Eliminate Topside
Focus on the core gamplay loop

Seems like you could pretty easily hire a mixer to bomb your competition's HQ without needing staff, or any number of equally dastardly acts of corporate espionage.

I haven't personally noticed the lack in GMs that you've mentioned, my puppet requests are always answered in a day or two. A week tops.

Maybe we need to throw out another request for a GM in training to fill some gaps that might be being felt by the corpies?

I do think one of the weaker points is forced separation.

Sindome has a lot of really cool story beats, theme, and a lot going on. Since joining I've loved the history, the story, a world that has scars of previous plots and a place that has developed from character actions. Its also a lot bigger place than it seems.

But to get back to my point, there seems to be some desire for tension from folks but other folks are content to be reactionary rather than action oriented, or the actions they are taking are very slow long cons which can make it seem like a lot of nothing.

If you were looking for that more reactionary play from players. I think pushing topsiders and mixers together more in some areas would be more befitting. I think thats what Gold Sector is supposed to be but only Recently have I seen an uptick in Gold Sector activity, personally.

Examples being. A dramatic change would be having lower corporate folks still live in the mix, rather than topside. Though this might be a dumb idea.

I say all this because, I like flash in the pan, but I've also been plying the game with minimal to no real puppeting, which I know top side seems to require more of and most the plots I've made or ran myself or things I do are based around other players primarily, because I feel it's better to include folks in a community, rather than try to treat Sindome like a gritty hardcore rpg.

I think it might become strictly necessary over time to scale back the scope of the game in terms of factions and other things, whether anyone wants to or not, so it's not the worst idea to start these conversations and think about what it crucial to the core storytelling and experiences of the setting and which could be trimmed or folded together a little.

As long as we have GMs puppeting corpie bosses and approving/denying requisitions and reimbursements I think topside is in decent shape. We didn't have much more of that the last time I played a corpie and the tension and conflict seemed far greater to me at the time. More is great but that is enough to get PCs into conflict.

I am not saying that conflict can't be created in the new social order. But I feel it's harder, especially given that I feel most players are still learning the new dynamic. I know it's been years but things really do take that long in my experience.

A second factor, in my opinion, is pushing the status quo too hard. Requiring that certain orgs come out on top over other and all orgs come out on top over individuals can really make it harder to even WANT to push conflict. And I feel that NPCs used to enforce such things was a little too prevalent during a recent phase of the games life that only recently ended.

Sure, one can still manage to create content and story in such an environment but the effort, IC and OOC, scales up massively. To the point where I often just don't even engage in certain conflicts much anymore as it's not worth the OOC investment for me.

Again, I think it's a lot of things but those are two big ones in my opinion. I also have to admit that what I think makes for a better game is not universal.

I'm not sure permanently killing other players is going to really add to the game in a meaningful way. It can be an extremely potent plot piece, but it won't add any amount of meaning or tension to a dome which seems to lack it imho at the moment.

That said, maybe you're right and what is needed is some completely unhinged mayhem.

I've said this in other threads, but the game itself feels like it is just moving in a different direction compared to a decade ago or even four years ago with less conflict and more slice-of-life RP. It's not my cup of tea and probably not others, but a lot of people seem to enjoy it! I don't see this changing in a meaningful way anytime soon. So ultimately, I do not know if this would change much even if implemented in terms of the theme - but it could def. aid on saving staff resources.

I think topside is good for the game and allows players to represent the big bad evil that the corporations are. You don't even need a lot of topside players doing that, just a few who know how to push the theme. I'd be a fan of mixers being used in even Gold sector corporation on corporation conflict though. More links between corporate Johnsons and the mixers stirring up trouble are welcome and I think better than a return to the hard divide that the game used to have since that creates other problems.

In my opinion the game needs more people, corporate and mixer alike, throwing their chy around to encourage people to take risks. Combat characters catch a lot of flak for various reasons but also often shoulder more risk than anyone else. Paydays being staff assisted or reimbursement budgets going up as long as they're used for the right reasons might also be helpful.

One of the things that the game is missing right now is staff dictating the theme through SIC puppets and general world response but that's something that only time might be able to solve.

I also don't think that conflict isn't pushed by players as much as it used to be but I don't think that all or even most conflict has to be linked to treachery. I love IC treachery but I think there are a ton of other ways to push conflict. More trecher would be good but I'm open to all kinds of conflict.

I also agree, to some extend, that player need to be willing and able to play to lose on occasion. But I think that this is something that needs to be balanced. Just asking some players to sacrifice so much for the enjoyment of all while others face little risk or loss isn't going to result in tons of players taking up the call. I don't think so at least.

And there are lots of ways to enforce the status quo, if it's determined that this simply has to be the way, that don't involve one side taking all losses and another rarely losing anything. And to be clear, I am not talking solely about corp vs mix conflicts though that is a great example.

I would like to see more interaction with the world.. more random actions, plot hooks made available to characters based on their notes & current motivations perpetuated by GMs, or that kinda thing. I think there does need to be more interaction between Mixers & Topside - more corporate manipulation, more Mixers & Corpos interacting. Maybe that's just a matter of getting more Corpo players with ambition & drive... Unfortunately, most players end up starting at the very bottom and taking weeks or months to decide to go topside.

Slice-of-life RP is a nice aside to the grit, daily violence, and tension the game generally provides. I think that's also themely - down-time & romance provides a nice counterweight to the daily question of whether you'll see the next sunrise.

The player culture topside is really not substantially different than it was before CPI. The actual social engagement between players improved dramatically with CPI but what conflict there was declined in turn, and topside just has several factors which tends to select for players who tend to be a little less interested in that sort of storytelling.

Both topside and the Mix hugely rely on key players who are carrying the game culture on their backs, but in terms of a discussion about the game's future, I see topside as requiring fewer actual players to convey that theme (1-2 really good PCs or NPCs can project the sense of crushing corporate oppression across the whole setting) and being the setting which is just somewhat more distant from, and ancillary to, the core punk element.

I see it as basically like two bodies trying to survive from one heart. We're not urgently at the crossroads of having to decide to do away with one to save the other, but there is a reasonable argument to be made that crossroads might be arrived at in the medium term of the next five years, so it's worth thinking about what are the most important things for the game when it comes down to making tough choices.

There's definitely situations where megacorporation A goes and helps megacorporation B against minor Mixer threat X. Some of those are friendly, those are generally discouraged by at least one faction. In the past, that'd be more discouraged and frowned up by the megacorporation factions, and something which should be going forward, but it's not every incident is because banding together.

You have to look at it as: did megacorporation A just go and help megacorporation B to make megacorporation B look weak? I believe there's been at least four cases of this over the last year.

Did megacorporation C hire mixer X to attack megacorporation B so megacorporation C could go 'rescue' megacorporation B so they look weak? As part of a means to hurt the public image of a competitor?

The WJF is generally not going to double up on someone if they're getting getting it from a megacorporation. There's some exceptions as there is in all parts of the game, but generally not. That's the way those players are trained ICly and OOCly.

So it's kind of like peeling back the layers of an onion. I think going to help your rivals to embarrass them is hilarious and great for corporate conflict. Especially if your megacorporation is the one who hired the mixer to attack your rival in the first place. I think going to help your rivals just to help out and band together, this is usually not great for any conflict. The ones being helped overall should probably feel a general sense of unease best cest and anger/seeking revenge against the public humilation in dire cases. And there are many instances where that will get pushback from at least one faction as I wrote.

Now could we stand to have NPC bosses puppeted to either tell them to stay off other corporate property or for the 'helped' corporation to tell them this type of public humilation is not okay and to strike back in their own way? Yeah, I think so. Which isn't a criticism of staff, only I think it could probably be done to help set the attitude moving forward into newer PCers in those positions so they can teach the next crop coming up right after them too.

I think basically my points boil down to:

1. Showing up at your competition's home and helping save them and then crowing about how they can't save themselves in whichever way you want to frame it is hilarious and good, especially if the conflicter causer doesn't get bodyslammed by every one in the process.

2. Hiring the agitator in the first place and then showing up to humilate your competition is A+ trolling and imo very themely, love it and think it's good for the game.

3. Inserting yourself into mixer X versus megacorporation A, if it were me I'd probably weigh the reasons why and also think about how much mixer X could take longterm and how that helps foster conflict moving forward.

4. Showing up just to help to help fight back against mixers causing problems is not great for the game, imo. Maybe ask yourself why your character would do that because not only does it discourage someone causing conflict if they're getting it from all sides for no real reason besides 'must stop', it also takes roleplay out of the hands of the popele who have characters in corporate security roles or other similar roles.

5. The idea of CPI is good, I think, but maybe a refresher course on CPI doesn't mean everyone helps everyone all the time and absolutely should still be hilariously sabotaging your corporation's competition.

6. Remember there are layers and not all cases of someone showing up is the same across the board.

Topside activity can appear docile and dull due to the nature of it, but I think this is also due to the optics surrounding it right now. What I mean is that you ICly have a lot of reasons to become a corporate citizen. But OOCly / mechanically it's more appealing for people to remain a Mixer. The freedom and opportunities that are lost to go topside don't outweigh the benefits in most people's eyes. This may be a reason why the corporate culture is seen this way.

As for generating conflict, I've been trying my hand at it more and more and I have to say, it's great to outsource that stuff. Not only do you give someone else something to do, you can focus on your slice of life roleplay. Ultimately, the outward facade of the corporate lifestyle is supposed to be detached and 'clean'. That crust is supposed to hide some f-ed up stuff.

Chyen is made to be spent and nothing fuels a fire better than paper bills.

Being mercenary about it, is a few errant bits of truly cyberpunk storytelling here and there, when the stars align and the right people do the right things after being coached and encouraged just right, really worth the costly overhead of populating two entire sectors and the three largest factions in the game, and three or four smaller factions on top of them? That's insane overhead for the added storytelling benefits it provides, in my opinion.

In an alternate present where the game was just the Mix and always had been, and we had the same player and staff resources we had now, a proposition to split the game into a whole new high-living wealthy ecosystem with its own politics and independent social networks, it would rightly be seen as a calamitous deviation from cyberpunk and 'high tech, low life' and one that the modest staff and player population couldn't support.

Players have become acclimated to its existence now so it seems normal, but from a purely cost-benefit basis of investment versus thematic gameplay, I don't think the value proposition is really there when the question is 'how large a game world can our resources support?', which is a question that is looming on the horizon one way or another.

We can kick the can down the road with talk of encouraging culture and getting out there and be the change you want to see, but I believe the day is going to arrive where there will be a crucial decision between supporting a more focused and refined cyberpunk experience that allows the game to continue to flourish for another twenty years with a dedicated and passionate core fan base, or instead trying to cater a bit to everyone and thus pleasing no one and slowly evaporating like a too shallow puddle in the sun.

Even if it's only in the hands of a limited portion of the player base, a cyberpunk setting NEEDS its corpos and it needs to be role obtainable by players. Maybe that is the problem here: corporate employment is no longer challenging to get, or keep, and the perks are not immediately worthwhile until you get past the junior stage. Maybe what should happen is corporate players apply for roles of characters already in upper management. Then they can do really heavy handed shit. Just completely delete players being juniors and middle management.

But removing topside, and a huge swathe of work? Really don't see that happening, or helping anything much at all. Now if the player base goes down to twelve players on peak? Sure.

There is a ton of evidence to show that if given no other choice than to play in the Mix, players who would otherwise stick to isolating themselves topside will absolutely continue to play, even if it means they're subjected to parts of the game they don't want to be and will be more productive participants of the story in the process. Will they like not having a choice? No. Will the cyberpunk storytelling outcome be better overall? Yes.

The game can absolutely cater to a more conflict-driven, cyberpunk-aligned core audience and still capture more than enough casual players to sustain itself because the latter is effectively drawn in by the former group and the setting they create. As evidenced by the fact that a game as niche and cutthroat and unforgiving as Sindome became so popular in the first place.

How many GMs are there and how many actual players are harassing them regularly?

I know there are items that I would love to delve into more with my character but I'd hate to plan something if its overwhelming to a GM or the request is annoying or the response time is weeks?

I don't really know how to read those stats so I can't really make an intelligent commentary on them.

The social scene topside was much improved by CPI coming in and I believe the end of 2020 was the height of topside population but I am not sure I would call it a golden age. It came at the expense of corporate shadow wars, and was at least partly responsible for a major collapse in Mix storytelling and the decline of their major criminal factions (though this was also due to a lot of long term player burnout in fairness). Likewise it was a nightmare for plotting because players had to be basically forced on pain of death to do anything more than show up at a party, because there was a lot of anonymity in numbers and thus lower responsibility on everyone to engage out of their comfort zones.

2022 had a significant rise in topside populations as well, I believe partly out of momentum of more and more players shifting there, and partly because the storytelling became very topside oriented. However I would say the outcomes of that population boom were extremely dysfunctional and not good for the game, so I wouldn't be in a hurry to replicate it myself.

Again it's cyberpunk, not cybersocialte or near future slice of life anime. It doesn't have to be a big tent, it shouldn't try to be because ultimately players can do slice of life anywhere (and will continue to do it in Sindome as the past has shown regardless) whereas nowhere else anywhere offers an intense cyberpunk roleplaying experience that Sindome does. Adulterating the strength to cater to players who don't even like what's on offer is not a formula for longevity.

I don't think we should be focused on improving topside, honestly. There's a litany of threads recently that have explored its issues. Why would a player want to play topside when they can make more money, have more RP, be around more players, and be relatively safe in Red sector? It makes much more sense to collapse the population than to cater to two.

Rather it's a matter of whether an entirely separate game is necessary to maintain a version of the game world that is more affluent and domestic. To enable, say, one Jack Anderson or Jonas Alexander for cyberpunk theme purposes do we really need to have 4 player HR agents and three medics and two requisitions officers and five artists and six security officers and three judges and two bustling sectors of jobs and plots and housing and politics and so on. There absolutely corporate characters to add to the story in important ways but the way it's done now has enormous resource overhead behind every single one of them.

I know these roles and character archetypes can be done to the same great effectiveness within the context of the Mix because basically all the great corporate players were also great Mix players, often on the same characters.

Basically all of these roles could exist very, very similarly with players in the Mix with very little difference in practice except now we're talking about twice as much player-to-player contact and concentration and more broad impact of plots rather than having to juggle two separate ecosystems that don't overlap anything like as much as they should. Elimination of topside outright is not the only way to streamline and concentrate the game's core experiences but it's a maximalist position to enable questions about how to start streamlining a game that has grow (arguably) too large in scope to maintain as is.

I don't personally think gameplay and scheduling preferences really drives the majority of the topside population, so much as the corporate fantasy of wealth and affluence and beauty and a disinterest in anything grimy intruding on that fantasy, but where gameplay and scheduling is the major factor then I absolutely think the lessons learned about what topside does well and what roles it accommodates to the game's benefit can be taken and adapted and folded in to the core part of the game and create something that was better than the disjointed halves that preceded it.

'Budgets and themes, make it work.'

But from my perspective, I think it's fair to say that historically, only half of topside players actually put that loop to use, and it's maybe because these jobs aren't being presented properly. Syndicate style jobs require lots of GM caretaking, there's a whole help file about it and the expectations that GMs hold for those players. I do not recall there being one for corporate jobs, maybe there should be?

Maintenance

The most basic is the bare bones of supporting players. This means doing basic puppet requests, working gridmails, hiring and firing, doing requisitions and reimbursements, setting up player roles permissions, handling leases and managing the game's health via the @rules. Having topside or not doesn't really impact GM effort here. The GM effort required is mostly based on the total number of players and the number of active players.

Support

This is my favorite aspect of GMing. This is basically picking an eager PC, pointing them at a goal and funding them towards it's execution. It's GM light in terms of effort but, if they happen to pick the right PCs, can yield massive results in terms of conflict and story development. Once again, the amount of effort required from GMs here isn't really based on the number of 'zones'. It's based on the number of supported PCs.

Enlivening

This is usually simple little stuff. Puppet a bartender for a few hours one morning. Bring out a random NPC to try and mug as many PCs as you can before they get taken out. Bring a corpie PC to the mix for a night of fun. Mostly just simple puppeting sessions or microplots that make the world feel more alive, bigger and to help enforce theme. Heck, even just having a GM play SIC warrior helps here. Honestly, the number of players, active players and zones doesn't really impact this much. It's something a GM does when they have the time and energy and they notice some PCs they can interact with.

World Plots

These are all about having the world move and change and shift, ideally engaging some PCs. It can be as simple as a newspaper article or as complex as a foreign army invading the dome. I can see how zones can make this more time consuming for GMs in certain cases but not all. As with Enlivening, the number of PCs and active PCs doesn't play a huge role in GM demand. These CAN be very demanding but that depends on the scale of the plot and how involved PCs are. At the same time, GMs generally chose to run these when they have the time and energy.

Of course, the above is just based on my experience and my opinions. With this being my view, however, I don't really see how shrinking the map and forcing players into one zone will reduce GM load significantly.

I might reduce builder load and coder load but even then I think the scale of the impact is debatable. I am not convinced that condensing the game to a single zone will impact coder or builder load significantly.

I guess one angle is that if everyone is condensed into a smaller area that Player with Player RP will naturally occur more often. And this is a valid point point in my eyes. But I don't think it's that simple. Just because you move all characters to the mix doesn't mean the characters and the players behind them change. Some will just leave as they simply don't want to play the mix. Some will keep doing what they do, just with ponchos on. I'm not convinced that the result will be an improvement for players as a whole or a significant change regarding staff workload.

Regarding game culture... Yes. There is a lot GMs can do should they have the time and energy. But there is also a lot players can do. It might involve losses and maybe cost characters but players who want more conflict can do a lot to create more conflict. Even in little ways that don't take a mountain of time and energy and focus.

Just some new thoughts on this topic. I reserve the right to change my mind!

Nearly all corporate characters are expected to eventually fall to the Mix, what comes up must go down was the mantra for a long time regarding the administration of the corporate storytelling. Players who would sooner quit then play in the Mix at all, can be shown as being determined not to engage with the genre and are pretty unlikely to be telling cyberpunk stories.

So in this light a smaller, more dedicated and theme-focused player base would be an improvement to the game, given there is a large section of players who view the game essentially as a venue for their social or sexual interactions and not a competitive cyberpunk roleplaying setting. To them Sindome is lo-fi VR chat with their chosen deeply questionable anime aesthetics and dress-up, and they've more or less settled on playing it because it's well populated, rather than actually liking it or its idiosyncratic rules or dark themes or difficult challenges.

But a smaller shared space where everyone goes whether they want to or not is key in my opinion, there's way too many opportunities for players to enclave themselves off and make the game seem depopulated even though it isn't (notice how many new players complain they never run in to any other characters organically).

Probably true in some cases but I see no need to indulge anyone who would lock their character inside forever rather than step onto a Mix street, the opposite really. If players have to be forced to roleplay to theme at the tip of a ceramic then call me Musashi.

But I'd be perfectly fine myself with junior corporate characters living in the Mix being protected by junior CorpSec, would give the latter something meaningful to actually do and create real and active conflicts with the other residents.

Green and Blue being so physically removed in virtual space from Red just makes security basically superfluous in many cases. Taken to extremes, smaller game spaces just lead to more conflicts out of contact, larger ones lead to stagnation out of distance.