One of the things that irritated me about Arm was that GMH and Noble houses were more or less (outside a few that might have been mistakes or bugs) impenetrable.
It could be a blinding sandstorm, or utter darkness of a world event and the gate guard could still via Osmosis or simple proximity tell you’re Joe Dickhead who worked for Salarr. Sneaking didn’t work, shadowing got stopped working, lots of things were broken. Then if you did manage to get in, the NPCs would just brutally murder you instead of try and capture you.
While I don’t want to see people breaking into buildings/places every day, I don’t think it should be impossible. I don’t think that clanning or however you establish employees should be tagged to the character specifically.
Make uniforms actually matter. If I get hired to clan A and their uniform is a certain sash, and I leave it at my apartment, then try to walk into the clan, the guard should be like “Where is your sash, fuck off.” (unless I’m adequately high in the ranks where they know me by face.) so random entry level employees have to have certain items or a uniform, where the CEO just walks in like he owns the place.
Uniforms or access objects like clearance cards or something mattering in this way would be great, as well as sparking problems if lost or forgotten, it would also make it possible to enter the areas with a stolen ID.
One thing that had been discussed staff side, and we don’t yet know how feasible it is code wise, would be to consider defining zonal access rules within the ‘compound’ area, which if a PC is then seen by a roaming guard, their presence is challenged. You’d have x amount of time to diffuse the situation by providing ID before a negative consequence is enforced, be it attack, arrest, restraint etc.
It definitely needs to be balanced, possible but difficult and the potential devastation needs to be limited. Nobody enjoys working for months to have one twinked up person break in and undo everything with no real basis for RP or story enhancement.
While this isn’t going to be a quick implementation, this is definitely something we’re keen to continue actively discussion so we can view it from all angles.
Part of me is thinking if there’s going to be a chip in our head that stores our info, then affiliation to a clan would also be stored there, and would negate the need for this. However, that would squash certain types of RP and I don’t want that.
If this is done, I feel like there should be a holding area and the NPC guards would escort you there, but then any online PCs of sufficient rank to deal with the situation should be pinged. That way, they can come and decide whether you should be left alone or not.
The use of the chip would be interesting. You could have a specific ‘key’ location you could add keys to, which would be hashes that would act as the ID card or key. This way, security could cycle them if needed. This could be used to grant access to automated doors.
I said this before, but I am a giant fan of physical stuff. Having some form of badge or uniform that would allow you to pass through could be a thing. NPCs could be fooled by it, while players could easily challenge you on it and so forth.
I like where this has generally been going, in the sense that we seem to be aiming for something that isn’t just granting someone a rank and all of the sudden, everyone knows that person is supposed to be here etc. As far as physical items, I kind of feel like the setting we’re in would make those obsolete, but at the same time, there’s no denying that making them physical objects adds the possibility of them being stolen or misappropriated.
My hope is that if we go down that path, that such things would take the form of a card or device on a lanyard, or, a badge that you can pin on your shirt. I think we can and probably should avoid the inventory juggling of having to get the thing from somewhere, use it, then put it back in that thing. Also, even if it’s pinned to a tunic or sash, that doesn’t mean there can’t be trouble surrounding it.
If we end up with laundry services and one of the workers there is less than savory, imagine what could happen if you forget to unpin the badge before you have that uniform piece sent away to be washed.