Recently I've got an idea for adding some immersion and depth to accommodation business in AoC. The reason I was giving it a thought at all is because I've read about some people that are really looking forward for freeholds and what they can do with them, specifically be tavern/restaurant hosts. So I wanted to provide some depth to it other than just the ability to RP there.
There's an idea for a mini-game for the inn worker (owner).
So, you have an inn (presumably at your freehold). And there's an icon at the entrance that the other players can click to be added to the queue. There's a limit to this queue depending on the size (level) of the inn. Players that clicked the icon then can just go on with their business. What they've queued for is achieving some random buff, when the inn owner is done playing his minigame.
From the inn owner's perspective it looks like this: he gets notification as soon as the queue is full, he goes to the inn dining area, where there are several tables, depending, again, on the inn level. The seats beside the tables are occupied with the "dummies" of the queued players (this is optional, I'll come back to it later). Then he presses the icon to start a mini-game, where these dummies start placing orders for food and drinks and he has to serve them as quickly as possible. Actual cooking of foods may be involved, but the most important part is serving the food before the timer runs out. And the timer has 2 or 3 stages, ranging from "perfect timing" to "late is better than never, I guess". And every dummy places their order a couple of times and their timers lengths are different, so the owner has to micromanage during this time. In the end, owner's score is counted, depending on his performance, and as soon as he clicks "finish challenge", the players receive a buff based on the owner's score, even if they are offline.
I decided to use dummies of the players instead of actual players so that people don't have to wait for each other.
We've discussed this idea at Discord and here are few updates/ideas for more immersive activities:
There should be an option to switch between using dummies and real people interaction. In this case the participants may have a menu to place orders or something.
@Wolf: "how about have the inn keeper/Tavern able to act as a merchant for alcohols and foods?
And maybe he gets temporary access to things appearing on the map, WHEN a player directly asks and pays a tip to find out about them."
@C4ptainGrumpy#9353: "The "rumor mechanic" can serve as a marker towards random resource, dungeon or quest nearby with a cd"
@Wolf: "I think the Rumor mechanic is a good one.
I'd include that for sure.
with the duration/ CD"
And there were couple of goofy talks about flirting with barmaids and playing mini-games in taverns after that, which I think were already discussed on the forum.
So, first, the mini-game idea, if it is any good, most likely needs polishing, so please give your feedback. Second, feel free to contemplate on the other abovementioned ideas or new ones for the tavern-based activities.
