This is a pilot policy, we will revert back to current standards if players abuse the new ones. Please do not take this as carte blanche to bomb Grunen's at 4AM, remember to note down your actions and respect the ambient population. Thank you.
Hek: NPC's are characters too.
We will find edge cases and deal with them as needed, we appreciate your patience as we test this out.
We're loosening this policy because the player base has shown a lot of maturity and we think you all are able to self police this. Topside crime has also been a thing that has been brought up a lot in town halls and office hours. It's obvious people want to have more agency to do it, and we want you all to do it, we just want it to be done smart, or, if done un-smart, for that to be an intentional act due to you playing your characters to theme/stats. And that means being prepared for the repercussions obivously.
Seriously so excited. Thanks so much for trusting us with this! The game is going to be so much more explosive. Crazy! Awesome!
That is great. Thanks for the clarification.
I asked for newer players who might not be totally clear on the definition of "character" when it comes to policies like this.
When in doubt, don't is likely to produce a lot of 'don't' when there's doubt and uncertainty about what is actually kosher. I don't think there's much incentive to experiment when people get punished for getting it wrong.
Every week there's a substantial amount of very public punishment doled out against players, whether fines, executions, behavior chips, et cetera. When so much of player's impressions of crime are seeing other players getting punished for crime, it's inevitable that there's a cooling effect there -- regardless of how much it's being encouraged behind the scenes.
I think ultimately players will do the things they see work, and avoid the things they see fail, and that encouraging them to do something that is so often shown to fail (and is often invisible when it succeeds). I think if staff really want to see players stepping up what they're trying to do topside, the optics on the benefits/punishments are probably going to have to change as well.
Speaking radically, I think you could dispense with the Hall entirely and make Corporations responsible for their own security and you'd see the dynamic gameplay topside blossom, but more moderately I think a lessening of the perception of the Hall as an all-seeing, all-punishing, ultra-authoritarian monolith would much improve player's willingness to undertake things topside.
For every extreme punishment there are usually dozens if not more of little ones leading up. People shouldn't use big consequences as reasons to deter them from having t heir characters attempt crime. Crime is committed and people do get away from it, from little to small. Making bad planning and strategic decisions doesn't mean it's inevitable your character will be caught, it just means they made some bad decisions and should try to improve.
I wrote this in xooc when the CRIME UPDATE was announced, because I saw a lot of people rejoicing about how this was great for the game (and make no mistake, it's great for the game if people take advantage of it) and how finally they could have their characters do crime topside: I didn't want us to rewrite history and ignore the fact that committing crime was always possible, you just had to xhelp for it. I didn't feel people disliked that because they didn't want to wait, but because I felt a lot of people, whether conscious or subconscious, didn't like it because they felt it increased their odds of being caught since they had to work with staff beforehand. And now that we have CRIME UPDATE and there's still not a great increase of crime per staff's own words, I think that's been proven to be the case in some ways. A lot of people don't want to take risks because they've convinced themselves it's a foregone conclusion that they'll be caught.
End of the day what I'm trying to say is that the policy change is great, but it's only going to be taken advantage of when the players of would-be criminal characters change the culture of their thought. I don't think removing the WJF or lessening the WJF does this, because that's a train of thought which will always exist until the culture changes: it's okay to lose, it's okay to get consequences, all of this drives RP so why not see if you'll actually get caught before deciding it's a foregone conclusion.
I want to say that I'm largely in agreement with Reefer on this. It is very safe, and very easy to get very large sums of money using codified systems in place that offer a perhaps excessive amount of player protection when doing so. And being real here, ganging has almost zero barriers to entry to getting access, unlike many other codedly and structurally protected jobs.
If we want desperate, downtrodden people organizing and doing crimes topside, there has to be both thematic and economic reasons to do so. Corpies have, and will continue to have relatively large bounties on them for extended periods of time simply because the risk/reward calculation is skewed. If you're a moderately equipped solo who is able to take down say, one corporate target and one corpsec agent, then the chances are, over time, that you'll probably break even on your gains and losses. However, while doing so, you'll also be accruing a rather punishing criminal record (when caught) that will block you from significant portions of the game in your character's future, and can result in the most powerful and wealthy (themeatically or otherwise)_people in the game having reasons to kill you.
Tl;DR version here is that it's not so easy to get away with doing crimes topside, and the potential profits aren't so high that they offset the potential losses in many circumstances. Landing expensive jewelry and clothing won't make up for losing your life and/or running the risk of getting chipped.
Storm:
Staff can't police every action you take, nor do we want to. Just because you have the ability to walk up on some dangerous NPC's without us animating them and fucking you up doesn't mean you should. Just because you don't have to xhelp unless you're attacking someone topside doesn't give you carte blanche to do whatever you like, anywhere else, ESPECIALLY if what you're doing makes no sense at all.
We will get really mean about this if you push us to but you probably wouldn't like that. Please respect ambience and NPC's. Thank you.
Slither:
Despite the calls to change this, and the positive response it has gotten... we aren't seeing a ton of topside crime. Step up your game people.
Being told to step up on one hand and also being warned that stepping wrong are going to bring the staff down on you is going to introduce some doubt and caution into players, I think it's fair to say.
The farming guidelines are somewhere where there are clear and unambiguous rules about what is allowed, and that's something I've rarely noticed as being an issue as a result. Sometimes it's been abused, but anyone who knew the guidelines would know they were abusing it.
I know there is a general reluctance to spell things out, but I think unless players are told explicitly what is and is not allowed, there will probably less engagement than there might be.
I think it's just a result of timing. GMs would have a better overall view of who's capable of what, but my viewpoint suggests it's not hesitation or unwillingness that's preventing PCs from taking full advantage of this. (Yes I know this is ambiguous).
Over time, and as new PCs rotate in, I think we'll see better use of the looser rules.
