UE Revamp
Just some thoughts on the state of the game.

I didn't think this way before, but now that I've experimented with other muds, I do think the skill gain is too slow here and get frustrated when characters just ride out their 3 or whatever literal years it takes to get max ue. It doesn't reward interaction in the world. It kind of deincentivises it. Apartment ninjas are always going to be brought up ic in a sort of backhanded ooc complaint against other players. Sometimes people have a good point, other times they don't have a good read on what's actually going down.

People are going to have different ideas of what good rp means. My character is not particularly very old and has seen some very rich rp, relationships, interactions, and engagement with the theme. (From my perspective) That said, I didn't have that same experience on my first character because I just didn't know how to find it. It's not due to gatekeeping either - it really was me better understanding the game's themes and what creates the rp that -I- think is good. Once I started poking at those themes, stuff happened. I was murdered, I got caught between crazy people. I was betrayed several times, suffered heartbreak, then pushed that heartbreak on others for a few promotions. I learned when to shut up and when to start twisting the knife. I saw one of my favorite characters crash and burn and turn into an absolute force without me. It was great. All very themely. And others, still, would say my character did nothing. Which is fine - we all value different things and those characters I rp'd with regularly, my partners and my enemies, valued me and I valued them. I'm still learning how to do stuff from older players and probably won't ever be as good as others at some things, and they may not be as good as me in other areas.

You walk up to say, a ganger today, or a corpsec agent. Or an artist or a fixer. They're going to more than likely bend over backward to try to help you learn. Sometimes theyre total dicks about it and sometimes they're suuuuper generous icly. I just have a hard time believing people are actually truly gatekeeping. Some aren't great teachers and some just want to do their own thing. Someone who was the biggest dick to me icly taught me the most about the game and its theme. Both doing as they do and just the opposite. It has to click and it can take time.

If you increase the rate of skill gain, you'll have to be okay with the consequences of that too. Unlike other games, Sindome time is real time. In other games, every rl day is a whole week. The game moves a LOT faster and people also have a lot more threats to combat elsewhere. There's also no cloning system in most places. Stories just end for good on what feels like a whim. Its really obnoxious sometimes. And Sindome does that part better.

This game is great because it does enable the opportunity for slow, complex character development. That has drawbacks too. People can stagnate or get frustrated. Pros and cons to everything.

I feel your frustrations and I've been there. Im there right now in a lot of ways. But it's a pretty complex issue I think.

Sindome does a lot of things better than other muds do. Which is why I grew to love it. But I'm starting to wonder is that delusion? Am I playing a character that lives in this dystopian society all around it but nothing really happens?

Papertiger you touched on some points I think are kind of important. A few other muds move on a 24 hour a day schedule. Some have RPXP systems mixed with hack and slash bullshit. Some aren't bad and some are just awful. Information is absolutely gate kept. Other fun RP is blocked by a massive time sync through UE or another system. I made one of the most fun characters about 9 months ago. The character secretly had a plan to be a Judge someday. Well the path to that was logical for me. Don't get involved in to much combat bullshit and just plow through. But the characters path was completely blocked. Being told to wait four weeks until I could actually start playing the character like it was ment to be played. It wasn't a huge out of the box concept either actually pretty standard but I just quit it was easier. I wish I could share more IC details but I can't. I respect the staff to much to break any rules.

But to say an experienced fixer will take you under their wing and show you things. No they really wont. They will be your friend and stand up for you all that fun stuff but when it comes to actually giving information that could cause competition…. HAH! @who is almost the same people its been for 3 years and some change for me. There are a few people that have stuck it out. But the ratio is very VERY low. Why? Simple its a combo between information gatekeeping and UE to be useful and finding meaningful fun RP. Once the honeymoon is over, what RP is there? No one wants to wait that long to get into some fun stuff. Three to four weeks to be a pledge in a gang? Now come on. I don't even need a coded job to hit the 10 kay a week cap. No one does.

Where are the kidnappings, the beat downs for someone running their mouth? A year old character can talk shit to a 2, 3, or 4 month character and literally have 0 repercussions. Why? UE! The playing field is simply not level. Which makes small worlding even worse. Sure it boosts one persons ego maybe a group of people, but that is not healthy. It causes new players to run screaming. To get a character to F in four stats is almost 6 months. Thats completely neglecting a couple stats and not even included skills. By the way I like most of the people in the game, I'm not really shaming anyone. But there is a serious imbalance.

Another thing about UE and other systems that drive me insane. Is the 24 hour reset timer. Eventually it pushes forward an hour and doesn't stay aligned with a schedule. I'm actually blessed I can login most times of the day and not miss but I have despite being active I've had UE gains start at 2 am and a month later they are pushed to 8pm. I don't get why everything doesn't just reset at 0 hour. It all adds up to be the same amount. Its like some people have 5 to 8 hours they can play on certain days but then the next day maybe they can only do three hours. But if that three hours doesn't line up with the day befores schedule your not getting your UE. People should be rewarded for playing. If you have 8 hours one day you should be rewarded for it. But if you have 8 hours one day and 2 the next your punished. If the schedule doesn't mesh your really punished.

Yes help ue says missing some ue doesn't matter. Well thats one part about help ue I don't like. Miss 1 ue a day everyday for a week. Thats half a letter grade per week, per month its even more. If you literally only received two UE a day your progression for four stats to F out of chargen goes from 6 months to 8 or 9 months. Thats a lot of time. Most new players seem to be counting the days till they can have the stats to do interesting things. But during this time people lose track of the character idea and or intention and some if they make it that far will never be willing to put it all out there on the line. Because its a significant time investment.

Bottom line fun RP shouldn't be time gated or blocked by UE by any system. RP should be that RP but it isn't UE, other systems, and information gating are huge hold ups.

Likewise a common idea is to lower the UE cap (say to something like 1000) for all characters, so it takes nine months to two years for characters to cap instead of 3 to 5 years. Now however you have the issue that a significant part of the player base are all max UE, which is not at all desirable from a gameplay standpoint because it makes it even more punishing to not be at the cap.

Also there are ideas about boosting characters into greater UE investments at the start of their lifespans, sort of how veteran rerolling works now, but again there is trouble there because that sort of system is hugely advantageous to players familiar with the skill system and extra punishing to players who come out of character generation without that guidance.

That's not to say it's not good to discuss alternatives, or that there are no alternatives (there has to be a better way out there), more just that we do talk about it, and often, but it's not always really obvious whether something is better or just different.

Players also tend to massively overestimate the amount of UE they need to do just about everything, and also overestimate the UE earned by basically everyone else. Their issues almost always stem from having the wrong stat assignments rather than not being old enough to do whatever, so I think education and documentation and guidance is really as important or more important that how wide the tap is open.

In the meantime and assuming the post even survives until the morning, I've made a post on Anything Really about character creation guidance that I feel falls within the rules about in-character information. Hopefully that will help players feel a little more guided in their initial trajectories.

You could up UE to 4 or 5 a day, drop the cap to 2 years and I don't think a single actual tear would be shed, or anything of any actual value would be lost in the process.

The fact vets come in the dome with several hundred extra UE is a nice little bonus for us no-lifer longtime players, but the actual literal months of being totally useless at the game could stand to be done away with utterly.

You want more people going out, doing things, making the world lively and interesting, and taking some of these jobs that literally nobody ever does? Consider giving everyone the vet UE bonus and letting the entire game start out with ~350 UE in character creation. We already do this for vets and it doesn't break the game, so we have literally means-tested this and know it isn't going to suddenly break the game. It's a major handout to new people trying the game, and there's been consistent feedback for years that players get frustrated and quit after a short time in the game because progression is so slow, and characters are so useless without the vet reroll bonus.

I also just think that it'd be good for letting people experiment with the game and start doing roles in ways that don't have them unable to do the job because they simply can't pass the required skill checks to do said things. Let's push build diversity and character diversity by allowing players to not be overcooked soggy noodles when coming in the game.

I think you've made some assumptions without realizing it, and taken it for granted players will play every day, or that players who don't play every day are more casual and shouldn't be catered towards at all. This is not really true in my experience, there is quite a significant population of players who play a lot on their days off, and a change like this would change from being relatively equal to players who played a little every day (7UE/week versus 6UE/week), to being massively behind (27UE/week versus 10UE/week).

There really are no simple and obvious changes in my experience, or they'd have happened. I'm very confident at this point after about a million different proposals to changing daily/weekly/monthly UE allotment that pretty much everything advantages one level of activity over another.

Whatever power differentials players feel there are between the top and bottom of player experience levels would be increased with expanding the income cap or increasing the total amount of UE available to new characters. Like I would prefer a slightly less slow start because I like some tricky parts of the game but this is highly selfish and is likely to make the gap between myself and new players much wider.

Giving characters more UE in general will accelerate some parts of the game, but players should not fool themselves into thinking it will make things more equitable.

I have no idea how min/maxed or "good" my build is, but after reading the help files for each stat and skill I wanted to pursue, I feel like the entire ten months wasn't that big of an issue progression wise. I must be a rare bird that thinks the system is pretty nice. A player with substantially more UE and at the wall where it stops may feel differently, but how many people are getting to that point? How many people are waiting the 3-4 years or whatever to pursue the style of play they wish to do? How many people plan to do that? I think we are worried about the wrong stuff here.

1) Characters gain and lose jobs quickly

2) Alliances change daily

3) People lose shit daily

4) Romances flame out fast due to stress

This is not a slow game. The only thing slow is how long it takes to become someone who isn't at the bottom of the vat.

Having three weeks of UE assignments in the wrong direction already discourages new players and they often abandon characters out of the feeling they've inadvertently spoiled their tickets. Can you imagine four months of misdirection at once?

Players say they don't like time-gating on progression because, from their perspectives they want to achieve their goals as soon as possible and move on to other things. In Sindome's case the same concepts apply, players want for one thing, but the game at large doesn't necessarily want for the same. I believe it is in the interest of the storytelling ecosystem for characters to play for longer and tell longer-term stories, and be somewhat discouraged through the game design of iterating quickly.

There are better games for players who want more immediate instant gratification experiences, but I think the secret sauce of Sindome is actually a lot of the features that players tend to not like but that in combination with one another create something that really has no alternative, anywhere.

A lot of SD seems to be manual systems and physical hands on levers, and that doesn't scale well with player count. I don't think that having 50, 100, or 150 players makes the game better or worse.

The thing I do see that concerns me is the sheer number of people on the wholist who are idle 10+ minutes. As a function of % population it seems to range anywhere from 30-50+% depending on the day of the week and the time zone.

If we have 50 people playing the game and 25 of them are typing WHO every 10-15 minutes and collecting SIC information that's the extent of their 'gameplay' then we don't actually have 50 people playing the game. I'm not gonna be an elitist asshole here and say that people all have to play super active roles, but there are not-insignificant blocks in the game's activity where the game world objectively feels dead as fuck.

Part of the solution for that problem is on us, the players, getting ourselves out of ruts and getting other players invested in the game in doing things. The other part is to address the problem by getting fresh blood in the game in those time zone areas. I'm personally biased in thinking that SD would be better if there was more UE off the get-go and suggested the vet bonus be given to everyone. But I'm also cognizant and aware of the fact that this is a massive, persistent and consistent complaint about the game on reddit, discord and other games.

Also tons of other RP games with in-game progression systems like SD's don't feel the need to make their characters dog water for months. Those game's are great, and tons of people play them. SD's appeal, to me, isn't pacing, but the quality of people, the quality of staff, the lore and the theme. That's why I play the game. The systems being complex and sorta decently balanced is nice too, but really, I think people are here for a diverse range of reasons and only part of those reasons have anything to do with dice rolls. You bet your ass it's something people don't like about the game, though.

The game doesn't have to, and shouldn't appeal to everyone, everywhere, all the time, but when you have literally hundreds of people saying the exact same damn thing for years on end, maybe waking up and smelling the coffee is warranted.

I obviously like retraining, as I pitched the idea in the first place, but it's not without it's own issues.

I originally suggested that it should be done as an expansion to the vacation system, and I was very specific and deliberate in that pitch for a key reason: the game is impossible to balance around forever characters. You can help alleviate the impact they have on the game by getting these people in years-long roles, with insane institutional power, connects and personal wealth taking vacations to allow newer and younger characters to come up and flourish in their absence. You also get people trying and doing new things without having to bite the very big bullet that is perming their character off, and in return you give them the chance to take their character in a new direction as they come back from vacation fresh, new, and wanting to try and do new things.

That idea changed to be the retraining system because, as you said, people wanted 'unicorns.' I have some sort of strong opinions on things that a lot of people don't agree with. That's totally fine, but I still think that if we're going to talk about a major enhancement to the retraining system then we are going to continue to build the already sorta problematic behavior of people sitting in job roles for 2, 3, 4 years straight.

I say sorta problematic because if someone loves doing a job and they're good at it and push that content regularly, great! Power to them! Hooray! Some people do this. Other people get lazy, complacent, burn out, or simply are more purely reactive characters. Those cause big balance problems.

One is that in order to actually bump someone off some of these roles, you have to either perm them or get them to MAJORLY fuck up, and oftentimes, it requires more than a single major incident. This wasn't always the case. Staff used to (seemingly) be much more aggressive about shit-canning people who were job-terminal sponging or for big fuckups. Now it seems like they just let them stagnate at a low or mid rank for their complacency. Again, not great, because the jobs are filled, you have reactionary players filling slots active players want but realistically may not be able to get, and the entire time they're doing this they're building massive wealth (and therefore actionable power) that makes it further difficult to knock them off their dragon hoards. It's a self-reinforcing issue and people only seem to stop doing it when they get bored.

Staff used to also regularly check-valve people sitting on giant fucking nest eggs, but I don't know how often that happens anymore. Maybe they are, and maybe people are good at bullshitting the reasons why they need 100's of K's sitting in their account. I remember getting messages from staff going 'Hey, you have a lot of cash, whatcha plannin' on doin' with it?' and hearing others getting the same IC. This was a good policy. People sitting on millions of chyen (liquid or assets) isn't good for the game. It doesn't get plots moving, it doesn't get the world bumping. Telling people to use it or lose it got shit happening. Neat things happened because of it. Shit like structural @redecorates for institutions, cool apartment features, getting big expensive plots, etc.

This might seem like a ramble, but it's specific to this point of retraining. If you're going to let people slowly forever retrain and resculpt their characters, you're going to outright get rid of one of the major sources of character turnover in the game. That's bad. Forever characters are bad. There's a reason most PVP permadeath RP games have a seasonal model or enforced character lifespans. Dragons are extremely bad for the game if they're not the best players of the bunch. The issue is that the systems we used to have in place to tame the dragons that aren't your star RPers don't seem to be still active and enforced policies. Staff have stated they rather see a job filled with lazy-ass players than be empty, because lazy ass players do… something? Well, they do do something. They take that job off the job board and make it so people don't try and apply and do those things. Good job, you have corps filled with players that have been there for years with zero indication there's any change in the horizon. Cool that the corp is fully staffed! Unless, of course, you'd like to work there and do those jobs. Meanwhile that dragon hoard just keeps on growing.

The game has become dramatically less of a pvp-heavy game and shifted to being more of a life sim with some PVP action here and there. Staff used to be much more aggressive in policing a lot of things, and while I appreciate that it probably caused burnout and a lot of work. I don't know that the game in 2024 has any good solutions for bob the mix plumber character having millions of chyen of assets, and yet we have bob the mix plumber having millions of chyen in assets. Are you going to fuck with the character who can perm your character 10 times over without even dropping a zero off their bank account statment? No, no you're not. You're going to get crushed into meat paste, and that's a problem.

So if you ask me? Sure, let people make UE faster, let them retrain, let them do whatever they want, but slap a 5-year expiration date on your clone save data at Genetek. Sorry chum, reaper comes for us all sooner or later. You can even be really nice about it. Reintroduce NPCifying PC's and make it the norm for everyyone who hits that landmark. Here's a party, check out all the cool things this person did, we get to see their character and contributions forever henceforth in the game. Now go reroll and let other people grow and tell their stories. Hell it might even get people motivated to get off their respective asses and start playing the game if they realize that SD is, in fact, a game and not their second life simulator. Wild thought, I know.

Otherwise, you're going to promote a system where everyone is eventually the best at what they want to do and nobody ever rerolls and the game becomes super static and boring for everyone. I personally, do not want to play that game. I want to play a game where wild, crazy stuff happens, characters make a lasting impact on the game and we get a healthy ecosystem of players climbing the rungs of the latter or the steps of the pyramid then moving on.

Then other people who don't agree with you see the things I write about, and have been leaving very positive feedback on it.

I like SD quite a bit. I think it's better to talk about the game in a (hopefully) constructive manner, offer new and differing opinions, and sometimes simply just agree with others or +1 someone else's work. If it seems like all I do is bitch and moan on here, I think that has more to do with the nature of the boards and the discussions people have. We generally don't write posts saying "I like chef's islands, they're great, and I love everything about them!"

There's a ton of shit I really love about the game and I think that most of the game is in a good state and that SD is worthwhile to play overall. On the contrary, I see a lot of other people spreading extremely pessimistic and dour takes on shit basically daily. I'm generally positive about the game and the game state, and very positive about the future state. I'm making the suggestions and discussing topics because I think that improvement is a process that takes constant effort and there is always room to improve, no matter how great things are currently. I prefer to talk about stuff here because I'm generally a fan of longer-form takes and reasoned arguments.

My first character was a mess up which finally made it to a place that I felt it was in a great spot UE wise. But it was time consuming. I did however burn out was waiting on UE on the daily for quiet a while. Was she capped no. She had a IC job that was really fun for me for some reason. It wasn't like the be all end all of fun but I did enjoy it. But I moved on and wanted to try something else. Well bad call and it more or less ended up burning me out on the game. Like I was just done. I wasn't mad I was just bored. However UE was less of a problem. But in my mind I thought, okay I'll just take a break till the character is reaped. Oh and what a mistake that was!

Its documented somewhere that reaped characters don't get to return with their bonus UE. I've searched even now https://www.sindome.org/help/game/ and can't find where it says this. But I didn't bitch or xhelp and beg for help. Maybe thats my problem I typically only ask staff for something when I absolutely need to. So I sucked it up and thought alright I've got a great character concept here its going to be fun to play and I can do this again. I was hyped. Yeah I missed not getting the bonus UE. In hindsight I still do but the character to me was so interesting to play I didn't really care as I've said multiple times the game is about RP for me. So I waited around for about 2 or 3 weeks to finally get the job interview I wanted and needed to make the character work. Passed the test with flying colors but the term was full. I more or less just face palmed when I was told to come back in month. I already stuck out a month of not playing the character how I designed her. So I just quit. I wasn't mad or pissed off I had fun with this character. But not getting a very common job shut down her RP avenues in my mind, maybe I'm small minded. I even tried applying other places but well the character was designed to do one thing, generate RP without the pressure of having to worry about UE. Yeah it bothered me to just up and quit. Cause I love this game but at the end of the day I'm not going to do something I don't want to.

Now I see Mr. Email 9 months later. I've been RPing a few other places and to just be honest I was missing the dome. Because I love the world. There are somethings I feel need changing but it is what it is. So I thought alright here is a concept I've always wanted to try. Problem is its UE intensive. The first 12 hours were fun, speedy staff on the history, I get my clone made some chy, but then I'm basically told 3 weeks to a month. Like yeah no that on top of missing the UE on a past character, and having to do it all over again on a concept I'm sort of into but not 100%. Its so depressing to start at zero. The only time it wasn't was on a character I was really hyped to play. Now I feel like that character I really wanted to play is done, to try that same concept with a different name would just feel dirty, and the job might not even still be there.

But doing that daily UE grind to even be close to a level playing field on a character concept I'm not sure I'm even into. Yeah its painful to even think about. The RP would be great but the month wait to get to RP yeah I'm not feeling it.

I have one concept left maybe two. But I don't think I will find someone IC that could possibly help. I might try it out but for now I think its just better for me to walk away, or at least think on it for a few days. I love the game but having to do that UE grind all over again. I can't. I could have on the one character I really wanted to play but this one I just really can't bring myself to grips with how long it takes.

At the end of the day it was my fuckup that lead to me not getting bonus UE. Though I feel it needs documented way better than it is about the reaper not allowing you to access your bonus UE. Cause my orig first character wouldn't have killed herself. Just wouldn't have happened. Maybe that wasn't the only avenue, hell I know it wasn't. I'm not blaming anyone, but me. Staff are great. But progression is slow and starting over I'm just not sure I can do it, I want to but damn. After that first 12 hours I was limited to bar RP on my current character. I thought about boothing her and trying my last concept but again I wouldn't even know where to start with asking ICly for help and there are a lot of reasons for that.

But to wrap this up I am living proof that the UE system is to grindy. I just can't do it again. The players are great, the staff is great. At the end of the day it was my mess up and I own that. Playing X lead me to burn out(Honestly wish I would have just stayed at the job I orginially had.) then moving to Y and doing bar/runner RP and being hyped and being denied a job cause the term was full, that I could do lead to well where I am now. Honestly I do think what jobs are full should be posted somewhere had I known that one character I was hyped to play had no chance of getting the job I wouldn't have made it 9 or 10 months ago. But in the end its on me I accept that. I just can't do that grind again without the RP being there.

Self-moderation or opting out of discussions are also options.

(Edited by Ares at 4:25 pm on 5/24/2024)

That is more than likely a stat issue then, and there are plenty of other tailor PCs who can nudge you in the right direction towards fixing that.

(Edited by Ares at 4:25 pm on 5/24/2024)

Let's avoid talking about skill and stat levels, skill checks, and what is required to complete them. These topics are best explored ICly. I've redacted a few posts.

Thanks,

Ares

If you seek out a mentor IC that can show you what is necessary to use just about any skill that the level of training required to get started is likely to be much less than many people are imagining.