[MUD-Dev] Time debt

[Jason Lai]

On Mon, 16 Aug 2004 10:47:43 +0000,
cruise <cruise at casual-tempest.net> wrote:

> 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.

Well, time-debt could be applied mainly to physical exercises like
combat and crafts and such, while there could be a reduced penalty
(or none at all) for sitting around and chatting -- you could even
recover time debt while not doing any activities.

The way I'm planning on implementing time debt in my MUD -- in order
to discourage people from playing for a ridiculous number of hours a
day -- is to allow people to play with minimal penalty as long as
they aren't on for, say, 10 hours in a day. The penalty will be
having to drink lots of caffeine ;) After 10 hours, your character
starts suffering harsher penalties including suddenly falling
asleep. In-game sleep and not being logged in will both recover the
time-debt; the former lets you chat out-of-char.

> 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...

I think time-debt should be used to encourage players to participate
in different types of activities. Like if you spent a lot of time
questing, you should probably take a break and earn money or learn a
skill or whatever. Go do something unrelated.

- Jason Lai
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