Locking Contractors Into Certain Roles

[Zundy]

So far contractors seem to be going well. Originally the idea was to have each faction of contractor locked into specific job roles (Scientist and Security for Necropolis for example) however for now we've run with the idea that as long as you can justify why with your character concept any role barring heads and interns is fine.

 

Would you like to see contractors locked into certain jobs roles? The argument for would be maintaining faction theme and against would be freedom of roleplay amongst other things I'm sure will come up in this thread.

 

In theory we could have everyone being Idris scientists and Necropolis chefs. At the moment everyone is following with the themes and I personally have seen no cases of silly concepts.

 

What are do you, the people, think about this?

[Skull132]

I mean, I am already in the process of implementing this.

Along with locking down contractor factions to specifically named entities.

My view is that allowing too much freedom in this regard will devalue the ones the lore could be focusing on. And it'll also make them a hot mess.

[Bear]

Will it lock them out of the assistant role, for when say, 3/4ths of security is dead and you offer your services? 

[stev]

I mean sure, a poorly played contractor in an unfitting role could make other contractors look worse, but isn't that the case for any instance of lore being badly represented? This really seems more like a moderation matter than one to lock by mechanics. As it currently is, I've seen firsthand contractors in unreasonable positions be shut down pretty damn quickly through moderation, and coding in a hard limit to what jobs contractors can do seems unnecessarily limiting. Moreover, locking contractors from certain corps into specific jobs seems pretty reductive and detrimental to the lore - since we're talking about these massively powerful megacorps with fingers in many pies, reducing them to a single specific role just seems counterproductive.

[Skull132]

5 hours ago, stev said:

I mean sure, a poorly played contractor in an unfitting role could make other contractors look worse, but isn't that the case for any instance of lore being badly represented? This really seems more like a moderation matter than one to lock by mechanics. As it currently is, I've seen firsthand contractors in unreasonable positions be shut down pretty damn quickly through moderation, and coding in a hard limit to what jobs contractors can do seems unnecessarily limiting. Moreover, locking contractors from certain corps into specific jobs seems pretty reductive and detrimental to the lore - since we're talking about these massively powerful megacorps with fingers in many pies, reducing them to a single specific role just seems counterproductive. 

I disagree wholeheartedly.

If there is one consistent issue that I have had with our lore, then it is the fact that it is spread way too thin. And choices to give player excessive freedom, like in this case, are a major contributor to this. Lore quickly becomes irrelevant if people have the ability to create their own pet little faction or take their own pet approach to a solution. This not only undervalues the importance of lore as is written and developed by the lore developers, it also creates a situation where the attention of the lore developers is spread out over a multitude of factions that have to accommodate a shit load of different ideas "Because a player might want to do this".

The result is that the lore, beyond the key points that we do still enforce mechanically (species), can largely be ignored and is irrelevant in game play.

The idea currently is to, first, reduce the number of officially supported contractor factions to a handful. And to give each of them a specific feel, background, specialty. This would distinguish them from each other, and help reinforce their image in-game. And later, hopefully, the lore developers can use those existing and reinforced factions to actually do things that are relevant to the player base and in-game characters.

[Carver]

On 31/05/2019 at 10:58, Skull132 said:

If there is one consistent issue that I have had with our lore, then it is the fact that it is spread way too thin. And choices to give player excessive freedom, like in this case, are a major contributor to this. Lore quickly becomes irrelevant if people have the ability to create their own pet little faction or take their own pet approach to a solution. This not only undervalues the importance of lore as is written and developed by the lore developers, it also creates a situation where the attention of the lore developers is spread out over a multitude of factions that have to accommodate a shit load of different ideas "Because a player might want to do this".

The result is that the lore, beyond the key points that we do still enforce mechanically (species), can largely be ignored and is irrelevant in game play.

I would argue the freedom offered so far is a good thing, though I agree with locking pre-existing contractor factions into roles. But letting John Doe bullshit up a small little medical, mining or security contractor company harms no one at all. If you stick people too far into pre-defined backgrounds, then it just gets boring and people won't give half a shit about the lore regardless.

[ben10083]

4 hours ago, Carver said:

I would argue the freedom offered so far is a good thing, though I agree with locking pre-existing contractor factions into roles. But letting John Doe bullshit up a small little medical, mining or security contractor company harms no one at all. If you stick people too far into pre-defined backgrounds, then it just gets boring and people won't give half a shit about the lore regardless.

Yet you can't help mix things up for the factions if there are so many BS factions, too much freedom in this sense is a bad thing, sticking with predetermined companies is fine, and if you really want your mining company added, make a lore canonization request.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

9 hours ago, ben10083 said:

Yet you can't help mix things up for the factions if there are so many BS factions, too much freedom in this sense is a bad thing, sticking with predetermined companies is fine, and if you really want your mining company added, make a lore canonization request.

A small mining company is not enough for a lore canonization. I would be fine with such things being done on an ad hoc basis.

[Carver]

On 03/06/2019 at 02:24, ben10083 said:

Yet you can't help mix things up for the factions if there are so many BS factions, too much freedom in this sense is a bad thing, sticking with predetermined companies is fine, and if you really want your mining company added, make a lore canonization request.

It doesn't mechanically harm the idea of the topic to simply retain the 'Other' option that lets you type in a name, and simply make it so using that option doesn't grant anything specific or lock anything specific.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

4 hours ago, Carver said:

It doesn't mechanically harm the idea of the topic to simply retain the 'Other' option that lets you type in a name, and simply make it so using that option doesn't grant anything specific or lock anything specific.

I agree.

[Skull132]

1 hour ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

5 hours ago, Carver said:

It doesn't mechanically harm the idea of the topic to simply retain the 'Other' option that lets you type in a name, and simply make it so using that option doesn't grant anything specific or lock anything specific.

I agree. 

I disagree. I disagree on the premise that the implementation of this feature is no longer as simple as you assume it to be.

The new system that I am developing is not a simple matter of, "Select from a list and call it a day". The system is more tightly integrated with others, there are more requirements applied to the input data, and what's more noteworthy, is that I want the contractor status to be more visible. So much so that it would be incorporated into your rank in-game. It is absolutely not imaginable that we allow for the creation of an n + 1 lore entities of such notoriety. If a person wants to have their own pet little corporation, then they can use the currently existing loophole and just be contracted directly under NT or some shit.

[Carver]

19 hours ago, Skull132 said:

I disagree. I disagree on the premise that the implementation of this feature is no longer as simple as you assume it to be.

The new system that I am developing is not a simple matter of, "Select from a list and call it a day". The system is more tightly integrated with others, there are more requirements applied to the input data, and what's more noteworthy, is that I want the contractor status to be more visible. So much so that it would be incorporated into your rank in-game. It is absolutely not imaginable that we allow for the creation of an n + 1 lore entities of such notoriety. If a person wants to have their own pet little corporation, then they can use the currently existing loophole and just be contracted directly under NT or some shit.

So long as it ICly doesn't lock out the possibility, I'd be less bothered about such a mechanical implementation. I just don't want to see some smarmy jackass going 'no u can't b dat no mo' over LOOC to the people who wish to put it in their records that they're under contract from 'insert X random small company'.

[Skull132]

3 hours ago, Carver said:

So long as it ICly doesn't lock out the possibility, I'd be less bothered about such a mechanical implementation. I just don't want to see some smarmy jackass going 'no u can't b dat no mo' over LOOC to the people who wish to put it in their records that they're under contract from 'insert X random small company'. 

That'll be up to the playerbase and administration to hash out, ultimately. I don't think we have instances of that at present happening, so we hopefully won't in the future, either.

[Skull132]

This is now live. Some adjustments to follow but otherwise live.

[Skull132]

List of adjustments to be made over the weekend:

• New name for Eridani if I can be bothered enough. EMPC is a meme, 90% of the other suggestions were memes too.
• Skrell factions if the lore devs can be bothered enough.
• Removal of the remaining loadouts I missed if Paradox hasn't gotten around to it yet.
• Better selection separation because hnrg styling.
• Solve the Final Question of merchant and reporter. Probably go with what Arrow and others suggested: a special "Freelancer" faction or some such. Though also consider making merchant selectable by other factions as it makes sense.
• die.