Deckers on Sindome
Don't be meta about their skills

I am -not- bashing the work of anyone who works on the game, this isn't me trying to poop on anyone, it's just trying to put in perspective the frustration the archetype brings with it.

Just look at all the features SD has added in just the last year or two. All the disguise updates, the makeup stuff, the chatter system, the shroud stuff, the ambient NPC stuff, the ganger system changes, all this incredible complex work -- amazing work by our staff, who I'm proud of and amazed by left and right. These bring great RP, complexity, richness to our world.

Now imagine you're a decking-oriented player who's essentially had the same grid system for more than 10 years.

Imagine being a combat character of basically any kind -- corpsec, ganger, elite UE maxed street sam for hire, whatever. Imagine there was no coded combat system at all. Like Eph mentioned, imagined you just had to emote and RP it and hope everyone involved was agreeable to each step and outcome -- even this isn't even comparable, because even then you might have outcomes that actually have repercussions in the IC world that people would care about.

Imagine people being unafraid of gangers or solos because in meta they know that unless they really, really, really bend over backward to for some reason make themselves vulnerable (and absolutely no one does to deckers, ever), they can't be hurt by them.

Now imagine feeling passionate about playing a character like that for, like, 15 years, while deckers received 15 years of one feature after another, with one topic after another on the BGBB where all the -other- players on the game got to excitedly go 'THIS IS AMAZING, THANK YOU SO MUCH THIS FIXES MY PROBLEMS AND MAKES ME EXCITED TO PLAY THE GAME'.

That's how deckers feel watching one makeup tweak, or grappling addition, or armor complexity update post as the months and years go by. Meanwhile we log in to SIC chatter about 'THE GRID? LUL DICKZ ON NODEZ'.

We lack great lore or community too. Decking characters don't last long because they get super burned out by all of the above and suicide to play Another Combat Character Who Maybe Also Is A Tailor Or Whatever.

The one decker in 'Withmore History', Trancer, you say? Trancer was famous not because he was a decker, trust me. Trancer was famous because in his time there were like 10 active players, so allying with any one of them made you / your group very strong. Trancer had strong friends. Trancer was involved with interesting events. Trancer -did- have insane decking skills, including rolling such a high cracking skill check on the first grid hack ever that it broke the system (throwback, Johnny!). But there was nothing to use them on. Trancer got bored, turned into a badass combat character like everyone else, had great roleplay -- that's why he's A Somebody. Not because he, like, hacked the planet.

I vent this just so people who may not get it yet get why some folks may get really, really salty about the topic, IC and OOC. Decking may not now or ever be your thing, but it's very much the thing for some of us, and we watch and even join in being happy when everyone else gets fancy new stuff when we've gotten nothing for literally forever, so give us some slack and maybe try to have fun with us. :)

I don't mean that broadly, I mean that specifically.

Why have we added all these other coded systems in the past year and not Grid 3.0? Only Johnny can carry Grid 3.0 over the finish line. More Cooks in the kitchen is just going to make it tougher. Once he is finished, people like me who know web dev are going to be able to update code because the framework is there, but until that point, it's a one man show. And that one man has a family and a real job, and Grid 3.0 requires a ton of dedicated work.

Sindome has existed for 22 years without Grid 3 0. As was mentioned, this topic is about you, the player, not being meta about the Decker's lack of coded skull. We already know Grid 3.0 is important. But until one of us wins the lottery and we can all quit our day jobs, the pace we develop at is the pace we develop at.

I want to say, having interacted with Deckers through my sindome career, I will parrot the advice of everyone here.

Deckers need guidance if they are to do anything beyond the bare basics of grid design and navigation.

Deckers outside of the coded jobs that employ deckers need more of a support network setup for them.

Deckers need more NPC's to look at and model themselves after. Fixers have at least 5 I can think of. Solo's have so many more. There's more fucking racecar drivers that show up on SIC to posture than deckers right now.

Deckers are fucking underpowered code wise, and until they have coded power beyond very minutiae of situations, they will always be disrespected.

Grid3.0's full implementation will help all of these things. But it will not be a panacea, more of a bandage.

Slither gave a bunch of examples. The thing is, these aren't things a decker's player just goes and does. It takes planning, @notes and GM engagement.

"deckers DO have power. We run plots where we manually roll decker skills and give them access to things, and let them do cool stuff, because that's fun and that's stuff the archetype would be able to do if we had a perfectly complete game."

To what extent do GMs currently consider either providing or supporting plots which enable non-coded decker hijinks?

Are these plots always and only GM-driven plots?

To what extent could a player invent, drive and execute a plot like this?

How could a player (and their character) come to know what is thematically and practically possible with their deck?

What is that which "the archetype would be able to do" today, beyond what's codedly implemented?

To what extent are GMs today expected to not waste their time on these and instead wait for the coders to advance the state of the art?

This is a lot of questions, and I do know that manually rolling skillchecks is the smallest part of this kind of work - there is so much more to running a plot and providing a non-automated in-universe result, and a lot of staff time would probably be consumed just to even decide whether a particular exploit is valid, and then contrive ways to communicate the potential viability or unviability back to the PC in question.

Should deckers be plotting ambitiously today? How would a player go about getting this kind of support, if the answer isn't just No?

I hope none of this is sensitive. I do know it's complicated. I think it's worth it to talk out loud about it though, because I feel like it's a little bit too bad that player expectations are probably lower than they could be. I get that GM work in general isn't supposed to be white-boxed. Some of this conversation is relevant beyond decking, too, but I mean to focus on decking.

However, if you are looking for expectations, I can give you the following:

* You will not be guided to what can and can not be done. There is a general guideline of what is and is not allowed that the GMs have. Which I suspect has some flexibility given what plots are required at the time. That is not and likely will never be communicated to you, ICly or OOCly.

* Do not expect to have decking plots/activities rain down on you. If you are happy dealing with what coded support exists along with some moments of really cool stuff, then you will be all right. But it's a lot of work on their end, so in general, you should temper your expectations on frequency on this kind of thing.

As for how to get support. You do so like you do any kind of way you want to engage in the world. You RP out something you wish to do. You make Detailed Notes and/or put in a puppet request. Not everything you do will work or even get a response.

Occasionally, if it is very time sensitive and pertinent to the plot as it's occurring, you could put in an XHELP after noting to say you tried something, but there should be a REALLY good reason to do that other than "I want it now". Additionally, like any topside crime, if your attempt to do something would generate attention while you are doing it, XHELP. "I'm uploading X program into Y network and trying not to be noticed".

But a note like this should get things rolling.

JoeHacker wrote a program to skim 1 chy off every deposit made at [Some financial place].

JoeHacker will upload this program into the ATM at [that place with an ATM]

JoeHacker did this late at night when there were few people available

JoeHacker will try to cover their tracks by writing a routine that fixes balance statements and messes with the [financial place]'s logs.

Then you wait. Sometimes things happen, sometimes you need to put in a puppet request to move the chains.

Hope that helps.

Decker special plots take lots of non-coded GM planning. So if you, the player, can come up with your own plot - something that is realistic, not just a guaranteed win, something that effects and involves a lot of players, something that won't force us to rewrite the whole game world... all of that planning will help take the load off of us. We won't be able to approve everything but we can try to foster as much of it as we can. If you can find ways for your character to push the role without GM to support yourself and engage others then attempt to bring GMs in for those things you want to offer the community of roleplay (understanding that in doing so, your character my "lose"), it will help the staff a lot. This is just being a player who drives plot.

I totally understand if this feels unreachable for some. As players, a lot of the GMs have felt the same way - not understanding how to create plot on the player level. But keep trying. Keep trying to pull back and see the game in a wider scale. Though I enjoy all player stories - even the quiet ones that affect maybe one or two, I often have to shove players to involve others. This introduces risk, which is uncomfortable and often takes more time, but the story travels further in the end.

We have discussed adding a list of viable hacks that can be done by deckers, but it's just a bit difficult to narrow down. If left unchecked, they can also become too OP. Know we all want more for decking, and have some extremely talented people working on more coded support. Its just a dance that is very complex.

Leave us notes on how you see your character - how you are thinking outside the box to enhance the decker role on your own and how it is trickling out to other PCs. Notes are so important.

Sometimes realistically - the GMs just may not have as much time for more in depth guided plot. We struggle with the daily demand of life too but do our best!