Factories run by players combined with long term absence and 'game progress' automation require a game design that is and shouldn't be supported by CoE, in my view. And players should not expect this to happen. Think uninterrupted resource supplies and product turnover, OPC-AI handling 24/7 character behaviour while dealing with long term OPC-NPC dependencies and basically rewarding player passiveness. No, not fitting. No way.

Edit: See for more explanation of my view posts 3 and 6 below.

Posted By AlteOgre at 08:59 AM - Wed Oct 03 2018

Factories and long term absence and 'game progress' automaition require a game design that is and shouldn't be supported by CoE, in my view.

OPC's don't have any skill progress, this is about offering people who don't got their own enterprise an opportunity to have their OPC earn them a salary while they are offline, whether or not it's long term or short term.

And players should not expect this to happen. Think uninterrupted resource supplies and product turnover, OPC-AI handling 24/7 character behaviour while dealing with long term OPC-NPC dependencies and basically rewarding player passiveness. No, not fitting. No way.

OPC's and NPC's both need rest and food, i.e. an OPC continue to consume resources necessary for staying alive when you're offline, so they will need a way to acquire capital and resources for their sustenance. Having the OPC's sitting around doing nothing just leeching settlement resources is exactly what isn't the intended game design.

Also, this doesn't need to apply to factories or industry in general. Anything a NPC can do an OPC can do, so take patrol and guard duties as another example, which is too boring for an active player to do, but could be a good enough job for someone to earn a bit of coin while offline.

@ShadowTani:

The OP specifically refers to 'factory', not 'workshop'. It's the scale that matters here.

And do note I mentioned game progress, not skill progress.

Yes, an OPC can take over a players activities and earn some living performing the characters role or even roles, but at 'workshop' level (scale). The notion brought forward here exceeds that level.

Also note that long term absence (weeks versus days) should result in seriously degraded output of those automated OPC activities, even at 'workshop' level. CoE shouldn't support long term absense on the scale of weeks or longer. This again, is a scale issue, as the OP suggests, but in time instead of volume of operations.

An OPCs daily business should hardly be noticably affected when a player is absent for a few days, but absence of a week or longer should be costly imo.

I think this is what they want to do because what else would the OPC's do? Having some menial task that doesn't earn any experience anyway be done by an OPC just makes sense. Running store fronts, stoking forge fires, chopping fire wood and other mindless repetitive actions that don't earn xp should all be programmable for OPC's.

Posted By AlteOgre at 09:27 AM - Wed Oct 03 2018

The OP specifically refers to 'factory', not 'workshop'. It's the scale that matters here.

And do note I mentioned game progress, not skill progress.

Does the scale really matter? Because the factory owner could be hiring NPC's instead. It's not very likely that people will pay sparks for the sole purpose of putting a character into a permanent factory job if that's your worry. Large scale production is a bit ahead of time though as the game starts out in a pre-industrial era, slowly progressing towards an industrial steampunk era, so if scale is an issue it shouldn't be one at launch (I personally don't think it matters).

Either way, skill progress is the most significant game progress for a character imo, while doing a job might just as well be seen as a contribution to and progress for the community similarly to the works a NPC does. Your argument about degraded efficiency over time would mean degraded community progress. Sure, that the character is fairly compensated for this contribution does mean players who have limited gaming time is also able to 'progress' in regards to purchasing power, but I don't see the problem with this.

It's a much bigger problem if the active players end up having to carry the burden of inactive characters that aren't pulling their weight while leeching resources. I would rather argue that an OPC should only be able to run on a player created script for an x amount of days until it starts taking on a default NPC script.

@ShadowTani :

Yes, scale does matter, a lot. We're dealing with a world with finite resources. Mines can deplete, harvests can get lost, herds can die from over-hunting or disease, war can cripple sales (or boost them), disaster can strike, and every player has a soul mate doing his or her thing somewhere else in Elyria. In brief: all is finite and shit happens. And playing should be more rewarding for players than not playing.

Workshops can be combined to form a 'factory' setting, ofc, but not in the original meaning of 'factory'. And when all are owned by one player, these could produce a lot, sure. Yet, the player should have to work harder for it to maintain the output by his minions through ensuring continuity of supplies and outlet of their produce. In other words, I expect that when a player hires an NPC, some dependency will come into play that will ensure the NPC will not automagically keep producing wealth without any effort of the 'owning' player. Such should and will adequately limit the scale of activities.

For an individual business, call it 'workshop', it'll be rather similar, but on a smaller scale and without the NPC-player dependency. There should be restrictions on how much resources, produce and food and water a player can have in his 'containers' and replenishment shouldn't come without 'cost' / there should be some risk of losing stuff from theft, decay or unfortunate events. If all would automagically run (while the game progresses) without it coming to some standstill due to whatever reason, players will have no incentive to log in and play, because playing would only come with additional risk. And that is not in line with the starting points for CoE regarding basic survival of individuals. Keep those in mind and superimpose them on 'urban survival'. Of course, in an urban environment (where one would suppose 'business' exists, i.e. within CoE's settlements), there are factors that reduce the risk of imminent danger, like a better secured supply of food and more permanent shelter, but there are also other risks involved, and mechanics that can reduce or even cripple the output of the OPCs activities. These should be noticable for any player that decides to call it a week and log off for another fortnight. I expect OPCs to be less succesful in automagically maintaining their business than NPCs. For NPCs it's clear, their AI will not be replaced by a more advanced model from time to time, and they need to be sustained, automagically or (partially) by a player in case of dependencies. But OPCs exist to temporarily replace players, who need an incentive to play. So the longer you leave an OPC in charge of your character, the higher the chances the player may find his alter ego exhausted, out of supplies, with broken tools or crafting stations, or even out of business or out of life.

The potential problem you mention regarding inactive players leeching resources will not be an issue when taking the above into account.

Ignoring whether it should be done, and just looking at the logistics...

Let's say a Hrothi PC has a coal mine. We'll nickname him overseer.

Let's say 10 PCs have mining skills and sign contracts with the overseer to do mining in his mine.

The players could do that mining while signed in at a normal rate to complete the contract, earning them whatever rewards were in the contract and possibly some skills.

In theory, the players could use an OPC script to work the mine while offline, probably at a reduced capacity, to complete the contract, earning the rewards but unlikely any skills.

In theory, the overseer could provide that OPC script to the miners when they sign the contract. You do trust that script they gave you blindly right?

As I said, we aren't talking about whether they should do it, just about whether it would be possible.

Hmmm...

I actually really like this concept. It can be applied in a number of different areas - simply a contract of "while you are an OPC, I will pay you X to do insert menial labor".

You are, simply, paying someone for their time.

As the OPC system is a fundamental part of CoE (i.e. characters and NPC are always online, and always impacting the game), I don't see how this violates the "spirit" of anything.

Instead of using their OPC time to do something for themselves, they are selling/renting/leasing that time to someone else. One the surface, it seems like something that could easily be executed via the contract system.

I like it.

I think, this could be done. But I dont really see a good reason to use it... as long as one devellops skills with ones character, that character should be able to run on OPC scripts and have a normal NPC-lifecycle as long as the player is offline. This should include staying alive and working and as such increasing wealth anyway. So if someone wants me to work in his factory, the profit needs to be better than the normal life... And I doubt that will be the case.

@Grom

I think that, just like in real life, it comes down to "low skill labor".

Sure, you could skill up your character and get them to a point where you can do legitimately productive and profitable work on your own. But given that you don't actually gain skill while OPC, that might only really apply to crafters (as an example).

Maybe your in-game efforts are focused in a different direction (whatever that might be), and the idea of fulfilling a low-skill, menial task for a few extra bucks is appealing.

Not everyone will use it, but, conceptually, I like the idea.

Posted By ShadowTani at 12:14 AM - Wed Oct 03 2018

OPC's don't have any skill progress, this is about offering people who don't got their own enterprise an opportunity to have their OPC earn them a salary while they are offline, whether or not it's long term or short term.

Have the devs confirmed that OPCs don't have skill progress? I may have missed a Dev chat on that.

All I have seen is this: https://chroniclesofelyria.com/game/offline-player-characters

And that doesn't say that. It does say that OPCs can use skills and presumably the skills they can use can't involve difficult tasks or experimentation, so there would probably be little and slow skill progress -- but that is not the same thing as no skill progress. It even says that scripts can be used to "train skills" -- which implies there is skill progress in OPCs.

Even aside from the factory, could there be schools or dojos where players can camp OPC characters for the boring, mundane, repetitive grind of training -- logging on the use the skills developed offline? I hope so. That preserves the realism of the grind of real training while also preserving the fun of actually using the skills. And, given the limitations of scripts, this would not be an exploit -- as online training can almost certainly be more efficient and productive than offline training. (I also like the visual of walking into a building with a bunch of OPC characters going through the moves of some martial drill like a choreographed dance routine.)

OPC's can gain skill up to a certain level (like novice or something) - whatever the first tier is. However, it stops after that:

Snipehunter06/18/2018 Still just at the beginning, @Protey Joat. You can do your initial run up that way, but you can't advance beyond that without pushing yourself.

Posted By Marovec at 11:07 AM - Wed Oct 03 2018

OPC's can gain skill up to a certain level (like novice or something) - whatever the first tier is. However, it stops after that:

Snipehunter06/18/2018 Still just at the beginning, @Protey Joat. You can do your initial run up that way, but you can't advance beyond that without pushing yourself.

That's cool. Fair balance. Thanks for the info -- and it seems like a casual player might be able to become a fairly broad "jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none" that way, if there are enough training opportunities in their town. And, having played such characters in a casual way myself (although most games don't let you create them in a casual way), such a character can be both fun and useful and even sought-after.

Posted By AlteOgre at 10:58 AM - Wed Oct 03 2018

Yes, scale does matter, a lot. We're dealing with a world with finite resources.

Yes, resources is finite, but so is demand as well. Corporations (or guilds in CoE) aren't welfare institutions. No matter how profitable a corporation is there won't be any logic in hiring more people to produce stuff if there isn't sufficient demand to get your products sold. And the demand scale with the population, living standards, and purchasing power. That demand won't go away. If that large scale factory won't produce enough, someone else will do that production instead - because the community will want it and request it. Restricting OPC's and NPC's in that regard thus makes absolutely no sense as they don't define the economy - they are just cogs that helps the economy moving.

I've played games with finite resources before, and they are designed so that it takes a very long time to exhaust resources. If balanced properly an average vein should last a couple of generations if it only supplies one settlement. In addition CoE have recycling and ways to seed new resources into the world (volcanic eruptions and meteorites for example). So you're making a bigger deal out of it than it is. Conservation efforts to prevent deforestation and extinction of flora and fauna will need to be put in place early, but minerals should not be an immediate concern.

I expect that when a player hires an NPC, some dependency will come into play that will ensure the NPC will not automagically keep producing wealth without any effort of the 'owning' player. Such should and will adequately limit the scale of activities.

The NPC will need to sleep, need food, crave recreation, and potentially quit their job to seek better opportunities elsewhere. What more do you want? The owner needs to ensure the facilities are maintained, salaries gets paid, find markets to sell the products, and scale production up or down according to the demand. Being an entrepreneur is A LOT of work without having to micromanaging the lives of his laborers in addition.

Besides, if there's work that require skill that OPC won't be hired for long if they don't log on to advance those skills. Someone else with higher skills will always be in higher demand.

There should be restrictions on how much resources, produce and food and water a player can have in his 'containers' and replenishment shouldn't come without 'cost' / there should be some risk of losing stuff from theft, decay or unfortunate events. If all would automagically run (while the game progresses) without it coming to some standstill due to whatever reason, players will have no incentive to log in and play, because playing would only come with additional risk.

But these limitations are already going to be there. There's only so much you can own before you'll need a house, which have regular expenses tied to it. And whether it's a NPC, OPC, or an active player there's always a risk of theft or loss, a NPC and OPC is probably at a higher risk than an online player because they'll be easier targets. Players who don't log in won't make any significant character progress, while the community will still be dependent on its labor pool - the community shouldn't be punished for it if someone decides to quit or simply don't have time or interest to play as much.

The potential problem you mention regarding inactive players leeching resources will not be an issue when taking the above into account.

What you're essentially suggesting is that inactive players should die off. But what you don't seem to get is that the community depend on its labor pool, which is also a finite resource. Perhaps orphans will be magically poffed into the world, I dunno, but any other character will be claiming a NPC. So if inactive players just died off the world would get depopulated relatively fast, causing several issues and the potential death of the game itself.

The devs have stated several times they do not want there to be any significant differences between a NPC/OPC and an active player, and they don't want the distinction to be easily recognizable. Hence why restricting OPC's any more than they already will be don't make any sense.

Posted By Beathan at 7:50 PM - Wed Oct 03 2018

Have the devs confirmed that OPCs don't have skill progress? I may have missed a Dev chat on that.

Sorry for the confusion. It's as what Marovec said; I just don't consider getting novice skill tier for skill progression as it's the first skill tier. What I mean is that you can learn new skills as an OPC, but you can't really advance the skill properly beyond that. You're not likely to take on a job that require skills you don't have, so one is probably more likely to send ones OPC to a school for tutoring or to a guild for apprenticeship instead then.

technology starts in something more similar to the bronze age and will end up in an industrial age about 10 real life years later. we can talk about factories then. I think CoE is not really marketed towards people who just want to have their character do nothing. but since you can create OPC scripts to work, trade and live for yourself, you can basically have an autonomous NPC that is just part of the world, but you take control of him every once in a while for 30 bucks a year. And hey, if its that what you are into, fine. But you will still not be able to "just park your OPC at work for a few weeks". Your character still is a human being with needs.