Public LiteTerms

I think that at the moment there's too much of an investment for Decker characters, with nowhere near enough payoff, and while I know that's going to be fixed in Grid 3.0, I think a way to get more people actually using more of the Grid's features would be to have public-access LiteTerms. Sort of like StreetTerms, but, uh, lite.

And, of course, because of the obvious advantages, I also think that the amount of these public-use terminals should be fewer than the amount of regular StreetTerms, and possibly have a fee to use them, which could charge either a person's SIC, or require an up-front cash payment.

Overall, I think it'd be a good way to help newer characters get into that sort of shit, which'll certainly be getting more popular after Grid 3.0 releases.

By Baguette at Feb 20, 2019 7:34 AM

Public access LiteTerms would be an absolute catastrophic move for NLM from an IC perspective. Imagine all the script kiddies they'd be giving access to all those hackable nodes to.

Just hustle a bit, they're meant to be a job specific, fairly expensive item. Making them publicly accessible would be a big bad.

By Ryuzaki4Days at Feb 20, 2019 7:36 AM

I guess that's true, though the public terminals could be worse than regular LiteTerms at decking, with IC console restrictions that only experienced deckers would know how to get around, or something.

Plus, at the moment, if someone's paying that much for a LiteTerm, they're probably gonna be a little disappointed with what they get.

By Baguette at Feb 20, 2019 7:43 AM

I've owned terms in the past as deckers, and they are very under-whelming. But, that's a grid issue that's being addressed.

The only reason I'm against this as a whole is the entire fact that ICly, NLM would never allow public access to administrative Grid systems. It's why Lites are expensive. That, and in doing so, you'd most likely render Lites an almost entirely useless item.

I would love to see more decker items, though. And eventual Matrix implementation, with proper Ic reasoning for it making a return to Withmore, of course.

By Ryuzaki4Days at Feb 20, 2019 10:07 AM

You're assuming Quicks, Lites, and Public terms are the only things available.

Anyone who uses a weapon gets "completely and irrevocably shafted" out of using their primary weapon skill.

The whole point is to have something to work forward to and a physical item to exploit if you want to screw with a decker.

Honestly, the idea of a public Lite is hilarious and would also make [REDACTED] obsolete.

Maybe deckers should explore more options ICly, rather than assuming Lites are the end all be all of griddling.

By HolyChrome at Feb 28, 2019 9:23 AM

I think the fact that decking is all about finding/sharing/stealing/hiding secrets and the risk implied with those acts should be enough of a clue that there's more to it than what people think.

You know where to get a Lite retail. You know how much they cost. I don't see how the ground level could be anymore obvious in that regard.

By HolyChrome at Feb 28, 2019 9:33 AM

I think the primary issue here is that there are immediate and obvious benefits to being good at things like fighting, stealth, or shooting.

There aren't any immediately obvious benefits to being a decker, because the systems that are evident seem more or less irrelevant to the IC world at large.

I understand that you may have more context, but a new player definitely doesn't especially since they seem to be rare, and as a result there are not so many people who understand much IC past the basics.

Frankly speaking, decking skills seem more or less utterly worthless ICly or OOCly as a new player. Just saying.

By hello_marmalade at Feb 28, 2019 9:39 AM

Frankly speaking, decking skills seem more or less utterly worthless ICly or OOCly as a new player.

I couldn't agree with this more. As someone who has played for a bit, decking skills still seem worthless to me and I have had at least one very effective decker character. Unfortunately, the amount of GM time and ingenuity needed to succeed as a decker who doesn't work for a major corporation is a little daunting.

I have faith Grid 3.0 will alleviate a lot of these issues.

Going back to the talking point on Public LiteTerms - I don't think this is needed in the least. It doesn't really get to the real problems deckers face currently. As it stands, the price of admission to be a decker is 10-20k. That is in line with any other skillset.

There's other threads which go into depth about these issues and the solution is clear. Remove/change objects which indulge decker-like abilities with none of the corresponding skills. Have Modded Quickterms and LiteTerms be the key object to leverage these abilities depending on skill-level...and add more expensive/difficult modifications so there's various specialties a decker can embrace so it's not a one-concept fits all.

In short, the grid is one of the most crippling aspects of the game. It takes the CYBER out Cyberpunk and we all know it. The GM's are working to rectify it and just be patient. We all have been for years. :-)

By ReeferMadness at Feb 28, 2019 11:13 AM

Fully agree with Reefer. Quicker/easier access to LiteTerm capability doesn't really change the fact that decking is quite useless without serious GM support. It's why I am so hyped about Grid 3.0 and wary of anything that would distract from it. I am happy to wait on combat updates, tailoring changes, chybernetics changes and all that if it gets Grid 3.0 off the ground even one day sooner. Same with any changes or fixes to Grid 2.0.

By Grey0 at Mar 1, 2019 3:37 AM

a	Mench	1h	Doing a bit of everything.
-	BitLittle	45m
And 12 more hiding and/or disguised

Public LiteTerms HACK THE PLANET!

Public LiteTerms
HACK THE PLANET!