NBT Department Division Feedback

[Zer0Winds]

First off, they said they're going to work on a justification to transfer your characters to the new megacorps.

Now, I want to mirror what people say about Cargo. I feel like it needs at least one more group in it. It's strange to be the only department with only one corp, and as others said, there's a lot of places in lore that dislike Hephaestus, while keeping that Cargo mindset. I feel like Idris could be put in. There used to be Idris Cargo Techs and QM's but that was removed, so I assume they're not going to get it again. There's only two departments for Idris right now anyway.

And as others said, if you really want to keep it at three, I say move NT away from Medical to Cargo instead.

[lukebr2]

4 hours ago, Alberyk said:

For example, robotics will likely be moved from science.

is it going to fuse with medical or engineering?

3 hours ago, greenjoe said:

Cargo only having one corp linked to it Seems a bit odd. Maybe they should get another. NT for miners might make sense with their phoron extraction history stuff.

Idris could be interesting too, what with the customer service angle to cargo.

this is very important because there are backstories focused on cargo/engineering/etc that dont fit with the corp restriction like Himeo and others wicht if kept in place would stop making sense like,why make himeo focused in engineering/mining when it will be controled by heph

[Lordnesh]

How is this going to affect the avowals? One of the work arounds for it was to play a contractor, but with everyone essentially bring a contractor that no longer matters.

Will there be bug heads of staff in NBT?

[Alberyk]

21 minutes ago, OffRoad99 said:

Anyway....I didn't know that Zavodskoi dabbled in heavy industry, how come they suddenly have an Engineering division? While I am certain (as it's been explained by an admin) we'll get some lore updates...

 

5 hours ago, Alberyk said:

The lore team is working on lore updates to help justify this change. We will also have an in-character development to help people transfer their characters to the megacorporations.

 

[Alberyk]

7 minutes ago, lukebr2 said:

is it going to fuse with medical or engineering?

Undetermined for now.

5 minutes ago, Lordnesh said:

Will there be bug heads of staff in NBT?

We do not plan to lift species restrictions.

[Zer0Winds]

I'm going to be honest, it's not surprising to have a Zavodskoi Engineering department.

They already do military grade engineering. There's more to engineering work than working on a Supermatter Engine and fixing angry vending machines which throw stuff at you. Zavodskoi has been doing military engineering, beyond simple guns, to things like military vehiccles and stuff. I'm not sure about ships, but the point is, I can totally see Zavod Engineers.

[WickedCybs]

Was kind of a shock at first but honestly, Zavod engineering makes a lot more sense than its security and now vestigal medical sector. They already have a strong background for it, just needs more of a spotlight on it now which I trust lore will give us

Heph exclusive cargo though. I'm not a fan of Heph's aesthetic and background in general. It'll be a wait and see probably but hard to think of the IC reasons for certain char concepts to even join up with them. One other Megacorp so they're not the only option would be nice to me. Maybe Idris which I think could be flavoured to have that unseen side of warehouse workers moving products and such. They'd have a different corporate culture from Heph as well.

[Haydizzle]

10 minutes ago, WickedCybs said:

Maybe Idris which I think could be flavoured to have that unseen side of warehouse workers moving products and such.

This is something I have personally vouched for among lore, but I am also curious to see if there are any other recommendations to be had to give cargo a second department and what the reasoning might be.

[MattAtlas]

Just now, Haydizzle said:

This is something I have personally vouched for among lore, but I am also curious to see if there are any other recommendations to be had to give cargo a second department and what the reasoning might be.

Realistically, the only two options are Idris cargo and another corporation that's shareheld between a few of the other corps, probably the ones who actually have stock in shipping - Nanotrasen, Zavodskoi and Hephaestus mainly.

[Lordnesh]

58 minutes ago, Alberyk said:

We do not plan to lift species restrictions.

Oh. That's what you meant earlier. Thank you for clarifying it for me.

[tzeneth]

I know you said you're working on the lore but how are department transfers going to work when you have a bunch of different companies? I know I had a character who went through a traumatic event and basically I had him "go back to school" and transfer departments because of that event. Are characters who legitimately might transfer going to have to figure out a reason to not only transfer departments but companies if the department they want doesn't have the company they currently work for?

[Alberyk]

25 minutes ago, tzeneth said:

I know you said you're working on the lore but how are department transfers going to work when you have a bunch of different companies? I know I had a character who went through a traumatic event and basically I had him "go back to school" and transfer departments because of that event. Are characters who legitimately might transfer going to have to figure out a reason to not only transfer departments but companies if the department they want doesn't have the company they currently work for?

The lore team is working on lore updates to help justify this change. We will also have an in-character development to help people transfer their characters to the megacorporations.

[Rabid Animal]

Maybe I just hate change, I like the idea of the other corps getting more of a hand in things but I also feel like NT served as a kind of "neutral party." I know the goal is to force variation but I'd personally rather see NT remain a baseline for all departments and encourage players to branch out just by allowing other corps into more jobs or departments - which seems to be the case with the proposed changes. Hot take, I know.

 

ALSO I'd love to see independent get more jobs since the whole thing seems to be based around contractors anyways.

[tzeneth]

13 minutes ago, Rabid Animal said:

Maybe I just hate change, I like the idea of the other corps getting more of a hand in things but I also feel like NT served as a kind of "neutral party." I know the goal is to force variation but I'd personally rather see NT remain a baseline for all departments and encourage players to branch out just by allowing other corps into more jobs or departments - which seems to be the case with the proposed changes. Hot take, I know.

 

ALSO I'd love to see independent get more jobs since the whole thing seems to be based around contractors anyways.

Honestly this is kind of how I preferred it. I had a few characters who were kind of designed around "Nanotrasen is baseline" where one is a "Nanotrasen is best" and another is, "You hire me because my company is quality, not like shoddy Nanotrasen!" Kind of cuts into the latter and the joke doesn't land as much when there is no baseline company but I can live with that.

My other concern along these lines is barrier to entry. Not only are you adding the barrier that already exists for base lore but now a person needs to know pretty much every corporation to create a character because they need to know the corporations for the department they want to play, figure out which might work best. I mean, I created a lot of generic dudes where I had only skimmed the wiki when I started playing because I didn't want to invest the time if I didn't gel with the server. Now I'm joining the server and going, "Why can't I work in this department" or more likely, "Man there aren't a lot of roles on this server."

[Scheveningen]

This is an interesting change and I will like to see it. I have no real concerns besides curiosity as to what might change with command staff, though my initial assumption is that they will all be NT for the time being until something changes later on.

Also, what Marlon posted. I would also like to see Unathi-centric and Skrell-centric guilds/institutes embedded with the SCC station later on. I'm sure it can be handwaved and roleplayed in IC as-is but having some mechanical support for it would be cool to tie them into the game as well.

Edited August 22, 2021 by Scheveningen

[Alberyk]

58 minutes ago, tzeneth said:

My other concern along these lines is barrier to entry. Not only are you adding the barrier that already exists for base lore but now a person needs to know pretty much every corporation to create a character because they need to know the corporations for the department they want to play, figure out which might work best. I mean, I created a lot of generic dudes where I had only skimmed the wiki when I started playing because I didn't want to invest the time if I didn't gel with the server. Now I'm joining the server and going, "Why can't I work in this department" or more likely, "Man there aren't a lot of roles on this server."

That can be solved by putting more explanations in game. You can also get the basic rundown of any corporation by going to select which one you want in the character creation setup.

[4000daniel1]

7 hours ago, DanseMacabre said:

I am guessing that there is an effort to keep each Corp from having too many positions across the board. Cargo only having one Corp is a bit of a problem in my mind, though. Personally, I would remove NT from medical and put them in cargo instead. NT has never really been strongly fluffed as a medical corporation but I know for sure that they’d fit in fine in cargo, especially because of mining.

I agree with this. I can understand wanting to limit NanoTrasen from being an option in every department, but in that case I think moving NT from medical to cargo makes sense for several rather apparent reasons.

Edited August 22, 2021 by 4000daniel1

[Kintsugi]

3 hours ago, Rabid Animal said:

Maybe I just hate change, I like the idea of the other corps getting more of a hand in things but I also feel like NT served as a kind of "neutral party." I know the goal is to force variation but I'd personally rather see NT remain a baseline for all departments and encourage players to branch out just by allowing other corps into more jobs or departments - which seems to be the case with the proposed changes. Hot take, I know.

 

ALSO I'd love to see independent get more jobs since the whole thing seems to be based around contractors anyways.

Got to say I really disagree with the first part. Contractors kinda feel tacked-on as it is. By making it so there are NO contractors and every corporation is on equal footing, the other megacorporations feel a lot more real and grounded, while also eliminating the general feeling that NT dominates the setting - and honestly, I think having people play a corporation other than NT is a major boon, because NT is about as interesting as a saltine cracker without the salt. It's dry and boring.

I personally would not mind more independent jobs, but I also think logically opening more to independents doesn't make sense and likely isn't going to happen, because the focus is supposed to be on the SCC.

Edited August 23, 2021 by DanseMacabre

[Rabid Animal]

Tzeneth nailed it on the head imo. Coming from bay, for example, where there are a billion different ranks and different factions, that gets overwhelming really quickly. The point of having a baseline is to prevent it from getting to that point, while opening up other corps in other jobs for people that think its "NT is about as interesting as a saltine cracker without the salt." Forcing people to play other factions isn't going to result in those people caring enough about said factions to make them anymore interesting than NT and frankly will water them down with people who don't really care about the corporation lore in the first place.

Still a hot take. Whoa.

[BunkyB]

A thing I don't think has been mentioned yet is:

Are jobs not going to be locked by company?
For example, Investigators can only be NT and Idris, will Investigator be locked to Idris on the NBT? It feels funny to just have a single corp able to take a unique job slot.

Or is it undecided of now and we'll have to rely on lore fluff and other additions?


I'm really happy with the dispersion of companies between departments, not having a singular corp that does all. I'm eagerly waiting for NBT. 

Edited August 23, 2021 by BunkyB

[Alberyk]

26 minutes ago, BunkyB said:

Are jobs not going to be locked by company?

No. If a company is in a certain department, its members can pick any job from that department.

[Triogenix]

I have but one question, how will learner roles work with this? Would they just be from the companies that occupy that department? For example, Zavod or EPMC Cadets?

[Alberyk]

1 hour ago, Triogenix said:

I have but one question, how will learner roles work with this? Would they just be from the companies that occupy that department? For example, Zavod or EPMC Cadets?

Yes.

[Peppermint]

Seems all good. The only one I dislike is cargo having only one department, and moving NT out of med and to that does seem sensible. I'm also not really all too sure about Idris taking the security slot IC, given I assume NT has a much better standing security force outside of investigations - though their lore is more interesting anyway, so I can see it working out just fine.

[Skull132]

Some thoughts.

I noted someone saying that we're adding a barrier to entry wrt. to the lore you need to understand. This is sort of true but it's also a positive. If NT exists as a generic default, then there isn't much incentive for people to look up new factions. This change makes them more prominent, ergo, hopefully, more useful. In general, ingame lore presentation is something that needs to be worked on anyways. (And has been worked on, with the various info presentation screens!) I don't think the concept is that insurmountable, considering that every MMO and RPG basically does something similar to this during character creation.

I'd also like to emphasize something, specifically around moving your characters from NT to another corp. I hope everyone understands that the effort of lore and how it affects characters is cooperative in nature on this server. The lore team can offer up potential reasons for your character to move ranks, but in the end, you also have to be flexible enough to accept those changes. (If you want to, anyways. It's totally fine to also just make new chars.) Hopping from one company to another might be justifiable with something as simple as, "They offered me better opportunities". So I truly hope that everyone who's concerned about the transition is also aware that they have to put in effort themselves as well, the lore team cannot deliver these things on a silver platter.