Armageddon General Discussion Board

So you may or may not have seen that karma was a topic up for debate as part of our roadmap. There has been a general consensus for some time amongst staff that the current system wasn't fit for purpose but the idea of tackling it is quite an overwhelming one.

We have now discussed it a fair bit our side and we are looking at changing the scale back to a wider one and a system that makes it much easier to gain (and lose) karma, so that overall it is more fluid and more encouraging of maintaining high RP standards at the top end.

We know it's an oft discussed topic player side, but consider this a more formal opportunity to let your thoughts be known on our current karma system and what you think a better future system could look like.

• PLEASE refrain from targeting the RP of particular players or groups of players. This is not an opportunity to make disparaging remarks about your fellow players. Keep it civil.
• Please refrain from shooting down the ideas or perspectives of your fellow players.

Current State:

1 Karma:

• Races:
  
  • Desert elf - http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Desert%20Elves 

• Subclasses:
  
  • Magick:
    
    • Water Touched - http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Touched 
    • Stone Touched - http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Touched 
    • Fire Touched - http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Touched 
    • Wind Touched - http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Touched 
    • Shadow Touched - http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Touched 
    • Energy Touched - http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Touched 

2 Karma:

• Races:
  
  • Half Giant - http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Half-Giants 
  • Thryzn - https://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Thryzn

• Subclasses:
  
  • Magick:
    
    • Vivadu Healer - http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/vivaduans 
    • Vivadu Corruption - http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/vivaduans 
    • Vivadu Creation - http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/vivaduans 
    • Ruk Protector - http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Rukkians 
    • Ruk Empowering - http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Rukkians 
    • Ruk Creation - http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Rukkians 
    • Whira Illusion - http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Whirans 
    • Suk-Krath Guile - http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Krathis 
    • Elkros Vigor - https://www.armageddon.org/help/view/elkrosians 

3 Karma:

• Races:
  
  • Mul - http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Muls 

• Subclasses
  
  • Magick:
    
    • Whira Travel - http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Whirans 
    • Whira Tempest - http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Whirans 
    • Suk-Krath Agony - http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Krathis 
    • Suk-Krath Devastation - http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Krathis 
    • Drov Shadow Dancer - http://armageddon.org/help/view/Drovians 
    • Drov Shadow Stalker - http://armageddon.org/help/view/Drovians 
    • Elkros Havoc - https://www.armageddon.org/help/view/elkrosians 
    • Nilaz Anathema- https://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Nilazi 
    • Nilaz Void- https://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Nilazi 

Suggestion 1:
I believe that the first point of Karma should be automatically provided to any account that is 9 months old.

Suggestion 2:
I believe having 1 karma should allow players to have access to the touched subclass of Vivadu, Ruk, and Suk-Krath only.

Suggestion 3:
Move the current 1 karma to 2 karma, and 2 karma to 3 karma, and 3 karma to 4 karma.

Suggestion 4:
Make Mindbender Subclass available for people with 5 karma, but create a "limited number of available positions" in the character creation process to limit the number of total active characters.  This should remove the need to special app for it.

Suggestion 5:
Add half-giant and mul to the "limited number of available positions" code.

Let's be honest.  Expecting Staff to subtract karma from players for bad acting will lead to more accusations of favouritism.  Not to mention, there are times of day where Staff aren't the most attentive so bad actors get away with heinous acts that they know they normally wouldn't during peak or more staff-supported hours.

I don't believe putting the expectation of Staff taking away 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.

To make karma more fluid, reinstate the unpopular karma timer system while expanding the karma levels.  I like Mansa's idea of people generating their first karma after a certain period of time.  I think 6 months is sufficient.

I like the karma timer because it encourages people to take their characters more serious and not be so flippant or careless about them.  Isn't one of the criteria for karma character longevity?

When reinstating the karma timer, make the floor One Karma instead of Zero Karma.

Also, consider raising the karma limit to higher than what you can spend.  If it's going to be five like Mansa suggests, then make the karma max six, MAYBE seven.  This way, if someone does have an accident, they still have a buffer of karma to comfort them.

I've been playing this game for 28 years and as of a year ago, only tallied up approximately 20 days played on magickers.  A drovian that I stored for a sponsored role after 1.5 days, and a Krathi, so I don't feel that I have the experience nor the knowledge to speak to how the karma levels should be broken up when addressing the different magickers.

I do agree that there should be a limit of sorcerors.  Muls should be divided per faction/group, meaning the Byn can have 1-2.  The Crimson Wind can have 1-2.  Things like that.

I still think there should be a limit on rogue magickers just like there is on desert elves.  Maybe even have those divided between north and south or per civilized population.

https://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Karma

Karma                                                                  (Account)
ArmageddonMUD operates a Karma system designed to open up the more complicated,
powerful and RP challenging roles to players. Karma is simply a measure of trust
that the staff members have in a given player's:

* Degree of maturity and responsibility as a role-player, as evidenced by
playing roles realistically and acting responsibly with the code.
* Knowledge of the game world, and an appreciation of the way in which the
various races, guilds, and so on, interact.
* Role-playing skill, as evidenced by role-playing in such a way as to show that
they are really involved in the game world, and also enriching the game world
for other players.

Staff base their decisions to award karma on a set of categories. Each category
has a list of criteria which players need to meet in order to gain a karma
point. No more than one karma point can be awarded in any one category area; one
must pass six of the seven categories to get max karma.

Categories:
* Longevity
* Good communication
* Ability to roleplay
* Proven understanding of magick and its place in the game world
* Proven understanding of cultural and racial structures
* Contributes to the game
* Leadership

Players may request a karma review every six months. A Karma Review request will
automatically have staff assessing your account against the karma criteria.
Staff may also award (or remove) karma at their own discretion outside of Karma
Review requests.

Karma is not an end in itself. Acquiring karma points is not something you
should be 'striving towards' as a player; the fun that you get out of role-
playing your character should be the primary reward in itself.

Karma is a totally out of character (OOC) concept, and should have no bearing
whatsoever on what happens in the game.

Part of the function of karma is to make life easier for the staff members;
those players who over time have demonstrated desirable qualities will
'automatically' gain access to privileged races and guilds. Gaining karma is
not, however, the only way to do this. If you feel that you have a case to make
about why you should be allowed to play a race or guild that you do not have
karma for you may submit a special application through the request tool. See
'help special applications' for more information, and if you want to see which
options are available at which level, see 'help karma options'.


If there is something like a 'punishment' system to be put in place, I think "temporarily removing karma options" and have it systemically be resolved rather than a request / reminder to manually resolve it.

"You cannot play another dwarf for 12 months" - timeout dwarf 12 months being a jerk and killing people in taverns.



I think there should be better described options on how to gain karma.  Something like 3 examples each - and if one of the examples is "respond to a call for new NPCs in the submissions", then the staff need to make sure they are making submission calls in order for the players to fulfil that requirement.

Adding my voice to the strong belief muls need to be restricted in some way. At least by way of NPC and visible world representation, my impression is that they are an incredibly small and rare population restricted to certain organizations with what's supposed to be rare exception. To keep it brief, muls should be removed from the karma process to be made special-app only. Running into a mul PC in a specific world area shouldn't be, "Oh it's another one. I wonder what it's doing here!" It should be "Wow, it's a mul."

Currently it's, "Oh it's another one," followed by "I guess it's here to kill people."

Quote from: Windstorm on August 04, 2023, 04:51:44 PMCurrently, it's "Oh it's another one."

The same can be said for magickers and sorcerers.

Sorcerers are now highly restricted.

Yet there's always at least one out there causing shit.

If we want to use karma to restrict rare and powerful roles, bump half-giants up to 3 as well, maybe all magickers up by one karma point.

Personally I'm skeptical that the 3 point scale has enough gradation in it for a system like that. I'd like to know what Staff is expecting the Karma system to govern and achieve; it sounds like decisions have already been made.

Quote from: BadSkeelz on August 04, 2023, 04:52:52 PM

Quote from: Windstorm on August 04, 2023, 04:51:44 PMCurrently, it's "Oh it's another one."

The same can be said for magickers and sorcerers.

I'd have to defer to people with better perspective on this than me. Being a mostly-city player, I don't honestly see more than a few that I'd call active in cities I've played in around me at the time.

Rogues and gemmed are entirely different roles and can't really be lumped together in terms of population numbers, but in my experience it's a fairly rare occurrence that even more than 2 gemmed magickers are even in the same room, and sometimes, even online.

I know why players who have been playing for decades will want players to wait before getting their first karma point. In general, I don't think there should be an extensive wait for the first point. Partly because I think players should have a karma point unless they're very new or otherwise troublesome, partly because staff might be able to decide in half the time if a player stands to be a benefit or detriment to the community. Ultimately the six month karma review should stay to lessen the burden on staff, however.

I'm not terribly worried about the karma system personally, because I'm generally happy with staff feedback on my roleplay. While I would like one point for advanced city start role calls, I don't have a persistent interest in playing magical characters. If I want to play a mul, half-giant, or ridiculously awesome antagonist sorceror, I'll make a special app when I have a quality concept or see a particular niche to fill.

I'd like to know why staff think the current system is failing, though.

Quote from: Trevalyan on August 04, 2023, 05:01:52 PMI'd like to know why staff think the current system is failing, though.

There are a few reasons, but I'd quite like to see what players think. I will give one example of something that bothers me, however.

We give karma for meeting certain criteria. One of those criteria is for 'RP', per our guidelines this point is actually pretty easy to achieve and it is usually one of the earliest ones that players will get. They need to show they can inhabit a character, stay IC, use emotes and such.

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.

If we expect our max karma players to adhere to a certain standard then surely that is the standard that the karma criteria needs to require?

We should expect all but the newest players to respect the vNPCs and opinions and to shape their actions accordingly. Either to adhere to them, or at at least go forward knowing they're swimming against the current. If player characters aren't expected to at least react to the wider world, then why have it at all? Just fully empower PC main character syndrome and let them set the tone for the world.

However, Lord knows I've had my misgivings about (v)NPC actions and the staff driving them. Really hard to compete with a character that's effectively immortal unless they're purposefully being set up to fail. vNPCs and how they should be used is a whole other topic of discussion in and of itself, really.

If we return to regenerating chargen points then I think keeping the costs the same as they were is okay, but allow us to regen more chargen points than we can spend at once. This would allow someone to generate multiple premium characters' worth of chargen points over the course of a long lived character. (if we go that route, we should do this)
Imagine a cap of 2x your karma level. a 1k player can gen 2, a 2k 4, and 3k 6. It allows multiple splats on premium characters but a single long term one could recoup the points. This rewards longevity which is something people seem to highly value.

The upgraded subguilds not requiring karma to be picked also is a REALLY BIG DEAL when it comes to removing the perception of karma jail. Now only the people who wouldn't be caught dead playing a mundane will truly be stuck there.

I have many thoughts.

1. Make it a 5-point system instead of 3.
Why:
more opportunity to feel "rewarded" for achievements/improvement.
more opportunity for staff to adjust what goes where if/when the need calls for it, without putting a large chunk of the playerbase in an awkward/unfortunate/anger-inducing situation.
less clumping of so many categories into a single spot.

2. The "first" point should not be for "longevity." ANY singular point should be for longevity. Example:
Someone does an outstanding job playing their first three characters, getting involved, maybe even promoting into a leadership role, proving they understand the game and the roleplay. But they only have 3 months of play total. They haven't earned a longevity point yet. But they HAVE earned a "amazing job + leadership" point. Give them that point. Let them earn longevity when they earn it.
2a: Make that longevity point have some teeth to it. Creating an account 10 years ago and playing for the next two years, then not playing for the following 8 years - means you have no longevity anymore. You lose that point, and need to earn it back. Longevity shows that you've been playing - somewhat consistently for a certain period of time, and are able to get into the current iteration of the game, and flow with the continuity of the current plotlines.  Call it "average of 2 hours per week of ACTIVE play over a period of 6 consecutive months including the current month" should be sufficient to earn that longevity.  People who log in, park their character at the bar, set their script to type "scan on;listen on" every 20 minutes and then go AFK for the next RL hour, and do this every other day for the next six months - don't deserve longevity.

3. Karma-lock dwarves at 1 point. Dwarves are a very niche type of mindset and roleplay need, and it does the game AND new players a huge disservice to hand them the role right off the bat.

4. Find some way to automate the longevity point, so no one has to ask for it - it just shows up when the timer dings.

I know rules and the "letter of the law" are important to Armageddon and the way things are run. It's the only concrete way to ensure fairness and even-handed application of things to all players. But it also makes it hard to establish roleplaying standards, and in some ways I do believe the game needs roleplaying standards.

For example, a higher-karma PC should require a description that includes or describes multiple visible features about the PC. I don't think that's a high ask for a player that, theoretically, has the highest level of staff trust available to the playerbase. But I've witnessed this standard not being upheld, because we don't have that standard.

The example I'll use related to this is templars. From what I can tell, due to past incidents templars are under an extreme microscope by the entire playerbase and the staff. They're expected to do a lot, it's a demanding role, and anything they do right or wrong is subject to scrutiny because they come into the game with a lot of power.

This needs to be applied similarly to any role where a high degree of power is a given on entry into the game. This includes certain high-karma options that haven't gotten the same level of scrutiny.

That said, I also understand that's work for the staff. I wish I had a more magic solution personally, but some degree of roleplaying standards needs to be applied the higher the level of staff trust and inherent coded power one goes. When it's not, the bar gets lowered and frankly, everyone has less fun.

Quote from: Usiku on August 04, 2023, 05:15:14 PMWe 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.

If we expect our max karma players to adhere to a certain standard then surely that is the standard that the karma criteria needs to require?

EXCELLENT point, and one that I think needs to seriously be considered for 2 and 3 karma roles/ races if nothing else changes. If it was up to me-

Temp ban/ permaban: Disruptive influence, toxic GDB presence, or unrepentant code/ OOC abuser.
0 points: Very new player, or someone who staff isn't sure will abuse game code/ world privileges. Not overtly breaking the immersion or using exploits. Possibly still learning game mechanics.
1 point: Able to make characters with good grasp of the world. Can jump into combat clans with an advanced start to save time without being completely clueless in their preferred sphere. Understands the setting and generally respects the code, but may have trouble with unfamiliar roles or spheres. Has gaps in their understanding of game mechanics, but can teach 0 point players the basics.
2 points: Detailed knowledge of the world and etiquette in spheres which they apply to. Can be trusted with advanced abilities, races, and knowledge. Never abuses the game code knowingly.

3 points or more: Extremely detailed knowledge of the world, which they can be trusted to separate from their character's knowledge. Can be trusted with serious magical power/ psionics. This level of player is likely going to be held to the same standard as Armageddon staff, assuming they haven't already joined.

Personally, I'd rather see the Karma roles being enforced, I.E if someone abuses a role, or shows they do not know the racial, cultural, or setting roleplay expected of the race/role/class, talk to the player, and if they don't listen, bar them from that role (temporarily).
I understand that having a system is easier, but adding more hoops to play fun things, will just make some people people not play at all.

I'm going to weigh in, because I feel like there's a lot of things in this post that take time to process. I'm going to run through a few gut responses. And provide 3 potential systems that aren't meant to be complete, but could be thought provoking.

My gut response for right now; Is that Karma as it is, is a dangling reward hook that is both needed and unneeded. And also feels like something that until you have it maxed, takes an inordinate amount of focus away from playing the things you want.

And once you have it, you very rarely consider it. As you earned it and it's just there now.

So in a way, it's needed, it acts as a gauge for player knowledge and RP chops. But also, it's unneeded, as it can ultimately be a distraction from the characterizations of characters you play. And it's possible for a newbie to come in with some real serious chops for RP, for driving plot and conflict, who doesn't discard the world. Who respects VNPC's. Etc.

The whole concept needs a topographical shift in my opinion.

With that in mind.

My gut says there's a vast amount of potential solutions and so I'll focus on just three for right now.

One is just getting rid of it altogether. Double or triple the amount of spec apps for various purposes you're allowed, or maybe categorize them. And allow players to play what they want if they are willing to spec app for it.

You have say, 4 magicker spec apps, 4 racial spec apps, and 3 positional spec apps, a year to play with.

And that feels like it'd be enough. With staff if they don't feel a player is ready to play a desert elf, or if they've seen a player abuse playing a Mul in a way that didn't fit theme. Having the ability to deny, and refund that spec app.

Yes this would be more work on the staff end. But it would allow the staff to contemplate and better fit PC's into their clans and sections of the world.

Second radical shift idea.

Make it temporary. You go through a character, you file 3 bi-weekly reports, it dies horrifically in a massive conflagaration of poison, Guild agents and Kryl, and you give a heavy attempt. At the end of it. Your storyteller and admin get together, and say, "Here's 1 point for this, one point for that, 1 point for good reporting, 1 point for ending it like a badass, you've now got 4 points that will expire after the next 3 characters." You have those point grants max out at 2 points per month the character is played. Up to a max of 5 per character.

You shift around Karma from an unlock to a point buy. Where a touched or Dwarf or Desert Elf costs 1 point. A half giant, thyrzn, or a full guild elementalist costs 2 points. And subguild elementalist costs 3. And the points add up, so you want to be a Thyrzn Subguild Elementalist, that would be a concept you work towards getting the points for over multiple characters all played well. All played consistently.

Third Radical Shift, would just be repeating what others have said so I'm just not gonna elaborate much more, about the whole 3 to 5+ Karma thing. Beyond saying I also believe, that if you go away for more than 4 years, your Karma shouldn't remain. And should be placed on a temporary "hold" if you will. Maybe a knock down to 1 karma.

Quote from: RheaGhe on August 04, 2023, 11:20:44 PMThird Radical Shift, would just be repeating what others have said so I'm just not gonna elaborate much more, about the whole 3 to 5+ Karma thing. Beyond saying I also believe, that if you go away for more than 4 years, your Karma shouldn't remain. And should be placed on a temporary "hold" if you will. Maybe a knock down to 1 karma.

Being put down to 1 karma for inactivity shouldn't be seen as a penalty. Day in and day out on the Discord I hear from people who at minimum haven't played the game in months, if not years. At the point of being inactive for more than a RL year, the admins should enforce a lack of major karma roles/ races until you get up to speed with the new look of the world.

Removing karma from inactive players, while it makes sense in certain ways, may discourage people from coming back after an absence. Given most players of these are adults with real life lives, I just don't think it's a feasible thing to be applied across the board.

I preferred the old karma system. I had 5 back then, the 5th point was rewarded for my gith RP. So..I approve.

As much as I like having as much karma as I have, and as much as I think it will piss some people off, higher graduation (like it was) seems to be the way to go.

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

And by Tek's balls, please don't bring back the karma timer. People still played what they wanted to play, they just made throwaways or straight up left the game until they could. Not to mention waiting 3 RL months and turning up with stats that could suck the life out of a raisin is deflating for everyone.


Edit: RheaGhe's idea doesn't sound bad. If it caught it correctly, having karma be earned on a by-life basis, aka your next character will be entirely dependent on your current one's """""""quality""""""". I'm not sure how to feel about that or what the implications are. It may overwork the STs to hell and back. But its an interesting idea that beckons thought

Quote from: Inks on August 05, 2023, 04:12:01 AMI preferred the old karma system. I had 5 back then, the 5th point was rewarded for my gith RP. So..I approve.

The old system was 8, wasn't it?

There are some good ideas here and it is pretty reassuring to see similar sentiments to staff reflected in the conversation. Some similar ideas have been floated too. I will say that staff time/energy is a big limiting factor, however, and that is something we have to very carefully balance.

less is good, more will put more weight in staff' shoulders on trying to monitor and constantly move players up an down 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. Whereas some other 7 karma players I often seen sparring with turaals bare handed, spamcasting, etc. were ignored because 'uppps, sorry', staff didn't see that happening, what a coincidence. I am against more regulation, more monitoring, more neediness from players to constantly ask for please review my karma. I think the current status of staff handling requests are already putting too much work on their shoulders, and at times it feels like soviet bureaucracy. I just do not want to remain at karma 3 whereas playerXXX is 7 because they constantly ask for karma reviews. More stages mean more prone for error.

Quote from: Usiku on August 05, 2023, 05:19:35 AM

Quote from: Inks on August 05, 2023, 04:12:01 AMI preferred the old karma system. I had 5 back then, the 5th point was rewarded for my gith RP. So..I approve.

The old system was 8, wasn't it?

Yes but 5 karma is the level I played at clearly :P

After reading Najdorf's post I think he is right. Leave as is. Staff can be super judgy and I remember one review where a staff who hated me put every negative account note I had ever recieved in 8 years of playing Arm in his reply which kind of shattered me.

Interesting way to agree with me in a rude way.  8)

I do have to say, I enjoyed being awarded karma without reviews back then. But seems like a lot extra work for staff as Naj said.

Either way really, but having karma removed is always disheartening (mostly valid though but at the time because you were so invested in your PC you can not see it that way). I do wish I had tried more full guild magick options within my karma range back all those years ago but I remember hating my full guild nilazi.

Part of the issue with leaving 'as is' is that we see RP standards as slipping. We want to maintain (or return to) a standard of RP that keeps us deserving of the RPI label. Another part of that issue is that we spend an awful lot of time on player complaints or 'coaching' of players when they do things that don't conform to the standards that our community expect. I would rather see staff spending their time animating with their players and watching and supporting their players (which would allow them to award karma) than be 'coaching' and dealing with complaints. My hope is that a more robust karma system would take care of a lot of the 'keeping up of standards' so that we don't have to keep spending our time doing that.

To summarise.. more time spent assessing for karma is the same as more time spent interacting with players which is what we WANT staff to be doing anyway = less time spent on player complaints and coaching. Potentially for a net positive on time/energy spent for staff.

We get *a lot* of commentary from the playerbase about the behaviour of '3k' players.

It is also my hope that our current staffing team aren't the kind of people that would compose replies that could be 'shattering' to players. I wonder if a karma request system that allows for you to submit a request and get a response (either yay or nay) but opt out of any commentary would work? E.g. A "I want to know if I pass this criteria, but keep your feedback to yourself" option?

That could totally work. I was younger back then and even more defensive. Because many of us pour so much creativity and time and energy into our PCs it can really sting at the time you know?

I've decided to retract my comments for now. My stances on this are well known. I don't think blowing the horn anymore will matter, especially this soon after my return again.

But no sir, I'm not a fan of the karma system.

Another thought - going in a totally different direction. Also very long.

Make RP karma a stand-alone add-on. Allow roles based on the regular karma + the RP karma.

And so - normal non-rp-point karma gets:

0 points = human, half-elf, city-elf, all non-locked mundane classes and sub-classes.

1 point = desert elf, all "touched" mage classes, plus the current non-mage 1-karma-required classes and subclasses.

2 points = to be awarded ONLY if one of the points includes "understanding of magick roleplay" - the mage aspects currently allowed with 2 points. This means they either had to play a touched sub, OR interact extensively with and show understanding of, prior to playing a 2-point character.

3 points = only unlocked IF one of the roleplay points has been awarded within the past 6 months, and is current: mul, all the other current 3-karma magick subs.

Noticed dwarf and half-giant are now missing.  Dwarf now bumps to 1 karma "or higher" and is dependent on earning a roleplay point.  So if they earned the RP point to get their 1st point of karma, dwarf unlocks. If they don't get that RP point until their third point of karma, then that's how long they have to wait to play one. Same with half-giant.

Sorc & Psi MUST have all 3 karma, AND current RP point, AND their "understanding of magick" criteria has to be currently valid to even special app one.


THEN:

Create verifiable criteria for that roleplay point. Make them reasonable. If they spam-craft in the privacy of their own apartment/clan compound, but respond whenever anything happens and "animate" at that time, that's fine.  But if they're spam-crafting in the middle of the road without any tools, no emotes, no thoughts, ignoring people who pass by, making a templar wait until they get the succeed/fail echo - then yeah that's a mark against them earning that RP point.

Starting a sentence with a capital letter, and ending it with some kind of punctuation, should be a standard in the minimum requirements to earn that RP. Even text-to-speech programs provide blind writers the ability to do this, so there's really no excuse to not do it.  This has to do with the flow of roleplay.  We "hear" sentences in our minds, based on how they're written. That drives the emotional investment in the scene.

Engaging others in the scene.  Using "tell" instead of "say", or nesting emotes in our "says" to direct to the person we're talking to. Including other people, other things, in our emotes. Tossing up a think/feel now and then. These are all things that can earn that RP point.

Ability to show a range of emotions with your character. This adds dimension to the character and brings it to life. That doesn't mean they have to be bi-polar! It just means that no one is ALWAYS happy, or ALWAYS upset. Not even dwarves!

Ability to step back and allow others to take the spotlight when the situation calls for it.  Everyone plays for themselves. We all play for ourselves. Otherwise why bother? But sometimes, even though we want to say ME ME ME! we need to say "okay - enough about me. You have ten seconds to make it about you."  I exaggerate but you get the idea. We need to share the spotlight with our fellow players. If I create such a ruckus that no one has a chance to sit and think "okay what do I DO about this" - for hours on end, then I need to learn to step back and give other people breathing room to respond to part A before I jump in with part B.  Even folks who love making fun for others - need to sometimes retreat and allow others to make fun for themselves.

A few things should be kept in mind:

-Systems help prevent and lessen discretionary decisions / bias. People point out good uses of systems here with Longevity -- Making it automatic after either a certain amount of time played on a PC, or longevity of an account (6 months). This prevents people from being overlooked -- I was overlooked for 2-3 years until Sanvean noted one of my PCs had survived a long time, and added 1 Karma to my account.

-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'.

-The Karma system was initially put in place to quantify Staff trust in players. I think many players have felt this was misguided from the beginning -- after all, Staff has many tools besides Karma in reinforcing rules and conversing with a player they find problematic. Docking Karma is unnecessarily punitive in a volunteer environment (for Staff, and for Players). Someone suggested temporary docking that automatically renews after X time -- that sort of system makes more sense to me, rather than permanently knocking someone and expecting them to still enjoy the experience. By now, we have to recognize that bad actors (both on Staff, and in the playerbase) can manipulate a situation to look better or worse for themselves or others, so there have absolutely been poor judgements by Staff on both granting Karma, and taking away Karma.

-I agree that the 3 Karma system was not a successful experiment. Having 8 Karma as a spread was a far better journey as a player, and flattening the system has only put pressure on the steps between 1 and 2, 2 and 3, etc. I played for nearly 15 years and made it to 6 karma, and felt totally fine with that. I felt I was a 6 Karma player, not an 8 karma player. But now, with 1 and 2 and 3 karma, i'm like...So i'm just a 2 karma player? Dunno, it's just weird. Not sure what the impetus behind flattening the system was, but I think it's had unintended consequences.

--

In general, I believe instead of moving to a 'gaining Karma' system, we should move to a 'Special Application' system. This was suggested earlier in the thread as well.

After the Longevity Karma is achieved, one can assume that a Player has gotten a healthy dose of exposure to ArmageddonMUD. Perhaps not everything they will ever know, but most people learn by doing, not by description or osmosis.

I believe that after the Longevity Karma is achieved, more options should become available to the player. Many magickers, races, and advanced start options (but not all magickers, or all races). Perhaps the magickers can only be Gemmed, or if they are rogue, lesser versions of that Magick type.

I'm not sure which would be gated behind Special App only, but I think rarity comes into play (Muls, for example), power (full magickers or the more destructive elements, etc) or exceptional thumb on the scale possibility (Half-Giants, Thryzn, etc).

I would ideally see the cap on Special Applications increased from 2 to 4. This allows people to still 'burn' a Special App on things like Advanced Start, or other options that require a burn of an app, and apply for a concept outside of their current karma rating.

It also accomplishes a few things -- If someone really wants to play a Half Giant, they put thought into an application for one. They take the time from their day to show they are committed to the concept and role, which should be encouraging to Staff. It also provided an opportunity for a player to prove themselves, which is how the old karma system felt. If they do well in a role above their karma grade, common practice dictated they stood a better chance at gaining that karma point. IE, if a 6 karma player did not have Mul karma (7 karma back then), special applied for a Mul and did a great job with it, they would stand to gain 1 karma when reviewed next or when they died.

To make the system less discretionary, most special applications should be approved if they meet minimum requirements, and there is room/space for that PC type. If there are issues with the minimum requirements, those are enumerated to the Player so they can work on certain fields of RP or game world understanding before applying for that role (and it isn't left vague or cryptic). If there is no room for that PC type, they are offered to be put on hold and notified when their position becomes available, or they can choose to apply again in the future and have their special application spot returned to them.

The Karma system could be returned to how it was (either 8 karma, or if you want to flatten it a bit, 5 or 6 karma to provide more movement possibility for players), and for roles over a certain karma threshold, you have to special apply for them and see if there is room available. I think this will help with the Rogue Magicker Pandemic, and cap amounts of available Muls, Magickers, etc at a given time.

As BadSkeelz points out, we need to figure out first and foremost why we have Karma in the first place. Is it something to point to and say 'You're a 2 Karma Player, I expect Better from you' (Which was a quote from Shalooonsh on one of my PCs)? If so, it is a poor power structure for Staff that leans towards negative interactions with the playerbase. Is it a fun mark of how well you are doing as a Player? That is how it used to feel to me before the 3 Karma adjustment went into place -- it felt less punitive, and more interactive with Staff. You had more possibility for having Karma added to your account after playing a well-lived, well-played PC -- Now, given how little movement there is up or down, it reduces the standards required to achieve higher results.

My personal opinion is akin to what Mansa has been requesting politely for a while — Karma should help dictate population control for more rare roles, while also providing reward (mainly reward) to players for jobs well done and opportunities to pursue different more challenging roles.

I think slipping RP is definitely true -- the quality of RP on the game has degraded in the last 10 years. I think we're all getting older and lazier with our RP. I certainly played better 10 years ago. Is it the zeitgeist of the game? I'm not sure.

I think if there were better rewards for good RP, it would go a long way towards encouraging it. Right now there is certainly good rewards for understanding the code of the game, but not so much the RP.

Just to be a saltlord:

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.

Quote from: Trevalyan on August 04, 2023, 06:00:06 PM

Quote from: Usiku on August 04, 2023, 05:15:14 PMWe 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.

If we expect our max karma players to adhere to a certain standard then surely that is the standard that the karma criteria needs to require?

EXCELLENT point

I actually have a lot of beef with this. This as a reason why someone got a pass is very fucking silly. You (general you) are as producers the ones who decide what these bullet points are. How about replace Leadership (which is a crapshoot and only a handful of people get a shot at and often get the same roles over and over) with actually demonstrating taking the VNPC world into account? Problem solved? Like. These bullet points didn't spring into existence from nowhere, and no one is forcing them to remain as they are nor has forced them to remain. At any point they could have been changed to require this. And if you know and I know that this is silly and yet it's remaining, why is it like this?

But I'm also a fan of hot takes. And mine is to completely throw out karma and let people show that they are too big of a jughead to play something via letting 3 player complaints on them in that role seeing it knocked off their play options for a reasonable period (a year, three years, whatever) until they can ask for a review after having shown they're not being like that anymore and maybe they can handle it now (so special app, and if it goes well, you get the option back). And if the option proves too many out of the available pcs, (a. figure out why b. rebalance other options to make them more appealing using similar principles, and c. impose a reasonable cap, not 2 unless it's a nilazi or something but maybe 5 or 6).

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.

If it's me, open a request today about my behavior. Let's chat.

1. Constantly opening conversations with players to hash out issues with their roleplay is something we would rather not have to do. It's unpleasant and it's draining. Having a system in place that explains to players the standards they should be adhering to that also helps encourage them to keep to it is definitely preferable to having to have these kinds of conversations with players. Those are not fun for anyone involved.

2. Yes, we can change it. And that's what we're doing right now, we're looking at how to change it. We're not just going to tack on more and more criteria to karma each time something comes up that doesn't work right because we have to consider the impact on the whole system. So we take our time to try our best to do things properly and really think things through as a team.

3. Dealing with player complaints and talking one-on-one with players about behaviour are two of the most draining and time consuming parts of staffing, these are things we seek to minimise by trying to encourage players to play the game, according to the standards long upheld by the community, with less staff hand holding. So we can do more stuff like animations, running plots, building stuff you guys dream up and so on.

p.s. No one got a pass. Please refrain from assuming that we do 'very fucking silly' things. But these situations highlight the flaws in the karma system when we have to deal with them.

Karma system is okay. Roles that can walk into the game and kill anyone they want from the start should be gated, imho. The problem comes when players don't trust staff to be fair judges of karma reward. I'm not criticizing staff or players, btw. No matter what the spread is, 0-3 or 0-8, maybe GAINING karma should be automatic (by meeting some standard like time and/or longevity of PC's) and only the taking away part should be done by staff with a transparent reason. This would take the burden off staff of rewarding karma, and removal of karma would be such that the player would understand the specific reason so they could correct their behavior.

Quote from: Usiku on August 05, 2023, 03:25:12 PM... according to the standards long upheld by the community ...

I've been playing ... what ... 10+ years now ... and I have never seen consistent standards. I have seen a guy do XYZ a hundred times and then I do it and boom .. the vNPC community comes alive and 10 HG soldiers teleport in. I've seen staff say "you shouldn't do this ... the vNPC ..." and I'm like, "What vNPC? It's an empty rooftop at night. The vNPC isn't in the room description or echoes." And the answer that came back was, "a guard on the wall saw you."

vNPC community largely means whatever the individual staffer wants it to mean at any given time. There's no consistency there. If you see me doing something that's against the vNPC community and you echo down to me IC then I'm going to respond IC and change my behavior.

Recently a comment was made about me being in a location I shouldn't have been. The staffer didn't notice my emotes about sneaking in, they didn't notice all my emotes about hiding, struggling to not be seen, etc. What they saw was a 'ding' alert when I failed sneak on the way out and they commented on it as if I hadn't done any of the other things.

I'm saying your roleplay standards are going to be incredibly fuzzy if you don't talk to people about it in advance, and if you change the karma and AGAIN I lose options that it took me 10+ years and several bitter staff who were blocking me leaving the game in order for me to earn them ... then it's going to feel like punishment out of nowhere.

I would like to echo Miradus' concerns about consistency. I, too, have seen instanced where "we didn't see someone else do it, but we saw you, so you get to be punished".

Maybe take a Tuluki look at it and stop 'punishing' people and just try to correct them. Don't take things away until you've had a talk with the player and they've given you reason to pull their ability to play a dwarf. Don't just say "You keep abusing dwarves and now out of nowhere you lost dwarf as a race".

Also, crucially, it shouldn't be "one point of Karma per criterion mastered" but it should be particular ones that have to be achieved. Maybe you're real good at longevity and leadership, but you suck at realizing the vNPC world exists. Maybe you cant get "beyond 3 karma" until you prove you can hit that benchmark?

So less gut reactions this time, and responding to a lot of the critiques so far.


The current system is flawed, because it's inconsistent, because it not just wants, but requires staff coaching, and often times, as Miradus pointed out, staff don't have full knowledge of a situation. Adding to Miradus, there's a time recently where I've pointed out, a basic policy regarding spam selling that I knew from my time as a GMH member. I tried to offer it ICly, and then when I couldn't find the words to explain the mechanics, I explained it bluntly OOCly. I got told to send in a request to make sure this was actually a policy. It was, and I got an apology from the staffer. But it still was an example of no staffer being fully knowledgible on all systems.


In Miradus' staff reaction there, he likely should have wished up before doing a scene like that, and got given a go ahead that at least someone was watching. Not talking about it from a critiquing Miradus standpoint. But rather as a reinforcement that these types of common behaviors should likely be included publicly in Karma review process.


This is the give and take of an RPI. Staff involvement must by necessity be heavy, because the consequences of things being done without staff/GM's knowing about it is... Severe.


Especially in a game as chaotic and where consequences are as permanent as arm.

I fully believe that Karma should flow freely in both directions, and quickly, of the systems I proposed before, I prefer the temp karma point buy the most.

I think given the shorter hopefully term of it. That work would be reduced on staffers ends.

And it adds neatly into the already good cycle of, "Report how you died and why, and leave the forums you got access too" loop that death already has in Arm.

Now instead of that report on how you died and why only really being a factor at 6 months, 1 year, and 1.5 years played, with a mass of other reports. Needing to be reviewed in a single Karma review, and then hopefully never again without a player complaint. It's a factor each time a character dies. And a formal moment that a player should EXPECT coaching. Within limits, I think staffers should be able to play fast and loose with it. It should be something that's quick, easy, and not require as extensive of reviews as we have currently.


You also have the opportunity to shut off the tap as it were as a method of corrective action.

Someone fucked up bad, but not in a ban worthy way? "We're removing your ability to spend or earn karma until a staff vote allows you to do so. You are still welcome in the game. You may submit mundane character concepts, but your abuse of mechanics in this instance warrants a severe breach of trust. And notably impacted others play in a negative fashion that didn't occur through natural processes of RP. In X months you'll be able to ask for a manual review. Please don't take this as a point to die on. We like you, we like your RP. We just need to guide you down a more constructive path, and don't feel like allowing you more high power concepts will let you do that at this moment. In X months, please ask for a review."

Final note and I'm sorry to double post like this.

A big thing to consider from the staff side.

On one end you have Complacency and on the other, scale.

I have people I've tried to recruit to the game, who looking at the rules for the higher end concepts said, "1 and a half years?! Nah, I ain't gonna cap to that. Seems like a lot of work just for a fucking video game. Soun's like it's gon be an old boys club." if the scale is too long, many will leave before the opportunity to be weighed.

And on the other end, you have complacency.

When you have played 100 characters, your RP will suffer, because complacency will set in. It's lost novelty. And your mid brain stops dialing in the focus 100%. It may be that these players were full on 10 karma or whatever players back at character 30, but now that they're full on 3 Karma players, they are tired. And have grown complacent.

There's a good quote from Karl Jobst on youtube about speed runner who submit illigitimate runs. I'm going to butcher it here to apply it to this game.

They are often some of the best Roleplayers in the game, they know they are capable of this level of play. They just have grown tired of the time, and commitment it takes to perform on that level. And so they take what they view as shortcuts.

My solution is the same it's always been.

1 and done: You either know the game setting and can be trusted not to abuse dangerous mechanics, or you aren't trusted enough yet.

Maybe call it something else like "Security Clearance" I dunno.

Then make Karma temporary. Lets staff who notice people doing neat stuff tack it on, and then let that karma be spent on skill boosts for your next guy.


This would let staff reinforce better rp, and reward people for putting in effort on things.

I also think it should be rewarded for consistent good emoting. Maybe cap it at 2 points. But make it an easy 2 karma to get because staff love to watch/be in scenes. Which would promote more of it.

I see a lot of ideas for changes on points, criteria, roles, but I'd kinda like to know what karma even is supposed to do and mean.

I was not here when the system got added twenty (fifteen?) years ago, but even as I joined the MUD in the early 2010s you could see that it was wonky. Something notionally about staff trust awarded to a great deal of players who just got oodles of theirs because a staffer threw it their way. Constant tinkering with options down the scale. To this day I don't really know what it's all supposed to be for.

Is it a measure of staff trust? The median player has been with the MUD for maybe ten years now. I would very well HOPE that even half that time is plenty to establish some trust. Do we set three quarters the playerbase to max karma since they've spent half their lives here? I'm not necessarily opposed if so, but that is an argument you have to actually stand by then, and it is one hell of a daunting cliff for the few people who are indeed new showing up.

Is it a means to limit rare and powerful roles? If so, is it a good way? Can we think of no other such mechanisms? Do we have to gate that by an opaque system that has been abused more often than not?

Is it about encouraging RP? Whose RP? Do we tell someone who brings an extremely entertaining stoneworker to life they can now toss around lightning? Do we tie it to kudos received(please don't)? Do we keep the cyrrent system, where writing an eloquent karma review request is the meta-game? Armageddon is a MUD where the game's culture makes feedback on anything IC extremely difficult.

I ask this genuinely: what is karma supposed to even measure? What do we have it for, inertia aside? What problem does it solve, are the tradeoffs worth it, can we do better?

As long as we don't talk about questions like these, a thread like this is going to be one with many confused people and little clarity.

My actual thoughts are complicated, and mostly err on the system not having ever worked that well and one of the probably-goals (keeping high-power roles rare) just working out less well in 2023 than it did in 2003. We aren't a freshly ex-hack 'n slash MUD any more, the playerbase doesn't lean as new, as inexperienced. I'd much prefer the system be scrapped, and that we had other safeguards in check than to whitelist some oldbies and pray things work out thereafter

Quote from: Usiku on August 05, 2023, 08:38:49 AMPart of the issue with leaving 'as is' is that we see RP standards as slipping. We want to maintain (or return to) a standard of RP that keeps us deserving of the RPI label.

Can I ask what about the RP has been slipping? Just generally?

the standards for a max-karma player should be really high and require a great deal of scrutiny from staff before achieving.  that is my contribution to this conversation.

Ultimately if Karma is a measure of staff trust, I would argue that the level of RP is indicative of the expectations that have been successfully communicated to the playerbase by staff.

How many players have been taught something by another member of the Community just to eventually get ripped apart over it by someone in a position of authority within the Community?

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."

Don't want to "constantly open conversations with players"?  Improve your publicly available, expansive, and comprehensive expectations.  If your expectations aren't publicly available, expansive, and comprehensive you should probably work on that.

Keep seeing the same performance over and over?  Update your Lore and documentation to cover the issue and do a public release on it informing everyone of the new expectation. 

As far as I'm concerned Karma, is staff's rating of how well a player has learned a system that is literally designed for them to not know, or do well in.   The fact that this is a "don't ask don't tell community", combined with it seeming to be run by folks who are specifically trying to find ways to not have to interact with players, I can't imagine how the quality of RP is going to improve without a change in the information flow. 

To answer the OP, I think karma in its current and past iterations is a needlessly hierarchical system, especially considering the size of the playerbase. There is very little need to distinguish between two players whose roleplay is high-caliber when one may have different slightly experiences than the other, or simply better luck when asking for a karma raise. This was just as true when the game had more players than it does now.

Many other roleplaying games assume trust based on a player's compelling interest in a role. Newer RPIs and MUSHes will more or less allow you to play characters as codedly powerful as a sorcerer or psionicist here, or as socially powerful as a noble or templar, by simply demonstrating that you understand what will be expected of you in the role. This is achieved by writing your plans for the character in the application, writing about what you feel you can bring to the game in this role, and promising frequent contact with staff. These games have few to no problems with griefers or otherwise poor-quality roleplay because the players of these roles work in parallel with staff to ensure they're always a net positive for the game. In the unlikely event that ceases to be the case, the character is simply retired - or in the case of games with rosters, the character may be given to another player.

Armageddon and several other RPIs do the opposite, and assume no trust until players go through the rigors of proving that they can be trusted. As seen in the past, this proof is only as sound - or as faulty - as the judgment of the staff member or members involved in determining a karma increase or decrease. Karma is simply not a good indicator of trust, not a good indicator of player skill, and not a good indicator that a player is contributing positively to the game. There are low-karma players who deserve more recognition, but simply don't receive it because they never get the roles they need to demonstrate that they deserve it. There are, as evidenced by the upheaval earlier this year, high-karma players who use the trust they acquired as a cover to earn a position on staff and be abusive from there. Karma is awarded, oversight is minimal or non-existent until complaints are raised, and then karma is reduced. This is not a system concerned with roleplaying quality, but with rewarding players and denying rewards more or less arbitrarily.

Put simply, karma as a system has always had faults. I don't think there is a way you can change the karma system to be "less" faulty - it will simply retain some old faults, and change some other old faults for new ones. Any karma system is going to be unfair, and I think trying to reform the system is basically a question of "how unfair should it be?" when really we should be striving for a system that is fair.

But if we really must have a karma system, the fairest possible karma system is one in which all karma is awarded solely on a basis of time playing the game actively (ideally automatically), and in which it is reduced solely due to poor conduct.

[/quote author=CirclelessBard link=msg=1095928 date=1691325688

But if we really must have a karma system, the fairest possible karma system is one in which all karma is awarded [/b]solely [/b]on a basis of time playing the game actively (ideally automatically), and in which it is reduced [/b]solely [/b]due to poor conduct.
[/quote]

This is what I said (see above) +1

Quote from: Usiku on August 05, 2023, 08:38:49 AMPart of the issue with leaving 'as is' is that we see RP standards as slipping. We want to maintain (or return to) a standard of RP that keeps us deserving of the RPI label. Another part of that issue is that we spend an awful lot of time on player complaints or 'coaching' of players when they do things that don't conform to the standards that our community expect. I would rather see staff spending their time animating with their players and watching and supporting their players (which would allow them to award karma) than be 'coaching' and dealing with complaints. My hope is that a more robust karma system would take care of a lot of the 'keeping up of standards' so that we don't have to keep spending our time doing that.

To summarise.. more time spent assessing for karma is the same as more time spent interacting with players which is what we WANT staff to be doing anyway = less time spent on player complaints and coaching. Potentially for a net positive on time/energy spent for staff.

We get *a lot* of commentary from the playerbase about the behaviour of '3k' players.

It is also my hope that our current staffing team aren't the kind of people that would compose replies that could be 'shattering' to players. I wonder if a karma request system that allows for you to submit a request and get a response (either yay or nay) but opt out of any commentary would work? E.g. A "I want to know if I pass this criteria, but keep your feedback to yourself" option?

I also wanted to write a separate reply to comment on this sentiment specifically. It's understandable and commendable that staff want to improve the quality of roleplay in the game. I think that the current karma system is actually unrelated to roleplay quality, however. There is no objective standard of "good roleplay" beyond that which the staff and players of the game prefer. This is because the game does not direct players to play in any particular way. If you ask ten random players here what good roleplaying is, you will get at least ten different answers, as evidenced by the rotation of arguments over the decades about purple prose vs. simple emotes, whether emotes are or aren't RP, how to take vNPCs into account, how magic should be treated, etc.

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.

I'm going to flat out say I don't like this proposed change at all for multiple reasons and will be deleterious instead. It won't really fix the problem for reasons already specified by others - if some people still want to get away with bad behavior, they'll still do it knowing that staff is too stretched for time to police or have discussions with players for behaving poorly. You'll just have complaints about the behavior of 5k or 7k players doing dumb shit instead of 3k players and have it go largely unacted upon. Meanwhile, the barrier to entry for current 3k roles for newer players is just going to become increasingly time gated and cause frustration (and possibly turn away said newer players) because we're all tired adults (or at least most of us) and who has time to chase an increasingly distant goal?

Do away with it entirely if what we have now doesn't work. As Circleless Bard mentioned, most other RP games either trust you with roles or they don't (or they ban you). Give everyone x number of special apps per year to apply for anything that isn't a role call or a sorc/psi app. If the special app is reviewed and found to be compelling enough by the staff to give the okay, then great. Perhaps capping the amount of each type of non-mundane, non-basic races (humans and breeds - dwarves should be also put into the special app purview) would help. If someone has a thing for abusing a certain type of race or magick, then temp ban them from it.

Also, Circleless Bard has another excellent point. With the expectation of what constitutes "good" RP so subjective - even from different staff members, not to mention players - there really needs to be a document which defines what they wish to see. What is good, what is bad, what is explicitly necessary and what is amazingly sucktastic. The Karma system isn't going to achieve this. It would require too many ideally objective decisions by staff on something that is inherently subjective - to get a better idea, it would require something like ALL of staff to make a decision on every player's bullet point, and that would be a heavy load indeed.

Quote from: CirclelessBard on August 06, 2023, 08:41:28 AMTo answer the OP, I think karma in its current and past iterations is a needlessly hierarchical system, especially considering the size of the playerbase. There is very little need to distinguish between two players whose roleplay is high-caliber when one may have different slightly experiences than the other, or simply better luck when asking for a karma raise. This was just as true when the game had more players than it does now.

Many other roleplaying games assume trust based on a player's compelling interest in a role. Newer RPIs and MUSHes will more or less allow you to play characters as codedly powerful as a sorcerer or psionicist here, or as socially powerful as a noble or templar, by simply demonstrating that you understand what will be expected of you in the role. This is achieved by writing your plans for the character in the application, writing about what you feel you can bring to the game in this role, and promising frequent contact with staff. These games have few to no problems with griefers or otherwise poor-quality roleplay because the players of these roles work in parallel with staff to ensure they're always a net positive for the game. In the unlikely event that ceases to be the case, the character is simply retired - or in the case of games with rosters, the character may be given to another player.

Armageddon and several other RPIs do the opposite, and assume no trust until players go through the rigors of proving that they can be trusted. As seen in the past, this proof is only as sound - or as faulty - as the judgment of the staff member or members involved in determining a karma increase or decrease. Karma is simply not a good indicator of trust, not a good indicator of player skill, and not a good indicator that a player is contributing positively to the game. There are low-karma players who deserve more recognition, but simply don't receive it because they never get the roles they need to demonstrate that they deserve it. There are, as evidenced by the upheaval earlier this year, high-karma players who use the trust they acquired as a cover to earn a position on staff and be abusive from there. Karma is awarded, oversight is minimal or non-existent until complaints are raised, and then karma is reduced. This is not a system concerned with roleplaying quality, but with rewarding players and denying rewards more or less arbitrarily.

Put simply, karma as a system has always had faults. I don't think there is a way you can change the karma system to be "less" faulty - it will simply retain some old faults, and change some other old faults for new ones. Any karma system is going to be unfair, and I think trying to reform the system is basically a question of "how unfair should it be?" when really we should be striving for a system that is fair.

But if we really must have a karma system, the fairest possible karma system is one in which all karma is awarded solely on a basis of time playing the game actively (ideally automatically), and in which it is reduced solely due to poor conduct.

This encompasses literally all of my thoughts, including the ideal of what the karma system would be and how it would be allocated if it must be something that is kept, and why it is something I /don't thing we SHOULD keep.

Now that the Karma discussion has moved from discussing possible changes to the abstracted realities of karma. I'm going to post a few things, flaws and benefits to the karma system in concept as it currently is.

Flaws
1. Communication is important. Communication is very important. However, as a flaw Karma reviews don't provide a corrective action at onset, and often, regardless of behavior, it's not worth the drama that bumping someone down Karma would bring.
2. Karma is relatively public. If you're playing something that requires Karma, it's pretty obvious you have that or near that karma. This provides an attack vector on anyone criticizing that players behavior.
3. Sociologically you've uplifted these people and given them a higher 'status' of sorts. And that can lead to entitlement.

Benefits
1. If done correctly, it could provide a solid set of standards for expectations of staff on player.
2. If done correctly, it could serve to modulate and enforce variety.
3. If done correctly, it could serve to motivate and inspire action to fit those standards.

That said, the flaws are currently present as those are more easily observable on a player side, the benefits are vaguely present.

But those are obvious, less obvious, is how do you make it a meaningful change? As many have said, most any tweak to the system, barring foundational discarding and rewriting of the concept. Will just be SSDD, same shit different day.

This means as staff you have decisions to make.
Notably the ones I see from a design perspective. And largely these will echo @Patuk's points but more succinctly and numerously.

Who do you target these changes towards?

That should be the first question. If you're trying to create an old boys club, then do so, many like that aspect in games. Are you trying to uplift newbies, train them, guide them, and create standards for everyone? Then why have those standards be gated by Karma? I'll get more into this later.

The second should likely be,

What do you want to accomplish with the karma system as a whole?

This sounds almost like a different angle of the first. And it is. Do you want a strict rigid requirement system, where you have to seriously, and dedicatedly consider every players actions, and if they match to your set of Karma requirements. That sounds fucking fury inducing to me personally. Or do you want a system that flows smoothly, where you glance over players, and mostly trust them to do as they will, except in cases where they step beyond where they're supposed to be?

the third should be,

Where do you see it in 1 year, in two years, and years later?

And you should evaluate these expectations yearly with your team. We said we wanted it to work like X in a year. And it's getting there, or not getting there. What do we do now? Do we revert, do we try another option, etc.

The final question is one you've likely answered already,

But why are you making these changes and why you've answered as you have?

Because if you don't know why you've done these things, perhaps more thought needs to go into them.



So I've touched on what staff should be doing. What about players?

I'm not going to admonish anyone in particular. But this holding 3 Karma players to higher standards is fucking ridiculous. Spoken as a zero karma player, Everyone should be held to the same standard, excepting fresh newbies just getting into the game. And in a certain regard, 3 karma players should not have any more standards held upon them than a 0 Karma player. Karma to me isn't a rank, it's a measure of adherence to, experience with, and knowledge of a system. Everyone makes mistakes, judging a 3 Karma player's actions as any worse than a 0 karma player's creates an atmosphere of bickering. Decrying they should know better, is exactly one of the issues I pointed out with the Karma system at present.


Expanding on the idea's I brought up earlier. It would also be possible to work advance start stat/skill boosts into a temp karma system. And I kinda like that. As I feel a lot of the problem that more experienced players have is that they've done the grind to midbie and beyond probably 6-80 times before. They don't want to do it again, and honestly, I don't believe they should have too. Having an accelerated start option that applies a template of experience based on your current class. And having it cost 2 temporary karma points in the system I brought up. I think would be good to alleviate a lot of feelings of grind.

I think that sometimes you just find a class/character/race that just fits. You like it a lot. It's a niche that you are able to find a lot of joy with.

Sometimes, for folks, it's a half-giant or a mul. Or a dirty stinky nasty gick.

Players play from one D-elf clan to another, a lot. Cause they love D-elves. And each clan feels different while still keeping the arrogant and speedy-footed shit.

Half-giant and mul are polarizing, so a lot of the characters seem redundant. And I'm not sure if that's a player issue or just a race issue.

DWARF: okay, I think dwarf should remain zero karma. While the other 0 karma races are good, the dwarf is unique in it almost being a character study. Anyone who attempts to take on a dwarf has my respect. And I think a lot can be learned from those trying the race or interacting with them.

HOWEVER: City elves, that's a race I think you either need to be in a clan to do, or have a guide. They are tricky and isolating when no one is around. And if a new player rolled in as a C-elf? How long do they usually last?

Quote from: RheaGhe on August 06, 2023, 04:56:38 PMBut this holding 3 Karma players to higher standards is fucking ridiculous. Spoken as a zero karma player, Everyone should be held to the same standard, excepting fresh newbies just getting into the game.

It's a little more complicated than this just because higher karma roles can do things lower karma roles cannot.

If, for example, you are a templar, you could theoretically walk down a street in your city and murder almost every PC you see. If you are a mul or a magicker that can immediately go around destroying people with inherent coded power, you do have a responsibility to use that coded power with responsibility.

That, to me, is what "karma" or however one would title trustworthiness-with-coded-power should represent: taking the game environment and even the enjoyment of other players, the health of the game and the community into account. Not just going about flexing, killing, looting, or living out a personal murder/power fantasy. More karma doesn't mean you have to play differently, but coming into the game in an abnormally high-powered role should come with expectations of that role being used to express great roleplay, not just express a high strength score or superkillmove via nondescript player killing that no one but the killer enjoys.

That isn't how it exists currently, and I think that's what this thread is about. I do otherwise agree everyone should try to hold themselves to certain standards without having to make the staff - who already have to do so much - monitor it. How to do that exactly, though, remains elusive.

Quote from: Windstorm on August 06, 2023, 08:24:25 PM

Quote from: RheaGhe on August 06, 2023, 04:56:38 PMBut this holding 3 Karma players to higher standards is fucking ridiculous. Spoken as a zero karma player, Everyone should be held to the same standard, excepting fresh newbies just getting into the game.

It's a little more complicated than this just because higher karma roles can do things lower karma roles cannot.

If, for example, you are a templar, you could theoretically walk down a street in your city and murder almost every PC you see. If you are a mul or a magicker that can immediately go around destroying people with inherent coded power, you do have a responsibility to use that coded power with responsibility.

That, to me, is what "karma" or however one would title trustworthiness-with-coded-power should represent: taking the game environment and even the enjoyment of other players, the health of the game and the community into account. Not just going about flexing, killing, looting, or living out a personal murder/power fantasy. More karma doesn't mean you have to play differently, but coming into the game in an abnormally high-powered role should come with expectations of that role being used to express great roleplay, not just express a high strength score or superkillmove via nondescript player killing that no one but the killer enjoys.

That isn't how it exists currently, and I think that's what this thread is about. I do otherwise agree everyone should try to hold themselves to certain standards without having to make the staff - who already have to do so much - monitor it. How to do that exactly, though, remains elusive.

I can certainly agree with some aspects of that.

But as an example to my point. A slipknife mixed with any decent combat or wilderness stealth class would be an incredibly potent mixture. And require no karma. Should they not also have a responsibility to engage in great roleplay as well?

Why put the onus of that requirement on JUST 3 Karma players? That requirement should be on everyone. No exceptions, except perhaps newbies who might not understand the MUD they are entering.

Yes, a 3 Karma player has more access to fuck uppable things. But that neither reduces nor increases their requirement to roleplay well.  It is just the same as my own, when I play a particularly high power mundane. In my opinion.

Edit: Put another way. Hold everyone to the same standards, and don't enshrine a pedestal too any one particular variety of player.

I do agree with Windstorm that Karma as it now stands is more of a gateway to trust with coded power, which really seems to be far different than RP standards. Yes, your slipknife can get quite lethal, but it will take far more time to train up to that point as opposed to a mul or a HG which can smear people out of the box (or a gick which will take more time to get to that point but can do a lot of things a mundane cannot).

Again, Karma=/=RP, which is why it's a bad metric for it. Expanding the scale won't help. It will still be a gate to coded power which will still be abused.

This isn't even getting into the very sticky mess of perceptions of favoritism which was the cause of many complaints so recently (past the ickier things). Something like awarding karma will always come with a level of distrust and accusations of favoritism. It seems like this would be an ideal "wipe it clean and come up with a new, better system" situation.

Quote from: whengravityfails on August 06, 2023, 08:55:14 PMI do agree with Windstorm that Karma as it now stands is more of a gateway to trust with coded power, which really seems to be far different than RP standards. Yes, your slipknife can get quite lethal, but it will take far more time to train up to that point as opposed to a mul or a HG which can smear people out of the box (or a gick which will take more time to get to that point but can do a lot of things a mundane cannot).

Again, Karma=/=RP, which is why it's a bad metric for it. Expanding the scale won't help. It will still be a gate to coded power which will still be abused.

This isn't even getting into the very sticky mess of perceptions of favoritism which was the cause of many complaints so recently (past the ickier things). Something like awarding karma will always come with a level of distrust and accusations of favoritism. It seems like this would be an ideal "wipe it clean and come up with a new, better system" situation.

Agreed on all of that.

It is a system that is needed in some respects, and as it's implemented now, not needed at all, as it's cost is greater than it's benefits.

I'm pointing out the absurdity that the system creates as well, when I say that you shouldn't treat 3 Karma players any differently. Because the system itself conflates itself towards that.

A scrapping of the general concept and rework into a system that would be functional to do as the GM's wishes describe would be the ideal. There is no need to cling to a mistake any longer than the realization of it.

Off to work a 13 hour shift. See you lovely people when I can. Next week includes between 43 and 50 hours of work at least.

What about yearly per player account Karma nominations?

This would change the currency from being Staff driven to player driven — it would be in the form of a request, and a more verbose sort of player kudos.

Staff already does a yearly "Valenkudos" during February — why not do something similar for Karma nominations?

One per account — you make a case for someone to gain karma due to their play of a PC. You point out instances of their RP, and maybe even areas of potential improvement, but mainly why they deserve more karma.

This also excludes the nominator having any idea what a player's current karma might be — maybe they are max already. But maybe they have none, and this nomination puts them on the map.

Ultimately, yes, there is probably a way to game this. But Staff would be the arbiter rather than the nominative party — they just take under advisement player recommendation for karma addition.

I definitely think it's important for staff to have a system for documenting a player's understanding of the game and their trustworthiness with positions of power (codedly or socially).

If karma is that system, then yay.

The biggest take away for me after reading this thread is the need for having known guidelines detailing what kind of rp standards all players (especially high karma players) ought to be meeting.

*** one thing to note:

I think it's very important that people aren't shunned or punished for not meeting these standards right away (or ever) or for not executing them perfectly. Not everyone is going to be an amazing story teller and that's ok! All players deserve to experience great role play and an interactive environment regardless of their personal skill or creative abilities.

I don't think tenure has that much value for karma discussions, there are folks who have been here 10% of how long I have who add more to the game's structure.

And people seem to conflate the ability to create drama with the ability to run with other's plots and plans while still remaining in your lane.

Quote from: Usiku on August 05, 2023, 08:38:49 AMPart of the issue with leaving 'as is' is that we see RP standards as slipping. We want to maintain (or return to) a standard of RP that keeps us deserving of the RPI label. Another part of that issue is that we spend an awful lot of time on player complaints or 'coaching' of players when they do things that don't conform to the standards that our community expect. I would rather see staff spending their time animating with their players and watching and supporting their players (which would allow them to award karma) than be 'coaching' and dealing with complaints. My hope is that a more robust karma system would take care of a lot of the 'keeping up of standards' so that we don't have to keep spending our time doing that.

To summarise.. more time spent assessing for karma is the same as more time spent interacting with players which is what we WANT staff to be doing anyway = less time spent on player complaints and coaching. Potentially for a net positive on time/energy spent for staff.

There are two problems as far as I can see them after reading this thread:

1) Your playerbase has vastly differing, and often completely irreconcilable, ideas of what the karma system should be used for. They feel strongly about it because karma unlocks "interesting" character options, and often the more powerful races/ magicks.
2) A major impetus for changing the karma system is actually the coaching system, which theoretically doesn't link to karma at all.

If staff members don't like coaching people, all I can say is "well, don't DO that." If the overall game base is really determined to critique roleplay, allow a system of anonymous player feedback where staff can just relay comments until one party stops wanting it anymore. And if the players don't care, maybe staff should examine how much effort they want to expend on changing player behavior. Do what you enjoy doing. Watch the players, see what they do, and put notes in their player files to see if other staff agree with your takes.

Secondly, if you want players to more generally adhere to acceptable behavior, then fix the documentation. Let's focus on help files available in game or on the web site for now: a lot of players do not understand the basic code, never mind the full emote code. Without the GDB they would have zero chance at developing adequate combat characters, never mind good ones. Some if not many functions of the code are just about invisible: there's no HELP THEFT guideline for explaining stealing RP. And the Thief's Bible, which is quite pleasant as a whole, mentions NOTHING about vNPCs. Instead of repeatedly having to duplicate effort in educating players, simply put up help files. The GDB is an absolute nightmare of conflicting expectations, cruft from previous staff that no longer applies and perhaps never should have, and some of your documentation sections either need to be completely purged or built from the ground up. Ideally, players could put up versions of the files on the GDB, with the most liked/ helpful versions making it to "official" status.

This isn't focused on the karma system, but I'm beginning to think karma isn't your actual problem here. Reducing staff work on player coaching and bettering RP standards is what you actually want, and karma can be considered to be incidental to that. I personally like my player coaching and enjoy regular feedback when it's not solely negative. That's probably down to having very active, intelligent, and ultimately benevolent staff overseeing me. And while I don't have any karma, I'm not actually interested in it either. Good notes on my account should justify my mul Legionary more than any number of points should.

There is a lot of content in this thread so apologies for not reading all of it.

I think having a system that punishes *abuse* or very poor RP that negatively impacts other players is more important than trying to evaluate good RP.

Because evaluating RP is hard.

For that reason some basic thresholds to gatekeep options that can grief the game, with a more granular system of option timeouts is what I'd look at.  ie "no more elves until they actually read the elven docs"

PS let's all start at 0 and have a big RP competition wouldn't that be fun (edit to note this is not a serious thought)

There are quite a few players here that have been playing RPG games for 20+ years that would probably give the big finger to anyone who critiques their RP. Therefore, as mentioned in a few posts above:

1) karma should be awarded automatically, and taken away ONLY with full transparency as to the reason.
2) if a staff member decides someone should be docked karma, at least two other staff members should have to review and agree.
3) No one that has been playing this game for RL YEARS and gained karma is going to want to start at 0 again.

I know there are a few players in this game that enjoy playing low-key, mundane roles that don't stir the pot. IMHO, those players are just as capable of adding to the game and playing their role well and should not be punished for it.

Quote from: Gentleboy on August 06, 2023, 05:13:50 PMI think that sometimes you just find a class/character/race that just fits. You like it a lot. It's a niche that you are able to find a lot of joy with.

Sometimes, for folks, it's a half-giant or a mul. Or a dirty stinky nasty gick.

Players play from one D-elf clan to another, a lot. Cause they love D-elves. And each clan feels different while still keeping the arrogant and speedy-footed shit.

Half-giant and mul are polarizing, so a lot of the characters seem redundant. And I'm not sure if that's a player issue or just a race issue.

DWARF: okay, I think dwarf should remain zero karma. While the other 0 karma races are good, the dwarf is unique in it almost being a character study. Anyone who attempts to take on a dwarf has my respect. And I think a lot can be learned from those trying the race or interacting with them.

HOWEVER: City elves, that's a race I think you either need to be in a clan to do, or have a guide. They are tricky and isolating when no one is around. And if a new player rolled in as a C-elf? How long do they usually last?

I'm this way with Aide roles. as I've once said 'I love being a Nobles HP."

But when it comes to karma reviews, the fact I play these High-rp, High political, high knowledge based roles is used against me because I haven't played much demi-humans. The last time I did a karma review I was 4 or 5 RL months into playing a VERY active noble. And was told "You don't play enough elves and such."

But demi-humans literally can't play the roles I enjoy playing the most. While I am at no point trying to say we need to change this. But the built in IC racism does make it so some people might shy away from picking those roles. And for some fairly good reasons that you shouldn't need to think to hard about to find.

I'm all for urging people to play more Demi's. But to require someone to play something that doesn't appeal to them due to less to actually do, or RL reasons, or a myriad of other reasons, in order to play other roles that  I do (i think I would make a really good HG player IE, and I've always wanted to play a Drovian) seems backwards.

Some random thoughts on having a higher number of karma point (8 points, 10 points, 500 points, whatever)


Background:

The original karma system was put in place and billed as "a measure of trust that staff have of the player to play more difficult or high-powered roles".  Eight points were decided on and sorcerers and psionicists were put there and anyone could just play one if they had the karma.  It was our first version of the system and wasn't really more involved than that - a trust issue.

The 3 point system was introduced later and with it a list of criteria.  A very important thing to know about the 3 point system was that the -intention- was for most all players to eventually be able to get to 3 karma.  The karma decay timer was added to help prevent people from just playing muls or high-powered mages over and over, and psi's/sorcs were make specapp only to limit them.  What seems in my observations to be the case is that most people (with some exceptions) don't really buy into the notion that "most all players should be max".

There are several issues that staff in general have with the 3-point system.  Because the scale is so small, staff are reluctant to give karma and take it away, at least after 1 karma.  Because so much is at stake when a point is removed, it's pretty rare that it happens and the emotional impact that has is high.  Adding a point is a whole discussion thread and the player has to meet multiple criteria to the point where some folks are denied because maybe they didn't play a leader before, or some other single criteria.  As a result they're not allowed to play several options that they could conceivably do well.

Taking one away is equally as traumatic.  I'll be honest here and say that a lot of times things slide because removing karma is such a time and emotional sink.  People complain about each other "this guy shouldn't be playing 3 karma roles!" and want us to remove it from the other player.  But they fail to realize we won't just haphazardly remove it.  We have to talk to the player, have long discussions about it.  We -often- get a lot of emotional push-back, the player doesn't think it's fair, and it just turns into this big ordeal.  And that is emotionally and mentally draining on staff, much less how the player feels.


A higher-scale system:

Pros
- It's easier to award because each individual rung of the ladder has less criteria than a 3 point scale
- It's easier to remove because each individual rung of the ladder has less options that a player loses
- More opportunities for staff to 'award' for good RP
- More opportunities for staff to 'correct' for bad RP

Cons
- More staff involvement required in watching players
- More staff time spent adding/removing the points
- More staff time spent in working with players who lose karma
- People don't like change

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.

One issue we had long ago with the 8 point scale was that different staff had different ideas in their mind when a point should or should not be added/removed.  This led to inconsistencies, accusations of favoritism, accusations of persecution.  The biggest benefit to the 3 point scale was that it was added with a list of well thought out criteria, that was an attempt to try and make it more fair and evenly used.  If we moved to a higher scale of points, we should absolutely bring the concept of the spelled-out criteria with it.


Combine the two systems?

A combination of the old and new systems might work well.  More points to allow more granularity with the criteria of the lower point system.  Instead of having to hit 3 criteria for a single point, you have to hit 1 for the next point, or something like that.

You deal with the issue of staff workload by enabling individual staffers the ability to award and remove karma without a full review process required - at least at the lower levels.  But there is a well-defined list of criteria (like now) that they still have to stick to.  For example, Talia the Storyteller sees Amos doing well in his RP in regards to elves, so she can just give them one on the fly for "racial RP" without having to consult anyone else.  After a certain karma level, then maybe it would require an Admin+ to sign off on.  At the absolute highest levels, then it requires a senior staff consensus.

In theory the impact is much smaller, whether adding or taking away, so staff would be more willing and enabled to make changes.  In theory.

Note:  This text-dump is all just my opinion, and does not necessarily mean this is how things may go.

I think there's a couple things here.

Is soandso trustworthy, yes or no? Most people can agree on this.

How trustworthy is soandso? < and that's subjective.

I think if there has to be a karma thing, it should be binary, they have either shown that they're trustworthy or they've shown that they haven't. You can make it relatively recent, let's say in the past 6 months. Then having karma reviews for every 6 months doesn't change. It doesn't increase staff work, if anything, it decreases it. I feel like you are going to continue having endless problems of time sink and friction and back and forth as long as you continue to try and objectify something subjective (the quality of roleplay and HOW trustworthy someone is, rather than just if they are generally trustworthy).

Start everyone whose accounts are a year or older with karma set, and let them keep or lose it at the next karma review time, and let new people get their karma automatically when they've been playing long enough, keep it until the next review time and then either keep it or lose it subject to what they've done with it in the meantime the next time it's time for a review. KISS. Keep it Simple, Stupid. It's a classic for a reason. (Sidenote, I'm talking about the KISS philosophy, not attempting to call anyone names).

Quick edit to add, thank you for laying that out, @Halaster. That's appreciated.

Quote from: Halaster on August 07, 2023, 11:12:35 AMA higher-scale system:

Pros
- It's easier to award because each individual rung of the ladder has less criteria than a 3 point scale
- It's easier to remove because each individual rung of the ladder has less options that a player loses
- More opportunities for staff to 'award' for good RP
- More opportunities for staff to 'correct' for bad RP

Cons
- More staff involvement required in watching players
- More staff time spent adding/removing the points
- More staff time spent in working with players who lose karma
- People don't like change

The entire post by Halaster is a good write-up, and I want to highlight this part in particular because IMO the cons outweigh the pros by a significant amount - and not just of a more scaled karma system either. A less scaled karma system decreases the cons but the cons still exist. So the karma systems as they have been implemented throughout the game's history all carry these cons to a degree.

From what I have seen staff write in this thread and on the GDB in general, they want to spend less time policing/judging players, and more time positively contributing to the game's code and story. At the same time, players want staff to spend less time with staff acting as that inconsistent judge of RP and more time positively contributing to the game's code and story. It seems reasonable from that angle alone to say that the karma system as implemented currently or previously is not serving the game in a positive way. It serves to drain time away from staff who have to maintain the system, and time away from players who are taking years or in some cases decades to earn the complete trust of staff, if they ever do at all.

By extension, any moderate changes to the karma system - the number of rungs on the ladder, the amount of time and experience required to climb each rung of the ladder, what it takes to go up or down a rung - doesn't change the fact that it's kind of an old rickety ladder that's a PITA to maintain.

If, as stated before, staff want to improve the quality of roleplaying in the game, that needs to start with staff outlining what they actually expect players to do. If we are like an "interactive, collaborative story" as the website's front page says, then I think having some basic guidelines for collaboration in the context of characters with different coded/social power levels would be more useful than deciding how players' roleplay should be evaluated.

Quote from: CirclelessBard on August 07, 2023, 12:16:58 PMstuff

I'm not against the idea of a higher-point karma system, 8 or 10 points.  I just like to try and think about it and lay it out all and weigh the options.  If we can potentially solve (or more realistically lessen) the cons, then I'm fine with a change.  As you alluded to, it boils down to weighing the pros and cons.

I think a critical first step is to define what we want out of a revised karma system and what its goals are.

Do we want most players to be at max karma?  Or do we want only the best RP'ers at max karma?
Do we want karma to gatekeep high power?  Roles that are difficult to play well?  Both?

Honestly? I hate the idea of gatekeeping power. The only people who have it are going to be people who are in power, staff and people who are viewed (rightly or wrongly) as having the favor of staff. Which means that every time they fuck up it looks bad on staff and brings into question whether or not staff are showing favortism, or what the judgement is. Especially for people who enjoy those type of roles (objectively do not abuse them) and yet are gatekept away from them for any number of reasons that can range from simple oversight to social anxiety preventing them from feeling comfortable to asking for points to actual malice or worse.

The only way gatekeeping power makes sense and doesn't call into account the judgement and rubric and all of that is if it's done by time or a rigid guideline that does not leave room for someone behind the scenes to cut the legs out from under the player without their defense, or uplift another without people knowing. Until then, I absolutely understand the endless chorus of people complaining about their objections of '3k players' - I bet that most of the ones doing it aren't '3k players' themselves? I am endlessly cynical though. I think that roles that are currently sponsored roles should be capped and apped into like desert elves are, with higher caps, like 3 in each house, @Halaster just to let there actually be a variety of concepts and ecosystem of the roles. Let there be the same with whoever, you know? Let people show with their play that they can't play something rather than the other way around, after they've been around for a few months and have a general idea of the setting. I think it'll make things more interesting and bring people around and add to the world.

I want to note that the "criteria" addition for karma was well before the flattening to 3 karma.

It wasn't one and the same.

Quote from: Halaster on August 07, 2023, 12:39:59 PMI think a critical first step is to define what we want out of a revised karma system and what its goals are.

Do we want most players to be at max karma?  Or do we want only the best RP'ers at max karma?
Do we want karma to gatekeep high power?  Roles that are difficult to play well?  Both?

I think defining the best RPers is going to have the problems all art criticism does. If it's done on a checklist, people will try to be confined to that checklist without taking narrative risks. If it's subjective, you have all the issues of favoritism/ cliques that such systems inevitably endure.

Then again, I also think that karma would be at its best simply gatekeeping the most powerful coded roles for people who would use them for the betterment of the game. Some fantastic RPers are not emotionally equipped to deal with constructive criticism, let alone deal with major crises from a leadership position, and such people probably shouldn't be trusted with major coded power. Conversely, some people who can absolutely make the game more interesting as leadership PCs are either mediocre roleplayers, or have additional controversial issues. Sometimes both at once. Either way, if staff want to keep most players from rolling muls, or sorcerors, or mul sorceror ninjas, by definition you shouldn't want most of the playerbase at three karma. And if most special roles/ races have to be spec/ role apped, it defeats the coded point of the karma system as anything but a scoreboard.

Also, keep the lower end of the spectrum in mind. Armageddon needs new players to develop, but if people spend six months at zero karma despite regular engagement with the world and no major issues? Either:

- they're incredibly patient and supremely confident about their role (not likely)
- they're new and simply haven't made enough of an impact to be noticed (often)
- they had previous issues with the staff and are not at the same level of trust

Without an indicator of staff trust, a lot of these zero karma players will simply go elsewhere if they don't feel like they're being recognized.

More encouragement of roleplay instead of less is a good thing and I would totally support staff doing something like this, coming from other avenues to Armageddon I sometimes feel like the RP can take a backseat due to the overstretched staff at times, it would probably be much better for the game to have more feedback back and forth, even if it's stressful at times, it's better than not saying anything, and someone has to or it's not fair on the people that are relying on the hope that things are being kept clean and fair, it's better to encourage those people than an atmosphere of "anything goes", right? :)

RP can only exist when everyone is treated to the same standard, and "maxed out" people have to worry as much as anyone else, so making up and down major pain points is probably not a good way to keep people motivated I think, rather than resting on their laurels once they "got it" - and it would encourage a better standard, a lot of us have those stories of sorcerers acting in cheesy ways etc but staff seemed to recognise that and try to take steps to make it less "raider new game+++ mode" so things are definitely getting better, but obviously it's not just sorcerers

QuoteHere's a log from July 5 2019

QuoteThe Storm's End Spice Den [N, S, W, U]
    At a black silk pillow, you overhear the swarthy, dark-bearded man say in tribal-accented sirihish:
         "I was there to appreciate and nearly bid for the Drov piece.. I've seen your talent."
    At a black silk pillow, you overhear the dusky, feline-eyed woman say in an unfamiliar tongue, settling back into the pillow again with a grin:
         "oqatu oia. m'vq pyljiyu il re oyreny, oitge omo'uc eu qyaos mna mehlmimoeom ul lyna."
    Reconnecting...
    Reconnected.
    You notice: The swarthy, dark-bearded man's eyes flicker from a brief, distant look, back to the dusky, feline-eyed woman.
    You notice: The dusky, feline-eyed woman's gaze searches over the draperies above as she looks away from the swarthy, dark-bearded man.

These players were literally reacting to the OOC message of Someone has reconnected. I know at least one of them absolutely knew better, but part of the problem is having "roleplay is required" in the rules is very vague and messages like that should have on the end to make it clear, so people can't abuse gray areas: (OOC, do not respond to)

QuoteOne thing also to consider though is that it also can be bad for RP if there's one person staring around/ logging all chat and all Sdescs that go in and out of the tavern (I've seen some people do this at city gates even, which feels really unfair since it's frowned upon to take action against AFK/linkdead characters) and make people avoid that tavern if there's someone idle bot-logging everyone that goes in/every conversation

Quote from: tiny rainbow on March 29, 2023, 11:04:40 PMIf staff can get punished for doing things that don't break the rules, surely players should be too, isn't that fair, what's wrong with that Patuk?

If you look at https://armageddon.org/help/view/Rules it says under 1

QuoteFailure to roleplay and disregarding documentation can result in warnings, karma reduction, storage of your character, and temporary and permanent bans.

Hard to say without knowing what you did though? But I know people do tend to do cheesy things a lot so I have that concern as not a lot of staff are willing to enforce RP rules (and it's something is needed for the game to support people that are not code-focused, they need that protection against mindless twinkery stuff or no one wants to play in cities etc)

Maybe we just need a better https://armageddon.org/help/view/roleplaying on what is bad RP (I've said this a few times before all this but no one listened to me just like everything else, haha)? There's a lot of situations that can be hard to place and especially not always clear for newer players

⚫ Don't post things that people can use to identify your current character, the reason for this is to keep the sense of mystery and drama with the game's story, and protect players from OOC peer pressure or coercion:
• Don't post publicly about roles you are applying for or character applications - if you have a question, make a request on the website.
• Don't post comments, pictures, or videos that refer or allude to something that is currently happening or recently happened IC, for the obvious reason that it's often easy to narrow down who posted it.

⚫ Due to how the game mechanics can use keywords for The Way, don't refer to exact keywords when your character is speaking IC: For example when speaking to a Templar that "the rugged, unshorn man" stole from you: Don't say "the guy that looked unshorn" because there are many people in the game world that would fit that description, so it would not realistically work to pick out someone in a crowd or The Way. Instead say something like "The guy had a beard" (and any other details or clothing from their LOOK description).

• Similarly, if someone is wearing clothes that cover part of their body in the description (for example a mask, while their long description says their cheek has a tattoo), do not refer to the things that your character can't see. Armageddon does not have disguise code, you are expected to roleplay realistically what your character would know.

⚫ Don't use Contact to check if someone is online. Characters that are unavailable due to being offline is an OOC mechanic, and IC characters can be still contacted while asleep or working etc, so roleplay around that.

That kinda stuff. 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)

Quote from: Riev on August 07, 2023, 01:18:38 PMI want to note that the "criteria" addition for karma was well before the flattening to 3 karma.

It wasn't one and the same.

Thanks I wasn't 100% sure as the change from 8 to 3 karma happened during my 14 year hiatus. :)

Quote from: Fredd on August 07, 2023, 09:27:13 AMdemi-humans literally can't play the roles I enjoy playing the most. While I am at no point trying to say we need to change this. But the built in IC racism does make it so some people might shy away from picking those roles.

Oh Little jozhal in Luir's (https://farside.link/invidious/watch?v=rY5LFpGdYvE&t=26s) proved that ABSOLUTELY wrong come on. A lot of Sun Runner characters were very successful politically :D Just make a character application for <sponsored merchant role> in the Sun Runners.

Re:  Staff spending time to recognize 'good roleplay sessions' to give karma.


Perhaps we could deputize players with high karma and allow them the ability to 'tag' characters that they thought 'had a good session', like roleplay points or something.  This could be logged similar to the 'idea / bug / typo' command.   Similar to Kudos, but in game, and can help staff members recognize good sessions.
It doesn't have to echo to the target player.


The downside would be that it takes a few moments of OOC paperwork for players to 'tag' another with some sweet RP juice.

I believe other online roleplaying games have something similar, but I'm not exactly sure the mechanics and how often it gets used.

While I typically steer clear from restricted roles, including psi/mul/sorceress, the advent of the new subguild system has further solidified my preference for 0 karma mundanes. My objection for such big scale changes is for my fellow players, because we have repeatedly seen in the past, when things change at this magnitude, it creates more detractors.

Someone who is now 2 karma being cut off various options will start having resentment, because s/he will end up 2 or 3 in a scale of 5. You might argue you will TRY to be as reasonable as possible in initial allocation, but that is NOT enough, even if you loose 2 3 players there, it is a hit to the game. I believe such is a churn risk that the community should refrain from taking.

I'm not fundamentally opposed to the 8 karma system; my issue lies in drastic changes. When the shift from 8 karma to 3 occurred, I expressed similar apprehensions.

What I claim is, proposed change from 3 to 5 promises only marginal benefits. Prove us otherwise so we can better understand.

- Noble / Family roles are already restricted & based on role call.
- Psionics and sorcerers are already restricted and lately based on role call.
- Having 3 scale to 5 and setting psions and sorcerers 5 is utterly useless because they are already restricted roles.

So what is the actual, functioning design here that could be better than current state? Is it only about magickers / muls and HG? And just to reflect my opinion on how subjective is magick scaling, thus it is pointless to spread is to a broader scale: Consider Ruk empower. Is it less powerful than a 3 karma role? Or does it require lesser RP standards? Definitely not to my standards. For instance, the constant ignorance of Rukkians about the earth trembling, causing potential earthquakes, even doing them in their apartments, is sickening to my RP standards. A Drovian is much easier to play because it is less sensitive to the environment.

And lastly, the idea of let's tackle the issue of identifying who is a better player first, then we can see how we will allocate karma options will be the worst idea ever. If we are in an island and there's only coconuts to eat, it is pointless to allocate open buffet golden stars to people. It will only cringe people who will get lesser stars.

Quote from: tiny rainbow on August 07, 2023, 03:10:33 PM

Quote from: Fredd on August 07, 2023, 09:27:13 AMdemi-humans literally can't play the roles I enjoy playing the most. While I am at no point trying to say we need to change this. But the built in IC racism does make it so some people might shy away from picking those roles.

Oh Little jozhal in Luir's (https://farside.link/invidious/watch?v=rY5LFpGdYvE&t=26s) proved that ABSOLUTELY wrong come on. A lot of Sun Runner characters were very successful politically :D Just make a character application for <sponsored merchant role> in the Sun Runners.

That does sound fun. Let me add that to the 'to-do' list.

Quote from: Halaster on August 07, 2023, 02:14:24 PM

Quote from: Riev on August 07, 2023, 01:18:38 PMI want to note that the "criteria" addition for karma was well before the flattening to 3 karma.

It wasn't one and the same.

Thanks I wasn't 100% sure as the change from 8 to 3 karma happened during my 14 year hiatus. :)

Not so much a Halaster dig, but just for the conver-sensation we have here that the idea of tying Karma to a set of criteria was before the flattening and included everything it does now, but it all was 1point of karma each.

When we flattened it, suddenly that became a list of criteria you could be judged by, but you could get to 3 karma and not embody half of them.

Quote from: Riev on August 07, 2023, 04:49:44 PM

Quote from: Halaster on August 07, 2023, 02:14:24 PM

Quote from: Riev on August 07, 2023, 01:18:38 PMI want to note that the "criteria" addition for karma was well before the flattening to 3 karma.

It wasn't one and the same.

Thanks I wasn't 100% sure as the change from 8 to 3 karma happened during my 14 year hiatus. :)

Not so much a Halaster dig, but just for the conver-sensation we have here that the idea of tying Karma to a set of criteria was before the flattening and included everything it does now, but it all was 1point of karma each.

When we flattened it, suddenly that became a list of criteria you could be judged by, but you could get to 3 karma and not embody half of them.

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.

Quote from: Brokkr on August 07, 2023, 05:55:05 PMI 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.

Makes sense, but doesn't everything that karma stands for essentially boil down to trust? Trusting the player to RP well, to take the world into account, to take care with sensitive knowledge about the game, etc.

QuoteGiven 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.

Is there a particular reason why a number on a scale is preferable to account and character notes? It seems that notes would be a more detailed form of memory storage than where someone is on a karma scale.

I guess I'm a bit confused, since it simultaneously seems like staff find the karma system useful while at the same time being miffed that it takes so much to maintain that system, to the point that it degrades the relationship between players and staff.

Quote from: CirclelessBard on August 07, 2023, 07:39:41 PM

Quote from: Brokkr on August 07, 2023, 05:55:05 PMI 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.

Makes sense, but doesn't everything that karma stands for essentially boil down to trust? Trusting the player to RP well, to take the world into account, to take care with sensitive knowledge about the game, etc.

Some may view it that way? I view it as behavior in the past, used as a predictor of future behavior. That takes the very loaded term of trust out of it. And while past behavior is a fairly good predictor of future behavior, as the small print says in the investment world, Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Quote from: CirclelessBard on August 07, 2023, 07:39:41 PM

Quote from: Brokkr on August 07, 2023, 05:55:05 PMGiven 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.

Is there a particular reason why a number on a scale is preferable to account and character notes? It seems that notes would be a more detailed form of memory storage than where someone is on a karma scale.

I guess I'm a bit confused, since it simultaneously seems like staff find the karma system useful while at the same time being miffed that it takes so much to maintain that system, to the point that it degrades the relationship between players and staff.

The same reason similar things are used all over the place. While I could give you the idea behind the difference between a BBB and BBB+ rating, using that scale is a quick differentiator that lets a whole bunch of people know very, very quickly what they are looking at, with generally understood subjectivity in the scale.

Quote from: Brokkr on August 07, 2023, 07:58:46 PMThe same reason similar things are used all over the place. While I could give you the idea behind the difference between a BBB and BBB+ rating, using that scale is a quick differentiator that lets a whole bunch of people know very, very quickly what they are looking at, with generally understood subjectivity in the scale.

And with the karma system, staff pay for that relatively minor convenience with all of the major flaws the karma system entails, as Halaster mentioned in his earlier reply and Usiku alluded to in the OP. This is after all of the rigorous testing the karma system has been put through over the years, demonstrating all of the same flaws it has today.

If the goal is to "maintain high standards at the top end" of the karma system as Usiku put it in the OP, then why are staff relying on a system that demonstrates past behavior when the goal should be to get assurances for future behavior - something that, with the karma system, can only be achieved through coercion (telling a player they will lose karma if they don't behave this or that way)?

Surely there are better ways to come to a mutual understanding between player and staff regarding what is expected from a given role, given how many roleplaying games do not use a karma system at all yet maintain a high quality of roleplay and minimal to no griefing.

For reference:

QuoteArmageddonMUD operates a Karma system designed to open up the more complicated, powerful and RP challenging roles to players. Karma is simply a measure of trust that the staff members have in a given player's:

    Degree of maturity and responsibility as a role-player, as evidenced by playing roles realistically and acting responsibly with the code.
    Knowledge of the game world, and an appreciation of the way in which the various races, guilds, and so on, interact.
    Role-playing skill, as evidenced by role-playing in such a way as to show that they are really involved in the game world, and also enriching the game world for other players.

The karma file itself does mention that karma is a measure of trust that a player has role playing skill and acts responsibly to code.

It USED to be one criterion per karma, Brokkr. I did not say it did now.

It would be nice to have more mundane options for karma, like experienced crafter, experienced grebber, dune trader with a (small) wagon, etc...
Also, I don't much like the players having a say in who gets karma. There should be a list of of checkpoints and if you meet them, you automatically get the karma. It would reduce time that staff has to worry about it, favoritism wouldn't be an issue.

"Some may view it that way? I view it as behavior in the past, used as a predictor of future behavior. That takes the very loaded term of trust out of it. And while past behavior is a fairly good predictor of future behavior, as the small print says in the investment world, Past performance is no guarantee of future results." Brokkr


Let's run with this train of thought shall we? In the past.  How has staff performed when given power?  Love how trust only really matters one way, I personally don't trust them to manage a system where Karma is easily lost, without being abusive.  Any consideration to systems of checks and balances going in here for Karma droppers?

Sounds like a future of only people who don't ask questions, and do exactly as they are told by Staff get Karma.  With a little bit of, I don't like how you're responding to my player report responses so I'm also docking you a karma kinda thing.  0 Karma for life.

Massive thumbs down from me.  People skills should be necessary for handling the player population, not bigger sticks.  We are playing Armageddon, not supposed to be living in it.  I'm less concerned with if changing the Karma system improves RP and more concerned of it's likelihood to be abused.  You know, based on "past behavior is a fairly good predictor of future behavior."

Let's try our best to keep snark at manageable levels in this thread

I ask questions a lot and people know I'll try warn when it seems like something fishy is gone on, and I don't have that many problems really? I think I am probably one of the ones where it means more me saying that considering I uncovered the #moderator-chat leaking etc? I think the problem at the moment is not staff anymore but with the players :

Seen a lot of muls and maybe 2 interesting characters in that, same number for giants, seen a lot of minimum-length character description magickers that don't really have much impact on plots/the world other than casting spells it seems like. That to me is a warning sign, that something went wrong somewhere?

I would rather there are checks and balances than it just being completely hands off? More regulation of stuff is what a lot of people have been saying for years now with all the comments about these kind of characters, it's what a lot of people have said they want at this point?

Quote from: tiny rainbow on August 08, 2023, 09:09:28 AMI ask questions a lot and people know I'll try warn when it seems like something fishy is gone on, and I don't have that many problems really? I think I am probably one of the ones where it means more me saying that considering I uncovered the #moderator-chat leaking etc? I think the problem at the moment is not staff anymore but with the players :

Hi,  Lead moderator here.

#moderator-chat leaking happened within the first two weeks of player moderation, 2023/03/30, and discussed with the full moderation team, and a policy was created to prevent such things from happening again. 

The player affected, tiny rainbow, was apologized to.

The "leak" was when a player moderator said to another player, who isn't a moderator, in a private chat.
"Tiny Rainbow sure does create all the moderator reports in discord and on the GDB, complaining about all the other players and how they are breaking the rules and the moderators aren't doing their job."

The internal discussions were about "How does a moderator moderate, and still remain an active member of the community and speak with their friends, and what is allowed to be shared with other players about 'the ongoings behind the curtain' of actual moderation."

If you believe this has happened after the policy was introduced, please create a request in the request tool under 'General Discussion Board - Complaint or Appeal'.  If you're referring to the same incident from 2023/03/30, it has already been actioned and resolved. 

Honestly mansa I would say that the way the whole point of that sentence seems to have just kinda wooshed over your head there is probably a good reason why you shouldn't be in this kind of position?

(the point I was making is that even though I was harassed by a member of your crew who was NOT "actioned" in any way and is still a mod, it's common sense for literally anyone in that kind of role to not do stuff like that
- I was using that as a point to say that even in that position, I still think that things are getting better)

And if you're going to repost lies about me:
I didn't create "all the moderator reports", there was someone saying they were going to report every post by me in one thread, so I did the same about the posts they made which broke the rules. The player who they were talking to was the one who had been making lots of insulting posts breaking the rules, while saying they were going to report me. While the moderators ignored those posts and one-sidedly warned me.
(This mod was mansa)

It seems like a lot of people don't trust staff, and want Karma to be automated.

I'm... Yeah I guess that would work for me. At least then I can work for it and know I will actually get it.

It seems like they're really trying to make an effort to deal with problems and talk things out more, an automated thing wouldn't be good because you can't automatically detect good RP it has to be a human at some point (chatGPT style stuff is not that good yet) - having more discussion would be good I think and the key thing is to just make it so people can talk without worrying about talking and that way bad things get dealt with instead of getting bottled up

You could still work for it and get it if there's a person, you shouldn't feel bad, I've seen your posts and you seem nice :) Just need to make it less of a scary formal thing probably for some people to not feel as put off from making comments

Quote from: Fredd on August 08, 2023, 11:55:59 AMIt seems like a lot of people don't trust staff, and want Karma to be automated.

I'm... Yeah I guess that would work for me. At least then I can work for it and know I will actually get it.

I don't trust a human being to be objective. Period. I don't trust anyone to be completely objective with anyone. I think sometimes when someone tries to be very ethical they might try to outsource their judging but that that is still suboptimal to not having to judge at all when things can be objective. (and with problematic results dealt with as they happen)

Quote from: dumbstruck on August 08, 2023, 12:37:40 PM

Quote from: Fredd on August 08, 2023, 11:55:59 AMIt seems like a lot of people don't trust staff, and want Karma to be automated.

I'm... Yeah I guess that would work for me. At least then I can work for it and know I will actually get it.

I don't trust a human being to be objective. Period. I don't trust anyone to be completely objective with anyone. I think sometimes when someone tries to be very ethical they might try to outsource their judging but that that is still suboptimal to not having to judge at all when things can be objective. (and with problematic results dealt with as they happen)

This, combined with years of staff having too much to do already, is where I'm at. When it was 8 karma, there were 8 criterion one had to achieve. If you were found to no longer be adhering to that criterion, you COULD get docked. The issue was whether you were being docked because StaffA didn't like you, and HighlordB didn't care one way or the other but trusted StaffA more than any other player.

Boy its sure good we're gone from those times.

Quote from: Fredd on August 08, 2023, 11:55:59 AMIt seems like a lot of people don't trust staff, and want Karma to be automated.

Speaking for myself, I don't think this is really a question of trust or lack thereof in staff, but rather the level of trust in the karma system specifically and how players and staff will end up interacting with it.

It seems like staff basically want the karma system to give a reasonably accurate indication of the quality of roleplay a player will bring to the table, but it currently doesn't do that well enough for them right now, indicating a lack of trust in the system on staff's part. And players want the karma system to be accessible so that otherwise-overlooked players actually get a chance to play higher-tier roles, but the system doesn't do that well enough for them, indicating a lack of trust in the system on the players' part.

Having karma increase automatically with time aids players in achieving roles, but does not aid staff in detecting high-quality roleplay. It only gives them something to deduct in the event that they feel the caliber of a player's roleplay does not match the karma they've accrued. Like with the current karma system and the past karma system, an automated karma system just places the staff in the position of being the "bad cop" all over again, which historically burns through staff teams and creates a sort of brain drain from the playerbase.

What I think the goal should be is a game that does not need a karma system to achieve a healthy collaborative roleplaying environment. Ideally, every player should understand that the goal of the game is to contribute to a shared story. Players should understand that their in-game actions have ramifications on that story, and they should be held accountable in the event that their roleplay only serves to grief a player or the shared story. If that ideal can be achieved, then any player can be trusted to play any role, provided there are suitable guidelines for the role and there is enough room in the game for that role.

Quote from: Brokkr on August 07, 2023, 05:55:05 PMKarma 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.

While I'm grateful that this perspective is out in the open, it's why staff will have a very hard time persuading players to take karma reductions amicably, and why reducing karma to zero will be a relatively extreme solution. From this perspective, you'd be obliterating all institutional knowledge of a player who could have been with the game for years.

Given that karma has such an importance to the staff, it doesn't terribly matter what function it has for the players.

I don't think anyone ever suggested reducing anyone to 0 so I'm not sure where this concept has come from. If there are any changes to the karma system, we would be aiming to transpose.

I have things to add, re. the purpose of karma but I need to come back to this conversation when I have a bit more time to give it the attention it deserves.

I think any tiered system is going to foster resentment and mistrust for people who are higher on the ladder.
I don't think playing a mul, by the docs, is inherently more difficult than playing a city elf, by the docs, if you read the documentation and can stick to it. Karma should be automatic, based on time played and that's it. Once you reach the top, that's it. No deductions except for egregious cases. Put a limit on muls at any given time, magick users, and half-giants too maybe. Maybe one mul per person a year as well.

Quote from: Classclown on August 08, 2023, 09:28:56 PMI think any tiered system is going to foster resentment and mistrust for people who are higher on the ladder.
I don't think playing a mul, by the docs, is inherently more difficult than playing a city elf, by the docs, if you read the documentation and can stick to it. Karma should be automatic, based on time played and that's it. Once you reach the top, that's it. No deductions except for egregious cases. Put a limit on muls at any given time, magick users, and half-giants too maybe. Maybe one mul per person a year as well.

There are players who haven't read the docs. Or have read them, and have trouble understanding the intricacies. Or have read them, and choose not to stick to it, and prefer to play the "exception" without ever demonstrating that they understand the rule. Why should they automatically be granted the karma to play those characters, then?

Why should someone who does understand and stick to the docs, NOT get the karma to play those roles, just because the automated system hasn't kicked in for them yet?

I much prefer a subjective system to an automated system, for that reason.

Turn down "exception" applications for any pc. Play by the docs or not at all. Exceptions should be spec app only, which are limited to two a year.

I haven't read this entire thread, so apologies if I'm repeating a point someone else may have already made, but from my perspective Karma should have three main goals:

• Promote good roleplay
• Promote being a trustworthy player with the use of powerful characters
• Promote being a good member of the community (or at least not a bad one)

With these goals in mind, I believe the following things:

1.  Having more levels of Karma is beneficial, as it's more reactive and doesn't 'cap out' quickly.
2.  Karma levels should be largely based on in-game behavior, but repeated bad behavior on the GDB, Discord or other channels should absolutely count against someone.  There should be a consequence for being an asshole in this community, even if your character is anonymous whenever you make one.
3.  Karma for roleplay should grantable by other players, not just staff.

Two major reasons for using primarily players to determine Karma increases.  1)  Encourages consistency, no matter who is around you, because everyone can reward you.  2)  Creates more frequent positive feedback loops for good play.

With that said, here's my proposed structure for a system:
(https://imgur.com/a/hC1J6S1.png)
https://yourimageshare.com/ib/Ee4GOmGunF (my picture won't work for some reason?)

Core concept is there are 4 trust tiers that are controlled solely by staff.  These trust tiers determine the maximum Karma potential for an account, and will only be up for review periodically.  The first tier is very easy to get, the last tier is not.  Designed to allow staff to only act as the gate keepers infrequently, rather than requiring constant intervention and maintenance.  They set the limits, rather than policing the system entirely.

How far up an account climbs within the potential is determined by players and staff (but mostly players).  How exactly we allow players to 'vote' or 'grant' Karma is a separate design discussion, but I kind of like the idea of having a slowly refreshing pool of fractional karma points available for players that they can grant to others in-game or via the request tool via Kudos.   Accumulate enough of these "points" (perhaps at an increasing level) and your account 'levels up' to the maximum set by your trust tier.  Players should easily be able to see how many Karma points they've accumulated, so they get a surge of warm fuzzies when they realize they've been granted some more points and are progressing towards the next level.

An account can only lose Karma levels (or points that build up to levels) only by staff intervention.  This can come as a result of player complaints, their own observations of bad roleplaying, or for severe cases by having a 'trust tier' lowered which would restrict the account to a new maximum Karma level.

Quote from: Lizzie on August 08, 2023, 10:57:27 PMI much prefer a subjective system to an automated system, for that reason.

Any proposed system that requires subjectivity on the part of staff is going to continue to fuel resentment and cries of favoritism. Put simply, players will continue to wonder why they get passed up for karma increases and special/sponsored roles while other players are getting those things if they don't personally see any good reason for it. And even an "automated" karma system is subjective because there will most likely be a mechanism to allow staff to reduce karma manually.

Additionally, neither a subjective system nor an automated karma system do what staff apparently want the karma system to do: accurately depict a player's standard of roleplaying. In fact, no karma system can do that, because the karma system has never been able to do that. It has mainly assigned scores to players on the basis of how often they ask for a karma increase, and their luck with attaining a wider variety of roles than other players (such as sponsored roles), regardless of what the criteria for karma increases ostensibly is.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but I really have to reiterate that Armageddon is in the extreme minority of RP games that tier its players the way the karma system does. Almost every other RP game does just fine assigning roles to players on the basis of what they bring to the game's collaborative story and routine communication with the staff and other players to ensure the community is having fun. I sincerely do not see why the karma system is seen as necessary to keep and reform, or why a karma system is preferable to regular OOC check-ins with players and staff.

Quote from: wizturbo on August 08, 2023, 11:45:29 PMI haven't read this entire thread, so apologies if I'm repeating a point someone else may have already made, but from my perspective Karma should have three main goals:

• Promote good roleplay
• Promote being a trustworthy player with the use of powerful characters
• Promote being a good member of the community (or at least not a bad one)

With these goals in mind, I believe the following things:

1.  Having more levels of Karma is beneficial, as it's more reactive and doesn't 'cap out' quickly.
2.  Karma levels should be largely based on in-game behavior, but repeated bad behavior on the GDB, Discord or other channels should absolutely count against someone.  There should be a consequence for being an asshole in this community, even if your character is anonymous whenever you make one.
3.  Karma for roleplay should grantable by other players, not just staff.

Two major reasons for using primarily players to determine Karma increases.  1)  Encourages consistency, no matter who is around you, because everyone can reward you.  2)  Creates more frequent positive feedback loops for good play.

With that said, here's my proposed structure for a system:
(https://yourimageshare.com/ib/Ee4GOmGunF)
https://yourimageshare.com/ib/Ee4GOmGunF (my picture won't work for some reason?)

Core concept is there are 4 trust tiers that are controlled solely by staff.  These trust tiers determine the maximum Karma potential for an account, and will only be up for review periodically.  The first tier is very easy to get, the last tier is not.  Designed to allow staff to only act as the gate keepers infrequently, rather than requiring constant intervention and maintenance.  They set the limits, rather than policing the system entirely.

How far up an account climbs within the potential is determined by players and staff (but mostly players).  How exactly we allow players to 'vote' or 'grant' Karma is a separate design discussion, but I kind of like the idea of having a slowly refreshing pool of fractional karma points available for players that they can grant to others in-game or via the request tool via Kudos.  Accumulate enough of these "points" (perhaps at an increasing level) and your account 'levels up' to the maximum set by your trust tier.  Players should easily be able to see how many Karma points they've accumulated, so they get a surge of warm fuzzies when they realize they've been granted some more points and are progressing towards the next level.

An account can only lose Karma levels (or points that build up to levels) only by staff intervention.  This can come as a result of player complaints, their own observations of bad roleplaying, or for severe cases by having a 'trust tier' lowered which would restrict the account to a new maximum Karma level.

I like the concept of separating "Tiers" and "Levels" so that you can do additional things.
a) "Punish" a level without actually dropping a tier.
b) Automatically distribute a level without affecting a tier (such as time-played on existing character / account)
c) Give people a perk for doing something good, and showing people "Yes, I hit this criteria, but I didn't quite hit other criteria, so when I request a review they have some additional information rather than just 'karma 1'"


It could look like this:

Karma Tier	Karma Juice	Criteria	Character Creation Perk
1	0	Time at 0 karma	Water / Stone / Fire Touched
	1	Trust	Desert Elf
			Wind / Shadow / Energy Touched
2	0	Time at 1 karma	Thryzn
	1	Trust	Water Healer / Creation
			Ruk Creation / Protector
			Whira Illusion
			Suk-Krath Guile
	2	Criteria 2	Half-Giant
			Water Corruption
			Ruk Empowering
			Elkros Vigor
3	0	Time at 2 karma	Whira Travel / Tempest
			Suk-Krath Agony
			Drov Stalker
			Elkros Havoc
			Nilaz Anathema
	1	Trust	Mul
			Suk-Krath Devastation
			Drov Dancer
			Nilaz Void
	2	Criteria 2	Mindbender
			Sorcerer

Now, why not just make it single bracket ladder, instead of splitting it into 2 categories?  Because some of the perks of character creation should be based on the time played within the game, and some should be based on how well the player understands the world, and understands the expectations of playing with other players in the world.

The partial earning of karma criteria should give some perks, even if you haven't hit everything in the list.

All of the examples above are just an suggestion of how we can split it up.

Quote from: CirclelessBard on August 09, 2023, 05:59:55 AMI hate to sound like a broken record, but I really have to reiterate that Armageddon is in the extreme minority of RP games that tier its players the way the karma system does.

Which games are you thinking of, specifically?  Which of those have the core attributes similar to Armageddon: code-determined conflict (so no MUSHES) with asymmetric class balance? I haven't played any other games in this genre in awhile, so quite likely some are out there I am not aware of.

Quote from: Brokkr on August 09, 2023, 01:47:28 PM

Quote from: CirclelessBard on August 09, 2023, 05:59:55 AMI hate to sound like a broken record, but I really have to reiterate that Armageddon is in the extreme minority of RP games that tier its players the way the karma system does.

Which games are you thinking of, specifically?  Which of those have the core attributes similar to Armageddon: code-determined conflict (so no MUSHES) with asymmetric class balance? I haven't played any other games in this genre in awhile, so quite likely some are out there I am not aware of.

Silent Heaven and Sundering Shadows are two games self-applying the RPI label (well, Silent Heaven calls itself "RPI-lite") that immediately come to mind as being closest to Armageddon when it comes to character vs. character conflict. They are both relatively new games in the MUD space and very successful given their age.

I would offer that MUSHes should not really be struck out from this conversation, since characters can very much be asymmetrical in terms of skill level and social power in pretty much any MUSH, even if the rolls are sometimes being done manually. Conflict still does happen between characters in a non-pre-determined way. The only difference between many MUSHes and Armageddon is that MUSHes are more TTRPG-like. But the most code-reliant MUSH/MUD Hybrid is probably Arx, which lets you apply for a wide variety of social/coded power roles by simply sending a message to the staff about what you intend to do with the character and how you think it will add to the game, and is the primary example I was thinking of when I described that process in earlier posts.

Even though these games are not 100% similar to Armageddon, they do still rely on high-quality roleplaying and trust between players and staff. Although the first two games are still relatively new (about a year old or so), all three of the examples have it figured out without assigning scores to players, choosing an open line of communication instead.

I'm happy to provide further guidance on the current state of the MU* space privately, as I don't want to come off as if I am advertising other games here.

For those pushing a "time played" metric:

Is this time actually in game, promoting AFK characters?
Is this time since account was created, promoting no need to actually play the game?
Is this time as an active member of the communitY

Quote from: Riev on August 09, 2023, 03:13:23 PMFor those pushing a "time played" metric:

Is this time actually in game, promoting AFK characters?
Is this time since account was created, promoting no need to actually play the game?
Is this time as an active member of the communitY

People are going to log in and be afk when they're afk, whether or not there is karma in the mix. Apparently this is a known thing with leader pcs in 'safe' rooms that I have heard mention of on the gdb in the past few years by staff members more than once. I don't think that currently having karma requests tied to account creation dates promotes people to not actually need to play the game, do you, @Riev ? Because that's how requesting new karma without it being handled automatically is done anyhow, it's still tied to account creation dates.


Edited :  Let us try not to call people stupid please. - Kestria.

I remember looking into Arx when someone came here advertising it like a year ago or so, I think best I can say without trashing it is it seemed sort of very generic fantasy stuff and not really up to the same standard that you get from reading stuff like the staff story posts tend to be here - I would say that's inevitable with fewer checks and balances and frictionless apps like suggested, it's a case of be careful what you wish for really? Obviously some don't mind and will stay there, but from what I've seen with RP most people just tend to self-select and not complain or make a fuss, they just move on to a different place when they see the crowd seems a bit cringe, kind of like a club. If staff don't do much selection, "footfall" does instead :)

Quote from: dumbstruck on August 09, 2023, 03:21:13 PMI don't think that currently having karma requests tied to account creation dates promotes people to not actually need to play the game, do you, @Riev ? Because that's how requesting new karma without it being handled automatically is done anyhow, it's still tied to account creation dates.

Problem is, we can't actually answer that, because we don't know how many players put a couple months in, want to play a 1-karma role but didn't get noticed, and just AFK.

We also don't have it directly tied... so could I just make an alt game account, create a character ... and not touch it for a couple months and have an account with karma?

There is no perfect system, but its all coming back to "what is karma". If its just playtime, how do you even measure that in an objective, mechanical manner?

Quote from: Riev on August 09, 2023, 03:28:59 PM

Quote from: dumbstruck on August 09, 2023, 03:21:13 PMI don't think that currently having karma requests tied to account creation dates promotes people to not actually need to play the game, do you, @Riev ? Because that's how requesting new karma without it being handled automatically is done anyhow, it's still tied to account creation dates.

Problem is, we can't actually answer that, because we don't know how many players put a couple months in, want to play a 1-karma role but didn't get noticed, and just AFK.

We also don't have it directly tied... so could I just make an alt game account, create a character ... and not touch it for a couple months and have an account with karma?

There is no perfect system, but its all coming back to "what is karma". If its just playtime, how do you even measure that in an objective, mechanical manner?

Karma requests has been tied to karma reviews historically before they were split up and were limited to 2/year, and a 6 month limit by that if you wanted not to glom them up together, since I've been playing. Which means, after a fashion, karma requests have been tied to time since the account was made for 15 years or more. Are you arguing that it shouldn't be? If not, what should it be tied to instead? I'm merely arguing that it should be automated unless someone fucks up at which point basically your account gets flagged /stop giving this asshole more karma for now (if it's a scale, I think it should be a simple this person is trusted and gets to play restricted roles, vs this person is not, no scale, because the scale I think is a big part of the problem, and no matter how you do the scale, people are going to have a problem, and the people who are playing higher things on the scale when they make antagonistic moves are going to garner endless complaints to the staff about what they did, whereas if it's just a 'well, you're not a newbie, you can play stuff if you're showing you're doing reasonable stuff with it, do stuff', there's gonna be less envious people trying to tear others down about the moves they make aka haters but more than that, if you show that you're not trusted, you literally just get a switch flipped off which is much easier to get flipped back on again than a whole ass ladder to climb, but again that's just me)

Quote from: Riev on August 09, 2023, 03:13:23 PMFor those pushing a "time played" metric:

Is this time actually in game, promoting AFK characters?
Is this time since account was created, promoting no need to actually play the game?
Is this time as an active member of the community

I have been pushing for a "time played" metric, because it is something that can be automated, and it is something that doesn't need to be "tracked" by staff - it is there to help the players who haven't caught the attention of staff members but are still active players.

The problem that a "time played" metric is solving is for those players who feel they have been left behind because they either play in a non-active timezone or their characters aren't popular characters.

::edit::

To answer the question from Riev,
It doesn't matter how it is calculated - you can design the perk so that it gives you something that isn't "game breakingly powerful".
From my example above:
* The first perk is getting 3 Touched Elemental subclasses
* The second perk is getting the Thryzn race.
* The third perk is additional magicker subclasses.

I really like the idea of staff trust tiers and co-player karma levels. This seems like a really good solution to touch on most of the needs.

1.) Less maintenance for staff, yet still providing some security
2.) More autonomy and influence for players
3.) The ability to clearly label what is needed to achieve trust tiers and karma levels.
4.) The ability to integrate a time-based system that works alongside/supports the human aspect.

I also really like the additions @mansa suggested for doing a command similar to 'bug' in order to "tag" someone you notice doing well.


(edited to fix some typos)

Quote from: digitaleak on August 09, 2023, 05:56:02 PMI also really like the additions @mansa suggested for doing a command similar to 'bug' in order to "tag" someone you notice doing well.

I mentioned something like this on discord recently. I like the idea of being able to 'kudos' people on the spot in some way. There's the downside of needing to be able to target their keyword, but it's a hell of a lot better than not being able to do it.

Tagging with a string argument.. Like..

tag bedraggled_elf Really good sewer encounter ending in me being lightened of some coins for 'toll'.

If that is what you mean, I like it. It means a bit more staff footwork but it's more relevant and organic than

'Tuannon has spent 300 hours afk because his noble lives in a complete other timezone and Tuannon is too dumb to calculate differences.'

Quote from: Riev on August 09, 2023, 03:28:59 PMThere is no perfect system, but its all coming back to "what is karma". If its just playtime, how do you even measure that in an objective, mechanical manner?

Time spent in a room with another PC, where both are active (measured by both characters doing some form of communication command in 5 minute increments, exact repeats of last X commands ignored)?

I'm not convinced any other game is comparable. I'm confident that no other RPI Mud has staff who are acting as guardians to a three decade long legacy and world created by the combined efforts of probably hundreds, if not thousands, of players and staff. We are slow, cautious, careful and protective because what we have is special and it's important, not just to us, but to every contributor who has passed through.

I also doubt that other communities have the same ratio of staff to players that we have and the same level of hands on support where a player's actions can potentially result in tons of backstage staff hours being spent on building or changing the world.

Karma is the system that we have here and it's one we are pretty comfortable with. We think it needs work to be in a better place, we also want it to come with much more structured and transparent criteria so that it's super obvious to players and staff what needs to be demonstrated. The objective is to minimise reliance on subjective staff opinions while still enabling the review of role-play, adherence to documentation and other aspects that are challenging to define and cannot be automated.

While Brokkr's definition is good, and it certainly captures the core of why we need karma in our day to day, there are other aspects to it too. So, '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.'

In that sense, it is very much a measure of trust but also knowledge and experience. It's not, "Do we trust this player not be an asshole." but, "Can we trust this player with a Southern noble because we know that they understand the culture, social stigma related to various races, how to treat gemmed etc."

I would also like it to be a way to guide people through learning our game in a somewhat structured way because the learning curve can be intimidating. And also a way to outline the level of RP we would ideally like to see, at least in sponsored roles and those that serve as influences to other players, and encourage maintenance of that level. Not that you always need to bring your A game, but knowing how to and when you ought to

Simply providing the docs and hoping that all players will avidly consume them is not enough. I know this because we still get apps for bearded, mining dwarves and Tolkien elves. We still have half-elves who act like humans with slightly pointy ears (and are treated well, cared for and cuddled). I know this because we've had higher karma players try to spec app muls with no acknowledgement of bondmates. We also have a lot of thematic docs that are hard to adhere to, because they go against our nature as players. Karma allows us to check that a player has studied up on a particular field of play and essentially conquered it.

Briefly I will address the idea of player to player awarding. This is something that we have discussed in detail, because on paper it has merit. However, the main concern here is that, like it or not, we do have cliques of players and then we have players who stay away from those cliques and I'm not sure how we would make sure that players acknowledged and recognised all players and didn't just focus on their circles. There is also not knowing whether a player would be awarding because they liked and agreed with a particular angle of play or because the play actually adhered to our criteria and documentation. I did think about a concept where players could give other players their own karma (e.g. they would lose it) because it would have a lot of meaning behind it, but ultimately it diluted the purpose, definition and structure of karma.

The other theme that has come up here that we have discussed is the balance of staff involvement across awarding and removing karma. For example.. karma goes up over time and staff just remove it for 'poor' play. That is not something we would want to implement, it puts such a pressure on staff to only be having these negative interactions with players when all staff honestly just want to be having positive interactions. That would be such an unfair system to ask our staff to carry out. I also floated the idea of the reverse at one point, where we would award points (quite liberally) but they would tick down over time and players would need to keep earning them. That concept did seem like it would be a bit too demanding on staff time and attention though, and the liberal application of karma would probably mean more subjectivity would slip through.

And by the by, we are very aware of new players and we work very hard to make sure they don't slip through the net. There are a few particular staff members who also strive to champion new players and lower karma players. I think across the breadth of staff.. every player is on someone's radar pretty much.

This has turned into something of a ramble. We are working on trying to put together a concept. At this point we are not looking to reinvent the wheel or to scrap the wheel altogether. I think if we try something new and then, given enough time to see how it plays out, it still doesn't function the way we envision it will.. at that point we might be ready for something more radical? Be it a new system or even letting go of our ideals a bit in terms of the RP standards. Who knows.

Quote from: Usiku on August 10, 2023, 11:30:38 AMI'm not convinced any other game is comparable. I'm confident that no other RPI Mud has staff who are acting as guardians to a three decade long legacy and world created by the combined efforts of probably hundreds, if not thousands, of players and staff. We are slow, cautious, careful and protective because what we have is special and it's important, not just to us, but to every contributor who has passed through.

The fact that other games don't have long legacies should not discount them from being compared to Armageddon. If anything, it should further invite comparison. The newer games were not made in a vacuum; almost all of these games are run by people who know of Armageddon, or have even played it in the past. They know that Armageddon is a special game. They know that it has a long history. Many of them have been inspired by the exceptional nature of Armageddon to make their own game. They also know that Armageddon's history is dotted with flaws and mistakes that people who run modern RPIs would prefer to avoid, and the karma system with all of its flaws is clearly one of those mistakes.

That being said, I have the wherewithal to realize when I'm about to beat a dead horse. It is clear that the producers are looking for ways to change the system in minor ways, and I sincerely hope the staff and players all get what they want out of the next iteration of the karma system, whatever it ends up looking like.

Well, good thing you asked for our input before you did whatever, regardless of what the input actually came out to be. That'll surely soften the blow. And good thing @Hestia didn't let the cat out of the bag after leaving staff but before now on discord (result 3 when you search 5 karma in discord, even with a date! September 7th! Watch for it kiddos!) already about how there was a plan to change the karma scale from 3-5 weeks before this came up. I'm sure these two things are unrelated.

Context is important. That was Hestia's reaction to the posting of the roadmap it looks like? She hasn't been on staff since March-ish and conversations around karma only very recently started (much later than that comment). Ex-staff are not involved in these conversations and they are not being given any kind of special, early insight. I'm not really sure what she meant by it, but 5 karma specifically isn't something that we have looked at. There was no cat and no bag I'm afraid, nothing is finalised yet and we are taking feedback on board. We're just not going to do exactly what you want. I'm sorry if that doesn't support the narrative you are trying to spin. Your sarcasm isn't really conducive to this discussion.

Quote from: dumbstruck on August 10, 2023, 01:05:07 PMWell, good thing you asked for our input before you did whatever, regardless of what the input actually came out to be. That'll surely soften the blow. And good thing @Hestia didn't let the cat out of the bag after leaving staff but before now on discord (result 3 when you search 5 karma in discord, even with a date! September 7th! Watch for it kiddos!) already about how there was a plan to change the karma scale from 3-5 weeks before this came up. I'm sure these two things are unrelated.

Took a little digging to understand what you're even talking about.

"[6:57 PM]La Hesita: So we're changing the karma system from 3 to 5 karma points in 3 months! That'll be September 7. So excited. I'll have my request typed out in advance and just have my computer automatically hit the send button at midnight."

She posted that on June 7, that same day this thread came out:  https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,59492.0.html

Where we said in about 3 months we're going to do a karma system review.  Reading the context around her post in Discord it's pretty clear that was some kind of weird joke of hers.  I guess she just wants a 5 karma system and that's her way of joking how in 3 months form the date the post was made that she'd get what she wants? 

Let me be clear:  Hestia does not speak for staff, is not on staff, and has no idea what we're discussing in regards to karma beyond what's in this specific thread.

Whatever it takes to have inherently high powered roles have expectations for roleplay and standard-setting to match. Roles, races, classes, whatever, should be selected for the roleplaying angles and opportunities, not for the power fantasy of being able to kill easily. Killing PCs is fine. Killing PCs is a part of Armageddon. Killing PCs being entire objective of someone's play is not. Making a (max-karma option or special app'd role) just to kill PCs is doubly not - it both looks and feels bad on the game.

I'm not sure Karma is actually the easiest way for this to be accomplished either, but I don't really have a good suggestion besides what CirclelessBard wrote.

The game needs to kind of define what their ideal of play is. Some people don't even think emotes are necessary. I've enjoyed play quite a bit and sent kudos to people who emote and people who don't, but I'll always prefer when people do.

So what's the staff's ideal?

Quote from: dumbstruck on August 10, 2023, 01:05:07 PMWell, good thing you asked for our input before you did whatever, regardless of what the input actually came out to be. That'll surely soften the blow. And good thing @Hestia didn't let the cat out of the bag after leaving staff but before now on discord (result 3 when you search 5 karma in discord, even with a date! September 7th! Watch for it kiddos!) already about how there was a plan to change the karma scale from 3-5 weeks before this came up. I'm sure these two things are unrelated.

So - I don't post as Hestia anymore but - uh - yeah that was a joke, a "wishful thinking" in direct response to the roadmap, which was posted almost three months after I left the staff.  Because I would love a 5-point karma system and they said they're going to revamp the karma system somewhere between 3-6 months from that roadmap post date.

Context is EVERYTHING folks.

Quote from: Windstorm on August 10, 2023, 02:39:22 PMSo what's the staff's ideal?

As varied as the playerbase's is  :)

We've got some specific ideas but we haven't settled on anything yet, so we want to hear from you all too, your specific ideas.  We're kinda leaning, based on opinions posted, towards more points than 3, but we don't wanna do something and find out 90% of players hate it.  Usiku and I mocked up a 10 point scale to see what it might look like, got feedback on it, but we're by no means settled on it yet.

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.

I don't think karma is a perfect system, but I long ago gave up trying to find a 'perfect' system.  Whatever we do is going to have its pro's and con's.  I think it's an evolved system, and if we do expand it to more points, that's a yet-another evolution of it.

Quote from: Brokkr on August 10, 2023, 11:29:13 AM

Quote from: Riev on August 09, 2023, 03:28:59 PMThere is no perfect system, but its all coming back to "what is karma". If its just playtime, how do you even measure that in an objective, mechanical manner?

Time spent in a room with another PC, where both are active (measured by both characters doing some form of communication command in 5 minute increments, exact repeats of last X commands ignored)?

This will work. Here is why. I would categorize players by 3 main criteria: knowledge, role-playing, and responsibility. Responsibility covers aspects such as not involving others, sticking to committed timelines, not abusing code, and avoiding OOC communication.

I'm going to simplify the possible situations here to identify player segments.

         Knowledge      Roleplaying      Responsibility
1        Low                Low                  Low
2        Low                High                 Low
3        Low                Low                  High
4        High               Low                  High
5        High               High                 Low
6        High               Low                  Low
7        High               High                 High

Time played is correlated with Knowledge (significantly) and RP (highly). Hence, as time leads to karma, responsibility will be gained as you keep rewarding people. The last part is where I occasionally disagree with the staff on the style of handling things. When someone causes trouble, what would work better? Punish them, leading them to quit the game because this is 2023 and people are too old to listen to negativity, especially on vague or subjective matters. Or, you could kindly show them a better solution, guiding them on how they can improve, with a pat on the back and acknowledging that you still love and respect them?

Let responsibility be the main driving factor for prioritization of restricted role calls. Make HG and muls restricted too, and let the time played determine the Karma points.

For instance,

         Knowledge      Roleplaying      Responsibility
1        Low                Low                  Low
2        Low                High                 Low
3        Low                Low                  High

These are people who are new to the game. They don't know anything and might not care much. They might RP or not, but they are just looking around. They might lack responsibility, approaching with a hack & slash mindset, because they aren't deeply invested. Time played will automatically increase their Knowledge, Role-playing, and even Responsibility.

Similarly, for

         Knowledge      Roleplaying      Responsibility
4        High               Low                  High

Allow these players to enjoy the game. If they're dedicating hours to it, why not reward them? Who are we to determine the RP standards? Baxxxx Kadius (disclosing name) was one of the most enjoyable players I've encountered. He crafted 5 chests in a minute without RP, but so what? When you punish that behavior, will the player's RP improve? The character might lack in emoting a simple craft, but he excelled in other areas, like reasonable political actions. Over time, as people play, their role-playing will likely improve too.

I think most of the player base is concerned about

         Knowledge      Roleplaying      Responsibility
5        High               High                 Low
6        High               Low                  Low

And again, restricting options for magickers will drive these players away from the game. What's the fear here? That they'll abuse the code and use their characters' powers for ill? They don't need karma for that. Anyone with some knowledge of the game can skill any mundane and wreak havoc, if they wish. Limiting their options will NOT help them. The critical fact we often overlook is that people change. A player once deemed irresponsible may outgrow those traits. But if they seek restricted roles or role calls, they'll be deprioritized unless they commit to improvement. Even so, this provides motivation for them to play better and remain in the game.

Quote from: Halaster on August 10, 2023, 03:21:49 PMHere'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.

For what it's worth, this is essentially the idea I have been suggesting and endorsing in previous replies to this thread.

I don't think the downside is actually all that huge if instead of "researching" players, you use the application to discuss expectations for holding the role - both on the player side, of essentially providing a rough plan for the character (more than just a character background), and from the staff side, of what they think that type of role should add to the game. Ideally the "research" is just glancing at account and character notes for recent red flags. The real trust-building should happen in that conversation, sort of a handshake to make sure player and staff are on the same page before the player starts playing the role.

(Of course there can still be some restrictions, e.g. you probably have an idea of how many mages, muls, etc. you want in the game.)

I think it's funny that you took the 2 8 karma things and made them basically special role call or special app only and now with basically only able to app up to what used to be 7 karma roles now are kicking around a 10 karma system from a 3 karma system when just a few months ago the request time was changed to make it so you didn't have to wait 3 years to unlock the top apped stuff because you yourself thought it was ridiculous and unreasonable @Halaster as a time investment. What changed?

Quote from: CirclelessBard on August 10, 2023, 03:42:10 PMI don't think the downside is actually all that huge if instead of "researching" players, you use the application to discuss expectations for holding the role - both on the player side, of essentially providing a rough plan for the character (more than just a character background), and from the staff side, of what they think that type of role should add to the game. Ideally the "research" is just glancing at account and character notes for recent red flags. The real trust-building should happen in that conversation, sort of a handshake to make sure player and staff are on the same page before the player starts playing the role.

I agree with all of this, and would further remark that if someone doesn't take the time to read or make account notes, their opinion probably doesn't matter in assessing the suitability of a player for special roles. It might even be possible that people relying on karma to determine suitability is a major contributor to people playing special roles poorly.

Quote from: najdorf on August 10, 2023, 03:34:16 PM6        High               Low                  Low

And again, restricting options for magickers will drive these players away from the game. What's the fear here? That they'll abuse the code and use their characters' powers for ill?

To be perfectly candid, my concern isn't about driving these players away from the game. Rather, it's that their style is causing sections of our game to feel more H&S. The fear lies in these players becoming more pervasive, potentially deterring the type '7' players due to a decline in roleplay.

You also missed out:

8.      Low               High                  High

...which is a thing when we welcome exceptional new players, which we do. My hope is for these players to find what they are looking for and remain engaged. After all, there are alternative games available for those less inclined toward roleplay.

Quote from: CirclelessBard on August 10, 2023, 03:42:10 PMI don't think the downside is actually all that huge if instead of "researching" players, you use the application to discuss expectations for holding the role - both on the player side, of essentially providing a rough plan for the character (more than just a character background), and from the staff side, of what they think that type of role should add to the game. Ideally the "research" is just glancing at account and character notes for recent red flags. The real trust-building should happen in that conversation.

This would mean every now-karma-restricted role would necessitate an application followed by a trust-establishing dialogue? One potential downside, if seen that way, might be the considerable demand on staff time. This could lead to a substantial limitation in the number of these roles.

Bear in mind, we have these comprehensive discussions with sponsored role applicants. Even then, despite hearing all the right things, the outcomes can sometimes be... unexpected.

These unexpected outcomes often lead to significant frustration within the playerbase that is then directed at staff for permitting players to assume, or enact, these roles.

Quote from: Trevalyan on August 10, 2023, 04:12:14 PMIt might even be possible that people relying on karma to determine suitability is a major contributor to people playing special roles poorly.

In most cases, karma serves as an automated gateway to all the karma-restricted roles. For sponsored roles, there's a thorough review of account notes, discussions among staff alongside the review of karma.

Quote from: dumbstruck on August 10, 2023, 03:54:24 PMI think it's funny that you took the 2 8 karma things and made them basically special role call or special app only and now with basically only able to app up to what used to be 7 karma roles now are kicking around a 10 karma system from a 3 karma system when just a few months ago the request time was changed to make it so you didn't have to wait 3 years to unlock the top apped stuff because you yourself thought it was ridiculous and unreasonable @Halaster as a time investment. What changed?

The ten-karma system we've been exploring could be achievable within 12-18 months, possibly even quicker. The goal is to improve the pace of the process with smaller, incremental adjustments. We'll almost certainly share the final version after we've made necessary changes based on the insights feedback received. (I say almost since there is always a small chance we just tregil out of the whole thing and nothing changes).

Thank you @Usiku for the response, because honestly, I don't even have a wide array of different types of karma things I'm interested in. I'm heavy explorer. I like illusion wind magick, and I was seeing it just on the cusp of being something I could ask for the karma to not have to special app for every time and seeing things turning into god knows what again... not super enthusiastic about it. I also like vivs of all sort for their rp and convenience angles, but for the most part, those are really the only magickers I even care about access to. But... I do care deeply about that.

Quote from: Usiku on August 10, 2023, 04:40:35 PMThis would mean every now-karma-restricted role would necessitate an application followed by a trust-establishing dialogue? One potential downside, if seen that way, might be the considerable demand on staff time. This could lead to a substantial limitation in the number of these roles.

Bear in mind, we have these comprehensive discussions with sponsored role applicants. Even then, despite hearing all the right things, the outcomes can sometimes be... unexpected.

These unexpected outcomes often lead to significant frustration within the playerbase that is then directed at staff for permitting players to assume, or enact, these roles.

If the goal is to maintain a high standard of roleplay, staff will face a considerable workload regardless if they approach it with a karma system or the "discussion" system. With the "discussion" system, the workload is front-loaded. If you get buy-in from a player to roleplay in a way that is more conducive to a collaborative storytelling environment, they are far more likely to actually do so.

With karma, the workload is back-loaded. Yes, it is simple to just add a point to a player's account. Now that the player is entitled to a new role, but with no guidance on maintaining a high standard of roleplay from staff and no need to assure staff that they will play collaboratively, staff workload will increase in managing the player post-character approval as the player proceeds to do whatever they want, even behavior that isn't considered a high standard of roleplay.

With the "discussion" system, the problem of increased staff workload is self-resolving. If you give me a sorcerer on the condition that I do not use them to kill every PC in Allanak, and I go ahead and use them to kill every PC in Allanak, you will add a character note to my account stating that I went back on my word. Now, the next time I try to apply for a sorcerer, or any powerful role, you can point at that time you gave me a sorcerer and I went back on my word. I will have to answer for that in a sufficient way to get your trust again.

On the other hand, if I play that sorcerer impeccably, that's also to my advantage in future discussions because I have already proven that I can play a sorcerer responsibly. There is no need to get into an in-depth discussion on trust the next time I apply for a sorcerer or a similarly powerful role.

With the karma system, the problem of increased staff workload is ever-present. You will routinely get karma increase requests, player complaints where a player's karma level must be reviewed, or be in a position to decide if someone's play with a sponsored role was sufficiently high-quality to deserve a karma increase when they decide it's time to retire their character.

At the end of the day, the most important thing for roleplaying quality is not whether a karma system is used or not, how many points are on the scale, or how long it takes to reach maximum - but whether staff are sufficiently setting expectations for roles, and applying a process properly depending on how well those expectations are met. However, for workload, I think the choice is clear.

Quote from: Usiku on August 10, 2023, 04:40:35 PMThis would mean every now-karma-restricted role would necessitate an application followed by a trust-establishing dialogue? One potential downside, if seen that way, might be the considerable demand on staff time. This could lead to a substantial limitation in the number of these roles.

Quote from: Trevalyan on August 10, 2023, 04:12:14 PMIt might even be possible that people relying on karma to determine suitability is a major contributor to people playing special roles poorly.

In most cases, karma serves as an automated gateway to all the karma-restricted roles. For sponsored roles, there's a thorough review of account notes, discussions among staff alongside the review of karma.

I like the way you address the issues, Usiku, and I particularly like the fact you're thinking about how the system will work for new players. I don't necessarily think the game should relax RP standards, and I can even see how you'd want those standards become stricter for higher-level concepts, but I do think that without new players all games eventually wither. I wish you luck for changing the karma system, but I honestly think doc updates, transparent information easily accessible to new players, and increased levels of scrutiny by Storyteller-level staff might help tighten up deficiencies in RP as well.

I used the way people emoted and spoke in arm to teach myself how to verbalize and socialize better with other people in real life.

I also used it to determine a system of afterlife I thought was fair and right so I could just stop thinking about it altogether and get on with daily life. It was crippling until I did that. I used what I had /originally/ expected the ArmageddonMUD karma system to be, when it was 8points, and shrouded in mystery to me.


Since it was 'Role Playing Game', I assumed that you would pick one of those options available to you:


A)Human     D)
B)Half-Elf  E)
C)Dwarf     E)Elf (City)

And then pick a city, yatta yatta yatta,

play that role, then die.

Then once you died, you'd make a new char and staff would be reviewing your old one and assigning your 'karma', only I had mixed up notions and thought in my young mind it would go something like 'Killed 50 chalton, hunted a lot, interacted with Oash, might be interested in Oashi hunting plots'. I think my first set of account notes I got to review was a list of every mistake I ever made and it was crippling. Nothing I was proud of got noticed, I assumed.

It was later I developed the afterlife ideas, that's only partially relevant, that's what I'll share.




So, this is a role playing game, you want to reduce staff workload, increase RP, change the karma system, and generally boost player confidence and positive interaction with said karma system. I'd like to propose we try a karma system wildly different.

Open every option up, in every area.

Play the role, expect everyone to be prolific with kudos and complaints (because we've stated we need this in this era because we just opened up every single role), and we a char dies, they can continue playing /other/ roles. Whatever they may be. To play a role /again/, or to play a higher or stronger /version/ of that role, it must be reviewed how well they did on the last one. Higher version you say? Everything's already been tiered up already, from magick, to races with high strength, to political powers, correct? Well, play the lowest tier without complaint and move up to the next, play that tier with any kudos and move up to the next, receive complaints, receive reviews. Receive kudos, receive reviews. It becomes on us to move the needles of others' power up and down, staff merely responds.


Chatgpt3, clarify this for delivery to a beloved audience. Make it seem it seem like I'm a sane person.

I'm not sure that there is a goal to reduce the staff workload from where it is now specifically. We're managing pretty well. Rather, reassign some of that workload. As it stands, the bulk of the time required for karma reviewing (of any system) involves STs (and Admins) spending time monitoring their clan players, reading their reports, interacting with them and animating for them. These are the activities that allow them to witness and review the roleplay and behaviour of the players they work with. These are the activities we want STs to be doing anyway.

So technically, a karma review or spontaneous karma award should not be something that requires a heavy, additional time investment at all. What we do want to do is free up ST (and a bit of Admin) time and energy from doing other things so that they have the time to spend interacting with their players more. Ultimately how we manage staff time is on us and there are many moving parts to it that are likely impossible to really have a good understanding of unless you are on staff and actively dealing with it, with that in mind it is probably not worth including how we manage our time as part of the feedback from a player perspective. I don't mean to be dismissive with that, just 'staff time' is such an indeterminate and fluctuating thing.

Quote from: Jimpka_Moss on August 11, 2023, 04:31:51 AMThen once you died, you'd make a new char and staff would be reviewing your old one and assigning your 'karma', only I had mixed up notions and thought in my young mind it would go something like 'Killed 50 chalton, hunted a lot, interacted with Oash, might be interested in Oashi hunting plots'. I think my first set of account notes I got to review was a list of every mistake I ever made and it was crippling. Nothing I was proud of got noticed, I assumed.

This makes me sad and I'm sorry that was your experience. If I'm honest, it was pretty much mine too. It's hard but that is something we are actively trying to work on. It's not that we don't notice the awesome things players do, it's just that we have a lot of documentation and recording that we do generally, and pinfos can be hard to remember. They do happen, they are happening more frequently and it is my hope that we can improve more on that. It's a bit off topic, but just wanted to address it!

Quote from: Usiku on August 11, 2023, 05:04:27 AMI'm not sure that there is a goal to reduce the staff workload from where it is now specifically. anyway.

Quote from: Usiku on August 05, 2023, 08:38:49 AMAnother part of that issue is that we spend an awful lot of time on player complaints or 'coaching' of players when they do things that don't conform to the standards that our community expect.

No idea where we might of gotten the idea part of the point was reducing the staff workload.

Is this going to be a situation where this is being done to "improve rp" but negative account notes will still be added in secret, without any kind of player defense, and only discovered on the off chance you put in a request for your own account notes.  Or will there be interaction between players and staff where the player is not only informed what it is they did wrong, but informed how it is they should be expected to perform in the future?  Or are we sticking with the Armageddon traditional learning style, the subtle art of "fuck around and find out"?

What is the standard of RP in Armageddon, other than mandatory?  Can anyone tell me?  In what way, is the player base not meeting documented requirements?  Or are we just, being told we aren't good enough as a default with no genuine basis of comparison other than romanticized memories of the past?  If the RP is so bad, that Karma has to be overhauled, surely there must be some kind of proof?

While I'd think that there should be a quantified process for giving points for 'good' and 'bad' RP, the game isn't a democracy and in the end I cannot think of any MU* that is. I think the best point is somewhere in the middle of as draconian as you seem to be implying and anarchy.

Quote from: Usiku on August 11, 2023, 05:04:27 AMUltimately how we manage staff time is on us and there are many moving parts to it that are likely impossible to really have a good understanding of unless you are on staff and actively dealing with it, with that in mind it is probably not worth including how we manage our time as part of the feedback from a player perspective. I don't mean to be dismissive with that, just 'staff time' is such an indeterminate and fluctuating thing.

This is just food for thought, but it's difficult to provide meaningful feedback on staff proposals when staff emphasize their own workload being an issue, player feedback tries to take staff workload in mind, and then staff turn around and state that staff workload is not really an issue players can be concerned about. A lot of my prior feedback is based on your earlier statement that staff spend a lot of time in the position of being corrective about players' roleplay, and I agree with you that the ideal system minimizes the amount of time staff are doing administrative stuff, and maximizes the time staff are actually having fun and helping other players have fun. We just obviously disagree on which system is going to do that.

If the standard of roleplay is declining and staff see poor roleplay quality as an issue with the game, then disagreement over that system is meaningless. Whether a max karma player has 3 karma, 8 karma or 10 karma means nothing if that player does not try to meet a high standard of roleplay. What the discussion really needs to be about is what the standard of high-quality RP should be and how that should be communicated to players - to the extent that such a standard can even be set objectively.

As is my salt-lord status, I do have to pile on to the "too much work", "a lot of time spent on" and "effort put in" as phrases we did not just hear historically, but are in this same thread.

Staff is a thankless position. You'll never see me apply because I wouldn't want to deal with a player like myself, nevermind the three that are probably worse.

However, you cannot both espouse "it is a lot of work that we spend on this game" and also say "Its not about the workload". It seems some players want to think about how much time staff have, and how they can more efficiently use the time they dedicate to staffing to supporting players rather than playing the paperwork mini-game.

How can we help you, so that our experiences are better or more positive when staff get involved with karma? How can we show you that our mul was angry and thats why they killed your new sponsored Byn Sergeant and not a result of "ha ha byn sux"?

Reading the past few ideas, especially Jimpka_Moss, clicked something in my head. Idea:

A new staff echo that triggers to all clan staff and all unaffiliated staff (new trains not yet assigned) at a certain time a character in that clan logs in. Cannot be toggled off.  It is triggered by 30 days with no "karma check." Something like:

>Jimbob has entered the game. Karmacheck due.

And SOMEONE on staff needs to check off that karmacheck. Either with an actual karma pinfo comment, awarding/removing a point, or a "karma has been checked" notation.  It would need to be someone overseeing their clan, OR an unassigned staffer (because they should be checking all players at some point or another, it's part of the training process).

A karma check result could be:
pinfo jimbob kudos received
pinfo jimbob kRP amazing thinks when stressed
pinfo jimbob kmagick spam-casts for hours in temple
pinfo jimbob kgeneral monthly check complete
pinfo jimbob kcomm argumentative in discord re: magick system

Any comment that would help admin see that staff ARE looking at the players, and ARE noticing when the player does something terrific or not so terrific, or understands/doesn't understand a concept.

Once every month. If a staffer has already commented, then the month timer begins anew. Every time a staffer adds a comment, that timer starts over. In this way, no player is overlooked by mistake. No one falls under the radar.

If a player doesn't log in for more than a month, then the next time they DO log in, the staff message would be:
Jimbob has entered the game, first time since 1Jan2020.

And that will let admin know that THEY might also want to take a look.

Let everyone play anything, if there aren't too many ig. If someone is bad at it, and I'm talking abusing the system, ignoring the gameworld or docs, etc...,  then don't let them play that role again until they've demonstrated an improvement in their gameplay on mundane characters. Having a tiered system will continue to foster resentment. Make all races playable, but like desert elves, make it so that you have to inquire about vacancies before rolling a mul, half-giant, etc.
 Maybe auto-email a "General characteristics of <race/magicker>." message when one of those races/magick users are chosen.

 This way everyone can have fun and you might find someone who would probably have less karma, but plays an awesome mul or half-giant.

Quote from: Classclown on August 11, 2023, 01:25:05 PMLet everyone play anything, if there aren't too many ig. If someone is bad at it, and I'm talking abusing the system, ignoring the gameworld or docs, etc...,  then don't let them play that role again until they've demonstrated an improvement in their gameplay on mundane characters. Having a tiered system will continue to foster resentment. Make all races playable, but like desert elves, make it so that you have to inquire about vacancies before rolling a mul, half-giant, etc.
 Maybe auto-email a "General characteristics of <race/magicker>." message when one of those races/magick users are chosen.

 This way everyone can have fun and you might find someone who would probably have less karma, but plays an awesome mul or half-giant.

I agree with this. Punishing people who abuse a race/magical is far better than requiring a player to play for an entire year irl to play something like a normal mage without special apping it. It's also probably easier for staff to manage complaints on a role being misplayed than to authorize every single player to play one eventually.

I'd actually agree with the no karma, open the gates kind of thing, if population numbers were monitored and muls/sorcerers/psis were special app.

If there needed to be some level of division to separate truly new from knowledgable players, make it between 0 and 1, call it standard and advanced players.

Should half giants be allowed to be magickers in the new system? I think we should remove them just so that people don't ever subject themselves to that again.

Quote from: Classclown on August 11, 2023, 01:25:05 PMLet everyone play anything, if there aren't too many ig. If someone is bad at it, and I'm talking abusing the system, ignoring the gameworld or docs, etc...,  then don't let them play that role again until they've demonstrated an improvement in their gameplay on mundane characters. Having a tiered system will continue to foster resentment. Make all races playable, but like desert elves, make it so that you have to inquire about vacancies before rolling a mul, half-giant, etc.
 Maybe auto-email a "General characteristics of <race/magicker>." message when one of those races/magick users are chosen.

 This way everyone can have fun and you might find someone who would probably have less karma, but plays an awesome mul or half-giant.

And here is your answer. Want to bring the game into the 21st century? Karma is an old, outdated concept that hinders arm far more than helping it.

What all of these other players are saying. Make it a 0 or 1 thing. Are they so new they don't know, too abusive to be trusted? 0. Can they be trusted? 1. Jesus, just trust them, don't make it a scale. Then people won't tear each other down.

My disagreement with allowing the playerbase to play anything is that they will only play magickers.

So to prevent that, you would need to put harsh limits on the population of certain classes and subclasses.

I would say something like:
10% of the active playerbase can be a mul or half-giant
15% of the active playerbase can be vivaduan/rukkian/suk-krath/whiran
10% of the active playerbase can be drov/elkros/nilazi
20% of the active playerbase can be a desert elf / thryzn

And I would prevent players from playing a magicker character two times in a row.

Quote from: mansa on August 11, 2023, 04:45:25 PMMy disagreement with allowing the playerbase to play anything is that they will only play magickers.

So to prevent that, you would need to put harsh limits on the population of certain classes and subclasses.

I would say something like:
10% of the active playerbase can be a mul or half-giant
15% of the active playerbase can be vivaduan/rukkian/suk-krath/whiran
10% of the active playerbase can be drov/elkros/nilazi
20% of the active playerbase can be a desert elf / thryzn

And I would prevent players from playing a magicker character two times in a row.

People like playing magickers. Do you want people to play or? You can't make people play what they don't want to play. You can try but that's not going to make them do it. I said that on the IDB when they planned to instill the karma timer and sure as shit, a cool 25% of the playerbase are willing to admit when polled that they would rather just not play than play something they don't want to. How many more are just not admitting it? Come on, dude, it's a game. Ask Pathian about the numbers. The plots are high magick. The setting's backbone is magick. If people want to play magick, maybe just let them do it. I mean.

You can try and make an artificial limiter but look at the stats that you're gonna create on deaths, playtimes, storages, and so forths on that. You're not going to do what you think you're going to do. You're going to force the people who are in spirit of what you're doing to just drift when they play what they hate to conform to suit your tastes, and twinkish asshats to game the system to whatever degree they can fall through cracks or are allowed to, or are we going to say that it's gated on playtimes, like 20 days played as a mundane, what do you want, how badly do you want to micromanage people's pretendytimes my guy?

I'm for opening everything up to everyone, (except for muls and sorcerers, which imho should be spec app only) and only taking away the option of something is roleplayed poorly, in which case the player should be informed immediately how they performed poorly and why, in an open discussion with the identified staff member.

Even with enough karma to play magickers, I rarely play them. I enjoy mundane roles and I doubt I am the only one.

If everything (barring muls and sorcerers, and I would add psions and half-giants) is made open-play with only "bad roleplay" the check, I hope you're all prepared to aggressively monitor and snitch on each other via player complaint. Frankly I'm skeptical.

Quote from: BadSkeelz on August 11, 2023, 05:28:06 PMIf everything (barring muls and sorcerers, and I would add psions and half-giants) is made open-play with only "bad roleplay" the check, I hope you're all prepared to aggressively monitor and snitch on each other via player complaint. Frankly I'm skeptical.

Exploitative play and 'I dislike how this guy plays' are a bit different metrics.

Still require players to file requests, and people generally don't. I also think the player base's general standard of roleplay is low enough that it'll just further drive Armageddon into Mageageddon.

eta: Plus Staff have to be on board for reviewing and investigating these requests, and staff do not seem particularly keen on having to (re)actively monitor players.

I think a karma system is absolutely essential for the success of the game long term.  Putting the wrong players behind the wheel of many of the Karma restricted options is a recipe for disaster.

Quote from: wizturbo on August 11, 2023, 05:38:17 PMPutting the wrong players behind the wheel of many of the Karma restricted options is a recipe for disaster.

In commenting on the decline in the quality of roleplay in the game, staff have essentially said that this is already happening.

Quote from: BadSkeelz on August 11, 2023, 05:31:16 PMStill require players to file requests, and people generally don't. I also think the player base's general standard of roleplay is low enough that it'll just further drive Armageddon into Mageageddon.

eta: Plus Staff have to be on board for reviewing and investigating these requests, and staff do not seem particularly keen on having to (re)actively monitor players.

This is my personal and candid opinion but I imagine many tenured staff likely share the sentiment: I don't want the bulk of my time and energy focused on negative interactions with players. Such interactions drain our morale. I can't support a system that forces staff into the role of the constant bad guy. The reality is, addressing player issues, whether it's a poorly role-played scenario or outright rule violations, always carries a risk. No matter our familiarity with the player or how tactfully we approach the conversation, there's always potential for things to escalate unexpectedly—be it due to a bad day, misconceptions or tone misinterpretations. Ideally, these types of conversations should be kept to a minimum - and we're certainly not aiming for them to be a central player-staff interaction.

I hear you. Personally I think we should all know who is playing who, and be able to cast votes to ban other players or at least retire their roles if a sufficient number of us get sick of them. Take some of the burden off staff and on to the community at large.

That sounds pretty brutal too. I'd rather we just all got along.  :-[

Quote from: Usiku on August 11, 2023, 06:35:35 PMThat sounds pretty brutal too. I'd rather we just all got along.  :-[

I mean, in many (most other games that are mushes, and many muds) other text based games it's done, and not really considered brutal even when your characters kill one another, even when it's nonconsent, even when it's permadeath. If it's a shitty death over and over again, a behavioral pattern appears, and people start to shun people and staff don't /need/ to prevent them from playing stuff, because people will just avoid them and they will leave, and then the abusive player is gone. They're not trying to get around ISPs, they just don't have an audience. Because when avoiding doesn't work, mob justice happens. It's only brutal if you're a shitbird essentially.

Quote from: Usiku on August 11, 2023, 06:35:35 PMThat sounds pretty brutal too. I'd rather we just all got along.  :-[

Frankly impossible given the strict IC/OOC separation expected of the playerbase. I think Armageddon is a roleplay-at-your-own-risk hack-and-slash because that's the gameworld presented by some characters, and I have no means of checking that behavior other than to avoid them or PK them right back. Or vaguebook drag them on the GDB. Those are the only legitimate means of community regulation we have.

Hot take:

People wouldn't ONLY play magickers if mundanes had more than kick bash disarm and charge. Because mages have those, too.

Do I have a solution? Hell no.

Quote from: Riev on August 11, 2023, 07:01:02 PMHot take:

People wouldn't ONLY play magickers if mundanes had more than kick bash disarm and charge. Because mages have those, too.

Do I have a solution? Hell no.

Full guild mages and restricted subguilds that don't have kick, bash, disarm, charge, or ride (animals sense magick and hate it).

Quote from: BadSkeelz on August 11, 2023, 07:02:08 PM

Quote from: Riev on August 11, 2023, 07:01:02 PMHot take:

People wouldn't ONLY play magickers if mundanes had more than kick bash disarm and charge. Because mages have those, too.

Do I have a solution? Hell no.

Full guild mages and restricted subguilds that don't have kick, bash, disarm, charge, or ride (animals sense magick and hate it).

I'd be with this but only if you make every subguild mage eventually branch mount if they don't already so they can make magickal mounts that don't and give them ride to whatever old school mage guilds had ride at. I agree that giving them an unreasonable ride is unreasonable, but so is completely removing it. They're not elves for gods sake.

A lot of mages don't have bash. The only mages that can have bash and wilderness quit are elkrosian touched. The only mages that can have bash and brew are vivaduan touched. A good mundane subguild gives so much utility to cover a main guild's weaknesses. People like to complain about the stalker guild giving mages too much, but it doesn't give them bash.

Quote from: CirclelessBard on August 11, 2023, 06:19:38 PM

Quote from: wizturbo on August 11, 2023, 05:38:17 PMPutting the wrong players behind the wheel of many of the Karma restricted options is a recipe for disaster.

In commenting on the decline in the quality of roleplay in the game, staff have essentially said that this is already happening.

That's like saying climate change is already happening, why don't we remove all the environmental protection legislation because it doesn't matter anymore.

Start caring a litte more about who's actually good at roleplaying, and a little less about who's being a diligent fan of the game and fighting the good whiteknight fight. The latter seems to have been what it's all about for a very long time and it hasn't actually served the game very well.

Quote from: wizturbo on August 11, 2023, 10:01:31 PM

Quote from: CirclelessBard on August 11, 2023, 06:19:38 PM

Quote from: wizturbo on August 11, 2023, 05:38:17 PMPutting the wrong players behind the wheel of many of the Karma restricted options is a recipe for disaster.

In commenting on the decline in the quality of roleplay in the game, staff have essentially said that this is already happening.

That's like saying climate change is already happening, why don't we remove all the environmental protection legislation because it doesn't matter anymore.

No, it's not like saying that at all, because no one has suggested removing all regulation. Even those arguing that the karma system is unhelpful are still saying trust and player-staff dialogue are important.

Quote from: CirclelessBard on August 11, 2023, 10:19:36 PM

Quote from: wizturbo on August 11, 2023, 10:01:31 PM

Quote from: CirclelessBard on August 11, 2023, 06:19:38 PM

Quote from: wizturbo on August 11, 2023, 05:38:17 PMPutting the wrong players behind the wheel of many of the Karma restricted options is a recipe for disaster.

In commenting on the decline in the quality of roleplay in the game, staff have essentially said that this is already happening.

That's like saying climate change is already happening, why don't we remove all the environmental protection legislation because it doesn't matter anymore.

No, it's not like saying that at all, because no one has suggested removing all regulation. Even those arguing that the karma system is unhelpful are still saying trust and player-staff dialogue are important.

You know I love you, but some in this thread ARE arguing for a full deregulation. Not everyone is suggesting your idea of frontloading the trust in a player's ability via a dialogue.

I can't think of anyone that's thinking of fully doing away with anything either as much as a 'are they too new or prone to abuse to be trusted or are they trustworthy' at the absolute baseline, which is a binary over a scale, for sure, but even I, who I think am the most wanting to do away with stuff, know that some people are absolutely going to be abusive asses or are too new to get certain stuff right, and it needs some safeguard on that.

It seems we keep forgetting to touch on the RP standards we want to agree on as a community, so I'm gonna suggest some to get the ball rolling again.

1. Basic punctuation and grammar. (No shorthand or slang like "u" instead of "you")
2. Conservative usage of the OOC command.
3. Regular use of emotes in both action and speech when interacting with others or in the vicinity of other players.
4. Adherence to general documentation on the game's setting and culture.
5. No godmoding. (You can't force another pc to high five you, for example. But you can raise your own hand and set the high five up!)

For new players, bullets 3-5 will understandably need to be learned over time.

Quote from: Riev on August 11, 2023, 10:55:31 PM

Quote from: CirclelessBard on August 11, 2023, 10:19:36 PM

Quote from: wizturbo on August 11, 2023, 10:01:31 PM

Quote from: CirclelessBard on August 11, 2023, 06:19:38 PM

Quote from: wizturbo on August 11, 2023, 05:38:17 PMPutting the wrong players behind the wheel of many of the Karma restricted options is a recipe for disaster.

In commenting on the decline in the quality of roleplay in the game, staff have essentially said that this is already happening.

That's like saying climate change is already happening, why don't we remove all the environmental protection legislation because it doesn't matter anymore.

No, it's not like saying that at all, because no one has suggested removing all regulation. Even those arguing that the karma system is unhelpful are still saying trust and player-staff dialogue are important.

You know I love you, but some in this thread ARE arguing for a full deregulation. Not everyone is suggesting your idea of frontloading the trust in a player's ability via a dialogue.

I've read (well, listened to) this thread pretty thoroughly, but I admit I could be wrong with my generalization. The closest I've seen people come to saying "let everyone play everything" was also with the caveat of "staff should be telling people what they actually want from us". And while those messages seemed tinged with frustration (frustration which I think is understandable, considering how much of a divide has been created by needlessly stratifying players over the decades), I did not get the sense that they don't want any staff guidance at all. If that was not the case I apologize for misinterpreting.

Quote from: digitaleak on August 12, 2023, 03:06:47 AMIt seems we keep forgetting to touch on the RP standards we want to agree on as a community, so I'm gonna suggest some to get the ball rolling again.


3. Regular use of emotes in both action and speech when interacting with others or in the vicinity of other players.

Some understanding of 'pacing' during a scene would be great too.

For new players, bullets 3-5 will understandably need to be learned over time.

Quote from: mansa on August 11, 2023, 04:45:25 PMMy disagreement with allowing the playerbase to play anything is that they will only play magickers.

So to prevent that, you would need to put harsh limits on the population of certain classes and subclasses.

I would say something like:
10% of the active playerbase can be a mul or half-giant
15% of the active playerbase can be vivaduan/rukkian/suk-krath/whiran
10% of the active playerbase can be drov/elkros/nilazi
20% of the active playerbase can be a desert elf / thryzn

And I would prevent players from playing a magicker character two times in a row.

I disagree with this. I have never played a magicker and probably never will. I am probably not the only one. It would be easy to implement a no back to back rule. You played this last char, so you can't play this on your next one. Instead of it being tiered, it can just be based on your personal account. No back to back muls, hgs, or magick users, etc.
Example:
Did you play a mul last character? - No.
Are there mul vacancies in the game? - Yes.
= Free to roll a mul.
If one of those is a no, you'd have to wait.
ETA: I would add a time limit of 30 days as well, to avoid people suiciding to get around it.

A time limit of 30 days huh? Sounds a bit like... A karma timer. :P

Quote from: Usiku on August 12, 2023, 11:36:36 AMA time limit of 30 days huh? Sounds a bit like... A karma timer. :P

With a 0/1 on off binary though, which is a different context than the original one existed in.

I will note that I still don't agree with it and still believe it will drive a large portion of people to just sit out the time period (or sit there afk, or idle, or play in the most disengaged absolute minimum) where the role they desire to play is locked, if people try to force things, because there's evidence it has been the case historically and it was something that was predictable ahead of it then too.

But a couple days ago I had multiple people point out here to me that context was important, and I think it's important here, too. This is a different context, not a scaled ladder, just an on/off.

(back to my goblin hole)

In order for me as a player to trust the awarding or reduction of karma to another PERSON, I would have to:

1) truly believe they are a better roleplayer than I am.
2) have complete trust that they are unbiased and will judge based on roleplay only. Not just of me but everyone, equally.

A difficult but not impossible task. Staff PC's should be the most awesome RP'ers, setting the example. Awarding OR reduction of karma should be completely transparent. WHO is doing the giving or taking and WHY it is happening.

There can't be 40 magick users and 50 muls in the game at one time. If you can't play any other character, that's not the game's fault. If you've already played a mul last character, roll a different one when that one dies/stores. I don't see a big deal. The timer doesn't have to exist. Maybe if you suicide/store to get around the rules, that proves that you're not mature enough to play such a challenging role.

Quote from: Riev on August 11, 2023, 10:55:31 PMYou know I love you, but some in this thread ARE arguing for a full deregulation. Not everyone is suggesting your idea of frontloading the trust in a player's ability via a dialogue.

This.

Also not a fan of front loading trust all the way, but I could see giving people the benefit of the doubt and offering some mid-tier karma options sooner if they're doing well.  That's why I like the player driven approach to granting karma with staff setting their maximum.  I'd be cool with new accounts starting with their max karma limit in the middle, so if the player base is regularly rewarding them for great play they could climb the karma ladder quickly.  Players like Papertiger who just started a few months ago would probably already have reached that level based on the quality of their play, if it was just players granting them karma and not entirely at the mercy of staff witnessing them.

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.

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.

Quote from: Classclown on August 12, 2023, 03:05:12 PMHow 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.

Quote from: Tailong on August 12, 2023, 03:22:25 PMYou 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.

Quote from: Trevalyan on August 12, 2023, 03:28:46 PM

Quote from: Tailong on August 12, 2023, 03:22:25 PMYou 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.

Quote from: Tailong on August 12, 2023, 03:31:51 PMStaff 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.

Quote from: Tailong on August 12, 2023, 03:22:25 PM

Quote from: Classclown on August 12, 2023, 03:05:12 PMHow 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.

Quote from: Classclown on August 12, 2023, 03:05:12 PMHow 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.

Quote from: BadSkeelz on August 12, 2023, 04:15:06 PMWe 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.

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.

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.

Quote from: Classclown on August 12, 2023, 03:05:12 PMHow 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.

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.

Quote from: Classclown on August 12, 2023, 08:10:45 PMIt 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.

Quote from: digitaleak on August 12, 2023, 08:40:29 PMSecond 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.

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.

Quote from: Classclown on August 12, 2023, 08:10:45 PMIt 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.

Quote from: Kaathe on August 12, 2023, 10:17:29 PMI 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.

Quote from: Halaster on August 10, 2023, 03:21:49 PMHere'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.

Quote from: BadSkeelz on August 12, 2023, 04:50:42 PMThe 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.

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.

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.

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'.

Quote from: Usiku on August 13, 2023, 01:54:16 PMI 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.

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.

Plenty can argue we're already a hack-and-slash with a veneer of character roleplay atop it. Documentations and guidelines tend to go out the window when people's characters (representing hundreds of hours of their time) are on the line.

Quote from: kahuna on August 13, 2023, 07:09:17 PMI 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.

It's exactly this mindset that makes Karma completely mandatory.  Without Karma it just becomes arbitrary on what "good" looks like.  With karma it's enforced and bad players aren't given the same options as good players.

What about karma makes good roleplay no longer arbitrary?

What is good roleplay?

Why are some max-karma players not good roleplayers?

If you need Karma to force people to adhere to basic roleplaying standards, then we've already lost the point of the game. Roleplay should be the focus of the game and why we're here. There are plenty of hack and slash and video games where you can kill stuff. Coded skills are only there to enhance our roleplay. Live your character's lives without worrying about coded skill, except where your character might be worried about their training.

 I do understand days where you're not in the mood for rping, but there are ways to even do that that would still be good rp, rping your character being in a mood and needing to be alone, or whatever. If you close your eyes and imagine inhabiting your character's life, how they would feel, what smells they would smell, the sounds they'd hear, how they would walk down a busy street or through the bustling bazaar, it gets easier to roleplay them when around other pcs. There is a coded limit to emotes, so we're not expecting paragraphs here, just something true to your character.

  I am for no karma or maybe everyone starts at the highest karma and it goes down after every karma role used and then resets when you hit 0.

 I understand people have favorite builds, but I find it a little childish to say "Oh, I won't play for a month because of a timer." Mundane characters can be fun too. where you have to use your brain without the added coded bonuses. I don't know, this meandered a bit. My point is you shouldn't need karma to force you to play well and good rp should be common sense. Be in the world, be your character, acknowledge the npcs and vnpcs in your actions. Try to leave ooc thinking out of the game. It's hard for me sometimes too, but it improves the game immensely when everyone is playing together instead of fifty solo players.

Quote from: Usiku on August 13, 2023, 07:20:21 PMExcept 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.

Speaking as a max karma player that has played some high power roles here. I havn't played in a few years though.

Armageddon is already a hack and slash that incentivizes abusive play styles and it always has been. Information sharing, griefing and skill chasing should be considered endemic. How about staff supported leader roles that seem more interested in tricking players into back room deaths than actually engage in interesting longform rp?

When I role played in Armageddon I did so IN SPITE of these incentive structures and often payed the price with a dead character. Similarly when I engaged other players in good faith and empathy I was routinely rewarded with a dead character. When I complained to staff and other players, I was basically just told I was doing it wrong.

In the face of these problems what does karma give me? A couple new subguilds to tinker with? A couple of combat races that are stupendously limited in how and where they can play? Unlikely access to a super magicker that takes 20+ days played to get anywhere?

For a player primarily interested in role play it might as well be nothing.

A far as documentation goes? I actually don't care. Racial documents are routinely glossed over and ignored, though I can't blame anyone with how little use most of them are.

City/Location/Tribe RP is mostly vibes based IMHO. It's cool to have in depth documentation for all of these but I bet you I could pick a desert elf clan, never read the clan specific documentation and come out just fine. Note that after 20 years, Redstorm still has basically no location specific documentation.

Quote from: Master Color on August 14, 2023, 08:01:47 AM

Quote from: Usiku on August 13, 2023, 07:20:21 PMExcept 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.

Speaking as a max karma player that has played some high power roles here. I havn't played in a few years though.

Armageddon is already a hack and slash that incentivizes abusive play styles and it always has been. Information sharing, griefing and skill chasing should be considered endemic. How about staff supported leader roles that seem more interested in tricking players into back room deaths than actually engage in interesting longform rp?

When I role played in Armageddon I did so IN SPITE of these incentive structures and often payed the price with a dead character. Similarly when I engaged other players in good faith and empathy I was routinely rewarded with a dead character. When I complained to staff and other players, I was basically just told I was doing it wrong.

In the face of these problems what does karma give me? A couple new subguilds to tinker with? A couple of combat races that are stupendously limited in how and where they can play? Unlikely access to a super magicker that takes 20+ days played to get anywhere?

For a player primarily interested in role play it might as well be nothing.

A far as documentation goes? I actually don't care. Racial documents are routinely glossed over and ignored, though I can't blame anyone with how little use most of them are.

City/Location/Tribe RP is mostly vibes based IMHO. It's cool to have in depth documentation for all of these but I bet you I could pick a desert elf clan, never read the clan specific documentation and come out just fine. Note that after 20 years, Redstorm still has basically no location specific documentation.

My man. /Denzel Washington

Staff have been getting 'better' and bridging the divide between themselves and 'us' players, but we're still a 'them', or so it feels.

Playing to your character, and taking risks? Doing something your character would do that is not 'the best course of action'? Leads to dead characters. Staff also cannot support your PCs goals if you're dead, and often won't support your crazy risk taking by giving you an 'out'.

Unfortunately, Master Color has the right of it that even if you rise up the Karma Ranks, you're awarded with different skill sheets that may or may not be of interest, but you don't end up having more support, followthrough, or accessibility with staff to cultivate plots.

Quote from: Master Color on August 14, 2023, 08:01:47 AMSpeaking as a max karma player that has played some high power roles here. I havn't played in a few years though.

Do you have any suggestions as to how to improve things, then?  I see a list of complaints in your post, but I think it'd be even more helpful to see a positive effort or list of ideas to improve the situation.  As someone who hasn't played in a few years (you), are you thinking of coming back to contribute towards moving the game in a better direction by your standards?

Quote from: Halaster on August 14, 2023, 09:29:31 AM

Quote from: Master Color on August 14, 2023, 08:01:47 AMSpeaking as a max karma player that has played some high power roles here. I havn't played in a few years though.

Do you have any suggestions as to how to improve things, then?  I see a list of complaints in your post, but I think it'd be even more helpful to see a positive effort or list of ideas to improve the situation.  As someone who hasn't played in a few years (you), are you thinking of coming back to contribute towards moving the game in a better direction by your standards?

Remove karma and the stigma it creates that some players are some sort of elite caste and others not.

Quote from: Halaster on August 14, 2023, 09:29:31 AM

Quote from: Master Color on August 14, 2023, 08:01:47 AMSpeaking as a max karma player that has played some high power roles here. I havn't played in a few years though.

Do you have any suggestions as to how to improve things, then?  I see a list of complaints in your post, but I think it'd be even more helpful to see a positive effort or list of ideas to improve the situation.  As someone who hasn't played in a few years (you), are you thinking of coming back to contribute towards moving the game in a better direction by your standards?

Reduce or replace Armageddon's system of unrestricted pvp. Good luck with that.

Quote from: kahuna on August 14, 2023, 10:02:54 AM

Quote from: Halaster on August 14, 2023, 09:29:31 AM

Quote from: Master Color on August 14, 2023, 08:01:47 AMSpeaking as a max karma player that has played some high power roles here. I havn't played in a few years though.

Do you have any suggestions as to how to improve things, then?  I see a list of complaints in your post, but I think it'd be even more helpful to see a positive effort or list of ideas to improve the situation.  As someone who hasn't played in a few years (you), are you thinking of coming back to contribute towards moving the game in a better direction by your standards?

Remove karma and the stigma it creates that some players are some sort of elite caste and others not.

Umm but everyone can attain karma so....there is no stigma or elite caste. 

My suggestions beyond making muls special app - which is essential - to return karma to what sounds like its intended function of becoming and rewarding adherence to roleplaying standards:

1. Determine what we want from our players and what the structure of trust will look like. Is it more thinks? Is it more feels? Is it more emotes? Where are players with karma collectively doing well and where are they coming up short? I know opinions will vary on this but if there's no agreement on what the direction of the game is or what improvements you would like to see, then it's all but impossible to actually move forward productively! So what is it?

2. Establish standards. IMO, the standard for playing a higher-powered role should be an increase in what I would call interactive expression. At a minimum, we should expect when a high-powered role walks into the room, even if it's to kill you, you're getting some emotes or some dialogue that can be responded to and a well-written description. The standard you expect from a templar you should expect from a mul.

That should be the burden of a high-powered role. If players don't want or don't live up to that level of scrutiny, fine: just don't play a high-powered role.

3. Limit the number of high-powered roles. Unless they are story-driven by origin, there should only be a limited number of these per-year and definitely per-person or per-region. Keep in mind that these should be rare, not only current population-wise but frequency-wise. If two people have played (rare race or class) in the past month and gotten themselves killed, a third should not be appearing in the same region for a considerable period. They have been exterminated here for X length of time.

If (rare role or class) isn't being played well frequently, consider adjustments that will move them more into line. If they are being played well, consider empowering them. Make half-elves better, make muls worse. :P

4. Go down the current list of Karma "checkboxes" and clear out every one that does not encourage or reward what is actually good roleplay. Good and responsible roleplay doesn't include forcing me into roles I don't want to play - out of areas I enjoy most or into races that don't interest me for example.

Quote from: Windstorm on August 14, 2023, 11:37:10 AMGood stuff

I pretty much agree with this.  All of this. While I have had leadership roles, I personally don't want them currently and have no interest in leading. Same goes for role calls or sponsored roles. Should I be exempt from certain karma requirements? Maybe, but it should be more based on my roleplay and merits as a roleplayer and not the roles I want to play.

So this game revolves around pk and death in general having such a high impact, right?

Whether we are talking "high powered" roles or 0 karma options.  The ability to quickly cause death can exist. What rp would you wish to see when any of those things enter a room with you that would make a pk acceptable to these rp standards we're trying to apply?

Players flee upon first sight of endangering conflict probably 80% of the time.

I'm not a big pk oriented person so this all seems moot to me but the way I'm reading this it seems to be the biggest issue in regards to rp vs hack n slash. Outside of that I see people doing really well in many different roles including muls and magickers.

Karma is just a tracker of staff trust in my eyes.  Not a judge of poetic role play. Some people are very straight forward with their emotes and stuff and they are just as value as the paragraph long emoters imo.

One PK limiting option I found, that I try to keep hidden IG, is the idea that my PC has a favoritism for females, will only kill one if last resort. I think that similar things could be easily adopted. I.E. the dwarf that never kills another dwarf or muntants that only hunts 'normal' folks.

As well as adding RP hindering factors to PKing it also creates a general idea of the more dangerous PC's to pick and wonder out with if you want that added PK potential/risk to your game.

In my experience female PCs are less likely to be killed as is.
Dirty-half breeds are always the first to go XD

Arguably against the docs as sexism (positive or negative) isn't supposed to exist in Zalanthas. Pretty silly strategy really, though granted like 60% of the PCs at any given time are women.

I think to really change how PK is approached and the roleplay (or lack thereof) that surrounds it, you would have to make it so Player characters are no longer expected to be antagonistic towards each other. This means certain roles - templars and rogue sorcerers, in particular - would need to stop being player-characters and instead be staff-run antagonists that PCs either need to defeat or avoid. PC focus shifts to being the underdogs of Zalanthas - the common people, the tribals, the rogues, the escapees. The PVP axis shifts from powerful sponsored and karma roles carving out their own turfs and crapping on anyone they can get away with to a PVE focus of trying to survive under NPC Templars and wasteland sorcerer-lords.

This would of course probably require a complete rebuild of the game, so I doubt it's going to happen. Armageddon was built as a PVP hack and slash and it will remain one so long as you can target PCs with lethal commands.

Quote from: BadSkeelz on August 14, 2023, 04:38:01 PMI think to really change how PK is approached and the roleplay (or lack thereof) that surrounds it, you would have to make it so Player characters are no longer expected to be antagonistic towards each other. This means certain roles - templars and rogue sorcerers, in particular - would need to stop being player-characters and instead be staff-run antagonists that PCs either need to defeat or avoid. PC focus shifts to being the underdogs of Zalanthas - the common people, the tribals, the rogues, the escapees.

This would of course probably require a complete rebuild of the game, so I doubt it's going to happen. Armageddon was built as a PVP hack and slash and it will remain one so long as you can target PCs with lethal commands.

I'm not sure you'd have to go this far. In fact, I rather think there's an area in the game where you can enjoy something very close to this experience.

Just because you can target a pc with the kill command, doesn't mean the game is focused on that. It just means the threat of perma death is codedly real and adds real stakes to rp. Just my opinion.

Quote from: Master Color on August 14, 2023, 08:01:47 AMStuff...

If you're not playing and you're not interested and all you have is non-constructive criticism based off your experiences from.. I don't know when.. then you're not really bringing much to this conversation.

Quote from: Riev on August 14, 2023, 09:29:17 AMUnfortunately, Master Color has the right of it that even if you rise up the Karma Ranks, you're awarded with different skill sheets that may or may not be of interest, but you don't end up having more support, followthrough, or accessibility with staff to cultivate plots.

You are absolutely correct. More karma does not bring you better access to staff and more support for your plots. Because that is available to all players at all karma levels equally. Staff support is entirely separate from karma and is gained by having well-planned concepts with achievable, realistic goals, being ready to engage with the challenges/quests/activities required to achieve them and communicating regularly with staff. We maintain a very high staff to player ratio so that our storytellers can enable our player's stories. Yes, we have limited manpower and therefore limited time, but everyone has a good shot at getting a piece of that pie and over the few years I have seen no pattern as to who gets that support beyond people communicating and playing in ways that help us to help them.

I have always been led to believe that karma is given to those who show that they understand the game, the dynamics, the lore, and the general way that the game world works. I would not want to have karma taken away and let new boots bob have a half giant, a mul, or a witch. Does the system need tweaking? Yup. Should it be taken away? Nope. I understand both sides of the coin with this arguement, but if we take karma away, you're going to be looking at a REALLY long waiting time on your special apps that will be protected roles such as witches, muls, hgs, sorcerers etc, which will only lead to frustration on both sides.

It's uncomfortable seeing two staff members come in and call Master Color's criticism unconstructive and unhelpful because it is dated and without specific solutions in a thread that contains many replies lacking solutions. I understand the reflex to do so - the staff team of today is made up of mostly different members than it was a few years ago, and it's worth acknowledging that the current team members are trying to take the game in a new direction, ideally without having to be tied to the mistakes and abuses of former staff members and players.

Where I think critique from an older standpoint - constructive or otherwise - is most valuable is in pointing out old mistakes the game, has made and encouraging the new iteration of the game to avoid them. Some people are good at identifying problems, others are good at coming up with solutions, and some can do a bit of both with roughly equal skill. I think we shouldn't dismiss what anyone has to say when they're posting in a thread to collect thoughts on making the game better. I would assume good faith of anyone trying to contribute to this particular conversation, especially since the next iteration of karma (or whatever it ends up being called) will have a long-lasting impact on the game and I would like to think that none of us would be here if we weren't trying to make that impact as positive as possible.

Quote from: CirclelessBard on August 15, 2023, 06:37:42 AMIt's uncomfortable seeing two staff members come in and call Master Color's criticism unconstructive and unhelpful because it is dated and without specific solutions in a thread that contains many replies lacking solutions

It is not uncomfortable to me. It would get uncomfortable if staff decides to take action and try banning him or whatever. As long as they are sharing opinion only, it is fair game. Freedom of speech exists for all parties.

I'm not discomforted about staff taking moderation action, but rather staff going back on the initial wording of the original post which asks all people not to shoot down others' ideas and perspectives.

It's also meant to be a discussion about the karma system specifically.. not a thread in which to offload all your gripes about your history with the game.

Quote from: Usiku on August 15, 2023, 07:57:21 AMIt's also meant to be a discussion about the karma system specifically.. not a thread in which to offload all your gripes about your history with the game.

I understand that, and I read Master Color's post as a critique of the karma system in that karma has historically not been indicative of good roleplaying skill, something I think you mentioned and has been broadly acknowledged/agreed with at this point.

I disagree with Master Color on the matter of documentation not mattering and I think that if the game is going to use the karma system to measure roleplaying skill, the documentation does need to be shored up so that players know what expectations we're supposed to meet. I imagine this will be an evolving process, with players and staff getting the initial bulk of the work done together, and the documentation being added to whenever questions about edge cases arise. Sort of like a moderated Wiki.

One question I have asked repeatedly throughout the thread and haven't really gotten a sufficient answer for is: what does good roleplaying look like? If some max karma players are bringing mediocre quality roleplay to the table then we need to know what the opposite looks like so we can emulate it as much as possible. I think that will contribute to the quality of the game much more significantly than the scale players are rated on.

Quote from: najdorf on August 15, 2023, 07:34:14 AM

Quote from: CirclelessBard on August 15, 2023, 06:37:42 AMIt's uncomfortable seeing two staff members come in and call Master Color's criticism unconstructive and unhelpful because it is dated and without specific solutions in a thread that contains many replies lacking solutions

It is not uncomfortable to me. It would get uncomfortable if staff decides to take action and try banning him or whatever. As long as they are sharing opinion only, it is fair game. Freedom of speech exists for all parties.

Staff won't take away someone's ability to post or whatever in the current system, so I'll go ahead and nix this thinking before it gets taken anywhere it shouldn't be going. Please try to keep objectively on the subject and keep the conversation civil and all will be well.

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?

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".

Quote from: Riev on August 15, 2023, 08:47:42 AMthe 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.

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.

Quote from: Halaster on August 15, 2023, 10:32:45 AM

Quote from: Riev on August 15, 2023, 08:47:42 AMthe 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.

Quote from: Brokkr on August 07, 2023, 05:55:05 PMIt 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.

Quote from: Riev on August 15, 2023, 11:03:14 AM

Quote from: Halaster on August 15, 2023, 10:32:45 AM

Quote from: Riev on August 15, 2023, 08:47:42 AMthe 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.

Quote from: Brokkr on August 07, 2023, 05:55:05 PMIt 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.

"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.

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?"

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?

Quote from: Usiku on August 15, 2023, 11:21:41 AMI 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.

Quote from: CirclelessBard on August 15, 2023, 11:40:41 AMWhat 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.

Quote from: Halaster on August 15, 2023, 01:45:18 PM

Quote from: CirclelessBard on August 15, 2023, 11:40:41 AMWhat 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.

QuoteThe 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.

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

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.

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.
8) 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.

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.

Quote from: Riev on August 15, 2023, 11:49:03 AM

Quote from: Usiku on August 15, 2023, 11:21:41 AMI 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

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.

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.

Quote from: CirclelessBard on August 15, 2023, 02:06:29 PMIf 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.

QuoteI 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.

Quote from: kahuna on August 15, 2023, 09:09:04 PM

QuoteI 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.

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

Quote from: Jimpka_Moss on August 15, 2023, 11:06:35 PMI 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.

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.

Just call them trust levels or trust tiers (tts ;D ) 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.

Quote from: digitaleak on August 16, 2023, 01:46:30 AMI've read a lot of comments on staff/player trust but what about player/player trust?

What is player/player trust? MCB is a thing that people who are not me take very seriously and literally.

Quote from: Tuannon on August 16, 2023, 03:17:02 AM

Quote from: digitaleak on August 16, 2023, 01:46:30 AMI've read a lot of comments on staff/player trust but what about player/player trust?

What is player/player trust? MCB is a thing that people who are not me take very seriously and literally.

From my experience on other MUDs, TTRPGs and other roleplaying mediums, player/player trust is established by four main things:
1) Understanding that conflict is character vs. character (CvC), not player vs. player (PvP)
2) Understanding that in a collaborative story, every player should be given a chance to contribute
3) Understanding that every player believes their character is special and has a place in the game world, and should not be treated as expendable for its own sake
4) Having players participate in routine check-ins with one another to ensure that any conflict their characters are engaged in are fun for the player, if not necessarily for the character

I think 1-3 are easily achievable in Armageddon, and 4 is achievable if not for the fact that the staff have said they will never, ever under any circumstances consider letting players know who each other plays, even though I personally feel that outlook is detrimental to a healthy RP environment where players trust one another.

Player/Player trust, to me, is knowing that if we meet out in the wilderness and end up fighting ... if I emote backing off or surrendering, that you aren't just going to keep swinging, go for the immediate murder, and at least let me play out the scene.

Maybe I'm going to die anyway, but I want to back off, surrender, yell something, etc. Maybe I live for it, maybe I don't.

On the flip side, to know that if I'm trying to raid or kill someone, they aren't just going to no-emote spam flee and run to a nearby known-aggro monster and drag it back to me to have it try and kill me instead.

I think player / player trust can only be ooc. Whatever happens in game is fair game as long as it is within the rules of the game.

Why can't we just say killing pcs, or sentient nonaggro npcs, without emotes is unacceptable? hemotes and semotes do count here, I'm afraid. All pks should require a log from the killer's perspective to be submitted to have on file for a time period so the victim can put in a request to either see a cleaned up, and redacted if necessary, copy of the kill scene or at least be told, if a stealth kill, whether their killer roleplayed even if they didn't see it. We should be able to hold ourselves to a higher level of rp, myself included. This is a roleplaying game. This is a roleplaying game. This is a roleplaying game.

 Just because the mechanics are built on a hack and slash game, doesn't matter. We know it isn't meant to be one and should be able to adjust our gameplay accordingly.

What I meant by player/player trust is that if we were to move to a karma-free system, are we going to have people throwing fireballs left and right and gangs of muls walking around trolling? Or half giants that act like intelligent humans? Can we trust that our fellow players are going to honor the game world and documentation?

Quote from: najdorf on August 16, 2023, 10:10:01 AMI think player / player trust can only be ooc.

True - this is essentially implied by being described as player trust. The karma system represents staff-to-player trust that is also ooc.

QuoteWhatever happens in game is fair game as long as it is within the rules of the game.

A reasonable sentiment, but judging by the staff already having commented on the quality of roleplay from high karma players moving on a downward trend, it's unfortunately just not sufficient to just say "whatever happens in game is fine as long as it follows the rules". If high-karma players were breaking rules, there wouldn't be a karma debate; those players would simply have karma deducted and/or be banned from the game.

Quote from: Diesel on August 16, 2023, 11:32:07 AMWhy can't we just say killing pcs, or sentient nonaggro npcs, without emotes is unacceptable? hemotes and semotes do count here, I'm afraid.

Before, or after PK? If before, what if the victim was weaponless, and draws their weapon? What if they later on claim that they were ALREADY going to draw their weapon, and it was a coincidence. What if the victim prepares themselves in a swift escape, alerted by the sudden awareness from the pre-emote. What if the victim escapes due to being aware, then returns and murders the entire lineage of the assassin? Who is going to monitor all that, judge all that, decide on what is wrong or not, on that.

Quote from: Diesel on August 16, 2023, 11:32:07 AMAll pks should require a log from the killer's perspective to be submitted to have on file for a time period so the victim can put in a request to either see a cleaned up, and redacted if necessary, copy of the kill scene or at least be told, if a stealth kill, whether their killer roleplayed even if they didn't see it.

What you say afterwards is already within the rules of the game. Sending PK report is mandatory as far as I know.

Quote from: CirclelessBard on August 16, 2023, 12:27:34 PMA reasonable sentiment, but judging by the staff already having commented on the quality of roleplay from high karma players moving on a downward trend, it's unfortunately just not sufficient to just say "let whatever happens in game is fine as long as it follows the rules". If high-karma players were breaking rules, there wouldn't be a karma debate; those players would simply have karma deducted and/or be banned from the game.

I don't think PK roleplaying is distinctly a higher concern separate from the overall roleplaying quality. It is especially one of those areas that pre PK emoting might have serious IC issues, and not doing it should not be seen as bad RP.

Yes it should be. It is bad RP. It is also bad rp to autoflee. Both are true. We shouldn't relax on those points.

If it's your character's time to go, you should (and should have a chance to) go out in style.

You should be owed at least a single emote, a whisper, a say, something, when your story is ended.

When you take it in your hands to end someone else's story, you owe them something. An end to their story.

However small it is. A say, a whisper, an emote. Something. You are taking it in your hands to write the end to a story someone else has been writing.

This is a roleplay intensive game, not a hack and slash game. And as long as people are given a pass on NOT giving that to one another, the standards are going to continue to be no more than a hack and slash.

You literally cannot have it both ways. Someone in charge needs to decide. And so far, they have decided that the standards are that of a hack and slash, that you don't owe the other player an end to their story, and that is how you get what you have. If there's a problem with it, change the code and change the rules.

But I'm tired of people pretending like it's not poor form to just bum rush someone with code and mantishead them with nothing but code. Is it against the rules? No. Is it shitty and something that completely disregards the player behind the other character, their time investment and the creativity and passion and whatever else they have invested? Absolutely.

So... do we want to lessen that? Maybe we should change the rules or code to disallow it. Yes, you will always have someone crowing about how something being changed is going to be a problem. God knows I'm usually the loudest and longest one on that. What is the problem that it will create exactly? That it makes it harder to kill other characters? Is that a bad thing? I don't think it is. And I don't think it necessarily will make it harder, either. It all depends on implementation.

Quote from: Diesel on August 16, 2023, 01:08:32 PMYes it should be. It is bad RP. It is also bad rp to autoflee. Both are true. We shouldn't relax on those points.

I think it's bad to autoflee, not no-rp autoflee doesn't result in me losing a character I spent hundreds of hours on, so I don't hold them to the same regard. I do also think people should have proper, personal motivation to kill another character. I don't think "I hate all elves" is a very good justification for pking every elf you come across if you have the chance. But I also have a pretty different perspective because I consider PKs to be a very extreme action, and I know not all people do.

Quote from: Diesel on August 16, 2023, 01:08:32 PMYes it should be. It is bad RP. It is also bad rp to autoflee. Both are true. We shouldn't relax on those points.

With that mindset, we will loose half of the player base. I'm always in for practice > theory.

Quote from: najdorf on August 16, 2023, 03:03:56 PM

Quote from: Diesel on August 16, 2023, 01:08:32 PMYes it should be. It is bad RP. It is also bad rp to autoflee. Both are true. We shouldn't relax on those points.

With that mindset, we will loose half of the player base. I'm always in for practice > theory.

We're straying a bit from the topic of karma, but I'll address this.  I think the goal should always be to RP (via say/emote/etc) in combat.  Before, after, during.  But let's be honest here:  it's hard sometimes to do that when death is on the line.  Particularly for someone in a once-in-a-long-time kind of role.  A templar, or a sorcerer, or some kind of specapp.  Someone playing one of those gets in a situation where they've got the potential to possible lose the character, and maybe never play something like it again for many years?  They're going to make fast decisions to try to save the character, and I can understand that.  I'm not saying it's 100% OK to never RP during a fight, but I think some understanding for those people is in order.

The fight-or-flight response during CvC (character vs. character) situations would mainly be mitigated by rules of engagement for players to follow in such situations, something which other RPIs have employed throughout the history of the genre and have found their way into other types of RP from MUSHes to GTA5 RP servers, but seemingly never found a place here, despite being suggested many times over the years. For those not familiar with the concept of rules of engagement, they are basically rules that players must follow during CvC situations, such as: not attacking or moving from the room until both parties in a conflict have emoted, not using long-distance attacks without warning the other player that they are being targeted, making sure all combatants are taking turns with their actions, etc.

Though how to RP during deadly situations is somewhat off-topic, I would generally expect players with high karma whose character is an aggressor to, at the very least, understand what they are taking away from the other player and only use killing as an absolute last resort. However, this is the barest of bare minimums. Ensuring consistently good RP when a high-karma character is under attack is going to basically need rules of engagement, I think, especially given the scarcity of high karma roles and a player's desire to not lose access to said role interfering with the actions their character might take - something anyone with empathy would understand is both human nature, but is considered poor roleplaying form per site documentation.

IMO this all falls under these two points I brought up earlier about how to establish greater trust between players:

Quote from: CirclelessBard on August 16, 2023, 05:23:41 AM2) Understanding that in a collaborative story, every player should be given a chance to contribute
3) Understanding that every player believes their character is special and has a place in the game world, and should not be treated as expendable for its own sake

And I think if rules of engagement existed you would definitely see a higher caliber of roleplay from all players, not just high-karma ones. Of course, this all depends on what decline in roleplaying quality staff are witnessing among high-karma players exactly. If it's something else, like not properly adhering to racial or tribal documentation, rules of engagement would obviously not help with that.

I would hope that a player with a high level of karma/trust/PP Points would be the kind of player that has evolved into understanding how to engage in conflict that doesn't start and end with "I can not leave my enemies alive, or they will only serve to come back at me".

I cannot tell you the number of PCs, in game, have told me that or held that mentality. Kill, because otherwise they're a nuisance. There are myriad ways to engage and possibly resolve conflict that isn't murder or maiming. They just take longer, more effort, or some assistance from staff. Many of us (me included) are not willing to sit for 3 weeks on a grudge because there's staff conversation or the aide you're looking to maim is on vacation.

High karma players should have the understanding that engaging with other players should TRY to default to prolonging the scene or the roleplay rather than immediately ending it. Not that killing and murder is verboten, but it should be the last effort of desperate men (or rinthis)

Armageddon is a large-scale prisoner's dilemma where there are two options for survival: Kill anyone who poses a threat at first opportunity, or check out from the PVP game as best you can entirely. (And it is a PVP game given the number of people whose characters serve merely to act out power fantasies.)

As far as Karma goes, it just marks staff favor towards players who are allowed to play with loaded decks.

Some context circa 2021

When players saw my sorcerer coming I think maybe 1 in 10 would stick around. I could arrest them with magick but I wasn't about to force anyone to a scene they weren't into.

Maybe about 1/20 would try to no-emote faceroll my sorc. These were always dwarves, half-giants or muls. Tellingly the rp switch would flip right back on again once they wanted to blubber at my pc over The Way.

My main issue has always been that there's been a lot of high-karma players who clearly didn't deserve it. That doesn't come from a place of jealousy--I don't deserve high karma, because I've never lived up to the criteria. My accounts (hehe) get the first point and then I don't care enough for clanleading or biting my tongue in the face of unfairness to ever qualify for more. But to see players of high status who routinely twink out, suck at roleplaying, and just don't represent the standard that should be expected of the game's supposedly most exemplary players, that always made me wonder if making an effort and playing by the rules is a sucker's game.

If you can be a total twink and a lazy RPer and still rise to the top of the karma scale, why should I give 110% myself? All you get out of doing that is disadvantages. Training skills in a realistic manner, giving others the benefit of the doubt in PvP, taking the virtual world into account at all times, these things don't exactly help your character. They're disadvantages for you if others get away with ignoring them, and if others get away with ignoring them and still have plenty of karma, it doesn't exactly encourage dogmatic behavior in oneself.

As far as I can tell, karma comes mainly from three sources:
- Playing a clan leader for a long time, and generally playing for a long time. There's a strong element of 'time served' in the karma system, going so far as 'you must have played this long to qualify'
- Being unwaveringly polite and subservient in communication with staff. You largely have to treat them like you treat your boss at work, even if you've been wronged. Never show any sort of temper or defiance
- Organizing events, no matter what they are (no matter how inane and dull), which has an inherent US-centric bias since almost all events in this game take place in a US-exclusive timeslot and the game is nearly dead outside of it as a result

Things I've noticed playing little to no role in karma:
- Making an actual effort to characterize through emotes, writing with effort, having a detectable personality for your character that you actually adhere to even when it's disadvantageous, etc.
- A realistic approach to the coded systems. Skill-grinding, twinking, insta-attacking in PvP, people routinely get away with these and complaints about it are futile. The rules are so lenient when it comes to this, or at least enforcement of them
- Going out of your way to include as many players in your roleplay as reasonably possible. This game can be very cliquish and exclusive, and reaching out does not appear to garner any sort of recognition for one's efforts, nor do insular habits appear to be discouraged

I've always wished that Armageddon was a game where just pouring your heart and soul into your character could be enough, not necessarily for the top echelons of the reward system, but at least reasonably recognized--and a game where those who don't do that are not put into that top echelon. But it has never been that, so I've always felt like I could have been a much better player myself if it wasn't for the fact that I was up against the disadvantages that come with playing fair; a disadvantage that other players evaded by not playing fair and somehow still got to enjoy the perks of high karma. It made me never want to strive for excellence, because it felt like the system didn't acknowledge the attempt, it just acknowledged not rocking the boat and not expressing dissent, and doing manual labor for the game in the form of being Sergeant Whatshisface or Agent Whoever for x months, even if I did fuck-all with the character. Just filling the position seemed enough.

Quote from: Yelinak on August 16, 2023, 06:00:08 PM- Organizing events, no matter what they are (no matter how inane and dull), which has an inherent US-centric bias since almost all events in this game take place in a US-exclusive timeslot and the game is nearly dead outside of it as a result

We are routinely at 30-40 players at 3pm ST these days, by the way. US exclusivity is becoming less of a thing.

Quote from: Yelinak on August 16, 2023, 06:00:08 PMThings I've noticed playing little to no role in karma:
- Making an actual effort to characterize through emotes, writing with effort, having a detectable personality for your character that you actually adhere to even when it's disadvantageous, etc.
- A realistic approach to the coded systems. Skill-grinding, twinking, insta-attacking in PvP, people routinely get away with these and complaints about it are futile. The rules are so lenient when it comes to this, or at least enforcement of them
- Going out of your way to include as many players in your roleplay as reasonably possible. This game can be very cliquish and exclusive, and reaching out does not appear to garner any sort of recognition for one's efforts, nor do insular habits appear to be discouraged

Unless you consider being tactful in communication as subservient, this is how I received most if not all of my karma. Aside from the one hilariously botched and abandoned templar, I have (almost) never played leadership or organized anything worth a shit. My one sorc RPT'd a raid on the Oashi vineyard and it was a total shitshow.

Most of my ~85 characters have made very little impact on the world, I don't write particularly compelling characters, and I pretty often wonder if I'm just playing some different shade of myself. I'm not a great roleplayer.

I do make an honest attempt at all of that quotes shit as often as possible. I consider theme 100% of the time, I read documentation, and I try to illustrate the world in a way that feels like Zalanthas. That's kinda it as far as I can tell; all of my karmas have come from just being a responsible player that respects the game.

I guess if I were to give input on karma and what I want out of it: strip out all the shit except ability to interpret the world as built and play within that framework.

If staff find a way to allocate more of their time to working with their clans, I imagine more players who aren't playing leadership roles would get recognition. If finding a new way to work karma opens up their time, then that can only mean good things for the game imo.

@Usiku Have you got your data?

Quote from: Tuannon on August 17, 2023, 04:02:07 AM@Usiku Have you got your data?

We have been discussing in the background and trying to design a proposal in tandem with this discussion. With elements of the conversation here impacting that as well as causing side discussions about other issues. I imagine that this has probably run its course and that most of the folks with viewpoints to express have expressed them but we shall see. Now we're trying to put something together that we can all agree on.

All righty, going to lock it down for now.

Quote from: Yelinak on August 16, 2023, 06:00:08 PMMy accounts (hehe) ..

Thanks for the heads-up.