i'm curious about how other ppl view the conflicts between the various orgs.
my understanding is that we're in a sort of state of cold war, where
there aren't any outright deliberate hostilities but lots (taking into
account how many ppl grind missions all day, LOTS) of covert hostile
activities on all sides. maybe it's a hopeless cause to try to fit
something that might be more game mechanics (standard missions as the
main means for players to gain experience and $inf) into the
overarching storyline but i like to try anyways lol.
take for example, assassination missions. yr controller contacts u and
informs u of a certain opposing org individual who has been a thorn in
yr org's side. u then go through a few steps and finally u kill that
individual. now, if that person were zion, chances are they were a
redpill and presumably since u don't have killcodes to prevent
emergency jackout, the instant u killed them, they jacked out and woke
up in their ship. (OR, to even more helplessly complicate things with
more game mechanics, maybe they just lay there dead on the mission area
floor until u left, at which point they asked someone over /fc for a
res lol) it could be possible that if it were an actual exile target
(ie a blood noble, or a nightmare) or an actual program target (ie a
captain, or (sigh) an agent), that killing them actually terminated
them permanently. maybe the merv doesn't keep spare copies of all his
exile bosses on hand, or maybe gray figures that if a program fails to
defend itself from a redpill they're obsolete and unworthy of
reloading. but if it's a redpill, (and i just realised half the time u
are clearly fighting other redpills, even in anti-mach or anti-merv
missions) in all likelihood they just emergency jackout. which at the
very least explains why over time u have to kill armandhammer 500,000
times in 500,000 separate missions. (or more, he might be the guy in
phase 2 of the mission, holding the map disk u need to locate
broomfondle)
this begs the question... er. why? why do we bother assassinating these
ppl if they just jack back a few moments later? the other missions
(ironically the ones ppl on the whole tend to do less) at least seem to
have a more natural place in a cold war setting. stealing information?
sure. rescuing operatives? definitely. recruiting bluepills? of course.
framing other orgs? cool. but when death means nothing, what's the deal
with all the killing?
a few theories:
A) it's about controlling territories. wot u are actually doing when u
take someone out is destabilizing that org's control over that
particular building. cumulatively, the more of your org's ops that do
the same thing in a neighborhood mean greater control for your org. the
problem with this is that barring a brilliant new implementation of
*reasons* why we would want to control territories (ie monopolizing
datastream leaks) controlling territories is also pointless from a
storyline perspective.
B) it's about a secret war of attrition. at a level we, as mere
operatives, cannot discern, every time we die and have to jack back in,
it costs our org something in terms of resources. so even if killing
Ffwjeobiweofhg one time doesn't do much, those hundred times Ffwjeobiweofhg has died has deprived his side a measurable amount of resources.
C) it doesn't do anything in terms of resources but it's a way of
"keeping score" in an invisible war. again, as simple operatives, we
aren't privy to the scorekeeping but the leaders of the orgs know the
balance and use the numbers to keep track of their relative power
compared to the other orgs.
D) it's just game mechanics. shhhh.
thoughts?
my understanding is that we're in a sort of state of cold war, where
there aren't any outright deliberate hostilities but lots (taking into
account how many ppl grind missions all day, LOTS) of covert hostile
activities on all sides. maybe it's a hopeless cause to try to fit
something that might be more game mechanics (standard missions as the
main means for players to gain experience and $inf) into the
overarching storyline but i like to try anyways lol.
take for example, assassination missions. yr controller contacts u and
informs u of a certain opposing org individual who has been a thorn in
yr org's side. u then go through a few steps and finally u kill that
individual. now, if that person were zion, chances are they were a
redpill and presumably since u don't have killcodes to prevent
emergency jackout, the instant u killed them, they jacked out and woke
up in their ship. (OR, to even more helplessly complicate things with
more game mechanics, maybe they just lay there dead on the mission area
floor until u left, at which point they asked someone over /fc for a
res lol) it could be possible that if it were an actual exile target
(ie a blood noble, or a nightmare) or an actual program target (ie a
captain, or (sigh) an agent), that killing them actually terminated
them permanently. maybe the merv doesn't keep spare copies of all his
exile bosses on hand, or maybe gray figures that if a program fails to
defend itself from a redpill they're obsolete and unworthy of
reloading. but if it's a redpill, (and i just realised half the time u
are clearly fighting other redpills, even in anti-mach or anti-merv
missions) in all likelihood they just emergency jackout. which at the
very least explains why over time u have to kill armandhammer 500,000
times in 500,000 separate missions. (or more, he might be the guy in
phase 2 of the mission, holding the map disk u need to locate
broomfondle)
this begs the question... er. why? why do we bother assassinating these
ppl if they just jack back a few moments later? the other missions
(ironically the ones ppl on the whole tend to do less) at least seem to
have a more natural place in a cold war setting. stealing information?
sure. rescuing operatives? definitely. recruiting bluepills? of course.
framing other orgs? cool. but when death means nothing, what's the deal
with all the killing?
a few theories:
A) it's about controlling territories. wot u are actually doing when u
take someone out is destabilizing that org's control over that
particular building. cumulatively, the more of your org's ops that do
the same thing in a neighborhood mean greater control for your org. the
problem with this is that barring a brilliant new implementation of
*reasons* why we would want to control territories (ie monopolizing
datastream leaks) controlling territories is also pointless from a
storyline perspective.
B) it's about a secret war of attrition. at a level we, as mere
operatives, cannot discern, every time we die and have to jack back in,
it costs our org something in terms of resources. so even if killing
Ffwjeobiweofhg one time doesn't do much, those hundred times Ffwjeobiweofhg has died has deprived his side a measurable amount of resources.
C) it doesn't do anything in terms of resources but it's a way of
"keeping score" in an invisible war. again, as simple operatives, we
aren't privy to the scorekeeping but the leaders of the orgs know the
balance and use the numbers to keep track of their relative power
compared to the other orgs.
D) it's just game mechanics. shhhh.
thoughts?