Ditching the karma/sponsored role system to improve player-staff relations.

[Seeker]

There has only been one single resource PC in recent years...

Regrettably, I have less reason to believe you than to doubt you, Bokkr.   

More importantly, the last most visible example of the case was NOT a Resource NPC as defined by the staff to the player base.  The senior member of staff who animated that character blatantly broke the rules that Resource NPCs were required to follow in a spectacular fashion for a very long time.

I am still furious that the rest of the senior staff allowed that to happen in the first place.  Resource NPCs were expressly defined and limited to make that type of behavior impossible by staff if they only followed their own guidelines and held each other accountable. 

Please understand this is not an attack post.  This seems to be an unfortunately necessary post to keep the issue clear.  I offer it with all the respect due.

[Brokkr]

As you doubt what I am saying, please go ahead and put in a request about other PCs you think were Resource PCs, as I assume you have some reasons to justify that doubt.

[Seeker]

Thank you, Bokkr.

If you would address the other seven sentences of my above post, I will gratefully expound upon the specific reasons I have to be justifiably wary of your statements.

[Veselka]

In an ideal world where the staff were totally fair, this would be a non-issue. But that history, which culminated in multiple staff members holding resource PCs because of a lack of trust in players to hold those same roles, is clear.

There has only been one single resource PC in recent years and one edge case, and then when there was literally no player applications for the role.  If a Staff avatar works their way up from a Byn Runner to a Sergeant, as an example, that is not a resource PC.

The edge case was for one of my secret role calls. It involved some character customization as part of the plot.  Multiple folks were chosen, not just one, and they all got the same customization.

We haven’t done resource PCs at all for a number of years before this.  The last I can think of (and this was before I was Staff so may not be the most recent) was some Negean nobles as part of the plot to destroy that House.

There are a lot of mental gymnastics going on to help defend Staff's decision to allow a Resource N(PC) to exist for both as long as they did, and become as powerful/well-provided for as they did.

The reason this is upsetting to the community is the amount of obfuscation / defending that Shalooonsh provided for his own character.

This is tantamount to cheating.

He cheated, protecting what was ostensibly a glorified NPC, because he wanted to. So many people have examples of this. In my instance, Shalooonsh used animated superior NPCs to chastise one of my leadership PCs for targeting his Resource PC in an assassination plot. THAT IS CHEATING. It is breaking the rules you yourselves set out to make as Staff for Resource PCs.

Staff isn't owning up to this cheating, rather saying Shalooonsh was let go for 'being rude to the playerbase'. It isn't that simple. And if the community believes otherwise, they aren't going to engage with the game until it is not only addressed and apologized for, but we are shown a path forward that will prevent this from happening in the future.

[BadSkeelz]

Shaloonsh was hardly the only Staff PC. Maybe he was the only "Resource" PC but as recent events have shown that's a meaningless label.

In the last months there have been too many Staff PCs, too many convenient coincidences of late, to not suspect that there was widespread systemic cheating by Staff. The appearances of cheating are as bad or worse than actual cheating, because we can't even be sure it happened at all. It rots trust in the entire system.

Simply knowing who you're playing with is the simplest form of Collusion, of Cheating. It lifts a psychological burden off the players involved and establishes a base level of trust that make interactions safer. Staff have this as a perk built in to their position; their ability to read reports, animate NPCs, and actively spy on other PCs exceeds anything non-staff players can achieve. It is human nature to seek advantage and show favoritism, and Staff have too many means to do so without any recourse. They're refereeing a game and playing in it too. All we can do is trust that they're going to play fair, and that is impossible under the current system.

Staff need to not have PCs. Staff need to stake their names and their reputation on every interaction they have with players. In a perfect game, a collaborative game, we would all know who we're playing with. Players (Staff or otherwise) need to be able to take a step  back from their character's heads and emotions and remember that we're playing together, not against each other.

Or maybe we are playing a ruthless prisoners' dilemma emotion simulator. Maybe I should get around to making the "What kind of game is Arm?" thread I've wanted to for a week now.

[Veselka]

Shaloonsh was hardly the only Staff PC. Maybe he was the only "Resource" PC but as recent events have shown that's a meaningless label.

In the last months there have been too many Staff PCs, too many convenient coincidences of late, to not suspect that there was widespread systemic cheating by Staff. The appearances of cheating are as bad or worse than actual cheating, because we can't even be sure it happened at all. It rots trust in the entire system.

Simply knowing who you're playing with is the simplest form of Collusion, of Cheating. It lifts a psychological burden off the players involved and establishes a base level of trust that make interactions safer. Staff have this as a perk built in to their position; their ability to read reports, animate NPCs, and actively spy on other PCs exceeds anything non-staff players can achieve. It is human nature to seek advantage and show favoritism, and Staff have too many means to do so without any recourse. They're refereeing a game and playing in it too. All we can do is trust that they're going to play fair, and that is impossible under the current system.

Staff need to not have PCs. Staff need to stake their names and their reputation on every interaction they have with players. In a perfect game, a collaborative game, we would all know who we're playing with. Players (Staff or otherwise) need to be able to take a step  back from their character's heads and emotions and remember that we're playing together, not against each other.

Or maybe we are playing a ruthless prisoners' dilemma emotion simulator. Maybe I should get around to making the "What kind of game is Arm?" thread I've wanted to for a week now.

+1

Very well put.

[Jarvis]

Shaloonsh was hardly the only Staff PC. Maybe he was the only "Resource" PC but as recent events have shown that's a meaningless label.

In the last months there have been too many Staff PCs, too many convenient coincidences of late, to not suspect that there was widespread systemic cheating by Staff. The appearances of cheating are as bad or worse than actual cheating, because we can't even be sure it happened at all. It rots trust in the entire system.

Simply knowing who you're playing with is the simplest form of Collusion, of Cheating. It lifts a psychological burden off the players involved and establishes a base level of trust that make interactions safer. Staff have this as a perk built in to their position; their ability to read reports, animate NPCs, and actively spy on other PCs exceeds anything non-staff players can achieve. It is human nature to seek advantage and show favoritism, and Staff have too many means to do so without any recourse. They're refereeing a game and playing in it too. All we can do is trust that they're going to play fair, and that is impossible under the current system.

Staff need to not have PCs. Staff need to stake their names and their reputation on every interaction they have with players. In a perfect game, a collaborative game, we would all know who we're playing with. Players (Staff or otherwise) need to be able to take a step  back from their character's heads and emotions and remember that we're playing together, not against each other.

Or maybe we are playing a ruthless prisoners' dilemma emotion simulator. Maybe I should get around to making the "What kind of game is Arm?" thread I've wanted to for a week now.

Amen

[Supified]

Sponsored roles is an issue I feel hasn't been addressed. 

It wasn't so long ago there was a post on the GDB about people avoiding cities to avoid templarate pcs.  This is a huge failure of this game if players took things into their own hands to fix a problem that should have been fixed by a combination of rules creation and enforcement.  Now I get a lot of this has to do with actual abuse on staff side, and I personally have absolutely zero love lost for Loon, but if the actions taken in game appear above board, even if they sort of broke rules but players could still conceivably run cities in such a way that other players solution is simply to not play there than those problems have not been addressed.

Before templars are handed out to anyone there needs to be rules and checks and balances (and dare I say it, the option to retcon) to ensure templars arn't treated as essentially staff sponsored pc machines or staff sponsored player maiming (cause it's very similar in the end). 

Ultimately I don' love the karma system but I also don't love the existance of half giants, muls or templars in the first place.  Especially not in a game where in game actions are not reverseable unless a bug happened and no one witnessed it.

[Inks]

My karma was taken two weeks before all this stuff came out, linked to how I responded to a PC linked to the staffer who is no longer on staff, I was raged at mid rpt by that staffer and was forced to argue over the wish system.

Next time I logged on I found my karma gone.

I actually had been taking a break due to this, so I missed the massive fallout.

There was definately shady stuff going on. And every PC in that RPT could see that.

But I still want the karma system in place. Thanks.

Even though my trust was damaged severely I do believe in the majority of current staffers.