[MUD-Dev] Man Hours: (was Offline Persistence)

[Dmitri Zagidulin]

Here's an idea to kick around on the subject of player advancement and 
offline persistence. 
What if we used the concept of man-hours as a resource and as a 
pre-requisite to completing projects.

Let me illustrate by example:
Say Jebediah the Thrice-Foul is building a dark tower for himself.
He certainly better have the necessary resources:
Money, stone, cement & such, and maybe tools.  And workers.
So he puts out a call to (in OOC terms) all the willing PCs which
have the appropriate stone-mason skills.  The PCs and Jebediah
then sign a contract, in which they receive say 10 gold for every
man-hour spent on the project.
Since nobody actually wants to stand there and click on the stones
and watch the wall slowly build up stone by stone, the way the 
game handles it is: when the players disconnect, they are assumed
to be spending a player-specified amount of hours for a contract.
When the log in, they get the gold/whatever rewards they agreed to
for performing the work, their skill increases from practicing the 
craft, and Jebediah gets that much closer to completing the 1000 man-hours
necessary for building his tower.

Benefits:
- Social Interaction. Instead of sitting in their lonely cubby-holes 
clicking (or macroing) away at items, gold-mines or buildings, 
players can go out, talk with other players, hire and get hired,
and receive reward - gold, favors, items, etc.
- No repetitive actions. Time-intensive tasks get handled 
offline. 
- Increased "money drain" -- to get things accomplished,
older and more powerful players need to spend more money
as well as go out and find able and willing workers (of course
if nobody appropriate is on, they can go to an NPC guild and
hire workers, but that can cost a lot more (union wages) 
to encourage PC labor).
- Offline skill advancement. Now, players can either advance
when working for themselves (a smith working on a broadsword)
at some preset rate, or by working for a foreman/teacher.
Thus, if miner PCs are spending time on a contract headed
by a hired master miner, their skill can go up more (since
they're learning from a master), and the job can be of higher
quality in the long run.  There is room for the plain laborers
(newbies, PCs not too skilled in the area) as well as master
craftsmen (they get to supervise the activities & lend their
expertise to the success of the project).
- Offline character advancement for casual players. Two 
biggest time-wasters - skill-advancement and money earning
are relegated to offline time.  Time online can be spent doing
the exciting stuff - fighting, treasure hunting, intrigues, 
socializing (and finding contracts), etc.  Note that since
actual offline hours are needed to be spent on the projects, 
players who don't play too often are actually in demand for 
the offline time they can contribute.
- Safe(r) offline persistence. This has to be handled carefully.
Say a band of goblins decides to attack the construction site
of the tower and scatter the workers.  Or say that Jebediah
hired (contracted, offline-time) some PC guards to
prevent that from happening.  A battle then ensues. If the 
goblins win, they scatter the workers/guards and get to 
plunder the construction site, set up camp, write rude things
on the walls, etc.  If Jebediah's forces win, construction
can go on peacefully.  If PCs get damaged in the process,
the cost of healing can be taken out of Jebediah's worker 
insurance or whatever.
The point is: PCs can be hired either for work or combat while
offline. While offline, they retain their fighting stats & 
equipment.  If they get into a fight and lose a preset amount
of health, they scatter - it's assumed that they ran away
rather than be killed for their employer.  When the owner
PC logs on, their characters are back home, healed, with a story
to tell about the goblin attack. 
This way, the players don't get mad for their PCs getting damaged
while offline, and the employers have temporary extra "human shields" 
between them and the trouble.

Problems:
- This might encourage "Mule" characters. However, that's 
not this system's fault or creation - the designers need to
have ways to handle the Mule problem in any case.
- I'm sure there's others I can't think of right now :)

- Dmitri







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