Discussion thread for proposed karma changes.

[Armaddict]

OMG YOU'RE KILLING THE GAME IT'S DYING AND THRASHING AND YOU DIDN'T DO THIS WELL.


Just kidding.  I think everything looks pretty solid, particularly as guild and subguild balances continue to roll out.  I too think the regeneration and spending was entirely necessary (though that was moreso under the full mage times).

This is as someone who doesn't really use my karma much at all, so the only thing I'm really seeing for future reference is tweaks to the 'rate of regeneration'.

[Cind]

I like how both you will be able to play more things and how you won't expect someone in your five-person hunting group to manifest any more. (I'm just assuming witches are rarer than that, even though I say that knowing full well that most of you at the bar are aides.)

I don't think there's a perfect system. Let's just try it, if it doesn't work they'll switch back, right?

[Kryos]

Pound for pound, its darn close to what I suggested a while back.  Yay!  On that note: I still believe there's a few ESGs that should be moved to 0 karma as they don't offer staggering powers, but a way to flesh out a concept.  Looking at things like grebber, majordomo, and other 1 karma current ESGs.

[sleepyhead]

It's a good idea to take the edge off losing a karma character within a week by giving them a point back. However, I think the cushion should be 1 week IF the person has played at least 3 hours during that week, which is the standard noob rez time limit anyway. I would hate to be denied that consolation point just because my spec app was approved, I logged on once, went on vacation for a week, and then logged on again only to get killed by a drov beetle or something. So I'd put the grace period at 1 week or 3 hours, whichever comes second.

Regen is great, but like others, I also think it should be a bit faster. I don't think it should matter how many points you recently spent. I would prefer karma points to take 30 days each to regenerate, but I guess the 2nd and 3rd points could require progressively more regen time if it's really necessary.

[najdorf]

I think regen at proposed durations is good that it prevents suicides, you know what I mean.
You may say that there is a mutual trust, good players shouldn't, and so on. But leaving too much to players goodwill creates issues especially towards systematic growth.  rules are healthier.

[Large Hero]

Well done! I like how all players should be able to get to max karma. I like that psi and sorc will now be special app only. Good changes.

Kudos to the staff who put time and work into designing this. It looks well thought out.

[Dar]

Perhaps allow Kudos, or just generally cool scenes that staff would find awesome to speed up karma regen.

Let's say say someone does something totally cool. Not enough to grant karma over it, but still pretty darn cool. A staffer watching over it would use some kind of a mechanism and that shaves off 10 days from karma regen. Let's say someone does something and receives a kudos, same thing happens.

[Delirium]

I'm a little puzzled that 3 months is considered a long time to play a single character. 

I mean yeah, bad luck happens, but c'mon, it is absolutely possible to get involved and do stuff and live a few real life months. You don't have to play a suicidal (or homicidal) person to stir the pot. And if you really want to go that balls to the wall, warriors and pickpockets are 0 karma.

[Jarvis]

Just my two cents as a fairly new player:

I like the proposed change of a smaller karma scale.

I can get behind a karma regeneration system. But not as it's proposed now. 60-90 days is a hell of a long time. If anything, I feel like it further encourages treasuring higher-karma roles, playing it safe and even taking long breaks from the game. Shorten the wait time! Please? Pretty please?

I agree with Insigne, its a hell of a long time to wait, especially with gicker sub guilds, encouraging players to generally keep their karma "stored" just in case. Karma looking more like a consumable resource than a level of clearance for more demanding roles. Now don't get me wrong, thats not that bad to get behind of, its the waiting time and more parameters and rules to follow to get a character up and running that are bothering

Not to mention that if I used a level 3 karma option, I'd have to wait up to 6 months for it to fully get back up.

[Riev]

You don't have to play a suicidal (or homicidal) person to stir the pot. And if you really want to go that balls to the wall, warriors and pickpockets are 0 karma.

I'd be interested to see what people can do with the 0-karma classes and subguilds, myself, but I feel a lot of this is speculation until we see/hear the new Guild Revamp. It seems Custom-Crafting is going to be karma-gated, so if you want to be someone who adds items to the game, you need to survive on a couple characters for a while to "earn" it.

However, I too am worried about the regen rate. I definitely get the "3 karma offerings are so much more powerful that if you use all 3 karma, it will regenerate slower". 3 months is a long time, though. As other have noted, it just feels like its encouraging "safe" play if you enjoy your karma roles. HOWEVER, as I said before, it depends on how attractive the new 0-karma guilds/subguilds appear to be.

[palomar]

Make it a soft-cap for psionicists and sorcerers, say 3-5 as someone mentioned previously.

Not sure I understood the regeneration times, but it might work out.

[Exen44]

I dislike the spend and regenerate aspect. If I earned two karma points then let me spend two karma points on each character. The world does not suffer if there's two protectors or outdoorsmen out there.

If it's a matter of mages being too frequent, put them on a whole separate system. Like mundane karma classes don't spend but mages do.

It's a livable system, I suppose, but I die frequently enough that I can see I'm going to spend a lot of time at 0 or 1 karma. Dying is going to feel like a punishment now, which is just going to screw over those like me who are on the explorer/achieve side of the Bartle chart.

ETA:

I'd like to add that maybe you could mitigate the pain of that by a karma refund for storage or adding in more rerolls per character.

I feel like the wait times are massive for some of these subguilds/setups. It seems unreasonable to wait 90 days to get to play some of these extended subguilds. On top of that, I'm not a fan of further long OOC wait times between these roles. I've hardly even ever played them, and I feel those wait times are massive. You have to wait three months to play a different (non-touched) elementalist (even for the 'cheapest' ones)? That's extreme. Further, must wait 6 months between any 3 karma applications, if yours dies? I get it, on the sorcs, and psions. I think they should be behind special applications. I don't necessarily think you should limit the number, and think ideally, the difficulty of getting to a point of playing them would limit them enough (more so with these wait times than anything), but I get that staff have quietly been pushing on that for a time now.

There's so much here that I'm just shaking my head at. I'm trying to nail down the major points though.

1.) The wait times are extreme.
2.) The extended subguilds that are right now placed among the 2 karma guilds are not worth 2 karma under this new system.
3.) The new design of the karma system DOES allow for more people to possibly play psions or sorcs. However, it greatly limits the amount of times you can play any given thing, in a way that's honestly worse than having fought to earn 5 karma under the old system. If people played too many powerful roles at once, or in a row, honestly, address that on a case by case basis. This is too much.
4.) 3 total points of karma is too low paired with the 'regen' and the amount of things for it to be spent on, especially for later on adding MORE stuff to spend it on. It seems like it'd be better off doing 5 with lesser wait times for the lower two karma points, and maybe a bit higher at the 5. Still, six months is too much.


Proposed changes to this system outlined?

-Bump total karma possible to 5.

Sorcerers and Psionicists are Special Application only, with only 1 allowed per year, with an unlimited number of each allowed in game. Must be at least 3 karma to apply for them (within the range of special application ideal). This would limit their presence (once a year per player that has ACCESS to them even), and wouldn't result in 3 super secret hardly logs-in psions/sorcs holding these spots for a while (or losing them when their RL interferes with their play times for a while).

5 Karma -Devastation, Travel, Agony, Mul

4 Karma -Illusion, Guile, Tempest

3 Karma - Half-Giant, Water and Stone Elementalists, Protector, Berserker, Lancer, Bruiser, Aggressor

2 Karma - Outdoorsman, Rogue, Cutpurse, Slipknife

1 Karma - Desert elf, Water/Stone/Fire/Wind Touched. Master Tailor, Minstrel, Master Jeweler, Weaponsmith, Master Crafter, Master Armorsmith, Master Potter, Master Chef, Grebber, Apothecary, Master Trader, Majordomo.

With this system, I would propose a 2 week period between each point of karma, gained back steadily. Not escalating. That means if a MAX karma person apps for something stupid strong, they're still forced to wait at least 10 weeks to app the same. Non-refundable.

For the case of special applications, you can apply 3 higher than your current karma. You should stay at your 'current' level of karma under the new changes, with people 6-8 karma dropping to max karma of 5. (Do you really have anything to complain about, if you get access to the same things? Probably not.)

This ideally seems a better set up. As is, six months between the more powerful applications is too much. We're talking about a percent of a person's life, for a 20 year old game. I understand the elitism that is Armageddon, as it's a fantastic community for roleplaying, but let's please draw the line somewhere. I agree that players shouldn't have to wait 10 years to get to play the most powerful stuff in the game. But I would sooner stick to the old system than move to one where the amount of time between each is massive. I've gone away and almost never come back to the game purely by accident of getting distracted by other things in life. Furthering the confines of the player base within mundane or lesser codedly powerful roles doesn't serve to make the game more inviting or fun.

To anyone who whines about Armageddon needing to be low-magick, or simply have 'less' magick, I'm going to point to the very first paragraph on the 'Home' page of the website.

"Armageddon MUD is an online fantasy game in which players jointly inhabit a harsh, post-apocalyptic desert world. The game requires roleplay; while conflict abounds, the game is not about killing things. Rather, it is about living out a character's sometimes short and always difficult life in the harsh world, Zalanthas. It is a world where sorcerer-kings and their ruthless servants, the Templarate, govern the two main cities, Allanak and Tuluk. Any magick not granted by the Kings is feared and hated, and where the punishment of such a curse might be death. In this harsh realm, life is a constant struggle, and death may occur over a drink of precious water."

You might come here to chop up people with bone swords. That's cool. I think many come here for this though. Let's not bog them down with massive wait times. Karma is about trust. If you trust a player to have the karma, you should trust them to be responsible with it. If they aren't responsible with it, take it away from them until such a time where they show to be responsible with it. Trying to blanket fix problems (like some people just continually re-apping powerful roles of Psions and Sorcs) will result in many people who don't have anything to do with it, nor having done any wrong suffering the consequences of someone else's bad behavior. I just want us enabling people not only to play the role they want, but also to play other ones they want too without needing to devote years to getting around to them all EVEN IF THEY DIE.

Even if you ignore all of my proposed changes, and want to stick SOLELY to the 3 karma system, I would suggest some sort of HEAVY reduction of the 'regen' times involved. You shouldn't have to wait more than 2 months to play any role that YOU already -earned- access to.

I agree with Dresan - I would completely remove the Sorc/Psi from the Karma tree and have them as sponsored roles. This keeps them small and gives staff great oversight onto them, and also places some kind of emphasis (whether real or imagined) that the character is a mover and a shaker and is meant to drive roleplay for other characters. As much as a templar, it could be viewed as a leadership role, though of the antagonist sort, usually.

As far as the karma system itself goes - my questions are thus:

• Will players that currently have karma keep their options?
• Do players still have the ability to request classes/subclasses that are karma restricted via spec-app? If so, is that spec-app for a non-sorc, non-psi role considered your single spec app for the year?
• Will any of the new classes (speaking of class revamp) be karma restricted?
• Would it be possible that roles be advertised as karma uses, as well? (will explain more on this in my comments section)
• Are you considering population caps on any other karma-restricted classes/subclasses at this time?
• Would it be possible to trigger karma reviews after a certain amount of playtime in combination with real-time?

So, wrote a whole bunch of questions, first thanks for answering any of them. I'm glad to see movement on the karma front, and am greatly anticipating the class revamp as well. Probably even moreso than a karma revamp. Couple comments I'd like to mention in regards to my questions:

I know I, and many other players who have karma, fought long and hard for it. In the past (granted, I haven't played in nearly ten years), karma was a hit-or-miss affair. I played a very, very long-lived, and renowned leader... and only a chance glance at my account by a friendly staffer (much later) netted me a couple karma when I put in for a very low-karma spec-app. I'd hate to be in that situation again, even if I don't use my karma options very often (read: ever).

I'm also curious if any of the new classes will be karma restricted; brokkr brought up an interesting idea that anything that can mastercraft is a restricted option. If that is then a consideration, would some mundane classes with exceptional crafting ability (i.e. merchant, as an example) be relegated to a karma-required class, or is that a subclass-only requirement?

I'd also be interested in knowing if you might consider opening up some generic, default 'roles' up as karma options. This worked well in SoI when I played there (though the RPP gain was much faster), and was able to get more advanced players into more advanced roles, where they can often benefit more players with their experience.

As far as a critique of the system, I will say that I think the karma regain mechanism seems a bit more complex than it needs to be, and doesn't quite make sense to me, though perhaps I'm thinking about it wrong.

If PlayerA has three karma and apps a mul, he will regain one karma again in 90 days.

If PlayerB has one karma and apps a vivaduan, he will regain one karma again in 30 days.

Let's say that both characters last 45 days. PlayerB is free to create another Vivaduan even though he spend 100% of his available karma, ad nauseam, whereas PlayerA must wait an additional 45 days for the same benefit.

The issue here does not seem to be how many vivaduans there are in the game world - only that PlayerA apped a 3-karma class and thus needs to wait 180 days before regaining his full karma, or 90 days for even playing a 1-karma class, whereas another player spending 100% of their max karma only has to wait 30 days.

It would seem a simpler system if the karma regenerated like:

1st point: 30 days to regenerate
2nd point: 60 days to regenerate
3rd point: 90 days to regenerate

Finally, I will say that I've seen a similar system work very well in SoI, though it did have the added feature of having some default, generic roles (like army Corporal, for instance) available for RPP - that helped quite a bit in a few cases, and those roles often came with some skill bumps and/or other small perks that made them worthwhile. I have great hopes!

Just my two cents as a fairly new player:

I like the proposed change of a smaller karma scale.

I can get behind a karma regeneration system. But not as it's proposed now. 60-90 days is a hell of a long time. If anything, I feel like it further encourages treasuring higher-karma roles, playing it safe and even taking long breaks from the game. Shorten the wait time! Please? Pretty please?

I agree with Insigne, its a hell of a long time to wait, especially with gicker sub guilds, encouraging players to generally keep their karma "stored" just in case. Karma looking more like a consumable resource than a level of clearance for more demanding roles. Now don't get me wrong, thats not that bad to get behind of, its the waiting time and more parameters and rules to follow to get a character up and running that are bothering

This. Can't be bothered writing up my own response with a broken hand. Although I will say this: This is Armageddon. People die all the fucking time. It's important to remember that going forward with a Karma regen system.

[Nathvaan]

We are in the process of actively discussing the regen time as well as the psion/sorc cap numbers among other things.  The feedback is appreciated.  Please feel free to keep it coming.

[valeria]

Has the following been considered:

Giving a player who has spec apped a psion or sorc the option to be put on an interest list if approved but if there are too many presently in game, and then filing from the list when the slots open up.

I could see myself getting very frustrated trying over and over again if the slots were full. But knowing that I'm on a wait list (and given the option to store a current pc or go back to the bottom of the list) would be much more bearable.

(PS sorry if this was addressed elsewhere, I'm on a 10 minute break and don't have time to read the whole thread.)

[Tisiphone]

I'm okay with spend-and-regen; that's been in the works for a while, anyway, and it seems like a decent way to soft-cap things so that staff can trust it to be mostly automated, instead of everyone running around as a Master Cook all the time.

One thing that worries me is that moving from 8 to 3 points might be squishing the scale a bit much. Perhaps we should change one thing at a time, test out the regenerating karma scale, and then squish the scale after the kinks are worked out? Or move to a slightly larger scale to allow for more granularity.

Finally, if we're interested in the non-linear regeneration scale, might I suggest flipping it? As written, the first point of karma takes the longest, with the others coming faster. If the idea is to limit high-karma apps without being overly punishing, it seems like having the first point come back quickest and latter points regenerate more slowly is the way to go, since that will bias people toward playing on the lower end of the scale, instead of saving up all their karma to blow on the highest thing possible (since, after all, if you've already waited the long time for the first point, it's a short wait for the next).

Also, two questions:

• When this concept was first broached, it was intended that karma choices be additive, so that, for example, a desert elf bruiser would cost 3 points (using the new scale). Is that still intended? If so, it might be useful to have karma levels above the scale, so people can play half-giant devastators (which would be 5 karma)
• In the new karma system, would muls still be debarred from being magickal? The previous rationale was that giving muls full-guild magicks made them too powerful, and the previous IG rationale was that magick-touched muls would quickly be found out by their Houses and culled. With subguild magicks maybe neither's the case anymore. I'm really just curious, and not bothered either way by it.

[Miradus]

Yeah. Action Jackson is going to end up stuck in a lot of Social Sally roles.

What's FUN is an Action Jackson IN a social role, going out and having some rough and tumble risky fun. But I have seen firsthand how people who are enjoying their character shrink from any possible risk and will completely shut down and withdraw (to the point of logging out for days) when there's a plot going on which risks their role.

Look at some of the extremely old players right now and you'll notice a propensity for low playtimes and lurking inside safe dens, only sending out Ways or interacting with disposable henchmen. Not just leadership people either.

I can't imagine that none of you long-time players have noticed this behavior.

There's some pretty decent no-karma combos out there. Warrior/nomad or warrior/bounty hunter is really fine and epic. Ranger anything is good. An assassin or pickpocket is really good at their guild role and can be paired with most anything for flavor. But I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one with a couple of karma points who hardly ever goes back to the non-karma subguilds. And I don't mean gicks.

I like that staff is talking to us about this. I'll say that right now. Nothing as proposed is making me think that I'm going to run off and find another game to play. But I still would like to see some tweaks. Either to the regen times for karma or for the current karma costs of mundane subguilds.

I really don't know if I'm the oddball when it comes to character longevity (or lack thereof). I've never seen any hard metrics as to how long characters last. I've seen some extremely old characters in game, but I also could point out that those players do not play as much as I do. When you're logged out of the game you're pretty damned hard to kill.

[Delirium]

I mean, I get the concerns. But that entrenched player behavior is not going to change by making it easier to roll karma after karma pc. Remember that we are squishing the karma scale so there will be a lot more players with karma options going forward.

[TheGoose]

The wait is ridiculously long. Maybe if you've been playing 10+ years and know everything, 6 IRL months or 3 IRL months doesn't seem like a long time. Me? I've been playing for six months. It is a very long time to me.

I've never gotten to play anything but zero karma classes. And now, it looks like I never really will. Because the moment I play something else, I'm going to die due to not knowing the mechanics of the anything other than mundane classes, because it's all SUPAH SEKRIT and then have to wait months to try again, so I'll have forgotten anything I learned and die again, and so on and so on.

Please, please, please, please reverse this system. It heavily favors long term, decades-old players and heavily disadvantages and discourages new blood.

[nauta]

While it is a bit orthogonal to the discussion at hand, one way to meet Miradus (et al.) and the Action Jackson point would be to add a new category to the Karma Evaluation section, namely the bold line (or something isomorphic to it with enough mutatises mutandisized) below:

Granting Karma:
Karma will be granted using existing criteria.  Each karma category can only be granted once. (i.e. Only 1 point for Roleplay, 1 point for Leadership etc.).  A level 3 player should still have achieved in 6+ areas.  On review multiple karma categories may be awarded. If not enough categories are awarded to move to the next level the category will be noted and used when next reviewing the account.

Level 0 - No criteria required
Level 1 - 1 or 2 points
Level 2 - 3 to 5 points
Level 3 - 6 or all 8 points
Karma criteria remains the same:
Longevity
Good communication
Ability to roleplay
Proven understanding of magick and its place in the game world
Proven understanding of cultural and racial structures
Contributes to the game
Leadership
Makes things exciting for adventurers (a combination of kudo, independent staff observations, etc.)

One comment on using player kudos exclusively: a lot of us get them for the mudsexx, which isn't really optimal.  But some do come through, especially staff kudos, which are more about stirring things up.

I also wonder if we can streamline some of these categories.  Can't we eliminate longevity?  What does 'contributes to the game' mean?

[Nathvaan]

Finally, if we're interested in the non-linear regeneration scale, might I suggest flipping it?

We are looking into this, yes.  We haven't really had enough time yet to crunch the numbers but we are looking into it.

Also, two questions:

• When this concept was first broached, it was intended that karma choices be additive, so that, for example, a desert elf bruiser would cost 3 points (using the new scale). Is that still intended? If so, it might be useful to have karma levels above the scale, so people can play half-giant devastators (which would be 5 karma)
• In the new karma system, would muls still be debarred from being magickal? The previous rationale was that giving muls full-guild magicks made them too powerful, and the previous IG rationale was that magick-touched muls would quickly be found out by their Houses and culled. With subguild magicks maybe neither's the case anymore. I'm really just curious, and not bothered either way by it.

As to the additive vs cascading, we looked at having an additive system but settled on a cascading one.  By that I mean you 'spend' the number karma used for the highest option but all lower options are available.

All the previous restrictions (for good IC reasons) are still in place and will continue to be in place.  This includes muls not being magickal, psions being human only and HGs having minimal magick ability. 

Hopefully that covers your questions! Thanks for asking.

[Armaddict]

As far as the concern for the wait time...

Isn't that kind of the point?  I'd read it as a way of keeping people from playing the 2 karma options over and over.  Six months of wait time isn't that big when you consider it's meant for two characters instead of one.  Or three characters, instead of one?

[MeTekillot]

Make dwarves 1 karma.

[Thunkkin]

Throwing in my two cents of feedback as a casual, achiever-oriented player who hasn't had time to read this entire thread carefully (or really play much in the last few years ...).

I like the changes. Except ...

I don't think the extended subguilds should be behind a karma wall. It requires trust and knowledge of the game world/culture to play a half-giant responsibly. Aggressor not so much. Seems like apples and oranges to be lumping subguilds in with desert elf, gicker, half-giant, etc.

[Miradus]

Throwing in my two cents of feedback as a casual, achiever-oriented player who hasn't had time to read this entire thread carefully (or really play much in the last few years ...).

I like the changes. Except ...

I don't think the extended subguilds should be behind a karma wall. It requires trust and knowledge of the game world/culture to play a half-giant responsibly. Aggressor not so much. Seems like apples and oranges to be lumping subguilds in with desert elf, gicker, half-giant, etc.

That really sort of highlights this.

Some of the extended subguilds just let me start out with a skill I'd eventually get anyway. You can't make any sort of an argument that starting out with parry disrupts the game world balance on characters that are going to end up with parry anyway.

Or that having a merchant who can parry and block with a shield so he can successfully move from Luir's to Morin's without hiring the Byn is somehow upsetting to game balance.

Is an assassin/protector more dangerous than an assassin/thug? In some ways, but that assassin is still likely to die at the hands of a Templar's half giant soldier.

It's possible the regen time isn't the dial we need to be turning, but rather looking at where the subguilds sit on the karma scale.

In fact, the game documents all refer to "spending" karma for some other type of game system that was before my time and apparently never manifested beyond a change in the documentation. So I'd say that the current karma costs/configuration are outdated even for the CURRENT system, much less the proposed system.

I dislike the kudos system due to its arbitrary nature and would advise against using it for anything reward/punitive. I got the most player kudos praising a specific character's behavior that staff was discouraging me from engaging in, so it's clear to me that the players and staff are not necessarily in sync with what makes a fun world.

[Armaddict]

I'm also against a kudos system, but just because it would make me very derelict in a duty to send kudos.  As is, I'm all-around generally pleased with almost all interactions I have in the game.  Sometimes I think 'Well that wasn't a good idea', or 'Well, they clearly see this thing different than I do and that's going to make their life in game hard', but as a whole...generally pleased.

But with that in mind, I don't send kudos often.  I send them when someone either totally rocks my socks with their play, or they engage in play that is a big contribution that is generally subjected to much harsher scrutiny (i.e. Raiding).  So if we rated karma off of kudos, I'd...feel bad that I didn't send them more, but that wouldn't necessarily make me send them more.