This is going to be a long one, but I promise it is well organized. There is a premise, and supporting points, and a final conclusion that ties everything together.)
I've been playing here for a little over a year. It has been a great experience for the most part. I am absolutely amazed by the dedication that Slither and Johnny have to making this place better. If you all don't realize how completely improbable it is for life to come together in such a way that allows two people like Slither and Johnny to find the RL partners that they have, who allow them to spend their free time here, to voluntarily make this place great for OTHER PEOPLE to come enjoy, you need to. Seriously. It's… odd, in a "that drek only happens once in a million years" kind of way. You're all blessed.
You're all blessed with Dreamer too. Dreamer and I got our relationship off on the wrong foot. In 99% of life, that would have been that. We would have gone on as more or less enemies. The fact that Dreamer was able to accept an apology and continue to be courtesy and respectful to me as a player is a rarity. People who can do that are a rarity. The world needs more people like Dreamer. And Sindome is blessed that Dreamer is in the role that they are in.
I'm just not having fun here anymore. And while that's a bad thing, it's also a good thing. If I was having loads of fun, it would be hard to step away and my RL would suffer for it. Life is funny like that. Whether you want it to or not, the universe is always nudging you (sometimes no so gently) towards things you should be doing to make your life better, and away from things that are draining your energy and bringing you down. One of the easiest things to say, but the hardest things to do is "Trust your intuition."
This brings me to my first point (I told you this was going to be long). Over the last year, I have seen a fair amount of posts on BgBB that follow the theme of, "I don't have as much time as some people to do play this game. Therefore the game NEEDS to be balanced for more casual players like me."
Here's a newsflash. Free time is a privilege and a blessing. Not everyone will have the same amount of time. Some people will have more of it at certain times of their life than others. Some people will choose to do things with their free time that other people might not choose to do with their own free time. Life is not an even playing field. Sindome isn't either.
The second thing I want to point out is that this BgBB is toxic. I am going to seriously advise just removing it from the community entirely. This is a HUGE source of bleed. Pretty much the only two boards worth anything here are Ideas (and we've seen what a cesspool that can become) and Announcements. The rest of it is a passive aggressive mess of OOC / IC crossover that really brings out the worst in people. It's really used by a small handful of vocal players to bully other players and degrade the entire game experience.
I am 100% serious when I say that if you were to do away with the BgBB and make everyone deal with their angst and butt hurt bleed ICly, IN THE GAME instead out here on these boards, the game would be 10,000% more dark, gritty and THEMELY.
I understand that the BgBB is a "good" place to come blow off steam and decompress a bit. But I truly believe that it is too permissive. So much of what gets vented here would be much better dealt with ICly. The game would be a much better place for it. For a game and community that prides itself on a strict, borderline draconian prohibition on OOC communication about the game among players, the BgBB in it's current state totally undermines that. It's almost laughable just how 180 degrees opposite the "no OOC communication" policy and the BgBB are. Especially the memes section.
This brings me to my last point. (Got popcorn? This is going to be a bit of a rant.)
DWIC - Deal With It ICly
I am going to do what many have done over the past year I have been playing here. I am going to offer enough background of IC events to hopefully speak "authoritatively" about the subject. While doing that, I am going to do my best to omit specifics so as to not cross the line into divulging information about coded game systems or IC events.
This might be partially ego, but my character was more or less the "reason" for the latest economy adjustment. After playing the game for a year, I got to the point where I had a good understanding of the coded systems. And I was milking the heck out of them. I was making absolutely as much chy as I could, week after week.
It got to the point that I was making so much chy that I could start taking risks. The entire time I was playing, I had Slither's advice from the newbie videos in the forefront of my mind. (Do stupid things if you have to in order to generate RP.) So I went out there and started being stupid.
The "safe" way to play a game like this is to be quiet. Play small. Don't be flashy. Don't draw attention to yourself. Play stupid. Don't tell anyone else what you know. Horde everything for yourself and use it to your advantage over others.
I stopped playing safe. Rather than sit on my knowledge and exploit it, I started spreading it around. And let me tell you, it was HARD to do that. At the end, I was literally throwing free chy at characters to try to get them involved. Even then, I still had about 50% of characters too scared, or paranoid, or lazy to get involved.
And I wasn't just doing that with the particular system that was recently adjusted. My character was in a position where they came into contact with new characters all the time. And without going into specific numbers with the new characters, I did everything I could to educate them on ways to make the absolute most amount of chy possible.
Every time I let a new character in on things, I knew I was taking a risk. I was being flashy. I was hinting that I knew what was going on. I was coming as close to "@add-note ROB ME" as I could without going that far. Every time I took my character back to their apartment, I was expecting someone to jump out of the shadows to mug them. Every time my character picked up yet another stack (pet peeve here, a stack is 10,000 not 1,000. Stop being a junior and make REAL stacks), I was expecting some bigger, badder and more conniving character to mug them for it. I went so far as to leave literal stacks of chy on the floor of the apartment and invite characters over to see them.
I was throwing chy at PCs and NPCs alike trying to learn more about how the game works in general, and how my character's professions worked specifically. I was doing everything conceivable to burn through as much chy as possible.
But at the end of the day, it wasn't enough. Nobody came through and DWIC. Nope. It was whining and crying on the BgBB that brought the gravy train to an end. Veteran players who didn't like that "They" were better than "Us" complained about it. They didn't come down to the Mix and take advantage of the rich Mixers. Oh no, heaven forbid that people step out of the safety of their little bubbles. Nope. They turned to the age old of refuge unimaginative players. OOC.
Based on my experience over the last year, in what I read in Eph's post about the things that they have been dealing with, and just in the ups and downs of life, it's time to step away. And as I do it, I have to laugh. Those of you who have been around for a while will appreciate this. Those of you who haven't, I hope that you can learn something here.
I played on Shadowrun Seattle in the early 90s through about 2000. It was a "cyberpunk" MUSH. And so much of what was wrong with Seattle is still wrong with Sindome. I don't know if that is a community issue, or just a symptom of online roleplaying in general. But there are SO MANY parallels.
Back then, it was +noms instead of UE. You needed +noms to gain "karma" to improve your characters. Each player had a limited number of noms per week, and because of that there were nom circles of people just nomming their friends. If you weren't in a nom circle (I never was), you were SOL.
There was so much TinySex (now MOOsex). "Nobody" wanted to leave their apartments because they were too busy TSing each other. TS led to all sorts of IC behavior that made zero sense ICly. Rival faction members on each other's turf. Lame revenge RP based on who was TSing who. Relationships that carried across PC, after PC, after PC as the same 'mated pair' of players kept recreating themselves and finding each other to pick up where they left off. I swear that not even playing a service mixer or anyone on Green, I know EXACTLY what the "service mixers on green" is all about.
There were limited admins and unless you were an admin favorite, you didn't get any plots or meaningful character advancement. (FWIW, Sindome is a million times better than Seattle in that regard. I just bring it up because Eph mentioned it, so the perception of it is still there. But trust me man, "You kids these days don't know how good you've got it." with the widely distributed admin attention here.)
Seattle even had its own Cerberus in the form of Shayd. I swear that if anyone tells me that Cerberus was into RPing girls and spent his days having lesbian MOOsex when he wasn't busy abusing his staff privileges to selectively screw with the playerbase, I'm going label him Shayd… or at least, the reincarnated essence of Shayd.
To wrap it up, I want to advise you all to not take this game too seriously. Literally EVERYTHING that you have a personal problem with here is just part and parcel of online roleplaying. So much of what I've read on the BgBB is like a flashback to 25 years ago. They say that people never really change, they just evolve slightly. I think the same might be said about online RP communities.
Lastly. Love your staff. Love the admins. I have been an admin. The level of crap that admins deal with day in, day out is nothing short of soul crushing. Remember that they are real people on the other side of the monitor. Treat them with respect. It will come back to you a thousand fold.
