Stargazer

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Given that there are badges for having multiple day jobs, would you agree that the devs didn't intend for people to not have multiple day job badges?

I'd agree that double negatives are bad....

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In this situation I think that the usage was appropriate. The negations do not cancel out.

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Shouldn't the question have read: Given that there are badges for having multiple day jobs, would you agree that the devs intended for people to have multiple day job badges?

I agree that double negatives are bad.

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That would be a possible question, but it is not the same question.

Consider this example:

A: Roses are flowers.
B: A said that roses are not red.
A: I did not say that roses are not red.

A's second statement is not the same as "I said that roses are red".

Multiple negatives in one sentence do not always cancel out.


In this case, there are three possibilities:
1) The devs intended for people to have multiple day job badges
2) The devs did not intend for people to have multiple day job badges
3) The devs had no specific intent with regards to how many day job badges you should have


Your question asks if 1 is true. The original question asks if 1 or 3 is true.

You could question if option 3 is meaningful or not, but that does not make the question invalid.

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Given that there are badges for having multiple day jobs, would you agree that the devs didn't intend for people to not have multiple day job badges?

I'd agree that double negatives are bad....

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In this situation I think that the usage was appropriate. The negations do not cancel out.

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Ok, thinking about it, make the day jobs exactly like the Super Group badges (separate window via a button in the badge window), not counting towards the badge totals, not displayed in your info window, etc with one exception: you could use it as a selectable title.

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If Day Jobs are shown in a separate window, do not count towards the badge totals, and are not called badges, do you feel they could be displayed in a separate tab in your info window?

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Issue 13 may be making things easier for the casual player, but for those of us who have been around for years (many since the launch and even the beta before it), it's just straining tensions. While it's not all bad, everyone who spends a significant amount of time focusing on a single aspect of the game is suffering in one way or another.

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There are people from several sub-communities that are disgruntled with various aspects of i13, but I think you're exaggerating a tad.

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However, the Heal/Damage/Whatever badges are earned faster if you play normally *more often*, while the rate at which you earn Day Job badges actually slows down if you play more.

(this isn't how those badges are treated by badge collectors though, and thus not the effect it'll really have on them)

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Apparently the gladiator loophole seems to be plugged:
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* A Heal Event now imposes a 25% Resistance to further heals on the character, regardless of source. This Resistance to heals will last for 15 seconds, and stacks with itself. This means that if you are healed 4 times, no further healing will affect you until the resistance duration ends.

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Quite possibly, depending on how Gladiators are affected. Castle didn't specifically state how Pets (or Henchmen for that matter) are affected.

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I think there is a misconception that the devs explicitly want the badges to take a very long time to get. I think it has more to do with how long they want it to take for players to get the day job bonus powers, and to make them not easily farmable.

Personally, I disagree with the time spans for the rewards recieved. I think it would be much more reasonable for them to reward in 10 days, keeping in mind active playtime, rather than 10 days logged out total.

This is the merit I see to the 8 hour counts per 24 hour period idea someone else had. It makes the logged out times not easily farmable, while allowing for the rewards to pop every 10 days without forcing people that want the rewards to change their playstyle.

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It appears that the combined systems of Day Jobs and On Patrol are intended to be biased towards players who spend less time on a given character.

However, if one feels that the On Patrol system provides enough of a bias, one could decrease the degree to which the Day Jobs depend on hours spent offline.


There is a possible technical issue with the alternative you mention though, and it provides a possible answer to the question I posed earlier; If you want a system that benefits everyone the same regardless of how long that character is offline, why design it so that it depends on how long characters are offline?

Because it's as close as you get with reasonable investment.

Determining how many hours you have spent offline is easy, all you need to know is when you logged off, and when you logged on. The only information you need to store is the time you logged off, and that time is already stored. All of this also only needs to be checked at the time of logon.

Limiting the credit you get per day is however more complicated. What information do you store to make this work without any undesirable side effects?



It is possible that the devs feel (or could be convinced to feel) that the Day Job rewards should be given in "total days" and not "effective days spent offline", but that it is not feasible to implement the system this way.


edit: note that I'm not saying that it is not possible to make it work, just that it is much more complicated. You could for instance do something like this:
Add a counter for time credited for LastCurrentDay, and store the date of this day.
When you logon, compare CurrentTime to TimeOfLogoff. For the amount of intervening time that falls upon LastCurrentDay credit the minimum of that time and Limit-Counter.
If any days are completely within CurrentTime and TimeOfLogoff, credit each day with Limit hours.
If CurrentTime falls on another day than TimeOfLogoff, credit the minimum of Limit and the amount of hours that have passed on that day, change the counter to that value, and set LastCurrentDay to that day.

example:
The system credits a maximum of 16 hours per day.
I have spent 14 hours offline on Monday, and logoff at 9pm.
My next logon is on 10am Thursday.

When I logoff on Monday, LastCurrentDay is Monday, and the counter is at 14 hours.
When I logon, it is determined that I spent 3 more hours offline on LastCurrentDay, but since that makes the total reach the 16 hour limit, I am only credited with Limit - Counter = 16 - 14 = 2 hours. If the counter had been at 10 hours, I would have been credited with 3 hours instead.
Tuesday and Wednesday are completely within the time I've been logged off, so I am credited with 2*Limit (16) hours.
Thursday is different from LastCurrentDay (Monday), so I am credited with the minimum of Limit (16) and CurrentTime (10) = 10 hours, the Counter is set to that value, and LastCurrentDay is set to Thursday.


Doable, but *much* more complicated.

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The dedicated badge collectors are probably more likely to keep track of how much longer they need, and change Day Jobs in a timely fashion when the time comes.

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I lolled at the thought of Beef's alarm going off in the middle of the night for him to get up and switch job locations.

It's a bit more likely that he'd just log in as normal, note the new job badge, and log out somewhere else, the same as any other collector.

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Heh.
Well, I wasn't really thinking on the scale of hours, but more like days.

I don't expect everyone to always log on their characters on the "right" day, but I would be surprised if the most dedicated badge collectors do not.

If someone manages to go a year with always logging out at an appropriate location and always switch location in a non-significant amount of time, wouldn't they *be* dedicated badge collectors?

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Sorry, but using a openly stated broken badge to compare to is not going to work here.

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[color= yellow]Yellow[/color] part re-added by me. [color= orange]Orange[/color] part highlighted.

There's a reason I added that bolded part at the end.

But you stated that "No other badge in the system does this". To show that as being false one only needs to show one example of the opposite, and there is no need for me, you, Positron, or my neighbor's cat to particularly *like* the other example. It just happens to be the easiest to show the extreme case of the opposite.

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Ok, technically you are right. I should have said that "No other badges in the game are designed to be like this." Even Empath was designed to be done actively healing others. That people have perverted that intention doesn't make what I said false however.

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But Empath isn't the only example (just the most extreme one). How about Damage badges? Mez badges?

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As designed, those badges are supposed to take a long time. I would say excessively so, and have. However they were not designed to be done while away from the game.

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I can agree that there's a difference with respect to how both sets of badges were (presumably) intended to be earned.
Both of them are presumably intended to be earned through "normal" play, and not to encourage people to avoid "normal" play.
However, the Heal/Damage/Whatever badges are earned faster if you play normally *more often*, while the rate at which you earn Day Job badges actually slows down if you play more.

(this isn't how those badges are treated by badge collectors though, and thus not the effect it'll really have on them)


On a slight tangent, I agree that the requirements for some of the epic badges are a tad.... well, bonkers.
I especially do not like that there are villain Accolades that require some of these badges.

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Casual gamers and alternate characters earn these badges faster than characters dedicated to collecting badges. There is something seriously wrong with this.

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All else being equal, a character that spends more time offline will earn these badges faster than characters that spend less time offline (though this isn't necessarily something that hurts characters dedicated to collecting badges. I'm pretty sure that there are many dedicated badge collectors that are willing to spend time offline if that turns out to be the overall optimal rate to earn badges).

However, not all other things are equal.
More "casual" characters are probably less likely to keep exact track of how long then need to spend offline, and will thus probably be in greater risk of "over working" a Day Job, spending more time on it than necessary. The dedicated badge collectors are probably more likely to keep track of how much longer they need, and change Day Jobs in a timely fashion when the time comes.

More "casual" characters are probably less likely to seek out a Day Job location after every play session. The dedicated badge collectors are probably more likely to do so.

I'd be inclined to believe that these factors would give dedicated badge collectors a fairly significant edge over the average player.


All in all, I'd be surprised if "dedicated badge collectors" are not among the first to actually earn all these badges, even if the system remains exactly as described in the dev diary article.

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Because trying to collect them actively prevents you from playing your character. [color= orange]No other badge in the system does this.[/color]

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That's a matter of interpretation I suppose. One could argue that badges like Empath prevents you from playing your character in a similar fashion. [color= yellow]Both of them are set up in a way that generally makes "actively playing" your character slow down the rate at which you earn them compared to the "optimal" rate (unless you consider sitting in a Gladiator farm (or similar) to be actively playing). The difference is that the Day Job badges (presumably) "prevent" you from playing that specific character, while Empath prevents you from "actively playing" that account.
"Playing" (an account with) a character aiming for Empath probably also slows down the rate of gain more than playing a character aiming for a Day Job badge does, unless possibly if you are playing in situations that provide for extreme healing.

That's not to say that Empath is a shining example of badge design that all other badges should aspire to, but the situation does not seem to be completely unique.[/color]


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Sorry, but using a openly stated broken badge to compare to is not going to work here.

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[color= yellow]Yellow[/color] part re-added by me. [color= orange]Orange[/color] part highlighted.

There's a reason I added that bolded part at the end.

But you stated that "No other badge in the system does this". To show that as being false one only needs to show one example of the opposite, and there is no need for me, you, Positron, or my neighbor's cat to particularly *like* the other example. It just happens to be the easiest to show the extreme case of the opposite.

But Empath isn't the only example (just the most extreme one). How about Damage badges? Mez badges?
You *can* get those from normal playing, but usually the by far fastest way is through things like "Damage farms" (which essentially keeps your character "locked" for the duration).
In a similar fashion, you *can* get the Day Job badges with normal playing, but it is faster if you keep that character offline.
(and it seems to me that the effect can be more extreme for those other cases than for Day Job badges)


You could argue that no badges should behave like this, but I think that a fair case can be made that you are wrong if you state that no other badges currently "promote" the same behavior (if you want to optimize the time required to get them).


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As for capping the reward rate, that would essentially equalize the reward rate (excepting around the clock offline farms of one kind or another), and that would seem to be contrary to what I believe is one of the intended effects of the system.

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Show me where you can possibly infer that.

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I stated a belief, but I do feel that it is a reasonable belief.
It seems quite obvious (and you seem to agree) that these new systems give rewards that are biased towards characters that are played less.
I simply find it much easier to believe that this effect was intended rather than a remarkable coincidence.

If you want a system that benefits everyone the same regardless of how long that character is offline, why design it so that it depends on how long characters are offline?


You could argue that the system should reward people independently of how much time they spend offline, but if the system is intended to benefit characters based on how long they spend offline, then that opinion is contrary to an intended effect of the system.

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There are visible badges that are actually multiple badges as well. For instance, the Respec Trial badges. You get one badge (with associated text) for earning a respec, and then the badge changes after using the respec.

So why not take the same approach to Day Jobs?

At 10 days, you earn a Day Job badge, but it doesn't boost any of the rewards associated with that Day Job (like reducing the time it takes to earn full credit towards those rewards).

At 30 days, the badge gets a star logo, and the description text is changed to say that you are a "Star Employee." This is the point when you start gaining the benefits associated with the badge. The badge's title still says you're a "Professor," it's just the flavor that's changed.

The technology and precedent already exist in the game to support this. Originally, there was a contact red-side that was supposed to be activated for earning the 24-33 and 34-43 respecs. However, it was accidentally made so the contact was only activated after using those respecs.

The Accolades would work the same way. You earn the badge simply having the two job badges, but then you can earn "Star Employee" on the Accolade, and the benefits, by having "Star Employee" on both the jobs required to earn it.

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Hmm.
That would certainly take care of many of the complaints.

However, consider this:
As the system is currently set up, the badges provide an incentive to keep exploring the Day Job system; many players will probably continue to pursue different careers simply because doing so awards badges.
If you reduce the time required to gain all the badges, you also reduce the amount of time the system continues to be a draw for certain groups of players.

This obviously has to be weighed against the negative sides of long acquisition rates, but reducing the time to acquire all badges is not purely a benefit.

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Because trying to collect them actively prevents you from playing your character. No other badge in the system does this.

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That's a matter of interpretation I suppose. One could argue that badges like Empath prevents you from playing your character in a similar fashion. Both of them are set up in a way that generally makes "actively playing" your character slow down the rate at which you earn them compared to the "optimal" rate (unless you consider sitting in a Gladiator farm (or similar) to be actively playing). The difference is that the Day Job badges (presumably) "prevent" you from playing that specific character, while Empath prevents you from "actively playing" that account.
"Playing" (an account with) a character aiming for Empath probably also slows down the rate of gain more than playing a character aiming for a Day Job badge does, unless possibly if you are playing in situations that provide for extreme healing.

That's not to say that Empath is a shining example of badge design that all other badges should aspire to, but the situation does not seem to be completely unique.




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And if you are competing with others, then the length of time doesn't matter as long as it is the same for everyone.

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Actually, it isn't. The time varies (in both extremes) from 30 days to 60 days for one day job badge as proposed. Now playing for 12 hours a day is unhealthy in the extreme. It is more likely that each Day job badge will take from 35-45 days, but there is still a variance. Variance != same for everyone.

To make it less of a variance, the developers could cap the reward day at 8 hours per day. So instead of 2,592,000 seconds, it would be 864,000 seconds, but would grant the award every 30 days unless someone played for 16 hours a day. They should have a way to tell if anyone is consistently playing that long and likely should notify medical health people for an intervention.

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Many other badges have a signiicant variance in the rate at which you achieve them during regular play, in many cases *far* more extreme than the ones for the Day Job system. Why is variance inherently a problem for Day Job badges?

As for capping the reward rate, that would essentially equalize the reward rate (excepting around the clock offline farms of one kind or another), and that would seem to be contrary to what I believe is one of the intended effects of the system. If this is the case, then claiming that the change would reduce variance would not be a very persuasive reason to implement the change.
Even if it is not intended to be that way, I still see no specific reason that capping reward rates would be "good".

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When you are playing one character you will still get progress on the other characters.
Only the time you play a specific character will slow down the progress for that specific character.

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Are we sure about this? I'm not questioning you directly I just haven't seen a developer comment on it. To be fair I haven't looked for one either. I know in other MMO's I've played you only earn rested xp when the account is logged off and not a particular character. Meaning as long as the account was logged on none of your characters would be gaining rested xp, I assume if the xp portion works that way so will the badge portion. Any one know if we have any confirmation on this?

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Hmm. Interesting.
I've only glanced at Rested XP implementations in other games.

My impression from reading the Dev diary article (and my previous impression) was that it would work per-character. After reading through it again, it seems like the article alternates between talking about a "character" being logged out and a "player" being logged out (and not always using the words consistently).
To me that still seems to indicate that it is enough that a character is logged out (if a player is logged out then so is also all its characters) though.

Anyway, my impression has always been (and continues to be) that the log out time is counted per character, but I don't really recall any dev posts specifically stating that (possibly because I always assumed that it would be, and thus would not have found any such comments noteworthy).

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The counter is based on seconds, so every second you are logged out you are getting credit.

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To be technical, I assume that you mean "you will get credit for every second you are logged out"?

I take it this will be determined by comparing your login time to your logout time? If so, where (server-wise) will this be determined?
If it is on the mapserver level, how will misconfigured mapservers be handled? (sometimes a mapserver ends up running on incorrect time)
If I log out on a mapserver that is running one hour behind, will I get one "extra" hour of credit? Will I lose an hour of credit if I log out on a mapserver that's running an hour ahead?


Will we need to both log out and log in from a Day Job location to get Day Job progress, or is it enough to log in (or log out)? i.e. if I enter my SG Base from a Hospital and then log out from my Base, I will appear in the Hospital when I log back in. Will this give me progress on the Hospital Day Job when I log in even though I did not technically log out there?


If so, and if the time checks are done by the mapservers...
If my Base is instanced on a maperserver that is running one hour behind the mapserver that the Hospital is on, would I gain a free hour of progress by doing what I described above, and then be able to repeat this for as long as the two instances continue to exist on mapservers that have this relative time difference (as fast as my Base Portal recharge would allow of course, something that'd be much easier if there are locations that have Base Portals within a Day Job location)?

This would presumably also work if the relative time difference exists for a mission and its entry point, and the mission entry point exists within a Day Job location (for instance, Portal Corp missions, missions you enter from a train).

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Badgers, 1 year is to long to wait for "all" the badges (per character) if i have 12 characters on a server... that's 12 years of offline play collectively GRANTED you CAN do all 12 characters at one time BUT - then you wouldn't ever be playing the game just paying for "these" badges...

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That is a *huge* exaggeration.
When you are playing one character you will still get progress on the other characters.
Only the time you play a specific character will slow down the progress for that specific character.

The time to get *all* badges on *all* your characters will, assuming that you change Day Jobs in a somewhat timely fashion, be limited by the character you play the most. The other characters will get their badges faster, with the ones you play the least getting their badges first.

If you play your characters more or less equally, then the increase in time required will be rather low.
If you have 12 characters you play relatively equally and play for a total of 12 hours per day, then the increase in time required will be approximately 4%.


Getting all Day Job badges on many characters will increase the amount of location switching you will need to do, but it is not reasonable to claim that it will have the effect you say.

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If I read the description correctly the day jobs essentially amount to double strength vet rewards. This new feature just adds another component to the I have been around longer feature of the game.

[/ QUOTE ]Err... how do you figure?

It's not my favorite feature, but... it takes 10 days to obtain the best reward for any given job. A trial is 14 days. And we don't even have numbers (other than those for double xp) for this stuff yet.

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30+ days. Once you get the badge "the potency of them <the bonuses>" will increase.
It's not specified if the bonus you currently have will be "upgraded", or if you'll need to wait 8 more days (in the general case) to max it out.

It doesn't take long to being able to start experience the bonuses, but to literally "obtain the best reward for a given job" seems to take at least 30 days.

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Didn't the announcement say that it was only for mob kills?

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In addition to all of the Day Jobs, every character is "On Patrol" after they log out of the game. When players log back into Paragon City or the Rogue Isles they will gain 1 bar of double experience (when defeating enemies) for every 24 hours they are logged out. A player can earn up to 10 bars of double experience this way. Double experience is shown as a blue portion of your experience bar. One thing to note is that if a player has any experience debt, the debt will be removed first before any double experience is applied.

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Bolded part relevant.

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That's one possible interpretation, but it might also be shorthand for "when doing any activity that would normally award XP". i.e. "to clarify, you do not get free XP from this, but rather the XP you would normally earn is now doubled for the duration".

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It actually seems pretty explicit to me. And, if indeed it is modeled after WoW's rested xp, you only get double for mob kills. Quest xp isn't increased.

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It does, and it is very possible that you are correct. However, sometimes people end up phrasing things a bit incorrectly, so I wouldn't take it as a given (possible and maybe even probable, but not a guarantee).


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On the subject of farming mission drops (for xp and/or Day Job bonuses), is it really possible to make any kind of significant headway by dropping one mission every 3 days?

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It's not really the reward/real time that matters, it's the reward/invested time.
It doesn't take very long to log in and autocomplete a mission, so the threshold for when it becomes time efficient to do so is rather low. Once it is time efficient, you can set up multiple characters (over a hundred if the gains are significant enough) to take advantage of it, and at that point the rewards/real time can also become significant.

Some of the rewards are obviously less meaningful at lower levels (and it is possible that there is some form of level limit on participating in the first place), and this would limit how much the system could be exploited (since getting 100+ characters to higher levels would not be an insignificant time investment).

But if the rewards/invested time is significant enough, you don't even need all that many characters to profit from doing it.

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I honestly feel that this system could be improved by becoming an either/or system. If you're a casual player and want more XP, log out on the streets and be 'on patrol'. If you want the normal XP progression and would rather unlock badges and costume pieces (clearly a more devoted player mindset), log out in one of the interior locations. Thoughts?

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I'm not sure that's the best idea either. I'm pretty sure there are people who will want both progress to their Day Jobs and get Rested XP (and I would guess that number is higher than the number of people that (fairly) strongly want to complete all content on one character).

The people that really want to run more content on one character always have the option of staying in debt (my first hero/villain stayed in perma-debt for prolonged periods of time for this specific reason). It might be a bit trickier now if you want to run all content (with added content, "XP smoothing" (still don't like that name), and soon Rested XP), but it should still help a lot. We now also have Oroborous that can to a degree help with running missed content.
Also, wanting to run *all* content on *one* character is a fairly extremist position (it is often nice if you can see some new content if you start a second character, so it should probably not be trivial to see *all* content on your first character. That means that you'll generally need to run alts to see all content, and this is something that is also encouraged by these systems.


Anyway, it feels to me like these new systems have a focus on increasing retention among certain groups of players (like players toward the more "casual" end of the spectrum), so a big question is: What will serve this purpose the most, leveling a bit faster or seeing a little more content per level? That's not a trivial question (and also varies with exactly what content is missed; not all content is created equal), but I'm inclined to believe that the On Patrol system would be a net positive among this group, especially since content/time would tend to remain approximately the same, and progressing at a higher speed can have quite a significant psychological effect if you do not play "very often".


Are there possible drawbacks by adding Rested XP?
Yes. But I'm not convinced that it is a *bad* thing to add (and making it possible to opt out of everything you don't like is not always the best policy).

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Another thing.... just keep all your toons logged off for 3 days... call your contact or whatever, drop your mission and get double xp! lol

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Ugh, even I didn't think about that. I personally detest the way players use that "feature". It was meant to bypass buggy missions so you wouldn't have to call a GM to fix things. It was NOT meant for risk free xp on lesser played characters.

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Didn't the announcement say that it was only for mob kills?

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Even if it were only double xp for mob kills, there are other considerations with the mission dropping. Namely, the salvage drop bonuses. I could see entire accounts being made that devoted to mission dropping for salvage.

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Hmm.
My initial concern when the Day Job system was first announced was that it would end up possible to "farm" them by creating multiple characters. The 10 day limit seemed to curtail most of that, and giving the rewards at the end of missions was another way to limit it. Even if you can autocomplete a mission every now and then, is switching characters around to do so really worth it? You could do it at the most once every 3 days per character, and it doesn't really take too much time to get a random salvage drop by playing regularly instead. It'd seem to be a very small benefit, and not really worth setting up several characters with Day Jobs for.

However...
It sort of depends on how the Day Job bonuses "stack", and on how their duration is measured.
If they do stack, and if the duration is in-game time rather than real-time, then you could end up with a situation where you could have multiple Day Job bonuses, which might *all* trigger on a mission completion. Since it only takes a very small amount of time to login/autocomplete (especially radio missions which would be an unending supply of missions), each bonus would last for *a lot* of mission completes if setup in this way.

So, where's the limit for when it starts to become overly "farmable"?
I'd say that 1 random salvage every 3 days (per character) isn't really much to bother with.
But... 2 random salvage, 1 enhancement, 1 large insp, 2x inf bonuses, plus whatever else they come up with ("Below is a list of most, but not all, of the Day Jobs available"; Recipes? Merits? Prestige? Ponies?) might have crossed that line.


So, this suddenly pops up on my list of concerns again.
How is the duration of the buffs measured (real-time, in-game time), and is it possible to have more than one of them?

If the bonuses are an all-or-nothing affair where you only get them after 10 days of logged out time it should be possible to make them mutually exclusive, but that wouldn't be as easy if they gradually accrue (if logged out 1 day you get 10% of the duration). "So, you had gotten your Professor Day Job bonus maxed out, and then happened to crash during a Portal mission? Sucks to be you!!"

Though it might be possible to set up the end-of-mission bonuses so that you only get one of them when the mission completes...

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Didn't the announcement say that it was only for mob kills?

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In addition to all of the Day Jobs, every character is "On Patrol" after they log out of the game. When players log back into Paragon City or the Rogue Isles they will gain 1 bar of double experience (when defeating enemies) for every 24 hours they are logged out. A player can earn up to 10 bars of double experience this way. Double experience is shown as a blue portion of your experience bar. One thing to note is that if a player has any experience debt, the debt will be removed first before any double experience is applied.

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Bolded part relevant.

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That's one possible interpretation, but it might also be shorthand for "when doing any activity that would normally award XP". i.e. "to clarify, you do not get free XP from this, but rather the XP you would normally earn is now doubled for the duration".

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just curious about the 'Out of Combat' recovery and regen bonuses... how does the system differentiate the potentially different stages of combat:

approach, first strike, fleeing, etc?

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Just a guess, but it'd seem plausible that the bonuses suppress when you attack/are attacked. Sort of like travel powers.

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Actually, I have one question....for villain: there is a thief one for logging out in a vault...other than mayhems or a few other missions, how do you log out inside a vault? Seems like a hard one to get 30 days of.

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Vault Reserve

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Seriously, we should be able to see the blue message = "X items sold" (or whatever), each time we Exit to the Login Screen and then "Re-"Login into an Alt on that server.

As it is, It only seems to do this properly - when I Exit to the Desktop, then Re-Launch the game.

I think it will occasionally also work properly - if I Exit to the Login Screen & then Log back into an Alt on a different server than I was just on. But, I'm not certain that works reliably.

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The message stops showing up if you have "too many" things on the market. The display system essentially isn't able to handle a large number of items properly.

So, "how" you login shouldn't matter, it's a question of what (how much) the characters in question have on the Market.

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It doesn't really reward people for playing alts either. You'd earn a lot more by playing the character.

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You'd gain more on that character by only playing that character, but your "total rewards" would be higher if you split your time between characters.
i.e if you are going to play two characters to level 50, then all other things being equal you would get there faster if you alternate between playing the two.


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People seem to think they'll be losing entire levels. You are earning EXP at double the rate, not getting free EXP. And only one bubble for 24 hours (up to ten bubbles). You're not gonna be speeding by much content.

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That would depend on how much you play the characters in question.
For people who tend to spread their time among many characters, it is not hard to end up in a situation where you will spend a significant fraction of the time in double-XP mode (something you can mitigate by altering your playing patterns, i.e. start playing those characters in longer blocks of time, but that may not be desirable for everyone).

I'm curious...
The dev diary states (about the Professor Day Job) that "This bonus will take 10 days of log out time to earn 2 hours worth of this bonus.".

Does this bonus gradually accrue, or is it a threshold situation where the entire award is given at the end of those 10 days?
i.e. if I spend 5 days offline, do I get 1 hours worth of the bonus, or will I have to wait until I've spent 10 days offline at which point I will be given 2 hours worth of the bonus?

If it's the former (and "Most rewards take 10 days of logged out time to reach the maximum benefit." can be interpreted as suggesting just that), then each hour of offline time is worth 2/10/24*60 = 0.5 minutes worth of bonus.
So, if a character is played 4 hours per day (thus spending 20 hours per day offline), they would earn 10 minutes worth of bonus per day.

The thing is, there is usually some amount of "dead time" when you first log on a character. You may say a few words to friends, maybe do a quick check of the Market, get from the Day Job location to the mission, etc... You may also want to find a team, and if you are going to play with friends, all of you may not log on at exactly the same time.
This all eats into those 10 minutes.

Many (most) of these bonuses also trigger upon mission completion, so in order to get a benefit you will need to finish at least one mission in what remains of those 10 minutes.


Basically, this would in many cases seem to lead to what is effectively no-gain situations (as opposed to non-optimal gains) for characters that are played daily.

So, do the bonuses gradually accrue, or is it a threshold sitution where the entire award is given at the end of the 10 days? If they gradually accrue, is this the intended behavior?