Eliminate Cube/Pad Lotto

Sindome isn't Skyrim with players stripping rooms of every wheel of cheese and hoarding health potions for the final boss, and characters acting like this a MUD to be combed for everything that isn't nailed down to collect and sell is no different than farming NPCs for cash or weapons as far as I'm concerned. It's extremely gamey and dumb.

This is essentially exploiting how apartments get emptied after eviction and should be restricted under farming rules, or adjusted so apartments are just emptied properly when vacated.

By 0x1mm at Nov 12, 2022 6:45 PM

While the results can be frustrating, it seems to be a very themely and sensical IC mechanic, not unlike people buying abandoned storage lockers IRL.

If the core issue is the effect on housing options there are ways to tweak certain mechanics. I think the comparison to farming NPCs holds very little water.

It'd be just as logical to me, though, that when gone vacant any items are dumped into the markets (i.e., the landlord selling things off, if they can be arsed).

By JessicaBlue at Nov 12, 2022 11:40 PM

The comparison might be valid if players were realistically purchasing abandoned lockers, but they are not. The existence of weekly rents on full apartments is a gameplay conceit in and of itself, and characters crowing about their latest weekly lootbox rolls on SIC is the furthest thing from sensical unless thematic roleplay has been substituted for chatter from Overwatch 2 lobbies.

By 0x1mm at Nov 13, 2022 12:21 AM

I don't see an issue with this. Dog eat dog world.

By Slither at Nov 13, 2022 7:09 AM

I don't mind hotel lotto, but I tend to agree on pad lotto. Wouldn't your slummy landlord look through your pad once you were evicted? And wouldn't they confiscate your stuff/sell it/put it on the market?

By Bear at Nov 13, 2022 8:16 AM

Pads are cleaned out automatically under that very premise but it doesn't always work.

Someone on the staff took issue with the underlaying concept Slither, since there have been at various points shouts forbidding removing items from lapsed permapads, or removing stock furniture items from apartments.

This seems like subjective enforcement of borderline mechanics, where sometimes characters can openly loot to their hoarding contentment, and other times it's exploiting inactive properties. I think at a minimum this kind of activity should bring heat from property owners when players are bragging about robbing their mob-owned AirBnBs.

By 0x1mm at Nov 13, 2022 10:20 AM

Stuff PCs have installed can be removed, but there are stock items that shouldn't be removed. We @lock those now, so I don't -think- they can be uninstalled. What items are you referring to specifically? Mama Boots the Master Builder has a list of items that should come standard with each pad for us little builders to stick to.

Are you wanting all PC installed items to be cleared on eviction?

By Tangerine at Nov 13, 2022 10:41 AM

My understanding was that evicted apartments get cleaned out by the system and what got left behind was limitations in that code, not an intentional lootbox mechanic for players to take advantage of.

If this is supposed to represent the landlords coming in to empty places out, I don't think it makes a lot of sense for them to forget about tens or hundreds of kay of items, or to be unbothered by habitual daily renters making off with it.

I struggle to see the distinction between players farming inactive cubes and pads for unculled items, versus farming NPCs for excess chyen or extra items they accrue.

By 0x1mm at Nov 13, 2022 11:00 AM

It may not be something that can be addressed right away but I'll poke Boots about it. Thanks for bringing it up :)

By Tangerine at Nov 13, 2022 1:00 PM

I appreciate it Tangerine. I think ideally pads just get emptied when evicted, but until then I do think help farming really ought to apply to this kind of activity:

"First, the ratio at which you target NPCs vs PCs. In general, you should not be targeting NPCs for dipping/mugging/stealing/killing/whatever significantly more often than PCs. If we look at the source of your character's wealth and it mostly comes from your character taking things from NPCs, it's a problem."

Since pad lotto deliberately and exclusively involves targeting NPC-held properties without PC owners, then I don't think it is meaningfully different than farming inactive vehicles or farming NPCs or other kinds of prohibited exploit profiteering.

By 0x1mm at Nov 13, 2022 1:34 PM

I never considered apartment lotto before this, or even know it's an exploitable mechanic. I think in some ways, this thread is going to cause more people to attempt it if there's something to be gained.

That said, this seems less of a strictly NPC abuse issue and more of a hybrid case. The only reason there's something to take advantage of at all is because a PC died/lapsed/etc.

All things being equal (Treat NPCs like PCs) this looks like it rides the center of the road in terms of farming. A PC lost their belongings when rent lapsed. An NPC was lazy and didn't get to it before another PC rented it. Like Slither said, dog eat dog.

But you know what? Sounds like that could be solid foundations for landlords to follow up with pads that were rented before cleaning them.

"Oh hey, choom. Your owe me for that shit you sold. Nothing in the lease agreement said it was yours. That'll be ten kay extra. Enjoy your fucking stay."

By RatchetEffect at Nov 14, 2022 1:50 PM

Is this really an ongoing issue that needs to be mitigated, or is it more like a few players got a one time come up because they took advantage of a considerable number of long time players getting suddenly banned recently?

My suspicion that it is the latter case. Cube Lotto is not exactly a secret. It probably pays off less frequently than it results in a jackpot.

While writing this and putting some thought into it, it almost seems like exploiting ooc information for IC gain. The ooc knowledge that a whole bunch of players got banned and won't be coming back, then going around and looting the specific apartments of previously highly active characters.

By Hek at Nov 14, 2022 5:57 PM

I frequently check apartment lease times for various reasons though, and now I'm constantly thinking about apartment lotto as a result of this thread.

But yeah, @hek. Cube lotto is standard for sure. *Apartment* lotto, never even occurred to me. I just thought stuff was auto scrubbed from the room before eviction period ended.

From staff response though, it sounds like that's how it's supposed to be. So maybe the takeaway here is, "Whatever player x y z was doing before now, note that it isn't supposed to be a mechanically achievable pursuit, apartment lotto." So you know? Now it's known. Just stop until it's fixed.

By RatchetEffect at Nov 16, 2022 5:18 PM

Sounds like the staff is very busy and cleaning out the old membership/perma pads didn't happen before they were reset. I'm not sure why these didn't get automatically washed the same way all apartments do, as they would technically use the same system. Sounds to me like it might be characters who had the combos to those places going in and cleaning them out in a semi-IC manner before GMs/Builders could get to it.

By Slither at Nov 22, 2022 6:43 AM

-	Phexion	15m
-	Hippo	22m
-	Emily	28m	I lost myself, in the dark charade.
-	Sivartas	9s	Busy training guard scorpions in the desert
-	Hivemind	8m
-	zxq	31m
-	QueenZombean	2m	Singing the song that doesn't end, yes it goes...
-	Terrible_the_duck	21s
-	Wonderland	11m
a	Mench	2m	Doing a bit of everything.
And 31 more hiding and/or disguised

Eliminate Cube/Pad Lotto Is stupid and gamey

Eliminate Cube/Pad Lotto
Is stupid and gamey