The Daily Grind: Are rewards for offline time a good idea?

by Adrian Bott Aug 28th 2008 at 8:00AM

In City of Heroes Issue 13: Architect, a new 'day job' system will be introduced where your character can gain buffs and progress towards special badges without you having to arrest a single villain. The system just requires you to log the character out in a location appropriate to the kind of work your character does when he's not being a superhero - a University for a scholar, a Hospital for a medical technician, a Police Station for a cop - and when the character logs back in, you get an appropriate buff and badge progress.

Other games have 'rested' systems, too. Age of Conan has 'fresh kills', where a set number of the first kills of the day net you extra XP (so long as they're a challenge), and something similar was popularized in World of Warcraft long before.

But do these systems just reward players for not playing? Is a system that rewards you for spending time offline effectively dictating how you ought to play? Or do such systems enrich a game, giving added incentive to keep several alts on the go?

Tags: offline-rewards, the-daily-grind

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

recursive said on 8:48AM 8-28-2008

These systems don't so much reward you for not playing as not punish you for it. And a bit of time management is not to be sneezed at of course.

Neko Ali said on 10:30AM 8-28-2008

These sorts of systems are very much a bonus for people like me, who are confirmed altaholics. That way I can play different characters and games as suits my desire, but I won't keep falling further and further behind my more focused friends. In a game where there is no sort of mentoring system, that's very important.

And the Day Job system in City of Heroes is completely different than earning bonus experience in other games. It doesn't give you bonuses for logging out, but rather has you think about where you leave your character when logging out, instead of just disconnecting next to your last mission giver, or the trainer or whatever.

Lemmo said on 10:47AM 8-28-2008

Unless you really have a problem, you have to log off sometime.

I see no problem with providing incentives and rewards for taking a break, or better yet, parking your character in a smart spot as opposed to just pulling the plug out in the field. Also, from what I observe, the rewards are pretty minimal compared to actually playing.

CoH says you can earn salvage for logging off at a University. But if you really wanted salvage, you could spend that same 4 hours running task forces and coming out like a bandit. So there's still a trade-off.

Tony said on 11:27AM 8-28-2008

And couldn't you just spend those same four hours as another character? That's how WoW and LotRO seem to work... so instead of going off the computer, they just play another character. Not really an offline anything lol.