Is the gap not..gappy enough?

The weighting towards salaries and reimbursements (which you can file asynchronously any time and get approval for later even if asleep) makes these roles perfect for players who can't play for hours every day and grind for every chyen, and gives players more freedom to focus on their roleplay versus their gameplay but will definitely take some adjusting to if players are used to being able to convert daily time directly into money when required.

It's fairly normal for players in junior corporate roles to feel a financial pinch because they have non of the previous perks they had access to, all these additional costs, and none of the new perks they have to look forward to yet.

That said, a lot of the wealth and status and privilege of the corporate world in Sindome is cosmetic: More lavishly described housing, more upmarket clothing, the trappings of wealth, but less so actual literal money going to players.

Much like 0x1mm said though, a lot of corporate life is the enjoyment of those more opulent surroundings and a sense of higher quality of life. It's a different flavor of theme and play style for those who enjoy it over the alternative.

In some cases you can rapid advance switching from one to the other and skip some of the initial climb, but it's not as if junior corporate characters are super wealthy socialites starting off. They're still at the very bottom of the corporate hierarchy.

Keep in mind it's a competitive game where (mostly) everyone is after the same resources, pretty much any part of the game that gives access to those resources (influence and chyen) will be gated by time or effort or knowledge or competition, or all of the above.

But that aside these are sort of different concepts: Gameplay balance versus theme. The rewards provided to characters are going to be a factor of how much game knowledge they have, the work they do and the time they invest, their investment and engagement. The limitations players have on their roleplay is going to be a matter of theme, and different roles in the game will have different expectations and standards.

The roleplaying divide between Corporate and Mixer is basically an artificial construct that is imposed to greater or lesser degrees since players will, if given the option, just treat everyone in the game as an extended friend network and it ends up eroding the thematic differences if a WCS worker spends the day digging skillsofts out of the sewer just to retire to their partner's pad on Blue.

Junior corporate roles don't get huge spendy salaries off the starting line, but they get them every week, week in and week out, forever (subject to some minimum level of activity). This combined with the vastly increased safety means that corporate roles tend to make a lot more money over time than a lot of players think, it's just a matter of getting over the fallacy that well I saw someone make 25,000c that one week as a Mixer so that's what I should be expecting all the time.

The idea is to keep everyone more or less on the same plane of existence when it comes down to it, so that no one part of the game dominates any other, and that players have a wide variety of things open to them that are all sort of similar to one another in what gameplay potential they open and that players are not forced into picking "meta" jobs just for the sake of resources.

If you want to be in the position of being spendy towards big plots then the thing to do would be to find those positions and chase after them, though there is either 1) a lot of competition for them, or 2) a huge workload associated with them, so it's generally not enough to simply volunteer and get an expense account. Everyone has to work for it if they want to be the one who people ask for work from.

My experience has been that generally, over time, players who make it a priority to do cool stuff and make plots happen for other players will be given more and more leeway to access things like reimbursements and requisitions to those ends, but it will never come in the form of an NPC just giving someone a pile of money and telling them to have fun.

Nothing in Sindome that is really worth it has an instantaneous, obvious payoff the same moment you do it. This is a slow burn type of game. Usually.

Barely any corporate characters volunteered the information that they died. Some of them may have been hiding it to avoid meta, possibly, but I feel like it's pretty accurate. Corporate characters are absolutely not in a more dangerous environment and they die vastly less often, if ever, than mixers.

I would guess it is quite common for corporate characters to have never died during their entire corporate career, and even more common for most of those who did die to have not died more than once.

That is the real wealth of corporate citizenship. Safety.

None of them are worth just the money they pay. I've watched players trying to fake their way through their 30,000c a week jobs for the sake of the chy and they were miserable the whole time. Fit into a corporate role if you like it, and don't worry about the rewards except in terms of figuring out how to do the stuff you want to short term.

Never ever take a job you don't like hoping to soldier through to something that pays well.

I guess if the focal point is to just collect pay cheques than yes - it works. So that's what I have gathered from this discussion. THe goal of topside is to survive being a junior, do fuck all and maybe someday you can do something worth any use.

None of that drives RP or encourages a person to bother.

And I've only been in this game for four months. In that amount of time I've seen topsiders die. So maybe it's just me.

It is what it is. I get it. Just chill and wait. I'll go play another mud while I do so. It's fine.

I don't know who the world's leading expert on corporate play is but any list of the top 3 has got to include Crashdown so there is no universe in which his advice won't apply.

If the only answer you were looking for was "you're right, here's more chyen" then you're probably going to be disappointed. Ask your boss for more pay, leverage, hustle, think outside the box. Anything.

As a final word, I would definitely encourage anyone who is having trouble making money either in the Mix or topside to engage with people who have been successful. The knowledge and means are out there, but the best place to find out about it is in the game world itself.