No, it breaks SR's internal logic due to the massive, colossal, epic disconnect between the way technology has previously been stated to work in the Sixth World, and the way it is now being stated to work, with absolutely no in-universe explanation given for the change.


I have no idea where he's getting the idea that nobody uses radios, drones, or tacnets. I see posts here on Dumpshock all the time about the awesomeness of tacnets (and they are pretty damned awesome), and my players use drones and comms all the time. Which reminds me, I should really start throwing some hackers at them.

Anyway, hacking enemy comms is super useful in combat. Hacking enemy drones is super useful. Hacking the enemy tacnet... holy shit, the havoc you could wreak. Why in great Cthulhu's unholy name is it necessary for cyberware hacking to be a viable avenue?

I do not know how to move my post!



As written above I get that the metagame explanation is kind of thin, but I'll have JH rather concentrate on putting together a great game than arguing over the in game explanations of that point right now.



Because it could be fun amd make for some awesome stories and runs to happen. I'll give you that - if overdone - it can turn out to be a real pain in the a**. And what part of Shadowrun -besides playing it with friends- is not a pita if overdone? It all comes down to how it will be used at your gaming table, where you have a say in how the game will be played, social contract and whatnot.

btw - great Idea moving this subject to a different thread!

love,
Sunshine

The part with "making sense" should not start at the gaming table and your GM , it should start with the very first sentence in the basic book.



Not really. We are talking about standard combat options - not about plot devices or story arcs. It´s in the same area as "why do I get +1 dice if I aim?"

The official reasoning was "hackers are not combat viable, so all items and cyberware need to be hackable and we achieve that with online bonuses" and so totally ignoring already existing online commlink, online radio communication, online drone remote control, online tacnet and indeed the non-professional enemy using online items/ware because of factory default settings.

If that was not enough to convince the writers of SR5 that a hacker/decker is combat viable, then you should not expect any reasonable ingame explanation except metagame handweaving.

SYL

I don't know how the first sentence in the basic book will read but I am fairly sure it will make sense. IMO the "making sense" part is exactly starting at the gaming table. How should a game designed to be taken as a jumpstart for your and your gaming buddies imagination ever make sense without you accomodating it to your wants and needs. How could something totally "make sense" out of the box that was designed to be used arround gaming tables from arround the world? With multiple emphasis on so many different aspects of the game world that shadowrun is. IMO what you are asking for is impossible.


Are you talking about combat hacking or online bonuses?


I try to use this as an example:

There were always minor things that bothered me considering continuity or plausibility. I have two choices and I am sure we could come up with more. 1) I change the rule to the comfort of my gaming group or 2) when playing with new people I keep consistent in my interpretation of the rules so they don' t get blindsided by the rules.

I can't remember any rpg that didn't need a variation of 1) to suit the people who devoted their time to come together and play that game.

love,
Sunshine

I was just asking to remove strange "online bonuses" and make normal "online and offline bonuses, as usual".You know, as in SR4 for example, where a reaction enhancer could work together with wired reflexes, your vision googles were not able to catch tiny info bits out of the fresh air and where almost everything what was tried as an explanation for the new online bonuses was simply ... a tacnet. Which is everything but "asking for the impossible".

The only thing combat hacking the enemy team (both player and non player) needed was the removal of extended tests - which happened in SR5. Then you could go and have fun with the enemy drone, communication and tacnet. Which was exactly what JH wanted in SR5 - and totally ignored. Instead he gave us wireless chemical seals, reaction enhancers and glasses, and every explanation by both the authors and the community ended in "what you describe is a tacnet".

'Which ended in "yeah well, tacnets could be part of reaction enhancers now".

Do you really think that it is impossible to simply ask for rules and ingame explanations to make sense, based on the universe?

SYL

I think my biggest problem with the matrix bonuses is that they are illogical and contrived. It is especially infuriating that wired reflexes and reaction enhancers need to be connected to the matrix to be able to work together. Wireless bonuses is not inherently a bad idea, but their implementation, even from what little hard information I have gleaned from the discussions, seems to be illogical bonuses, and penalties to things that worked fine without wireless before.

I would be fine if wireless did things like reduce penalties for indirect fire, allow instant communications without needing to expend a simple action, or give bonuses to perception, surprise, and some teamwork tests. Make a world where newbies run with wireless, smarter runners turn it off, and the best runners use it, along with some hefty protections for it.

Heck, here's a basic gameplay example.

What happens with the wireless-necessary systems when you go out into the NAN lands where there isn't anything to produce an omnipresent network?

Is SR intended to be a strictly urban game now?

Well, I hope you use a satellite dish on your reaction enhancer.

SYL

1) The one with DNI - you know, cyberware and stuff. It tells the machine "Hey, dude, I just moved 45 degrees to the right and 10 degrees up, isn´t that awesome"?
2) The one which ... has sensors (the same way your smartphone known if you have it moved upwards or downwards

Now, I don´t know the definition of what wired reflexes and reaction enhancers are in SR5, but let us have a look at the SR4 rulebook (and Ii would bet my money on copy/paste in SR5... )



So, superconducators and adrenalin stimulators work better because they have a homepage now? I mean we are not talking about a tactical network. Or an implanted commlink. Or remote controlled drones.

We are talking about adrenalin stimulators, glasses with binoculars, superconductor material and an airtight construction which works besser if it is online and hackable. Which does not make any sense. A superconductor does not work better because you add a smartphone to it´s surface.

SYL

If that's how you imagine it, fine. Those motion-detecting sensors of today that you mentioned are incredibly primitive and error-prone. Perhaps in the future they will be awesome and guaranteed accurate. But just maybe those extra dice need something more so.

Like a hackable, spam ridden, matrix noise dependable (you didn´t forget the mechanism of matrix noise, did you?) online system, which cannot be in any way be replaced via cable, skinlink or ... DNI ...

Please wear your glowing pink suit to get a +3 bonus to initiative.

SYL

I can just make shit up, too, but that doesn't mean it fits the setting or the two decades of precedent for how technology in it works.

And now I have a new signature, thank you.

I think everybody who thinks "online bonuses" are the steamiest, stinkiest, smelliest, squishest pile of bulldrek that has even been inflicted on Shadowrun should add this quote to their signature, too.

What are we talking about, anyway?

In 5e, What advantage do you get from having your Wired Reflexes with an enables wifi connection? How easy is it to hack?

it all started in the rules thread. wired reflexes don't stack with reaction boosters... unless they both have wifi enabled.

And your chemical seal seals up as an action you have to take, unless its wireless, in which case it's some free, nonwithstanding the fact that literally nothing needs it to have anything but a DNI to you.

I suspect the implication is meant to be that "not connected" also means "non-DNI'd".

And that is a retarded implication, because both datajacks and skinlinks have been a Thing since the '50s.

That would have to represent an in-game change where shutting off one means of connection means shutting off all forms of connectivity, clearly - a change due to the new protocols, perhaps, which are patched across through any available means of connection to any other nodes.

You realize you're now just making up things that are entirely counter to any idea of network security ever considered, right? The stuff you're saying is a literal leap backwards in how devices interact.

I can imagine that it's a manufacture uplink you need. Like all the games and software nowadays "need" an internet connection to work. It's not a necessity to funtion, but the manufacture wants to make sure you're connected and he can keep track of his stuff.
The consequence of this HAS to be, that there is a hardware/software override mechanism possible, that will make the gear work properly without wifi enabled and constant matrix tracking. It will be a 100 upgrade every decent shadow doc or hacker connection can provide and every runner needs.

This is how I'm viewing it too - it's similar to present day Xbox or SimCity nonsense. I'd allow anyone with a Hardware skill and a few hours to make this mod, similiar to the hot-sim mod allowed for the sim module.

Players will still go to great lengths to not be online and vulnerable, so nothing will have changed in the game other than making (large?) portions of the player-base angry at this bad idea.

No, the activation speed is based on "is it connected to the Matrix".

By the text of the rules it it the same whether DNI or not.

And the text gives zero in-universe rationale on any of it.



-k

I'm suggesting that the corps did something in accordance with their interests without giving a damn how it impacted people who don't an alternative anyways. Always Online is good for them for a lot of reasons.

I think you missed the point - I was considering a possible implication that it is not possible to have the DNI operating without other connectivity active, or that it is otherwise assumed that if it is connected in some form that it eventually reaches the Matrix.

That would mean, that NO active cyberware like eyes or arms are even possible as they are DNI-controlled. And following your consideration this would mean not only "no bonus" but "not possible".

SYL

There is that - then again, in the case of something like a chem seal, you have to consider that it has to fist connect up to something that transfers it to the DNI. Things like cybereyes have other reasons to validate their bonus.

Do basic cybereyes even have bonuses (except of course besides "you can see now")?

SYL

Presumably it would be additions like Vision Enhancement it would be relevant for, which can validate their bonus through distributed computing concepts.

DNI means that a device is connected to the neural system such that extending a spur becomes a "natural" action like sticking out your tongue. Why on earth would that require a wireless connection? Do your nerves operate on wifi?

As somebody who deals with wireless devices on a daily basis, I can assure you there is no way that a wireless connection would be better, as a standard, to a hard-line connection. Less-secure, less-reliable, less-consistent...

... also, Wireless has a definition already. Wireless communications typically includes only the "Wifi" band of radio signals, but can be expanded to loosely include bluetooth (abysmal, imo) and IR (has its uses, just not in regular implementation). Wireless DOES NOT mean "on the web," or in this case, "on the Matrix" as a standard word-definition. But, y'know, if SR5 REALLY wants to play like this... fine...

- All combat systems set to Signal 0, including a hand full of burner commlinks JUST for that, to establish my own mesh network and claim "Matrix access".
- Signal Jammer R1-6 (whatever's most viable) on myself.

There, my gear is all Wireless, so it gets the bonuses. Like restricting our dice pools by capping skill ratings and giving us tons of un-typed dice pool bonuses (ah, Tailored Pheremones and Tacnets, l'amor).

Seriously, though, the biggest advantage to break the game thus far has been borderline-basic reading comprehension. We'll see how they word their bonuses, and we WILL take advantage of it. It's part of what gamers do. After all, just because something is wireless doesn't mean it has a connection outward. The more stupid it is, the harder it will eventually hit their bottom line.

That does not in anyway what so ever qualify as "Matrix access", thats just a normal PAN.

That leaves the question what exactly constitutes as "matrix access". Do my wired reflexes and reaction enhancer have to subscribe to a distinct node / network for them to work together?

-CJ

This!

There HAS to be some kind of jailbreak available or Jackpoint (or SR world in general) isn't what it used to be...

-CJ

Surely you can quote a rule for that.

SYL

Why would i need to quote a rule, the system listed very specifically isn't in any way connected to Matrix.

This is part of why so many of us are boggling, honestly. That sort of thing should be standard practice for shadowrunners. Has been in the fluff for decades, this is what some of the oldschool deckers did for fun, subverting corp-spec ware to see what they could do with it.

It was the whole foundational narrative device for at least one of the Matrix sourcebooks, even, with NetCat (IIRC) picking apart a Renraku child's training program for an audience.

The matrix consists of nodes. Therefore node is a (very minor) matrix. Or do you imply that there have to be a specific numbers of nodes connected?

SYL

It wasn't NetCat, she's (a) straight (or at least straight enough to be in a parental relationship with Slamm-O,) and (b) too young to be that woman. But I do remember that one, and the roffling everybody was doing over that crippled, stupid thing.

i'm having a hard time believing the corps managed to somehow persuade everyone to trade in their old tech, which doesn't require matrix access to function.

i mean, imagine for a second you're making a sales pitch to some government/military. how are you going to persuade them they should stop using the secure, perfectly functional tech they've been using for years, and trade it in for new tech that is *specifically designed to not be secure*.

i mean, yeah, they may not have the best of tech programs, but if you think for a second their major legitimate contracts are going to agree to a design that is deliberately made to be infinitely less secure, well... you must not like verisimilitude very much, because that is the exact opposite of what i would consider to be even remotely believable.

some things could potentially make sense. the vast majority of things will not make even a tiny bit of sense. and it won't be just the shadow community that jailbreaks these things either... this has got to be very annoying from a convenience perspective as well, and probably opens you up to being constantly spammed advertisements...

so really, not only would i expect shadowrunners, criminals, any sort of serious security force, all police organizations, and every single military in the world to jailbreak these things... i would also expect joe average who has to worry about matrix dead zones and who doesn't like being reminded that the upgraded model of whatever he has is 10 times faster every 15 seconds to jailbreak their stuff.

or, in other words, about the only people who won't be jailbreaking are the obedient corp drones that live in corp facilities 24/7. or, in other words... expect to be able to use this on people with no skills (or at least, no skills relevant to shadowrunning) and no connections.

In principle, the idea of Wireless boni isn't bad. I could actually get behind the idea. However, the execution is about as wrong as it can be.

It's not offering boni, for instance. It offers the same functionality devices usually had in previous editions - reaction enhancers and wired reflexes interacting positively, for instance - and says "nu-uh, only if you activate wireless" wantonly. It is not offering a bonus, it is taking away from players. A very crude way of enforcing a game mechanism that is so scathingly unpopular that most players bent the system considerably and engagesd in massive rules red tape in SR4 to circumvent it. If it was a new function added, such as "boosted reflexes can interact with reaction enhancers too if you activate wireless to process the necessary computing in the cloud", then it would be a bonus. As is, it is punishment. Especially given that Skinlink has just vanished in the editions without any explanation.

It is as if the designers decided to fix their system and get players to accept the fact their equipment will be hacked frequently by making defense impossible and punishing everyone who doesn't conform to how they want the game played. Probably, that was not the intent, but it comes across as a spiteful, arrogant, heavyhanded, and very lazy way of solving this. There's no fixing, to adjusting screws and no real Boni. There is taking away of functionality, taking away of defense options, and then it's touted as an improvement.

Apparently, CGL has learned nothing of their communications and writing disasters of the past.

It's the same problem that comes up in the real world all the time when talking about requiring some new feature for gun safety. There are literally millions of them already in circulation without this feature, and they don't break down all that fast. Extend it to literally everything, and it gets really absurd.

I mean, look around at your stuff. Have you replaced literally everything you own in the last five years? If not, why would your character be assumed to have done so?

From what I posted elsewhere:
Something else:
1) Edition differences. Things change with Editions. I don't see any reason why the creators have to be 100% beholden to the mechanics of an earlier edition. The shift from 1st to 2nd edition was drastic. 2nd to 3rd was drastic. 3rd to 4th was drastic. Things don't translate 100%. 4th to 5th is 'close', but isn't a direct translation. Nor should it be. So, if things run 'better' when they're wired to the matrix... you can presume that earlier versions (products made in 2060, 2065, 2070) don't run as well as products in the here and now do. Or, consider this. If you've got a cyberdeck from 2050, it is NOT going to run as well as a cyberdeck now. Even if, mechanically, it would be the same. The game doesn't put that much into SOTA fade, so why would anything ten years ago be expected to be as good as the latest tech? Some things are tried and true ... a bullet is a bullet (usually), and a knife is a knife, but when you're getting into actual electronics and mechanics, later technology is going to improve on previous technology in some fashion.

2) The corporations. Maybe they want everyone to be wired to the matrix. And being who they are, they can push the issue. They have the muscle to ensure that their vision is one that trickles down to the public. They're the ones who can add features that only turn on when the device is talking to the matrix, and runs less effectively when it isn't. Why would they do that? Control. This gives them a window into the habits and activities of the public. It restricts illegal activities using their goods. Does this make life harder for runners? Very likely - and you know what? The corporation doesn't care. I can easily see in-setting justification for this kind of activity, and I can easily see this hosing a number of runners. But I see this as an 'evolve or die' situation for characters, and I don't mind this kind of thing. There's excellent in-setting justification for why this could and would happen. Does it have to make sense? Does it make things more complicated for people? Yes. But funny enough... this happens. Sometimes, when people have the choice of the easy path or the complicated path, people take the complicated path, because the benefits they see outweigh (to them), the reward of doing things simply. Humanity isn't rational, and humanity doesn't always see the 'factors' around them. We have the benefit of being able to look at past rules, and see how things have changed, but in-setting, people don't quite have that luxury.

And really... if you don't like the mechanic, don't use it. I personally find the mechanic interesting... I can see an in-setting justification for it, I can see how it would drive some shadowrunners absolutely bonkers, and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the rules, and taking a good hard look at it. I'm probably use it, specifically because it makes things a bit more tricky for the PCs. Then again, I'd be more inclined to it as a player, too, because I'm certain that it would make my character's lives more difficult.

Of course they're not bound to the old mechanics. They are however bound to the setting that they've chosen to work with. Look how much story effort it took to make over the Matrix system into the kludge of 4e. Crash 2.0 ring a bell?

Going to all that trouble to keep the setting congruent with the mechanics, then going with 'it just works like this' for a similarly large change in the way the world works is exactly why people are calling it out as crap.

Several NAN areas are quite high tech, by the by. The Sioux have some nova-hot computer tech, and the PCC are even hotter in that field (And have top-level air superiority craft and many other tech bits) ... but, that's a different discussion.

In areas where you can't get a good Matrix connection, well, you probably won't get the bonuses. Being out at sea, for instance, or in feral zones, you have to make do.

@tashiro: if the stuff they're making now runs better but is infinitely less secure, it won't be running better for long if they're up against any remotely serious opponent.

especially for things like highly specialized combat gear, i will take 90% of the effectiveness for an infinitely large increase in security any day. because that extra 10% effectiveness only exists when nobody decides to take advantage of the lack of security, at which point the SOTA person likely not only is not getting their extra 10% effectiveness, but is in fact probably being made less effective than a completely mundane unaugmented human would be.

it's even more ridiculous when you consider the relative ease of bringing matrix assets to bear against an opponent dumb enough to leave all their equipment accessible to it.

They could generate their own wireless hotspot for a LAN, lol.


But hey, don't take that as an excuse for the stupidity of the rumored game mechanic of SR5. The "things that are wired should be wireless" was a big part of what turned me off of SR4. I mean it's kinda ludicrous that something called "Wired Reflexes" would need anything to be wireless. It's literally a series of implanted nervous system augmenters. What is it wirelessly connecting to? Seems fairly easy to run another 6 inches of "wire" to the brain controller, lol.

Ultimately, a lot of what SR4 (and now 5 it seems) suggested were products that nobody would actually use (even normal civilians in a lot of cases), and just wrote off the discrepancy by saying "Well, everybody does" in rolling with it. It's kinda funny, when you think about it. A game which features ridiculously advanced professional hackers, exists in a world where nobody would have created hacks for pretty much any and all of the technology to remove any unwanted characteristics.

People are pirating copies of just about everything these days, cracking/jailbreaking phones just to do it, and there are even large communities of people writing free open source software. And yet nobody in Shadowrun is offering up cracked firmware/software that eliminates any built-in weaknesses in cyberware used by high tech professional criminals? Come the hell on, lol. There's no way that shadowrunners are using anything with factory DRM on it.

But it's a pointless argument in the end. Catalyst will write it into the game, and players will write it out of the game like they did before, and first time players at conventions or something will say "That doesn't make a bit of sense".

To be fair there: Up until the last few books of SR3 the base assumption was that nobody actually could offer cracked firmware to such degrees.

What you're doing here is same as if i connected my computer to my brothers computer throught our internal network and then claim that i'm now connected to internet.
To count as being connected to the matrix you have to actually be connected to the matrix and not just your PAN, how is this so hard to understand.

Almost nothing in SR3 was written with so many built-in security faults, lol. There wasn't a need to crack the cyberware in SR3 because it was written almost with the assumption that it was actually designed with the required performance in mind. I mean, I'm sure there are examples, but I'm having a hard time coming up with any bits of runner gear that suffered from anything other than what could be reasonably considered as inherently implied insecurities.