Discussion thread for proposed karma changes.

[Jo]

I don't mind the regen times, the review structure, and the shifted scale. Also, the timelines for karma reviews are pretty reasonable.

Thumbs up from me.

[Cind]

What if you could have a 1 level karma character every other character, a 2 level karma once every three characters, a 3 level karma once every four, provided you had the karma originally?

I mean, adding this on top of the current system, not as a replacement. That way, you can play the witch who manifests loudly and violently in the Gaj and is cut down by soldiers, without the other players going "Oh, what a shame, a wasted character."

I like the idea because it allows for those violently-lived short lifespan rinthi elf krathis, among other things. Nonmundanes who go raiding, for example.

[John]

What if you could have a 1 level karma character every other character, a 2 level karma once every three characters, a 3 level karma once every four, provided you had the karma originally?

This would encourage people to suicide characters. And as someone whose characters live very short and brutal lives, it'd be pretty difficult for staff to work out whose deliberately suiciding vs just playing recklessly.

That way, you can play the witch who manifests loudly and violently in the Gaj and is cut down by soldiers, without the other players going "Oh, what a shame, a wasted character."

I like the idea because it allows for those violently-lived short lifespan rinthi elf krathis, among other things. Nonmundanes who go raiding, for example.

There is nothing about your suggestion that would force players to not have these characters live long and prosperous lives.

[Exen44]

So far I'm liking the Karma changes. Could use some tweaks here and there but it is overall is starting to look like a usable system.

The only thing to add I can think of at the top of my head is to reduce the time in between special applications. Like come on, a whole year? That's absurd. I'd recommend lowering one down to maybe 6 months instead, tops. Other than that, looking pretty good.

I'd give a more constructive post but only got one usable hand at the moment so this'll have to do.

[Dar]

Regarding the Sorc/Psi roles.

If a player has to take time off, or RL things is making him rare. Perhaps perpetually, perhaps over some particular timespan. Will that sorc/psi be stored to clear space for someone else?

What would be the requisites that potential sorc/psi need to know about. The "if this happens, or starts to happen, we will be forced to store you" clauses.   Aside the usual abuse, detriment to the game, breach of rules, acting outside of conduct that a karma 8 high karma spec app requires.

[RogueGunslinger]

Am I right in thinking that everyones Karma will be set to zero after this is implemented?

Seems like this will piss people off who have gotten used to their options.

[Lizzie]

Am I right in thinking that everyones Karma will be set to zero after this is implemented?

Seems like this will piss people off who have gotten used to their options.

No, no one is being set to zero. The staff has said everyone's existing karma will be REset - to the new scale. So if you have max karma now, your new karma will be 3, not 9 or whatever it is now, because the higher number will cease to exist and your current karma options will now exist in 3, instead. If you have no karma, it'll still be zero.

[solera]

Regarding the Sorc/Psi roles.

If a player has to take time off, or RL things is making him rare. Perhaps perpetually, perhaps over some particular timespan. Will that sorc/psi be stored to clear space for someone else?

If there is no better way, I suppose that comes under the heading of "Life sucks sometimes," and those affected have to bite the bullet.

[Melkor]

Brokkr, that data is very interesting to know. Thank you.

[Synthesis]

I feel like karma regen times will encourage people not to play the game for months at a time, if their brand-new PC bites it hard early on. Assuming the player isn't horribly addicted and will play anything just to log in...there's really not much of a point in rolling a PC with an inferior skillset and sticking with it when there's a better alternative available.

[Lizzie]

I don't understand the mentality of "I'll just not play if my karma character dies and I have to wait to play another one." I always thought it was a good idea to mix it up a bit anyway. I'll play a karma role, then switch to mundane. Or play a couple different types of karma roles, and mix it with mundane. I play because I love the game, not because I want to be a master-armorsmith. So if I can't play karma roles for a month or two, I'm good with that. I get that other people feel differently, I just don't get why.

[FantasyWriter]

Regarding the Sorc/Psi roles.

If a player has to take time off, or RL things is making him rare. Perhaps perpetually, perhaps over some particular timespan. Will that sorc/psi be stored to clear space for someone else?

If there is no better way, I suppose that comes under the heading of "Life sucks sometimes," and those affected have to bite the bullet.

As I said earlier, I think the best way to combat this is to have the limits not be hard limits.  Staff has always kept soft limits on non-mundane characters.  I've been told once for a special app and once for a regular app that it was turned down because the guild was at capacity at the time.  And I was told to resubmit or put in a request at a later date to see if room had freed up.

Also, as someone else stated, having a hard limit tempts us to meta when we are in a situation where we happen to know/know of all/most of the powerful 4.  I don't -want- to know this number. I think ~4 is better than 4+/-0.

A similar problem caused by knowing this kind of information is that going forward any evidence of drov/elk/nilazi magick in game will be assumed to be the result of sorcerery instead of a possible elementalist being more/equally likely as is how the IC world tends to balance and how the game was in a past. Sometimes I feel like I would give my left reproductive organ to be able to unknow things about the game/world.

[Nathvaan]

I have updated the announcement post to reflect the changes we are looking into with regards to the feedback here.  Thanks again for the spirited debate. 

Again we would like to reiterate that we fully expect things will need to be tweaked as we see how this works 'in the wild' but we will make sure to keep everyone up to date on the progress.

I for one am very excited to move this project along so we can move on to some other exciting projects that are waiting on this code (and some related code) like beta testing new guilds.

Thanks again for the input, it was very helpful.

[sleepyhead]

I have updated the announcement post to reflect the changes we are looking into with regards to the feedback here.  Thanks again for the spirited debate. 

Again we would like to reiterate that we fully expect things will need to be tweaked as we see how this works 'in the wild' but we will make sure to keep everyone up to date on the progress.

I for one am very excited to move this project along so we can move on to some other exciting projects that are waiting on this code (and some related code) like beta testing new guilds.

Thanks again for the input, it was very helpful.

Thank you! It looks great. Can I just ask one question? When you are accepted to play a sorc or psi under this system, are you obligated to store your current right away (or in a certain amount of time) if you want the slot? I don't see another fair way to deal with the limit. I don't think anyone would like being turned away from playing a sorc or psi just because someone else has dibs on one whenever their current dies, and who knows how long that will be.

[Nathvaan]

Thank you! It looks great. Can I just ask one question? When you are accepted to play a sorc or psi under this system, are you obligated to store your current right away (or in a certain amount of time) if you want the slot? I don't see another fair way to deal with the limit. I don't think anyone would like being turned away from playing a sorc or psi just because someone else has dibs on one whenever their current dies, and who knows how long that will be.

A totally understandable question.  While I can't say we have arrived on a 100% settled way to handle this what I can say is that in no way do we intend to have the system be unfair with how the roles are handled.  I suspect it will generally be a judgement call for the admin+ staffers.  We'll discuss it though, very good question.

[Lizzie]

I have a suggestion for the quandry re: psi/sorc approval vs. current character storage.

IF the current character (CC) = 0 karma
ANDIF CC = non-sponsored role or clanned leader OR sponsored/clanned leader who has been in the game/a leader for less than 2RL weeks (such as a newblar or recently promoted Byn sergeant)
THEN CC can be stored temporarily, for up to 2RL months.

If the above is true, then...

IF the new PC lives longer than 2RL months
THEN CC gets stored permanently.
IF the new PC doesn't make it that long,
THEN player gets to unstore their CC.

That's all I got for now.

[FantasyWriter]

Not complaining by why the 0 karma argument on line 1?

[Synthesis]

I don't understand the mentality of "I'll just not play if my karma character dies and I have to wait to play another one." I always thought it was a good idea to mix it up a bit anyway. I'll play a karma role, then switch to mundane. Or play a couple different types of karma roles, and mix it with mundane. I play because I love the game, not because I want to be a master-armorsmith. So if I can't play karma roles for a month or two, I'm good with that. I get that other people feel differently, I just don't get why.

Why would you keep playing a warrior/armorcrafter beyond the month or whatever it takes to wait and play a warrior/master armorcrafter?

It's not about mundane vs. magick.  It's about the simple fact that there's no point in locking yourself into something inferior when you have the self-control to just not play the game until you can get what you really want.  If you're completely addicted to the game to the point where that consideration doesn't matter to you, then fine...but I'd suggest that perhaps there aren't so many people who are absolutely desperate to play Armageddon as you imagine.

If you -do- play that inferior character...what's the point in continuing to grind away at it when you can do something totally reckless IC, die, and roll your karma-required subguild?  The only reason I can imagine keeping a 0-karma subclass PC after a couple of months is if they rolled legitimately amazing stats or the subclass wasn't particularly relevant.  I mean...yeah...rangers are so damn versatile as a main guild that you could probably play a long term 0-karma subguild ranger with minimal buyer's remorse, as long as you got good stats.  Likewise, merchants are so completely useless at everything except crafting that it probably doesn't matter (much) what your subguild is.

Even with the CGP system...the CGP-required subguilds are the new baseline for every player that has enough karma not to need to use a special-app for them.  Sure, this is a roleplaying game, but skills matter immensely.

[Lizzie]

Not complaining by why the 0 karma argument on line 1?

Because I don't think it's fair to take up a karma based role slot, preventing others people from taking it, on a temporary basis to play and even more-limited availability role. Seems kind of greedy to me. If you HAVE 3 karma and want to special app a sorc/psi, and you're currently playing a 100% mundane character, then you should be able to store it temporarily (at first) to make sure that you can return to that character if the psi/sorc doesn't work out in a short period of time.

[Dar]

Is there a limit on karma based, but non sorc/psi roles? I wasnt aware of that.

[Lizzie]

Is there a limit on karma based, but non sorc/psi roles? I wasnt aware of that.

It's a time limit, but I would imagine if they found that all 3-karma players were using it on the same guild/subguild all the time, they'd eventually want to pare down on that and tell someone "hey we already have a dozen of those - we can approve it for the next round but would you mind pretty please trying something else for this next PC of yours?"

In fact if they said that to me I'd be happy to comply, especially knowing that the app itself IS approved - just not for this particular PC.

[Armaddict]

Based on the feedback, eliminate extended subguilds and add a skill to each of the normal subguilds.

Because this mentality of 'I won't play unless I can play an extended' is revealing a serious design flaw as far as how it interacts with players.

[FantasyWriter]

Extended subguilds will likely be much more of a "requirement" for some roles/players if the new class system eliminates the well-rounded mastery that comes with warriors, merchants, and rangers (and probably assassins) as described in the staff teaser about it.

[BadSkeelz]

More like "Eliminate standard subguilds because they are shit compared to the Extended."

Unfortunately I think the general staff philosophy is that they want individual characters able to do less, so that we cooperate with each other more. Personally I find such restricted skillsets to be pretty immersion breaking ("ten years in the cavalry and I still can't ride?") and would rather us be forced to work together because the world is that fucking dangerous, but that's just me. I wouldn't be at all surprised if staff ditched the Extended Subguilds and instead made every crafting Subguild able to Master Craft.

rip merchants and assassins who might be able to exist outside of their narrow niche thanks to Outdoorsman and Protector subguilds.

[helix]

Based on the feedback, eliminate extended subguilds and add a skill to each of the normal subguilds.

Because this mentality of 'I won't play unless I can play an extended' is revealing a serious design flaw as far as how it interacts with players.

I think I'd challenge that and say... the guild revamp will probably fix some of those issues. Right now everybody wants to play an extended subguild because most of the main guilds (other than Ranger and Merchant) are severely lacking in utility and capability. Increasing main guild capability decreases the need for extended subguilds, and may even make them fairly obsolete.

If main guild capability is increased, the 'flavor' subguilds may come more into play. Nomad comes to mind - I like that a subguild gives you a different accent and a language, as well as a host of useful abilities. I'd certainly be interested in other subguilds with similar abilities - ones that let you speak Allundean, or Mirukkim, and give abilities commiserate with someone that has spent a long time among desert elves or dwarves. And please don't tell me linguist. Languages are nice, but not useful enough to use an entire subguild on unless you're basing your entire concept around that, or you're playing a high-utility class, like Ranger, or to a lesser extent, Assassin.

What doesn't make sense to me, personally, is why mastercrafting is gated behind a karma wall. Take, for example, a nomad - they have one crafting skill (spearmaking). I think allowing a PC that works at it to achieve master status in a single crafting skill as the result of a subguild is not that big of a deal.

Alternatively, an interesting thought is the ability to increase a skill max of a non-combat skill in CG using an RPP, rather than increasing the starting level. I'd much rather play a Nomad with master spearmaking than most of the extended subguilds.