I don't think we need Breaking and Entering. Personally, I don't want to play the game all week, make money to pay my rent, and then go to sleep, waking up to find my cube/apartment/membership pad/locker has been robbed while I was asleep by some baka with a lockpick set that hit up all the apartments/lockers/cubes on my floor.
One of the arguments for B&E is that we need to keep the moo skinny and avoid bloat when people have hoards of items sitting in their apartments. I think that is a reasonable goal, avoiding bloat, but I think the methods we have for it (nanny programs that scan for hoards and alert the staff so they can prod the players into selling) handle that plenty fine.
Also, we have the autopruner which runs weekly, shaving tons of bloat, and there are plenty of places we could add integrations for this, making it prune even more off. We have the clothing voter system so recycled custom clothing CAN be saved, but also, CAN be deleted. Previously, it was always saved.
We have the recycling chutes which offer incentive to recycle things and not hoard them. We have shops and the market and many places you can sell goods.
In the end, I don't think we need B&E to solve this problem.
I also don't think lockers should be break-into-able. My reason behind this is simply that as soon as we spent time coding that, people would just stop using lockers. People that can afford to have a hoard, can afford a cube or apartment or vehicle, or all of the above to 'spread' their hoard around in. Having B&E for lockers just means people stop using lockers.
Also, let's consider apartments. People have lives, in real life. They have work, and play, and family. The last thing I want when I am playing a game is to sign in and have my stuff stolen or my character moved against his will, or turned in to the WJF in some cases, or kidnapped or whatever. All while I wasn't around and didn't get any RP out of it. That doesn't create RP for me that I want to engage with.
B&E is the ultimate PvE. You use your 'skills' to hack a 'door' or 'locker' or 'whatever'. And the other player(s) involved doesn't even have to be there and may never be aware.
You can make an argument that waking up and being robbed could 'create' rp for you, but is that the RP you really want? Fruitlessly trying to track down who broke into your apartment and robbed you while your character was sleeping (and didn't wake up to defend themselves in the same way you might if it happened IRL)?
And then you track them down, and surprise, it's a cartel, or faction or oldbie you can't contend with because, well, the only way to balance a B&E system is to make it take loads of skill and people with that kind of skill, or the money to buy a skillsoft are probably already established players in the game who have lots of UE.
So you do manage to track them down only to realize... there is fuck all you can do about it because if you attack them, or B&E them back (assuming you have the skills and still have the money to buy whatever tools are required) they'll just perm you.
- Does that seem fun?
- Is anyone excited about the potential to lose all your stuff while you aren't signed in? - - Does this add value to the game?
- Is anyone going to find this a fun RP avenue?
Player hoards are NOT a problem right now. The MOO is a healthy size. And there are plenty of ways we can keep it healthy that don't involve dramatically changing the landscape of the game in a way, honestly, I don't think any players are excited about. I would even posit that we could just randomly recycle one item from any room with > 50 items in it every day, and that would be preferable to B&E.
Yes, there would be counter measures to help prevent B&E, but those won't be perfect. It will still be YOUR skill versus the THIEVES skill. And the protection products YOU buy versus the tools the THIEVES buy. There will either be a BE ALL END ALL protection that protects 100% of the time, or, there will always be a BE ALL END ALL thief, who can break into any apartment given the right skill.
Again, this isn't PvP. It's PvE. With both players preparing their 'environment', one to protect them and their gear when they are asleep or out, and one to break in and steal that gear at the time that is going to offer the biggest chance for success: when the victim isn't online (or the victim has just been murdered, so, yeah, prepare for people to kill you just so you can't stop them breaking into your place?)
The sheer amount of code this would take would be much better suited put toward Grid 3.0, or a slew of other features players are craving and asking for and excited about.
You might make the argument that the original founders of Sindome, intended for the game to have B&E, and from everything I have heard and know, that is true. However, this is a bit of a circular argument.
- The original founders wanted us to have an -in game grid- but we made it on the web with Grid 2.0.
- The original founders wanted us to have The Matrix, but we made the decision to focus efforts on Grid 3.0 instead.
- The original founders wanted the WJF to patrol Red, but that is done by TERRA now because it is more themely
- The original founders wanted a stock market that players could directly profit off of but we found that to be game breaking and thus we have CorpShare
- The original founders wanted the game to run on a single machine, with a MudClient. or telnet. Now we run on a suite of machines and we have a webclient.
The original founders wanted Sindome to be and do a lot of things that don't make sense with 20+ years of development in the rear view. It is wonderful to try to keep to their overall vision, but they aren't here, and we are. We need to make decisions for what is going to be best for the game, now.
If i'm reading the room wrong, I'd love feedback. If you agree, I'd like to hear that too.