We're now soliciting topics for the discussion portion of our 2025 Winter Town Hall.
Throw your ideas out in this thread. Please avoid discussion of ideas here. If you're putting your own ideas up feel free to call out that you also think a topic that has already been proposed would be a good idea.
Looking forward to seeing you all there!
Cheers!
More vehicles.
More weapons.
More armor types.
More everything really, make people really spend that chy.
Dosn't have to be good, or bad.
A weapon or slice of life.
Either or.
Just more.
Also +1 to Kalii's message and I think it could be expanded to a discussion on all skills that feel like they could be combined as the munitions/explosives combo isn't the first one I've seen proposed with reason.
In fact, we've had features removed with the promise "we'll put them back in when they're rebalanced" but nobody really knows when / if that is ever happening.
1) Theme. How do we want mix life to look? How do we want corporate life to look?
How can veteran players help push the theme to new players? What are some struggles new players have had in understanding and playing to the theme?
2) Conflict. How can we encourage healthy and interesting conflict between characters? What does quality conflict RP look like to you?
3) New player experience. Hear from new players about what has been useful and what has been difficult in their initial time here.
4) Factions. Syndicates, gangs, corps, etc. Just a general discussion on how these seem to be working out.
Also, is it time to revamp factions? Are some factions outdated or could use more love? How can a player make quality RP when they are not part of a set faction?
Could be expanded to other archetypes as well.
-The corporate-mixer divide, and how to create more opportunities for collaboration and interaction between these segregated communities. In extent, how to FEASIBLY bring more danger up to those too-safe sectors.
-Support for high/max UE criminals and solos, who help make waves at the risk of significant losses and often don't have the luxury of a faction or job to help them recoup. In extent, expanding the amount of established roles these usually combat-oriented characters can play and progress towards if the current very limited options are either not their cup of tea or full. (I think this may contribute to the mentioned issue of burnout player-side, too)
-The cost of recovery and its contribution to an extremely risk-averse playerbase.
-Seconding Ociex on more melee weapons and stuff. Please.
-PDS. Its outdated scripts, inconveniences that nobody really plays up anyway, how oddly taboo it is despite this being a cyberpunk game where the more the chrome the closer to God, and its place in said theme.
-Gear and general item hoarders. Is this okay, in a game with a rarity-based system and where more high end gear is often difficult to acquire? What can we do about it beyond reach out, wait and hope?
-The Explosives skill. It needs some love.
Munitions/explosives.
Honestly mixing them together may actually be detrimental to them, as while now some people pick them anyway, easier than relying on others, if you get both the munitions and explosives use for the same UE price… There will be almost no reason to become an expert especially not in munitions ICly speaking, too many people would have that combo. Both those skills need love, don't get me wrong, and the forums are full of ideas for them and I am curious if there are plans for that.
The theme.
I think mix may feel quite a bit lost on what it's identiy is, what can be done to bring that clearly to fore-front and encourage that "myx life", whatever that is expected to be? I always saw it as just endless hunger, wanting that better life - one way or another - but dealing with being bashed down with "you are just a mixer" after every attempt to climb.
Hoarding.
Nuff said, it's bad. How can we unhoard people?
Is the dual wielding bonus too good? You don't need to be wielding anything that even costs much to replace in order to benefit from it and it's ridiculously effective.
Certain weapon types have had cyberweapons added to give them the options other weapons already had. Should adding top tier weapons in line with the best pistol, SMG, rifle and katana now be looked into for weapon types that do not have 'limited access' weapons?
Melee weapons may be codedly locked out of being able to hit certain high damage body locations (eyes?), should this be changed? I could be wrong on this one and it could also be a bug, but it's worth a mention since it's a unique and damaging disadvantage.
Those and a discussion about giving characters who take risks more options for recovery. Corporations making deals for gear returns and the like so that stuff doesn't just end up sitting in a tower's armory after a plot.
What are some ideas for how PCs can leave a lasting impact on the game world in other ways?
Burnout is another important topic that’s come up. Identifying specific causes and brainstorming solutions could be very valuable. For instance, clarifying the scope of staff and player responsibilities might help set realistic expectations. Regular “state of the game” updates might also reduce frustration by aligning everyone’s understanding of priorities and progress.
Mechanics and skills are also worth a deeper look. Combining munitions and explosives has been debated here, but I’d like to expand this to a broader discussion about skill accessibility and design. Are there skills or combinations that could better reflect the game’s theme or provide more meaningful choices for players? Revisiting how skills are grouped might lead to some useful adjustments.
The topic of hoarding has come up several times, and it’s a shared concern. Could we explore the possibility of introducing item/resource “decay” mechanics? For example, rare items could degrade or become unusable after extended inactivity, ensuring they circulate more frequently and don’t sit idle in inventories.
Conflict and risk-reward dynamics are also critical. The current cost of recovery seems to discourage risk-taking. Could we create systems where factions or corporations sponsor “bounties” or offer ways for risk-takers to recoup their losses? Additionally, expanding opportunities for collaboration and conflict between factions could make the game more dynamic and engaging.
Lastly, I’d like to support the idea of focusing on the new player experience. It would be great to hear from recent joiners (including myself, relatively) about what worked well and what felt challenging during their early days in the game. Perhaps more in-game prompts or events specifically designed to help new players integrate into the community could be explored.
No-selling.
This isn't a prolific issue, but when it occurs... or more specifically, when a player does something like @quit in the middle of RP, or just boredly yawn in the middle of what is supposed to be a tense scene, it is a huge mood killer, and one that sets a tone for your interactions with that character from that point forward. Furthermore, it sets an expectation for any newer players coming into the game when they see this sort of behavior.
There's no stopping it. People are going to do what they want to do. What I'd hope to see is an actual discussion so that some sort of an understanding between parties of their perspectives, and how or why they react in the way they do to that sort of interaction. Nothing is done without reason. It's just a matter of determining whether that reason is... reasonable for the collective group.
Of course sometimes that's just "tough on the outside" display where you are falling apart on the inside, I am not trying to shame anyone here, but maybe it would be nice to have a bit of a discussion on what are the expectations out of your first few vats at least, as sometimes it can really feel like no-selling.
I realize this is my personal pet peeve. But I think the game lost a whole lot of opportunity by just completely getting rid of them all together.
I think that bringing them back into the game with the following dynamics would greatly improve Corp/Mix interactions.
1. Make interaction with Red sector objects required for >50% of MCGs.
2. Police the players who do them solo (or in very small, exclusive cliques). Including financial penalties. Locking them out of the system for increasing lengths of time for subsequent violations. Demotion and or loss of job and extreme cases.
3. Require weekly / monthly interactions with the MCGs for corporate EMPLOYEES. I emphasize employees for a reason. These characters are employees of corporation. They aren't supposed to be sitting around collecting paychecks. If they don't have the skills to move corporate projects and initiatives forward, what the hell are they doing on the payroll? What the hell is HR doing hiring people who aren't contributing to the same?
MCGs are truly the lowest barrier to entry, legitimate cyberpunk Style corporate r&d, espionage, coded way to Foster conflict in a cyberpunk thematic kind of way.
I do not know exactly why they got pulled out of the game. But reading between the lines, it feels like the baby got thrown out with the bathwater because a couple bad apples and the player base ruined the bunch for everyone else.
Strangely, I'm going to ask that a New Player portion not be included in the Town Hall. Don't get me wrong, feedback to the onboarding experience is crucial and should be done on the regular, but that is like a two hour talk on it's own that should be a separate guided discussion outside of Town Hall. Love the new people, though some fat of Town Halls need to be trimmed if they're lasting so long. My actual favorite part of the Town Halls is actually after, being able to bounce back and forth between the coder and builder rooms and such and have direct back and forth feedback in real time, and staff is often very exhausted by that point.
But some questions I'd like to be thought of when framing of conversations
[General]
-What is Cyberpunk? Like, I know it sounds corny, but what does Cyberpunk mean to staff? Do you think the themes have shifted since Sindome's foundation? Is there a notably different approach to cyberpunk since the release of Cyberpunk 2077? Is it right to still say Sindome is cyberpunk?
-How to swing up. How to (properly) swing down.
[Coding]
-For those of us that have QA experience with working with and testing code, how can we help? How can we help if we don't feel like signing up to be staff?
-Coding Idea Triage. What can we do to help write better ideas that would revolve alterations to code? What ideas sound more able to be done, while others sound impossible? Should we just stop asking about tailoring? What systems have unfortunately been relegated to the back burner?
[Munitions/Lords of War]
-What does a high end munition skill look like? As in, can we figure out characters from pop culture and movies that could reasonably be said to possess a Muntions skill of A-E. Like, looking back I don't even see Nic Cage possessing a relatively high munitions skill in Lord of War and he's the one the perk is named after. He is very much an arms merchant yes, but he's much more trading and not the technical know-how of the specifications of the munitions skill. So what would a character with Munitions A-E look like? And can this be actually represented by the systems present in the game now? If there isn't a place for extremely high munitions skill, approximately where can we stop improving munitions and generally not have to worry about improving it?
-Market Price Freeze. No ability to haggle in the markets means fixers are forced to raise their prices to even make a profit. High firearm prices means nobody buys. Nobody buying means there's not really a reason to have a Lord of War on call. Also fixers slowly become firearm hoarders because nobody is buying. Nobody buying also means that nobody uses them in combat, which means they can't actually be properly balanced against the active game population's combat styles means they remain either unfairly overpowered or incredibly hamstringed.
Can you explain why the market is frozen? Does this actually help the game, and if so how?
-Opening WAI or ZMI as an independent syndicate style faction. Currently WAI and ZMI are what I think of as sunset corporations. Yeah it's great you want to work for the people supplying the tools of bloodshed that the Dome runs on, but actually pursuing that dream means retiring your character and never playing again. Maybe open up one of these corporations as a monitored syndicate style faction? I think playing out WAI possibly being above the law would be interesting. I mean, what is the Hall going to do to the people who supply them their bullets?
[Robotics]
-What's coming? You made the brand new archetype all about rigging and being a stick jock. What can we expect to see in 2025?
-More rigging positions in The Mix would be nice. Like… any.
I still stand by rifles needing 1-2 middle of the road options, and knives also feeling slim pickings.
The only arguement people had against rifles adding more when i brought it up, was that they had end game variants equal to other end-game variants so they don't need middle of the road weapons too.
But i find that a silly position I'de be happy to defend against in the town hall.
Talks of dismemberment, rumor slinging, non-lethal fighting, and other means of being mean to eachother ICly.
I was sitting here, smoking a bowl, and realized. In the past year, I've really only had 1 conflict scene i really considered all that fun. It is still paying off rp dividends to this day. And that was a scene where my character was dismembered.
So I'de like to toss this topic out there. I will be trying to be the change I wanna see , but i mean… it's a townhall. This seems liek the thing to discuss (ands also a variation of the topic from the last one, that we never got to cover, due to time contraints. Which was a discussion about conflict escalation)
But also echoing the few people bringing up the reduced ways of making money. Changes have been put in recently that threw huge wrenches in more then one market and more then one lane of gameplay. All to cut down the amount of money players have.
But you want us to have conflict with eachother? Why would people fight, if they can't possibly afford to replace what they lost for 3 REAL LIFE months? thats a FUCK LOAD of risk for 5-10 mins of fun.
Not counting some underground types having a LOT of difficulty finding some 1-use items I wont go into due to FOIC things. And not counting that at least one of these things was a source of constant conflict, either for fighting over it, fighting over the right to handle the people fighting over it, or the money being used to pay for other conflicts, because when your weapon costs you 1 week of money, and your armor costs you 3 months of money. You need money to replace your gear. Or you need money to pay a solo, or a dip or bribe a person.
also: Macguffins should be brought back. They happened when I wasn't playing, but they sound like a healthy way to put conflict into the game.
So, I'd like to start by making an apology to the staff for my unfair language in recent conversations describing the Syndicates. I used the term terminology out of frustrations regarding how Syndicates appear to be handled. While I do feel that the points I bring up are valid, it was not right of me to insinuate thing such as favoritism. I had a direct talk with the staff about the frustrations that I have had, and came to realize there is a LOT of OOC misinformation floating around and generally permeating the boards. With that I think a concentrated topic discussion of Syndicates and organized crime factions in Sindome would be appropriate, and I hope my questions reflect at least a little bit of what people think and or feel and want to be answered..
-What is a syndicate? Like, yes it is one of the criminal organizations but what make them different from a Megacorp on paper? Can corporate citizenship through crime be a goal for characters? Why the idea to stratify the entire concept of organized crime, when doing crime is a very key theme?
-What even is crime for the syndicates? In this age things like gambling, guns, prostitution, and drugs are what the Syndicates thrive on for revenue. In Withmore, most of that can be found in vending machines. Like, is it business as usual out in the world but when it gets to Withmore things get different and FOIC?
-What are the different themes of the Syndicates? No doubt for all them have carved off their own niches in the criminal markets… what are they? Russians for loans? Yakuza assassins? Did the Mafia go legal and are just very heavily armed legitimate businessmen? Everyone in the world generally knows PRI is consumer products, NLM is a media empire, and SK is all about the chrome. What would people very vaguely know about what sets them all apart?
-For that matter, what do you want the general theme of Syndicates to be? Are they supposed to be the boogiemen of the night? Shadowy figures nobody knows about? One step above Corps? Or is the enemy of my enemy my friend? Are the syndicates heroes of the night, forming together to shield the people they protect from the brutal tyrants of the law? Like... some really broad brush strokes would be nice.
-Racism. NOT a part of Sindome, but that isn't quite true for the real world organizations. They are some of the most racist and xenophobic people out there. I think it would be an interesting plot point to add somewhere in the past how these organizations stopped being this way. It kinda fits the Cyberpunk theme of selling out everything about yourself to attain power. The Syndicates go full DEI in return for UN recognition. The Yakuza allowing the Chinese to join in order to incorporate is somewhat the very definition of selling your soul for a seat at the table.
-Syndicates are thought of as being High UE. The equivalent of NLM Megastars and higher than Sr. Corp Security. So obviously they only want the best of the best of the highest skills. So what exactly does this mean in terms of numbers though? What is the minimum UE you should be before you start to think of interacting with the Syndies? Just to save time and not dedicate all that RP only to find out you still have to wait another 9 months to qualify. What should players do while waiting to qualify to stand in line?
If you can't give a number, can you give general letters to be looking for?
If there isn't a UE requirement to join the syndicates, why are syndicates repeatedly referred to as High UE factions? Can midbies attempt to join? Can one roll up a vacation character and enter as being on tryouts with the Syndicates from the start?
-Unaffiliated vs Syndicates. What should the odds be? The Syndicates are wealthy, hold great power, and can easily recoup any losses. Launching a one man war on them would be madness. But for every John Wick there is a Frank Castle.
Also, for those who want a seat at the table and are willing to become very bloody to sit there, how does one progress when conflict is essentially throw yourself into a wood chipper against a deeply entrenched enemy. Doing things because you think you can or your hope you can lead to stories. Performing an action that you know you have absolutely zero chance of success do not.
-Unaffiliated vs Syndicates (Biz Edition). If an independent wants to dabble in contraband (big one being firearms) the fact that the Dome is an isolated area that have system mechanics against casually bringing these items in. Granted these systems can be circumvented but that requires additional time, risk, and inevitably chy. Meanwhile the Syndicate player can just ask for a rocket launcher and it might just be given. Quicker, safer, and probably much much cheaper to boot. If the trading skill is used in the requisition process, I'm going to point out that it's extremely unfair to keep the market prices locked if requisitions means even cheaper prices.
I don't know if this is how it is, but if it is, it's unfair.
Specifically, more legal places to chrome up in red sector not just for easy access, but for more player potential. As it currently stands, cyberdoc archetypes have one chance at one place to get a job pertaining to their type of desired gameplay without major financial hurdles. The Mix is a slum, yes, but there has been at least one other option in recent memory that was axed for a reason that I do not know.
The transhumanism aspect of cyberpunk media has always been a major factor that personally feels lacking in Sindome. Whether it being some of the objectively best implants being invisible stat boosts or people having gear fear (despite prices being lowered), I believe there should be more incentive for a character to choose to shed some of their flesh which makes the chance of loss worth it for the cost.
In a general sense, more chrome that caters to all archetypes, niche applications, or just has some cosmetic difference or customizability would be great. What those could be or look like is up for debate.
Also, I'd like some discussion on how/if staff could allow players to help contribute more to development stuff, and I guess if they'd ever consider it. Stuff like players being able to help code new items or features, giving lore ideas, fixing bugs, adding new items and locations, etc. Even not doing it directly, but having guides on how this can be done, templates, general knowledge on how this stuff works, that sort of thing.
The time and effort required person who wrote it and person who wants to contribute would be insane, and it almost never happens as far as muds history goes unless it already had steady group of devs to easy the new person in.
(Edited by Slither at 2:33 pm on 2/19/2025)
Thank you for the heads up on just what exactly the staff is like in terms of addressing manpower and some of the issues being brought up. This is sort of why I brought up the topic of "How can we help?" to assist in any way we can in resolving bugs and issues.
I believe though that some of the systems should be looked at as a community at the town hall. While this may be some big plates to deal with, at the very least there can be active two way communication between staff and players in regards to what can and cannot be achieved. At the very least we can identify exactly where the pain points are and whether anything can be done with them. That way when the planets do align and you find yourself with time on your hands you have written down exactly what the problems are. If anything the people who are griping can say that they have been heard and there has been a discussion instead of locking of threads and the ensuing radio silence.
Thank you.
