Karma spread

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cathal
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Re: Karma spread

#21 Post by cathal » Thu Jun 26, 2014 9:58 pm

ferranifer wrote:What the gods think of you = Favour.
The moral universal standpoint of your actions = karma.
...
in-game help wrote:Karma is the sum of your earthly deeds, as seen from the perspective of the gods
I don't know what to add to that... Clearly the in-game help contradicts your definition.

I don't think there are anyone who are great supporters of karma. Or any in-game mechanic that tries to evaluate your character and his actions. They can be all be gamed and abused, are very flawed and limited and create their share of problems.
ferranifer wrote:Lastly, to this point in the thread, nobody has been able to explain what the "karma spread" mechanic is trying to accomplish. Why do we keep this mechanism when all it does is emphasize the problems with karma AND segregate the playerbase for no reason?
However, as it has been stated it is there for a reason. And the same applies to the karma spread. Back in the day when Cathal was the Taniel archbishop it was extremely common that the Sathos sacrificing people from the villages at their crosses for their evil god would be protected by a bunch of characters who would have perfect karma, claim to be good, their players had decided they are good and probably even to some extent believed that and still saw no problem with not only witnessing but also ensuring it could happen without any interruptions. But they'd sometimes not take part in something and instead just watch, using that to rationalize their gaming of the system. I don't know much of the real details but as a safeguard against extremely bad roleplay (which is unfortunately very common) I can't help but vote for it to stay as it is until some better alternative comes along. At least it forces you to consider who and what you are supporting.

The best solution of course would be to allow players to alter their characters karma score or report their own sins and good deeds. There aren't many people I would personally trust with that type of a system.
ferranifer wrote:I think a world where your character is judged by mortals based on its actions and not based on a limited number of abusable minigames is preferable to a world where favour and alignment are mixed together and people is pushed away from each other from some strange spidey-sense mechanic that nobody can even explain.
The problem here is that if there is no code support for any consequences for your actions it always comes down to someone's word against the word of someone else. How do you prove that a character who gets caught red handed killing some NPC is lying when he claims that the NPC attacked him? Again, it is a very rare player who actually roleplays getting caught, having blood on his clothes, having left clear evidence of what he just did. No, karma doesn't solve all that and the system can still be abused but it is a step to right(?) direction.
delia wrote:I do not really know but I think the karma system can be a bitch for those trying to keep an extreme alignment.
Actually, it is very easy for those who actually follow the rules of the "extreme" Gods to the letter, it happens pretty much automatically. I would claim that people for whom it is really a pain are a very limited number and more likely closer to the middle. Should those characters who are not clerics or follow their laws to the letter be really good in the first place just because their players "wants" them to be? For what purpose?

I personally consider karma to be 'sum of earthly deeds as considered by the Gods' as the help states with the realization that not me, my character, nor anyone else for that matter, needs to agree with the Gods' definitions. My character can think that Crusaders forcing me to follow their rules are evil and that is just fine. And the karma system may say that they are the good guys and I am not and that is just fine. Because that is a scale used by the Gods for Godly things, not something I or my character need to be directly concerned with. Sure, my character worries for his soul and all that but nobody is perfect. I have my own morals and I can call myself good in any case. And thus I have no need to game the system just to have some number where I "want it to be". It is not going to be something extreme unless I do something extreme. I am not trying to advocate the "everything is relative and the Gods don't matter" viewpoint here, just the more practical "surely I can get to heaven if I break some of the 10 commandments here and there as long as it is not one of the big ones and I don't do it too much and I do the whole confessing thing afterwards. And I really wanted that trinket, I'll give to charity the next time."

As for whether the archbishop should have some way to affect it, I think either way it is problematic. In option one you have the possibility to abuse the system while everyone actually knows that you are doing it (which has happened on occasion). In the other option there is the possibility that the players just get it completely wrong what type of a character someone else is or what he has done (which has happened on occasion).

I wouldn't actually mind splitting karma per God as well, with Taniel objecting breaking laws more than Evren who would in turn abhor taking lives more. But I still don't see anything working with just one value, it would still take two, one for judgement of your actions and one for "favour".

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Re: Karma spread

#22 Post by luminier » Fri Jun 27, 2014 2:02 am

I agree with much of what Cathal has said, though I do think the in game definition could be read in two different ways.

Ferranifer did a good job in pointing out why the karma system shouldn't exist and it should just be a favour system. If you kill undead Taniel should be happy with you, if you don't he will be mad. If you praise Taniel her will be happy, if you don't he will be mad. Doesn't that sound nice?

If you fight in a battle and bleed lots and the battle is close, that makes Asral happy, if you continually fight easy enemies Asral ignores you. If you don't fight, Asral hates you.



Okay, time to beat the undead example to death.

The karma system doesn't differentiate -why- you kill the undead, just that you kill them. If you kill them to get better in the eyes of Taniel to get back at his followers like I did, thats the wrong reason and should have no karma reward -in a perfect system-. If you kill them because your character believes it is a righteous thing to do then you should get a karma reward -in a perfect system-.

But we don't have a perfect system. I -do- think our system should be player driven... and who better than the player leaders of certain religions. That is, if we MUST have the karma system.
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Re: Karma spread

#23 Post by glorfindel » Fri Jun 27, 2014 3:39 am

luminier wrote:I agree with much of what Cathal has said, though I do think the in game definition could be read in two different ways.

Ferranifer did a good job in pointing out why the karma system shouldn't exist and it should just be a favour system. If you kill undead Taniel should be happy with you, if you don't he will be mad. If you praise Taniel her will be happy, if you don't he will be mad. Doesn't that sound nice?

If you fight in a battle and bleed lots and the battle is close, that makes Asral happy, if you continually fight easy enemies Asral ignores you. If you don't fight, Asral hates you.
That actually sounds more reasonable then what the karma system does right now.

luminier wrote: Okay, time to beat the undead example to death.

The karma system doesn't differentiate -why- you kill the undead, just that you kill them. If you kill them to get better in the eyes of Taniel to get back at his followers like I did, thats the wrong reason and should have no karma reward -in a perfect system-. If you kill them because your character believes it is a righteous thing to do then you should get a karma reward -in a perfect system-.

But we don't have a perfect system. I -do- think our system should be player driven... and who better than the player leaders of certain religions. That is, if we MUST have the karma system.
I agree that this "not differentiating why" is the whole breaking point of our current karma system.

As for a player driven system, I do think this is a very bad idea. Why? Because I do believe that eventually it will be abused a lot. Don't like somebodies face? Yeah well, I am the archbishop, let's make something up and ruin them, no big deal. Look at how similar features in the game were already used and abused. Till a certain point, power wielded by a char gives them great flexibility, including playing the corrupt / hidden agenda type, which I personally love. But that also contradicts with giving them absolute power over other chars (and honestly, for a good char, having your very existance at the mercy of some other char who's good you don't even follow... nope, thank you).

That being said, I am not a huge fan of the possibility of gaming the system like it is possible right now. I would very much be in favor of something like excommunications and other ways for clerics to get _their followers_ back into line. I also think things like the taniel clergy condemn have their use and their application, but everything within measure.

EDIT: I should add, why condemn vs. ruining karma. I don't htink a Taniel Priest should be able to influence how, for example, Zhakrin views my actions. He can, however, given his standing in Elvandar, tell the people I'm an evil person. I don't like how condemn currently works at all, but I think the idea is one that has merrit, esp. Elvandar/taniel clergy, Arborea/asral clergy. The sathos already have a system that works similar for Asador.

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Re: Karma spread

#24 Post by Aturshus » Fri Jun 27, 2014 4:41 pm

I suppose it's about time I truly share my thoughts on this matter. I'm tired of the system as it is, it's not balanced for good characters at all, while being evil is far too easy.

So now, I will share my proposed karma/favour system in it's entirety.

Let's start with favour and worship.
First of all, players should choose which God they worship, and this should not be affected by which God likes them the most. Something as simple as 'worship Evren'. This should of course require a certain level of favour with that God to perform. This prevents unwanted God-switching for characters. It should be each person's choice who they worship.

Secondly, each God should provide very very slight stat alterations based on favour, good favour providing positive bonuses and negative favour causing reductions. Turning away from a God should induce a strong long-term penalty to the related stat to discourage 'God-hopping'. As examples:
Taniel: modify discipline
Evren: modify agility
Gwen: modify intelligence
Zhakrin: modify wisdom
Asral: modify strength
Lilith: modify dexterity
Sathonys: modify constitution

Third, change the outputs from clerics on favour. Currently there seems to be 1 negative favour response, 1 'not very good' favour response, and 2 good favour responses.
I would suggest 2 negative levels, 1 neutral level, and 2 good levels, to simplify the above system. Being on the neutral level means nothing changes, being on a good level adjusts it -slightly-, a bit more for the more extreme, and the opposite for bad favour.

Now, on to karma and how it should affect this system.
First, karma needs to be equally obtainable for all alignments. Good karma should be gained in small amounts from fighting anything evil. Evil karma should be gained in small amounts from fighting good, etcetera. Neutral karma could be maintained by a) not fighting, for Gwennies, some Zhakrinites? b)beheading enemies which reduces karma already, for Asralites who do that anyways :P
Beheading should provide only a slight karma drop, so Asralites don't end up with bad karma
Skinning and butchering would be the 'strongest' way of gaining evil karma, as an alternative, maybe good characters should get a karma boost for properly burying the dead?
Giving coins to beggars works fine as it is, I suppose, a slight boost. It is only a problem because it is the only method. The same goes for thievery, it should work fine as is in this system.

Second, and possibly most importantly, karma should affect favour. Having bad karma and worshipping a good God should mean favour is much harder to obtain, and decays much faster. This will discourage 'playing the system' by forcing players to maintain karma that makes sense for their character.

Third, karma-spread, the topic of this thread!
Just get rid of it. We should not be expected to know what sort of karma others have and force ourselves to not play with them if we do know. What we are doing when we're teamed up with them should determine what karma we gain or lose, as described above.

I genuinely hope this is given some consideration, I understand it may or may not be difficult to implement, but please? :D I have no clue about coding or anything like that. I'm definitely open to discussing any issues people have with this, let's get it all out there and find a solution. I'm tired of slaving away for the system, and tired of the system being abused.

Edit: An afterthought! Add a new function to the meditate function.
meditate good
meditate neutral
meditate evil
which allows your character to focus on good, neutral, or evil thoughts when meditating and has a chance to alter karma slightly depending on meditate skill

Also, I should have made a new thread for this.
If you wizzies wanna move it to it's own thread that'd be ok. >.>

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Re: Karma spread

#25 Post by Aslak » Fri Jun 27, 2014 8:51 pm

Aturshus wrote:Well, where in the game's code does it punish you for not being neutral karma?
Well, all our miracles are linked to favour and karma. So it does effect all clerics.

But I do really like the system suggested by you, with one exception. There should be "neutral" deeds which raise or lower your karma to neutral. Not only black and white deeds. I think currently beheading might already work like that.

So, every action should have a "target level" where it changes your karma to. The further away the target level is from your current karma, the more heavy the impact should be.
I believe that way it would be possible to gain and keep a halfway decent favour for your god, but it would require a bit of dedication to gain perfect karma.

Even if it does not influence me directly, I am for removing karma spread. Instead lets deeds done it teams spread to all members. So if one skins humanoids in a team, he gets a heavy karma loss, all others a mediocre.

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Re: Karma spread

#26 Post by Aturshus » Fri Jun 27, 2014 10:57 pm

Those are great ideas, yes. I just couldn't really think of any 'neutral' actions, but I can see that they would be needed.

I definitely like the 'diminishing curve' sort of idea with karma, where when you have good karma, it takes longer to make it even better, meanwhile it's easier to go the other way if you do something against your alignment.

Oh and, mercenaries seem to be a good way to get attacked by the patrols without knowing it will happen. Maybe we need some sort of remedy for newbies hiring mercenaries who get attacked by the patrols? That hurts karma a good bit at the moment.

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Re: Karma spread

#27 Post by mazarmormuk » Sun Jun 29, 2014 6:08 am

Its seems right that warclerics are quite nailed to their gods preferred karma, still i see warclerics karma, or better the karma spread as one of the main hard coded parts for the warclerics position in game, and therefore it greatly affects us.

Which i think is completely right so.
So i think the karma spread thing and karma, of which both i dont like at all, have its reason and necesstiy in game.

The nailed karma of warclerics was, i guess, a makeshift to allow the asral clerics the around neutral position they are supposed to have.
It sadly overgoes all other neutral positions and persons.

however, not to turn this thread into a general karma discussion, i placed an idea about karma including spread in the ideas part, open for discussion there.

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Re: Karma spread

#28 Post by Rastien » Thu Jul 03, 2014 3:22 am

Aturshus wrote: First, karma needs to be equally obtainable for all alignments. Good karma should be gained in small amounts from fighting anything evil. Evil karma should be gained in small amounts from fighting good, etcetera. Neutral karma could be maintained by a) not fighting, for Gwennies, some Zhakrinites? b)beheading enemies which reduces karma already, for Asralites who do that anyways :P
Beheading should provide only a slight karma drop, so Asralites don't end up with bad karma
Skinning and butchering would be the 'strongest' way of gaining evil karma, as an alternative, maybe good characters should get a karma boost for properly burying the dead?
Giving coins to beggars works fine as it is, I suppose, a slight boost. It is only a problem because it is the only method. The same goes for thievery, it should work fine as is in this system.
What about something like these categories for karma change (not sure how much of this is already in game):

to evil:
negative actions against good beings (stealing, killing)
frowned-upon-by-good-gods actions (butchering, skinning) of humanoid beings
positive emotions (bow, greet) to evil beings
negative emotions (frown) to good beings
helping evil beings (completing quests like "Bring me elf meat")
directly pleasing gods of evil (donations, preaching)

to neutral:
burying
(+helping neutral beings (completing quests like "Clean around"), maybe only if you are evil, to balance that butchering of humanoids?)
directly pleasing gods of neutral (donations, preaching)
not fighting for a game day when you are a member of non-fighters

to good:
negative actions against evil beings (stealing, killing)
positive actions to good beings (giving coins to beggars)
positive emotions (bow, greet) to good beings
negative emotions (frown) to evil beings
helping good beings (completing quests like "Bring me orc scalps")
directly pleasing gods of good (donations, preaching)

Any other categories? Would you move something somewhere?

Note: With this system, donating to Taniel while you are Evrenite may, while giving you a slight boost of karma for "supporting the good gods", also make Evren quite upset (=drop of "favour of Evren") that you are donating to somebody else and not to her.

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Re: Karma spread

#29 Post by Aturshus » Thu Jul 03, 2014 8:35 am

But Evren doesn't even have a donation box so that would make no sense. Furthermore the idea of a good god getting jealous of good deeds seems a bit off.

I'm not sure I like the idea of emotes affecting karma in any way either, personally.

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Re: Karma spread

#30 Post by Rastien » Fri Jul 04, 2014 2:24 am

Aturshus wrote:But Evren doesn't even have a donation box so that would make no sense. Furthermore the idea of a good god getting jealous of good deeds seems a bit off.

I'm not sure I like the idea of emotes affecting karma in any way either, personally.
Well, we are talking about changes. One donation box is surely an easier task than others.

If donating to other god than the one you worship (though both of them are good/neutral/evil) should make your god annoyed, can be made either way, too. So you would rather think "No, it should not annoy him/her"?

You can take those emotes out. I was just trying to put in just any categories I can come with.

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Re: Karma spread

#31 Post by anglachel » Fri Jul 04, 2014 4:08 am

There are three different things, but they overlapped.
Favor/Faith -> the direct relationship to a deity
Karma -> The result of your deeds
Reputation -> What other people think about you.
Every action can affect none till all.
If you do something for Taniel, you are in the good books of Taniel. Because Taniel is a good deity it can rise your karma, too. If you do something for Asral, he will notice it, but if your karma is affected is an other question. If it was a heroic deed and the news spreads it should affect your reputation.
A good deep should raise your karma, but when no deity is directly involved your favor will not be affected.

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Re: Karma spread

#32 Post by tanriel » Sun Jul 13, 2014 2:00 pm

A few comments:

One in regards to what PO Aslak wrote:
Well, all our miracles are linked to favour and karma. So it does effect all clerics.

But I do really like the system suggested by you, with one exception. There should be "neutral" deeds which raise or lower your karma to neutral. Not only black and white deeds. I think currently beheading might already work like that.

So, every action should have a "target level" where it changes your karma to. The further away the target level is from your current karma, the more heavy the impact should be.
I believe that way it would be possible to gain and keep a halfway decent favour for your god, but it would require a bit of dedication to gain perfect karma.
As far as I am aware beheading has zero influence on karma. If anyone knows for a fact that this is different, please note it down.

I think what PO Aslak describes is a change to the karma system, where certain actions will only lead to certain changes of karma, and after a threshold/cap, no further change would be possible.

As far as I know, the current system (or at least the one used up to 2013, I have absolutely no idea how the game changed after 2013) has no cap at all. Repeated evil or good action will change the karma. Perhaps there may be some delays, and such, I have no idea either. But it is important to keep in mind that there are currently no "neutral" actions, and not even with a cap will these actions be "neutral". The actions described by PO Aslak would still be either good or evil (remember: it is a bilinear system, so only two possibilities), and the sole difference is that, after the cap, no further modification are possible.
Even if it does not influence me directly, I am for removing karma spread. Instead lets deeds done it teams spread to all members. So if one skins humanoids in a team, he gets a heavy karma loss, all others a mediocre.
I am absolutely against this.

I will explain to you why. There was a character, Saellyn, who went evil. That's fine. Before he did that, he specifically wanted to team with my character, then we fight some monsters for a while, then he announced an action with "Watch this." and skinned and butchered a dead ogre. This happened instantly because there is no delay in these actions.

Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing at all against this action, nor against Saellyn or the player, but here is a question I have to you, as the other character prepared that action clearly:

Why should MY character be affected by this for actions purposely done like this by ANOTHER character/player?

Also keep in mind that team-ing is a bit of a game mechanic to some degree, without a lot of IC sense sometimes. Why can I not define to auto-cancel team-ing in such a scenario before karma spread would hit and negatively (or positively) affect my character, just because I have had no chance to intercept or prevent this action by another character the moment BEFORE it occurs? What is the IC reasoning behind spreading karma? My character never agreed to condone such an action, so why does the game ASSUME that my character would do? I mean obviously, there is a simple way to work against this, and this is to add a delay to karma spread like that in a team-situation - give players the option to cancel a team, and if this happens within ~30 seconds or so, no karma spread will occur here. But as far as I know, right now this is not the case.

PO Cathal gave a great explanation about why karma spread was added, I will write in the next note about this - keep in mind that I did not play back then though, so PO Cathal offers a unique experience in this regard.

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Re: Karma spread

#33 Post by luminier » Sun Jul 13, 2014 2:51 pm

I don't know how well Tanriel knew Saellyn.
I do know that most characters are WAY too lenient about teaming up with someone they barely know and then going to do something extremely dangerous.

I would argue that it might actually be Tanriel's fault for teaming with someone who you didn't seem to know much about or you misjudged them.

I don't agree with the delay of karma spread.

I DO agree that teaming with someone is an OOC convenience. But when you team you are basically agreeing to have someone follow and protect you. I would only trust my friends or brothers with that honor. When someone asks to team with me and I don't want to, I simply say I can't stop you from following me but I won't protect you.

Does that sort of make sense?
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Re: Karma spread

#34 Post by tanriel » Sun Jul 13, 2014 3:14 pm

> ferranifer wrote:
> What the gods think of you = Favour.
> The moral universal standpoint of your actions = karma.
> in-game help wrote:
> Karma is the sum of your earthly deeds, as seen from the
> perspective of the gods
I concur with PO Cathal here, I think PO Ferranifer might have been confused for just a moment.

Favour is individual (per deity), karma is global (for all deities).

At least it was that way back in 2013, no idea how it is now.
> I don't think there are anyone who are great supporters of karma.
> Or any in-game mechanic that tries to evaluate your character
> and his actions.
Well, Abharsair added it, so I think at least one person liked it, and I think especially the Crusade depends on it (I even thought that the whole point of the karma system was to provide a framework for creating the Crusade), so I think all discussions about any change of it need to primarily ask the players of the Crusade what they want. It would be unfair to change the system and thus remove support for the roleplay the Crusade does, I have no idea.

Personally, it is nothing new of course, I never liked the karma system, but no need to repeat it over and over again. It also can not be really "fixed" with more code either. Of course it could be improved, caps, delays and thresholds be added, and different counting systems could be used (e. g. theft would be not so severe unless done repetitively in a short amount of time, but murdering Gerrit even a single time would be really, really evil, and so on).

You could even split it up, like favour, for each individual deity, so it could be evaluated individually. This might be an improvement if done properly, I can not say. But the core problem of the karma system, that some actions are evaluated, and others are not (see emotes) can never be completely fixed, as this requires manual work (admin monitoring players all the time and adjusting karma counter).

Or take the example Abharsair gave in another note of spies who would bypass the restrictions, pretend to be good but in reality act in an evil way.

And all this manual fixing will suck away time from admin, and we already know that admin does not have a lot of time available.
> They can be all be gamed and abused, are very flawed and limited
> and create their share of problems.
100% correct. This was however also known and stated by Abharsair even in 2007, if you read up on him writing about the limitations of the system.
> ferranifer wrote:
> Lastly, to this point in the thread, nobody has been able to
> explain what the "karma spread" mechanic is trying to
> accomplish. Why do we keep this mechanism when all it does
> is emphasize the problems with karma AND segregate the
> playerbase for no reason?
> PO Cathal:
> However, as it has been stated it is there for a reason.
> And the same applies to the karma spread. Back in the day
> when Cathal was the Taniel archbishop it was extremely
> common that the Sathos sacrificing people from the
> villages at their crosses for their evil god would be
> protected by a bunch of characters who would have
> perfect karma, claim to be good, their players had
> decided they are good and probably even to some extent
> believed that and still saw no problem with not only
> witnessing but also ensuring it could happen without
> any interruptions. But they'd sometimes not take part
> in something and instead just watch, using that to
> rationalize their gaming of the system. I don't know much
> of the real details but as a safeguard against extremely
> bad roleplay (which is unfortunately very common) I
> can't help but vote for it to stay as it is until some
> better alternative comes along. At least it forces you
> to consider who and what you are supporting.
I understand PO Cathal's reasoning and I think he is actually very, very correct. This is not the first time - many wizards, even Per, explained that sometimes, if players are cheating, the code is changed to counter that cheating. Or, if you think "cheating" is too strong a word, let's agree on "misuse".

This happened not for the first time. For instance, take teaming of Gwen and Asral worshippers. It happened in the past for no consequence, until a faith drop was added. Since then this has become less common, and even though I don't like this solution, I can understand it. And so PO Cathal's explanation makes a LOT of sense to me.

The very same happened with darkelves. I recall that Jahlad was roleplayed as a good darkelf, and PO Jahlad was a very experienced roleplayer. Obviously, it went against the
theme of the game (when many players play hippie good darkelves, the theme of evil darkelves is gone), and darkelves were made, by code, evil.

I do not agree with this either, but I can understand it. So as you can see, often enough wizards, especially admin, get grumpy, and "compensating" changes are made to the game world, to prevent "abuse" and so forth.

However, and here is the thing I actually disagree with PO Cathal - first off, there is no "safeguard" against extremely bad roleplay in my opinion, because the very karma system itself encourages bad roleplay. I gave some examples before - you basically give other players a tool, a weapon to use against you. See the situation of teaming e. g. with Saellyn. Other examples are characters who try to ICly explain why they start skinning and butchering. Or, my favourite example, the Satho who says he eats humanoids because he is hungry. Does this make any IC sense at all? Did the IC reason come with or without the karma system? Would this IC reason persist if it would have zero changes to karma, or not be promoted by +1 seeing in darkness by the code encouragement itself? And if the real reason for skinning, butchering, eating, is the +1 effect, then why is the explanation given "I was hungry!". Hmm.

These are questions that should be considered. Personally I can't help but feel that the karma system itself has never encouraged good roleplay at all, but it has led to a lot of inconsistent IC actions with absolutely no real IC foundation. A great example is PO Phaeniis - the whole karma system forced him to abandon or adapt his old character, it changed his personality too (back then). Perhaps it was an interesting change, perhaps not, but I myself would hate it if the underlying code forces me to adapt to something that is unfitting IC (and if I don't do this, then I may end up being screwed with my character, e. g. outlaw everywhere, hunted by every guild - now tell me how I can continue playing in such a situation effectively with no alternative? Read what PO Ronya wrote here before retiring, she gave excellent reasons.)

But PO Cathal forgot something else and this is that such a change will penalize ALL other players as well.

I give you the example of the change to 'who'. Now it was changed again, but the initial change would have eliminated me from the game. No matter what compensations are offered, this was the single most anti-social nerf that ever got into the game - and I am curious whether PO Ferranifer really does see it as an improvement, because from my point of view - and I hope that many can agree that my character was quite social, at least to most newcomers and hopefully also to most other Rangers - this change was awful. It was even more awful than the trap miracle joke, because the worst thing that the trap miracle could do, aside from destroying group PvP, was that I would auto-lose, but this is ok as long as I can have other players to interact with, and thus compensate for this massive nerf. This may be a bit strange to hear, but in essence, death is meaningless in the game, you only lose perhaps items and vitality (which both is a loss of time mostly), but you can still have a lot of fun with other players, If they play that is. But without 'who', ALL FURTHER interactions with other players are immensely handicapped and outright
crippled and sabotaged by people who do not even play the game. So yeah, now that says why my motivation to want to play the game is gone, wizards are simply too powerful and also clueless over real problems faced by players.

Anyway, my point is that even IF doing changes solves some problems, such as those players who protect Sathos and were assumed to have good karma, those changes also penalize OTHER players, often enough players who had nothing to do with this at all. Is this fair? What if all those older players retired already? Why would genuinely new players have to be affected by players who already retired?

But as written before, I think you gave the correct explanation why karma spread was added PO Cathal. Personally I do not agree with it though, I think it does not make any real sense.

The bilinear karma system has exceptions already. For instance, darkelves are eternally damned. I do not agree with this at all. Why would Gwen regard a darkelf as evil who attempts to worship her? But Gwen can not make any exception because the karma system forces her to treat darkelves as not fitting to her karma. (At least that used to be the case, perhaps the system was changed again, I have no idea. I just don't agree with this at all.)

When you have a faulty system, it cascades downwards even into roleplay.
> The best solution of course would be to allow players to
> alter their characters karma score or report their own
> sins and good deeds. There aren't many people I would
> personally trust with that type of a system.
Precisely. As you yourself wrote - some players will always decide not to report it, especially if penalties are associated with doing so. But still, the question of karma spread is something you have to consider here - I brought the example of Saellyn. Can you give an IC explanation why karma spread should occur in such a situation? I mean, it is simple to prevent it, granted, just allow a delay so that other players can disband the team with a "leave" command. But the problem still is - why would the situation be considered "just" that the karma spread would leak over to my character as well? It implies by code alone that my character would be supportive of that action (and right now that is always automatically the case, as far as I am aware, because no delay is in place; the moment someone does an action is the moment karma spread will occur. And of course there are other examples of karma spread, such as when you attack a "holy" karma person and vice versa. Why are such actions considered good or evil at all? If a Gwen worshipper attacks an Asral cleric who has pitch black karma, is this a good or evil action? If a Gwen worshipper attacks an Asral cleric who has extreme holy karma, is this a good or evil action?)
> ferranifer wrote:
> I think a world where your character is judged by mortals
> based on its actions and not based on a limited number
> of abusable minigames is preferable to a world where
> favour and alignment are mixed together and people is
> pushed away from each other from some strange spidey-sense
> mechanic that nobody can even explain.
100% agreed with PO Ferranifer.
> PO Cathal wrote:
> The problem here is that if there is no code support for
> any consequences for your actions it always comes down to
> someone's word against the word of someone else. How
> do you prove that a character who gets caught red
> handed killing some NPC is lying when he claims that
> the NPC attacked him? Again, it is a very rare player who
> actually roleplays getting caught, having blood on his
> clothes, having left clear evidence of what he just
> did. No, karma doesn't solve all that and the system can
> still be abused but it is a step to right(?) direction.
But you show one extreme here. I also showed the example of where actions influence other characters because of the karma spread.

The problem of NPC killing is something else:

You describe that there is or should be a global system used for reporting, that will always be accurate in its reporting. This is the bilinear karma system. It is like a global big brother, and it is assumed that it works perfect. I don't think it works perfect at all.

Even in the bilinear karma system, you can not for sure know that someone killed a NPC, because he could just be a thief, no? Or he could just have attacked another character with good karma, right? Are both the same actions? Why would someone who attacks someone with good karma automatically be evil? Why not neutral? What if that good karma person is just killing a lot of undead, but also tortures people left and right, but outcompeting his evil karma with good karma derived from undead? Even among all characters with good karma, there may be huge differences, but the karma system itself can not differ between these.
> PO Delia wrote:
> I do not really know but I think the karma system can
> be a bitch for those trying to keep an extreme alignment.
Nope, it is trivial. Just do extreme actions, e. g. undead killing.
> Actually, it is very easy for those who actually follow the
> rules of the "extreme" Gods to the letter, it happens pretty
> much automatically.
Correct. Except that killing undead simply is MUCH, much more effective than e. g. donating to charity.
> I would claim that people for whom it is really a pain
> are a very limited number and more likely closer to
> the middle.
Correct, especially those who do not have extreme deities.
> Should those characters who are not clerics or follow
> their laws to the letter be really good in the
> first place just because their players "wants"
> them to be? For what purpose?
Counter question to you here PO Cathal:

Should other characters regard ALL clerics automatically as better and ideal than followers?

Because I can tell you, I have witnessed followers who roleplayed better, and more consistently, than some of the clerics who spent 98% of their time grinding away monsters. Not much roleplay to be found in that latter group. Yet the game code 100% favours clerics, by code alone.

My favourite example is the preaching mechanic.

When a cleric can jump-rush into a room to ambush-preach, and start to preach in the ancient language (and the target character is both sitting, and does not understand the language), saying "Do not worship my god! Do not worship my god!", the target character will start to worship the god eventually, due to the mechanic. Yet if that character just pushes his position upwards by some centimeters, to no longer be resting, he is 100% immune to this vile attack, even if he would understand the ancient language, and the sermon would be a PERFECT sermon (like the one from PO Tatiana \o/).

I dislike that the code itself regards clerics as automatically perfect and better than followers regardless of any shitty roleplay that can be done by some clerics. And believe me, some players will even purposely do that, to try their "limits". It is unavoidable.
> I personally consider karma to be 'sum of earthly deeds as
> considered by the Gods'
But not all karma actions are deeds. Karma spread is not an active deed. The bias against darkelves is not an active deed.
The whole karma system itself is not consistent at all.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

If you whip gremlins with a whip, no karma change occurs, yet if you do a single lash-command, you end up as the most awful person on earth, even if you kill a million gremlins before and spit on them all the while.
> as the help states with the realization that not me, my character,
> nor anyone else for that matter, needs to agree with the Gods'
> definitions.
And who is to say that a helpfile is perfectly correct? Take riding on goblin spiders changing karma. Now, it was a bug in my opinion, because the wizard was unhappy with a player riding all over Forostar, but of course, all changes to the karma will not always make it into a helpfile. Then there are other helpfiles like the one about half-elves. It was clearly written by an opinionated wizard, it is MUCH much longer than e. g. a helpfile about dwarves, and it even attempts to use propaganda to persuade players that half-elves live in sewers (what the ... ???).

Anyway, I do agree with you in one respect - the system is what it is, for better or worse, and it was up to the one who added it to define it in this way. But just because that definition and explanation was given, does not always mean it is a correct explanation, or
one to be used.

I give you two other examples - first one about the skill system, then one about backstabbing.

Skills are counted from 0-100 technically. Wizards encourage to not have players do "Hey, I have sword 78." Instead it is recommend to say something like "I am a junior amateur." or whatever. A year or perhaps two years ago, a translation table was added. Now I found that completely useless, because my characters would never use either of that - neither the point system, nor the verbose description. And the reason is that I can not explain ICly why my characters should be able to differ between skill rank 66 or 67. It makes no sense to me at all, so I rejected the whole system from an IC perspective.

The other example is about backstabbing.

In particular, there were discussions between PO Isengorn, Abharsair, Drake and Naga years ago.

See this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1015&p=10648

Drake mentioned the "smiling satanically" powermote when backstabbing. Naga took nother opinion and I concur with PO Naga 100%. Why does my character have to smile like an idiot when performing a backstab action? Why is the halfling rescuing a village from a Satho with a backstab action hated in that village, even though he rescued many villagers? It simply makes zero IC sense to me, and while I can understand that Abharsair wanted to have this in the game in the way it was implemented (the classic good vs. evil struggle, I can understand that), the thing is that the arguments brought by PO Isengorn are much more logical and convincing. That is not to say that I say I disagree with Abharsair, mind you - I am fine that the game is opinionated like that. I just dislike the explanations given, especially the poweremote, which is total crap. If you gore Gerrit with a
spear when he is tied up, why do you not "grin evilly" automatically? Surely it is not a nice action, is it?
> My character can think that Crusaders forcing me to follow
> their rules are evil and that is just fine.
No, that is not fine, because there exists an IC problem, and this is that both the Crusade and the clergy of Taniel worship Taniel. And in doing so, there exists a dilemma.

You can not call the Crusade evil as a cleric of Taniel and vice versa, because that would mean that you'd go against divine rules by Taniel himself. I don't know how Glasp's codex affected the clergy of Taniel, but this was always a problem many years ago, even mentioned by PO Sun before Glasp's change, that there exists an IC problem - how many divine codices can you actually have? What if they are conflicting? And they were in conflict at least for a while with traitors (the Crusade was allowed to forgive traitors, yet with Glasp's change even those who left the guild long ago suddenly and automatically became enemies; I noticed that myself when Osiron was still a cleric, and he could not team with Glorfindel while all were fighting against a darkelf raid).
> And the karma system may say that they are the good guys
> and I am not and that is just fine.
That may be but the karma system is absolute - either you have negative karma, then you simply are evil, or you don't, then you are not. I mean, just give your earlier example again of players who aligned themself to maximum positive karma, yet protected Sathos who butchered whole villages at the same time. ;)
> Because that is a scale used by the Gods for Godly things,
> not something I or my character need to be directly concerned
> with.
As a cleric you have to be, because some miracles might no longer work. So it of course affects you. Plus the psychological factor, if the NPC cleric tells you that you are an awful sinner and must better your ways, many players will try to better their ways as a result.
> Sure, my character worries for his soul and all that but
> nobody is perfect.
So you are a sinner!
> I have my own morals and I can call myself good in any case.
But that is up to an individual, and the gods may all think that you are a sinner, and evil! Take your example with those who protect the Sathos. There can be many explanations given why they did not regard themselves as evil.

But the system states that they are evil. There is no alternative to it (ok, not technically back then, because it was not coded that way). All thieves are evil when they do theft - because the system tags them as such. Now they can argue all day long, but the gods all agree that theft is evil - Lilith likes theft-action, Taniel does not.
> And thus I have no need to game the system just to have some
> number where I "want it to be".
Yes, those on the extreme ends have it very easy. Those who are not, do not.
> It is not going to be something extreme unless I do something
> extreme.
How is karma spread extreme? I mean you refer to actions here, but karma spread can also occur when you are not the one doing the action. Take my example of Saellyn - I did not do anything but karma spread will leak over.
> I am not trying to advocate the "everything is relative and
> the Gods don't matter" viewpoint here, just the more practical
> "surely I can get to heaven if I break some of the 10 commandments
> here and there as long as it is not one of the big ones and I
> don't do it too much and I do the whole confessing thing afterwards.
> And I really wanted that trinket, I'll give to charity the next time."
I think you are evil. You took that trinket which did not belong to you. What now? You surely must have evil karma the moment you took that trinket - as long as you did not give it to charity yet, you are evil still. ;)

Of course I agree here because karma is not static, it changes with the actions done, so someone with a pitch-black aura may end up with a glowing white aura if karma-yielding actions are done lateron, and then pitch-black again.

The problem is that you can not easily discern between actions done ICly because of IC reasons, and IC actions done because of OOC actions. And players will ALWAYS try to find explanations or excuses, if you so will, so you can never really successfully argue either.
> As for whether the archbishop should have some way to affect it,
> I think either way it is problematic. In option one you have the
> possibility to abuse the system while everyone actually knows that
> you are doing it (which has happened on occasion). In the other
> option there is the possibility that the players just get it
> completely wrong what type of a character someone else is or
> what he has done (which has happened on occasion).
Completely agreed. Giving players more weapons will lead to more abuse. The judge system in general is a great example of that.

It would be a lot of fun to give players ways to change karma directly - they could finally become gods, and play as such.

I always wanted to make Ghalt have extreme good karma for that orange beard alone!

Perhaps we could even turn Ghalt into some god entity and teach us cooking.
> I wouldn't actually mind splitting karma per God as well,
> with Taniel objecting breaking laws more than Evren who
> would in turn abhor taking lives more. But I still don't
> see anything working with just one value, it would still
> take two, one for judgement of your actions and one for
> "favour".
Yes, favour would still be different, but I already think that favour is affected by karma to a certain degree, though I may be wrong. I think there may be different gains, but perhaps more loss of favour when karma is not matched. The example of teaming with opposing-faith is an example of that, but I think there are more. But please don't quote me on that, I am rather unsure actually ...

I think the reasoning behind that was that it was assumed as unfitting for e. g. a Satho follower to still have a lot of evil faith yet perfect positive karma. I am not completely sure however, because I also distinctly remember having read older discussions that this was not the case, and not resolved, and also led to frustration that such players will be and act like that.

I can give you another example.

PO Jezz, my favourite example - I love you man - has been famous as a fun evil (yep, he ruled), including having a great alignment (alignment was the old system before karma). When asked why he, as an evil character, has such a great alignment, he said something along the lines - but don't quote me on this:

"People love me because I am a good person!"

And I think it was a GREAT reply given by him. :)

Because why not? Why shouldn't a Satho play differently?

It's a matter of definition. I don't have a Satho, and the game world is unfortunately static, but in a dynamic game world, I would not care to roleplay in ANY way how a system wants to force me to roleplay, as long as I achieve (in honesty) IC goals of the deity at hand. But this is not how the MUD was setup, and I think players need to match to the reality how the MUD was setup, rather than how it should ideally *be*.

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tanriel
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Re: Karma spread

#35 Post by tanriel » Sun Jul 13, 2014 3:22 pm

> don't know how well Tanriel knew Saellyn.
> I do know that most characters are WAY too lenient about
> teaming up with someone they barely know and then going
> to do something extremely dangerous.
He knew Saellyn quite a bit, as Saellyn back then wanted to join especially the Shaolin, but kept on having IC problems. I don't know if this added to the frustration, or whether it was made up of a OOC goal beforehand anyway, or just developed naturally, but the behaviour afterwards was very different, and then Saellyn turned "evil" suddenly. It's a bit aside from the point though, I was just giving it as an example really.

The teaming and skinning of the ogre was done solely for spreading the negative karma.
> I would argue that it might actually be Tanriel's fault
> for teaming with someone who you didn't seem to know
> much about or you misjudged them.
That may be the case, however I think you miss the point that other situations can occur with precisely the same result/outcome.
> I don't agree with the delay of karma spread.
But why would karma spread based on actions done by other characters? How can you know how other characters act beforehand?
> I DO agree that teaming with someone is an OOC
> convenience. But when you team you are basically
> agreeing to have someone follow and protect you.
Sure. But where did I agree that I am supporting of anyone else doing other actions, like skinning or butchering or eating humanoids? Is that an inherent part of teaming?
> I would only trust my friends or brothers with that
> honor.
Ok now you just describe that we shouldn't team with newbies. ;)

But I think they already have it hard. I'd rather make mistakes than have no option to team with newbies (ok ok, I am not even playing, but if I *would* play ... but forum ghosting is much easier and less frustrating, I don't have to get annoyed over wizards who change the game but don't play the game ...)
> When someone asks to team with me and I don't want to,
> I simply say I can't stop you from following me but
> I won't protect you.
>
> Does that sort of make sense?
Sure, but what if he wants to go and hunt with you? And then starts butchering, skinning and eating humanoid meat? The first time you can not really prevent it, and that is when karma spread already happened.

And the problem is - the team mechanic automatically assumes that you will want to protect someone. I also don't agree with this all the time.

Ideally, the whole team mechanic should be split up to account for differences. I may want to follow someone else, but not want to automatically defend him perhaps. 'hunt' works a bit around this limitation to some degree.

The point is - why does karma spread occur just because the game assumes that my character condones this action, when he 100% does not? What option is given to players against this kind of play?

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tanriel
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Re: Karma spread

#36 Post by tanriel » Sun Jul 13, 2014 3:34 pm

Aturshus wrote:
> But Evren doesn't even have a donation box so that would
> make no sense.
It would indeed make little sense that the squirrel goddess would care about coins. If anything then chestnuts should be donated.

In more seriousness, I never had an Evren character, but I always found the blood-sacrifice VERY strange.
> Furthermore the idea of a good god getting jealous of
> good deeds seems a bit off.
It's a problem with the bilinear karma system.

With the extreme deities, you get to have an ideal peak karma, and all other deities have no peak karma. What I mean with "peak karma" here is that you reach a place where you have gained the maximum, and further actions that go into that maximum will not change it - neutral deities never have a maximum in the bilinear karma system, because ALL actions that manipulate the karma at that ideal point away, will then either be positive or negative, and thus change you away from the ideal karma (at least for Zhakrin; for Gwen it should be slightly above neutral and for Asral it should be slightly below neutral).

What I always found most surprising is why Gwen, which should be a goddess of mercy, would dislike donating to the poor - once the threshold is passed. I also do not think that you can make an exception to this in the bilinear karma system, because then you'd have
to explain why the other deities would respond differently. Anyway, as PO Luminier wrote before, it is the way it is, even if imperfect, and it will most likely remain that way (changing it is also not simple - for instance, the Crusade depend on it to quite degree, so roleplaying in a game where the karma system is suddenly gone, would seem rather unfair to the players of the Crusade, so any change away from the karma system should be started with
long discussions involving those players that could be negatively affected.)
> I'm not sure I like the idea of emotes affecting karma in any way either, personally.
I understand that but you need to think from this about another way.

Take skinning and scalping.

Ok, technically, we all will agree to scalping being partial skinning, I think?

So let's say you have a character who does this:

> scalp corpse

100 times.

Ok? He is using a game command, he receives an object (a generated scalp from a corpse) which he can trade in for money by the elves (how much I hate that this was added
to the elves; thankfully my character is a squirrelf so I don't really care, but I do not think it ICly fits to the elves at all honestly).

Ok, he gets no change to karma here.

Now he does this:

> skin corpse

Of an orc, he gets the whole skin, and a karma penalty.

This can only work because it is registered as an "evil" action.

Now compare this to this here, with emotes:

> emote sits down and starts to skin away at the skin of the corpse of a green-haired orc.
> emote sits down and starts to skin away at the skin covering the head of the corpse of a green-haired orc.

Excuse my awful english, I hope you get the idea.

Two problems with the emote:

(1) That character will not receive an object, e. g. the skin or the scalp.
(2) I think we can all agree that the emote effectively meant that the character actually *did* that action, if it was ICly plausible and possible, so logically he should receive the very same treatment as far as the game code is concerned - and in this case, this would also imply that he would get a karma penalty for skinning (and no penalty for scalping; and of course also that scalped-skinned object).

So, from a logical point of view, emotes should be considered the same. Because they are the same action of course.

But don't worry, this will not happen - it would mean that wizards would have to constantly monitor all emotes and dish out changes to karma. This is such a MONUMENTAL amount of extra work that it will never happen, and would only draw away time that could be much better spent improving other areas of the game.

(On a sidenote, you might offer emotes that are based on actions, so players could customize the skin-action for instance; problem is, some players want to cheat and abuse it, so this can possibly not be done, because wizards would have to monitor, which is annoying.)

But technically, I do think that emotes should in principle receive the same advantages and penaltes as "real actions" should have. Perhaps it would be possible if you add a new emote-subsystem, that could also affect the karmal. Let's call it "kemote" hahaha. :D

These could be actions that could be monitored and affect the karma.

Problem is... some players may tend to not want to use it anyway, or they would not want to care. There are quite many players who do not even want to use emote at all.
> One donation box is surely an easier task than others.
I think donating with money should actually be possible for all deities. You advance their cause, after all. In particular, I dislike that Lilith madness - it makes no sense at all. I know the reasoning "Lilith is about chaos, so you must be a mad person!" but that's not true. Lilith
is about *instigating* chaos, and that requires a plan, how you can cause chaos somewhere else. And you can't do that when you blindly attack everyone else.

I am not a fan of those favour-gaining mechanic at all ... gaining favour in Taniel solo is quite simple, just some coins for a candle and devoting that.

I can give another example ... back when I still played my tshahark, I hated how quickly he lost faith in Asral. I hate to collect heads, it was soooo annoying compared to e. g. donating to Taniel. That is what the wizards failed to achieve - the ways to gain favour are not balanced at all.

But I realized something else too... does my tshahark actually understand the favour system? Noone explained it to him, so why would he understand it? He does not even understand gods either. What are gods to a tshahark anyway (yeah, my tshahark was dumber than every other tshahark perhaps).

Then I realized, my tshahark was doomed to permanently be without deity. Perhaps he would be preach-converted by a cleric but that would not change anything because my tshahark would still be too dumb to understand what it means to worship (though of course, if someone explains anything, in any way, my tshahark may end up believing that).

Unsurprising, due to the many deaths, also faith-assocated punishment ("bla is angry with you", then you lose vitality), my tshahark ended up with minimal vitality. At this moment in time I realized that further deaths do not make my tshahark any weaker, so he has become an immortal being (though very weak). Unfortunately, this was only an OOC realization, ICly he has no understanding of it (and he also does not understand what ressing means, either).
> If donating to other god than the one you worship (though
> both of them are good/neutral/evil) should make your god
> annoyed, can be made either way, too.
If the gods are still all-knowing, as Abharsair once wrote on the webforum, then yes, for sake of consistency, they should know that you betrayed your deity.
> So you would rather think "No, it should not annoy him/her"?
It should annoy your god IF gods are assumed to be all-knowing. (Mind you, I write IF - I did not define it that way, if it were up to me, I'd make the gods purposely dumb, but this is up to admin, and Abharsair wanted to have it that way back then.)

Here is what he wrote 7 years ago in 2007 about this by the way so you don't have to believe me alone, you can read it up:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=532&p=4917
> You can take those emotes out. I was just trying to put in
> just any categories I can come with.
I understand that, but of course the main question is - should emotes really be different from coded actions? :)

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Re: Karma spread

#37 Post by ferranifer » Sun Jul 13, 2014 5:18 pm

I don't know why my definition was rebuked twice by people that then proceed to talk about karma in the terms I explained.

Let me repeat it again with some examples.

Favour = what the gods think of you.

If I do things Asral likes, I get Asral favour. If I do things Evren dislikes, I lose Evren favour. If I do things Zhakrin dislikes, I lose Zhakrin favour. No karma here. At least not directly, though there is some correlation of course.

Karma = the universal moral standpoint of my actions.

If I do EVIL things, I lose karma. If I do GOOD things, I gain karma. INDEPENDENTLY of what gods think. The definition of what is good and what is evil is determined by the game rules. The gods are then free to react towards me differently based on my position (elor door, miracle impact and other similar mechanics). Again, there is some correlation, specially with the extreme alignment deities, but gods DO NOT own MY karma. _I_ do. Otherwise we would have a 3rd karma dimension, but we don't.

If you have trouble separating these two concepts, think on why killing pale ones makes you lose Zhakrin favour, but doesn't touch your karma (AFAIK).

So, how did all the gods agree that I became exactly this much more evil because SOMEONE ELSE skinned an ogre? And why is that my fault?

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Re: Karma spread

#38 Post by Delia » Wed Jul 16, 2014 1:24 am

One could also adopt a more magical mindset when observing karma and think that being touched by evil leaves you changed. Like there was a taint in the world, so to speak. An invisible force that always lurks in the background and leaving oneself vulnerable to certain things invites it in to your soul.

That said I think there should be means against abusive players. Having corpse desecration skills being delayed actions would make sense and remove a lot of problems and silliness. Also certain actions not being able to change your karma past a certain limit(not sure if in effect or not)could be looked into as well. From a glance, I thought of Mazar's karma idea as intriguing. I will have to re-read and think a bit before saying more about that.
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Aturshus
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Re: Karma spread

#39 Post by Aturshus » Thu Jul 17, 2014 8:34 am

Well it seems my suggestion has fallen to the wayside, so I don't have much more to say here. Only that I really do not want to see an over-complicated and multi-threaded karma system such as the one Mazar has suggested, and that I still feel like karma spread is only a good idea in theory, because in practice it will always, always be terrible.

mazarmormuk
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Re: Karma spread

#40 Post by mazarmormuk » Thu Jul 17, 2014 11:21 am

yep, aturshus, i agree my system is complicated.

watching the system it is right now, i agree, karma spread doesnt make much sense. nailing warclerics to a special karma is no end solution, and neither does it make sense miracles stop working for both sides if taniels and asrals team up.
also here, the penalty of teams with different karmas could affect team combat or whatever, but not your own karma.

to karma in general, it is extremely used in the game. From crusaders over miracles over some warclerics systems over the elor gate and a heap of other things that depend on its existence, i cant imagine to have it removed completely.

but i also dont see a solution in the suggestions aturshus mentioned. it doesnt make sense i and every non-extreme karma character has to heavily do whatever to counter the heavy karma drop of a war against a goodie to maintain a "neutral" karma that, just to add this, isnt neutral at all.

also giving away abilities to counter the karma drop, you give the ability to abusal, too. so you can either make it hard to change your karma willingly and all aside taniel/evren vs satho/lillith simply wont fit, or you make it easy and give way to everyone to define his own karma with the given minigames, also a sathonite that doesnt like to be heavily hit by the "smite evil" miracle or a crusader lance.

Karma is one of the basics of that game and imo its simply impossible to have a wide facetted game and guild world and then squeeze this through an extremely simplified karma system called
"good and evil" with heavy consequences and penalties.

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