What I've run into:
- Oldbies you never see who, probably could do cool stuff but don't.
- Connected people who spend more time not connecting and not training anyone to be under them.
- People with access to stuff players spend years getting, and then never using it, training someone else to use it, or otherwise.
- Stock for some stores that would have items needed for crafting not rotating in, or the store just never seems to rotate, but also the cost is so prohibitive that you're back to waiting on connected players to do literally the most minor thing to move things along and get those items instead. And that's if you can even get into the circle.
- Ways to get into some higher expense stuff without actually spending the chy to do it being locked behind, again, bad connected players or chy.
- For Mixers, the cost to do anything massively outweighs any pay.
Let's do math for a Mixer trying to actively RP like a person and not like a standing block that just uses "say."
- Cube rent 1,050
- Extortion potentially 3,000 if you can't RP your way out of it, which is also based on the extorter not needing your flash
- Alcohol and food to go be social and meet people and tip your PC bartenders/dancers/other workers: I'll say 1000 a week.
We're already easily at 5k a week on just the most basic of RP. If you RP more or try to give more people RP for running or otherwise, you easily outpace that. If you're tired of living in a pile of your junk and constantly having to use count on your collected jackel pipes, now you're looking at an apartment.
Want to use CC and add keys? SIC bill just added 3k to that week. Friend get their keys stolen and now you have to rotate any you share? Fuck any money you made in the slightest. I think the cost for SIC was intended to push people towards other communication options.
Want to switch to using Progias? Minutes cost too. Friend a slow RPer that takes many minutes to respond?
What about radio? Oh right, securing is expensive and the handset or helmet is too.
Grid? Terms get stolen, keys get stolen, the grid isn't super friendly. Tons of dead nodes, a lot more niche for a lot of players. I still run into many months-old players that don't even know how to view a node.
Now, if you don't play SD as a second job and don't hit your max in side income from NPCs, you are broke as shit constantly because your income from your job, which you might actually spend a lot of time doing, is not even 5k.
Want to throw RP to your local vehicle player? With what flash? Want to get the tools to do something else? No social RP this week for you.
I know that's just an entire thing of complaints, but I've been absolutely crushing ideas trying to see a way out with skills or otherwise to achieve things most people look for, like getting some chrome, having a vehicle, getting some gear, and actually putting money towards people to do stuff for you so you spread the flash. Personally, I have spent to the detriment of my own character to try and boost others' RP because I see it as important to the story to make sure people don't feel so dead inside over income.
I see and have the exact same complaints frequently. Paying SIC bills constantly, just burning money that does not go back into any system players access; connected players being absent or having no drive to do the RP they may have spent years getting into; markets and stores with certain needed supplies for some crafts getting nothing.
I see the exact same stuff in the market constantly. The most exciting thing in the last month that changed was finding a new item that no one is buying because it's in the multiple 10ks, even with a skilled trader looking. And, it's not even a good item! I don't need 20 individual glasses of alcohol and nose rings with holes shot into them.
The junkyard has rooms that have nothing often, trash, or wildly expensive items. Building a vehicle from scratch in there would probably kill you from time before it panned out.
I know economy in every game is a balancing act and that we are playing on a tightrope in Cyberpunk of haves and have-nots. I definitely don't know the whole story and don't have answers. I've put some ideas to change below:
- Markets and junkyards need more randomly generated items put into them from many different options instead of how they populate currently. Traders need a reason to trade, even if it's not as a connected player going through other systems.
- Connected players should be heavily encouraged to make a certain quota of flash for their group. It doesn't need to be a second job, but just encouraging some of these people to RP for longer than five minutes and get faces running out to do biz for them, please. If you are one of these players, consider how annoying it would be to wait on someone for weeks to interact with you at all, and when you do interact, it's just for a few minutes. If you don't have time to be a connected player making the economy move, please bring people in for training.
- Store stock needs rotating. This is in another thread as well. You never see some items. My own character bought out a stock of one store's 3 of the same item weeks ago, and it has not restocked. I've been keeping track of store stock in many locations and seeing very few changes.
- Grid needs more of a tie to the economy. This has been in other threads as well. Transferring money with a term for goods and services would be awesome within limits. A decker putting a different SIC alias to skim off a transaction? Even better.
- Topside has an auction house for some reason. Was it intended to actually run auctions? Let's get some storage wars going.
- Either cut some costs of things by a percentage across the board or raise incomes by a percentage.
I'm aware I'm asking for a lot more coded changes than player ones. And that, with the limited coding availability, none of these have any likelihood of happening.
So, my final plea is just to players. If you have flash, spread it. If you are connected, get people in there, get them earning trust. Don't take skills you have no point taking just to avoid RP.
This is not an attempt by me to shit on the game. There are places that have people doing that enough. I'm in SD because I like SD in general. I came back to my character because I missed SD. But it's definitely different now. Hard in OOCly upsetting ways instead of thematically IC ones.
Thanks for coming to my MythTalk. All spelling errors trademarked by me. Please, I absolutely welcome other ideas for changes or changes to how players interact or just knowing others are out there spending a lot of time just to run head-on into the same roadblocks, and it's not just me being absolutely terrible.
