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More cyberpunky jobs
Themely jobs to keep new players interested

As mentioned at the Town Hall, I have noticed that the cyberpunk sheen of Sindome, that can be attractive to so many new players, can dull when they're so often directed to rather drab seeming jobs to start out.

From a veteran perspective, bartenders and food vendors and delivery people are ideal starting jobs because they teach new players to be social and that interaction is key, rather than your coded job advantages... however I do think from the new player perspective, it doesn't feel very much like escapist fantasy to be directed to a job they very well might be doing IRL to make ends meet.

When people see Blade Runner, they're probably imaging being Deckard and not the guy selling noodles.

The gangs to me are sort of the ideal in this way, since they provide an entry-level role where players are taught by veterans, and get to do something that is thematic an interesting in its own right.

I think it makes sense to create Day 1 jobs for the roles we want new players to fill. Intro tech wiz jobs working at the hardware/tech shop, intro thieves working for the local crimeboss. Maybe security guards for more brick-and-mortar shops (probably the #1 job sought by new players is security-related in my experience).

These don't have to be mechanically any different than a basic bartender job, but I think being able to do something interesting, even if it's just the idea of something, will hook a lot more players.

What other ideas might work to give people something themely to do Day 1?

I was just thinking about how having a character be able to be hired to work a food cart would further RP more than those who work in buildings or bars. Not only for those who seek to buy food, but those passing by who may not have wanted food but are convinced, thieves or gangs trying to get control or chyen from them.

Just a thought on making the entry level jobs more interesting.

I think these could fill out Gold rather well, to adress the whole 'more intermediaries/middle class' thing, plus perhaps making the possibility of topside work a more approachable topic for immys and greeters or make prospects more available for corporate recruiters to discover by placing their work on Gold.
I think the key to these sorts of jobs is not really doing anything of consequence (90% of the characters in them probably won't last a week), and not having perks that would fill them up with midbies -- but having some cryo thematic identity that would be compelling to new players.

Although I have subjectively found new players tend to shy from working topside (and I am not really sure what these sorts of jobs could be, working service topside has historically been super boring), I'd be a big advocate for bringing more daily life to Gold with new player jobs. I think it has a lot of untapped potential being the place where mixers and corpcits come into contact directly.

I missed the town hall but when I started I was under the impression that getting a job was THE way to get started in Sindome and so for my first few days I played accordingly. The advice I had been given was to go to some business, request puppet for a job interview, and start printing money, but it turns out that that's not really how it works. Right now I'm still kind of struggling with getting anywhere.

I would totally love it if there was a player-run Johnson system in the game to help newbies, though. It's totally cyberpunk and it wouldn't require coding.

Hot take: The foodcart workers are the faces for the Johnsons.
Imagining foodcart workers giving a stack of food to immies to sell to corporates topside. They gotta come back with 500c to get more food to sell.

"Here's 200c to get out of my face."

"Judges there's an immy mixer bothering me on the corner of Saedor and New Light"

"Are you intending to have the Law resolve a conflict that could be solved by you walking away and getting back to work, Citizen Baka?"

🤣

I'm already working on something like this ICly.

I think it is a great idea and I encourage lots of people to jump on this bandwagon. ;)

I would be -more- than happy to take see a mixer take corporate flash if it was to sabotage a rival corporate's interest. Maybe I just haven't seen it, but I wish this happened.
@Hek You probably shouldn't mention that too much here considering how relatively obvious it which characters some of us play.

There should absolutely be more 'cyberpunky' jobs'. Handing incoming new players the skills and archetypes we do and then giving them Greeters telling them to all go...idk, be a bartender or sell chicken sandwiches, it's not themely and it's not helping with new player retention. It doesn't feel CP, it doesn't feel interesting.

You can start at the bottom and still feel like you're starting to get woven into a cyberpunk fabric. There was an entire thread on this, hungering for more jobs specifically in the Mix for science / tech / decking types that was mostly just pooped on because 'there are enough jobs already' -- I think 0x1mm said as much in that past thread, which feels a little awkward, at present. Even if we entertain that premise as true -- I don't care. If there are 500 open jobs as bartender, that's not a good game design setpiece for even the number of archetypes that are presented as remotely viable to new players.

Everyone loves to drek on coded jobs or income without realizing the non-coded income largely comes with experience, connections, and surviving after, often times, months of investment into the game. Newbies don't have that. They need a bone. You gotta tide people over or present a safety net for lulls for even established players so they can all get back to what most of us agree is most interesting, which is player-driven content.

Gold has an insane amount of interesting potential as a 'melting pot' that is stifled because it's seen FAR more as 'Green Light' than it is any kind of intersectional sector. There's ambpop messaging that it's even got gangers hanging around in places but you've got corpies that see like, business cards on the street and stereotypically leap at cringey opportunities to over-RP The Divide on Gold as if spotting a piece of litter in the gutter of what's supposed to be a very busy, heavily-trafficked, corpie-and-mixer traveled sector is a visceral affront to their very being.

Gold should almost be the most active sector at certain times of the day, rivaling the Mix. Many of the things mentioned at the TH -- cross-sector biz, Johnsons, etc., Gold is where that would presumably be happening. It should be bigger. It feels now and has always felt, for what it is, small. Too much to rehash here -- why so much Judge presence when 90% of the property on Gold is corporate and protected by corpsec?

Veering slightly off-topic here, I think that some immigration greeters are making it too routine and rote. Part of that routine is what is mentioned here in this thread, "Go get a job doing (bartending / food delivery / joying)."

As @Jameson said, those jobs are not very cyberpunk.

What IS cyberpunk, and what I think the good immigrant greeters do, is take some responsibility for giving new immigrants the knowledge that they need to SURVIVE. There's a reason that the new immigrant guide is titled "SURVIVING Withmore".

I've said it before and I will say it again. I truly believe that new players need to develop proficiency with the "survival mini-game" before they can really have any hope of a long term existence. Everything else in Sindome is secondary to surviving. (I'm ignoring the edge cases of the random 1-2% of players who come as experienced roleplayers, make great connections right off the bat and thrive. Those are the exceptions to the rule.)

In that context, it is less about the jobs themselves and more about how much total chy is "easily" available to new players in total, across all of the avenues of money making that they have access to from Day 1 to Day 90 (or whatever).

Still seeing lots of new players coming in looking for non-existent tech jobs.

Even something very token like jobs 'repairing' or 'servicing' stuff for sale at the shops, or 'protecting' medical records at the clinics for 2000c-3000c a week would make a difference in terms of making new players feel like they had more of their intended identity and help to retain people.

Rigging especially is a missed opportunity.

It's one of the coolest and best designed mechanics and it ends up barely existing because of how scarce the implementation is. Drones are supposed to be filling the skies like flies, but the whole city freaks out when they actually see the one or two live drones because of how rare they are in implementation.

In so many recent RL conflicts it's shown that small drones are being used by everyone, even when they're using makeshift weapons. I definitely think it could stand to be a more grassroots thing in a futuristic setting where this would presumably be even moreso the case.

I think there are a few specific Mix factions that would make a lot of sense for them to have their own rigger/surveillance specialist.

Agreed with 0x1mm. I've seen some new players come through and ICly they're disappointed about the lack of tech jobs.

Idea: There's lots of machines in the Dome that could need regular maintenance. NLM StreetTerms, mag-lev turnstiles, vending machines, even elevators, escalators. It may (or may not) make more IC sense for each building to service its machines, but for playability, make a WCS position that goes around repairing them.

The position could require a relatively low amount of the appropriate tech skills and stats. A script could attach to the various machines, and every so often, it displays text about sparking, making a grinding noise, screen glitching, whatever's appropriate. And you'll have people reporting this in the same way they report sleepers and corpses now.

The need for repair could actually disable the coded use of the machines, or (for ease of implementation?) it could be cosmetic so the lack of a repairperson (due to a new player not logging in) doesn't leave characters unable to use their apartment building's elevator. Maybe do two positions, where one fixes the electronics and the other fixes mechanical problems, so characters don't have to be skilled in both areas in order to do the job.

Agreed, 100%.

But every time this comes up and people ask for more CP-esque jobs, especially techy ones with even token RP opportunities (largely understood little to no mechanics will undergird them), there's usually a mix of 'you can kinda do this just RP it or something' or 'there's lots of empty jobs just look harder' etc or, of course, 'FOIC'.

The impression is it never gets any attention because 'well, so few players ever engage in these roles'. Well of course not, there's no there, there for them. I understand the philosophy of wanting to push attention that'll affect the most players, but sometimes you have to plant seeds and water the garden so the game grows -- if you don't things remain very stagnant.

Some of these skillsets are so pigeonholed you're essentially forced topside and even into one corporation or another which is super silly -- if you're a veteran who knows this you're forced to write a character ahead of time to angle toward such a role whether you want to RP that kind of character or not. If you're a new player who doesn't know better well, tough luck, you have basically no prospects, and you're of little use to anyone through no fault of your own except in other capacities that may or may not be interesting to you at all, but certainly don't align with anything as presented to you at char gen or on the website.

We don't necessarily need fully fleshed out new organizations / mechanics to give these players a 'place' -- just being able to say 'Yeah, I work at Joe Baka's Deck Shop / Drone Repair Shack / Whatever' gives them the same basic paycheck as a pizza girl and lets them at least have -something- to help establish their rep, and it's something to build on IC'ly as the mechanics do grow.

Olga's for instance could make for an ideal, existing asset for a new employable location for these types.

There is a very cool rigging thing in the Mix, that is just there waiting to be finished and it would provide amazing new roleplay for all of the game but its been there sitting for years, this kind of reflects the very real need for coders which are extremely scarce due the archaic architecture of the moo.

Also there used to be very prominent street reporter who would just move around all day between the mix and topside with a camera drone no problem. As for why the use is more restricted now, it could be a policy change or something.

Also rigging vehicles wouldn't be insane. Definitely a skill that needs more love.

Some of this is a cultural problem.

Hire people to do the jobs you see lacking in the market/game.

Here are some examples of things I've done in the past / do currently:

**Hire people to clean cameras

**Hire people to 'debug' your technology

**Hire people to operate your technology

**Create superfluous nodes

**Deface superfluous nodes

**''Smuggle'' items around the dome

All of these things are things that my character is perfectly capable of doing themselves, but has chosen to rope others into doing for them for the purposes of RP, moving flash around, or just general fuckery.

On the flip side, there's also problems on the reception/doing side of things. People tend to focus on the execution and not the performative or RP aspect of these jobs. The most common response I see is that you hand out a job, it gets done in 3-5 minutes, payment is exchanged and then that's that. There's a brief flurry of activity and then hours of boredom afterwards. My suggestion would to be to do these tasks collaboratively, reach out to people, involve them in the execution of the job, generate and pay forward that RP prompt to others. Chances are it won't go anywhere and you can still do your job and get paid, but every so often, you'll have someone else that knows what's up and you start getting that good-good RP going.

In most circumstances, your character might be online for four hours, but you won't have four hours of ''cyberpunky things to do'' you'll have maybe 15-30 minutes, and then a bunch of kinda boring and uninteresting slice of life RP to fill the gaps.

Passing the buck to players to fill in the game's gaps is not the long-term answer in my opinion. This has shown to be inadequate and it's arbitrary to say one skillset should have coded jobs and another shouldn't.

We don't place the onus entirely on players to hire characters to do combat jobs, chemistry, medicine, cybernetics, driving, or any other number of things that there are coded positions available for -- very often these jobs facilitate the player-driven economy.

@0x1mm I'm not passing the buck. If I could Thanos-snap coded nerd jobs into the game, I'd do it.

I just wanted to illustrate that it's not a passive income stream that makes a job cool and cyberpunk. I've done technical jobs in the past, and some of them are so poorly supported that it's questionable why those coded jobs even exist.

Once you start bringing other players into the mix, though, any job can be themely and interesting. Sometimes you need a mentor to show you the way, other times you just need to spread community awareness that there's starving artists out there busking and you just can't see them.

I think also that player driven jobs will happen more often when there's a built in system to validate players doing those things. If someone works for JoeBaka's Tech Hut that becomes a signal to the world "call this person to come do X."

A related problem, though, is that tech jobs especially lack things to do a relatively low skllls -- and by low skill, I mean "an immy who has made this their focus". A low skilled combat character can mug people. A low skilled doctor can still work at a clinic. A low skilled artist can make some clothes. I've observed however an issue with mechanics for instance that they can't actually do their job practically until they are significantly more skilled, which then stifles that avenue a little.

Finally: I think SHI might be a good venue to use for more jobs. No one really works at SHI now despite it being described as the place people first get a job -- it would be a good spot for some low level maintenance tech jobs and maybe provide an incentive for it to become an ICly significant place again instead of a joke on SIC.

I think also that player driven jobs will happen more often when there's a built in system to validate players doing those things. If someone works for JoeBaka's Tech Hut that becomes a signal to the world "call this person to come do X."

A related problem, though, is that tech jobs especially lack things to do a relatively low skllls -- and by low skill, I mean "an immy who has made this their focus". A low skilled combat character can mug people. A low skilled doctor can still work at a clinic. A low skilled artist can make some clothes. I've observed however an issue with mechanics for instance that they can't actually do their job practically until they are significantly more skilled, which then stifles that avenue a little.

Finally: I think SHI might be a good venue to use for more jobs. No one really works at SHI now despite it being described as the place people first get a job -- it would be a good spot for some low level maintenance tech jobs and maybe provide an incentive for it to become an ICly significant place again instead of a joke on SIC.

Yeah, seriously, a thousand times over I'll give kudos and appreciation to Talon and players like them who do things like that -- I've been a player receiving that kind of RP / involvement and makes the difference between having a reason and desire to log in or not, or even deciding to perm a character or not.

But Talon, you're the 1% :)

Maybe 1% is an exaggeration, but...

We have hard-coded things in place because as 0x1mm says, we can't rely on players carrying the load here. Which isn't to say we shouldn't encourage exactly what Talon is talking about, but if such things were prevalent and vibrant, posts like these wouldn't exist, over and over.

I'm so sick and tired of 'passive income' as a trope / pejorative around here, like this is about people who just want free easy money, as if like 3000/week or whatever is what people give a shit about.

The point is when it comes to new player retention, or cultivating a game that actually feels like a cyberpunk game and doesn't just call itself one, it isn't just Town Hall #37 in a row asking 'Immigration Aides, is your just hard these days?' It's new player after new player walking in the gates thinking they might at least find a breadcrumb of themely engagement, and get told to become Bartender #7919191 who does the same crates / ganger handoff shuffle as everyone else because they're not a combat character or whatever and we have nothing else to offer them.

I agree that a few jobs are not going to make Sindome cyberpunk on its own, or fix every player retention or economic issue.

But I'm also seeing new players every week trying to ice skate uphill doing something that Sindome kind of tacitly advertises is possible but just doesn't work in reality -- and so they quit or play something else.

It's so frustrating, because I see a lot of potential and ability walking away from what might have been interesting characters. I remember being in the position of realizing my skills and conception for my character meant nothing and having to completely pivot. If I hadn't had the rare opportunity to learn directly from the best players, I doubt I would have stuck with it.

I think with games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Watch Dogs: Legion releasing, the lack of cyberpunk elements in Sindome starts to be thrown into even greater relief. I think we could do a lot to improve first impressions to new players with relatively small cosmetic changes that don't require new systems or serious coder overhead.

I see both sides of this.

I based my character concept around what turns out was meant to be a secondary / support skill. I didn't learn that until a GM told me that after a year of playing the character.

Even after my character got a 'coded job' related to their primary skills, it was still entirely RP based. There are not any coded mechanics like have been suggested in this thread.

The ideas that have been suggested in this thread so far are good ones.

I like the idea of scripts and broken down infrastructure like NLM terminals, elevators and what not. The key here is to make sure that the 'breakdown' doesn't actually impact people's ability to use things. If done right, the breakdown scripts could really lend a sense of Red sector being broken down, barely functioning and always needing to be fixed. A place getting by with the bare minimum of resources and attention, cobbled together and about to fail at any moment.

I also like the idea of low level jobs in various shops like Olga's or the other tech related places in Red. Also Techtronics in the mall on Gold would be good for that too.

I think that the shop gigs would only really be useful to characters / players who have the hustle and initiative to make other relationships. There really isn't much of a need for repairs so it would mostly be an RP job and trying to make some chyen on the margin by selling gear to people. But at least it would be SOMETHING themely that does not require any coded support (beyond the hassle of setting up an employment terminal).

One thing a lot of these posts don't seem to touch on is that all jobs have some variety of RP responsibility. It ranges, of course, but you're expected to do certain things that influence RP. The only 'button pusher' job that -really- exists isn't really regarded as a job at all and people are told to GTFO ASAP.

When it comes to tech jobs, the suggestions with people going to location X to fix terminal Y has a problem where there's no real service being done and no real RP being created. Yes, people are inconvenienced for a time that they can't use a term or kiosk in a certain location, but there's nothing really fix about getting up, hitting a command, and going on your merry way.

I feel like these sorts of suggestions are putting the cart before the horse. Other jobs with some 'automated' facets to it have a range of other things that go along with them, and in order for these automated suggestions for cyberpunk jobs to be implemented, they'd have to have the same.

There simply needs to be more dynamic mechanics with these skills, in order for them to be implemented in jobs, so that there's a responsibility that comes with them. I don't like the idea of people just getting a paycheck for basically existing, or it being a slightly more convoluted SHI.

Do I have suggestions for how these jobs/positions could manifest? Fully admit that I don't. Maybe dwelling on it further, I would. But I think the people who are chewing on this, affected by it greater than me, should take these parts of coded jobs in mind.

@HC

As I read your post my focus was on the mention of commands, and the suggested jobs being little more than having to type a few commands.

On one level, I think is EXACTLY what a lot of people are getting at.

Before we get to commands, we briefly need to consider if we want tech jobs to be PRIMARY jobs like fighter or medic. (The webpage / archetype info suggests that they are primary jobs, given that they are given just as much write up as the other roles available.)

Assuming that we want to encourage players to pursue these roles right out of chargen, I think that people are asking for some parity when it comes to skill use.

A no skilled nobody can walk through the gate and ATTACK. They can SNEAK. They can... (use a bunch of coded commands).

Techs do not have an equivalent. Even after getting tools, it is then weeks to months of trying to find random things to work on, with cryptic help files, and long term characters gate keeping knowledge of how things work.

Then when you do find something to work on, the experience is little more than the game responding with "You can't figure out how that works."

If I was not the right combination of too stubborn to quit something after I start it, and really curious about some of the niche coded systems in the game, I would have re-rolled another character a long time ago.

As a community I think we need to have a transparent conversation with each other and with the staff.

If the vision of the community is that all of the tech stuff is secondary flavor that characters are never supposed to be really really good at, then that needs to be made clear. Let people dabble in it as a third skill or use some skill chips to develop some minimal level of ability to interact with it. Also update the web page to deemphasize the roles and make it clear that they are not on par with the more codedly supported roles.

As others have pointed out, it is a bit odd to have a game that claims to be thematically cyberpunk while having an extremely underdeveloped technical component to it.

One of the consequences of that seems to be that we are losing out on a significant(?) number of players who would otherwise stick around and make the community more dynamic if they could engage in the kind of role play and day-to-day activities that the theme implicitly supports.

What's not cyberpunky about bland, soulless jobs that ask you to come up with more roleplay outside of delivering pizzas for a living and force you to do darker, seedier things to make ends meet?
The exchange is giving characters a reason to play the game and interact with other players and spend money and support one another. Sindome is almost allergic to basic rewards or respecting player time. It requires huge time commitments and investments from players for very little return

Many players veteran treat Sindome as a real job because many roles practically require it, and I've seen this bleed into the commitment they expect of newer players. I think this is a completely unrealistic expectation in the modern age when there are a million games to take cues from that have solved the challenge of motivating players: Reward them in fun ways for doing the fun things you want them to do.

We want players to play the game. This isn't paying them to exist, it's giving them a viable avenue to exist in our world and make it larger and richer. Would it be better if we could create complex systems behind all of them so that all of these roles were necessary and functional and had tons of coded and staff supported mechanics? Absolutely.

Should they be left to die because we don't, and can never with our resources, have that? I don't personally think so.

Deus Ex, Cyberpunk 2077, Shadowrun, Watch Dogs, all of these are, at their core, shooting people with different set dressings. Sindome has put a ton of coded investment into combat mechanics and roles, even though this is something that is done better by basically every modern game out there.

Where Sindome distinguishes itself, is being something other than just another Neon Capitalist Fortnite clone by actually letting characters live in a world where people can be more than Generic Badass Archetype.

I think it would be very beneficial to embrace and support that type of existence more than we do, and not expect players to have to justify with busywork why they should be allowed to play a game that asks so much of them in the first place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash

Subjectively one of the best Cyberpunk novels of all time.

Plot summary

Hiro Protagonist is a hacker and pizza delivery driver for the Mafia.

Just a take from a new player with less than 3 weeks in game, I have no complaints with my experience so far!

I think 0x1mm's last post is about as perfect as it can be put.

The situation is one where the most techie, futuristic, CP, sci-fi-, whatever 'set dressings' are given the least support, the fewest breadcrumbs, when those elements are the soul of the genre.

The input -> reward cycle, especially in this area, as 0x frames it, sounds about right. It often feels less even 'you get what you give' which should be approximately how it works, and more 'how masochistic and charitable are you willing to be with your time and emotional energy for an ROI you know most likely isn't coming or will be disappointing?'

The attitude to that seems to be 'this isn't the game for you', as if 'game' isn't right there in the phrasing. Sindome isn't special or unique, it's not a pursuit that stands above alternatives in an existential sense. That's just a way for some people to deride others and elevate their own, often long-term, investments.

The game asks a lot. It can give a little more. And it is just a game.

So my thoughts on entry level jobs, totally my opinion as a new player, not trying to be negative or combative, but just speak from the heart....

Alright, so I have been here 2 days ish, maybe three I dunno. Anyways, I joined up and was told about crates and such, but it's blatantly obvious they aren't meant to be done more than needed. Plus honestly, they are boring as shit with how slow you move from room to room.

So the common jobs were recommended, bartender, wcs (which I assume is just a janitor) and food places. I do like that looks is taken into effect for certain jobs, I actually got told I was too ugly to work in a bar, ouch...

The problem I see personally as a do'er and not really an idler, is that it appears that effort is not rewarded by any of these jobs. How I feel and I could be totally fucking wrong, is these are given for maintenance fees. So you get a job as a bartender, it pays you just enough to cover a cube rental for a week, the rest of your flash is intended by going above and beyond through roleplay.

Which is fine, I've done some chancy shit in my short time and it paid off, but there is a limit right? There is only so long I can talk on the sic and essentially hussle for cash. There is a limit to how many times I can travel to X and do Y.

I assume that all funds are finite and nobody is rolling around with millions of flash to pay me to run them a lighter or whatever.

So the challenge for me knowing that money is finite is trying to stay relevant and getting paid, without burning out or pissing people off by being a constant annoyance on the sic.

I feel if jobs were more action based and less chancy or dependent on the charity of the 1%, it would encourage more grind and hustle.

But again, I'm new at all this so I haven't figured out where the in game money fountains are outside of crates, because all money has to originate somewhere, but I have no idea where. Maybe that's by design, but it does leave people like, "Well fuck I'm bored."

There are definitely people with millions to pay you for services. It all depends on how shady you're willing to get, and how deep down the twisted rabbit hole of underground deals you're willing to align yourself. 😉

The best advice to getting involved in plot and making bank is to join a faction and stick with it. Chase those plot hooks and show no fear. Or if you hate the faction, stick with it until you've got a surefire reason to dunk on them and jump to a more profitable scene.

First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the influence.

Your feedback is valuable and appreciated!

There are definitely people with millions to pay you for services.

Let's not exaggerate what new players can expect to get so they're disappointed when they're only making a normal amount of flash for their efforts. It's normal to expect to make a few kay a week from anything a new player can be expected to be able to do. There's no players out there spending millions on immy busywork.

@Volo: Almost all new player-accessibly jobs will not translate more time directly into more flash reliably, but there are certain ones where the more you're on the clock IC, the more you will tend to make (especially in quieter periods of the day when certain services are less available).

This is good stuff to ask people about IC, though you have to keep in mind some people will have no clue and just repeat what they've been told.

Shameless self-promotion of a previous Idea, but I'd like to see more things like this, Jobs that engage the player and get PC to PC interactions happening.

https://www.sindome.org/bgbb/game-discussion/ideas/rigging-augmented-topside-restaurant-1746/

Let's not exaggerate what new players can expect to get

Well, let's not hide that it's a reachable possibility. It is. And is one of my favorite RP goals because of how fun the plots are. How long will it take? That's up to the player slash character.

We talk about risk and reward. It's not empty talk.

There's a difference between telling new players there's lots of flash to be made with experience and hard work and lots of roleplaying, and saying there's player characters with millions ready on hand to spend entirely on plots accessible to new players.

The characters with millions in liquid chyen are the 0.1% of all characters in the last ten years and all of them were spending the bulk of their resources on their own gear and on high-level faction plots.

Saying this is something that new players can expect to be involved directly in and to make serious flash on is PR fantasy and will leave people disappointed about reality -- which is exactly the issue this post is trying to address.

While I'm in agreement with 0x1mm, I wouldn't focus too much on the wealth of oldbies; the real point is that there are player characters who have enough of a budget to throw a few thousand around for immy-level work, whether through personal savings or from their faction in exchange for accomplishing something.

It's completely up to you to be on the lookout for these people and identify what they need, but there's money to be made making sure they get it. Sometimes a trustworthy newcomer is exactly what a high-level faction plot needs, and on those rare occasions, your proximity to these people makes a huge difference in whether you'll be involved.

From my very, very limited experience, Sindome's best treated like a marathon and not a sprint.

More time online doesn't = more money, better kungfu, or even more fun unless a lot of stuff happens to be going on right then. It's an almost slice of life sorta game in a cyberpunk setting. Some days are exciting. Some days the excitement's going on somewhere your PC isn't going to be. Some days just aren't that eventful!

Normal "progression" that you get from effort and immediate time investment in most games isn't really in Sindome. Instead it's a going the distance thing, being a consistent presence that's best rewarded. Play somewhat consistently over a long period of time and you'll progress, gradually, almost unfailingly if you don't take any risks!

But, playing for 72 hours straight isn't going to yield a widely different result than playing for 6 random hours over the same period. It's a different flavor and I think I appreciate it, but you really kinda have to adapt your expectations and even playstyle, since everything else out there is sorta built around keeping you logged onto it all the time and piling rewards on you for doing so.

@0x1mm: Sorry, I should have split that into three different thoughts.

1) There are people with millions.

2) These people are typically willing to pay those within their sphere of influence.

3) It's perfectly reasonable for someone to wriggle their way into that sphere within a month or two.