Criticisms of 5e

[RockingHurricane]

They all seem to make sense to me. It seems like they're universally bonuses that make perfect sense that would come from greater communication between gear. Which ones are you having problems with? I've had a bit of tunnel vision with the gear since I've been focused on my three default characters I've played in every edition, so there's quite a few I may not have looked at yet.

Disclaimer: First of all, trying to prevent the flame wars i have seen elsewhere the arguments here are about a hobby and hobbies should not stress anyone. Second, my arguments are not directed at anyone. I am discussing ideas as a way to understand and help others understand.


The way I see it, despite having some bonuses that make plenty of sense (like throwing knives and smart projectiles) most bonuses fall into one of the following categories of nonsense (for me, at least)

All reacting speed (color change, activation, etc) should be much faster without wireless. Why would route my commands thru the Matrix be faster than input then directly? Forearm snap-blades would be an example.

There are bonuses for no reason stated or imagined. Laser sight is a good example.

There are bonus with reasons not even remotely associated with the Matrix like Silencer/Suppressor.

 

[Abstruse]

Disclaimer: First of all, trying to prevent the flame wars i have seen elsewhere the arguments here are about a hobby and hobbies should not stress anyone. Second, my arguments are not directed at anyone. I am discussing ideas as a way to understand and help others understand.

Mine was a legitimate question. All the bonuses I've seen made perfect sense to me, so I'm honestly wondering if I missed something. I can explain away all the ones you brought up very easily, but the reason I can do so is because I actually understood the decking rules going all the way back to 2nd Ed's dungeon-crawl decking. So I understand the concepts they're building on. I've also worked IT before including wireless, and I read up on the advanced research being done on the sort of technologies they're building on (they've built a prototype cyberarm...seriously, a prosthetic arm that can be controlled using a neural interface...like a few months ago). So that puts me in a unique position.

I really think a lot of those concepts would've made more sense if they'd spent more time explaining exactly how all these devices interact with one another. But for a book that's 480 pages long, it still feels like they had a serious space crunch and a lot of things got cut that should've stayed. I'm betting it'll make a lot more sense once they come out with whatever they're calling this edition's version of Matrix and/or Canon Companion.

If you want me to, I can explain how those make sense within the game universe, but the fact that I even HAVE to is a flaw with the game. The book should've explained the concepts better.

 

[RockingHurricane]

Mine was a legitimate question.

I did not dispute that. By posting I am opening myself and giving everyone a chance to change my views.

All the bonuses I've seen made perfect sense to me, so I'm honestly wondering if I missed something. I can explain away all the ones you brought up very easily, but the reason I can do so is because I actually understood the decking rules going all the way back to 2nd Ed's dungeon-crawl decking.

Maybe explaining those will make everyone see the light. Please do.

I really think a lot of those concepts would've made more sense if they'd spent more time explaining exactly how all these devices interact with one another. But for a book that's 480 pages long, it still feels like they had a serious space crunch and a lot of things got cut that should've stayed.

I agree, but if there is an explanation me and a lot of folks out there are not getting, that sort of thing could have been discussed more seriously on the blog. The way I read it, the issues were shrugged of as a nitpicking from some few angry flamers

I'm betting it'll make a lot more sense once they come out with whatever they're calling this edition's version of Matrix and/or Canon Companion.

I agree, but waiting for an expansion to clarify something that is core to the game does not seem fair to the consumers

If you want me to, I can explain how those make sense within the game universe, but the fact that I even HAVE to is a flaw with the game. The book should've explained the concepts better.

Please do. There are a lot of puzzled SR fans out there waiting for it.

 

[Abstruse]

Please do. There are a lot of puzzled SR fans out there waiting for it.

First off, a bit of history (seriously, I started a Q&A thread about the world because I LOVE the history of this game). When the Matrix crashed in December (of course) 2064, a new wireless Matrix was implemented. It's a lot closer to what current cell phone technology is than wifi internet today, in that's it's broad-spectrum and is pretty much everywhere. There was a MASSIVE shift to cloud computing, which is why no one worries about stuff like storage anymore. Pretty much everything was connected to this new Matrix because the hardware to run it was very expensive (I think the server I bought for my decker in 4A cost me like 300,000¥ and it's a small one). It took more money than a starting character can even get in the game in order for me to be able to pull all my household appliances and everything else off the grid.

In Storm Front (the transition eventbook that shifted SR4 to SR5), the Corporate Court through their Grid Overwatch Division (aka GOD) implemented sweeping new security protocols that locked everything down. In the book, you can see it took months for even legendary deckers like Fastjack to crack the new protocol and it involved breadboxing hardware onto his commlink (thus why we not have commlinks and cyberdecks both in this edition).

Now, commlinks are still pretty necessary for all characters. It stores your ID and your money. In some places like Manhattan, you can be arrested if you don't have a commlink with a PAN broadcasting your SIN. Legitimate users basically use their commlinks as the central unit to manage all their gadgets (and EVERYTHING is a gadget in Shadowrun). Because of this, pretty much all your gear is slaved through your commlink which has a direct connection to your brain for mental commands, either through a datajack or through trodes (more common). Because of this link and the subroutines involved, you're able to perform actions a lot faster through your commlink than you would manually.

Here's the thing...there is no "direct input" for most things unless you mean some sort of manual activation. The commands have to come from somewhere, and that's through your commlink. Unless your stealth armor is directly plugged into your brain (which technically is possible but would look just silly), there's no real way to tell it to change from urban to forest camo when you hop the fence into the park. Those commands come from your commlink, which is why they have to be wirelessly enabled for you to access them on the fly.

For example, the forearm snap blades you mentioned before. In previous editions of the game as well as this edition, the blades are extended or retracted manually through a muscle command - basically, you flex your forearm muscles in a certain way and the blades pop out. Or, if they're wirelessly enabled, you simply think "Blades out" and the blades pop out. It's faster and it doesn't distract you from doing something else with that hand.

The laser sight goes more into what exactly AR is. Augmented Reality is an overlay on your own vision via Image Link cyberware (included with all cybereyes), glasses, or contacts. It displays information as you walk down the street, from advertisements for the sale going on at Stuffer Shack to the single's profile of the girl walking past. This is useful for mundane purposes, but most of the mechanics in Shadowrun revolve around AR's uses in combat. A smartlink, for example, transmits a ton of data about the gun to you - how many rounds you have left, the range to the target you're aiming at, etc. Laser sights do something similar but with less actual information when that data is routed through your commlinks processor - it determines range, it tells you whether the portion of the person you're targeting is protected by armor, stuff like that. It's not as good as a smartlink's detailed info, but it's enough to give you a slight edge in a fight.

The oddball out of your examples is the silencer because at least they tried to explain the wireless bonus on that one. I mean they really tried. It's just a hard concept to get across in two sentences that also include the rules mechanics. It basically works the same way active noise reduction headphones work today. You can mostly cancel out a soundwave by producing another soundwave that specifically mirrors the first one. It's not perfect, but it helps a lot in reducing sounds. And that's what the silencer does - it has a microphone and a speaker on it and, when the gun is fired, the microphone sends the sound to your commlink which analyzes the wave and commands the microphone to produce a countering soundwave, thus further reducing the sound the gun creates. Without the wireless connection to the commlink, there's no processing power available to analyze the soundwave so a counter-wave can't be produced.

I can clarify more if it's still murky or if there are other bonuses that don't make sense. Again, this is a problem with the book trying to cram so much in. The book should have thoroughly explained these concepts as they relate to the game rather than presenting the world as it is and leaving it to you to extrapolate how a lot of this technology works.

 

[RockingHurricane]

Thanks for the info, Abstruse.

Similar points have already been made elsewhere and while I respect your opinion that these are convincing, some may disagree.

Regarding "direct input" - Have all the wired communication know-how been retconned out of existence or is it simply more difficult to get? They could have been given a higher grade (more difficult to obtain and more expensive) but they are not mentioned (as I read so far).

The laser and the silencer explanation start from a premise I find very hard to believe (your mileage may vary) that devices in 207x do not have sufficient processing power to do their tasks alone. People today have much more processing power in their pockets than most satellites, but nobody in 207x integrated a physics processing chip into an expensive piece of hardware most users would gladly pay an extra for?

 

[Abstruse]

Thanks for the info, Abstruse.

Similar points have already been made elsewhere and while I respect your opinion that these are convincing, some may disagree.

Regarding "direct input" - Have all the wired communication know-how been retconned out of existence or is it simply more difficult to get? They could have been given a higher grade (more difficult to obtain and more expensive) but they are not mentioned (as I read so far).

The laser and the silencer explanation start from a premise I find very hard to believe (your mileage may vary) that devices in 207x do not have sufficient processing power to do their tasks alone. People today have much more processing power in their pockets than most satellites, but nobody in 207x integrated a physics processing chip into an expensive piece of hardware most users would gladly pay an extra for?

Wired communication is still important and gets a good page or three in the Matrix section dealing with Noise. However, it's still routed through the cyberdeck (which is a commlink with extra hardware). So no, wired technology is not lost.

However, a lot of technology WAS lost during the Crash of 2029. This has been the go-to crutch for explaining away the various schizoid tech in Shadowrun. Between the VITAS plague (which killed 1/4 of the population of the planet) and the Crash (which destroyed damn near all digital information), a lot of technology had to be re-invented. It was a built-in out that they put into the game (you'll notice BattleTech has a similar out built into its game world) to point to and say "That's why we have X technology but Shadowrun doesn't." Is it a cheap excuse? Yeah. But it does work as a hand-wave.

Anyway, that's the explanation from an in-world reason (the game reason is pure balance vs. the chance a decker can brick your gear, giving you an incentive to turn wireless on). I can clarify more if you have specific questions, but if you don't buy it, you don't buy it. Either give your players the MST3K Mantra and handwave it away, or start figuring out houserules. It's a tried and true tradition in Shadowrun, after all.

 

[coyote6]

Now, commlinks are still pretty necessary for all characters. It stores your ID and your money. In some places like Manhattan, you can be arrested if you don't have a commlink with a PAN broadcasting your SIN. Legitimate users basically use their commlinks as the central unit to manage all their gadgets (and EVERYTHING is a gadget in Shadowrun). Because of this, pretty much all your gear is slaved through your commlink which has a direct connection to your brain for mental commands, either through a datajack or through trodes (more common). Because of this link and the subroutines involved, you're able to perform actions a lot faster through your commlink than you would manually.

So is there a reason why can't you slave everything to a "commlink" that's not actually linked to the larger world? Why connect your personal network to the world network/Matrix? you should be able to run two commlinks; one an actual commlink, tied to the Matrix; the other isolated, and to just handle your personal network. Faster than the cloud, and more secure, even if it is wireless still. And you should be able to just plug most things in; all the gun accessories plug into your gun, the gun connects via skinlink, and the pieces of tech attached and wired to your body are wired to your body. Plug your armor into your datajack, etc.

I haven't picked up SR5 yet ( nterest in my group hasn't seemed high), so these questions might be covered there.

Here's the thing...there is no "direct input" for most things unless you mean some sort of manual activation. The commands have to come from somewhere, and that's through your commlink. Unless your stealth armor is directly plugged into your brain (which technically is possible but would look just silly),

So there are no more skinlinks? Datajacks?

 

[Abstruse]

So is there a reason why can't you slave everything to a "commlink" that's not actually linked to the larger world? Why connect your personal network to the world network/Matrix? you should be able to run two commlinks; one an actual commlink, tied to the Matrix; the other isolated, and to just handle your personal network. Faster than the cloud, and more secure, even if it is wireless still. And you should be able to just plug most things in; all the gun accessories plug into your gun, the gun connects via skinlink, and the pieces of tech attached and wired to your body are wired to your body. Plug your armor into your datajack, etc.

I haven't picked up SR5 yet ( nterest in my group hasn't seemed high), so these questions might be covered there.

Actually, they're covered in 4th Edition too, where wireless was introduced. It's not explicitly stated, but it's HEAVILY implied that a lot of the storage on commlinks is actually in the cloud. On top of that, the very function of a commlink is supposed to be closer to our modern day cell phones. Imagine that your cell phone also doubled as your ID, your bank card, your driver's license, your badge to get in/out of the office, etc. Now put it in Airplane Mode and see exactly how much you'd actually be able to do with it.

And I'm making an assumption here that you yourself are not a hacker or a computer security professional. Otherwise I wouldn't need to explain the horrific vulnerabilities cell phones tend to have - especially Android phones that aren't updated regularly (and when was the last time you updated the firmware on your phone?) But have you personally ever had your phone hacked? Not like those Facebook "LOL I hackd U! <3" posts, but actually had the security of your phone compromised by someone with malicious intent? Probably not, so you don't worry about it. Because only people who really follow the current exploits and read the code are able to do it, and those people are few and far between (I'm sure as hell not one of them, and I've worked IT for the Department of Homeland Security). So most people in the 2070s world don't even pay attention and assume that their automatically updated Aztechnology-Norton Firewall v4.2 is going to protect them so long as their subscription fee is paid up.

So there are no more skinlinks? Datajacks?

Oh god yes. Well, not skinlinks as even I don't remember those (unless you're talking about induction datajacks or trodes...maybe you're thinking Cyberpunk 2020?), but datajacks actually came back in a big way in SR5 compared to SR4A. There's an issue with wireless called Noise. It can be a variety of things - usually just the same stuff that prevents you from using your phone now, like thick walls, being too close to an in-use microwave, spotty coverage due to hills/buildings, too many people on the network. Add in problems like Spam Zones (imagine walking through a shopping mall where every single store and card has a pop-up ad for their most recent sale and all of them come up as soon as you're within 20m...that's a Spam Zone).

Noise acts as a dice penalty on Matrix actions. On top of that, the device you may be trying to hack may be slaved to a stronger host/server/commlink. Either of these are a good example of why you would WANT a direct connection when trying to hack. Here's an example.

HALO XXII's pre-launch is on Thursday at midnight, so you've cased out the Stuffer Shack to try to steal their shipment from the back room and beat them on the black market (netting a very good mark-up over retail for the people who couldn't wait a fraggin' DAY to play it). All you have to do is get past one maglock and the storage room is yours. So you try to remotely access it (in case the cameras are around) and find out that the McHugh's next door decided that 3AM was the PERFECT time to pre-nuke that morning's soysausage biscuits. So you grumble to yourself as you walk over closer to the lock. When you examine it on the Matrix, you see that it's slaved to the store's central computer, even though it's a cheap lock just meant to keep out the thrillgangers. So you pull out your universal cable and directly plug your deck into the lock. No more Noise, no more server, you just have to brute force the lock. Looks like Christmas is coming early for a pallet full of nerds on the black market!

 

[coyote6]

Actually, they're covered in 4th Edition too, where wireless was introduced. It's not explicitly stated, but it's HEAVILY implied that a lot of the storage on commlinks is actually in the cloud. On top of that, the very function of a commlink is supposed to be closer to our modern day cell phones. Imagine that your cell phone also doubled as your ID, your bank card, your driver's license, your badge to get in/out of the office, etc. Now put it in Airplane Mode and see exactly how much you'd actually be able to do with it.

I could still play some games, take pictures, record things, etc. More to the point, the headset/speakers/other devices plugged into it would still work. But what I'm talking about is having two devices -- one for your PAN, one to connect to the world.

Oh god yes. Well, not skinlinks as even I don't remember those (unless you're talking about induction datajacks or trodes...maybe you're thinking Cyberpunk 2020?),

Nah, skinlinks are on p. 328 of SR4A: "With skinlink, a device is adapted to send and receive data transmitted through the electrical field on the surface of metahuman skin. Though limited to touch, skinlink communication has the advantage of being protected from signal interception or jamming."

I think all the PCs in my SR4 game eventually went to skinlinks for their guns, especially after the gun fu adept got her pistol's smartlink hacked one time. Spent the whole fight trying to figure out why she was missing. Heh.

I like the way Noise sounds; not too sure about the uber GOD overlords, as if they're that effective, I begin to wonder how criminals are supposed to exist in the setting, and a setting that doesn't actually support the existence of the PCs is kind of problematic.

But, dammit, your descriptions have convinced me. I ordered the book from a certain online retailer, and I will probably end up breaking down and getting the PDF after I get paid on Friday.

 

[Abstruse]

But, dammit, your descriptions have convinced me. I ordered the book from a certain online retailer, and I will probably end up breaking down and getting the PDF after I get paid on Friday.

To steal a line from a childhood classic, "Don't take my word for it..." There's five or six previews online of the core rulebook and the Quickstart is available for free. Great way to take a look at the system before putting your money down on it.