Is rent too high?
A discussion on rent.

This is a discussion on rent and whether it seems to high or not. I haven't been playing for very long, but as a newer player I've felt that a lot of places have quite high rent, and frankly it feels like a massive money sink (coupled with the 10k limit, I will not go into that again as I have started a discussion on that before already) without generating too much RP.

The main points I have is:

#1: I personally feel that if you don't want to, or can't spend on a membership, you are definitely playing at a major disadvantage as free rent, especially in more middling to expensive areas can net you a lot of cash. As far as I know, the membership is meant to be more of a donation, rather than a pay to win button. Without membership, you are basically chained to the game in order to make enough to afford rent in some places to not lose your gear/chy/items, which I don't think is a very healthy way of playing. Of course, I was unable to pay for membership due to PayPal being a bitch, so this point may be heavily biased.

#2: All that chy that's spent on rent could be used to drive other RP. You could afford to save up more for that piece of gear, pay people more to do jobs without worrying as much, and be more willing to risk more without the constant nagging feeling that you might not have enough for this week's rent. It also allows more chy to flow around players instead of getting removed from the game, which may or may not help the economy (this I am not sure on). Of course, the counterpoint to this is that the high rent may actually be an RP creator, by forcing people to do more things for chy, or finding ways of cutting down the costs.

A suggestion for this could be slashing prices on places that focus fully on just being a safe place to sleep, while keeping apartments with benefits (better security, better facilities, etc, if they exist) expensive so that you are paying more for the mechanical benefit of a place.

Consider, you can have roomies, or sleep in hidden places people rarely go. I know lots of nooks and crannies, and you can find them too. Housing does generate RP, whether used as a meeting spot, safehouse, business, what have you. And the scarcity of it is... Well, the city is overcrowded. Millions of millions are crammed here, and housing is not readily there. Make some connections and try to work around this very cyberpunk reality

I like the idea of including cheaper, one room pads in the larger apartment complexes like Guevara and Ashlin Crown. I feel like there are way too many expensive apartments all over the place, with only one cheap option for newer players available.

From the perspective of somebody that is newer here, I think the ability to pay real money for your mud rent really takes away from the struggle that is cyberpunk rp. I also think the rent on most places in the slums are steep. Reflection of real life I suppose.

This raises the question of large membership pads, which I believe there is a demand for.

There are a plethora of location you can live for free and are designed as such, but best practice is to use a locker in conjunction with them.

@0xmm The problem is, newer players have no idea where the low rent places are aside from the very obvious ones, especially with the find out IC policy the game has. A lot of details are obfuscated and many people save for long time players may not know of the existence of these places.

This discussion is mainly focused on newer players as well, who probably don't know too much about the inner workings of the system (myself being one of them.)

So rentals are sort of a landmine that lurks under the surface of SD.

I have always been of the opinion that players should be limited to a single unit rental at a time, and that memberships should only be allowed to be applied to the most expensive housing units in their respective sectors (expensive, but still medium pads, for clarity.)

Point one exists because extremely gamey emergent gameplay has become meta-popular behavior among the population. Things like playing cube lotto and apartment lotto don't contribute to a healthy game environment. I remember a few months ago when the playerbase count was the lowest it's been in years, I ran into a situation whereby every single cube on red was rented. This literally should not ever happen unless people are doing this behavior.

Point two exists because it's overwhelmingly frustrating to try and rent the actually affordable units only to find every unit in the complex filled with memberships. You know what contributes to player burnout? Having to spend hours a week 'hustling' just to pay a 5-7k/wk. rent when you're a mixer making a 1-3k/wk. salary. We should be focusing on driving roleplay as a community and not doing brainless, boring automated income stream farming. People have fixed availability. Less time farming == more time available for RPing.

Finally, there's two ugly aspects that contribute to rental issues in SD. One is the obvious: That membership is a very pay-to-win advantage. Depending on what you do and where you live, you can easily double your weekly income on your character by swiping your CC. It adds up and is sort of a big deal when external social pressures drive IC gameplay (I.E. You live in the cheap housing, ew! Fake corpie!)

The other is that perma-pads suffer from month and/or years-long password sharing with seemingly zero checks and balances in place to counteract this behavior. I've seen a perma-pad get used for years after the player quit because of this. It's honestly not fair to the non-paying players, and it's equally unfair to the paying members as well. There's been groups of characters who share pad details as well, with some characters having access to five or more permanent pads simultaneously. It's just silly and should be addressed at some point.

"I don't understand why nearly the entirety of your set weekly income should be going to just rent"

If you're looking at apartments in the 7000c+ range these are representative of the best housing that exists in Red Sector, spacious to the point of luxury for an ultra crowded slum. Cube hotels can be paid off for five months with a week's income, and despite the 'hotel' name are completely functional as proper housing.

In a more abstract way, housing is more or less the most universally appealing reward mechanism for players. It serves as an mark of in-character progression in all sorts of careers, as a reward for supporting the game (past and present in various ways), and as one of the main ways that a character can carve out their own personalized slice of the city to make their own, if only in a small way sometimes.

So while making all, or most, pads affordable and accessible to new characters would mean everyone has a lot more chyen to spend, characters also suddenly have far fewer reasons to need to earn it as well since rent (along with memory updates and SIC bills) are the main persistent chyen sink that motivates characters both in IC terms and OOC terms to hustle and progress their characters to try to make it.

That and also memberships would flatline.

"Except there's a spacial limit, not only for items but people, and afaik you cannot install things in them. To say they're completely functional as proper housing is simply false. They're fine in a pinch, that's it."

Also true of all rooms (in terms of space limitations) just the quantity that varies but this doesn't make them any less meaningfully safe housing. One of my characters lived in a cube for five months or something and not for lack of any other options, they're incredibly convenient in a few key ways.

It's true cubes are not full pads and don't have every function that apartments do, but the original complaint pointed to new characters lacking any cheap single room options, which is what I'm pointing out isn't really the case. There being no minimalist inexpensive options and there being only very limited inexpensive full-sized pad options are really two different complaints. The former would definitely be a real problem, whereas the latter I'm not really convinced is a gameplay problem so much as something that would make things easier.

Is easier better from a bird's eye perspective on overall gameplay? I am not sure. To me it feels like something that feels better because players love housing and having access to the type they want, but may actually be much worse because it depreciates the value of in-game housing rewards for corporations and factions, depreciates the value of paying memberships which is likely to make them decrease, and reduces the amount of conflict over the choice pads.

Still it's an interesting discussion and I will link this thread in the future anytime someone says the Mix is too rich.

After pondering the responses in this thread, I think to simplify my issue with rent is not so much the cost of rent as it is the pay-to-win aspect of donations covering your rent. I understand a gated apartment complex in red sector can be expensive because you are paying for multiple rooms and the security, but as far as I understand you can rent one of these rooms, then donate $20 and have the apartment for six months in your 2000 chyen a week salary. It's just...weird? It also seems to be the meta. Again newer player perception.

I wasn't suggesting anything nefarious. I am saying it's weird to interact with people who have this rental leg-up and couldn't afford it otherwise from an RP perspective and likely takes away from the concept of "the struggle". That's it.

Honestly, the game needs more single-room apartments. Not cube hotels, apartments. It's an important distinction, and it's a big leap to go from cubes to a 5,000c/w apartment. Those aren't affordable to most people, especially with how Mix income got nerfed in recent years. Having MANY affordable single-room apartments is important, in my opinion; it's very themely for people to use these cheaper spaces as safe-rooms for their operations and such, but the scarcity lends to newbies almost never getting their hands on those apartments.

When I first started playing, affordable housing being difficult to find in Red was one of the main factors that got me to start donating. I'm fine with supporting the game, especially now that I don't rely on the donation pads, but it really did feel like a buy-in to actually start playing the game at the time, for someone with no intimate game knowledge or ways to sleaze free safe housing.

As for maintaining healthy funding for the game as 0x1mm mentioned, I think we've actually exceeded that goal by a heavy amount. Every Town Hall has blurbs from Johnny about the finances of the game, and every Town Hall shows that the standing accounts just keep growing, donations far outweigh the costs of running the game, and there's far more than enough in the coffers for emergencies or even extended periods with absolutely no donations. I don't think it'd be depreciating anyone's donations to the game to introduce more low-tier apartment areas.

"So while making all, or most, pads affordable and accessible to new characters would mean everyone has a lot more chyen to spend, characters also suddenly have far fewer reasons to need to earn it as well since rent (along with memory updates and SIC bills) are the main persistent chyen sink that motivates characters both in IC terms and OOC terms to hustle and progress their characters to try to make it."

I mean for this, I don't want to do hustle just solely to dump my cash into what is basically a zero RP cost. I want to hustle so that I can get that new bike, that new chrome, so that I can put together a crew and actually pay them meaningfully. The motivation to have more money is to spend it on things, just because people have lower living bills doesn't mean they -aren't- going to look to spend money, rather they'd be spending money on other things, like gear, cyber, jobs. Those kinds of things other people can take and other people can interact with, you can't really 'steal' someone's pad.

I might be wrong though and people literally only make money for just rent, SIC and updates and just chill in their apartments waiting for the day in day out automated money grind or job handouts from other people. This doesn't seem very fun, but it seems like it's the 'best' thing to do to save money for all your bills, plus getting a small few kay a week to even try and build up to mid level items, such as weapons, armor, vehicles, equipment, etc.

Converting the bottom floors of Guevara and Ashlin Crown to Westinghaus clones could be good, as they're already essentially just big housing blocks. I'm not sure about other sectors though as I haven't been playing very long.

"The motivation to have more money is to spend it on things, just because people have lower living bills doesn't mean they -aren't- going to look to spend money, rather they'd be spending money on other things, like gear, cyber, jobs.

I might be wrong though and people literally only make money for just rent, SIC and updates and just chill in their apartments waiting for the day in day out automated money grind or job handouts from other people."

I feel like there is a certain amount of a stealth argument being made here that more money means more roleplay, While I could see some single room pads coming in the next few years as builder time allows, I don't think it's really been shown conclusively that all players being richer on average makes them more productive on average.

The argument does make some sense in a vacuum (and it is often made) but the thing is, that hasn't always really shown to be the case. In fact there was a pretty dramatic nerf to the abundance of chyen in the game's economy within the last few years after it was argued successfully that overly comfortable player characters were now impossible to motivate, and people weren't taking jobs or hustling for chyen anymore because it was no longer necessary for them to do so, and plotting was too expensive for anyone to afford.

I didn't entirely agree with the reasons behind that push, but I do think a substantial chunk of players are essentially what you're describing in the latter part. Passively minded with a tendency towards social play, and only really strongly motivated towards conflict where there is a very large and tangible upside. There is some pretty good past evidence that the richer players are on average, the more expensive plotting becomes, so it's not necessarily the case that having a few extra kay a week means there's suddenly more thematic roleplay.

Sometimes the question is raised, why not just give everyone more money to run plots and RP with? It comes down to the competitive side of 'cooperative competition', which means in some sense that everyone is competing against everyone else to achieve their goals and make things happen they want, and to be 'the guy'. Being the one who secured the resources to be the fixer and put together the crew and see they're paid, becoming that means rising above the pack either in ambition or plotting or roleplay or achievements or resources.

That doesn't mean you have to be grinding out crates ad nauseum just to run basic plots, but it does mean you should be both 1) always seeking out better means of making money until the things you want come easily, and 2) always be making an effort to raise the level of roleplay and plotting of your character so people want to engage with plots with you no matter what the rewards or punishments are.

I'm cautious about tweaks to the master control knobs of the game's economy based on anecdotes.

Every other month there is strong player advocation for doing that in one direction or another (or both simultaneously): Either the Mix is too rich, or too poor, or corpos don't make enough salary, or their side hustles are too lucrative, or players won't take bounties (either because they're too rich and everyone should be poorer, or bounties are not rich enough and everyone should have more money). Players tend to view the state of the overall economy as an extrapolation of how they are personally doing, and adjustments to the economy as adjustments to their own personal fortunes in the immediate future.

Also my experience has been that neither recessions or economic booms are in isolation directly correlated to how much people are plotting and how much conflict there is (which I think is only really closely correlated to how many highly active players are playing), but conversely I have found that the economic instability that arises from visible adjustments to major game constants in any direction does itself tend to somewhat reduce activity while players adapt to the new status quo. Economic contraction in the short term causes players to become more conscious of maintaining their reserves, whereas economic expansion in the short term causes players to focus more on consolidating those income streams.

It took two years for the effects of the major recession changes to really start to settle out, there is a huge amount of chaotic effects that fewer or greater resources can have over time, and I don't think anyone is able to accurately predict all of them. Sindome's economy differs from a real economy in some unintuitive ways because chyen is not a closed loop and costs are fixed in a way they aren't in real economies. I argued pretty strongly that reductions in the cost of the most expensive gear and cyberware would stimulate overall player activity, which so far seems to be ambiguous or perhaps even leaning towards being wrong. On the other hand reductions in the cost of fuel did seem to be a net positive, but it will take more time to see if that's true overall.

So everyone paying less rent could be good, but it might also end up being worse overall in unexpected ways; either way I wouldn't describe it as a small change. I also think broad brush changes are the most unpredictable in effect, and it's much better to offer incentives and rewards to players from activity we want to see more of, rather than just existence in general (ie. tax the 'vices' and discount the 'virtues').

For instance I do tend to agree with Batko's position that nerfs to street biz several years had the long term knock-on effect of depreciating criminal enterprise compared to blue and white collar hustles, and that more income options from the underbelly that can be fought over might be a good thing because it could produce outcomes where criminality and conflict between criminal elements is more lucrative and therefore more common.

By comparison the obvious outcome of cheaper housing is more characters have pads, and characters have larger pads on average, neither of which are outcomes that I would say really addresses any noticeable gameplay or culture problems that the game has at the moment.

I see the essay justifications as preferrable to the old 'I can't explain why OOC, but you're wrong. FOIC.'

I haven't really seen any evidence shown here that says there's an actual problem.

Characters having in-character struggles are not always game problems. Those struggles are often intentional.

If you ask new players what the solutions to their problems are, they'd say free SIC, no brownouts, and faster levs. The perspective is valuable to a point but often doesn't take in account the not-so-obvious (sometimes very important) positives of what are, at first blush, negative aspects to their experiences in isolation.

I'm swayed by what Batko said but not really in the way you've reframed it here, for one I believe that player counts are actually down per unit of available housing, and the percentage of new players is from what I've seen pretty much the same as it always was, or very slightly down year-on-year.

The current in-progress apartment project has been cooking for a long time and there is, from what I know, eight major other building projects in the pending pipeline split between two people.

By the time any new housing was implemented the situation could be completely different, so I don't think it makes sense to frame this as a snap of the fingers solution that's an easy and simple fix to an urgent problem.

I think a start is if Westinghaus can have memberships applied to them to perhaps stop that to leave for cheap rent for non-membership people.

Another idea is to discourage on an OOC level playing 'apartment lotto' on Westinghaus units. It has less evicted time than the other apartments, but a week can still be a long wait for some if only being put in that stage for the 'apartment lottos'.

Then third I think the idea of exploring a creation of another Westinghaus or even just one or two floors in an existing property being converted to low rent isn't a bad idea.

During these OOC economic times, for those among us who can't play a good deal or who can't pay for membership right now, I think we should look for compromises and solutions.

Additional optional mechanics for a Safehouse type room:

1) They all share rental cooldowns like cubes. One per player simultaneously.

2) Eviction is 24 hours.

Between tunnels, alleys, rooftops and abandoned buildings in the Mix I can think of 10 locations that would be perfect for something like that, and it would add a lot to the cloak and dagger and skulduggery vibe that has previously been somewhat monopolized by the way more elaborate (and often now defunct) permapads.

If the game was designed around everyone staying in cubes or cheap apartments, why is there an excess of empty medium apartments, while Westinghaus is almost always full? Wouldn't it make more sense to have cheaper options of rent much more prevalent than the more expensive options?

I think that there are a few aspects to this discussion and I think that one aspect needs to be stressed again.

It's not JUST about the cost or pads or how many cheap one room pads there are. It's also about the benefits one reaps by paying for a membership and the gap between a paying player and a non-paying member. In my opinion, this gap is not insignificant and is made worse by the number of existing cheap one room pads.

The suggestion that the cost of apartments and the number of cheap one room apartments is all intentional and designed to result in certain play experience is a good one. But I also think that it's a hollow one given that players can simply skip all that by paying for a membership. If these are supposed to he core aspects of the game designed to create a very important hurdle/goal/motivation for characters, then why allow so many to just remove it entirely?

If adjusting housing costs and the number of available cheap apartments is not an option because it's too important to the play experience, then I am open to just removing membership pads as a perk of paid membership so we can all experience the game as intended. Maybe find another way to benefit characters of paying members that don't skew things in their favor so much.

If there's no desire to do this, then I personally feel we need to help make the free vs paid play experience more equal in other ways. There are a lot of options here and I feel some presented in this post are reasonable. Such as more cheap apartments.

Reducing the cost of rent overall? I don't think it's necessary if more cheap apartments are added but if that's the easier solution (probably requires a lot less build time) then I'm down for it. I am open to a lot of solutions aimed at reducing the gap between paid and free players.

I would not call Sindome pay to win. It's not. But I also don't think it's a binary thing. There are degrees. While Sindome is not pay to win, I do think people who pay do get a significant advantage over those who don't.

Text gaming skews older and carries a lot of baggage from the 90s when the internet was a very different place, and so there tends to be more opposition to monetization and mischaracterization of what costs are (ie. developer time so typically being valued at $0/hour).

I see the view of monetization as a necessary (or even outright) evil as essentially archaic and based on faulty assumptions, with 30 years of evidence to show that appropriate monetization not only improves games themselves through better supported development, but actually improves the communities themselves by creating deeper engagement and investment and feelings of attachment and ownership. These psychological elements can be exploited in player-negative ways (for example with ultra addictive gambling/gacha elements) but there are plenty of communities that creative positive outcomes with them as well, and the sudden grassroots rise of paid tabletop roleplaying shows this phenomenon is not limited to digital gaming or niche products on Patreon or Kickstarter. Conversely there are many, many examples of the worst communities, overrun by toxic players and cheating, as being the ones with the lowest possible financial barrier to entry and the widest possible net.

Of course, there is a careful balance to be struck between casting a wide net to bring in new players, measured accessibility to features, and generating revenue to fund development, because all dedicated players start as casual players; but having a healthy percentage of players to paying supporters does (I believe) aid in that 'upgrade'. In the past I thought casting the widest net over the largest number of players created the best outcome for Sindome, but with a more experienced perspective I believe now that the best experience and best future is had from selecting and filtering for players with a high degree of investment and activity, and having perks of paying memberships is more likely than not to create a sense of investment and commitment among more casual players who want the rewards, while also (if to a lesser degree) rewarding players who already have a high commitment.

Essentially: I don't think the game is necessarily improved by having more casual players as a percentage of total players, and either creating incentives to convert casual players to dedicated players or gently filtering for dedicated players is likely to lead to a richer game world. This doesn't mean the current strategy is the most effective one by a long shot (for instance I believe 100% of players paying $10 creates a better overall outcome than 25% of players paying $40, and rewards are probably more ideal if they appeal broadly to both new and experienced players), but I do think paid elements being a desirable feature for players is not a bad thing, and is the future of roleplaying in one way or another.

I don't think it's necessary to clutch pearls about it, what is true of Sindome's players is also true of its developers and staff, and it is not a human right. I welcome society's embrace of more socialistic principles but in the mean time money is the representation of showing appreciation and investment in a person or a product or a community.

The converse of free-for-all products is unpaid developers and development, which may have become normalized for lack of other options but is certainly not an ideal in a game that is famous for staff and admin burnout and turn over.

More one room pads might lead to good outcomes, they might also lead to more stasis and hoarding, but implicit attacks on the mere concept of paying for something are off-base in my opinion.

Sad to see such a considerable lack of empathy in this thread for fellow members of our community.

Just because SD is ICly a classist unequal dumpster fire doesn’t mean that we have to perpetuate this way of thinking in how we interact with other human beings OOCly. Believe it or not, many people, including me, see SD as escapism/stress relief, a way to immerse oneself into another world after spending all day dealing with the bullshit of the real world.

0x1mm, maybe you should try playing without a membership pad. See what that’s like. See how it affects your enjoyment of the game.

I think there is a big difference between a billion dollar corporation based on profit like Activision-Blizzard and how they run their games versus a niche 50-player MOO that appeals to a very small amount of number players. You cannot apply the same kind of business model here, because demographically, they couldn't be more different. If we were playing an Iron Realms MUD, it could work somewhat, but it does not apply here.

Most players are here for creative writing, roleplaying and just an escape from the real world as stated before by many. WoW and other MMORPGs may be timesinks and used for similar purposes in sub-cultures of those games, but it is still a completely different aspect of the gaming industry they are part of. Staff are volunteers and Sindome encourages active development as a passion project rather than a profit project. I don't think much thought from the Staff side is given to the financial aspect of the game, because they are meant to be what they are - donations, rather than something players are expected to contribute to play the game effectively.

I do not see the issue at all why smaller pads/lower membership tiers or even lowering rent would be an issue. Those who have the means to donate would still donate because they can and want to, and I highly doubt it'd lead to any significant changes within the financial side of Sindome.

*disposable income.

Wow, I just caught up with all of the responses here. I am a student and can't afford to donate because I have in real life priorities and needs I meet before a text game I use to entertain myself and or fill time gaps with. I don't think it's appropriate for you to tell me I'm "doing life wrong."

I am not against perks for a donation. I find them in their current state to simply be a detriment to roleplaying the struggle of the cyberpunk setting. I could potentially save enough money to slide into a 25 thousand chyen a week apartment, immediately get a paid membership, apply it for 6 months , then live like a king despite being a crate runner. The overflow to that is instead of struggle rp (TM?) you get an overflow of cozy rp.

I think GreyO understood my point and appreciate his input.

"I'm open to having my mind changed on this but overall it seems like something that is mostly 'this is good for me now' in terms of feature seeking, and not obviously something that seems good for the game as a whole."

One could argue your thread about the state of robotics is much the same. We petition for things we feel the game could benefit from and that usually stems from personal experiences, needs, and outlook on things.

Speaking as a player who can no longer afford to really feed themself, let alone pay for a membership, and after almost 3 years of paying now better understands the struggle of covering rent via chyen it's astounding to me that this has met such resistance, but I guess that's become the norm in any thread asking for change. Even if I wanted to take a step back to 'find better things to do with my life' as Hek has suggested, I would still need the chyen to pay up my rent for x months to do so without worrying about losing everything in the apartment.

This is not an attempt at a pity party but a request for those against this to have some perspective from the other side of the fence. Sindome is at its core addictive and stressful in a lot of ways because of all the management and care needed to protect your investments therein, but there are ways to alleviate that burden just a little bit and they're worth considering.

Yes, clearly it is the players who are wrong. Thank you as always 0x1mm for your predictable input that everything with the game is fine as is, and anyone who says otherwise is misguided.

It's funny to me that you have this perspective, because the bulk of the characters I run into or witness out and about, engaging others at risk of getting harmed on any given day are the social or 'casual' players as you call them and NOT the PvP-inclined types who, ironically, often spend a lot of their time in their homes. Wasn't that one of the aired concerns? That if people could more easily afford their characters' homes, they'd suddenly never leave them?

Moreover, if people had extra chyen to toss around for tools, gear, etc and to recover with when a loss inevitably happens, maybe they'd willingly take part in conflict more.

"0x1mm, maybe you should try playing without a membership pad. See what that’s like. See how it affects your enjoyment of the game."

I don't have a member pad.

In five or six years of play I've only lived out of my member pad for like four months combined, it otherwise sat empty or wasn't active or I didn't have a membership. I either roomed with other players, slept in vehicles, stayed in cubes, or lived in hidey-holes.

This wasn't meant to be a topic on membership fully but rather rent overall and how it seems to be taking away from the means of RP opportunities. Membership was just an example of how, if you pay membership you have a lot more disposable income and basically have a higher ability to RP, due to having the funds to do so.

I've often felt it is a little silly that rent on Red is remarkably similar to rent on Green. I think having more one-room pads would make a difference, and I'm not opposed to the notion of a wholesale rent decrease on Red. (I'd also advocate for decreasing the cost of an SK office -- they are underutilized, and I think could be a cool tool for player plotting.)

That said, there is a real risk of cheaper pads becoming a way for wealthy characters to spread around gear and the like. I think maybe that's an okay risk, but if it becomes an issue then we could tweak that.

@crashdown et al

I am not being callous to people who can't afford $25 every six months for a membership pad.

I am suggesting that if RL is full of struggles to survive, to put food on the table, and keep a roof over someone's head then Sindome probably isn't the "leisure" activity to pursue. Because, surprise, those are core themes and elements of the game.

I have empathy for people who feel the stress of playing here. It is that empathy that suggests "Find another game to play."

If RL is full of struggling to survive, it's not healthy to play a game where a core theme struggling (and more often than not, failing) to survive. A game that is setup to PREVENT characters from having an easy time. A game where the staff is constantly challenging characters and making sure that they never feel stable and comfortable.

It's not healthy for people to re-traumatize themselves.

@pavane and @batko brought up interesting points about the potential downside of more "cheap" pads. The main one was characters spreading gear around / establishing a number of different hordes.

I see the risk, but I think it can be mitigated by staff monitoring. I've personally experienced staff suggesting that the amount of gear I had stashed in an apartment was a fire hazard with the implication being a freak 'accident' could lead to the loss of the gear.

The upsides are numerous. The obvious one is making more low cost housing available to casual players. The other is making the game bigger for characters who are trying to hide / escape threats. In the current meta as soon as anyone knows where a character lives, the 'secret is out'. And moving is a PITA.

Another downside is that having more apartments available for one off clandestine meetings would further remove the likelihood of characters meeting in public, or semi-public places.

@0x1mm and @Grey0 have commented multiple times that every change requires balance. There are rarely simple answers or changes that can be made without a number of follow on effects.

What a depressing, energy and interest sapping thread to read. I dunno how the same people can go on about the dying themes of the game, the lack of activity, and the general malaise, while continuing to double-down on the status quo and promoting barriers of entry. I've paid for a membership pad pretty much since I started playing because without it the anxiety of renting anything but a cube was too much if I just didn't feel like logging on for a week, or wanted to focus on RP over the actually reliable but gamey hustles. I don't feel good about it, as it's a needless leg up that could be solved with adjustment to the economy, with donations going to something far less jarring.

If you want people to support the game, make it fun and playable, and they will. Pretty much every new player's 'where do I get an apartment' conversation ends with 'well there's several shitty options, good luck'. Not to mention this 50+ post thread doesn't get a single staff opinion to make it all seem like it's all into the void, with no help from the ever-present gatekeepers who balance out any sense of a need to change or even comment on anything. Such a joke. Imagine being a new player reading this.

Hi. Been a while since I engaged with the boards, but this seems like a topic to weigh in on.

As far as rent goes, I'll say I've had a membership for the better part of 5 years since I started on SD.

I tried playing without some months back to see what it was like, and I caved after a month or two. I decided to get it covered and realized if I ever dont have the ability to pay it, I'd be forced to drastically alter character plans or take a hiatus from the game because I'm not about to spend all my time rping just to afford a room.

That said, I've found it incredibly difficult to generate income outside of automated sources. I don't feel I've ever been good at it. Affording basic game necessities like rent/sic/etc. has been historically painful across all my characters past and present, and I accept that as a facet of my game play and/or lack of ability. I know it's possible for plenty of people, but I use membership specifically to offset my crappy IC biz mindedness and lack of money generating ideas.

Anyway, we've been lowering the cost of other things lately from chrome to medpaks. I can't really say I'm surprised - I assumed it was only a matter of time before prices started being slashed as a result of the payout cuts for ganger weapons and other similar automated incomes some years ago.

As for solutions, if any are needed, I'm on board with the following as a proof of concept:

1. Westin rooms operate like cubes. You can't rent more than 1 at a time. Lower the eviction period from a week to 2 or 3 days

2. Add a couple of floors to Westin and/or 1-2 other comparatively priced complexes. If I recall from previous town halls, we did see quite an influx of new players during the pandemic, and numbers haven't dropped below pre pandemic stats. It's possible we simply outgrew what we can IC support for a new character player base.

3. Westin can't be used as a membership pad. All it takes to get a pad after paying your irl flash is a week's worth of IC rent and a service request. If you can't afford a week at medium/large pads, that's OK. You won't have to worry about a sub taking the cheapest rooms in the mix.

3. Premium housing (medium/large pads imo) is premium for a reason. It's a status symbol. More rooms, more amenities, more customization, etc. Don't touch that. You afford it or you don't. Be that membership or forking over the chy.

I think we could run with these ideas and make it a topic for the next town hall to see how it's affected new player experience and overall RP.

@racheteffect

Might be onto something with exempting Weatinghaus from perms pads.

Reading between the lines here I think what a lot of people are saying is that they want reliable access to more than a cube.

The cost of housing in relation to the amount of chyen available via automated systems on a weekly basis is fine.

I think the game could use more Westinghaus priced apartments.

Unless there is a specific, meta/game mechanical reason for limiting the supply of Westinghaus cost level apartments, I don't see a thematic reason not to have more of them.

My understanding of permapads is that the character has to have enough to afford one week's rent. The character rents the apartment, then an admin makes it "permanent". This prevents players from jumping into super expensive places that they aren't ICly "qualified" to be in.

I can only speak to myself here, but I cannot imagine burning a permapad perk on Westinghaus given all of the other options available in red sector.

Given that, it seems to me like Westinghaus is really a casualty of either Supply and demand, or people playing apartment lottery. Both of which are easily addressed by adding more supply.

I know Slither has said he thinks apartment lottos are fine, or even themely, but I strongly doubt so many units get tied up by newer characters alone. I don't really know how to police it (if it was a problem) though, or even distinguish it from players renting units normally, but only being able to rent a single unit in a small building might be a way to discourage taking a whole floor out just to see what loot survived eviction.

If Westinghaus was enlarged it might make more sense to extended it to the east instead of up, doesn't interfere as much with the existing airspace.

If there was going to be any extensions though, I'd say Bradbury is more ideal for because what players seem to be describing here is not wanting a hold-over flophouse but rather access to cheap forever homes. Bradbury checks that box technically more than Westinghaus does but it's also weird and more dangerous and idiosyncratic, which makes it less of a 'live there because it's the default cheap housing' decision. It could likewise get mirrored to the east.

Bradbury is one of those fun little things to find out IC. That's why I refrained from directly referencing anything but Westinhaus and left it at "comparatively priced complexes".

Are you saying the names of buildings are FOIC?

I think more low rent apartments should be made available to avoid people having to sink more time into cash grinding than they want to every week.

This is why I think more low value apartments should be made available:

+ Rent is the weekly rate your character needs to pay to keep their things rather than lose their progress so far.

+ Earning cash takes time.

+ The amount of rent your character needs to pay therefore dictates the amount of time you as a player NEED to log in each week grinding cash to break even rather than lose progress.

+ The daily limit on cash grind means that higher rent apartments tend to require multiple days of grinding per week rather than a single one.

+ The shortage of low rent apartments means there is potential for players to be forced to spend more time across more days grinding for cash, even on weeks where perhaps they are busy or do not feel like playing. Membership should not be mandatory to take a break from a game without losing progress.

I have probably repeated some points made already, but this is a long thread. I did not read it all.

Someone said it takes ten minutes logged in a day to make rent. They must be playing a different game to me as I've found running for just one crate company takes about 40 minutes, and you need to run more than one crate company per day to reach your daily limit. This time adds up fast, and with the value of the available in game appartments players can quickly find themselves mandated to grind cash six hours across 3 days just to earn rent in game and not lose the items they already earned.

"They must be playing a different game to me as I've found running just one crate route takes about 40 minutes, and you need to run more than one crate route per day to reach your daily limit.

I don't think players should feel like medium pads are something they're forced to have at all (I kind of question if they are but that's another tangent), but I really think players are doing themselves a disservice making the assumption that running every possible crate job every day is anything like a time efficient way to earn chyen, or even something they should be doing at all except with specific archetypes.

One of my takeaways from this thread is that Water Finds A Crack and players are defaulting and sticking to some of the most player time-inefficient methods of income and then consequently becoming burned out by the grind that was just assumed to be an optimal way to play.

The huge disparity between players calling things too easy and those saying it's too hard makes me feel like there almost has to be better tools for guiding players away from soulless grinds into more productive and fun areas of the game. If everyone was grinding out weekly chyen with scanin and work the game would look like a sweatshop simulator.

Not in this thread, but arguments that there is too much chyen going around and that hustles are too lucrative have been constants in guided discussions and Town Halls and elsewhere since the original The Mix is Too Rich which lit the match.

That thread is almost 4 years old. I started playing in 2020 and don't recall much discussion on this subject anywhere, except in regards to corporate pay specifically. Entirely possible I've just missed them but, either way as new players come and situations change so too do general opinions on the current state of things.

Am I the only one to think that maybe they should just create a few more cheaper options?

I think a new building specifically designed like a shitty college dorm would be fun.

Utilize the bunkbeds. Even better if up to two people can rent a singular room at a time. Make sure you have a roommate secured or some rando can swoop in! (Wow, this forces player cooperation... Nice...)

Make it so the rooms lack showers/dryers/bathrooms individually but have the typically 'available' showers in a big ass locker room that people might be forced to interact in, that also has some of those nifty little lockers to store stuff in that uses your room code. So it's more '''security''' for less '''security''', and it forces people to interact more. You can even drop the price further from the West because at least the West has private bathroom facilities and you don't run the risk of seeing an 80-something year old man's junk. And make it hilariously public so if people try and do the hanky-panky in there they get pointed and laughed at.

'freight balancing, topside NPC payouts, requisitions, cube hotel prices, health/food/water survival mechanics, item and character degradation, item hoarding (a constant favorite), market bid values, item scarcity, scarcity to promote competition'

2 of 10 of these discussions have to do with the actual earning of chy and the price of things as opposed to just scarcity, especially in ways relevant to the people being discussed in this thread, which are Mixers and more specifically new players. For discussions such as the freight balancing, being present as well I can assure you that the issue was never 'we are earning too much money'. This list doesn't really have much to do with current economy woes in reaction to the changes I mentioned prior.

Point is, no, there is not a 'huge disparity' in the opinions regarding low end players making too much money since the changes I mentioned prior. In fact I'd say it seems pretty decisive in actually relevant discussions.

You are the one and only person speaking against adding more cheap housing to the mix, 0x1mm. As someone who is regularly "on the ground" interacting directly with new players and immy characters, I can attest to the fact that there is not enough cheap housing for the sizable influx of new players/immies to find a place to make their own. NO, cubes don't count. You can't redecorate a cube and it's so cramped and temporary.

I'm not doing that at all, I'd more or less expect the majority to always vote towards things being easier, I said there is a disparity (not in this thread) between players who see the game as tool easy, and those (in this thread) who are saying things are too hard, and reflecting with a bit of irony about how I would have liked to point to this when I was ad infinitum arguing that most incomes fell within an order of magnitude on average and didn't didn't to be cut back.

It's a bit funny to me to be held up as the villain here since I'm like one of the most moderate on the player QoL side of the vets, plenty of people who feel otherwise just don't have my zeal for fighting about it. I'm not claiming any silent majority, I just know the people (some of whom really matter) think hoarding is an issue, people don't die enough and live too long, and players safely camp in their pads too much.

I'm pretty much won over on a limited 1-room expansion and said as much, y'all wanted to quibble over details about people saying the things were too rich so have it, I can happily do it until the sun dies and never tire.

I agree that player will avoid conflict when they can lose all their accumulated efforts from doing it, but I suspect at least some people (some of whom count extra) think more accessible housing means more urge to accumulate which means more aversion, and that protected housing itself creates aversion to conflict. Those who have nothing, have nothing to lose, et cetera. If you really wanted to sell major changes, that is what I would focus on disproving because I am betting at least one staff vote comes down to that.

Until a thread is pointed to or there is a swathe of vets ready to jump in on the issue, or have in any recent thread, I will assume you are taking the route of 'I know something you don't' which I guess is fair if you do.

Hoarding issues are not relevant to the people being discussed here, because as in the OP, as in many of the messages from either newer or more grounded players since, having too much is not an issue to them. I'd also posit that hoarding is a result of 'I could sell this in the future, but no one wants it, because no one needs it' which is result of a poor economy and a result of low activity and conflict. That is the case right now. These small issues help solve things like that with the ultimate goal being more people getting out and about. Protected housing creating an aversion to conflict doesn't make any sense to me. People who are going to sit inside are going to sit inside for a multitude of reasons, despite the cost or comfort of where they are sitting. It is the amenities, the 'getting more' and the general fun and liveliness of the game that gets people involved.

"Until a thread is pointed to or there is a swathe of vets ready to jump in on the issue, or have in any recent thread, I will assume you are taking the route of 'I know something you don't' which I guess is fair if you do."

I mean, yes, I do, but to be clear I'm not arguing from secret authority with you, or trying to convincing you of anything at all in fact. I'm steelmanning an argument at you for the benefit of someone else (ie. the $justices), because my sense is it will be useful later when arguing against changes I really don't want to see made.

I can appreciate the connections might not be obvious, but feel free not to be swayed by my opinion. It's very rarely ever been my experience that building consensus among players mattered even slightly as much as building consensus amongst staff.

Admit to what? Steelmanning an argument is an effective and common means to head off a counter-argument, or refutation. In this case two things: 1) future claims of everyone being too well-off, and relatedly 2) B&E being more justified due to the easier access to safety and cheaper recovery. When these inevitably come up, I want to point to this thread.

You're seeing malice in a bouquet of roses, if a very chilly one. My goals are for things to be less arduous for players, just perhaps not in the same way you're thinking of it.

And I'm not saying I don't care about player consensus (whether I do or not hardly matters anyways, I don't make the final call), I'm advising that convincing fellow players is a lot less important than convincing the senior staff.

Not at all. Some of the most lively debates end up being the most impactful. Light a candle for all the Ideas that had two positive comments and then were buried forgotten forever in the depths of dead threads. If anything a lot of activity and makes it much more likely more players (and more staff) will have some opinion on it.

Don't be too quick to throw your efforts into the fire just because they didn't meet a cheering crowd.

As Macabre said the staff are looking for players to make specific suggestions, I pointed to how I thought there might be issues with moving players into better paying (and more fun) avenues of 'earning a living' and y'all want to argue with me about briefly referring to people who think things are too easy. Okay sure. I have the energy for it, if you don't, don't go down that road? Like, have you talked to Johnny? He requires a lot of convincing.

I don't think any change that pursues deleting space and potentially relocating current players is a good idea.

Back on topic: I still think that the lack of single-room apartments in Red is the major issue with rent being too high. Medium pads are not necessarily supposed to be accessible, but living out of a cube is a huge pain compared to getting a single-room proper apartment. If I had the option to acquire one such pad when I was starting out, I likely would not have quit and tried again multiple times over several years before finally bucking up the money for a donator pad.

To address a few things;

- Yes, it's possible to sleaze it out without any rent at all in Red. No, it's not feasible for first-time, or even second-time players, and that's a danger to player retention. You need a lot of knowledge and game sense to make that work.

- Yes, medium pads are probably appropriately priced, if not slightly on the high end, for what it is you get. They are not feasible to maintain without a lot of hustle or a donation, but they are (or should be) a luxury.

- There are roughly four to five times more medium pads than small pads in Red, as far as I can tell, off rough estimation. While medium pads should be a luxury, they are absolutely not a rarity, and small pads are vastly harder to find vacant.

I believe the perception of rent being too high is due to the general belief of players that these three-room luxury pads are supposed to be the standard that everyone lives in. This belief is likely due to there being infinitely more medium pads than small pads in Red and beyond.

At some points of the game population waxing and waning, it has been completely impossible for new players to acquire small pads, while dozens of medium pads sit empty; this has been true on three separate occasions of when I tried to play Sindome as someone completely new to the game. Once in 2017, once in 2018, and finally in 2019 when I began to pay for a club membership. I continue to hear similar plights IC with immigrants all the time.

I won't say that the peace of mind of not having to worry about rent is what caused me to finally stick with the game for four, almost five years now, but it was absolutely a major contributing factor. More places for people to pay reasonable rent for a small but semi-permanent space, not a cube hotel, will make more players feel settled in the game and, in my own experienced opinion, contribute to higher player retention.

There was a lot of stuff that was former FOIC that we documented as new general knowledge in the new @lore database, but I missed that omission so that is my bad.

Hey there, I'd like to pitch in a bit into this as well. From experiencing the lows and highs of rent, I have to agree that it feels to high if you want to just *live*.

I played most of my time on the corporate side, so that's where I can pitch in. Even the cheapest place you can get takes more than half your income away. The issue I have with this is that chyen makes plot.

I want to drive some plot forward, I want to give people an incentive to follow the trail of breadcrumbs I'm putting down or do something for me, but in my earlier days that was just not possible. In my first couple of months it was always paying rent at the last second because I just didn't have the chyen for it.

Reducing the time investment to have lower income pads would also make the higher income one more impactful. If anyone can live in a dingy place for basically forever, it feels like a real achievement to move into an expensive one. Right now with how pricing goes, moving to a more expensive apartment isn't something I've seen almost anyone do (emphasis on almost) because the idea is: I already pay X for this.

Also, rent goes **nowhere**. It's just chyen being substracted from the system for no reason. It's not going into the pocket of a player landlord whom you might hate, it's just disappearing. I get the idea of a money sink to keep the economy in check, but I feel like that should come from luxury goods and equipment (which you WILL lose), not *livelyhood*.

I have a lot of thoughts on a lot of things that have been said in this thread. Instead of laying them all out, I'm going to lay out a bunch of data. Let me get a few things out of the way to start:

1. There are purposefully cheap places in the game that do not accept memberships to keep cost of living low
2. We don't make coffins free for everyone forever on purpose to force people to get out and RP and look for jobs
3. Red is a slum, and the places aren't supposed to be nice
4. Memberships do increase play retention based on the data I've seen over the years
5. Empathy is important
6. You shouldn't need a membership to play the game
7. Scarcity is part of the game

Let's look at some data.

Warning: I am sharing this because I'm a Senior Admin and that is my prerogative. You can comment on and discuss the data I have shared while in this thread, but only in this thread if it falls under our IC/OOC rules. The IC/OOC rules still apply here. If you have some data you want to share that you think might violate these rules, xhelp and ask before sharing.

For the purposes of this data we will be looking at Red only, as most topsiders get rent subsidized by their corp so it's harder to come up with a realistic dataset. Also topsiders are paid more on the reg, so it's less of an issue IMO.

Lucky Eagle and the New Rose are specifically positioned to support people without membership pads. You can pay rent by the day, and the rent price has not increased in 25 years (despite other price increases elsewhere in the game).

There are 14 unrented Lucky Eagle cubes
There are 12 unrented New Rose cubes
Total unrented 1 room cubes: 26
You cannot apply a membership to these cubes.

A days rent is 130c @ Lucky Eagle & New Rose
A weeks rent at each of those is 960c @ Lucky Eagle & New Rose

Let's look at crate runs on Red. I'm doing this with a character that has Repulsive charisma which is essentially what you leave chargen with if you don't up it. Most characters would see a higher payout on crate runs on average, so these numbers are a low ball of what most characters would see. You'd also see higher amounts even with lower charisma if you went and did Gold crate runs, and even higher with Green crate runs.

Red Crate run #1 with Repulsive Charisma: 147c (3 min roundtrip)
Red Crate run #2 with Repulsive Charisma: 183c (4 min roundtrip)
Red Crate run #3 with Repulsive Charisma: 84c (3 min roundtrip)
Red Crate run #4 with Repulsive Charisma: 321c (dangerous) (6 min roundtrip)
Red Crate run #5 with Repulsive Charisma: 90c (3 min roundtrip)

Total Time: 19 minutes a day
Total Time (Weekly): 133 minutes
Total Crate Run Money with Repulsive Charisma for 1 day: 825c
Total Crate Run Money possible for a Week (825*7) = 5775
Total Crate Run Money possible in 1 year (5775*52) = 300,300

Now let's look at what that looks like against the total crate run amount. Keep in mind this is just crate run money, it doesn't account for the entire amount someone could make on automated jobs.

Weekly Rent: 960c
Yearly Rent: 49920c
Weekly Profit Minus Rent: 4815c
Yearly Profit Minus Rent: 250,380

Let's look at this in terms of time. I'm going to estimate it takes about 22 minutes to generate 960c chyen, again this is a really worst case estimate. Most people it would be close to 9-12 minutes.

Time to Generate Weekly Rent: 22 minutes (.36 hours)
Time to Generate Yearly Rent: 1144 minutes (19 hours)

What do these numbers look like if someone plays 40 hours a week?

Total Time in a Week: 2400 minutes (40 hours)
Total Time in a Year: 124800 (2080 hours)

% of time spent on rent a week / year: 0.9%

What if the person plays ~3 hours, 5 days a week:

Total Time in a Week: 900 minutes (15 hours)
Total Time in a Year: 46,800 (780 hours)

% of time spent on rent a week / year: 2.4%

What do these numbers look like if someone only plays 5 hours a week?

Total Time in a Week: 300 minutes (5 hours)
Total Time in a Year: 15600 (260 hours)

% of time spent on rent a week / year: 7.3%

Keep in mind that all these numbers are based on an absolutely terrible charisma stat that is never improved over the course of a year. I'd guess that even someone playing 5 hours a week, with a charisma of M to P would be spending less (~4-5%) of their time on rent in a year.

I think a 7.3% investment of someones time (which again is the absolute HIGHEST I can see someone with TERRIBLE charisma having to spend) is an acceptable investment of time for a safe, secure, place to sleep and store their gear. This also doesn't take into account having one or more roommates.

However, there is a case to be made here that due to the earnings cap, we are still putting people without a membership into a hole monetarily since they have an overall lower possible earnings amount.

I've taken some steps to mitigate this:

1. Any money a non-member pays toward rent on an apartment or cube THEY are the OWNER of (cannot pay someone elses), will be added to their weekly earnings cap for the week, allowing them to earn that money back (that week only) with automated jobs.

2. Any non-member will be able to do 1 additional crate run a day compared to members. The cap on most of them is 5 a day right now, so a non member can do 6. This should offset the walking around money that a person wold have to spend on rent to rent a cube for a day that a member would not need to spend.

3. Help rent and help work will be updated to reflect this.

An important caveat here is that if you are a non member and pay your rent in advance for a month, you will only have the week you paid the rent to recover the entire amount via the automated weekly profit system. Nothing I can do about that at this time. If you are good at the NPC selling part of the game, you could very well recover your money without a ton of effort -- if you are relying on crates, then you are better off paying your rent only a week in advance where possible.

I think these changes are a good step toward leveling the playing field and addressing some of the concerns raised in this thread.

For those of you that contributed to this discussion with best intentions, assuming positive intent from others, thank you. For those of you that didn't you can either do better, or stop posting on the BGBB.

(Edited by Slither at 12:35 pm on 10/16/2023)