Grid 3.0 worth the wait?

First and foremost, this is a free game with real people who have made real sacrifices (time, stress, and more) to make this a fun, quality game for us, like coconut says. They have lives, and it's important to always consider their perspective, and the sacrifices they make.

Also, what Reefer says: If Deckers can't get coded love, they deserve GM love.

These two ideas seem opposed to each other in some ways, so I have a suggestion that may help somewhat alleviate staff pressure and time constraints to allow the current Decker characters to get some GM love more consistently.

Any player (new or veteran) making a new character should be discouraged from creating a Decking-based character via various messages, possibly including prompts at character generation.

I notice that despite the current state of Decking in Sindome, there are new aspiring Deckers who appear at the gates often enough for me to believe it puts additional pressure on a Staff that's already stretched thin as it is.

And I believe this pressure is at a greater cost than the benefits(RP, IC world enrichment) that comes from it. My belief (zero evidence, only anecdotal musings and conjecture), is that Decking characters are able to get some GM assistance to feel like their skillset matters, but consistent GM assistance with that is absolutely not a reasonable expectation. So, I think dedicated Decker characters go for longer and longer periods of time where they don't get GM assistance (just how it is), and over time become more and more dissatisfied with their choice of character concept. I think this leads to a higher percentage of Decker characters killing themselves off compared to other "archetypes."

So, to someone like me who does NOT see the big picture, it looks like there is pressure for GMs to help Deckers out, but NEW Decker characters usually don't stay around for long enough to bring a good amount of RP to the IC world around.

Of course, in reality, that's just not possible because deckers are sort of the mascots of cyberpunk. Ignore the fact that they don't tend to have central roles in media because it's not really that interesting from an outside perspective.

The real objective that's worth pursuing in my mind isn't to improve the experience of decker characters, but to improve the experience of everyone when it comes to interacting with deckers. The way things stand right now, there's not much point to be vulnerable to deckers, since the Grid is barely useful and barely any real paydata move through them.

Grid 3.0, from what I've seen of it, would help, not because deckers would be stronger (which they will be though), but because it'll make people's RP more relevant to the Grid. Now, I'm really quite unclear about what Grid 3.0 will include on its launch, but I'm assuming that it'll continue the current initiative to make deckers able to tap into more info. Maybe tapping gridphones, private forums, and whatnot that will make privacy more complicated to obtain in Sindome and making hustling look more like Molly bringing Case to talk at the Finn's instead of just ringing up someone on a proggy.

My assumption was that they can connect to the grid and, having passed some test, are able to explore items connected to the grid, limited by their skill level. Door locks, SIC chips, weapons that require fingerprint grid verification before activating, etc.

There's hacking in a MUD called Starmourn (I don't play it anymore due to a toxic community). It has a really fun hacking minigame, but all it can be used for is opening doors (and 95% of those doors are pointless to open).

If hacking could be used for far more, deckers would be a real threat -- especially if they had to be connected to the grid in a remote location, and the longer they spend hacking in a single day (based on skill level?), the more they attract the attention of the WJF.

Temporarily disable weapons, cameras, locks, SIC, orbs, etc. or even worse, gain remote control over them. Upgrade them, change what they're linked to, etc. (Yes I understand that a lot of this needs to be fairly done, like is it really OK for someone to unlock a door where someone is sleeping? How difficult should it be to find the object you're looking for? Etc.)

I dunno if this is what Grid 3.0 is about but this sounds really exciting.

---

Liaison: "Can't you hack faster???"

Decker *says nothing because their body is jacked in*

Decker snaps back to reality.

Decker: It's unlocked. You have three minutes.

Liaison=> Three minutes. Go. [Sent to: Solo]

Liaison=> She's in. [Sent to: Boss]

The other problem is also that it’s hard to shift your character to a new goal when you designed your character concept around decking, which is part of what I feel like leads to a lot of people killing their characters. Personally, the reason that I’ve been considering a re-roll is just because it sorta kills my entire character concept and makes it not fun to play. In a lot of ways it makes more sense to neatly wrap everything up and sunset them, and make a character that more easily fits into the world, because radically shifting your character feels like a betrayal of the character and their motivations and doesn’t really feel like a logical IC story progression, but a forced one based on OOC practicalities.

It also occurs to me that though I was talking about setting the tone of deckers having power ICly is needed, I question that now because people IC and people here are talking so much about trying to push people -away- from the archetype. I think it’s hard to have everyone telling a character/player, “Don’t be this archetype” while also saying “But this archetype is very powerful and valuable.” Which I believe leads to all the meta of deckers being useless IC, even though they’re not supposed to be.

I feel bad that I unfortunately don’t have any kind of solution to suggest or add at this time, but I’m hoping that my input might be useful in some way to the GMs, and people who are more familiar with RP in general and Sindome itself.

I don’t say all this to place blame on the GMs or coders. I fully appreciate what they do, and have at all times found them to be incredibly mature and thoughtful, as well as helpful. The GMs do a fantastic job, and so do the devs. There’s a lot to love about Sindome.

I’m merely expressing the perspective of one new player’s experience with trying to play the archetype that interested them the most.

Silver lining: I do think, in the meantime, it gives good IC opportunities to hate on NLM. When that "Grid 2.0" ad shows up, blow up on SIC at NLM on a burner alias. Call them trash and wreck their reputation.

If folks show more spirit towards it IC then maybe that'll help inspire the development motivation train?

I'll say it again; our coders and builders can do amazing things, scrap this direction and put it MOO side in their hands. Our deckers deserve it. If we can crank out circuitous coded systems to literally generate shrouded NPCs bc meta stupidity then lets sink the MOOside resources into something that truly adds to the richness of the world.

Or 3.0 eventually drops and is whatever it is. Then when the foundation needs updating or fixing its back to this bc its the same bottleneck. Were strangled forever. Deckers get short shrift for another 15 years because our systems happen to have gone this direction and everyine else gets to keep being interesting, powerful, respected, viable.

Put the cyber in your punk. I love you Slither and we go WAY back but dude you'd be so less chill if things were reversed and you never got to play 7x because after playing SD for 15 years there was no working combat system yet and street sams were a joke while Grid 12.0 was steaming along.

I'm so numb watching some of the best RPers the game has seen suicide or just abandon their decking characters because they feel so negelcted. FIFTEEN YEARS with the same system dude you can only say "it takes time" so many times in the face of FIFTEEN YEARS . We're obviously just not a priority. I've been here literally like half my life.

Everyone knows that it's taking time.

And each time it's brought up OOC or even IC in a complaining or even deserving tone, it's embarrassing and disrespectful.

Encourage, support. Maybe even try to spurn plot with the Grid as it is, showing interest in it. The squeaky wheel gets the grease remains true, but it's squeaky IC wheels such as conflict and plot versus OOC complains. The areas of the game the GMs put effort into are the ones players are invested in. THAT is how you show you're invested. Not banging on the clockmaker's door.

I'm not slamming anyone, at least not with constructive input, and if it comes off as frustrated or harsh, there's good reason.

'The grid' or whatever deckers 'use' -- putting it into Node.js or whatever MOO-external frameworks is, I feel, a deeply flawed and failed design point and has been since it was implemented. The fact decking is where it is and that literally no one on the staff but Jman can work on it or has been able to is my reason for saying that.

Before Slither posts and tells me how hurtful to him it is to hear that, etc. I genuinely say it with full consideration of how much work and time and money has gone into it, both the work I know about and work I'm sure I can't even imagine. I really mean that. I've been a player as well as a staff member (though that was a very, very long time ago) so I get it . Slither and Johnny on and off over the years have been IC/OOC people that have been people I deeply admire and respect and have at times considered friends. But let me say it again because apparently twice now hasn't been enough for people to comprehend it: what we've learned is that this isn't working.

What would be actually fruitful is to start over, with an approach toward a decking system that is MOO-side so that the other coders and builders who Aren't Johnny and can actually contribute to it.

Without getting IC, as I've said before (and as some players might know) there's already some groundwork there, it's not even starting from scratch.

IDK why I've raised this as constructive input like 5 times now (including off-handedly at a town hall) and it's just glossed over with "lol lern 2 code and make ur own grid".

The flashy browser UI layer stuff is COOL but it feels obvious that it is and always has been too ambitious / too much because we've had so long to get there and we're not. That's not a criticism of Johnny, I don't think he doesn't care or isn't talented enough or isn't lazy or something, I agree with everyone else that this is just a free game passion project for the staff and real life comes first -- absolutely! Which is why things like the scope of this should match the time folks like Johnny can honestly contribute. If I have 10 minutes a day to read, I should probably read a novella, and not War and Peace.

And yes I've donated to the game a few times. The fundraising ideas are funny, Jman makes bank, we're not going to get him to quit his day job. =)

W/e I'm done, people don't read, most of the playerbase gives 2 chy about the archetype anyway because after this much time the people who want that RP have gone elsewhere for it. I can't believe I'm 34 and remember being 16 and thinking "OMG I love Neuromancer, I can RP it here! No decking? That's weird. I'm sure it's coming."

I'm stepping away from the forums, I've already stepped away from the game at this point. I hope to return to both in better spirits someday.

The node.js code takes time to learn, time we would be paying someone for even if there were a mooside API they could integrate with and a full project propplosal and technical roadmap that was fully scoped and written down. Doing that would take 10-15 hours. Learning the code by contractor 10-15 hours. Finishing the moo api--20 hours. Writing moo API documentation 5 hours.Understanding the MOO integration and API by a developer 5 hours. Writing the code needed on the node side, 40 hours. Project management 20-30 hours.

Add all those numbers up, double them, then tripple that. Then multiply that by typical contractor rates of 125-150 an hour for the caliber dev we would need. That's $117,000 ballpark or so. And if we paid that, we would be getting it cheap. Which means we wouldn't be getting the system we want in the timeline we want.

If you think that's crazy then ask yourself how digital agencies make money when they have to pay developers 6 figure salaries and benefits.

There is no way to raise the kind of money we would need, and even if we did someone on our end would still need to spend a bunch of time project managing it.

I'm sorry to folks that don't like how long it's taken. But thems the breaks.

We've only been working on 3.0 for a couple of years. Not 15. We were working on the matrix and made the active choice to work on only one of these systems. And this was the one we picked. We are not going to end up in the same situation we we're in with ikonboard and crapwiki. We are developing in languages we actually know. Languages and services that will be around in 20 years.

Be patient. And in the meantime, play characters that have the level of coded support you are comfortable with.

I understand what you are saying about obfuscation, closed source, etc. That is actually a plus in the category of having a third party, who does not play the game, come in and finish it. They have no frame of reference and can focus on making it work. The staff and players do not have to worry about "trusting" them because they are not in the position to exploit any information that they gain.

Personally, I have worked on some extremely sensitive matters that to this day I am not allowed to go into specific details on. Matters like the largest financial institution in the world creating financial products that nearly crashed the world economy about a decade ago. It is possible to work on a project without spilling the beans. Within the last hour I even considered whether I would give up my character for six months (even though the character is not a decker) in order to manage the project, and the answer is that I would.

I have zero skin in this game, other than wanting to see a working Grid / matrix.

A good 70% of a project like this is establishing the scope and deliverables. In other words, defining what the finished product is and how it is supposed to work. That is where Johnny is invaluable. He has the big picture in his head and knows how he wants everything to fit together.

The actual coding, testing and debugging is only 30%. It is a 30% percent that requires a specialized skill set. But it is not the majority of the project.

My fear, and this might be misplaced, is that very little has actually been done. And that "everything" is in Johnny's head. He knows what he wants the final product to look like, but he's the only person who knows how to get from Point A (where we are) to Point B (Grid 3.0 functional). He probably does not know exactly how to get from A to B and needs to hack it out. That is typical when it comes to development. You have a basic idea of what you want to do, but until you sit down and start writing code and debugging it, you aren't sure just exactly how it is going to work.

All of this is conjecture based on 20+ years of working on IT projects, so take it with a grain of salt. I am not trying to throw shade on the staff, or poo poo on what has been done.

As a third party who is reading what I see in public and looking at it as an outside observer, I am willing to bet that the project is a lot closer to the beginning phase, than the end phase. Glitch's response about not wanting to farm it out, combined with the lack of progress, combined with a single person being the "only" person who can work on it is a pattern that is common in the business world.

Nine times out of ten when I have worked with a team that is not making progress and is hesitant to let anyone else see what they are doing, it is because the reality of what they have accomplished does not line up with what they have been telling people has been accomplished.

Anyway, that's my two cents. Farm it out. Do all of the heavy lifting (scope creation) internally ahead of time.

I am willing to help. Over the last 20 years I've delivered over $100 million worth of IT projects. I've worked on highly sensitive matters involving some of the largest corporations in the world and three letter Federal agencies. I don't have a decker character, and despite having played FPS games since Quake on an IPX LAN, I have never once used an aimbot. I hate cheaters. =)

"And in the meantime, play characters that have the level of coded support you are comfortable with. "

Is there any way we can get this to display on the site, or the client in a more noticeable way, so that new players understand deckers do not get very much coded support currently, and will need to wait until it's more readily available?

I honestly think that if we just wait, Grid 3'll be fine. I don't particularly like having less shit to do without GM help than other archetypes, but I think I prefer it a whole lot more to not being able to do [i[anything[/i].

Keep it simple and to the point. (I haven't played a decker so I have no idea if these abilities are even relevant)

Open / Close Doors

Control Cameras

Look up Bank Account

etc

If it's not too much of an ask, it would be great if there was a process via Service-Request or something similar where a decker can check their abilities. To keep staff sane, consider limiting the skill check to once a month.

The reason I suggest a check is because other characters can pretty much figure out where they stand via coded systems. Combat characters can fight NPCs, or other PCs. Tailors can create clothing. Doctors can heal people. Mechanics can work on cars. Technicians can mess with electronics. All of the above can be done without staff interaction, and by a single PC working alone.

There should be a way for a decker to know if they can contribute meaningfully to other characters' plots before they are really needed in a life and death or other potentially PVP type situation.

briefcase

access-keypad

door-controller

dashboard

home-security

water-controller

weather-controller

window-controller

wind-turbine

cityscape

power-controller

power-supply

timer

chemicals

brain-implant

hydroponic-garden

drugs

lifesign-controller

robot

home-matrix-jack

kitchen-controller

factory

government

message-server

audio-stream

chip

defensive-shield

processor

scaler

tracking-device

location-tracker

matrix-user

map

bank-acct

ledger

transaction

spacecraft

offshore-rig

orbital-relay

satellite

blocks

data-dump

data-portal

database

framework

metrics

networked-vault

records

lifesign-monitor

personnel

gridphone

gridphone-call

shop

networked-person

identity

blockchain

grid-interface

link

network

protocol

signpost

architecture

touch-screen

light-controller

microphone-controller

decentralized

motion-sensor

camera

home-controller

vehicle

vehicle-controller

vehicle-security

express-tube

metro

traffic-controller

ship

.mutter bitterly about perming previous decker character.

.goe back to attempting to avoid having face smashed in.

It does give one ideas.