[MUD-Dev] Time debt

[cruise]

Stephen McDonald wrote:

> The current discussion about socializing, downtime, level grind,
> and campin= leads me to bring up an idea I've been playing with in
> my head for a little while.  I hope it may solve some problems
> that people see, or at the least put a completely different face
> on things.  The idea is composed of two propositions:

>   1) Move boring, repetitive, and time-consuming activity to
>   off-line time, when the player is not logged in to the game.

>   2) Have most or all skill improvement come from practice and
>   training, which occurs during off-line time.

> This could be implemented by creating a "time debt".  A person
> wishes to craft a leather hauberk.  He gathers his materials and
> tools, then starts working.  In reality, this should take, say, 10
> hours (completely arbitrary number plucked from thin air).  In the
> game, it takes 10 seconds (or 1 minute, or some other short time),
> but the character incurs a 10 hour time debt.  If the player logs
> off for 10 hours, his time debt is paid off.  This can work for
> almost any kind of time-consuming activity--crafting, training,
> harvesting a field, studying a new spell, repairing equipment,
> long distance travel.

> Working with this concept requires a rather non-linear treatment
> of time.  In essence, you can pretend that it really does take one
> day to ride to the distant city, but it all takes place "off
> stage" or "during commercial break".  The players get to
> participate in the activities they are actually interested in
> quickly, while still having to pay the "time" it should require.
> It will prevent a crafter from flooding the market with hundreds
> of swords crafted instantaneously, because the time debt is
> prohibitive.  The number of spells cast by a mage could be limited
> by having mana/aura/energy regain at the expense of a time debt.
> Accruing time debt can be limited by either setting an upper limit
> on the debt a character can take on, or by imposing increasing
> penalties for high time debt.

The obvious way to do this would be to treat time-debt as a lack of
sleep, or similar. The greater the time-debt, the more exhausted
your character. Its an interesting idea, but I can see players being
frustrated at "being punished" for being signed on.

Is the recovery of time-debt and training mutually exclusive? If so,
I can see this reducing the amount of crafting people do - the more
they craft, the /slower/ they will gain skills. If, instead, working
off time-debt also trained the skill used in creating it (so,
armouring skills for the smith, for example), then the more they
craft, the more they learn, but past a certain point, the
"exhaustion" would prevent them from making anything worthwhile.

Like you say, it would take an awful lot of balancing - but it is an
interesting idea, certainly...

--
[ cruise / casual-tempest.net / transference.org ]
   "quantam sufficit"
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