Let's talk about karma

[Tailong]

I'm sorry I still don't want players having any say or decision in my account, gameplay, or karma status. If you give me kudos, amazing. If you don't, that is amazing too. That is all the interaction I want with other players when it comes to my account.

[Classclown]

How would letting players give karma be any different from staff giving karma? We can pretend people don't talk ooc, but it happens and friends will definitely boost friends.

[Tailong]

How would letting players give karma be any different from staff giving karma? We can pretend people don't talk ooc, but it happens and friends will definitely boost friends.

You answered your own question. You'd have cliques, which have been confirmed by staff, boosting each other and forming essentially factions of 3 karma characters, unchecked. At least with staff, we hope, we get a bit of checks and balances, which I have heard of happen when a clan gets too many gicks, for example.

[Trevalyan]

You answered your own question. You'd have cliques, which have been confirmed by staff, boosting each other and forming essentially factions of 3 karma characters, unchecked. At least with staff, we hope, we get a bit of checks and balances, which I have heard of happen when a clan gets too many gicks, for example.

I generally support people playing concepts they actually want to play, but this is very important. I haven't been actively playing long, but I almost forgot about the time I saw a 3 RPP concept that was likely poorly conceived. That concept must have been approved by staff at some point in the past, admittedly, nevertheless the problem would become unimaginably worse if there was no staff oversight of advanced races/ classes.

[Tailong]

You answered your own question. You'd have cliques, which have been confirmed by staff, boosting each other and forming essentially factions of 3 karma characters, unchecked. At least with staff, we hope, we get a bit of checks and balances, which I have heard of happen when a clan gets too many gicks, for example.

I generally support people playing concepts they actually want to play, but this is very important. I haven't been actively playing long, but I almost forgot about the time I saw a 3 RPP concept that was likely poorly conceived. That concept must have been approved by staff at some point in the past, admittedly, nevertheless the problem would become unimaginably worse if there was no staff oversight of advanced races/ classes.

Staff are human and mistakes are going to slip through the cracks, but it generally gets corrected. I've seen staff approve a character, and within an hour another staff fixes it with a force store, and recreation. But,we have also seen some major foul ups. I'd honestly rather take my chances with how it is now.

[Trevalyan]

Staff are human and mistakes are going to slip through the cracks, but it generally gets corrected. I've seen staff approve a character, and within an hour another staff fixes it with a force store, and recreation. But,we have also seen some major foul ups. I'd honestly rather take my chances with how it is now.

I feel exactly the same way. I can't expect staff to make every 3 RRP concept absolutely perfect, especially when the staff isn't really monolithic. My contention was purely that without this reasonable staff control of advanced concepts, the problem of declining RP standards/ "power creep" would become much worse.

[BadSkeelz]

How would letting players give karma be any different from staff giving karma? We can pretend people don't talk ooc, but it happens and friends will definitely boost friends.

You answered your own question. You'd have cliques, which have been confirmed by staff, boosting each other and forming essentially factions of 3 karma characters, unchecked. At least with staff, we hope, we get a bit of checks and balances, which I have heard of happen when a clan gets too many gicks, for example.

We see that already anyway.

[mansa]

How would letting players give karma be any different from staff giving karma? We can pretend people don't talk ooc, but it happens and friends will definitely boost friends.

I'm not sure it would be implemented so that it would give direct karma, but that it would flag it for a karma overview to the approval bodies.  I think that would be the better design than direct approvals.

[Trevalyan]

We see that already anyway.

At the risk of being Kay to your Michael, the policy of cracking down on staff use of Discord to talk to players makes this much harder. Granted, OOC friendships are easy to use, and some people might even (still) have active ICQ accounts to talk online. But trying to quell OOC communication is a strong way to disrupt cliques.

[BadSkeelz]

I disagree. The cliques are still here and still talking, even ones that cross staff/player lines (to say nothing of the inherent clique that is Staff).

The only way to really challenge the powers of cliques is to know who is playing what at all times, so that the community can note patterns of interactions themselves.

[Cordon]

I enjoy the challenge of earning Karma, it's part of the depth that is ARMAGEDDON at the core, i.m.o.
The year wait to talk about things is just out of basic respect for how hard staff work to provide the depth that exists in Arm. If you truly like a challenge and seek it, be patient about the lil things, it's the least that can be done as a player to help staff. i.m.o.

[Yelinak]

How would letting players give karma be any different from staff giving karma? We can pretend people don't talk ooc, but it happens and friends will definitely boost friends.

Two reasons:

#1: In many players, there's a huge difference between the way they play when there's others present and the way they play when they're alone. Staff is privy to the latter while fellow players generally aren't, barring cases of active spying. One can be a good boi when it serves their purposes and an all-out twink when they feel they can get away with it. In fact, one could even point out that some aspects of this game encourage playing that way, because certain skills almost require it if you ever want to make meaningful use of them. One can feel the way one wants about that fact, but it remains the case, and it remains true that players can very much have a side of themselves that they don't show other players. Some of this game's most popular players have been horrific twinks and cheats.

#2: There's a huge difference between talking up your friend's deeds and being actively responsible for their power within the game. For all that I've ragged on staff, they are far more qualified in this regard than any player is. If players had a direct impact on karma awards, OOC networking would rule the game. Whoever has the most friends and is best at collaborating outside of the game would be the one who wins out, and that just isn't healthy. I've seen my share of players (here and elsewhere) who were awful and horribly abusive but very good at building up a network of, well, lackeys, basically, who would have nominated them for karma in a system where players can do such a thing.

At the end of the day, it's important that a system as impactful as karma is governed only by people who have access to all the information that is pertinent to such a decision. I've seen first-hand what sort of underhanded populist nonsense results from letting players decide. Armageddon is a game where cheating pays off, and is all too easy to get away with in the eyes of other players. Even though staff and the core game mechanics don't do quite enough to curtail it, it's still important that power is ordained only by those who have the ability to see everything that happens.

It just leaves less room for bullshit. While it's technically possible to buddy up with a staff member and enjoy favoritism, it's a lot less likely and common than simply forming an OOC group of friends who agree to boost you up in order to reap the rewards of it. That's something that I've seen happen in games where this was possible, and given how much Armageddon's code encourages cheating, and how easy it is to get away with it, I would never trust players to be a good judge of proverbial character when it comes to things that directly impact the game as a whole.

[Classclown]

It was a rhetorical question. I don't want players to have any influence on karma. I think it would be less of  a headache for staff to just open the races and just deal with the knuckleheads as they pop up, instead of assuming only a few people can handle a role because they've played longer. There is no correlation between time played and rp abilities or the ability to immerse yourself in the game world without twinking it up.

[digitaleak]

It was a rhetorical question. I don't want players to have any influence on karma. I think it would be less of  a headache for staff to just open the races and just deal with the knuckleheads as they pop up, instead of assuming only a few people can handle a role because they've played longer. There is no correlation between time played and rp abilities or the ability to immerse yourself in the game world without twinking it up.

I largely disagree with both of these points. First of all, staff said they want to allocate more of their time to working collaboratively with their respective clans in ways that build world/clan stories, etc. They don't want to spend the majority of their time being the bad guy and telling people what they did was wrong or correcting easily avoidable mistakes.

Second of all, there is a huge correlation between time played and the ability to accurately depict the specific culture of Zalanthas and the steep learning curve of coded things such as emotes and commands.

[dumbstruck]

Second of all, there is a huge correlation between time played and the ability to accurately depict the specific culture of Zalanthas and the steep learning curve of coded things such as emotes and commands.

This is true. There are always exceptions (I was told years later that several people thought even on my first character that I was not a new player, because I kept the 'emotes' helpfile up, and apparently emoted better than a lot of new players), but exceptions typically prove the rule. This is also the reason why I think there should be at least a binary 'are they new/abusive' 0/1 switch on trusted roles so show that someone has a grasp of setting and a willingness to play in a way that's not exploitative in a way that's massively disruptive with those roles or setting breaking, in the spirit of minimizing babysitting and complaints. There's always going to be some percentage of it. But I still think that laddering things and making a scale is a big part of the problem and once a person shows they have a grasp of the setting and are generally trustworthy, they should be allowed to work within those parameters, and if they show they are having problems with specific roles, those can be taken away.

[Kaathe]

not official staff opinion

I think we should have prestige karma levels that don't award any guilds or anything at all. Just something that we can give on merit so we have more carrots to use than sticks.

[Windstorm]

It was a rhetorical question. I don't want players to have any influence on karma. I think it would be less of  a headache for staff to just open the races and just deal with the knuckleheads as they pop up, instead of assuming only a few people can handle a role because they've played longer. There is no correlation between time played and rp abilities or the ability to immerse yourself in the game world without twinking it up.

I agree with all of this.

Someone having played Armageddon for 30 years is not functionally different from someone who's played for 3 years, or maybe even 1 year, except they don't know absolutely everything encyclopedically. I would argue that the latter is better for most roles.

Many tribes of the game are a total mystery to me. And that's great! I get to play my role realistically, not having any idea what they're about! Before my last PC, I did not know how to get from (city-state), to (outpost) or (outpost) to (other outpost). Instead, I had to risk and learn and pay people to show me the way to places.

I got to play ignorant because I was ignorant. In a way, I regret knowing these things now. It's also why I tend to take very long breaks between PCs. I want to forget! It's better for my roleplay.

[CirclelessBard]

I think we should have prestige karma levels that don't award any guilds or anything at all. Just something that we can give on merit so we have more carrots to use than sticks.

Understanding that this is not official staff opinion, my question would be: do staff feel a need to use karma in a carrot-and-stick kind of system, or indeed have a carrot-and-stick kind of relationship with the playerbase?

Personally, of all of the issues I have with the karma system, the one I find the most distasteful is that a particularly unscrupulous staff member can in theory (and historically, in practice) use a player's position on the karma scale to extort a certain type of behavior/compliance from that player. And while I think that "having more carrots" is a kind-hearted thought, it doesn't really solve that particular problem.

As much as the karma system has been talked up by its proponents as necessary to measure players' skill and level of trust, there really has been no acknowledgement that staff also need to be trusted to use the system properly. And if the main issue with karma is that high-karma players are not meeting roleplaying standards, that would imply that past iterations of the staff team have not been using the karma system properly. It seems the system was initially designed to reward good play and punish bad play, but since few staff want to be perceived as "the bad one", karma deductions never really happened outside of the most egregious circumstances.

Which is ultimately why I think the focus should really be on trust, and that trust really should be built through collaboration between a player and the staff. Because if there is a problematic player playing poorly, that is much better resolved through discussion and pointing back to past agreements, as opposed to the current system of worrying if dropping a player's karma from N to N-1 is going to drive them away, and deciding against it because they're usually fine.

[Bogre]

Here's a totally opposite idea I was mulling over:

What if we removed karma, and then made all mages, muls, half-giants as specapp only.  There'd be a lot less of them in the game.  The huge downside to that is that each specapp would have to involve staff doing some kind of 'research' on the player to get an idea if we'd want/trust that person playing it.

Ultimately, as Brokkr pointed out, that's what karma is for.  A quick way to represent someone's past with the game.  I don't genuinely believe we'll get rid of karma, but that's a personal opinion.

So I wanted to address this specifically, as I think if anything is going to 'fix' the karma system it is going to serve as more of a replacement, since everyone's going to probably be grumpy at where they end up and what is needed. I think along the lines of what you are getting at is to find someone's past with the game.

-> So my thought is that current karma roles are essentially unlocked once you've applied for and played them. A new player wants to play a desert elf - apps, is approved, plays out there character. Make it require a report or two on the new role / RP that they've done in it. Once that character is stored/dead, they do a mini review with a staffer. If there were no RED flags, then that player just gets that creation option.

So players would need to separately apply for all the magick subguilds, ESGs, advanced races, and then just have those options.

Pros:
Egalitarian - probably the only way to keep the whole playerbase at an equal starting or reset point.
Oversight - For a lot of players doing karma roles you'll get an idea of whats coming in the game, and potentially be able to manage numbers. "Sorry- we have a LOT of fire mages running around right now. Is there another subguild / etc you'd like to try?"

Cons:
-You'd have a lot of players doing X character just to unlock it, so you might have a rush of more mages / karma races. Might have to mark that you can't unlock more than 3-4 things per year.
-Staff oversight / workload would be higher, but the benefit is that player-staff interaction increases as well, so newer players feel like they're being onboarded and supported as they start to play more interactive stuff.

[Halaster]

The only way to really challenge the powers of cliques is to know who is playing what at all times, so that the community can note patterns of interactions themselves.

While that's an interesting thought experiment, I can tell you that it will never happen.  We're never going to force a mechanic where everyone knows who everyone else is playing.

[Halaster]

Some staff have also suggested a system (or part of one) where players can award karma to other players, or some hybrid of it.  I agree with those who said it would be too easy for cliques of people to just award each other karma.  That reminds me of the episode of Black Mirror called Nose Dive, where everyone is on a personal rating scale.  A bunch of guys just keep giving each other 5 star ratings.

I think what might be an interesting idea is to instead have one of our criteria - maybe even an optional criteria - that someone receives kudos from other players.  In a sense, that would be like nominating each other, but staff have the final say on whether it happens.  So if Bob the player is playing Amos the trader, and Amos receives several kudos about their great play, then staff could officially take that into consideration.  It utilizes the larger playerbase to help staff keep an eye out, pointing us in a direction while not relying on players to make the decision.

Just a thought.

[kahuna]

Removing karma.

Pros:
Reduces the decades long stigma of favoritism attached to arm.
Open up more areas of the game to more players.
Levels the playing field for pvp players.
Frees up staff time.
Is a more efficient system. ie: no more thinking/talking about karma, if it's gone

Cons:


Probably a lot more pros but this took 5 minutes.


While you're at it, get rid of role calls.

[Usiku]

I can tell you right now it would not free up staff time. Player complaints and 'needing to talk to players about poor play' take SO much more energy and time than karma reviews. Maybe like 10:1. So yeah, I would take 100 karma reviews a month over 10 player complaints or situations requiring talking to players who have done stuff 'wrong'.

[kahuna]

I can tell you right now it would not free up staff time. Player complaints and 'needing to talk to players about poor play' take SO much more energy and time than karma reviews. Maybe like 10:1. So yeah, I would take 100 karma reviews a month over 10 player complaints or situations requiring talking to players who have done stuff 'wrong'.

I think that's an eternal struggle that should probably be removed. If you remove karma you remove the unrealistic expectation for players to be held some arbitrary definition of a good player, or a good roleplayer. Removing karma should be coming with an understanding that if you don't like how another player is doing something, too bad.

[Usiku]

Except we are an RPI game with a huge wealth of documentation and play guidelines. We're absolutely not going to remove the expectation of adhering to a standard of play otherwise we might as well become a hack & slash and be done with it. Seems to me that would be a pretty big one for the 'con' list.

You've basically just solidified my feelings on the necessity of karma.