NPC Muggers
Get mugged, for the themeliness of it

So, ultimately this comes down to personal experience. But I find that there is a lack of mugging on player parts happening in the last year or maybe more .

The mix feels soft. And there are non-combatants and immy's even running around carrying valuable tools, in valuable clothes, that they cannot defend themselves. And yet I have not seen nor heard of anyone getting mugged over this in around a year+. This is a contrast to how it was even 3 years ago. Where if you made unthemely choices like this(And yes it runs counter to the mix's theme to walk around in silks and other high quality clothing, carrying high caliber technical devices like quickterms and liteterms like a corporate employee), you would have players roll your face in the concrete and steal your shit. Generally leaving you naked in an alleyway if you were lucky.

So on from that... As a bit of a tax to being unthemely, I'm going to propose a system, that on the outset I think would do some good.

This system is as such.

Walk past a ganger openly wearing high quality items, you get an auto aim action fire off from the NPC on a chance based basis. I'd say maybe scale it based on the items value, from about 2% if it's worth more than 2000 base value(2000 is literally more than a weeks income for most people in the mix.) to 50% if something is worth more than 30k. An exclusion list might have to be built, for things like Xo3, or Xo5, Solo gear and kit. But for everything else, it should roll on if that ganger feels like messing with you.

After the aim stops you, the Ganger says to you, "Give me (ITEM) or I take it from your twitching body." You're being mugged. Wait too long, I'd say 1 to 2 minutes and the ganger starts swinging with all the usual effects.

You have choices and chances there to escape, many in fact, you also have choices to even fight off the mugger, and if you're in good with a certain gang, maybe they won't bother you about your fancy shit. That's up to the coders. But the other ones will. It's not someone swinging on your ass randomly. It's something that is projected, avoidable using the typical ways of blending in. And it will add additional complication to existing within the mix that feels themely.

This item stays on the ganger for a bit, maybe a week at most, giving you an opportunity to hire a tough to smack the ganger around and get your item back, or to hire a dip to retrieve it for you covertly, and after this, the item, whatever it may be, goes into the markets.

Stimulating the economy.

Without getting in to whether or not I'm a fan of those play styles or not, there is a spectrum and it's all valid.

Reel the non-objectivity in please.

As for the idea itself. I...don't like the idea of NPCs taking too many automated actions that PCs should be taking care of. I feel like this is a heavyhanded attempt to address a symptom in lieu of addressing the problem.

2. The solution isn't an automated system that everyone will ignore and be meta about for something that should be done by players. Plots are driven by players, not by NPCs.

I don't care about killings, I care only about muggings in this case. When you are killed you do not know what you have lost.

That said, some real facts, because I like to keep track of corpses I see.

Of the 38 unique corpses I've seen in the last 30 days that I have noted down, 27 of them have been memento's, 5 of them have been boothed immy's, 2 of them have been Named NPC's. 4 of them have been player characters with more than a month in game. 1 was indeterminate.

As far as I can tell, 80-90% of all death that occurs presently in the game is systemic in nature taken about by Memeto's operating with said systems.

This is fantastic, it makes the world feel alive. But it very much counters your point there. That these automated systems will result in player meta, or that muggings and killings happen all the time between players.

Beyond that. I never once said people weren't getting mugged, I said it wasn't nearly as common as three years ago, to the point where I literally hadn't heard of someone JUST getting mugged for wearing nice shit in the last year+.

Stop being petty.

Be better.

All of you.

Rhea, those sound like some pretty hard numbers. It also sounds like pretty IC info...maybe reel it in a bit on that kind of OOC paydata? Or share it via xhelps? You also can't verify how many muggings have occurred outside of those bodies though.

One thing that may play in here (and I'm not 100% sure that's the case) is that some older players may not be as into punching down as was previously happening. Certain players can reach unkillable levels in one on one depending on their builds. It's possible that they're busier running gnarly plots or hitting higher targets, and not as interested in hitting midbies. Hiring lower level players to mug random people on the street is a bit of a donut hole. I think the higher level people are expecting low and midbies to be getting after that chy on their own.

Also, another thing that's sort of a gut feeling for me, is that the playerbase has been growing, and people are hesitant to give that hard welcome to a newer player so they can keep them around. I've seen plenty of people perm out after big losses. It can be a bit of a gut-punch to the person dishing them out, oocly. Without any numbers on actual muggings (which is the point of this post) there's no real way to know. I know a lot of people don't go screaming about how they're so weak they just got mugged. It's a great way to be on the menu forever. However, if maybe things have got too far in the other direction, I'd rather see the GM's incentivize players with a bad-ass NPC, or orders from Gang Bosses saying "these corpa' lookin' motherfuckers are making our street look bad. Make 'em bleed."

I can say one thing for certain though. I can think of one or two locations where a PC with fancy shit is certainly getting their ass whipped and robbed, and the locations I'm thinking of are PC enforced.

However, Batko has in my opinion, the right take on things.

Dipping is so completely rampant that hardly anyone carries anything on them outside their locker or apartment.

This makes mugging pretty much a waste of time, whereas robbery can be very lucrative. Unfortunately robbery has it's own share of issues (getting trapped inside for hours/days, Waiting hours/days for people to actually leave their apartments in the first place, etc.) so I don't see nearly as many characters doing that outside special circumstances (getting data on a motherlode stash, for example.)

TL;DR, I still think dipping is largely a non-interactive system that encourages PC money farming and causes a distinct lack of other RP/incentivized opportunities elsewhere.