Fatigue & Time Costs

Fatigue & Time Costs

One other pillar of our design philosophy is that a player who plays regularly, but not necessarily for hours each day, should be able to be comparable in ability to one who is able to play for many more hours. Of course, to do this, the player who puts in less time would need to probably make smarter choices, but it should be the choices you make, rather than just the hours you put in, that really cause you to advance.

Fatigue System

The main way this is implemented in the game are fatigue costs. Almost every action in the game costs fatigue, and the only way to replenish your fatigue is to sleep. Sleep takes real-world time, and although it can be shorted to some extent, or made more potent, generally all players will be within 50% of each other's sleep "effectiveness".

We implemented it this way so you can still sit down and do quite a bit in a single play session before having to take a sleep-break. However, it does fundamentally limit how much of an advantage any player can build over another just by putting in more hours.

Real-World Time Actions

In addition to sleeping, there are two other actions that take real-world time:

• Exploring - Discovering new locations and resources
• Traveling - Moving across the vast continent

Why Real-Time Costs?

Separation by long distances is one of the major drivers of character uniqueness in our game. Therefore, it needs to not only be difficult but also slow to move from one end of the map to another. Even if you aren't the best mace-smith in the continent, being the best one in your local area should still be a rewarding experience, because it is not trivial for the best-in-class maces to be shipped around the continent.