I get that ICly it's silly for folks to be like, "Oh! You're a dancer? You should try making clothes!"
But I also feel like it's up to you to choose what you want to get out of artistry.
That is FAR too many splits. It would crowd the menu and honestly be annoying to use, imo, UE wise as well. That would suck.
I would create two.
Actual artist-isms, Drawing, Painting, Writing, Tagging (the niche actually art kind), Tattooing. ETC.
Then a second skill, performance and theatre. Tailoring, Singing, Dancing, Makeup, etc.
So while I could be ignorant of the larger playerbase, I disagree based on my point of view.
I've always felt this should be a police yourself issue. Decide what your character is good at, and stick to it. But often artistic people are good at picking up multiple artistic things.
and somewhere else, I think…But I can't find the thread.
Also, there's some other coded things artistry skill allows besides tailoring/tattoos/painting so I think splitting the skill would be much more complicated than one would think.
On the other hand, I agree with @Seir; splitting it seems fair, but not splitting it into that many different categories as originally suggested/proposed.
Manywaters might be the exceptional, super talented artist. I know many creative majors, including myself, that absolutely cannot touch on other creative processes/techniques. They might be able to dip a toe in something other than their own major, but wouldn't be as equally great as their own major. However, I do understand how a lot of art/creative knowledge can intertwine together.
As briefly mentioned in the older post, what if when choosing the artistry skill, a prompt would be asked about what you'd like to specialize in? Then, whatever you choose, would be displayed in @stats as a reminder. You wouldn't be codedly restricted, but there'd have a nice reminder/guide that will nudge players to be more conscious and police themselves? And then maybe as you put in more ue into artistry, you are able to choose more specializations?
e.g
>@assign ue to artistry
"What would you like to specialize in?"
>Tailoring
And under @stats: [!] Specialized in Tailoring
(However, you are not codedly restricted to only tailoring.)
When you assign enough ue to artistry, you'll get another prompt where you can add another specialization.
Though the problem here is how it would work with skillsofts.
I used to think that it'd be beneficial to split up the artistry stuff but then after years you see how the artistic population can fluctuate. There's times when it's hard to find more than one or two tailors, there's times when it's hard to find people who do tattoos. By splitting stuff up you're making those situations harder. There's also times, of course, where there's a flood of all.
But like with all things, its ebbs and flows. I think letting people have the option to do any and all of them, but encouraging players to self-regulate a bit and maybe not be the best in every part of those artistic endeavours, is healthier for the game. Artists who especially put a lot of effort and energy, a lot of self-imposed stress and expectations, into their work burnout easily and need breaks from doing that kind of work and maybe move on to different parts of their artistry talents. I think by limiting them to what they can or cannot do mechanically would only worsen the burnout effect.
I can't type who without getting four results for 'tailor and tattoo'
even at the absolute slowest hours of the day.
I find that that overinflates the economy and those people really make a lot less money.
So if the 'good' ones were split up between skills, they would have some competition but not half the non combat playerbase. I think it would work out great.
Artistry IS the broadest skill in the game currently. And provides an incredible amount of impact for how little effort it is to skill up to where it's useful.
When you have a skill that lets you become a Chef, a Tailor, a Painter, a Tagger, a Tattooist, a Performer, a Dancer, and so on.
You begin to see a large degree of problems with that skill. Namely that it is too fucking broad.
A two way split would fix ninety percent of these issues. Performance and Artistry would be a good way to split it. Or hell even Fine Art and other art, not an artist IRL so I don't know the name for it, but basically a street level(Tattooing, Graffiti, Tailoring) and performance style art, and higher art, maybe with higher art like painting requiring more in the way of mental affinity, with the street/lower level arts requiring more in the way physical affinity(substats here.) It would also fix with the fact that you can really only find Canvas' on Gold and Green and so on.
Hell maybe at higher levels allow the skills to be blended a bit, where after a threshold your street art start benefiting your fine art, and your fine art can help you build up and succeed in street level art.
This could also add a social stigma to ridiculous amount of people in hand tailored
flashy as fuck clothes topside. Something which really never made sense to me, as corporate work is all about fitting in. And would allow social interplay to be made interesting for those who don't fit the mold.
Burnout can be pretty bad as as someone making art in SD - especially when you continue having to making excuses IC'ly for OOC burnout - so it's nice to be able to IC'ly dabble in other areas or have other avenues to progress in without a hefty UE investment.
Without spoiling things too much, let's get some context here, it takes around two-three weeks to get up and running at a basic level as an artist that can do tattoos and tailoring without fucking it up.
That's as long as it takes to learn to drive without crashing a car at mid level speeds.
That's as long as it takes to get to the ability to actually throw a straight punch and hit someone who isn't dodging well.
And for artists, that covers a hell of a lot more than just tattooing and tailoring too. It also covers painting, art installations, etc etc.
Too broad, and requiring the admins to verify that when you're doing coded things that you haven't violated your backstory and stated skillset is… A fucking atrocious thing to do. Even splitting it two ways would make it far easier to police.
I agree with the overall sentiments here that it's an overloaded skill. I'd also thought in the past that it was simply too much under one umbrella, and I don't think that breaking it into two or three different skills would overly mess up the already long list of skills (31 currently.) I think that you could probably break it into performance arts: such as dancing, singing, playing an instrument, acting, etc. and visual arts:drawing, painting, tattoo, tailoring.
I don't recall who made the comment, but the suggestion to break off makeup I think is a good one, but I'd not put it under disguise. I'd just take the skill check off it completely. It's an expensive, consumable toy to play with, grants virtually no benefit, and has downsides that make it more punishing for mixers to use. Mostly, I'd just like to see nothing else given to disguise, since behind artistry, I think it's probably the second worst offender in the game in terms of relative 'must have' need and is overly-valued per point. But that's food for another discussion.
Yes, artistry is a relatively quick way to pick up some work and make some flash. But again, as I stated before, its ebb and flow. There's been periods in the game where it's difficult to find a tailor. And people picking up artistry for this purpose doesn't mean they'll succeed. If your character is a bad tailor, whether through skills or design, people will go elsewhere.
This doesn't even factor in burnout issues that'll be compounded if characters will be codedly restricted. I've been lucky enough to be around some of the most brilliantly fantastic creative characters in-game and I've seen how much it wears on the players.
As someone who used to be of mind that artistry be split up, I just don't agree with it anymore. If you or your character has an issue with how many people are offering tailoring and tattoing, whether alone or as a combo, then there's lots of plots they can enact to trim down the competition and discourage those characters from offering those services.
Also, I don't think being a purely artist char is exactly very easy either, so limiting them with a hard stop might discourage that archetype from being played. I think it'd make sense if the more effort and ue spent in artistry, the more the char is able to specialize in because they focus on the arts in general. This encourages artist chars to add more ue into their skill, rather than stop at a certain point because why bother spending more ue if all it does is raise "inspect" value that chars won't care as much about if your wording is great?
You are a drone, you work at the behest of invisible empires, and you are only as useful as you have a use.
Barring a couple end tier characters. You are not the mega wealthy. This is by design. You are a local celebrity at most. And even then if you were a local celebrity you could get away with proper tailored clothes from a brand that's recognized...
Jim Junior at //Corp//Sec walking around in hand tailored clothes, with rocketships emblazoned and displays of plasma on them as he comes into or out of work. Isn't going to make management like them more. Jim Junior is now the man with loud clothing who couldn't just go into pinstripes and buy a suit like everyone else, like everyone should.
But this is getting away from the topic at hand.
Returning to the topic at hand. Splitting tailoring and tattooing would make sense, and I agree that these at least mix side are the primary ways to earn flash with people.
Yeah some people are really good at multiple things, but it should require investment in multiple areas. Painting is not singing is not tailoring. I think people generally self-police to not be ridiculous about it but…not always.
On the one hand, I agree with ManyWaters that artistry is definitely synergistic IRL.
I also think that from a balance perspective, nerfing non-combat skills is sort of unnecessary. Combat skills are already so much stronger than non-combat skills that to devalue any non-combat skill seems like a mistake. After all, artistry is definitely one where you get some bang for your buck.
The typical complaint we hear is that artist characters are making too much money off one skill, which I completely disagree with. First, these people are spending lots of time IRL writing things to add beauty and style to the game, so if they make flash for their RL effort, that's awesome. Second, artist characters only make as much as people will pay them, meaning there is money floating around, there is demand, and if you want that money instead, do something that makes the buyer want to hire you more than they want a new jacket.
However this strikes me is the inverse of that argument, which is that so many characters have the same skills that it's difficult to differentiate yourself and make money as an artist; the anxiety is that if you just stick to one thing, maybe you'll be completely overshadowed by some character who unrealistically does it all. I don't necessarily agree with that, either. You could devote yourself to one discipline and IC push that that's what you do, that's what you specialize in, and attract customers that way. Become known as the go-to tailor, the best painter, the best singer.
Having said all of that, I do agree that it's a bit silly for it all to be lumped together. What I might do is break it down into Design, Tailoring and Performance.
- Design would cover art, fashion design, bio-mod design, makeup, interior decorating, and anything else normally covered under Artistry. To set the @worn, describe, @wear etc of a piece of clothing would require a design check and those checks would add to the potential value of the finished garment. Should be expected of NLMTV producers.
- Tailoring would cover the actual fabrication of clothing, not the design. A tailoring check would be required to finalize and would add to the final value of the clothes, in conjunction with the design value. In other words, you'd need an additional skill (or a partner) to actually sew your designs.
- Performance would cover acting, singing, dancing, etc. A performance check should get you more flash when getting up on stage to strip, perform etc and should be expected of NLM TV personalities.
Now on the flip side, imagine making an entertainer character, spending significant time RPing that, and then losing out on a media icon job at NLM because chummer who prints out 'This guy fux!' t-shirts all day has more magical universal artistry skillpoints than you do.
I know I'd be mad about losing that job spot.
The lack of differentiation is as much of a hindrance in certain situations as it is helpful in others.
I wrote in the other lets-split-artistry thread, dabblers resent those who rule, those who are committed resent dabblers. Play your own game and let the (other) artists play theirs. Let any rivalry be IC.
if anything had a 'tailoring skill' it should be to minimize price drops when altering because thats what tailoring is.
but still, i am against a split, it will retroactively fuck over so many tailors unless someone is offering a free respect that isn't counted against our single allowed one
Part of the reason I think artistry is so broad is because, at the end of the day, artists are creating content and there's a lot of effort that goes into that.
That being said, I'd be in support of artistry specializations that make you better at one specific thing while lowering everything else. It would encourage people to specialize even more than they already do, and yes many do already specialize themselves.
i think it's a bad idea to do that. it should remain broad to allow players the freedom to specialize themselves and learn the systems of artistry without getting codekicked in the balls because one specialization you have isn't enough to try it, and it drives you away from different areas of artist play.
we want to keep artists around, not punish them with more limitation. it's bringing in content
Without an overhaul, I can almost guarantee tattoos will remain a 'side hustle' for most tailors since everybody not specialized will continue to be able to work exactly the way they did before without staff intervention.
People just need to police themselves accordingly.
The game reinforces the notion that style is everything, and limiting people's means to be creative would only hinder that.
While I like the new "quality" changes, it still allows people with terrible writing but high skill and stats to pump out something with one line and people are forced to call it a masterpiece.
If anything, I'd like to see more accountability held in this area, along with people who try to do everything, versus a perceived need of code.
Culture can go a long way to achieve these same results.
I genuinely feel that it's on a grey area. It would be a bit dramatic to call it a problem, but it's definitely something that needs attention from both players who participate in this rp and staff who make code changes.
My biggest pet peeve regarding this is the utter disregard in the actual tattoo culture. Players are already encouraged, if not enforced, to make clothes that are actual clothes and keep to the cyberpunk theme, yet so many of tattoos I have ran across have no research behind them and is just a line of descriptive prose. I rarely see anyone experimenting with actual tattoo styles and maybe even go as far as developing something cyberpunk.
The split, if it is to happen, will do nothing but exacerbate the problem because you can do the exact same thing if you aren't specialized in tattoos.
Which is why I don't think accountability and coded support for showing quality of tattoos should be mutually exclusive. IIRC Tattooing overhaul is already planned, but I'm only bringing it up because in light of this discussion (of splitting artistry skills), I just wanted to point out something in our artistry culture in game.
I think splitting it into three skills for tailoring - canvas/tatts - Performing arts would be good.
As far as the makeup thing goes I agree it should be under disguise. I also feel like putting on makeup without ANY training should always succeed just not apply a disguise if you don't have any skill in it. After all.. if my 8 year old niece and do her makeup so should pretty much anyone else be able too.
I would imagine it's even worse in Sindome because we use digital canvas.
@evie I never thought I would see the day when someone called Artistry OP :)
@Lionion tattoo quality should be its own post or if one exists let's take the discussion there and instead of reiterating it here, let's just link to the post.
@Holy "While I like the new "quality" changes, it still allows people with terrible writing but high skill and stats to pump out something with one line and people are forced to call it a masterpiece."
This seems off topic. This isn't a thread about the new quality changes or for complaining about people not having the same level of writing skill OOCLy as their IC artistry skill.
https://www.sindome.org/bgbb/game-discussion/ideas/art-specialities-1231/
I’ve read all the posts in both threads. It’s very very clear that this drives some players just wild, but as far as “no, really, WHY” goes, I’ve got:
It’s unrealistic
It’s OP
And really not much else other than just statements of resentment. And my impression is that that’s The Reason, it’s emotional not rational.
Unrealistic? Like many parts of the game, Johnny gives no fucks about your immersion (look it up) and we’re not a Real Life Sim.
OP? There might be something to that, but I’ve still only seen how neoprene feel and not a clear statement about what exactly is unfair here. Where’s the victim?
See above, the fact that SIC has so many tailor-tattoo tags tells me that there’s demand, not that there’s suffering.
Really, what are the unspoken judgements and assumptions behind the splitters’ powerfully emotional posts?
You said you've read the entire post(s) and yet you belittle everybody who participated in the threads and say everybody is emotionally charged. I am obligated to tell you because of my psychology background that fixating on rationality is as unhealthy as letting emotion drive everything. Let's get that out of the way first.
There have been several points enunciating that an umbrella skill hurts the specialists. I have no strong opinion about this, but that's pretty much the short and the long end of the stick other than the realism camp or the overpowered camp.
Please stop belittling other players. I'm fairly sure it's against the BGBB etiquette, but what do I know.
i dont see anyone complaining about it ingame since there are plenty of other avenues to make flash. people can specialize on their own just fine, and everyone seems to do it. i haven't seen one person in the past year or so who goes around saying that they cah:
make clothes
make music
paint
holosculpt
tattoo
sing
act
draw any form of a crowd
entertain in general
all at the same time
people specialize because it's normal for someone to not play some mary sue type of artistry main who can 'do everything and be a pro at everything'
it just doesn't happen. specialization is a natural process and SHOULD NOT be forced
* Artists choose two styles, akin to fighting styles.
* It does nothing mechanically, there isn't anything to spend UE on outside artistry. All it does is sort of 'declare' what you do to lock you into some accountability.
Gives specialization and makes sure nobody is doing a little of everything- which I have seen several artists who absolutely do just participate in every form of art because they're so amazing.
Wasn't trying to make a complain post, was just pointing out how the culture surrounding the Artistry skill in general affects its application.
“Fixating on rationality”... mixa please. I’m willing to be persuaded, and more “its just wrong” ain't gonna do it.
“Belittling everyone”... throwing false superlatives into an argument isn’t exactly honest, effective or fair.
“Im not particularly advocating for reworking artistry”... but youre nevertheless discouraging someone on the other side of that particular fence from respectfully posting with a genuine interest in learning what objections there are besides one which doesn’t count and one which hasn’t been explained with more than a 2 letter buzzword.
I will take it back though, and recognize that there is a third one: one person did say that with so many artists around, some of them aren’t getting the work or income they might have otherwise. I could react to that but I’ll save it for later since I'm still in Receptive mode.
There is no way in hell I am letting someone force me to pick between making clothes and painting, or saying I can't sing because I know tattoos. I am not going to be for this restriction whatsoever. Artists are a minority of the playerbase at large and I feel a lot of the people chiming in might not even be artistry mains to begin with, and people are putting restrictions on without even thinking of how it will lead to player retention or archetype retention issues
So while I don't necessarily want artistry to be split up, I do think some of the skills inconsistencies should be addressed, as artistry is objectively the broadest skill when it comes to applications, and by a pretty huge margin.
Now, if you want to introduce a UE dump like weapon specialization for artistry specialization, that'd be an idea. But I think it's predictable where those points would go if people did them.
Ultimately this is pretty self-regulated and I don't think people who aren't artists fully understand the mental energy and effort creators put into the stuff they make for other characters. For the most part.
I can sorta see a specialization like advantages or weapons specializations working, but even that comes with lots of caveats attached like the post I made above.
Like it or not, people who get the most out of artistry do so by taking a simple object in game and pouring a lot their personal effort and time into it to make it into something we can all enjoy (and often times we don't show that as much as we should). That is't the case, a lot, for people working with coded skills and coded parts to complement.
stop trying to police the people bringing content into your world and allow them to self regulate
we are all adults
we understand specialization is important, and a lot of people don't do jack of all trades shit
we are smart enough to self regulate and do not need people stomping on our autonomy to self regulate by absolutely fucking skills up
Anyone who’s interested to see any new information can check out the long discussion started as a proposal by Cerberus in the June 2017 Town Hall: https://www.sindome.org/sd-townhall-june-2017.html
Cerberus’s reasoning was that at that particular time players had been buffing artistry without any real IC reason or experience. He was objecting to people’s RP, but other players in that discussion did mention things like competition and the whole subject of how “ICly talented but OOCly not” seemed troublesome.
At the end of the day it's a game. And we should all sorta give some room for artists to experiment and grow, not just ICly but OOCly as well. (I know my writing improved a lot playing my current character) It would go a long way if people did some research though.
And in my eyes, having a mechanical bonus; i.e. advantage/specialization to the areas the player/character feels most passionate about would be a push to the right direction, since they would already put in tremendous effort into things.
Lets just imagine that this problem could be satisfied that way instead of with code. What would artsy characters do differently?
@holdback while tattooing if their only experience is in tailoring?
Refuse to paint if they’ve got a condo on Blue due to being a top NLM entertainer?
Not spraypaint, paint vehicles, produce grid designs, or Sing A Rong with the karaoke if they can create a €75,000 gown?
I don’t know, I'm asking. My brainstorms aren't intended to be belittling, just see if I,’m on the right track.
*fistbump*
Forcing artistry builds to pick just one thing is probably not the right way to go for a couple reasons, with the biggest one being roleplay.
From the top of my head, I can think of…
Idris Elba, who is an actor and an amazing DJ.
Alison Wonderland, Australian DJ who designs her own merch and tattoos.
and so on. It's not unrealistic technically.
Which is why I'm opposed to a hard split, but it would be good to have a solid lineation of 'I am good at these three or four things, but I'm not also a master chef and singer.' I'm not married to having to pick two, but even three or four seems like lots of freedom and fair to everyone. It also makes specialization a little more meaningful.
The argument to me that has always been the soundest for splitting it up, is that artistry is too broad.
Artistry is not overly broad, it's a broad skill in a category of broad skills. Look at the actual definitions of Forensics, Chemical, Medical and Biotech. And then apply the same rigidity that Artistry has in it's SYSTEMS, to how you RP those.
Artistry doesn't need to be split up. It just needs proper RP… Which is happening... It's like a middle school art class at first though... The character dabbles and then eventually, as they invest in, finds a niche they like.
Which can't be said for the other skills in the life science category. Most of which are ignored, or used purely for their systems.
