No skill UE at character creation
Build the body not the ability

I'd be behind the idea of giving new players a month of double or triple UE gains per day to build and fast-track their character while also getting actual practical experience in-game.

Just so long as they're not introduced in a 'use it or lose it' or 'you must login today to get your limited-availability login rewards!'

Oh yeah. The archetypes and general starting character information really needs to be updated or made perhaps a little more representative of actual IC things.

We should also probably be treating the information on those pages as idiot-proof, because it's certainly easy enough to look at all the skills and stats listed, and just dump all your UE into everything listed.

Which would be.. really quite far away from ideal in practice.

Actually- I retract part of what I said. It looks like the skills have been heavily pruned down from what they used to be. Shows me for not checking before posting to see if they'd been updated.

Elysian, there's nothing anywhere in the game that makes you tell characters that your name is your character object name.

It's somewhat common for people to go by nicknames, or use things other than their object ID name. Many people go by their SIC handle, which is very mutable.

My favorite food in Sindome is popcorn because I can eat it by typing "eat butt". I don't think people are going to hate you for your name unless you make it intentionally metagamey to spell to target commands on you like jhKXzy or something. This is getting off topic though.

On topic: Trimming all the obsolete old job titles (most of which never were filled out/clickable hyperlinks anyway) is also worthwhile.

I'm in favor of this because it also help broaden the scope of character gen (and just generally be more fun). If you ever want to make a more experienced character, like someone in their fourties, you have to hamstring yourself and make up awkward excuses as to why they suck. I understand characters start weak so you start their story at the beginning and not come in with a 'premade' character, but I do think the game takes it too far. I've always hated the idea that immies (mechanically) were useless, it's super gamey and immersion breaking (and even more dumb since the vast majority of characters were immies at one point. You never stop being an immie, but people play it off like that as soon as someone starts getting contacts and skills). Let immies be useful and unpredictable because nine times out of ten, it boils down to 'hah they're an immy so I know I can beat them in combat' and that's just... Boring and awful for everyone involved.

Let the dumbfuck mugger jump that immie they've never seen before, only to realize that immy used to be in a yakuza family and used their crate money to save up for a machete. It shifts the balance a little and makes interactions more diverse. All that to say, I think it's a great idea, especially since skills are easier to raise than stats, so new players can at least feel like they're progressing more when they put points into it, instead of having to dump like a week's worth of UE to go up one letter in a stat.

Of course, I think it's also worth discussing if this would make people more prone to making characters and getting them killed off if things go wrong, because they know they can jump back into another quicker than before. I don't think they would, because there's still a huge difference between say, someone who's been here 3 months and someone who's been here a year. And Sindome is 90% contacts, anyway.

@elysian

There are also IC ways to change that coded name. If it really bothers you, look into it. But mostly, realise at least a few players (and NPCs) have coded names that NOBODY knows them by (even though it accidentally slips and players use it in dialogue by mistake, but everyone just sort of waves it off generally.) I played one such character myself, where I'm pretty sure no one really knew their coded name IC and I never had issues.

Idea.

A section preceding point-spending that gives you premade options.

"Choose an archetype to view info on it, or create your own."

1) Ripper Doc

2) Medic

...etc.

20) Custom

When you select an archetype, you get a blurb from the archetypes page: (https://www.sindome.org/archetypes/)

Then you're asked if you want to select this archetype. Choose yes and you automatically get your stats assigned to you based on the skills & stats listed there.

So Ripper Doc gets 1/3 of stat points into INT, PCP, AGL

Make major skills count 3/4 and minor skills count 1/4 of skill points.

Ripper Doc gets 3/4 skill points in medical and bio tech, divided evenly. And 1/4 skill points in forensics and chemical, divided evenly.

Etc.

Alternatively blacklist certain advanced skills from character creation, that new players will have no conceivable way of knowing how they are used IC, or that they may require specific jobs or extremely expensive equipment.

Compared to other cyberpunk media some skills may work very differently (rigging) or be far less ubiquitous at street-level than might be expected (piloting, firearms) or require expensive equipment that is not obvious at character creation (chemical, forensics, bio tech), or have in-progress development (all decker skills).

A reluctance to engage with new players is often driven by their characters so often perming or vanishing in the first two weeks. Although part of that is likely just players deciding Sindome isn't for them, I do think some of that comes from learning IC knowledge about how skills work/what is actually good and sometimes deciding to build their character differently based on that knowledge.

A player who spends a few days learning how to start out strong with their skills, and then booths to start again with that OOC knowledge, will often have a coded advantage, both immediately and in the long run, over players who stick out their rough starts. I think it's worthwhile to consider providing some information to help make people feel like they're not making bad choices that contribute to them giving up.