OffRoad99 Posted July 25, 2021 Posted July 25, 2021 Let's get this out of the way, before someone mentions it: this post has nothing to do with the in-game starting money on a character's bank account. My character has spent the last month frequently lamenting about her rent, or generally discussing salaries and other expenses with her colleagues. It is here where I couldn't help but notice a glaring roleplay fallacy: how much are our characters actually paid? Speaking of salaries, it appears that everyone thinks their characters are paid much differently than the other, even if they have the exact same job. This is a big OOC issue, and any discussions that concerns someone's salary soon turn into bizarre IC chats and LOOC pauses where the players try and find a common ground or to explain their head canon to the other, and it's quite jarring. And as it seems, I am not the first person who brings this up: a post originally created around October 2018 from Resylinn shared my same concerns and also offered a very well-thought solution: This, for the time being, is what we can learn from the Wiki: Your Place in the Economy: The financial status of your character varies on a character-by-character and player-by-player basis. To reiterate, the believable character rule must be taken into account here - a security officer very simply has no excuse to be a billionaire, nor does a cargo technician have the ability to be an Interstellar War veteran. However, the pedantic of the extent of one’s wallet is in player control, barring mechanically of course. With this said, the cost of living is clarified or can be gleaned by context virtually anywhere set in lore - questions surrounding this can be directed to lore developers of the respective topic. That solution works if you care very little about your off-station RP and I don't want to flood a lore developer with silly questions concerning my character's salary. What if I'm with four different players? Should we all PM him and ask for details? That entry in the wiki works. It's functional. But it completely falls apart if you dare to invest some thoughts of your character's life outside of the station. Let's settle for something slightly different, then: bring back the Economy page, do not include a list of expenses (we know that'd be pointless) and instead create a list of standardized contracts, with perhaps some corporations paying better than some others. Let's list the minimum/maximum salary a character working in a Department can earn on a weekly/yearly basis and if the corporation that employs them offers any incentives/benefits to keep them happy and loyal. Very quick example: A NanoTrasen Physician is paid from 2800 to 3200 credits per week. Free access to physical/dental/mental health care. Public transports from/to the ODIN and their residence paid by the Company. A Zeng-Hu Physician can earn from 3000 to 3600 credits per week. Free access to physical/dental/mental health care. A fully-paid, one-week vacation on Silversun every year. Can receive sponsored Zeng-Hu cyberware. That's just something I quickly came up with, though I think it offers a fresh, monetary incentive to see non-NanoTrasen characters around the station, presents us with a minimum salary as well as the highest one a character may have while working on the Aurora, and some other cool benefits that may worsen/improve their lives. And it's something nice to talk about ICly! No more odd glances if your character is paid two thousand credits per week while the other gets 40k per month, please.
Cnaym Posted July 25, 2021 Posted July 25, 2021 42 minutes ago, OffRoad99 said: This is a big OOC issue, and any discussions that concerns someone's salary soon turn into bizarre IC chats and LOOC pauses where the players try and find a common ground or to explain their head canon to the other, and it's quite jarring. This is mostly a human issue since white listed species have rather established living conditions. Sure a Tajara RD is going to earn more than a tajara janitor, but neither will be able to spend money like a skrell captain for example. To my understanding there are no hard rules to allow a bit of a grey area concerning the off station situation, but the believable character rule should make it pretty clear that your average employee is not the owner of his own merchant fleet for example. In my experience this usually works and rarely clashes with some of the more, let's say "special" characters that people come up with. If you ever feel that someone is doing something unbelievable you can simply ahelp it to have an admin take a look at it.
Carver Posted July 25, 2021 Posted July 25, 2021 To accurately simulate a character's economic situation unfortunately requires some level of in-depth personal record-keeping, and that's not even taking into account in-round shenanigans and gauging whether it was related to canon or non-canon circumstances. As interesting as this kind of reference may be, it is unfortunately a resource that most players will not refer to. It is also somewhat countered in effect by the weird RNG nature of the in-game 'station accounts', which are given small variables already based on role, species and for some reason NT loyalty (Something that was going to be changed to economic background in a PR some months ago, had the coder of the previous PR not been harassed away. Fortunately said PR was revived by another contributor, so we'll be seeing that soon enough).
Triogenix Posted July 25, 2021 Posted July 25, 2021 (edited) As @Carver said I do not see many players referring to this cheatsheet or whatever you want to call it regularly, and while I would certainly find it interesting, I don't think the effort should be made to create something that would not be used by players. 7 hours ago, OffRoad99 said: This is a big OOC issue, and any discussions that concerns someone's salary soon turn into bizarre IC chats and LOOC pauses where the players try and find a common ground or to explain their head canon to the other, and it's quite jarring. On the topic of this, we have companies TODAY that discourage(strongly) employees discussing their salary with one another. Nanotrasen would probably follow this to a hardline-possibly including salary under the NDA all employees sign when they start working, so I don't really think it should come up in IC situations beyond "X company pays better then Y" or "X person defiantly makes more then Y", because hard numbers would be heavily discouraged by NT. Though I will also say, I think something about salary should be put on the wiki, especially for humans, just so potential new players and others can have an idea of what their characters quality of life is. I just think the approach suggested here is the wrong something to do. Edited July 25, 2021 by Triogenix
OffRoad99 Posted July 25, 2021 Author Posted July 25, 2021 7 hours ago, Carver said: To accurately simulate a character's economic situation unfortunately requires some level of in-depth personal record-keeping, and that's not even taking into account in-round shenanigans and gauging whether it was related to canon or non-canon circumstances. As interesting as this kind of reference may be, it is unfortunately a resource that most players will not refer to. It is also somewhat countered in effect by the weird RNG nature of the in-game 'station accounts', which are given small variables already based on role, species and for some reason NT loyalty (Something that was going to be changed to economic background in a PR some months ago, had the coder of the previous PR not been harassed away. Fortunately said PR was revived by another contributor, so we'll be seeing that soon enough). The economic background rework you just mentioned looks very interesting but I care...very little about my in-game finances as they are randomized at the start each round. If the economic rework PR makes it much more consistent then it may just make me happy... Our wiki already contains wonderful resource articles that people may not use regularly (or outright ignore), with some examples including the "Human Entertainment Media" and the "Human Social Media" entries, so why not have something that talks about our characters' income? What I would like to know, is something, anything more than a lazy "Ah lol, you decide how much you're paid". Everyone has their own headcanon about it, so why don't we try and establish something better and more precise than that?
Peppermint Posted July 25, 2021 Posted July 25, 2021 I would mostly just like in game prices to match up a bit better. I know this is a pretty big undertaking, but it's very difficult to talk about finance stuff when money is so out of whack. Or just a 'standard cost' type thing on the human lore page would be amazing, even if it doesn't lineup with game mechanics at all. Plus, I always felt that the NT salary thing Resi did never really made much sense, as everything is VERY well paid.
OffRoad99 Posted July 25, 2021 Author Posted July 25, 2021 59 minutes ago, Peppermint said: I would mostly just like in game prices to match up a bit better. I know this is a pretty big undertaking, but it's very difficult to talk about finance stuff when money is so out of whack. Or just a 'standard cost' type thing on the human lore page would be amazing, even if it doesn't lineup with game mechanics at all. Plus, I always felt that the NT salary thing Resi did never really made much sense, as everything is VERY well paid. Those numbers can be simply tweaked. I too agree that with our current prices, those incomes seems very excessive.
Marlon P. Posted July 25, 2021 Posted July 25, 2021 (edited) Oh i forgot about the economy page. I remember i averaged the salaries jobs mechanically get and provided teirs of living expenses like the DnD expenses for a variety of lifestyles. It's a shame it was removed, i remember i could casually reference it without having to pester loredevs with what are both at the same time important but also trivial questions. I think my old post/ruling there was a bit too conservative and cautious but it generally still has any elaboration on tracking these things. Namely we want to be really general and open to improv. +1 good idea Edited July 25, 2021 by Marlon P.
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