2023 Karma Revamp Discussion

[Brokkr]

Discussion for Karma Revamp 2023.

As noted in that thread, we welcome your reactions, discussion and feedback, but we are not anticipating doing more than minor modifications to the proposal before implementation.

[Krath]

The Karma conversion from current to future state is terrible, with the exception of current karma level 1.  I think the following would make more sense
  - 1 goes to 2
  - 2 goes to 6
  - 3 goes to 10 (They can do this anyway)

This is a huge punishment to the players, regardless if it is across the board, who have busted their asses to get to "MAX" karma. The message this gives to me is:

"We do not trust any of the current player base to be able to at will play any role that is Karma level 7 or higher."

That irritates me greatly.

[Brokkr]

If you are maintaining the level of RP and everything that goes along with that, that got you to Karma 3 (or 6/7), then you will likely be fine.

If you once were at that level and are now cruising, you may not be fine.

[mansa]

First of all, I hate it.

Next, here's my thoughts:

Players may request karma reviews every three months.

* This is extra work on the staff, to review, recollect thoughts, and remember what this player has done. 
* Each karma review takes what, an hour or two to complete?  This could be all a staff member has time to do over a weekend.


Staff should frequently observe their players and grant karma liberally upon meeting criteria.

* How should staff observe? 
* Where should they be writing notes? 
* Is there a reminder somewhere on a player character that they haven't been reviewed in a certain number of days?
* What does liberally mean?  Do you have examples given for staff members to follow?


Staff must document which criteria were met when assigning karma.

* Cool.

Feedback during karma reviews should be provided only if a player asks for it and must be constructive, offering clear guidance on next steps.

* Cool.

Special applications can be made for up to four karma points above a player's current level.

* Can someone with 6 karma apply for a psionicists, or sorcerer?  Or is that completely restricted to someone with 10 karma?


During the initial phase of these changes, staff will not play PCs that require more karma than the highest level a non-staff player has achieved.

*Okay, so no Suk-Krath Devastation, Whira Travel, Whira Tempest, Whira Illusion, Full Guild Drovian, Full Guild Elkrosian, Mul, Shadow Stalker (spec-app only), Elkros Vigor, Nilaz Anathema, Shadow Dancer (spec-app only), Elkros Havoc, Nilaz Void, Psionicist, Sorcerer.



0-1 points
New players start at 0 karma and can attain their first point by demonstrating Longevity & RP Novice, achievable after one month of play.

* Is this automated?
* Players _WILL_ fall through the cracks.
* In my initial group of highschool friends, 1 only played elves, and 1 only played dwarves. They would have never played this game if their preferred race was out-of-bounds for them.


Question:
RP Novice bracket is 0, 1 Karma
What is the karma bracket for RP Journeyman?  RP Advanced?

[Krath]

If you are maintaining the level of RP and everything that goes along with that, that got you to Karma 3 (or 6/7), then you will likely be fine.

If you once were at that level and are now cruising, you may not be fine.

I am going to keep this on point, and as kind as I can, as this has really irritated me. People have spent YEARS of their REAL life to get to MAX karma, to be able to play what they want to. Now you are saying, all of a sudden, the players with their current options are not trusted enough to continue to play what they have had access to?

A Max Karma Player would require 2 years to play a PSI? I am sorry, but this FEELS like there is ZERO respect for the players, and their time investment. 

If you want to Evaluate the players, do it with their current options. If they have 3 karma, give them 10 and monitor them then. You are effectively punishing players whom have already proven themselves worthy to play roles.

[Kavrick]

Main thing I'm worried about is the extra red tape and work that this is going to create for staff on top of how slow staff have been lately (not giving them shit, just seems like they already have a lot to deal with), this also means progress is going to be slower across the board and a lot of options are being taken away from people. I'm kinda baffled as to why some mundane options like HG and Mul are higher karma than things like empowerment rukkian and devastation krathi.

Also I do want to point out, just as an edit. This hurts the new player experience even more than how bad the new player experience already is, which is something that really needs to be taken account of when it comes to the health of the game. If a new player logs in and see that their only race option is human, it's gonna leave a bad taste in their mouth.

[dumbstruck]

I hate this.

I hope ya'll find players who like it or deal with it since you said you're only open to minor changes.

I'm not. My spouse is not. They were already drifting and their immediate verbal response to the announcement was "well I was looking for reasons to work on my world of darkness game anyhow."

Godspeed on getting new players and maintaining your playerbase.

[dunecrawler]

I am not playing right now. I very much like playing mages, but haven't had one for a year. I'm at two karma, and was looking forward to playing one out of the shitload of options when I get back to the game.

Now I can play... touched and a full-guild vivaduan!? Feels bad.

I've been inactive, so I don't see that karma review going anywhere, either.

[Kavrick]

Also a separate question

- Special applications can be made for up to four karma points above a player's current level.

Does this include the ones that are special app only? Because it doesn't feel like this alleviates things when half of the options seem special app only now.

[zealus]

This feels twofold:
An exuberating of "If staff likes you, you get cookies" sentiment.
Secondly, it feels like yet another case of "This was not done to the docs/how we'd like to see it, so we're taking it away". Please, please, please adress people who do it wrong, instead of also punishing those who do it right.
As it stands now, it will be a year until 10 karma things can be played.
If you didn't want them in game, just remove them.
As someone who dies frequently, and mostly due to taking risks and playing my PC truthfully, a criterium that is up there, I won't be able to put in XYZ hours on a PC. I also fail to see how barsitting for 96 hours shows you know how to magicker.

Not to be overly negative, but I hate, double hate, and loathe entirely more hurdles for people who do it right in order to filter out the few bad apples.

[Patuk]

I have thoughts. Lots of them. Most of them hinge on having one question answered above all:

Why?

What problem does this solve? Why is this being changed? What are you hoping to achieve with this?

[Lizzie]

This feels twofold:
An exuberating of "If staff likes you, you get cookies" sentiment.
Secondly, it feels like yet another case of "This was not done to the docs/how we'd like to see it, so we're taking it away". Please, please, please adress people who do it wrong, instead of also punishing those who do it right.
As it stands now, it will be a year until 10 karma things can be played.
If you didn't want them in game, just remove them.
As someone who dies frequently, and mostly due to taking risks and playing my PC truthfully, a criterium that is up there, I won't be able to put in XYZ hours on a PC. I also fail to see how barsitting for 96 hours shows you know how to magicker.

Not to be overly negative, but I hate, double hate, and loathe entirely more hurdles for people who do it right in order to filter out the few bad apples.

Why do you think it would take a year for anyone to play 10 karma? Anyone who had 3 karma yesterday, will now have 6 karma. So they only need 4 more karma points to get to 10. Staff can award a karma point at any time, without needing the player to request a review. Staff can ALSO reward a point when a player requests a review.

So theoretically, a player could end up with 10 karma a month from now, if they're kickass amazing top-notch players. If they're just garden variety solid trustworthy players, they could probably end up with the full 10 karma within the next few months.

If all they do is maintain the status quo, then yeah - it might be awhile before they earn the full 10.

I personally prefer fewer total points and different allocation, but I'm fine with the criteria required, and how staff can award the points. I think it's a long time coming since the 3-karma system rolled out, I wasn't in favor of it then, and I still think it should've been changed a few years ago.

[zealus]

This feels twofold:
An exuberating of "If staff likes you, you get cookies" sentiment.
Secondly, it feels like yet another case of "This was not done to the docs/how we'd like to see it, so we're taking it away". Please, please, please adress people who do it wrong, instead of also punishing those who do it right.
As it stands now, it will be a year until 10 karma things can be played.
If you didn't want them in game, just remove them.
As someone who dies frequently, and mostly due to taking risks and playing my PC truthfully, a criterium that is up there, I won't be able to put in XYZ hours on a PC. I also fail to see how barsitting for 96 hours shows you know how to magicker.

Not to be overly negative, but I hate, double hate, and loathe entirely more hurdles for people who do it right in order to filter out the few bad apples.

Why do you think it would take a year for anyone to play 10 karma? Anyone who had 3 karma yesterday, will now have 6 karma. So they only need 4 more karma points to get to 10. Staff can award a karma point at any time, without needing the player to request a review. Staff can ALSO reward a point when a player requests a review.

Without staff intervention it is 1 karma point every 3 months, so a year, since 3*4 is 12.

[Windstorm]

I think some of the reactions are a bit kneejerk, but possibly to be expected since the initial deployment is a sort of broad reduction to presumably be followed by reviews that would set things up a little differently.

But I for one like the spirit behind these changes and I never liked the checkbox system of the past. I also trust our current staff and I feel this is putting more power into their hands instead of just making karma this obligatory list of "roles you have to play to get karma," some of which I was probably never going to play.

I do encourage everyone to have a little patience and show some faith in the current roster of staffers. This whole year has been a journey for Arm, but I do feel strongly we're headed in the right direction. Overall, this might be a part of that! A karma revamp had been thought of and in the works for awhile, and I'm looking forward to seeing how things play out with it.

[flurry]

I may be out of the loop, as usual, but which players were privy to the extensive discussions of this? Was this a player committee thing? Was there a GDB thread? Since the stated reason that this is nearly finalized is those discussions, I think that matters.

[dunecrawler]

What players did you discuss this with? Why was this a secret? Why do they get to decide that I'm not allowed to play roles anymore that I've played for years with no problems?

[mansa]

In the previous thread, ( https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,59702.0.html ), there was some concerns raised by a few players:

DesertT:
"I don't believe putting the expectation of Staff taking away (or adding) karma to be a realistic one and still expect fairness across the board.  The more human interaction you have with a system, the more prone to bias and error."

Usiku:
"We then have 3 karma players doing things that staff (and players) will complain is poor RP for a 3 karma player.. for example not paying attention to the virtual world whilst committing crimes. Except we have no criteria for karma advancement that requires that. At no point did a player need to prove that they paid attention and respected vNPCs in their RP to reach 3k."

Jarvis:
"3 levels isn't nearly enough to filter out all the tomfoolery, fuckery, buggery, nonsense, funny business, skullduggery, and last but not least, mischief."

Najdorf:
"For a reason, I do not and will not make a request for karma review, because I don't sometimes want to hear some xxx staff's opinion on their perspective of how a good RP is, when I believe it is the opposite. And I do not want to get into such an argument. Favoritism and cherry picking exist. In the past, I had been pointed for my errors, whereas my off peak RP was completely ignored."

Veselka:
"-The more that is automated, the less required interaction there is from Staff to Player in giving karma. This doesn't necessarily mean coded automation, but even written procedure automation. When X milestone is achieved, then Player Soandso receives 1 karma for 'BlahBlah'."

Riev:
"One major issue to consider is what the work would be staffside. With staff inactivity, disappearing for weeks to months on end, leaving the entire game to be run by about 1/4 of the people its meant to. Its a lot for these 5-6 staff to monitor everything. Especially when they, too, want to play and experience the game.

So whatever system you come up with? Don't make it wholly dependent on staff. This is not 20 years ago when staff played alongside you and did stuff with you. This is 2023, when the staff that remain don't have playtimes like the no-life players anymore."


Miradus:
"If staff has a problem with certain people's roleplay they should open a conversation with those people and hash it out.

Gutting the entire karma system YET AGAIN does nothing but make people unhappy (speaking for myself) and every time it's been changed I got screwed. Every. Time.

Changing the system to improve the quality of RP seems a very passive-aggressive way of getting around having to actually talk to the people involved."

GreenTransient:
"If you want better RP, try articulating some intelligible standards and levels of expectation.  We are literally forced to play a game without enough information, without the ability to actually ask questions, in an environment where you can expect almost no one to be helpful, but also get don't do it wrong, or you'll get punished for not knowing something we weren't taught, or told.  That isn't listed in the rules, or on the website.  The type of things that is only documented in the gray and unknowing void of Staff group think, and even when you ask they say "I'll have to ask the others and get back to you on that.""

CirclelessBard:
"If you want to improve the quality of roleplay in the game, my strong recommendation would be to outline expectations for players. At the same time, give us a vision, a mission statement, for what the staff want to achieve with this game. Then set in motion the changes required to reach that vision. Armageddon suffers a lot from having its attention split several different ways."

Halaster:
"The biggest cons to me are the staff time spent.  As someone pointed out (Najdorf I think?) it means staff are going to have to be on the hook for dealing with this more often.  I brought this concern up to staff as we have been discussing it.  Some solutions to dealing with that are that we allow staff to just add/remove points without the need for a karma review.  Players could still put in for one (maybe every 3 months instead of 6), but staff could also do it (and should do it) more spontaneously."

Tiny Rainbow:
" Things that help to clarify things for new people especially would be really good. There's way too many unwritten things, or things that the general public have said are bad RP but aren't told to newbies. Until we have that the game isn't really ready for advertising to a wider audience, because so much stuff is unwritten that it's hard to teach lots of people at once (like the Sseth-tide with Space Station 13)"




And Usiku's post here as to some of the thoughts behind changing karma:
https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,59702.msg1096154.html#msg1096154

[CirclelessBard]

That's a very clear write-up of the new plan, I do have some questions though.

I have to admit to being a bit surprised that 0-karma races have been moved to 1-karma; locking new players out of unique options for an entire month just does not seem like a great strategy for recruiting and retaining new players. What was the reasoning behind this?

I also have to wonder what (if anything) is being adjusted staff-side to prepare for this revamp. Are all staff able to grant karma, considering that the people likely observing play the most are going to be the Storytellers? How does this interact with staff potentially spending less time in staff mode when they are playing the game?

Is there a limitation to how often an account can gain karma? It's stated that the system potentially allows for rapid karma gains within a short period. I guess my question is: is there going to be a maximum rate, or some sort of check by higher-level staff, or are all staff generally going to be trusted with their judgment individually?

Are there specific reasons as to why sponsored roles are karma-restricted now?

Per my commentary in the previous discussion, the new karma system has a rigorous set of expectations and criteria, but does this get us closer to the game having a "mission statement"? It seems like the system is designed primarily to sort and gate players by a perceived skill at roleplaying, communication, being a good sport, and other abilities. If the goal is to have a collaborative storytelling game, it stands to reason that in an ideal world, every player will reach 10 karma eventually, given these criteria. Is that more or less correct?

[Brokkr]

We want a high quality, RP heavy game, but we also want to be welcoming to the RP community, and so we recognize we will get people that are more "RP-lite, bone sword heavy".

Given the wide range of what players in the RP community want from a game, I am not sure even in an ideal world everyone gets 10 karma. In an ideal world, everyone that was here to be RP heavy and demonstrated quality play would.

[wizturbo]

My only feedback on the proposed plan at this point, and I'll think more about it, is:

• Allow for the first review to 'skip tiers' if a player has clearly demonstrated their capability.  No sense making the very best players we have re-prove themselves for a long period of time.  (I don't consider myself to be one of these people to be clear...)
• Perhaps allow sorc/psi apps or rolecalls for people below 10.  Or have certain Psi/Sorc options open at 8, but the juicest ones at 10.

[papertiger]

My only feedback on the proposed plan at this point, and I'll think more about it, is:

• Allow for the first review to 'skip tiers' if a player has clearly demonstrated their capability.  No sense making the very best players we have re-prove themselves for a long period of time.  (I don't consider myself to be one of these people to be clear...)
• Perhaps allow sorc/psi apps or rolecalls for people below 10.  Or have certain Psi/Sorc options open at 8, but the juicest ones at 10.

I think staff can already reward people extra karma though - which would essentially be exactly that, yeah?

[papertiger]

Also I do want to point out, just as an edit. This hurts the new player experience even more than how bad the new player experience already is, which is something that really needs to be taken account of when it comes to the health of the game. If a new player logs in and see that their only race option is human, it's gonna leave a bad taste in their mouth.

Elves are significantly different here than the normal sparkleshiny perfect thing you see in most other fantasy settings (ugh gross). They carry a heckin ton of expectation. I asked for advice on playing an elf because there's so much there. I got a TON of feedback there. It just doesn't feel like itd be a good intro to the game for a new player anyway?

I don't disagree that it looks incredibly daunting to work up to things you DO want to play. It feels a bit "sit down newb", but I think thats just my kneejerk reaction. I do appreciate that expectations are made clearer overall. If there's people abusing roles, maybe it'll make it easier to pull the rug out so it'll stop? It seems like karma is being made more fluid. Comes with risks of favoritism or people just getting passed up, but those risks are always there. I expect staff genuinely wants to rope as many people into plot as possible - thats kinda what they're for. We all do have storytellers over us, hopefully who are all interested in seeing us progress in... story.

[wizturbo]

I think staff can already reward people extra karma though - which would essentially be exactly that, yeah?

In theory, but may as well formalize that in the review process.

[Halaster]

Staff can bump someone from 0 to 1 karma without an official review process.   While I don't recall any rule stating staff must do a review to go from 1 to 2 or from 2 to 3, it's always done.  And staff never proactively award karma without a review these days.  That's how the 'culture' has developed.

This new system would be a break from that, and allow all staff to award karma without the need for a review.

[Armaddict]

Yikes, I'm a 1 Karma player.

Demonstrates a basic understanding and appreciation of the underlying game theme

I think it's important to realize that a lot of debates about the game come based on player interpretations of what this is, exactly.  Some people focus hardcore on the game setting, like me.  Other people will say that the theme is less based on setting, and more on the expression of stories.  Neither of those point of views are wrong, but they are sometimes adverse to each other (hint: Mage discussions fall into this category).

Follows the rules of the game and community. Such as consent, PK reports, wishing up before PKs where possible, no cheating, no multi-playing, no inappropriate OOC communication etc.

Mostly well and good.  But the PK reports stick out.  You know I don't do them unless required of me or asked for.

Makes use of the bio tool to flesh out their character and record their character development

I don't write bios unless they're needed or I feel like it, or if I know I'm in a sort of mindbender theme where I need to flesh out what information they'd be privy to, though I enjoy doing this more via thinks to give them snapshots rather than an entire flood of info at the exact time they want it.

Makes use of think/feel commands

As above; thinks and feels are for where they are pertinent to the play, not a requirement OF good play.  I talk often about how that goalpost of it shifted.  These were introduced to the game as entirely optional.

So on and so forth, pretty much all the way down that list.  If the assertion is that I'm a problematic player who cannot be respected or trusted enough to play any of those things, then I suppose it's a working framework.  But I'd caution strongly that not only are you going pretty deep on specificity so that only certain player types will attain them, I'd also argue that you're setting yourself up for very subjective interpretations of players that are not inclusive and will inevitably lead down the path of favoritism and a stagnating inclusion of players.

These are super directed in a way where you will have some player types who think they are grand on the surface...because they all 'look' like you're just promoting roleplay.  But they're actually pretty stifling and not very respectful of players time or efforts towards their own enjoyment despite differences in playstyles and what that time use is for.

Yeah, you never listen when I tell you upfront that this will lead to issues.  But this is in dire need of deep scrapping.