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No skill UE at character creation
Build the body not the ability

New players are at a big disadvantage with character creation, because they have no idea what skills will be useful or which will enable them to do the things they want to do. Depending on how active they are, it makes be weeks or months before they even end up at square one of where they thought they were going to be when they started.

Before entering the game they're also given sometimes outdated or misleading information on how to build their characters (one of the archetypes suggests taking heavy weapons for example, others suggest some very questionable skills), and they are only able to determine what is accurate after the fact.

I see this initial UE investment on skills (as I recall it's about a month's worth of full time play) downplayed a lot as a drop in the total UE bucket, but I think that's only really true for veteran players who are planning out the whole multi-year UE investment of their characters.

I think for a lot of new players, the idea that they can discover they are a month or more behind where they wanted to be, on a new complex game that is already asking a lot of them in terms of investment, it can seem pretty dispiriting.

I think it would make a lot of sense to have players build a character's stats in creation, and then kick them into the world to learn how to adapt from there. New characters could be given bonus UE after creation, whether a greater amount per day, or the whole new character chunk right away, or perhaps after a week of playing so they can get an idea of what they like and what direction they want to go in.

I'd be behind the idea of giving new players a month of double or triple UE gains per day to build and fast-track their character while also getting actual practical experience in-game.

Just so long as they're not introduced in a 'use it or lose it' or 'you must login today to get your limited-availability login rewards!'

I agree in several ways.

First: No stat is useless. Every single stat and every single stat point has always had an explainable, eventual to me and will never be a waste. Skills not so much.

Second: there absolutely is a lack of correctly reflected, up-to-date information about skills and expectations for them (the blurb on Deckers becomes ever more questionable as other skills seem far less relevant or featured than the many things the Grid is used for by now, in comparison, that don't get a blurb).

Third: Advantages are for skills, and advantages come with hard downsides. Knowing more before choosing them is better.

Some help with getting started on skills once that point is reached could be nice, but could also be as simple as introducing curved initial levels that cost less than 0.5

Oh yeah. The archetypes and general starting character information really needs to be updated or made perhaps a little more representative of actual IC things.

We should also probably be treating the information on those pages as idiot-proof, because it's certainly easy enough to look at all the skills and stats listed, and just dump all your UE into everything listed.

Which would be.. really quite far away from ideal in practice.

Agree with updating archetypes. Like, maybe notes on how many viable jobs each archetype has connected to it.
Actually- I retract part of what I said. It looks like the skills have been heavily pruned down from what they used to be. Shows me for not checking before posting to see if they'd been updated.
Total noob hot take:

- yeah this might be cool

- what is killing me most is always having your name displayed and not being able to change your name. In a world all about branding and adverts, rolling out of chargen with a fugly name is a one way ticket to a suicide booth so far as I can surmise. Flexibility in UE for new players might be nice, but also, noobs are going to make tons of mistakes like bad naming which possibly isn't preventable.

Elysian, there's nothing anywhere in the game that makes you tell characters that your name is your character object name.

It's somewhat common for people to go by nicknames, or use things other than their object ID name. Many people go by their SIC handle, which is very mutable.

I am aware of this but it doesn't change the fact that if your name is "Butthole" people are going to have to type "to butthole" when they roleplay with you which might ever so subconsciously shape their opinion of you. I am aware that it would be considered "metagaming" to hold such biases, but the thing about biases is they cannot by definition be controlled. Other games obscure names by default and that is 100% better for roleplay but I will adjust!
My favorite food in Sindome is popcorn because I can eat it by typing "eat butt". I don't think people are going to hate you for your name unless you make it intentionally metagamey to spell to target commands on you like jhKXzy or something. This is getting off topic though.

On topic: Trimming all the obsolete old job titles (most of which never were filled out/clickable hyperlinks anyway) is also worthwhile.

Imagine you put all your starting skill UE into heavyweapons...
I'm in favor of this because it also help broaden the scope of character gen (and just generally be more fun). If you ever want to make a more experienced character, like someone in their fourties, you have to hamstring yourself and make up awkward excuses as to why they suck. I understand characters start weak so you start their story at the beginning and not come in with a 'premade' character, but I do think the game takes it too far. I've always hated the idea that immies (mechanically) were useless, it's super gamey and immersion breaking (and even more dumb since the vast majority of characters were immies at one point. You never stop being an immie, but people play it off like that as soon as someone starts getting contacts and skills). Let immies be useful and unpredictable because nine times out of ten, it boils down to 'hah they're an immy so I know I can beat them in combat' and that's just... Boring and awful for everyone involved.

Let the dumbfuck mugger jump that immie they've never seen before, only to realize that immy used to be in a yakuza family and used their crate money to save up for a machete. It shifts the balance a little and makes interactions more diverse. All that to say, I think it's a great idea, especially since skills are easier to raise than stats, so new players can at least feel like they're progressing more when they put points into it, instead of having to dump like a week's worth of UE to go up one letter in a stat.

Of course, I think it's also worth discussing if this would make people more prone to making characters and getting them killed off if things go wrong, because they know they can jump back into another quicker than before. I don't think they would, because there's still a huge difference between say, someone who's been here 3 months and someone who's been here a year. And Sindome is 90% contacts, anyway.

@elysian

There are also IC ways to change that coded name. If it really bothers you, look into it. But mostly, realise at least a few players (and NPCs) have coded names that NOBODY knows them by (even though it accidentally slips and players use it in dialogue by mistake, but everyone just sort of waves it off generally.) I played one such character myself, where I'm pretty sure no one really knew their coded name IC and I never had issues.

As someone who spent UE on Skills exclusively for maybe the first 3 months, I agree that there needs to be far more emphasis on the importance of Stats.
Idea.

A section preceding point-spending that gives you premade options.

"Choose an archetype to view info on it, or create your own."

1) Ripper Doc

2) Medic

...etc.

20) Custom

When you select an archetype, you get a blurb from the archetypes page: (https://www.sindome.org/archetypes/)

Then you're asked if you want to select this archetype. Choose yes and you automatically get your stats assigned to you based on the skills & stats listed there.

So Ripper Doc gets 1/3 of stat points into INT, PCP, AGL

Make major skills count 3/4 and minor skills count 1/4 of skill points.

Ripper Doc gets 3/4 skill points in medical and bio tech, divided evenly. And 1/4 skill points in forensics and chemical, divided evenly.

Etc.

fwiw I agree with Sly and would have appreciated more of a heads up about how vital stats are
Alternatively blacklist certain advanced skills from character creation, that new players will have no conceivable way of knowing how they are used IC, or that they may require specific jobs or extremely expensive equipment.

Compared to other cyberpunk media some skills may work very differently (rigging) or be far less ubiquitous at street-level than might be expected (piloting, firearms) or require expensive equipment that is not obvious at character creation (chemical, forensics, bio tech), or have in-progress development (all decker skills).

A reluctance to engage with new players is often driven by their characters so often perming or vanishing in the first two weeks. Although part of that is likely just players deciding Sindome isn't for them, I do think some of that comes from learning IC knowledge about how skills work/what is actually good and sometimes deciding to build their character differently based on that knowledge.

A player who spends a few days learning how to start out strong with their skills, and then booths to start again with that OOC knowledge, will often have a coded advantage, both immediately and in the long run, over players who stick out their rough starts. I think it's worthwhile to consider providing some information to help make people feel like they're not making bad choices that contribute to them giving up.