Break Bonus (In-game incentive for taking breaks)

#1

As the title implies, this would mainly be a way to help ease the fear of missing out due to the constant events and such. This was inspired from a World of Warcraft mechanic ‘Fatigue Experience’ or the lessons that came about it while I was doing research on game design.

Essentially, players would receive an increase bonus, like a sort of clover or possibly stronger effect for a long duration of time if they recently logged off for a significant portion of time or as long as they do not go into realms or staying more than a couple minutes (maybe to collect dailies?). This way people who grind for long periods of time aren’t too affected while people who would like an option to play more casually feel less left behind due to the grind the game requires.

This could also help players get back on their feet if they grieve their characters, making it feel like there’s something ‘more’ to come back to. Bit of a side note but I recently had a friend take a break from RotMG due to losing a bunch of characters in a row and hoping they get back on their feet soon. I remember a bunch of times where I felt like this as well.

This might be too ‘forgiving’ in a sense though, as this would blur the line between the people who have sold their life to the grind to the people who only really touch the game a couple times. I’m not too sure about this idea but thought it might be interesting to bring up.


What do you think about the idea?

  • The idea is great!
  • The idea is good.
  • The idea is okay.
  • The idea is bad.

0 voters

#2

All the stuff they implemented to get the players online would be some kind of pointless, wouldn’t it?

They want you to play, not to take a break.

#3

Fair point, this is again only a suggestion and I appreciate the input as it can raise discussion like this. Its completely valid that this can be seen as dissuading people from playing the game entirely.

However the way you said it makes it seem like the only way to appreciate everything they’ve done so far or enjoy the changes made to the game is to play it non-stop. This surely can’t be the case as we can all agree that taking breaks, even small ones, can even help you appreciate the game more as you’d be more consistent with your input and vigilant on nexusing if need be.

Another point I would like to bring up is that this doesn’t directly impact players who already play the game regularly. We can still grind to our heart’s content and we get dailies for logging in regularly too. Events are also something that heavily reward players who can consistently do them.

However its important to acknowledge there are multiple parts to our player base, some may not have the luxury of time to continuously grind like most of us. This could help out those players and help the game be more open to whatever schedule you can have for it.

#4

On the contrary, I’d say this encourages players to come back from a break instead of having players take a break in the first place. Let me paint a couple of scenarios.

Let’s say if you take a break for 12 hours, you get a 1.5x drop chance bonus for one hour. And let’s say there’s an item that has a 1% drop chance, where running the content to get that item take 10 minutes.

Player Alfred is a gamer that plays the entirety of those 13 hours. Alfred has a grand total of 78 chances of landing the item with the normal rate. If my calcs are correct, Alfred has a 54% chance of getting the item at some point in those 13 hours of nonstop grind. In contrast, he’s only got a 8.6% chance of getting the drop if he takes a break for 12 hours, and runs the dungeon for the thirteenth hour. He probably doesn’t need that extra boost, and can sufficiently ignore it (and also probably should get some sunlight).

Player Bob is someone who doesn’t have the time to play RotMG for 13 hours, because Bob is a functional human being. But, he’d like to play when he has the opportunity. And what better way to draw him back in with an increased droprate for an hour? That enhanced 8.6% drop chance over the course of an hour looks a lot more enticing when the normal drop chance over one hour is 5.8%. Is it a massive increase? Not really, it’s only an increase of 2.8%. But is it enough to get Bob playing again? It definitely helps. And hey, his collective hours playing the game are certainly more efficient, even if he doesn’t have as many hours total as Alfred.

Player Carl lost his only 8/8 to his first O3 at 10% health, and swears off RotMG for a couple of weeks. But he notices that sweet sweet increased droprate after the first day of not playing. He sighs, and hops back in to grind for an hour to get some items that he lost. And then Carl accidentally turns into an Alfred after gaming for an additional 12 hours with his abusive relationship favorite video game, Realm of the Mad God.

#5

okay you don’t gotta put it like that but its not wrong but… I feel attacked don’t do this to me

#6

It’s a really controversial idea, because while I understand this change is to appeal to the more casual portion of the player base, a big problem is ensuring that between a player taking a break vs a player spending that time grinding, the latter should have a significantly higher chance of getting more and better loot than the former. Because if they’re the same, then this discourages people from spending that time grinding, when they can do other things during that time, and then afterwards spend the same amount of time as someone who would’ve grinded during that break, to get the same or better loot.

It is also somewhat exploitable as well, I wouldn’t be surprised if I see guilds or discords specifically set up such that they organise everyone to take a break at a certain time, then come on xx hours later for a massive dungeon chain.

Overall it’s a somewhat strange idea, considering DECA wants you to sink more time into the game, not less…like most game companies would. There’s also the question to ask on what is a good balance, too little of a bonus and people won’t care about this feature, too much of a bonus and the problems above arise.

#7

Off topic but hello again! (Not sure if you’d remember I went into Lost Halls for the first time on an 8/8 pally and died like a nub to the pillar when we tried to duo XD)

Ah well this is where the specifics start to get important. To be honest, balance might not be one of my strong points and I’d need better data and calculations to be able to discern as you’ve stated there needs to be a good system but a system that would push players towards playing more.

Speaking of specifics the term ‘break’ seems a bit vague doesn’t it. It could just be done on purpose but I don’t think it would or should be attained (the bonus) by a two-digit number of hours but most likely won’t exceed a week.

Although its completely different in context I’m taking some inspiration here from making a bunch of random item ideas: ‘give it a cooldown’. I don’t mean to literally give it a cooldown but more of a way to measure and control exploits from the playerbase.

Some sort of middle ground that could be achieved would be to make a sort of gauge for playtime active vs playtime inactive. Whereas playing for a certain amount of time will earn you a reward after spending a certain amount of time inactive. This way both parties would benefit from the system but as you have said the latter more time-invested part of the player base would reap better rewards. This isn’t to say its set in stone to be a ‘loot bonus’ I guess, perhaps it caps to a certain point and could reward players in a different way?

I’ll have to get back to you to think about the idea more but thank you for bringing this up! The specifics within this post gives a bit more insight as to why this idea can be problematic/flawed.

#8

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