[Town Hall] Summer 2021 Topic Thread
Summer Topics! Give 'em here!

OVERVIEW

Hola compadres, it's that time again. The Summer 2021 Town Hall has been announced and now Mother Mench UwU requires you all to band together and tell us what you'd like to hear about in this Town Hall. This is your opportunity to give us your feedback and let us know what you'd like to discuss and hear about during the meeting. Help us, help you. Let's make this Town Hall the best one yet!

TOPIC SUGGESTIONS

You can respond to this thread with your suggestions, however, PLEASE in the interest of keeping this easy to manage, do not engage in discussion about the topics here. If you want to discuss them, create a relevant thread in the correct part of the BGBB and note that not every topic will make the cut but we'll do our best to get as much in as possible. We Promise xx

SCHEDULE

The town hall is THREE HOURS long.

It begins with speeches from the admin, who offer updates on their respective areas of the game (Building, Coding, Operations, etc.).

Then we move into the discussion section, where we run through an agenda of player & admin submitted topics.

We then close it out and people can leave or stick around to chat with the various admin.

WHAT TO SUGGEST

If you're stuck thinking for suggestions to give, here are some general topic categories that you can think about:

Code Improvements - What could be changed code-wise to improve the game?

In Character Topics - What can we do In Character to make Sindome a better place for all?

Out of Character Topics - How can we help you, the players feel more at home in Sindome?

If you're still stuck, then take a look at the previous topics thread

WARNING

Please do not reveal any IC info in this thread. Again, this is just for posting ideas for topics (you can explain your topic in as much depth as you want, but don't get into it with others about the topics they post). Create a new BGBB thread to discuss something if you want.

PRE-READ INFO

If this is your first town hall, please refer to the posts below for a list of previous posts relating to the most recent Town Hall.

Winter Town Hall Agenda

Winter Town Hall Log

Winter Town Hall Topic Thread

(Edited by Mench at 10:12 pm on 7/31/2021)

If alittlelonger is referring the promotion time for job grades, that's also what I wanted to propose as a topic. I think it's a place where some community feedback could be useful, since right now I hear a lot of dissatisfaction.

There's been a discussion in the 'Desperation in Withmore' thread about how stigmatized it is to be a mixer who strives to become a corporate citizen, or to be a mixer that even does business with corporate citizens. I personally think that working with a corporation as a mixer should not be so stigmatized as it is, and at the moment, the mix is displaying a surprising amount of class consciousness.

This probably stems from recent real life political tensions heightening everyone's IRL awareness of how awful corporations are, which can bleed into the game. But while I agree with anti-corp sentiment OOCly, it's pretty on-theme for a cyberpunk game for the vast majority of people to not give a shit. As long as it's an opportunity to make them money, who cares? I'll point to Shadowrun. The underworld never really looks down on Shadowrunners for doing mercenary jobs for corporations. Why would they? It's a hustle like anything else. Get yours.

There's been an expression of frustration about how getting caught even talking to corporate citizens can mean a death sentence for your character, and how being a corporate asset is often equated to being a WJF informant, or doing solo jobs for corporations is taboo now.

+1 to Batko. We need to address this culture of 'performative' callouts and the trend of dogpiling on mixers who have biz relationships with corpies. It's gotten to the point where mixers are wary of taking jobs from corpies because they know they'll be eviscerated and killed over and over if anybody finds out. When -literally- the inherent role of corpies in SD is to extend jobs to Mixers and channel chyen into the Mix. I've seen this black-and-white rhetoric from NPCs on SIC as well as oldbies and it is killing all cooperative competition between topside and the Mix.

I'd like to discuss the following:

1) That we take a long, hard look at the role corporate & mix players are supposed to have in the game, and how the mechanics of the game don't align with the class fantasy we're supposed to be roleplaying.

2) A few months ago in XOOC, staff mentioned that some new hustle was getting added for topside characters to go out and be more active and start bringing home the soy vacon. What's the status on that project?

3) Clique-busting: There seems to be some efforts made in the past year to bust up some IC cliques, with mixed results. Is this going to continue? And will be be balanced among both topside and mix cliques?

Can the staff give their perspective on the current status of ganging. There is a pretty popular thread full of various opinions on what the issue is. I wanna know if the staff even thinks there is an issue in the first place. And if so what do they what players in ganger roles to do?

I'd like us to revisit the discussion on cyberlimbs being made cheaper, more commonplace, worse, etc. This was a discussion in Town Hall Summer 2020 and the idea seemed to be very popular with players. I think even a limited implementation of cheaper, even non-functional chrome would unleash a lot of RP potential.

Alternative weapons to martial arts and brawling skills would be pretty interesting to discuss. I think there's been a lot of suggestions both recently and in years past, from spiked knuckles, shock knuckles, to tonfa and nunchaku. Cybernetic upgrades were discussed recently in the combat chrome thread and that would also be interesting to hear about, as HerreraOutlaw said!

Also, I think revisiting the sever command and discussing what everyone thinks of it so far, as well as how it can be improved, would be an interesting discussion. I feel like this command can help drive conflict a lot, but in a lot of ways, it is difficult or obtuse to use.

I've talked about this briefly before, but with all the new crafting and makeshift stuff being added into the game (prog3s, craftable radio rigs, craftable robot parts), I feel like addition of very low end, crappy counterparts of items needed for specific archetypes to function could exist to be found/made in game for either free with a bit of work/pretty cheap. This tier of item would be competetively unviable (as in oldbies and midbies shouldn't be able to make use of the items to high effectiveness) and would only serve for lower end characters to fuck around with the mechanics of their archetype and generally experiment with it. It could create another layer of conflict which exists really only in the super lowbie tier where different immies of an archetype try to compete with each other by using their shitty gear without risk of getting stomped by an angry oldbie when they're just trying to use their skills.

Something that I've already suggested are things like low end chem benches to make bad drugs.

Another thing that I wanted to discuss that is semirelated to the above topic is the viability of more prolific scavenging/crafting for free/cheaper items, and whether that's healthy for the game or not.

An analysis of trends that limit player interaction, cause player frustration, and sometimes losing players:

-The order of puppets, having GM approval before player interactions particularly in the hiring process. The idea of handing over more control to players as well. This is looking at a large number of players stuck waiting for a character absent that forces them into limited play, sometimes only to be rejected after 1-2 month's mostly sitting around.

- Respecting time investment. Players who spend significant time building or setting up a plot only to have their investment completely voided by an interruption.

- Allowing for counter plotting. There are examples of characters catching hostile actions of other players but not being given the time to act against the threat before facing terminal repercussions.

- Insuring the loser isn't forced out of plot. There are examples of players working through NPCs and the RP being one sided allowing the initiator to reap the benefits while the other side recieves only the punishment without any follow up to keep them in the game.

Last call for topic submissions, tonight is the last chance to get your topic ideas in, the deadline is tonight!