Who dipped me?
I didn't see it but I know they robbed me!

There are a lot of situations where players and characters can (and will) have different information and make different decisions, and where the line between the two is is often not clear and remains up to players to decide. Certainly players can do whatever they like in these situations since there is no policing of identification, players can be entirely metagaming or entirely playing to their character and it's up to them.

Should they though? Well, possibly not.

In this very specific scenario there is actually an additional bit of meta information for a player to consider when transposing what they think they know, onto what their character knows, which is that in this situation (and a few other types with similar 'do I know' checks) the player themselves knows their character has just failed a skill check to be aware of what happened.

Say for a moment that the game worked differently and there was no hidden skill checks, that the game was explicit to the player what their character had failed at and they see 'X stole Y from you, but your character didn't notice it'. In that scenario it would be much more obvious when a player decides to override what their character knows in favour of what they know and says instead 'well actually I am choosing to notice it' and plays based on that.

I think it is more clear in that context how sometimes players can push the boundaries of what their character should really be aware of, despite what the game is telling them. This is likewise often true of players complaints about characters being able to stealth into locked rooms alongside them, which are usually presented as 'but I would know if someone was coming through a doorway with me, or someone was in a small room with me'... but of course their characters didn't know, because they didn't have the stats or skills to know, but the player nonetheless feels they the player should not be constrained by those limitations.

It is not easy to learn to limit playing abilities, especially ones we feel we've earned through hard work and dedication and experience, to play to stat limitations that constrict those abilities, especially when those abilities involve meta understanding or meta knowledge of the game and its players. At one time identifying someone for a plot purpose was a major triumph to me as a player, now it is often trivial. A one time identification of a character whose player I could recognize in my sleep is pretty much the worst thing I ever did as a player and I've regretted it ever afterwards. I am almost always trying to ignore now what I know as a player, because what does it really do but mess up someone's earned success?

Eventually it's no real win to deduce something that happened, and who was responsible. And there are plenty of scenarios where there is no skill check about what you can and can't know about players to act as guidance so it's really entirely up to player discretion about what they should do, but I think it's best practice to at least make the attempt to limit themselves to the constraints of their characters and not rationalize exceptions.

It is certainly an elegant skill of the very best and most experienced players to be able to veil their intentions and actions even from other players, to create disguises that no one can even suspect might be a disguise, to do something invisibly even under the microscope of a tiny world that is constantly watching.

Should that be the minimum standard for someone to succeed? I don't think so myself, and I think many players would be surprised to know how many times their successes relied on someone else deciding they didn't know something.

In so many words: being reasonably suspicious of disguised people isn't meta, assuming their real identity is meta. Killing every shroud you see isn't reasonable, but considering them as suspects for the Bad Things happening certainly is.

Scenario One: You are a local crime boss. You have way too many enemies to count. People want to kill you just about every time you show your face outside. You notice there's a shrouded individual standing outside your apartment/office/wherever, and that they've stayed there for quite some time. Is it smallworlding to be understandably paranoid that they're waiting to kill you? Nine times out of ten, that's an NPC memento, but I've seen plenty of players roleplay their paranoia (knowingly or unknowingly) and hire a solo to evict the loitering individual (with words, first, and then wrestling or beatings later, not just a cold-blooded bushwhack and necksnap). Maybe they really were just standing there because they wanted to, maybe they were waiting for a friend, but they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that's just how life is in Red sometimes.

Scenario Two: This is what started the argument in the previous thread. You are in a bar chatting with your friends. You notice a shroud come in. No big deal. Shroud says nothing, doesn't seem to interact with anyone, and then suddenly disappears. You didn't even see them leave. Considering you were aware enough to notice them enter, is it not suspicious that you couldn't even notice that they were leaving? Is it not suspicious that they didn't even seem to interact with anyone or order a drink? Even if you explain it away as something completely thematic, such as a solo swinging by to silently scan the crowd for a mark (which does happen as well) it is still suspicious behavior compared to the baseline of coming to social places for social interactions and drinks

For the Mixer Math to follow, you have Bad Things plus Suspicious People equals Assumptions. You might have just swung by to check out the crowd for a mark as a solo, but if someone notices that their shit is missing, they could very well assume your shady ass is the pickpocket and try to follow you. Or, maybe you did steal their shit, and instead of acting cool, you acted shady, and now they're wondering who that shrouded hulking femboy was. In my opinon, that's on you for being shady.

I think this is very interesting. I've never considered it but maybe it would be easier for players to know what things they can assume their characters do and don't notice if the game explicitly stated it instead of just not mentioning it. I've never considered this angle before!

I understand that can be difficult to wrap your head around when thinking about it from a text standpoint, but if you've ever been talking to someone in real life, not looking directly at them, just to turn around and see that they're gone, you could likely understand what I mean. You can notice you didn't notice something, by realizing something has changed without your direct observation of it. Depending on the situation, it can be quite startling. Just as you can notice someone was standing there without you having seen them move into that position, you can notice they've left that position without you having seen them leave.

If I was talking to them and poof, they're gone, for sure I get noticing that. But If I say them come in, looked at them chatted with two other people then eventually noticed they were gone, I'd personally be tempted to have my PC not take any special notice of it.

Now that I think of it, I kind of want to examine the room descriptions to see if places like bars/clubs mention people coming and going regularly. If it's assumed that there is a flow coming and going then I would once again be more inclined not to notice not noticing them depart or hide. Was probably one of the many in the flow and my PC just didn't take note.

I think that, for me, a few takeaways so far are:

1. It's almost always very situational to me. Sometimes it makes sense to notice and assume, sometimes less so.

2. I'm not ever going to be comfortable telling someone that their character should not notice something the game says they see. Or force them to see/hear things the game doesn't say is happening.

3. Assumptions are a character's prerogative but they can do as much harm as good. As they should.

A shroud by itself isn't suspicious. A shroud behaving suspiciously is suspicious.

And suspicious behavior in a shroud is amplified or lessened depending on sector. What's suspicious on Green (walking around an apartment area with a shroud on, seemingly following someone specific for a length with some other factors thrown in), isn't all that suspicious on Gold and is going to be even less suspicious on Red. Because you increase the ambient number of ponchos and hoods there as well as decrease the sector security each level you go down, while the overall population rises.

Also I think we need to step away from the overall thought of 'disguises are used because they don't want their face recognized and that's inherently suspicious' (I didn't pull the direct quote, sorry if it's different, I had this reply copied to paste and didn't want to lose it and I'm in a rush). Wigs and contacts exist to hide faces and are part of the disguise system, and for a long time we had to go through a whole period of people across all sectors trying to use wigs and contacts as a reason to say someone is up to no good. Wigs and contacts are disguise items, yes, we know that on an OOC level that they help bump the disguise score. But in a world built on looks and aesthetic, millions of people are going to be wearing contacts or wigs at one point just for the look. I'd really like us not to go back to people thinking someone wearing contacts (how would you even know if you don't know them???) means someone needs questioned or is a problem.

If an IC source told my character something wasn't suspicious, should be a certain way or is a certain way, my character would strongly question the motivations of that source. I personally find IC sources the lest reliable regarding how the in game world is!

Dipping has several major game impacting effects, all of which are very seriously negative to overall game health. I'll try and be short and to the point here for the sake of brevity.

Stealing promotes a culture of people not carrying things, which makes doing things like being a street thug and mugging people often a complete and total waste of time, especially compared to the high risk of the activity.

Stealing is extremely damaging to people maintaining a presence in social hubs and public spaces, and often deliberately rewards a dip going to a club or event and playing pocket raider with numerous people - something people are very keenly aware of, and which hampers the overall RP environment of the game.

You're allowed, or even encouraged to farm money off other players with the skill in a way that is completely out of alignment with most other game direction when compared to other ways of doing similar things. The help farming text file almost openly encourages dipping everything with a pulse (so long as it's a player.)

Now I mentioned liking the skill on paper, and I do, but I think that it could be made much better if it had some serious restrictions placed on it, and in trade, had other existing restrictions lifted.

-Restrict dipping to a handful of obvious dipping target items. Wallets, money, phones, jewelry, electronics, etc. Dipping crowbars, giant medical bags and helmets is immersion breaking, bad for balance, and again, leads to this culture of 'can't lose what I ain't got, yo.'

-Codedly limit the number of times the verb can be used per day to a small number, like 3-5. Encourage dip players to scout, recon, and choose their targets wisely, and get rid of the optimized gameplay of smashing the verb button on 45 immies. It's both toxic and non-interactive.

-Remove the restriction on dipping MONEY from NPC's with the help farming rules. It's literally on the income cap system, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to dip NPC's instead of running crates if you want to push theme (it also opens you to risk, and could make topside life much more interesting.) The farming rules are redundant and limit the skill considering it's hard-coded to be balanced otherwise. If there's a coded cap on uses per day, that also solves other balance concerns regarding NPC's.

-I can't stress this enough, please consider broadening the way the skill checks are rolled for detection. Past a certain skill level, this skill becomes almost entirely non-interactive.

-Under no circumstances should you be able to dip while in combat, or dip someone else who is in combat or aiming. While it's a pretty slick thing for players to do, it is really, seriously broken in ways few other things still are in the game.

If these changes are made to restrict and limit the scope of the skill, then I think a substantive cultural change could be made for those who play dips to improve their quality of life. If a dip can, in good faith, argue that all they did was steal a few phones, then the culture of snapping dip necks can be addressed, and players trying to break into the skill can have a hell of a lot more breathing space from the ire of other players. People hate this skill because it's abusive as hell, and that, in my mind, is a big part of why people come down so hard on dips. Improve the mechanical realities of the skill, and then we can start talking about not murdering or blackballing known dips for taking a skill.

I hope that the older culture of going hard on dips changes, but that culture seems to have developed organically because of the actual mechanical realities of the skill. It's not a 'play fair' skill, both because of it's non-interactivity, and because there's simply so many possible layers of safety net to make doing it one of the safest and lowest-investment get rich quick schemes in the game.

I really do think that rate limiting the skill mechanically could open up a world of new and much more interesting possibilities for the skill. If I could wave a wand and tweak it, that'd be my prime pick. Let's beat up and PVP people who have the means, IC and OOC knowledge of how to respond and play into it. Yoinking shit from immies is, in my mind, one of the larger factors for people not sticking around in the game -- and yet the skill heavily incentivizes you to punch down as hard as possible.

As I said in my previous post, there's some pretty major misalignment with the skill and the overall direction that we try and push for PVP activities in basically every single other system in the game. Changing things could be a massive benefit to both IC and OOC gameplay and culture.

However I think the reality of the situation is that entirely way too many people with the skill use it to farm at times idiotic levels of personal wealth with extremely little risk. If that's the game we want to play, I'm okay with that, but there's many, many checks against doing that very same thing in most other areas of the game.

I don't want to get into disguise meta, but I'm going to be very blunt here. Mugging someone's wallet over dipping it is vastly superior in basically every single metric I care to talk about. You're interacting with people. You're creating RP that people can respond and react to. You're leaving identifiable information about yourself and allowing people to build case files and push law enforcement RP that is often extremely lacking. You're also giving the victim the ability to play the victim, build sympathy, make allies and etc.

Mugging someone lets you tell stories both as the attacker and as the victim. I would argue it's pretty close to peak theme crime RP.

Dipping is literally none of those things. You don't need to spend 2 years to make a god tier dip, because you can half-ass shit and still pass all your checks by targeting immies, causing them to booth or to quit out of very understandable bleed. The skill is too easy, too safe, and way, way too non-interactive.

My suggestion for limiting dipping item types isn't because I want to stifle RP, it's because I don't want people using one verb while shrouded and sneaking to suddenly make 25K chen with zero risk and zero recourse. I'm also conscious of the fact the game is overly geared to combat goons and my suggestion for changing dipping isn't great in that regard, but really, the kinds of shit you can do with dipping can be some of the most toxic and abusive gameplay in the game, and I think it's high time we had a serious discussion about that.

That said, I remember being a new player. I felt like an immy for WAY longer than two weeks. Getting dipped regularly was not a feel good even a few months into the game.

Help farming tells people to do this as an example of how to be in compliance with the rules.

So consider the fact that you can dip 10K cash, plus a 'big item' worth as much or more from NPCs on top of the fact you can easily dip the same amount or far more off players.

If people were mugging 20K or 40K a week off players and NPC's instead of dipping them, you'd see such a massive and immediate culture shift that you'd get whiplash. For a long time this was very normal mix activities and the game prospered because of it. Medics, cyberdocs, solos, gangers, and syndicate players were getting absolutely mobbed with content on a daily basis. It was very fun.

And for current dips, there are all sorts of ways you can give hints and RP without straight up giving yourself away. Leave calling cards. Step out of the crowd and taunt someone before disappearing again. Do it in the open if you want to be bold. Pose that you bump into someone and apologize then dip them as you walk away. Buy somebody a drink with flash you just took out of their pocket. Or better yet, dip someone and then give them a job. Pay them with what you just robbed them of. Put out flyers for retrieval services - we need more people hiring dips (and plants) for targeted work to help pull them away from the ATM style gaming. Finding people to hire a dip was hard for me, but way exciting when it happened.

Also, 60k a week? Amazing. I've never clocked a fraction of that a week. Am I the fringe case or are you?

To put it mildly! Every NPC in the entire game combined probably doesn't have this much pocket change on them outside of game-y situations where they have a huge amount from getting payments the player knows about. The average pickpocket against an NPC is around ~0 chyen.

I really agree with all the points Grey0 has made, put all my thoughts into words better than I could.

I don't fully understand the psychology involved but you will see players harbour more negative feelings towards having their wallets stolen than being killed outright and losing everything, I assume a factor is the aforementioned element where it feels 'valid' to players to be killed by someone with better combat kills, whereas it feels like thefts are trespasses by characters who should be beneath them.

Severe responses to thievery train dips to both 1) do it only when they can be absolutely sure the skill roll will perfectly pass (ie. overstat their marks dramatically) and 2) make sure there absolutely nothing that could tie them to the act (ie. no roleplaying, no follow-up, more extreme stat discrepancies).

Alternatively they get caught, die a few times and perm, and their next character just murders people instead for their gear which is much easier and more socially acceptable to the community, but IC and OOC.

Not being mugged and losing your poncho. Dead and to Genetek. I say this because players are coddled and this creates an atmosphere that invites even more players that prefer the superficial elements of the theme and not the reality, and the problem grows worse and worse. There needs to be more loss and fear and distribution of wealth from pay cheques to someone's stuff being hawked for ten cents on the dollar.

And my preference for this is death, for players to feel afraid to be out on the streets of Red and to invest deeply in stealth or disguise or vehicles in order to offset this, but I am willing for theft to serve as a much lighter touched alternate while players are eased out of the bar RP hugbox they've grown accustomed to like boiling frogs.

So no I don't agree theft is broken, either in a mechanical theory-crafting sense or in the practical reality. If anything it is not popular enough and what amount of it does happen now I see serving an important theme-enforcing function amongst players who will happily disregard it otherwise.