky?) solution where the amount of time available to
a character != the amount of time the player is logged in.  Suppose
we gave every character 24 hours in the day.  This is a well of time
from which they draw to perform certain in-game actions.  These
actions might include some of the following

  - travel
  - create items
  - practice a skill
  - sleep

Maybe the player wants to travel from one city to the next, but
doesn't want to actually endure the boring travel.  So he uses
character time to get there.  No downtime for the player, but the
character has less time now to do other things.

Perhaps some items take a very long time to create.  But the player
is free to enjoy the game however he wants without the downtime,
because this time is charged to the character's 24 hours.

Maybe a player wants to increase a certain skill, but isn't really
interested in spending his own "fun" time online slaying one boring
crit after another.  So he dips into character time to do this.

And finally, maybe a character needs to rest in order to heal after
a battle, or needs to regain some endurance.  The player doesn't
want to log out, so he uses character time to rest his character.

Now, you can handle Vampires a couple of different ways.  You can
simply start them out with only 12 hours of character time per day,
or you can simply have them fatigue much more readily, requiring
that they use twice as much character time for sleeping, leaving
less for the other pursuits.

I think I'd go for the second.  The interesting thing would be for a
Vampire to have to budget his character time well.  (After all, once
the 24 hours is used, he doesn't get more character time until the
next day.)  If fighting is particularly fatiguing, then the Vampire
must pick his battles carefully, lest he spend too much of his
character time recovering and then remains vulnerable until the next
day cycle.

Anyway, off the top of my head, this is the sort of route I would
look at taking.  Hope it gives you some ideas.

--Phinehas

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