The Economy is in SHAMBLES!!
BUT MAH CHY-CHY.

WHY:To lower barrier of entry to all archetypes, to incentivize conflict/risk, and create a more enabling game environment. This was based off player and staff feedback t hat recovery from death was hard, along with risk taking, and vatting was difficult on players as things were too expensive to re-gear accordingly.

WHO IS IMPACTED: Everyone, but namely those in the business of hoarding mass amounts of gear stock: Fixers. We recently had a 'Moo Cleanup Day' which should alleviate some pain for hoarders, but those Fixers whose literal job it is to maintain a stock of good are being triaged on a individual basis by staff via XHELP.

NOW WHAT: We wait and see. Will certain archetypes be reinvigorated? Will more risks be taken? Will players who suddenly find their liquid chyen increased in value by roughly 50% put more chy out there in the form of gigs? Will the base weekly pay take people further than ever before?

What tell-tale signs do you think will indicate the success or failure of this experiment? Has some terrible consequence been overlooked? Does your archetype of choice feel lost in the void desperately needing a leg-up? Share your thoughts clearly, concisely, and lets all enjoy reading each others feedback on the matter.

(Edited by Bubbles at 2:31 pm on 4/14/2025)

The Issue at Heart:

There has not been a major change in any pricing in an upwards direction to warrant the belief that things are suddenly too expensive to recuperate from a wipe. In fact, prices have been repeatedly lowered in order to attempt to make things easier. This is not the first time that cyberware has been drastically reduced in price due to the perception that nobody could afford their chrome loadouts. So the idea that things are suddenly more expensive cannot be true. So the "cost of living" has not increased.

What has decreased is the amount of active chyen in the economy. This is because the sources of water (chyen) was coming from what was deemed to be broken pipes, which were fixed. In doing so this chyen source dried up along with the ecologies that it supported. These accidental fixes were spaced out enough that nobody actually noticed what their effects were doing to the economy until we have suddenly run out of water and nobody knows why.

I believe the games current problems can be traced back to three "fixes" that should immediately be examined and possibly reverted.

1.) There was apparently a change to the flipping targets in 21-22? I'm not sure the whole details of the bug, but from what I gather targets were flipping a lot more often than they should have. While this may not be the intended coding of the system, the game became reliant on the Candyman->Fixer->Runner economy to flourish. When this "bug" was fixed, I don't think anyone realized the ripples it would have. That part about the gigantic bloat of ganger weapons? That is because the ganger weapon sinks were fixed to not accept as much, but the item fountain's weren't adjusted. I hate to make a specific reference, but is there even an item sink for all the extendable batons those TERRA agents drop?

For reference, this candy pipeline was so vital and inherent to the backbone of Red culture that Slither outlines the most vaguest of basic concepts of this pipeline in one of his Youtube Tutorials about how to actually make money just like scanning into the SHI factory. It was that hard baked into the game's economy. It's "fixing" and subsequent dismantling of this pipeline just took a bit of time to notice the effects because the people who mostly interact with this system are legitimate fresh newbie players who don't automatically know more advanced ways of making chy straight out of the gate. Their frustrations at making money and not having enough may have been hand waived away as not understanding the game when they really were the first to feel the pinch because nobody realized that the cricket bat economy just didn't exist anymore despite everyone believing it did.

2.) The removal of corporate Macguffins. These were essentially cute little packages that served as money bombs to the economy. A corporate team roleplaying together while coordinating assets and working hard to synergize could maximize profits and other buzzwords to crank out those suckers over the course of a week, contributing 30-50K to the economy upon each completion. Yes, it may only be in the hands of three to four characters, but the money is still going to personal plots, which inevitably involve other players of some kind. Even if your personal plot is getting shit faced drunk and flashing everyone at the bar, the money you pour into the bartender makes its way down to the Mix into play. So what was a source of corporate "play money" has gone dry. If you reinstitute these chyen bombs, there will be more money to trickle down and circulate.

3.) Cargo licenses were removed. And while I agree with their removal as a horribly broken system, it did provide one thing, which was an insanely quick, efficient and safe way to make your weekly cap. People with access to delivery vans and other cargo vehicles tended to be in positions that directly supported other players, which as was stated made it seem like lease owners HAD to run crates to support their employees. Cargo seems like it was a necessity to do in half an hour what it would take three or more days to do running crates. It allowed lease owners to get their auto income almost immediately and focus more on the lease biz.

However, the cargo system is incredibly broken as it stands, and requires at the very least looking at vehicle combat as a reality in Sindome instead of an interesting possibility. I'm personally not a fan of the cargo system in general especially in regards to the service mixer position's pay at PRI being shackled to such systems, so I am NOT going to argue for it to be reinstituted.

Instead, I offer an alternative to reinstating the cargo system: Double the generated payout of leases while simultaneously paying employees of the leased businesses out of the ether instead of out of the business' earnings. The leased businesses are often seen as hubs of economy involving up and comers, so just magic up and hand more money to club owners so they can pay for aspiring artists to play while not having to worry about paying their bouncer to stand around and look grumpy.

I hope that this time I made sense. I will begin to organize my thoughts on how these current changes affecting fixers may ripple out negatively to make problems worse, but that will be a separate post.

While I will agree with you that the freight system was that, and it offered a dramatic benefit with little drawbacks for a privileged few, I don't think leases are exactly that. Like has been talked about after my badmouthing, they require far too much work for the payout and headaches they generate. On top of this they are a gigantic static location waiting to be attacked and defended for whatever reason today.

As you said, the people who run leases do so because they like the theme of it, and more importantly because they have the resources (chyen) to play to that theme. Whether it be a punk who runs 100 Rads and sponsors parties all the time or someone who uses The Sly for more backdoor reasons, I'm pretty sure that anyone who has managed a club can think of a large number of things that they could have done with another 40K per month from revenue. The other characters they could have employed under the table, the rock parties they could have sponsored, or the other sheer stupid things they could have come up with to give that money to other players. All of that would've gone into everyone having fun.

This would also go a great way to help recuperate chyen lost to investing in immies just to have them fuck off.

It sounds silly, but this IS a video game. If you want to simulate a strong economy with minimum number adjustment, you just magic wand lease income to simulate a strong flow of background customers in the clubs who ARE spending money. And if word gets around that owning a club's lease is a great way to make a lot of money, well… the quickest way to free up a lease is to bury the current lease holder. But hey, you don't sit down at the Club Wars table if you don't want to play the Club Wars game.

Also, I find your comment of it becoming a race of who can scoop up the most among their allies to be a bit troubling. Can you explain why you said it this way? A major theme I've been hearing whispered is the concept of collusion and it almost sounds like this is bordering on becoming meta-collusion. Given the Forever Lost Players topic seemingly approving of the tenacious drive that leads to meta-cliques and comms, it is only more worrisome that the general apprehension of expanding any sort of power within the game is the fear that any perceived power creep will immediately be seized by some nefarious group of players all colluding together and turned around to be used against their lessers. Apparently desiring the key to the shackles is what is keeping us in chains?

So who are these players who will immediately seize up all these assets and divvy it all up amongst themselves, and why do you believe that staff is cool with this?

I think it goes for the majority of the player base that we feel supported and listened to by you and the rest of staff, and that you care about making the game the best it can be. Thank you for everything:)

In terms of general indicators across all players though, if I saw anyone carrying non-combat archetype tools more often, like scanners or kitbags or robot controllers, or getting some of the more unusual cyberware with more regularity, I'd probably consider it a resounding success myself.

Respectfully, I am actually very thankful for the changes to income faucets being able to dispense more cash to encourage gatherings. It will really help to offset the costs to providing the big get togethers and parties.

The reason for my suggestion is twofold.

1.) The numbers are fuzzy, and I'm bad at math. I'm of the belief that taking on the responsibility and dangers of running a club should result in money in my pocket, after rent and employees, at around 13-18K a week from the club itself. This is income from working the club at what would be considered a normal rate with no special event. If this is about target now, great. Otherwise I suggest changes. This is what I would say would be a good number overall to give to a club owner in terms of "play money". While the update is wonderful for events, my suggestion is more to allow for more dynamic spending instead of the big numbers having to revolve around events and filing of paperwork for reimbursement.

If it comes out that the average Red club Owner is making approximately that a week, great it's about where I believe it should be.

2.) As a player who has gotten used to the concept of going to players for everything, I've actually grown to dislike the idea of asking staff for things in order to make the economy go round. I feel that Sindome would operate better the less the staff has to participate in order to inject money into the system for it to make it go round. Because when players go to extract money out of the game world, the question of whether so and so did a good enough job to be rewarded with reimbursement or not shouldn't be a matter of debate.

This is not a slight against the current staff, or even an accusation. I just have personally been extremely burned in past other games by staff outright cheating in favor of other players against me. I've also had to deal with the same toxic personality types in other hobbies. And so I have a deep mistrust of staff collusion, especially when it comes to who gets what and the secretive nature of Sindome's mechanics only amplifies these apprehensions. I don't want to put it all on the line and just fail to be properly reimbursed because the staff believe I only gave it a 7 when I thought I was at a 9, meanwhile what I judge to be a 6 is rewarded like a 10 leaving me with questions.

This personal policy of wanting avoidance of any form of staff involvement when it comes to making money is why I suggested an additional general raise as opposed to being scored on how well you are conforming to staff beliefs of how to do the dance the right way.

If you give your players the ingredients to make soap, and then grade them on how well they make soap, you'll never discover how much dynamite they can make. And from my history devising and telling stories over large character groups, the best stories are told when the storytellers don't have a fucking clue what's going on.

I just honestly believe that the economy would work better with even less staff intervention, including things like the need to XHELP before shoplifting in Red. Even if the new lease system is designed to help, it still slows things down in a city that moves at the speed of chy, and I feel a general influx of chyen would be more beneficially helpful as opposed to party/reimbursement focus.

I don't think proper chrome needed to come down, the prices were already fairly affordable for what they were and did. But the Nanos? Oh thank god those dropped.

Same with armor. Armor was just way way to expensive.

AND FINALLY! I can hold a rifle in a bag that isn't worth as much as the rifle!

8/10 great update.

I still feel like easier 'non-conflict' money is important. And I believe the sewer loot should be scaled back to near what it was. (this provided more then money, this provided goods to people trying to start into fixing, on top of many many other benefits to the game and economy.) With 'lose more' mechanics like DCD in the game, having a huge spare pile of cash is soooooooooo important.

I made this statement, and I stand by it while still supporting the changes. Allow me to explain.

I think when you take an item with coded value that is high and sell that item for way low, and you do it enough times, the player base now expects and demands that the item be that price. While this is an IC problem, it does weaken the ability for fixers to gain the full potential they could be gaining.

I also think that LOWERING the CODED value with OOC compensation for those who bought and listed said items at an old higher value is a fair fix until things level out. This does hurt the independent fixer without a storefront though.

There is a false impression that fixers have an unlimited chyen supply and hordes of items just waiting to be tossed onto the shelf, where in reality it is a fixer is taking the money, they make off of a sale to save a small amount and also replenish their supply to make more sales. I don't believe that the archetype is properly played in Sindome because in Sindome Fixers are mainly portrayed as salesclerks. If Fixers were used to say, middleman between solos and people needing solo services, putting together a team for a corporate run (and I consider this more of a GM duty), etc., than Fixers could really excel and move past mere item shuffling but that is probably another topic in of itself.

A lot of the things you mentioned are also more factors of choice. You can choose not to pay a ganger tolls. You can choose not to live somewhere that is 10,000c a week. There are economic alternatives in terms of housing and food.

Overall though, I would ask that we just give this change time to take hold and see if markets adapt and even out. Have I seen things flying off of the shelf as an instant result? No. I am hopeful though that people are less cautious about needing to replace the things they lose and are more willing to do stuff with things they buy without them needing a surefire plan or overwhelming odds of success.

Agreed on the separate conversation comment because the more I think and reply the harder it is to actually harder it is to define what exactly a fixer is and what they do and how they go about it without getting into a conversation about what is or is not the right way to go about things and whether the fixers in play are doing things "correctly" or not.

Would be a fascinating philosophy conversation that may help the game understand what it is to be a fixer but I also don't want it to turn into thinly veiled comments about everyone's biz game.

But getting back to your comment, I also agree with you, but counter that SHOPKEEPERS setting prices too low hurt the economy. And that leads to the question of whether or not shopkeepers are fixers or not. I'd argue that they're an evolution of fixer, but aren't? If SSC were to begin to stock brass knucks for 3K, it would do two things. It would immediately sell out, but if the SSC continued to take baths restocking at that price, it would set the maximum that knucks could be sold for, locking out all independent fixers with the equivalent of "It's cheaper at Walmart."

And while that's the purview of a PC running a shop, it's really super dickish when it's the NPC shop that can run in the negative indefinitely and is restocked regularly via crates for free.

So you were right that fixers don't have this back room of supplies they slog through. They operate more on a knows a guy who knows a guy basis. Or like villa said, relying on their networking and influence to move deals. Many deals exist in potential, but a lot of the leg work exists in finding that deal when it does need to happen, and having the capacity to leverage the transaction. If I know exactly where to get you a great deal on a star destroyer, but I just don't have the funds to get it for you, you don't get a star destroyer. Same thing happens if my contact is on vacation in Vegas. Money is great but if my star destroyer people aren't around you still don't get a star destroyer.

That's why I'm upset that not only does this cripple any biz I had in the future, I don't get any restitution for it because I operate in the margins of potential. Monetary recompensating for objects in my possession only rewards any previous hoarding I may have done. If I had 200 Protek items in my closet, I would've gotten all that chyen in repayment. But because I work the market, I get nothing?

Also, your comment about fixers being a middleman between solos and those who need solo work… those aren't fixers. They're Johnsons. Which while sounds like a fixer isn't a fixer, but is. Like I said, this conversation of what exactly a fixer is would be a fascinating debate, but probably get a little too detailed about how things actually work.

@villa

We're somewhat on the same page I feel. The arbitrage has become very much less rewarding. The time I expend on finding a deal has become significantly less worth my time because the prices are significantly less.

But I would argue that while there is more to fixing than margin flipping, everything about being a fixer IS about margin flipping. My access and networking allows me entry to markets that allows me to flip from one market to another. My new market may be a solo's closet, but I have managed to talk my way into it. My influence is how much I can move your price. But ultimately I still need money to help that influencing part. A charming smile and schmoozing goes a long way, but you don't keep a fixer on speed dial because they're a great conversationalist. Money equals access.

And fixers won't be able to get money now. Even you said fixers will see smaller profits, couching it with spending less being a good thing, and to that I say I'm not allowed to play to lose. You'll never make it big in Vegas if you stay at the penny slots.

If risk = reward, less risk = less reward. Less rewarding gameplay = less playing. Less fixers = higher prices. And I'm going to point out that while people believe fixer is totally a common type... are they? There are roughly as many car mechanics in Sindome as there are active fixers. So is that a lot? And when was the last time a new fixer actually hit the gate and survived for more than two weeks? They're just so much fun to play that there's so many!

If the entire economy is being scaled to match real money flow, what happened to the money flow? It was there. Now it's not. The reason it's hard for immies to get by is because the pipes have been shut off and the economy of a fixer hanging out in a bar distributing candy and cricket bats for immies to run around and make money is no longer. This is because of a decision by staff. Water was turned off. The solution to dying of thirst is to fix the water pipes, not pretend like dehydration is good for the soul.

And that's what I'm getting at. Nobody is going to admit that this is a fuck up. This is three small mistakes that were made because nobody understood what was going on. These tiny mistakes led to this. This can be repaired as long as people can accept that what happened was a mistake. Slither is capable of making mistakes.

Instead the game community is doubling and even tripling down on stupid. Ok. Maybe the plane isn't in a free-fall. Maybe I just have to wait a little and everything will be ok.

Fine. How long? How many weeks? Months? Are you going to keep saying just a little longer as the plane smashes into the mountain? Are you going to be able to admit fault when it does?

What will be required for the community to realize that this isn't the way to be going, or when that happens will there just be other factors that people aren't understanding that we just have to give things more time? Anyone actually going to confront staff on these choices and demand reverts or are we just going to applaud the next idea they come up with and scream at anyone who questions it?

Let's set up some goalposts now so that everyone can ignore and move them later.

If risk = reward, less risk = less reward. Less rewarding gameplay = less playing. Less fixers = higher prices. And I'm going to point out that while people believe fixer is totally a common type… are they? There are roughly as many car mechanics in Sindome as there are active fixers. So is that a lot? And when was the last time a new fixer actually hit the gate and survived for more than two weeks? They're just so much fun to play that there's so many!

'Roughly as many' to me suggests something that could be confused with 1:1 but by my count, by active players, there are four times as many fixers as mechanics and that ratio increases if you count reqtechs and market runners. It's a role with a handful of high power jobs, special properties, vending machines, and market systems to support it. As an archetype it is not in any danger. There is always going to be players wanting to compete for those resources.

While it's true some characters are going to get by just buying and selling anything they can find some margin in, I don't really feel these price changes hit any of the key volume fixing profit centres except ProTek armor (Xo3 is always a reliable moneymaker but IMO never is going to have the volume to make greater waves). And a 35% cut in absolute terms to a profit area, that is a profit area because it's historically reliable volume, feels completely fine to me because it is probably going to balance out with now even greater volume.

If anything, more young characters getting used to wearing super cheap Du-Wear from the start will acclimate players to wanting ProTek more than they might've otherwise. Maybe we run into problems where ProTek is now affordable enough and desirable enough that there isn't enough of it in the game to support so many midbies who find it affordable now but I feel like we could sort that problem out when we came to it.

I would agree that characters holding stock of items that were being actively cut, so they took a sudden loss on their investments, could have been hard up from the changes if that stock was old and fell outside the compensation window. However I don't think there is really evidence to show that fixing in general on stock not yet purchased is made any less practical by these changes. One could argue maybe Du-Wear is cheap enough now that it falls below the opportunity cost of just dealing with anything else, but there's always going to be a young upstart looking for an area to make money so that just seems to me like more volume sales to offload to the entry level while moving up the chain of armor tiers for the experienced characters.

https://www.sindome.org/bgbb/game-discussion/game-problems/everything-is-too-expensive-673/

I discussed this in the above thread. There used to be 3 items needed to be a top tier combatant gear-wise. It ran about 70k to have those items. Now there are a dozen or more. What used to be a single piece of full body armor is now several individually expensive pieces. There's nanos. Chrome. A cocktail of combat drugs instead of just V-202. So yes, while maybe no individual piece of combat gear has had price bumps in a long long time, the total number of new gear needed to be competitive on the same level had roughly quadrupled over time. I'll echo here what I said there - I don't think the price of combat was ever intended to be as high as it was. My perception is that two decades worth of game development and expansion of combat gear had raised the total cost of combat to something it was never intended to be, and income faucets have not kept up with those increased costs. It's like the U.S. housing market. Home costs have gone up 121% or so since 1960. Median household income has gone up only 29%.

Honestly, I hope the cuts are less the nightmare for fixers that's being pushed and more a chance to stimulate conflict for them. You're all more incentivized to engage in fixer wars, trade cartels, and yes, price fixing. I won't go into detail on my ideas there, but I'm curious whether or not it's possible now on some items. We'll see. I'm concerned for fixers too, but also hopeful. I'm also worried about cyberdocs. Again, we'll see.

And for the record, I was looking for a more two-pronged econ correction. Something like 10-15% cost reduction paired with a 15-20% wage increase across the board.

In any case, we're monitoring the effects of these cuts. I said in the Everything is Too Expensive thread that players need to be willing to bear with us while we work to re-balance the economy. Some of you might not enjoy this, and I'm sorry for that. For those of you that are enjoying, keep in mind that it might be rolled back if it causes more harm than good. In general though, try to have fun with it even if you aren't enjoying it. We need to see how players engage with this to know what's good and bad about it.

–-------

To Reefer, I'm looking at a few things to determine success.

Currency velocity (how often gear changes hands. It should go up, ideally, both in trade and from conflict.)

Hoarding vs. spending behavior regarding flash (I want to see it leaning toward more spending and less time saving)

Player conflict/deaths/risk taking (Tied to currency velocity. People want to afford gearing up for conflict. Wish granted, now let me see these numbers going up)

How much flash is going toward gear vs pushing plot to others. (I hope to see an increase in the latter since the former is more affordable.)

Number of players wearing mid and low tier armor (should go up)

That's a few of the things I'm looking at.

I think Risikio stated a whole lot of what I was feeling in regards to this.

To all the people who stated this might be good for the economy - the issue for fixer play is that your margin can stay the same and you make less and less depending on price of items. Using 30% as an example, buy for 6 sell for 8 versus buy for 9 sell for 12 means you're also slashing ONE THIRD off the profit of the same items. This can hopefully be changed by volume, but has yet to be seen, and I think was what the previous talk with 'margin of potential' was hitting on.

Separate way of saying it?

Fifty percent higher profits before this change not only for fixers, but for market runners/anyone flipping to NPC's.

This also hits the solo selling their victim's gear. The ripper taking out second hand chrome. The ripperdoc installing anything at all secondhand.

The other not so small issue I saw is that if you not only lose profits with this implementation. You are actively losing chy having to sell. If you go back to previous example: you bought for nine and now have to sell for eight. Your loss due to change isn't one kay - it's four, because your payment goes from twelve to eight.

There have been a large number of sudden price drops of chrome before, and those already pushed items from being worth taking to being a possible loss if that's all you got. The CGH board is now selling some things so cheap you are shaving profit just by ccomming to set up the sale.

I usually take these kinds of things on the chin and IC, because it's an unfair world. But I think this is starting to file down everyone who touches the affected gear. Hopefully the chyen brought in through other methods can help counteract this, but I don't know if it'll have the desired effects anymore due to that extra being changed.

(Edited by Slither at 8:11 pm on 7/13/2025)

Overall, the change has been completely positive from my limited POV.

But I still believe that in April a finger on the monkey's paw curled and players got what they wanted in order to stop making noise even though none of the underlying issues were addressed.

What has happened because of it?

I would however like to bring up the following points from the perspective of how they may be affecting the overall gameplay flow or whether the price slashing did what it set out to do.

Chyen Sink Increase - This was one of my biggest fears going into this was that by cutting out the fixer as the price break would just incentivize people to chuck their flash into the incinerator and pay for it retail. And once that money goes into a retail source it is gone from the economy forever. So, when the prices plummeted, did everyone run out to their local fixer, or their local retail store? I suspect that in the wake of the changes everyone ran out to their local store, bought what they wanted (because most of the changes were based purely upon player demand), and ran back to their apartments to essentially sit on their new toys. Flurry of flash, then back to nobody spending anything safe in the comfort of their apartments on Green. But they're not complaining about things being too expensive anymore because they now have everything they wanted so this must be a win!

We have generally established that the faucet / sink problem is at the core here. This change did not affect the faucets. It should not have affected the sinks, but I believe that they have by incentivizing their use over going through fixers, so while everyone thinks they currently have more in reality the holes have gotten bigger and all that was accomplished was buying some time before the chyen dried up even more.

I would honestly like to see the hard numbers of how much money is actually in our economy. How much money was added to the economy through automated income sources, how much was added through staff hand waiving and reimbursement, and how much has exited the economy through the various chyen sinks. This should, at the very least, be in the positives.

Currency Velocity has slowed. - This is a bit harder to define, but I feel like the average amount of chyen changing hands has gone down, and that the barrier for what is considered "big ticket" has lowered from $25K to around 17K. Once again, these are just my gut feeling about the gameplay I've witnessed, but I just don't think the money is flowing as much as it used to. If the price slashes were to free up chyen flow, it's weird that what is considered expensive went down.

Vehicles This one is simple. I honestly don't think anyone can really afford anything past a cricket. If any vehicles are being purchased, I'm pretty sure another vehicle is being sold to make up a significant chunk of the revenue. Even then, from my understanding the absolute minimum floor for a car starts at about $80K, and I highly doubt anyone can casually afford that. Considering having a vehicle is sorta required if you're planning on escaping from topside, there's no point in trying to rob any of the stores if you're just going to inevitably be arrested in the Arcadia Lev terminal waiting for the E7 to finally show up. I mean, you could always take an NPC taxi but that one Skyfox fare from Green to Red is probably going to cost you more than anything you stole from the register.

Also, has there been an uptick in vehicle combat I'm just not seeing? Vehicle ammunition was cut but outside of one incident in the first week I haven't seen evidence of this for health reasons. But I did have to take a month off for health reasons and the badlands do exist. Did I miss something?

Frivolous Spending vs Saving Up - Something I've noticed is that corporate characters are not as lazy as they once were, or at least less are leaning into the idea of frivolously spending money on nothing. When I first started playing there were many, MANY opportunities for a runner just learning the game. Corpies who were disgusted with their yellow umbrella and willing to pay top dollar for any other color. Those bemoaning how far the Krakeon was from the ice cream store, so they'd hire someone to come up to Green and just walk the three rooms to deliver it. The same was so with Tony's and the various bars in Red. 2K in a runner's hand meant instant pizza party but I rarely see it these days. I'm not saying that players should or should not play in a particular fashion, but I'm pointing out that people are far more frugal with their money these days, and that isn't a sign of a lot of money flying around.

Staff said they were looking for spending vs. hoarding/saving behavior regarding flash. How has frivolous spending been affected? Is there more or less?

Risk Taking / Conflict - Honestly, from what I have seen and heard generally on SIC is that violence in general has gone down. A LOT. Things almost seem to be peaceful. That isn't to say there isn't violence or that PVP isn't happening, it's just that there isn't any RISK to these conflicts. There has been very little scrapping in the streets, and from what I've gathered second hand that PVP has been more orientated towards very hard swing downs against under-equipped opponents. It isn't really increased risk taking when someone is in expensive Xo3 versus a bokken in trash-tier Du-Wear.

Has staff seen an increase in conflict between people within their own weight classes, especially on the top end, or has the swing-down squad been still cooperating with each other?

Flash towards gear vs. flash towards plot - How much have characters been paying other characters in order to push their own personal goals and plots? I think that this should be noted as being slightly different from just giving other people money. I don't further my own personal plots by paying the ganger my tolls. I honestly believe people have been doing less of both. And while everyone wants to say you don't need flash to run your own plots I'd like to remind everyone that if solos don't exist, then solos that work for free definitely don't exist.

Also, how much of this chyen was reimbursed by staff under expense reports? While there has been an amazing push as of late by NLM for marketing purposes and spreading of chyen that way I'm curious if the only way that happened was with staff deciding to rubber stamp footing the bill.

Ripper Docs - Did Ripper Doc activity increase, or is it more dead than ever? One of the biggest complaints I was hearing going into the cuts was that it was so hard to get into being a cyber doc. In response the costs of the surgery equipment were gutted to help people get into the activity more easily. However at the exact same time the prices of all cyberware were slashed. Again. So while the barrier to entry has been lowered, so has the rewards of being a ripper. Yet the insanely high risks of operating as one have remained the same.

What effects have been noticed in the past three months regarding this archetype?

Robots - Ok, you got me on this one. I actually applauded the price cut to robot parts. In fact, I said it actually wasn't enough to make a noticeable movement in use with Eisenhowers still sitting just outside of purchase at roughly $150 - 200K. However now that money has dried up even more that price water mark is seemingly more out of reach. What effects has staff seen in regards to rigging sales? How much more Mixer rigging have you seen versus rigging still being seen as a corpie hobby? How many rigging purchases have been reimbursed through corporate accounts?

Tailoring for Profit - Something that wasn't thought about is that when you're pinching your pennies, you don't exactly go for extravagance in clothing. And when Du-Wear and neXus is so cheap that they serve as both fashion AND function, there really isn't a point to dropping 3,000 for synth-cotton clothing when you can spend 1,400 for Du-Wear and those actually help pad a blow. Hell an eco-gear thermal shirt does more to keep you unaffected by the cold and it'll run you cheaper than any tailor will charge for a shirt. As for corporate level tailoring I've heard zero public calls for someone capable of making fashion. With these changes corporate characters should by absolutely flush with flash and have zero problem forking over 45K to 60K for their looks. For everyone cheering the introduction of the jewelry kits nobody seems to want to step into that 75K+ ballpark for actual gemstone around their neck. Remember this holiday season nothing says I love you like a ruby studded slave collar.

I think a good measurement for this would be the velocity of the Green level fabric machine. How much have people been buying wool, linen, egyptian cotton, prog cloth and diamondweave? I don't think there are many sane tailors who would pre-drop 10K+ to just have a bolt of cloth sit in the closet, so if it's not being used then top side isn't exactly splurging on fashion anymore because the flash may not be there.

Also, have any of those 50K+ jewelry kits even been bought yet? Were they actually crafted and sold?

Armor Market is Flooded. High Tier still impossible to find. - Not sure if anyone has noticed, but armor is currently the #1 type of item that is sitting on Player controlled store shelves (I count this as XChange, SSC, Dark Shop). It's pretty much useless right now to try to buy and sell armor because nobody really wants any except very specific kinds, but I'll get into that later. The problem here is that the cycle of ganger to ganger violence to fixer to ganger has been affected as well. You can't run out and beat up your rival for his shit to sell when his shit is absolutely worthless now. It's super cheap now at the retail store, and those don't have blood and bullet holes.

The bigger problem now though is that even though armor is worthless, the amor that actually matters like the D-Fence Bodysuit and the Xo#'s is still impossible to find, and are in the closets of people who are not going to be selling them. And in combat involving everything being equal, the person in xo3 having the better armor is PROBABLY going to win.

Except combat is not equal, and the people who already had the xo3 and xo5 probably already had things like ceramic katanas, NAILZ, and .45 pew pews, which all cut through street level armor like butter while the ganger valiantly struggles with their cricket bat against xo# ceramic plasteel.

I feel that this has created an even bigger gulf between the haves and the have nots, and formed an even bigger artificial barrier of big boy combat entry being finding an entire set of Xo3.

So are the ones who held onto their armor actually using it against each other? Because that's really the only way I see some of this armor moving is over dead people's bodies.

Everyone wants a fence, but nobody wants a fix - I think that money should be looked at in terms of not only flow, but direction of flow as well. It seems that everyone is interested in fencing services in order to get chyen, but nobody is really interested in the other way around. Nobody is specifically asking for things. It's almost as if with everything being gutted in price everyone ran to their local chyen incinerator sink and bought what they wanted retail. Now nobody really needs fixers anymore to be the price break man, they'd prefer someone to just hawk things into the market so they can then complain about being ripped off.

As I pointed out, by gutting so many items across the board you effectively gave every player a price break as if they had a Platinum Trading Skillsoft installed.

I wasn't joking when I said that this turned everyone into a "Bob" Dobbs in terms of fixing and getting good prices. Because how dare I talk about mechanics, but a skill of A will get you up to 30% off of a price in the markets. Keep that in mind for the context of the % everyone just got shaved off everything they whined was too expensive. Everything that was taken down by 60% was reduced by more than DOUBLE what any PC fixer can ever dream of mechanically achieving. Then the players demand that fixers make those prices even lower? If they even went to one…

But I guess when everyone is super no one will be, right?

Items that are wanted are only wanted to be flipped to NPC - Remember when I said that only in very rare cases are people actually asking for stuff? It's because that these rare cases are inevitably being asked for because there is money down the line for the other person because they know they can flip a nexus trench or a protek codpiece for fast flash.

People don't want items. They want money.

No more Syndicate trickle down - So as much as I've brought up the Syndicates and what exactly their purpose in the game was, I have to admit something. Their paychecks were probably needed to keep the game afloat. And while it can't be definitively said who plays what or belongs to what faction, I have noticed that SIC aliases that perhaps were commonly associated with Syndicate level play aren't as active as they once were. And with their inactivity means that their obscene paychecks can no longer be argued to be trickling down into the economy anymore.

This particularly irks me because the majority of the initial changes made to pricing made it look like staff was specifically catering to the Solo Syndicate Swingdown, especially with Slither's comment about certain characters not being deserving of having access to certain tiers of armor. And it comes off as extremely hypocritical for Slither to say that we need to remember that people aren't always going to need or get the best gear, only to turn around and slash all the prices on all chrome because flashboost capacitors, nano-surgeons, muscle grafts and armblades are apparently a necessary requirement for gameplay and their prices needed to be cut to help people recoup faster. Why should we pity the ones who need an armblade to have fun playing this game? Good thing none of their gear had their prices changed, so in the event they want to sell their closet of xo3 amor they can still get top flash. To me it really, REALLY reeked of catering to the top .01% combat-tier players because they were being the loudest while pretending to know the most.

So ultimately, if the Syndies aren't as active as they used to be, how does staff feel about their lack of chyen flow towards their personal plots and wars filtering back into the game?

Chrome Weapon Balance - It has gotten to the point that something needs to be done about the damage output of chrome weapons. At one point the chrome weapons were extravagantly priced but that was because they were considered to be God-Tier Lite, as in… while it wasn't as sharp as a ceramic katana the armblade was better than a standard katana while being unable to be disarmed. The problem here though is that all the weapons have been balanced in terms of price vs damage and other stuff. And while over the years weapons haven't seen any changes to pricing, cyberware has. I'm not sure how many but I recall at least one major price drop to "incentivize chrome use" before this one, so now ceramic katana lite is even cheaper now. However the damage output of these weapons weren't adjusted in relation to the price change and now these are borderline god tier in terms of chyen value. This probably needs to be looked at.

Don't Loan on Me - Last one I promise because I'm running out of room on this church door. Loans aren't being offered anymore, or as openly as they once were anymore at least. Even less people are interested in supporting new players with 1st time clones. So as much as loans were propped up as the great equalizer to the lack of liquidity, it sure seems like they never really manifested.

I mean, let's say I want to buy a delivery van. Massive massive investment. What player can actually assist me in large scale transactions without mumbling about something regarding talking to some people? So I'm getting a loan from the NPC faction the character works for, not the character themselves.

Nobody offering loans means nobody has the bank account to offer loans.

–------

So I'm going to stop here because I think I've either made my point, or people tuned out long ago. I know it was a lot but I'm trying to explain things from a holistic standpoint and a viewpoint of encouraging the health and overall gameplay. I'm just very frustrated with the mindset that everything in Sindome has to be "you like it, you love it, or you leave" and actual valid criticisms shouldn't be publicly expressed.

While everyone looks at things that was individually affecting them and saying "Oh, this doesn't effect me anymore, thus change = good". Either that or nobody really has the courage to admit that yeah maybe this wasn't the best move.

Once again, I am sorry that I came off half cocked like I did back then, but I still do not believe that this change was overall healthy for the game and I'm worried about how we can get back going again. The megacorps cutting prices this low in the game world should have been called out for predatory pricing, a method used to drive competitors (the fixers) out of business. This is widely considered to be illegal because it is considered anti-consumer. While yeah totally on brand for dystopian future, what we have to remember that when every player is a consumer, these changes should be considered anti-player too.

Regardless, can we TRY bringing back MacGuffins and see what happens? It can't break shit any more, and staff was talking about making this a one-two punch. One was cuts, the two was going to be pay increase. Still waiting for the two.

Thank you and I'm sorry.

But I don't think you're wrong overall in the idea. I get why the economic changes were made. But some items were definitely dropped down more than their posted prices. And that's led to a currency change that can't be weighed by code changes:

What is the value of a person's time?

Armor costs going down, tool prices going down, part prices going down are all good for the buyer and that looks good for the economy. But in a game that has several professions/archetypes built on acquiring goods secondhand for people, is that change good for those kinds of roles?

Being vague, there's an item that went from twelve and a half thousand new down to three and a half thousand new or so, after both economic price changes and some other changes afterwards. Amazing for the buyer and amazing to for offsetting losses and making it easier to recoup. But that really crunches the used market. Before one of the archetypes might've been able to get that item to replace one lost for around six thousand, they can sell it for eight thousand and make two thousand for their time. Buyer gets to save four and a half thousand on shelf versus secondary market prices.

But that changes when that item is thirty-five hundred off the shelf. So maybe the archetypes gets it down to 1250-1750 on a good day, they tack on seven hundred and fifty for their time, that brings it up to two thousand or twenty-five hundred. So the buyer is now saving a thousand in price. But what if the item is damaged? Is it worth it to buy it damaged when the savings aren't four thousand any more but only a thousand? And you see the lost value for the finder's time.

And that also shows up in some other areas that Risikio listed. I have to write a note about my own experiences, because I can't share them in this thread because of too much IC info.

Basically it boils down to: economic changes have done a lot of people well. But I think there's several archetypes that might be feeling the impact in a negative way and one of those ways is the value of time.

Game hasn't got any easier but the lower end gear being more accessible is nothing but a good thing for the majority of the playerbase and interaction it seems like.