2023 Karma Revamp Discussion

[Tailong]

Honestly, I could step up and meet your requirements, but I don't want to. I don't want leadership. One character was being groomed for it and I voiced IC  didn't want it. I had it for a short time in a dead clan and it was horrible, and I voiced that in every single leader report I made. I voiced it IC and OOC that I didn't want it. I don't want fleshed out backgrounds. I like developing my character IC, on the fly. I don't want to interact with the community either. I rarely post on GDB, and I haven't been in the discord for a long while. Just read up and you see why. No offense to anyone, but outside of clan forums, I'm good.

But why should this make you considered over others for roles that can have severely negative impact on other characters? As the scale gets higher, you have more power to end people or shut them down. If your goal isn't pushing rp not only for yourself but others too, why should you be allowed to become a mindbender and suggest they walk into the desert and die or cause them to question their relationships or entire life? These roles ideally are given to people who work to progress the overall story and enhance rp for everyone rather than just shitting on it.

Maybe I wasn't clear enough. I like playing mundanes, and people that have played with me might agree when I say that I don't need a max karma character to involve people, progress story and enhance roleplay. should my preferences though, keep me from playing higher karma characters if I want?

I have never special apped. I will never special app, and I will likely never answer a roll call because that's just not me. I think it's not something I would enjoy. Again, should that stop me from playing a high karma character? I just want to pick things that don't involve staff and play the game.

I think it should stop you from playing the highest karma roles if you're unwilling to push yourself out of your own sphere, yes. Handing high powered roles out to unproven players feels unfair because its so easy for them to shit on others and would likely a bit disastrous to other players.

I just said I don't want those roles, but okay.

[papertiger]

I just said I don't want those roles, but okay.

But then why do you care about or need karma? You don't want those roles and don't want to earn them - you just want to have free access to them outside of a spec app? That diminishes the importance and impact of those roles.

Edit - maybe I should clarify I feel mindworms, nilazis, and heavy hitting supergicks ARE high impact roles that should absolutely have someone with proven respect for the overarching story in them. Everything on the karma scale scales with responsibility for measured, considerate play.

[Pariah]

To be fair, I can roll a tier 1 combat role, fight wildlife for two or three days played and shit on most characters if I really wanted to.  I think that they are going a little too controlling with this tact of making everything higher Karma.  Yes, they can just go cast 'mon un fuck your mother' dude and kill you in a single spell, but I can go Bash/charge and kill your character before you get out of roundtime.

It's all just different sides of the coin really.

I'd rather see them give folks the chance to do it wrong than to gate everything fun behind, "But they could potentially do this wrong." type mindset.

Staff I'm pretty sure gets informed everytime one of us kills one another, so I'd almost rather it be a use it till you prove you can't handle it situation, but apparently, I'm the minority here.  I love mages, I also love hunters, despise social-only roles and like crafters when there is a plot or reason to be a crafter other than "Get rich as fuck."  I'm more for the co-op PVE side of things, but do enjoy getting intertwined in other character's stories.

I however, don't care about you lot oocly more than you're strangers on the internet who play the same game I do.  That is IC/OOC separation, I'll rp you're best friend in the game and not care about you as a person, that should be an option without being penalized.

[Brytta Léofa]

Staff, can we get a clarification here? Under the proposed system...

- For the mundane-lovers: Will it be difficult to get 8 karma (mul option) without playing magick roles?

- For the perennial minions: Will it be difficult to get 10 karma (void, psi, sorc) without playing leadership roles?

[Tailong]

I just said I don't want those roles, but okay.

But then why do you care about or need karma? You don't want those roles and don't want to earn them - you just want to have free access to them outside of a spec app? That diminishes the importance and impact of those roles.

Edit - maybe I should clarify I feel mindworms, nilazis, and heavy hitting supergicks ARE high impact roles that should absolutely have someone with proven respect for the overarching story in them. Everything on the karma scale scales with responsibility for measured, considerate play.

Again, I want access to races and classes that staff has put basic trust in me to play those basic karma roles. The way it is set up now, I will be gated from some of them, where as I wouldn't be otherwise because I have met or will meet their requirements.

I agree with your edit.  Again, those roles are not of interest to me at this point and require a special app, which I don't want.

[Shaydee]

My initial thought/feeling when I heard about this last night was anger. I must admit, I only in the past year got max karma, and I haven't even gotten to make anything that required it yet, but I had some great ideas that I was super stoked to try out in the next couple to few characters. But, having slept on it, and read through the Revamp post AND everyone's comments so far, though some I did skim through some. I am more accepting of it, less upset and mad, probably not quite happy or eager for it, but it could be a good change! I can certainly understand how many people who've been at Max Karma for a really long time could be upset with this change though. I really like the idea that staff can just give someone karma for doing something outstanding or deserving of it. Can you imagine logging in to just see your karma boosted one point randomly? That would make me so happy, just a little dopamine rush! XD

In my opinion, which I really don't like sharing on the GDB very much, (I also don't really participate much on the discord either) I don't think this is such a bad change! From seeing previous comments though, I can definitely tell that I'm in the minority when it comes to liking the fact that only humans are available for new players in the new system, but I like things like that. My husband's homebrew world for DND, everyone's first time playing in one of his campaigns in that setting, you have to be a human, then, as you meet races through play, you unlock them for play yourself. I think it 's like getting a little reward! In regards to Armageddon, a new player plays for a month as a human, sees how others act and treat others, including elves, half-elves and dwarves, maybe even other races and gemmed! Then boom, the races open up after one month! I see it as a reward-type thing, it's like a fun little, ooh, now I can see from something else's point of view, but they also get to see how those races have acted and were treated in their time as a human in the first month. I mean I still haven't played a full elf because I'm terrified I'd do an awful job of it despite reading and rereading the documentation many times over the years!

I do think, it would be a good and neat idea to make it so that the first karma review after the change allows you to get a point for every single factor you qualify for instead of just upping previous max characters from 6 to 7 for one point (not looking at staff intervention at all, I know it's a possibility, but I think just for this first review it would be nice) I know I, despite having max karma now, would not meet enough criteria to reach 10 karma in the new system, but I'm sure that many players who've been around longer and at Max Karma for longer than I've been playing the game, probably do and they should get the opportunity to at least get all the karma they meet the criteria for.

For the most part, I too prefer to play mundane characters, getting certain criteria are harder, like leadership roles, I feel like it should be soft point. I like to joke (mostly to myself) that I like being a support character or an NPC type character, I like to support /other/ people's stories. Most of my characters are not the main characters in their stories, hah. But it was really nice to have had all the options available so that I could play my occasional "I'm the main character of my story and everyone else's" type of character. XD Anyway I'm gonna post now before I decide to erase everything and say nothing at all like I usually do when it comes to sharing my opinion.

[papertiger]

Once again, why can some folks let people have their own opinion and let it be. You are not right or wrong papertiger, nor is Tailong. If you want to have a personal discussion take it to discord or PMs, rather than fill this thread with a back and forth.

Because I'm attempting to understand Tian's opinion and can be swayed otherwise. I and others are invested in this topic. I'm trying to understand it and I don't feel Ive been an asshole, unsympathetic, or too deeply entrenched in my questions. It's on topic and addressing the concerns we have regarding the karma system. We were not instructed to keep our opinions to one post and opinions can change through discourse.

I now I understand after Tainlong's last post I missed their initial point - they meant races and not subclasses or classes primarily. I understand now they have a point I didn't consider before and I have a better appreciation for what their upset with this all is.

But since I've been asked to exit, I'll now exit.

[Armaddict]

But then why do you care about or need karma? You don't want those roles and don't want to earn them - you just want to have free access to them outside of a spec app? That diminishes the importance and impact of those roles.

I can't speak for everyone, but the change is being talked about from very different angles and perspectives, which is...kind of the problem with it in its current state.  It means different things to different people.  I'm not talking from a perspective of what I lose or gain, because I don't play karma roles anyway.  That's not the point that's being tackled, and other people are going to have different points they're coming at as well.  But I do want to say, for one of those perspectives:

Karma as 'the ability to play things' is actually next to useless.  Having the Karma for something only feels like it does not because of how many years have gone by since special applications for normal characters were relatively common (i.e. Non leadership, non special roles; just to play a mage, a psi, whatever you wanted you didn't have karma for), and because apparently the rate of rejection has been very small.  But they could keep Karma the same as it is now, and just start a new character rejection policy to achieve the same goals.

They didn't do that.  I'm assuming because no one wants to go through the trouble of rejecting apps all day with explanations as to why...and again, that is why as this is outlined, this is a bad setup.  Not just minorly bad, but very bad.

Karma means a lot less when viewed as 'permission to play', and a lot more when viewed as 'general trust and relationship'.  Again, by the examples placed, I am likely a 1-2 karma player because of one or two of the minor notes in each point.  You could bypass them to show general trust, or you could make me, a person who -genuinely cares- about the theme, the setting, the enjoyment of players, the health of the game, the design of the game...into a player that is not well-received by that game.  And that will be what that discussion comes to.  Which will make me feel ill about it.  Which will make me less motivated to play.

I already don't play much right now due to changes.  I'm not saying this directly about me, I'm using me as an example.  You need to consider how these criterion will affect you as you conflict with different ideas.  As you change what roles you like and don't like.  As staff members leave and are picked up.  As interpretations of different things change, as code changes come.  These examples of dialogue are going to be extremely combative, and this is going to feel incredibly toxic for the majority of players and staff.

I am not against this because of the karma levels.  Like I said, I think decompression is good.  I think special applications are a little over-hated just because most people haven't used them for anything other than role calls. The tiers themselves look good.  But this attempt at promoting 'good roleplay' is actually soooo misguided and ill-conceived that it will cause more issues for everyone in the game, staff and player, than it will improve the experience.  I cannot overstate how poor this communication will be.

[Boggis]

I however, don't care about you lot oocly more than you're strangers on the internet who play the same game I do.  That is IC/OOC separation, I'll rp you're best friend in the game and not care about you as a person, that should be an option without being penalized.

My read of the karma revamp post is that you don't have to care about the OOC side of things if you don't want to. The post says that for karma to be gained the player should be demonstrating "most" of the examples. Also when it comes to GDB / Discord you should be largely positive IF you participate (i.e. you don't have to).

Speaking as somebody who really didn't participate much in the OOC side of things and only knew maybe at most 5 players OOCly in 20+ years of playing it was no barrier to gaining karma (I'd guess not knowing players OOCly probably helped as my characters had to find out everything IC and I'm pretty sure that shows). I just played my characters for fun and within the rules by and large and that was it.

[Brokkr]

Brokkr's comment about falling on the sword for staff or whatever and the reasoning behind it eroded a lot of my confidence in the change itself.

I'm not really falling on my sword, and I did not mean to come off like that. It is part of my job, as Producer, to deliver bad news. It is also part of Admins jobs to deliver bad news. Ideally Admins deliver bad news individually, and Producers deliver bad news to the community. And Storytellers get to deliver good news. There is quite a bit more empowerment to Storytellers to do so under this system.

One reason we want feedback is to have the ability to clarify things that are not clear. The initial karma review under this system we will have to evaluate which criteria people have met, and which criteria they have not met. Based on that, karma could go all the way up to 10.  It could also go down. Some players have had max karma and never been evaluated for criteria before because their karma pre-dated. They will need to be evaluated for criteria.

[Pariah]

I however, don't care about you lot oocly more than you're strangers on the internet who play the same game I do.  That is IC/OOC separation, I'll rp you're best friend in the game and not care about you as a person, that should be an option without being penalized.

My read of the karma revamp post is that you don't have to care about the OOC side of things if you don't want to. The post says that for karma to be gained the player should be demonstrating "most" of the examples. Also when it comes to GDB / Discord you should be largely positive IF you participate (i.e. you don't have to).

Speaking as somebody who really didn't participate much in the OOC side of things and only knew maybe at most 5 players OOCly in 20+ years of playing it was no barrier to gaining karma (I'd guess not knowing players OOCly probably helped as my characters had to find out everything IC and I'm pretty sure that shows). I just played my characters for fun and within the rules by and large and that was it.

Unfortunately that's probably the route I'll have to take.  Because the mods are players who get a bit emotional from time to time, or play things heavily weighted on the side of caution when it regards intangibles like people's feelings.

I think I provide a lot of valuable feedback and such, but will not be able to share it for fear I'm gonna get a three month karma penalty because some mod gets third party offended.

[GreenTransient]

but the tying of whether I'm nice to you oocly to me playing a good mage, or a mul or whatever is ridiculous. 

If you cannot be nice OOC'ly to each other, you have no business being in our community.

In the last week, I put in a staff complaint about how prevalent magic is in Armageddon.

""To restate.  My issue is that magic is so disturbing prevalent IG since I started playing that the what you would know section saying "Magick is a rare and mysterious power" is the issue."" -GreenTransient 2023-10-26 19:34:26

To which Brokkr responded.

"With that said, a lot of your complaint seems to be that you disagree with our theme, or how the theme is being represented in the game.  That is fine, but ultimately that is just your opinion of how you believe things should be and not everyone agrees with your perspective.  If we made changes to the theme to go in the direction you suggest, we might be pleasing you, but it would come at the cost of all the players and staff who prefer things as they are.  I hope you can understand that position.  I'm going to go ahead and close out this request at this point as I think we've explored the topic pretty thoroughly now." -Brokkr 2023-11-06 11:56:41PM

But now I'm seeing a different message from staff, example :

'This is in response to overwhelming feedback over the last few years that non-mundane characters are overly common.  This is a step towards moderating that trend, encouraging players to delve deeper into the role play opportunities these characters demand, rather than selecting them for stat or skill advantages." Usuki 2023-11-07 05:11:24AM

Plus the above sentiments that if you can't be nice OOCly, you shouldn't be in the Community. 

So I suppose my big question is, what kind of oversight is there for Karma docking?  Or is Big Brother just going to be doing whatever it wants, as it see's fit, indiscriminately while simultaneously holding players to an unknowable and totally shifting from person to person expectation?  All while actively doing the opposite of what they expect from players without fear of repercussions?

Ultimately, I think the changes are genuinely in the best interest of the game on several levels.  I can absolutely see why so many folks are upset in the short term and I genuinely hope it doesn't kill the game, because I would be very interested in getting to play in a MuD that has a quantifiable standard and expectations.  I look forward to hearing someone demand the data in a couple months so we can see how many karma staff are awarding outside of requests, vs how many karma they are docking.  As I understand it, can't staff award karma now?  How many times has that happened in the last year?  As long as it's not gate kept by known assholes this could be a great future for the Community.

[Halaster]

Hey Brokkr,

How many players were consulted on this? How many staffers were consulted on this? To be clear, by players, I mean non-staffers.

Thank you,

I'm not Brokkr, but here was the community discussion:  https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,59702.0.html

[Krath]

Thank you Hal! I think what would have been nice is a summary of what you had planned, and then asking for feedback on it, rather than forcing it upon us. The thread seemed to be a jumble of different ideas with no clear summary of what staff heard overall, and what they were thinking of doing. I feel that if you had presented your strawman idea of the 10 karma level, Current effect on Karma lvl vs new karma lvl, etc, you would have less of the backlash you have now.

At the same time, I know not all decisions should require the playerbase's ongoing feedback pre-final draft and this happens to be one of the main ones that should have been.

[seltzer]

Brokkr's comment about falling on the sword for staff or whatever and the reasoning behind it eroded a lot of my confidence in the change itself.

I'm not really falling on my sword, and I did not mean to come off like that. It is part of my job, as Producer, to deliver bad news. It is also part of Admins jobs to deliver bad news. Ideally Admins deliver bad news individually, and Producers deliver bad news to the community. And Storytellers get to deliver good news. There is quite a bit more empowerment to Storytellers to do so under this system.

Thank you for clarifying that.

[Veselka]

I'm happy with the system being decompressed from 3 to 10. I also agree with Staff's assessment and approach. I have a few suggestions:

-Perhaps consider a coded reminder akin to "Your character aged 1 year from 38 to 39!" etc, you could have a reminder when you log in and your karma review is up, 'You are eligible for a 3 month karma review, please see more at: <hyperlink>'. I feel many players fall through the cracks because they either don't participate in karma reviews, don't know they exist, etc.

-Consider removing the 4 karma upwards limit for special applications, and increase amount of special applications you can have from 2 to 3 or 4. If a Player has a good idea for a concept, it should stand on its own merits I think -- If they are very low karma, and are applying for a much higher karma role, they might be guided in their denial of the application of what kinds of RP or character concepts to engage with first, to provide a better track record.

-Consider adding that the karma 'requirements' within each category are guidelines for Storytellers to follow, and more examples of what stands out as positive milestones in those categories. I think people are getting hung up on the specificity, meaning they never write bios, and are worried that due to that, they will never gain karma in that category.

Overall I think it is the beginning of a much better system, which is something I have been keen on suggesting. I believe through this system, granting karma will be more fluid, less discretionary, and provide less in-roads for favoritism and over attention to certain PCs.

IF the coded reminder were added, and people were regularly filing for karma reviews, I believe it would be more egalitarian overall.

[mansa]

I have some unanswered questions:


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?

* Are there brackets for issuing karma?   What are the brackets?
eg:
0 Karma = New Player
2 ~ 3 Karma = RP Novice
4 ~ 5 Karma = RP Journeyman
6 ~ 10 Karma = RP Advanced

Do staff members need to agree amongst themselves to promote people to the next bracket, and a single staff memeber can add karma within the bracket?   
Or
Can any singular staff member give karma at any point along the ladder?

* Also, the same question, but in reverse for removing karma.

* Can players help give RP Points to characters? (basically, can we reduce the workload of staff and allow players to help give nudges)   

* In the list, you have written:
5 karma
Ruk Empowering, Ruk Creation, Ruk Protection, Vivadu Corruption (spec-app only)
Full Guild Krathi (spec-app only, gemmed)

Does that mean you need to have 5 karma to special app that, or does that mean you can have 1 karma and special app that for that?

[Pariah]

I took the spec app notes to simply mean that you could play those roles just required staff to turn them on for you and eats up one of your two spec apps a year if you're of the appropriate Karma level.

I could be wrong, but I think that's the gist of it.  If you're X karma that lists that spec app option, you just need to request it, eat up one of your two spec app requests for the year and they toggle it on for you one time use.  Probably have a faster turn around too because it's less of, "Is he allowed." and more of a simple thing like adding a clan to someone.

[mansa]

Warning!

I might need to clean up some posts in this thread.  I cleaned up the thread a bit.


This is a heated topic, as it is basically a karma re-alignment for anyone with 2 and 3 karma, and we don't like it when we lose.

[Nao]

I however, don't care about you lot oocly more than you're strangers on the internet who play the same game I do.  That is IC/OOC separation, I'll rp you're best friend in the game and not care about you as a person, that should be an option without being penalized.

My read of the karma revamp post is that you don't have to care about the OOC side of things if you don't want to. The post says that for karma to be gained the player should be demonstrating "most" of the examples. Also when it comes to GDB / Discord you should be largely positive IF you participate (i.e. you don't have to).

Speaking as somebody who really didn't participate much in the OOC side of things and only knew maybe at most 5 players OOCly in 20+ years of playing it was no barrier to gaining karma (I'd guess not knowing players OOCly probably helped as my characters had to find out everything IC and I'm pretty sure that shows). I just played my characters for fun and within the rules by and large and that was it.

Unfortunately that's probably the route I'll have to take.  Because the mods are players who get a bit emotional from time to time, or play things heavily weighted on the side of caution when it regards intangibles like people's feelings.

I think I provide a lot of valuable feedback and such, but will not be able to share it for fear I'm gonna get a three month karma penalty because some mod gets third party offended.

The decision to ban you from discord was made by the moderator team as a whole and was not made on a whim - we've been considering it for a while. Please don't shoot the messenger.

[Dune Bunny]

As a max karma (currently) player that sticks almost exclusively to mundane humans, this change overall doesn't make a big change to my play.

That said, I'm not the biggest fan of it overall. I don't think the system is bad, and I like the idea of decompressing into more tiers. The part I'm not too keen on overall is a bit of a double-edged sword I guess.

That being that things are about to become heavily based on player bias from the staff side of things. I've seen many conversations happen on the GDB in my time, some that I was a part of, where players and staff butted heads on issues of theme/lore that was very subjective and open to interpretation that the docs don't fully cover.

When a staffer is now casually watching a player rp, but not in the theme that they, and not exactly other staffers believe in, will that player be penalized subjectively, based on that one individual staffer? And can it be trusted that staffers won't bring personal bias into their choices?

This isn't an accusation that I believe all staff are biased, and people will suffer under the new system for it. But I left the game for nearly a decade over a staffer back in the day that made my Armageddon life absolute hell, and it's an anxiety issue I still have quite often when it comes to me dealing with staff. I assume I'm not the only player with these issues due to some (thankfully) no longer here staffers that ended up not good for the game.

I think it'd be a blessing to player morale/confidence with this system to know that there's perhaps checks in place to moderate potential bias:

-Have a report system when karma is awarded, so that producers, maybe other staffers, can see it and be like 'okay, this makes/doesn't make sense'
-Have a requirement for staffers who are watching a player to leave a report for other staffers as to why they chose not to award karma to someone they've watched for a reasonable amount of time. If Timmy Toebiter buys drinking water from a Vivaduan, and one staffer thinks it's horrible rp, but another thinks it isn't a big deal, the giving/docking of karma can be highly subjective, and likely not fair to be decided upon by a single staffer.
-Ensure that the OOC negativity from certain players is only considered in that area. I hate how abrasive/trollish some community members have been at times, and I'm cool with the new system penalizing that. But I'd feel pretty glum if I knew that said player was being a rockstar in game, but got denied karma on that basis, because the staffer making the decision isn't fond of them being a dick oocly.

The things above are mostly hypothetical, but are worries I have about the system, and likely worries others have as well. I'm absolutely down with a system this expansive though, and think it's nice to have something to strive toward, while also giving players a chance to try all the different options on the way up.

[Mr.B]

While this proposed change doesn't impact me very much due to my preference for mundane non-special applied characters, I don't like the proposed change and I suspect that the planned implementation will proceed no matter how many of the vocal majority dislike it, especially given that Brokkr mentioned having to be the bearer of bad news. Hopefully some parts of the proposal's implementation will be amended with some of the feedback given in this thread.

But I cannot bring myself to writing paragraphs that will not be read, considered, or cared for. This is a big problem for people like me, who have spent 20 years playing this game who finally got to the 'end of karma' only to have my time and input dismissed with a hand-wave. 20 years, and I finally got to play a mul that got a LOT of kudos for its play. And now, I have to beg and plead to play another if I ever wanted to.

End all be all? Staff complaints of late have been around "There's too much work for staff to do". This feels like MORE work for staff to have to focus on. More special applications that require producer time. More lower level staff thinking Riev should have 7 karma but they have to justify it and do their due diligence. More staff time required to supervise/observe players to ensure they're at the right karma level. The decision seems to be disconnected from the message.

I am heartbroken. I have spent more than half my life playing this game, and the respect for the time and effort just isn't there and perhaps worse? Neither staff nor player seems to care.

So many people have echoed those sentiments in this thread. Players have left this game because of feelings that the staff team did not respect their time and effort in breathing life into the game. Players that have spent one or more decades contributing to the game and proving that they could be saddled with sensitive roles.

The part that doesn't sit well with me is the idea of taking away options, with the carrot that we might be able to earn them back, possibly even quickly. I think it's natural for people losing options to feel like the implicit message is that they are now trusted less than they were before.

This was my feeling when I read the karma proposal and that we'll have to all be assessed to see how many of the criteria checkboxes we meet. While I like that some of the criteria are clearer, there are some others that have issues. I don't like the 0 karma level restricting elves and dwarves but I understand the data driven approach to try that out. I don't like the role-applications being locked behind karma if they're already reviewed on a case-by-case basis through the request tool anyway. Perhaps this is a way to sink our special application currency if we want any roles outside of the ones we can freely apply to in order limit special classes.

One reason we want feedback is to have the ability to clarify things that are not clear. The initial karma review under this system we will have to evaluate which criteria people have met, and which criteria they have not met. Based on that, karma could go all the way up to 10.  It could also go down. Some players have had max karma and never been evaluated for criteria before because their karma pre-dated. They will need to be evaluated for criteria.

One glaring example of criteria that needs work, in my view, is that there needs to be better documentation supporting the requirement for understanding of magick roleplay. I don't think there's extensive enough documentation on what that is or what it looks like when you compare it to cultural documentation made available to the various tribes or city-states for the requirement for cultural understanding. I think that it should be as clear and available to players as it is to staff that would be awarding karma based on this criteria, as opposed to handwavium and agreement with emoting style.

IF the coded reminder were added, and people were regularly filing for karma reviews, I believe it would be more egalitarian overall.

I think that would be cool. With the many tiers of the proposed karma system, players will probably be feeling more pressure to push karma review requests and having some kind of reminder would be nice. It would be even better if it could be automated and opened on a player's behalf.

[CirclelessBard]

But that's not really my concern, the way this fair play thing sounds is that say I'm playing the game perfectly, using my thinks my feels, emoting, being an amazing player and character that I always am.

I get moderated by one of you for being unkind here, all that shit goes in the trash and I don't get the karma point I deserve because "I didn't play nice"

Fair Play seems like it is for following the game rules, which just seems like a baseline for being able to play the game at all. I find it hard to imagine a state of the game where just about everyone that has been active for a certain length of time doesn't have their Fair Play karma. Anything less would mean there are a significant number of people breaking the basic rules of the game.

Communication karma is for being cordial and forthright with staff, Community karma is for being cordial with other players. That's how those criteria read to me, at least.

I suppose if someone screws up so badly in the community or on the request tool that they get a negative account note for it they would have their Fair Play karma dropped, but it seems the easiest way to avoid this scenario is to simply be polite, and avoid being blatantly rude or nonconstructive.

[Riev]

Fair Play*
(required to go from 1 to 2 karma)
Examples:

    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.
    No negative account notes for the last 3 months.

I read Fair Play's OOC communication to be more "No communicating with people outside the game for the purpose of gaining an unfair advantage in game". Such as DMing people on Discord, that you're currently playing with, saying "Alright, when I mention how hot it is, ICly? Backstab Pariah".

I do not think staff are saying "If you're being a jerkoff in the Discord and get a temp ban, you won't get karma for 90days". Unless you do something egregious. If staff told me I can't get karma for 90d because I was in a heated argument and needed to cool off? This isn't the right game for me.

[Pariah]

I could totally be reading it incorrectly.  But I thought for each point you had to pass the fair play bullshit.

So say I am at 4 after the change and want to get bumped or staff watches me play and goes omg he's amazing but I got into it with a player mod, I don't get the point because of fair play bullshit.

If I'm wrong then great.  That is literally the only thing I'm concerned with about building Karma and playing the sweet mage classes is they are gonna be like.  You do great at playing the game, your characters are fun, you create rp around you, BUT you're mean to people ooc so no karma for you.