Make some new friends... or at least find some fresh meat.

Update Complete!
Patch notes:
•Introducing the Vertex City Commons! Meet up, socialize, form Squads, Duel, and Trade, all from the convenience of a central hub.
•In addition, the Respawn system has been completely overhauled with the introduction of PurgaStory! Players waiting to respawn will now be able to chat with respawning players from other DigiPerVerse products through the Shared Afterlife Server. Currently, this includes Digital Police: Vertex City, Royal Aquila: Perseus Expedition, and Trials In Timefarer's Space
•These changes come with our recent complete overhaul of the DigiPerVerse server backend. Stay tuned as we roll out new Massively Multiplayer features and experiences to take advantage of this exciting new technology.
•As always, please report any bugs you may encounter during play by using the convenient in-game dialogue. It will pop up automatically whenever the neural interface detects sufficient Cognitive Dissonance. To access it manually outside of a neural-drive context, press F8 on PC, or look in the Options menu on your device.

You perch atop a mid-rise building, overlooking the neon splendor of the rain-slicked city streets below. Strange eddies of air currents swirl trails of smoke and vapor up to you from buildings and street vendors below, assaulting your nostrils with alternating scents of laundry detergent, roasted shawarma, and gasoline fumes. Once again, you find yourself utterly astounded by the creative genius of Digital Perfect LLC.

They can program all this, but they can't pathfind around a dropped chandelier that they literally gave you the tools to drop?

You equip your new toy, a set of nightvision goggles you got from a rare drop, and start cycling through its dozens of modes. Body temperature, heart-rate, microvibration filtering... pheromone analysis!? You didn't even know this game had a pheromones system! The Scanning, Integrated Detective-Mode, Electronic Nightvision, Analysis, Finder & Identification Lenses really do have it all!

Granted this license to perv, you spot plenty of interesting players doing fascinating things where they think nobody can see them. Lots of people fucking, of course, from the darkest back alleys to the loftiest penthouse apartments that you'd assumed were just for show because there's no way to access them without glitching through the walls.

And it's not just people. NPCs are getting in on the action, too. You can understand the appeal of the ubiquitous NPC sex workers, of course, and you even catch yourself feeling kinda jealous of the player getting spit-roasted by two male NPCs simply labeled "****," until you realize that the queue to participate in that quest and become their next victim wraps all the way around the block. But it's the NPCs fucking each other that have you confused. As with so many things in this game, it raises the eternal question: Bug or feature?

At what point did the developers pivot, and start designing Digital Police around sex? At what point did this stop being a first-person shooter that you were twisting for your own amusement, and become a sex sim with a plethora of unnecessarily complicated ways to spank your partner?

Then you spot a player who stands out. She's not turning in quests, flirting or being horny on Main Street. At least, if she is, she's not making that horniness accessible to anyone else. You can see it there in her equipped items, plain as day: Chastity Belt. The thing has bonuses to lockpicking, hacking and damage resistances, which only means that whoever designed it, they designed it with three different ways for other players to utterly negate its protection.

She's as good a person as any to ask. You jump off the roof, and wall-slide down into the adjacent alley. On your way out of this alley, an NPC begs for your help while another NPC pushes her against the wall.

Tch. They're both only level 5.

Without even looking or breaking your stride, you fire a single round from your pistol, killing both of them. Half a dozen bonuses and penalties flash across your HUD, allegedly affecting everything from your character's growth to NPC faction alliances to the in-game stock market to your character's social media clout, all in amounts too small to make any real difference.

The player you spotted gives you a friendly wave as you approach. Her outfit is flashy and revealing, but in a "fun" way. Too garish to be a dominatrix, too serious to be a prostitute, too slutty to be a superheroine. You're not sure what she's going for with her steeze, but whatever it is, she's definitely going all-in on selling the aesthetic. Even her sniper rifle sparkles in the moonlight.

"Hi there," she says cheerfully, "You new to the game?" Then she does a double-take as she sees your stats. Then her eyes widen as she recognizes your username. You're used to that reaction, but you're just not in the mood to capitalize on it, tonight.

"Yep! That's me. Total noob. Like, ohmigod! What the hell is going on, here?"