Anyone ever see a mobile rpg where you gear your hero and select his spells and playstyle, then send him out on missions and wait 2h-8h for him to return with loot/experience? I got the idea from those city builder games where you select tasks and return to the game in 5 minutes, 2 hours, or more. So basically you maybe have several heroes and you pick a place to send them (
multiple heroes so that you have multiple timers running). There should be other non-adventure tasks that instead of taking 2-8hours take only 5 or 15 minutes. It should mimic the mechanic of those empire games, which I think is an excellent way to do things on mobile, considering people are on a schedule.

All combat could be simulated. Perhaps have a combat log that shows all the fights the hero took place in, and how he did. The amount of sophistication in combat can be anything.

Dont know about mobile, but it sounds pretty close to the follower mission mechanic in World of Warcraft. You might take a look at that for inspiration.

Older browser games do this is a lot.

14 hours ago, JTippetts said:

Dont know about mobile, but it sounds pretty close to the follower mission mechanic in World of Warcraft. You might take a look at that for inspiration.

6 hours ago, ptietz said:

Older browser games do this is a lot.

I believe this is a somewhat newer mechanic that is underdeveloped. I saw it on a medieval shop game on steam from ~2014, and in albion online. I wish to see it more fully developed into a stand alone feature possibly merged with the timed mechanics of city builders which i find to be a timeless method of play.

edit: The game is Shoppe Keep from 2016 and there's a sequel. I found it while researching stand alone crafting games.

So timers are a timeless method eh?

On a serious note, what does the waiting add to the player? I often feel such waiting is introduced just to offer premium items/currency for sale so the player can skip them. You add an annoyance to make the player skip that annoyance. 

It's kind of a time gate which spreads out content. Other than that, it allows the player to play a lot (short timed tasks) when he's free, or queue up a long task when he knows he's going to be busy for a while. I like that. But I understand your annoyance because sometimes they can be made to urge you to skip the wait, but I don't think that's a requirement of the game model.