Olbies abusing combat
You guys should know better.

So, if you are the sort of player/char that thrives on combat, you will think "hey, by fighting or threatening this new PC, I am helping making them into a better char, like so-and-so did with me".

Or, if like me, you just dodged any and all combat characters 'growing up', you now really don't get it when someone actually believes your threats, cause you have no intention or ability to follow through unless pushed to ICly, because that's just not how the oldbies you looked up to would have done it.

Mixed bag. We all handle it differently, please don't group. Also, realize that what you need/want may be 180 degrees out from what someone else needs/wants to develop their character IC....and a good oldbie will help them with that.

Some character just a few days or couple of weeks old can own a character with 10 times the UE they have, if they have managed to RP their way into gear, cyberware, nanogens, friends, contacts, strings they can pull, et cetera.

So, yeah, it's all about RP. It is not out of -anybody's- reach, to be able to back up the shit they want to stir. Someone can have power without having one, two, three years' worth of UE. Someone who does have all that UE can be vulnerable.

Last thing:

Using an expression like 'abuse' tends to be alienating. You lost a round. Chin up, game on, and plot to win the next one. Get help. Build your character's arsenal. Don't 'wait for the UE' because it's completely unnecessary, if you can RP smart.

What I am talking about is not about a new character being able to compete against an older character. I’ve done it and know that it is possible, but what you know, who you know or what you have may be pointless in situation where an older character abuses combat (meta gaming that your character is new) to use you like a rag doll in a way that breaks immersion or straight out killing your character mindlessly.

@Lena: Even if RP is subjective or characters may have different motives, that doesn’t mean you should put yourself before other players and don’t consider them in the slightest.

@Cerberus: You clearly didn’t even bother to read anything I wrote and are still convinced this is just a “gripe”.

Okay let me make something clear. How do you even know they are an oldbie? Because out of chargen I can come out with a pretty setup character for combat and know of several new characters who gave a run for their money to older characters. My second main included.

point number 1.. Life is unfair, SD is unfair. However If an oldbie as you put it .. is abusing new players out of character or is otherwise detrimental to the retention of new players dont you think the GMs would have something to say about that.. also if they really are doing it.. even without GM intervention that means that Oldbie has lots of enemies for you to gang up on.

point number 2.. im no where near an oldbie.. but ive been around. ive been around as my character and i know my place in things.. do i attempt to go and take on every person in the mix in a stand up fight? no.. do i try and rattle the cage of everyone? no. why .. because im playing a character that is smarter than that.. im RP in character. now if i wanted to play a loud mouth character with a death wish? .. sure i would go and grief people and expect as a player to get my ass handed to me... but id go into that eyes open. With even a tiny bit of experience with SD.. if you roll out of chargen and super combat orientated, you should know that you are taking your life into your hands each time you go looking for a fight.. maybe you win.. maybe you die.. its live by the sword die by the sword. dont like, it.. play topside non combat..

final point.. In my experience of "oldbies" .. they have been around.. they have played this game and invested in it.. If you have any idea how long it takes to get to oldbie status then chances are you should respect the player . (not the character) but the player.. therefore have a little respect to believe that they are not going to grief new players because they want them to stick around..they by definition of being an oldbie have seen more of the game.. have seen the game when there was less and more players and have probably done a lot to help keep new players..

At the risk of getting a very emotionally-charge message in return, may I ask - what sort of response to this post were you hoping to get? From the player you were involved with, or from the GMs? What sort of an answer would have made you satisfied that your issue had been given due consideration? Not something that would have made you 'happy' necessarily...but what sort of process would you have been OK with? What way are you more likely to accept 'nothing will change in this situation' as acceptable?

Thanks.

It takes ever more increasing points to raise your stats.

Skill point cost rises as the skill rises.

This means a 'new' character has a chance to catch up because 'older' characters have to invest more to get -anywhere-.

i didnt say blindly follow.. i was suggesting that you show some respect in your wording and attitude to Players and GMs alike that probably have and continue to contribute a hell of a lot to the game and community.

shit happens.. and i doubt very much that anyone was picking on you occly or abusing anything to get you.. sucks in the moment but you gotta let shit slid and figure that you dont see everything that happens so you cant begin to assume anything. It again boils down to faith. You either have faith in the Gms, Johnny and the community to police any sort of abuse or you dont..in which case maybe you need to find a new game... (which im not suggesting you do as every player is a loss that leaves).

There was NOTHING meta at all about the entire situation, other than your own expectation, Olpolok, that your character deserved some kind of OOC 'protection' from your character's own IC failure to recognize a plainly stated threat and take steps to avoid a problem.

If there's merit to anything here its that the slurry of commands that make up what to do give a significant advantage to players who've had a chance to use them more. I think this gets a 'no shit sherlock' in any game, be it Battlefield, COD or Sindome. So, my response is a big ole pile of 'meh'.

>> I’ve seen several oldbies abusing combat, because there is no way that a fresh character (1-6 months) can stand against them. So they basically can drag you around and do crazy shit to your character in a very unrealistic fashion since they know OOCly that the can. It breaks immersion honestly, most often than not is uncalled for and doesn’t generally lead to rich RP for anyone.

I think perhaps your definition, and my definition of an oldbie might be different, however I wouldn't consider anyone who's been playing less than two years an oldbie (midbie perhaps for >1 year), I might even extend it out to significantly farther than that, but I've been playing the game for a damned long time.

How I RP my character is based on the many years of history that my character has had. Along with such a long standing character comes significant history that new players very much have the ability to abuse (from an IC point of view). I've been around through numerous changes to the combat code and when the UE Cap was introduced, making it more possible than ever to hand an oldbie has arse in many ways.

>> Now even if I don’t like the above, it pales in comparison to olbies perming characters under very weak excuses. Oh, your character looked at mine funny? Guess what? I am killing your character and there is nothing that you can do about it, because the UA curve is so steep and the gap between characters power is so big, that is completely unbalanced. (I don’t even want to talk about players who do things so ridiculous and OOCly as stalking people outside Genetek.)

Oldbies generally (which you can read as, pretty much all the time) don't perm characters with no justification. If a player just starts killing newer players willy nilly with no IC justification, they'll get smacked down. Hard. It's not good for oldbies to bitchslap newbies all over the place until they die from being so young.

As very experienced combat characters, however, they wouldn't generally take shit I imagine. If I was to walk into a bikie(biker?) bar and start giving them shit about how I was a badass, I'd expect to get the shit kicked out of me - which is kind of like, half the reason I don't.

>> Dear olbies, the “theme” is already hard enough on new players to add you killing new characters under lame pretenses to show how much of a badass your character really are. If you want to prove that you’re a badass, please do it in a fashion that promotes RP for both parts and don’t kill the new characters.

Who says their isn't RP on either side of your death. The RP doesn't have to involve you, to be perfectly blunt however there's a very specific reason why combat in the moment typically happens without warning and with very large force from one side to the other. It's because it's how the combat system on Sindome works.

>>All the time, I see people saying thing on OOC chat like “Oh, I wish there were more new players” and “We need all to vote so we can attract new players”. Well guess what? It is kind of a moot point, because if you bring new players and their characters get murdered by olbies for no good reason, then they are not going to want to stick around for very long to RP with anyone.

You know how an oldbie is typically rewarded (and yet all of the players with characters who I'd consider 'oldbies') when they try and help new players? Either their character ends up financially out, or the new character gets bored, perms their character to reroll and then they've got to deal with the IC fallout from it. I myself do this because I want more new people to find, and play Sindome.

>>Seriously guys, as seasoned players you should know better and try to make the game more engaging and enjoyable for everyone.

If giving you a free pass for acting outside of your characters stats is considered to be more engaging and enjoyable for everyone well sorry, you're always going to either see me the player, or my character as a dickhead at some point. Nobody gets an entirely free pass for acting outside of their stats.

>>Hopefully new players will agree with this to an extent, because mindless killing PCs doesn’t seem okay, especially on a game that prides itself to be about RP and not hack and slash. Because when you are killing a PC, you’re taking a decision for the other player to end all the time and effort that he put into the game with that character, so that decision should not be made lightly.

No, as a player, I'm deciding that it's appropriate for my character to either try to kill, or not to kill yours. I'm not going to make a decision with regards to how my character acts, based on the fact that you've invested alot of time into your character. I as a player, however may decide to make my character act like less of a dick if I think it would help RP.

I'm truly sorry that you feel that new players are being victimised by Oldbies, but I simply don't agree with your assessment of the situation and with all respect, I will continue to help new players in line with whatever is appropriate for my character, despite having no obligation whatsoever to do so.

Sometimes the RP was fun, sometimes I saw exactly where the death was coming from, but a lot of the time it felt very random to me. I would not however trade in those experiences for anything because, because of that character I learned a lot about how Sindome works.

On the note of "oldbies" helping newbies out: Like Gerik said, it sucks sometimes. I've been burnt by newbies disappearing or rerolling, to the point that even though I am in no way an "oldbie" I've already grown jaded to helping Immigrants out. I used to reach out to them the first couple days they were in Withmore. Now I wait two or three weeks of them being noticeably online before I approach them and try to include them.

And now a giant props to Gerik: He's the only legimate oldbie I know I've interacted with and he's always been awesome. Not nice, but awesome. RP was always to be had, I only know a slight amount of his character's history that is "public knowledge" ICly and the experiences I've had with him IC and I think he as a player does it right. He doesn't pull his punches but if he can do something other than punch he will do it. Even if he has to punch he makes it "fun", engaging.

I would like to see however a shift in death in Sindome. Being able to kill someone is one thing, but being able to threaten that death and force people to do your bidding is another and I haven't really seen it all that much on Sindome. That is something that I actually wanted with my first character here, and it never went that way, it just went all the way to 'You're dead'. "You're gonna get me dis" 'No I'm not' "You're dead". Not *beat down, tie up* "You sure you dun wanna get dat for me? Cause I got all sortsa ways to make you wish I just killed yah."

There have been times where I've had PCs @ooc or literally use the hide command the moment I walk on the block, in disguise, in an area with ambient pop. In these times I'm usually not intent on killing them, but potentially roughing them up and most certainly speaking and RPing with them. It gets to the point where I'm just going to settle with killing you when you're going out of your way to resolve the situation with some other RP.

Sometimes it's just the luck of the City, though. You find yourself in a situation, that might not even be in your PCs control, or your PCs fault, but perhaps the fault of an associate, and when those concerned get ahold of you, they're gonna want you dead. Those are the breaks.

I definitely prefer to let the RP go in a more interesting direction if a PC hasn't crossed that threshold where death is what makes the best fit for the situation. You've got to be willing to RP with me, though.

I play antagonistic characters. Which isn't to say I play 'bad guys'. I play characters that antagonize other characters and NPCs. My PCs do things that I know aren't safe things to do and get on the wrong sides of entities that I know are out of my league OOCly. I've taken my licks plenty of times. Sure, there are a few times where my PCs have gotten off far more lightly than I think they deserved, but I've been on both sides of the death fence and seen multiple angles of the 'getting to RP during would-be-death scenes' thing. I've gotten characters killed because I keep doing something that I know will OOC get me killed, but it's IC.

I've been given plenty of chances where I might have died at the hands of others. I think there's a reason for that. I'm prepared to grovel, beg, get humble real fast, but ultimately I'm prepared to work through conflict with somebody who could be an assailant. Since I've been here I'm seeing a lot of something different. I've been seeing a lot of players who are willing to play characters who will step on every toe they come across, but when their ticket comes up, they stick their heads in the dirt and try to move on in such a way that they don't have to answer for what they've done.

... Again. You can play a coward. You can play somebody who is dirty, dishonorable... Whatever the fuck. I don't think this is simply an IC attitude, though. It resonates as an OOC attitude. Actions I've seen taken by such players (see above: ducking @ooc, instahiding despite ambient pop, disguse, etc.) correlate with my belief that there's a real OOC factor.

When you get on the wrong side of somebody in Sindome, fucking own it. Be prepared to RP with that party, or don't be surprised when you get killed but didn't 'get a chance to RP'. It seems to me that most of the time people are upset over being killed and not 'getting to RP', they had days, weeks or months to fix their IC dispute and made the OOC decision to avoid the ingame situation.

I'm not saying this is always the case. Sindome can be brutal. There are unjust deaths. There are murders which are, by all means, sudden and leave little room to RP. I certainly don't think that this should NEVER be the case, but I think that there are infinitely more interesting options. Clone death isn't exciting conflict by itself (though good stories can result in clone death). Straight up loss in any form isn't exciting conflict in itself (see previous). But if you've done a wrong, you have to be prepared to work with your assailant, just as the assailant has to be prepared to work with you.

I hope I haven't crossed any OOC bounds. I'm trying to be as vaguely as humanely possible whilst providing a clear enough backdrop to illustrate my points.

To close, something I'd like to say is, I find it difficult to swallow when some PCs are looking down the barrel and seem to be prepared to laugh in the face of death and bite the bullet (which somewhat unfortunately shoots down much RP which could lead to your survival right away). I know that some players will defend this as being a part of their character, but when many of the actions of your character have proved to the contrary, that they're far from the hardened badass they seem to become five minutes before dying, then you'll have to excuse me for saying that I'm not buying it. ... And this can and WILL get you killed. There's no shame in having your character be afraid of death. Do what's consistent to your character. It'll get you out alive more often than doing a heel-turn will.