Let's talk about karma

[Riev]

I think that we would benefit from a couple definitions on goals, here.

What is the 'karma' system designed to measure? Docs say staff trust in players to understand the setting and be appropriate, but the Game's Leader (Brokkr) says it has nothing to do with trust. So if it isn't about trust;

What is the new system hoping to accomplish? Is it gating the "tough to play realistically" roles, or is it gating the "can become strong/more easily PK players", or maybe gating "potentially have the power to change the game world"? What is it you want the system to DO, specifically, that it is failing at now?

[Halaster]

What is karma, and what we we want from it?

Karma is multiple things, but can be best summed up as a measure of trust staff have of players.  Trust to handle a powerful role responsibly AND trust that they can play a difficult role correctly.  Those two don't have to be mutually inclusive, a role can be difficult but not powerful, or the opposite.  It is a measure of trust based on the play of past characters by a player.  It is a measure of trust that the player has an increasingly better understanding of the game world.  It is a measure of trust that their actions can be designed to enrich the play of themselves and others around them.

Karma is a numeric value that sums up and allows a quick understanding of a player's general trust level by previous staff.  Many times staff will briefly look into a player's history to see if they're a good fit for a role, and that goes beyond just a karma value.  But the karma value does matter.  And is the measure by which certain roles are opened based on trust.

Despite our small-ish size as a game, we still have enough players to make it too much of a time sink to thoroughly vet everyone every time they wanted a specific role, like a magicker.  Therefore, we have the karma system as a summary to let them automatically play those roles without the need for prior approval (specapps are a different thing).

Karma has criteria that players must meet which is an attempt at a somewhat fair, objective system so that everyone can have equal access.  No system will ever be perfect because trust is a subjective matter, and even in our criteria system different staff have different opinions about meeting specific points.  Nevertheless, it's a much better system than nothing at all, and is the best we've come up with so far.  Like many of our systems, it is evolving and I for one am happy that we can do this.  We're learning from our past, we're trying to improve it, and make it better.

What I've gathered from this thread is not surprising - there's lots of different ideas and opinions and that's great!  It gives us many viewpoints, and I for one have read more than one response here as a "I didn't think of that".

[Halaster]

the Game's Leader (Brokkr) says it has nothing to do with trust.

Can you do me a favor and link to where he says this?  I'm not finding it.

[The Lonely Hunter]

I think the old system worked best (8k system). Too many people have some sort of false sense of entitlement and have been coddled to believe that they "deserve" XYZ. Since the change to waterdown the karma system I've seen far more roles played without obvious regard to documentation.

Like in the real world, the people that usually are the loudest and complain the most tend to be the exact perpetrators that the system was originally designed to weed out.

[Riev]

the Game's Leader (Brokkr) says it has nothing to do with trust.

Can you do me a favor and link to where he says this?  I'm not finding it.

It takes multiple criteria to go from 1 to 2, and from 2 to 3.  Not just one criteria per bump.

I think a lot of people get told that karma is about trust, and ignore what karma really is, and why it is needed.

Karma is a way for Staff to not have to individually remember all the players.  It is a number that is shorthand for the institutional knowledge Staff have about a player.

Given our turnover and the small number of Staff that are longer term (5+ years), this becomes very important as we cannot rely on individual Staff member memories about any particular player over the longer term.

"A lot of people get told that karma is about trust, and ignore what it really is".
So. Karma is not about trust, they're just TOLD its about trust.

[Halaster]

the Game's Leader (Brokkr) says it has nothing to do with trust.

Can you do me a favor and link to where he says this?  I'm not finding it.

It takes multiple criteria to go from 1 to 2, and from 2 to 3.  Not just one criteria per bump.

I think a lot of people get told that karma is about trust, and ignore what karma really is, and why it is needed.

Karma is a way for Staff to not have to individually remember all the players.  It is a number that is shorthand for the institutional knowledge Staff have about a player.

Given our turnover and the small number of Staff that are longer term (5+ years), this becomes very important as we cannot rely on individual Staff member memories about any particular player over the longer term.

"A lot of people get told that karma is about trust, and ignore what it really is".
So. Karma is not about trust, they're just TOLD its about trust.

Thanks.

Yeah, @Brokkr will have to explain what he meant, because karma is most definitely about trust.  Staff agree, the docs agree, the community agree.

[Usiku]

"Karma is a way for Staff to not have to individually remember all the players.  It is a number that is shorthand for the institutional knowledge Staff have about a player."

Why do you think we need and want that knowledge? It's to help us know whether or not we can trust a player. And in it's coded/automated form, it governs which players we can trust to play which roles without needing approval or staff oversight.

I don't think there's anything to be gained from being pedantic. It can be more than just one thing and all you are seeing here is slightly different perspectives from staff on essentially the same thing.

[mansa]

Some of the things stated are:

• handle a powerful role responsibly
• play a difficult role correctly
• player has an increasingly better understanding of the game world
• their actions can be designed to enrich the play of themselves and others around them
• good fit for a role
• governs which players we can trust to play which roles without needing approval or staff oversight

I think there is a request from the players about these points, to expand upon it.

What does the staff mean by "correctly?"
What does the staff mean by "good fit?"

[CirclelessBard]

So, karma is a system that is designed to be a shorthand for player trust. That makes perfect sense.

There has been a decline in the quality of roleplay from high-karma players, noted by staff in this thread, which would suggest that these players cannot be trusted to play certain roles. And judging by players' accounts in this thread this mismatch has existed historically as well.

The primary difference in the historic karma system vs. the current karma system is a change in the size of the scale. The categories in which players are judged to have earned a karma point have more or less been the same throughout the years (I think the current karma helpfile was written about a decade ago, but I could be off by a couple of years).

What benefit, if any, is there in a minor tweak to the karma system like changing the scale, if according to anecdotes, the same issues arise in the 8k system as the 3k one?

[Riev]

I don't think there's anything to be gained from being pedantic. It can be more than just one thing and all you are seeing here is slightly different perspectives from staff on essentially the same thing.

Its not being pedantic, its a direct quote from the game's overall administrator and director. Its not 'picking apart' what he said, it was a quote in that we are 'told' karma is about trust but its really something else. Take it up with the person that said it, not the one who read it.

[Halaster]

What benefit, if any, is there in a minor tweak to the karma system like changing the scale, if according to anecdotes, the same issues arise in the 8k system as the 3k one?

An excellent question.

The notion behind more points on a scale is that it makes adding/removing a smaller feat.  On a 3 point scale where you have to meet multiple criteria for a single point, you are less likely going to get that point.  Conversely, because of the huge impact it has losing a point, staff are less likely to remove a point.  A larger spread means staff are more willing to give and take away, as the impact is smaller.

Another important point that I touched on earlier and I think was missed is the intent of the systems.  On the older 8 point scale, the idea was that the top levels of karma would not be reached by a lot of players.  The average player would sit somewhere on the high end of middle, or wherever.  But 8 karma would be a select few.  However, when the 3-point scaled was rolled out the intention was that most all players would reach 3 karma because the criteria were right there, laid out and not too difficult to obtain.

I think that if we changed to a higher scale but didn't change the intent, it would still be an improvement because of what I said earlier about each step having a smaller impact.  But I think that if we're going to change, the intent behind the system should change as well to the idea that the top level karma would be only seen by a few, not most, of the players.

[CirclelessBard]

What benefit, if any, is there in a minor tweak to the karma system like changing the scale, if according to anecdotes, the same issues arise in the 8k system as the 3k one?

An excellent question.

The notion behind more points on a scale is that it makes adding/removing a smaller feat.  On a 3 point scale where you have to meet multiple criteria for a single point, you are less likely going to get that point.  Conversely, because of the huge impact it has losing a point, staff are less likely to remove a point.  A larger spread means staff are more willing to give and take away, as the impact is smaller.

Another important point that I touched on earlier and I think was missed is the intent of the systems.  On the older 8 point scale, the idea was that the top levels of karma would not be reached by a lot of players.  The average player would sit somewhere on the high end of middle, or wherever.  But 8 karma would be a select few.  However, when the 3-point scaled was rolled out the intention was that most all players would reach 3 karma because the criteria were right there, laid out and not too difficult to obtain.

I think that if we changed to a higher scale but didn't change the intent, it would still be an improvement because of what I said earlier about each step having a smaller impact.  But I think that if we're going to change, the intent behind the system should change as well to the idea that the top level karma would be only seen by a few, not most, of the players.

Thanks for your prompt and thorough answer.

I'll reference this post, which was used to announce the 3-karma scale back in 2017: https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,52604.msg989638.html#msg989638 I can't actually quote from it since it's a staff announcement, so my copy-pasted quote below is from that link. Since you mentioned the intent of the two systems I thought it might be helpful to have in this thread as a reference.

The objectives for changing the system are:

    Provide a smaller scale to allow more players to attain higher level karma classes.
    Ability to move all players through the karma tree within a 3 year timeframe.
    Make removing karma a more acceptable occurrence while also giving opportunity to regain lost karma in a reasonable timeframe.
    Use regenerating karma system to add balance.
    Add new guilds to the karma tree.
    Cease the practice of skill and stat bumps as part of the application process. Skill increases are done via the structure of the guild/subguilds (The next phase of the guild revamp will see higher skill level options placed in the karma tree).
    Provide greater oversight to the most sensitive roles by making them special application only and limiting the amount that may be in game at any one time.
    Provide structure and criteria to karma requests to lessen the impact on staff and give clearer objectives to players.

The end goal of this project is that all players that play by the rules and act as good players should be able to achieve the full 3 points of karma.  This would make 3 karma the norm, rather than the exception.

It is definitely noteworthy to point out that the intention of the change to the 3-karma system was to create a more egalitarian system for players to unlock roles in a more reasonable timeframe. So I guess one of my follow-up questions has to be: did increasing access to karma result in the recently observed decline in roleplaying quality mentioned by Usiku, or were 8-karma players translated into the 3-karma system the cause of that observation? Or do they share the burden there?

If decreasing the size of the scale led to newer players and/or players with less karma finding it easier to gain karma, then proceeding to play to a standard not acceptable by the current staff, then I can see why you view it as an advantage to use the mathematics of the higher scale to staff's advantage in the reduced impact of +/- 1 point.

If the fault lies to at least a significant extent with former 8-karma players who translated into 3-karma players with 2017's scale change, I would have to wonder why there was any hesitance in reducing those players' karma in the first place, since they would have been around since well before 2017 to have earned 8 karma, and would have had sufficient time to know better.

As far as intention goes, my personal preference leans toward giving people access to more of the game, not less. Though I personally do not enjoy combat- or magic-heavy roles, I would definitely prefer to play in a kinder community with smoother communication between staff and players. I do not see how increased gatekeeping of roles would help build and maintain positive/constructive discourse and trust between players and staff. That said, I still think this is achievable with a bigger-scaled system, though personally I'm not really sure how.

[kahuna]

Trust is such a funny word to use in a game where people (staff and players) consistently prove that they can't be trusted.

[Cordon]

In my experience, the different perspectives and points of play in ARM are so vast that even as a player asking staff questions, I realized a need to limit the details of the questions.
There are things in ARM that few have a clue about, staff and player alike.
The roll staff take on is something that I admire because I wouldn't want to know anything outside of what I have played out, the depth of mystery in ARM is on a level of it's own I.M.O. and the Karma system is your key to reaching new levels of mystery and ability to expose plots staff have given their time to create.

The Karma system should be in every way up to the staff, to give them the ability to protect their hard work and time spent how they see fit. I.M.O.

[mansa]

My personal experience of Karma went like this:

1) Gained 1/8 Karma for "seems to be understanding the game now"
2) Special Application for Whiran Magicker, who died within a week.
3) Role Application for Sponsored Role
4) Gained 3/8 Karma for "understanding sponsored role"
5) Special Application for a Mul, who died within a week.
6) Special Application for Sorcerer, who died within a single day.
7) Special Application for a Mul, who died within a single day.
Gained 5/8 Karma for "playing Oseres Kadius"
9) Special Application for Mindbender, who died over 1 RL year later.
10) Gained 6/8 Karma for "creating new player guide"
11) Special Application for Nilazi, who died within a single day.
12) Karma Shrinkage moved to 3/3 Karma.

I made use of the Special Application process a lot in order to play races/roles that were out of reach with my current karma levels. I lost karma and then regained karma for being a tool (justifiably so) and I regained it after I stopped being a tool (some say I still am).



I keep thinking about the following ideas:
* Karma allows the players to play powerful races and classes/subclasses without the use of special applications.
* Karma is a numerical value of "Trust" within the gameplay space, to show that the player can play the game within the theme and style that the Staff wish to promote within the gameworld.

and
* Powerful races and classes/subclasses are being abused by players and not being played within the expected roles and theme that the Staff desire.



My personal preference on this subject is pretty well known:
* Increase the Karma levels to 5.
* Introduce "character type" restrictions based on current population, in addition to "karma" levels.
* Promote that players use the special application process more frequently.
* Change how the game handles "character death" because the current experience is jarring and injures the playing experience rather than allows the player to close their story of their character.
(https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,54739.msg1031663.html#msg1031663, https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,58565.msg1082756.html#msg1082756, https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,33854.msg415125.html#msg415125)

In my opinion, the way the game handles character death is a direct correlation between how well the roleplay of the players's characters are.

[Usiku]

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on how you think the PC death experience could be changed/improved.. just outside of this thread.

[Jimpka_Moss]

I don't think there's anything to be gained from being pedantic. It can be more than just one thing and all you are seeing here is slightly different perspectives from staff on essentially the same thing.

Its not being pedantic, its a direct quote from the game's overall administrator and director. Its not 'picking apart' what he said, it was a quote in that we are 'told' karma is about trust but its really something else. Take it up with the person that said it, not the one who read it.

If I said 'a lot of people get told the sun is 'just a ball of fire', and ignore what it really is', I /could/ be quoted as saying the sun is not on fire, isn't fire, has nothing to do with fire. I could  be quoted, then misrepresented as saying that because I said people ignore what the sun /really/ is, I must /not/ think it's a ball of fire.



I've read that Trust has four component parts: Communication, competency, consistency, and compassion. That's a fun bit of alliteration! Using this lesson on trust and its parts, I could say something like, 'Most people think trust is about consistency, and ignore what it really is'. Then of course, anyone who didn't trust me, who wasn't using compassion to evaluate my speech, anyone who didn't see a consistent effort to be compassionate, anyone who didn't think I was competent enough to understand trust, or just anyone malicious, ignorant, or merely reckless with my words, could come along and say that 'Jimpka Moss thinks Trust has nothing to to with consistency.'

And that would be false.

Absolute geniuses that some of you are, the logical constraints of some your arguments are almost ironclad.... without compassion. The way you can trap someone in a phrase, and lock them into a position that isn't real, it's pretty incredible. Especially if it's intentional. In my experience, it's not. In my experience, this kinds of miscommunication comes from lack of trust.


There is no Karma to measure the trust that players have in staff. Yet, if you read between the lines of how people perceive you, quote you, respond to you, then you can begin to see whether or not they trust you without a numeric system.




I would like to point out that I read Brokkr's message about karma, as quite clearly about trust. I know 90% of you don't use the word like I do, but I've been pretty hurt by people I've trusted before, and have had to develop a new definition to even begin telling people in the most intimate and dire of circumstances 'I trust you'.


I trust a snake to be a snake. Please don't attach negative cultural connotations to a 'snake' in this instance, I mean the animal. I trust a snake to be a snake because I have a massive database of institutional knowledge on most snakes. Even though I haven't met many snakes personally, I know people or know of people who have, whom have documented their experiences with snakes, and listed which ones are poisonous, when they got bit, why, how, in what areas, what the snakes hunt, almost everything about snakes.

And after learning enough about snakes, I trust them to be snakes. I trust a kingsnake to be a kingsnake, I trust a rattler to be a rattler, I trust a gardensnake to be a garden snake.

Give me an infographic telling me which snakes are more dangerous by assigning them a point value? That's going in my folders labeled 'Infographics', filed correctly. It could also be a good analogy for karma and 'staff trust'. You can't know everyone playing and how they play alone. This has all been Jimpka's opinion./nuff

[Brokkr]

I am well aware that Riev would likely award me -5 karma.  Even though I am not the lead, all the Producer's are equal.

As for my comment, I was around when (and before) karma was implemented. Trust has a variety of meanings. When karma came into being, you'd spec app a fire mage, some Staffer would see you do well with it a couple of times, and you'd see your karma go up. It was trust in the sense of hope or belief in the player. Not in a documented history, but at least (from my notes and other old timers account notes I have seen) it seemed more like, I think they can do a good job, lets give them the opportunity to do a good job. Which, maybe is just my assumption here, but the sort of thing most would associate with the word trust.

Criteria kind of killed that. It shifted the type of "trust" to expecting confidently. That expectation was based on perceived behaviors. Thus my comment about what Karma is, now. Based on how Staff are using it. I am not saying that this is better, I kind of liked the optimism inherent in granting karma and letting players live up to that, rather than requiring documented behaviors that aligned to it first.

So, yes, both are trust, I just wasn't thinking about how version of expecting confidently also falls under that word at the time.

After getting caught up after several days not reading this thread, all I know is that different players come to the game with different expectations on what they want out of the game. Not everyone comes here to be a high quality role player. And many players shift what they want out of the game, over time. Staff want to be as open and inclusive to what these diverse players want to get out of the game, as long as it is not disruptive to the game or game community. That doesn't mean everyone above a certain minimum threshold should have the same opportunities. Our system is graduated, the more what you want out of the game aligns to what Staff hope for the game to be, the more opportunities you get, ideally.

One thing about having criteria is that sometimes it gets treated like a checkbox. Someone shows us they know how do do magick RP, so they get that checkbox marked in. Later, their expectations shift on what they want out of the game. They play the game differently, due to this. The problem with a checkbox mentality and what people want out of the game changing over time is folks show us they can do  (they just aren't doing it now), so there is some expectation that they keep that checkbox filled in (even if they are not consistently RP'ing that way currently). So dropping karma becomes a very hard conversation typically, because the player feels they have demonstrated whatever it is, at some point (even if they are not doing it now, consistently).

Before criteria, I know I had karma dropped for not emoting when casting spells.  Hell, I had karma dropped for using a canned emote for each spell, each and every time I cast a spell, instead of unique emotes. As part of something I am doing with magickers, I will occasionally look through logs for their casting emotes/pemotes/hemotes. It is not uncommon to find someone has cast several hundred spells, and not have a single emote relating to them. And the majority of people I have looked at have less than a 1 to 10 ratio. Under a 3 karma system, I am not going to drop them from 3 to 2. I get it, over time you want something different, and it isn't coming up with a unique casting emote for the 23,452nd time. Under an 8 or 10 karma system, I might drop their karma point, at least temporarily.  The expectations haven't really shifted, just the behavior.

[CirclelessBard]

If there must be a karma system, then a more equitable way to run it can be the old way of staff optimism about the player's future rather than criteria. But I think that optimism will need to be applied objectively and evenly. An idea mentioned previously in this thread suggested regular karma reviews for all players as well as reminders for staff to conduct those reviews. As much as staff undoubtedly want the playerbase to trust in their ability to be the game's stewards, so too should staff in return trust players to potentially become the examples of roleplay that players look up to and remember.

Incidentally, I also think it will be good for the staff-player relationship if staff are taking an optimistic approach to awarding karma, rather than trying to line up a player's recent play with the checkboxes of criteria. Realistically, on a large-scale system, the default would be to grant a karma on every regular review unless there are serious misgivings about advancing a player along the scale. Basically, if it's easy to temporarily drop a karma point on an 8-10 rung system then it shouldn't be too hard to grant one either. After all, if you end up being wrong about increasing karma, the tool to decrease it is right there and has minimal impact.

Though I am still curious about the below, as the staff-side observation about declining roleplay quality does kind of mean that something has to give when translating karma over to a new scale. It would not necessarily make sense for every 3 karma player to be max-karma in a bigger system.

If decreasing the size of the scale led to newer players and/or players with less karma finding it easier to gain karma, then proceeding to play to a standard not acceptable by the current staff, then I can see why you view it as an advantage to use the mathematics of the higher scale to staff's advantage in the reduced impact of +/- 1 point.

If the fault lies to at least a significant extent with former 8-karma players who translated into 3-karma players with 2017's scale change, I would have to wonder why there was any hesitance in reducing those players' karma in the first place, since they would have been around since well before 2017 to have earned 8 karma, and would have had sufficient time to know better.

[kahuna]

I get it, over time you want something different, and it isn't coming up with a unique casting emote for the 23,452nd time. Under an 8 or 10 karma system, I might drop their karma point, at least temporarily.  The expectations haven't really shifted, just the behavior.

This is the kind of subjective, arbitrary stuff that makes karma a pointless system. When you have 20+ staff and they themselves cannot agree upon a set standard and how things should be handled you have a problem. One of the worst things you can do is have a system setup where one person does one thing and another does something completely different. That is why karma will never truly work and will simply be a hierarchical system in place for players to pretend to play a certain way to garner the play options that are locked behind it.

[Tailong]

I get it, over time you want something different, and it isn't coming up with a unique casting emote for the 23,452nd time. Under an 8 or 10 karma system, I might drop their karma point, at least temporarily.  The expectations haven't really shifted, just the behavior.

This is the kind of subjective, arbitrary stuff that makes karma a pointless system. When you have 20+ staff and they themselves cannot agree upon a set standard and how things should be handled you have a problem. One of the worst things you can do is have a system setup where one person does one thing and another does something completely different. That is why karma will never truly work and will simply be a hierarchical system in place for players to pretend to play a certain way to garner the play options that are locked behind it.

And yet, the karma system has been here as long as I can remember, it was here at least twenty years plus. But, it doesn't work? I think it works as intended.

[Jimpka_Moss]

I can see why my suggestions about a role and location specific, check-box based karma system that relied on review of 'role' playing performance wouldn't be viable.

I think maybe we should quickly, and immediately move away from calling 'karma' karma, and decide what else to call it. The very name we decide on should inform you what IT is, as a name often does. As 'karma' was shortsightedly intended to do, yet failed to inform anyone accurately what it is. Hence all the above misconceptions and clear lack of agreement.

I wish you all luck in trying to figure this out. o7

[Halaster]

I can see why my suggestions about a role and location specific, check-box based karma system that relied on review of 'role' playing performance wouldn't be viable.

I think maybe we should quickly, and immediately move away from calling 'karma' karma, and decide what else to call it. The very name we decide on should inform you what IT is, as a name often does. As 'karma' was shortsightedly intended to do, yet failed to inform anyone accurately what it is. Hence all the above misconceptions and clear lack of agreement.

I wish you all luck in trying to figure this out. o7

Trust-juice.

[digitaleak]

I've read a lot of comments on staff/player trust but what about player/player trust? I don't trust the player base (generally speaking) enough to operate fluidly in a karma-free system.

As an aside, moving to an 8 karma system, would the hope still be that every player might reach those top levels one day? It seems weird to have karma so high, we don't anticipate most of the players will ever obtain it.

[Classclown]

Just call them trust levels or trust tiers (tts ) and you can go up and down based on good or bad gameplay. Also, if there are going to be more levels, there should be more lower tiered options and not all magick based.