Second Grand Karma Off

[Dar]

Some people do not like the karma system. I personally disagree
I think its important and a variety of it exists in other games. Call it RPP, or whatever. Very often lately the quality of those posessing Karma is questioned, sometimes even by staff. And its true, suppose, during the end of the world Karma might have been given freely.

What if we have another karma off. Everyone who gained Karma before the recent karma system change would lose their karma. Currently the system seemed to have standardized, so there should be a clearcut, concise method of gaining it back. This would lessen all those cries of favoritism and so on.

Better yet. Create new accounts and mothball the current ones, so even your reputations of being exceptional players in one field, or another, would not bring you extra attention from staffside. Maybe potentially even ilicit some veterans who are damn certain the staff id out to get them!!! To uhh give their tries.

[MeTekillot]

You can do that if you want but I've been whinging for my karma for 10 years so I will pass.

[Krath]

Some people do not like the karma system. I personally disagree
I think its important and a variety of it exists in other games. Call it RPP, or whatever. Very often lately the quality of those posessing Karma is questioned, sometimes even by staff. And its true, suppose, during the end of the world Karma might have been given freely.

What if we have another karma off. Everyone who gained Karma before the recent karma system change would lose their karma. Currently the system seemed to have standardized, so there should be a clearcut, concise method of gaining it back. This would lessen all those cries of favoritism and so on.

Better yet. Create new accounts and mothball the current ones, so even your reputations of being exceptional players in one field, or another, would not bring you extra attention from staffside. Maybe potentially even ilicit some veterans who are damn certain the staff id out to get them!!! To uhh give their tries.

I understand and see where you are coming from but absolutely not. The playerbase will decrease by one if that happens.

[Marauder Moe]

I didn't give up my karma during the first one.  I'm not going to give it up now.


That said, the first Great Karma-Off at least had a pretty clear grievance and objective.  I really don't understand what you're on about for this one, though.  Can you summarize in one sentence?

[Dar]

A percentage of the people love this game, but feel agrieved. Often after negative experience with staff. Often for a good reason, but hurt feelings nonetheless. After variable years, they remained withour karma, often once more due to good reasons, but at times undeservedly as well. At some point the desparity would emphasize itself when someone playing a high karma acts worse then a noobie dwarf that arrived from a pk mud. There is this whole "rich will get richer", while the poor are there to be their playthings mindset. Often this is just in their head, but they are way beyond reasoning. A leveled playing field may entice them to return and give the game a honest try.

Some of this came from a conversation in discord about how people gained karma during the end of the world game. And a honest realization that I probably dont deserve the karma I have. I feel like I got so much lazier and shittier as a player. Mainly because due to my irl commitments, I tend to give a lot less fucks.

[Heade]

On the same note as players who have max karma that probably don't deserve it, though, I think there are probably players who deserve max karma that have just never got it.

I've played a LOT of independents, and brought a lot to the game, but historically independents had trouble getting karma, so I'm not at max karma. And with the current rule where you can basically only go up 1 karma per RL year, I have zero interest in going back down to zero and knowing I have to play 3 years on top of the 18 I've already played to get to be able to try some roles out that I've never been able to try.

[Lizzie]

On the same note as players who have max karma that probably don't deserve it, though, I think there are probably players who deserve max karma that have just never got it.

I've played a LOT of independents, and brought a lot to the game, but historically independents had trouble getting karma, so I'm not at max karma. And with the current rule where you can basically only go up 1 karma per RL year, I have zero interest in going back down to zero and knowing I have to play 3 years on top of the 18 I've already played to get to be able to try some roles out that I've never been able to try.

You know you can request a karma review right? There was around a year, where you couldn't request it. That was while they were re-writing the karma system. Other than that, you could've requested a review at least once a year (prior to that, twice a year, and prior to that, whenever you felt like requesting it).

[Heade]

On the same note as players who have max karma that probably don't deserve it, though, I think there are probably players who deserve max karma that have just never got it.

I've played a LOT of independents, and brought a lot to the game, but historically independents had trouble getting karma, so I'm not at max karma. And with the current rule where you can basically only go up 1 karma per RL year, I have zero interest in going back down to zero and knowing I have to play 3 years on top of the 18 I've already played to get to be able to try some roles out that I've never been able to try.

You know you can request a karma review right? There was around a year, where you couldn't request it. That was while they were re-writing the karma system. Other than that, you could've requested a review at least once a year (prior to that, twice a year, and prior to that, whenever you felt like requesting it).

I took the last 5 years off. Prior to that, after karma reviews were a thing, I requested one and was granted some karma. But I played for a long time when karma reviews weren't a thing. Karma wasn't something asked for, it was something given by invisible imms in recognition of player trust and ability to RP. Which made serial indie players a Karmic black hole, simply due to low visability.

Anyhow, then karma got compressed, and now I've been back awhile. So yeah, I'm working on getting more Karma. That doesn't change the fact that I'd have no interest in giving up what I've got, or what I gain, should I gain more karma.

Any karma system will always have a disparity between new players and players that have been around awhile. 3 years after doing this, we'd be in the exact situation we are right now, where new players would have zero karma and old hats would have max, so doing something like this is only a temporary fix to appease people who've yet to even contribute to the game. And, as a whole, I'd rather keep 1 great veteran than gain 2 newbie players. We'd lose people if we did this. A lot of people. And I don't think we'd even cover our losses with any gains it might bring.

[Synthesis]

Yeah.  No.

[Lizzie]

I wouldn't give up my karma points either. I didn't do it the last time around. I like playing some of the more challenging roles in the game, and I won't apologize for it.

[razorback]

I wasn't around for the first time. And to be honest, I'm not sure I know exactly what my karma level is. I just know that when I'm looking to make a new PC, I make it from what's available. If it isn't, I guess I just don't notice.

[Miradus]

If we could do something like loan a karma point to a newbie so he can try something new, sure. Fine. Since the karma regen place went in I've been largely confined to no karma roles anyway, so I can find something to play and have some fun.

But give it up in an attempt to ... what appears to me ... to be a futile attempt to browbeat staff into a more socialistic view of karma?

Full disclosure ... I got denied my last karma request because staff doesn't trust me to play "stronger" roles. I don't see how any one of you giving up your karma point is going to convince staff that I'm suddenly trustworthy. That just doesn't seem to be how the system works. Or ... how people work.

[Bogre]

Some people do not like the karma system. I personally disagree
I think its important and a variety of it exists in other games. Call it RPP, or whatever. Very often lately the quality of those posessing Karma is questioned, sometimes even by staff. And its true, suppose, during the end of the world Karma might have been given freely.

What if we have another karma off. Everyone who gained Karma before the recent karma system change would lose their karma. Currently the system seemed to have standardized, so there should be a clearcut, concise method of gaining it back. This would lessen all those cries of favoritism and so on.

The first karma-off was because there was a sense of everyone playing non-mundanes due to the end of the world stuff, and almost no one was mundane. It wasn't because people were angry at others for having karma.

Also I've already lost role options with the changes from the 8 point to the 3 point system, so I can tell you the prospect of having the rest evaporate would make my will to play...evaporate.

[evilcabbage]

Some people do not like the karma system. I personally disagree
I think its important and a variety of it exists in other games. Call it RPP, or whatever. Very often lately the quality of those posessing Karma is questioned, sometimes even by staff. And its true, suppose, during the end of the world Karma might have been given freely.

What if we have another karma off. Everyone who gained Karma before the recent karma system change would lose their karma. Currently the system seemed to have standardized, so there should be a clearcut, concise method of gaining it back. This would lessen all those cries of favoritism and so on.

Better yet. Create new accounts and mothball the current ones, so even your reputations of being exceptional players in one field, or another, would not bring you extra attention from staffside. Maybe potentially even ilicit some veterans who are damn certain the staff id out to get them!!! To uhh give their tries.

the people from the great karma off threw their karma away willingly, they weren't forced to lose it.

[Riev]

I cannot stress this enough. A number of people who gave away their karma, did it for the recognition and ability to say "I gave my Karma away" as a method to hold it over the rest of us.

There were a few who, after giving their karma away, requested to have it back. And it was given.

No.

[Harmless]

the latest revision of the karma system is mostly new for how karma is spent and categorized. The categories of qualities by which you gain karma are unchanged since the last major karma revision.

Since I got all my karma since the revision that put explicit goalposts, such as understanding of the game world, being able to understand magick and its place in the world, etc, I already have earned my karma using the more objective system.

The karma-off was done in response to perceived favoritism in who got karma -- and after all, there was little way for staff to object to favoritism claims, because before I started playing regularly, they did not actually put out criteria for gaining karma, only that karma meant "staff trust in the player," which of course was vague.

I will not be returning my karma because I feel I earned karma under the same system that EARNING karma happens in now. The way karma is spent now is different, and the categories were collapsed from 7 to 3, but the way it's earned hasn't really changed for about a decade.

[Boogerbear]

I've already karma-offed myself from mul/Nilaz down to special apping for 1 karma subguilds while people who have abused OOC info and other cheating-like habbits still have theirs.

At the end of the day, and this is for people reading this thread who have no karma/lost it for protesting X o Y, do yourself a favor and just try to focus on enoying the game for yourself, and not to earn karma/please the powers that be.

As a teenager, when I earned a lot of my karma, I viewed staff as coaches/seniors who, like their equivalents IRL, I had to work hard to impress.

But when you get older and they're your peers, well, I think part of it is just getting older, and part of it is not feeling obligated to emote or do X or Y because, staff.

In the end, karma seems like a tool to punish people as much as it does reward them.  The "trust" part from karma - the thing that karma is supposed to be awarded for - is I think intended to show that you understand your place in the gameworld and make sure griefers aren't running around with HGs or muls killing everyone they see.  What's unfortunate in my opinion is that it also extends to the OOC realm, like when players dissent.

What makes this even more complicated, despite new seemingly more-objective guidelines, is when, over the years, the faces of the people who do or do not trust you (or like you/don't like you) change constantly.  Different imms with different ideas come to power, and they like/appreciate various aspects of play which may stand in complete contrast with other imms, and, so, it seems like it's hard to attain this objectivity that is striven for.

At the end of the day, I think dissent should be out of bounds when it comes to karma.  Players have dissented before, for good reason, only to have karma removed, while players who have cheated without open dissent get off lighter.  IMO, cheaters/OOC coordinators (at any time in the past) are far less deserving of karma than those who have merely dissented.

To add, I think people should be perfectly able to enjoy the game without karma.  Out of this entire situation, the only thing that is frustrating from a 0-karma perspective is having to put in a special app to play an extended subguild and only being able to do so three a year.

Just because someone dissented does not mean they will use a mundane extended subguild to grief people on the game.  Quite the opposite:  if they cared enough to dissent in the first place, many would likely be the last to use karma to act outside of the scope of the gameworld or otherwise cause problems for other players; said ability to play extended subguilds freely might even enhance the game for others besides the player in question.

[Miradus]

I tentatively agree with the above.

At a certain point, to earn more karma you have to play in a way you may not enjoy. Doesn't suit your playstyle.

There's no point in earning karma if you have to spend a year or more playing the game in a way you don't enjoy.

Just acknowledge that what you got is what you got and stop worrying about what someone else has got.

[Akaramu]

On the same note as players who have max karma that probably don't deserve it, though, I think there are probably players who deserve max karma that have just never got it.

Dar, feel free to donate your karma to me. 

[650Booger]

I want to play a psion and won't quit till I get there.  don't you dare take away my preciously hoarded karma.