Silvermyst,

The idea of hiding expendable karma from the player who has it is a good one. As you said, it removes the economic element. Further, it turns "blessing" and "cursing" into a social as well as gameplay mechanic, as even if it happens you don''t have any karma to give you still have potential incentive to make your thanks or annoyance known.

Karma dispensation will be rare enough that out of a group of 10 players it is highly unlikely that more than 1 has expendable karma. Recall also that you have only one chance per day of receiving any... Further, the givable karma amount should be quite small in relation to the kill penalty, so someone would have to be "cursed" at least ten or so times before they drop below the kill threshold - and receive no "blesses" at all. The system could be broken through quite dedicated effort, but my hope is that the proportion of jerks to decent players is quite low.

Everybody has the same chance to receive expendable karma at login regardless of their own karma level, and they always receive the same amount with the same effect. The expendable karma amount is small in comparison to the kill threshold as described above. The karma reward/penalty for killing someone is proportional to the opposite of their current karma level, less the kill penalty. Mathematically,

(karma mod) = -(victim karma) - (kill penalty)

Let''s say a single bless or curse is +1/-1. The kill penalty is 10. Then killing a person with karma +20 earns you a -30 penalty, while killing a person with karma -20 earns you only a +10 award. Further, it may be a good idea to set a cap for karma awards for killing, say +5 or so... I would prefer if people earned good karma mainly through kindness to their fellow player. I''m not expecting values for karma to go much beyond these boundaries except for ridiculous nuisances.

I''d like to re-emphasize that the main purpose of the karma system is to cause OBNOXIOUS PLAYERS to SHAPE UP or LEAVE THE GAME. I don''t mean to shout, but that is absolutely the essential purpose of the system. Let''s say that 1 point of bad karma keeps you out of the game for 1 hour, 2 for 2 hours, up to 20; then 21 keeps you out for a full day, 22 for 2 full days and so on. Most decent players will have to wait less than a day to get back on, but once you pass twice the kill threshold the penalties become very significant. This is intentional. The karma system is intended to partially replace constant sysop monitoring, which is unfeasible for large play communities. If a player thinks the karma system was abusive in his case, he can submit it to the mods... but the mods may decide against him, and even burden him with additional bad karma, thus extending his sentence. If people get burdened with so much justly earned bad karma that they decide to drop their account, then the system is working exactly as intended. Should they decide to buy a new account, I intend to give them their old account back, karma burden and all. In summary, karma was not intended to be a gameplay element as much as a metagame moderation element. Karma is a PLAYER statistic, not a CHARACTER statistic.

On that note, I''d also like to reemphasize that it is entirely possible to play a horrible bastard character without accruing ANY negative karma. The karma system says nothing about stealing, assault, vandalism, hiring hitmen, or insulting people''s mothers. Sure, your victims can try to curse you... but only if they know who you are and meet you face to face. Cursing has limited range and targeting, and applies a much smaller penalty than outright murder. You just have to have a little subtlety. Furthermore, even contract killers who do the dirty work can save their karma by being a valued asset to their clients (Good work! *bless*) or taking contracts on the evil as well as the good. In fact, most bounty hunters will have pretty good karma - they''re killing criminals, and this is appreciated by the public.

Characters who die with positive or neutral karma will be able to make a new character right away, and those with positive karma will also be able to retain some of the advantages they gained in their previous life - things like learned skills. Characters with negative karma up to 20 will have to wait at most one day to make a new character, as described above.

I''m thinking about karma slowly decaying towards neutral over time, so that good players will have to keep being good in order to keep their high karma level, and those with bad karma can redeem themselves slowly simply by not stepping on anyone''s toes for a while. However, I would want to keep the decay rate quite low, to give players incentive to try to actively redeem themselves and to make sure that karma rewards persist long enough to be worth having.

To summarize:
- Hidden karma idea = good.
- Expendable karma is rare, which reduces abuse.
- Expendable karma is not related to player karma.
- The kill threshold is high compared to individual curses.
- Karma is a moderational rather than a gameplay element.
- Players can play evil characters and still have good karma.
- Good karma means no wait; small bad karma means < 1 day wait.
- Possible idea: karma decays slowly to neutral.

Further comments much appreciated.

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-SpittingTrashcan

You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".

There is now one end all solution.

However with your beautiful karma system, and other things such as town guards and bla bla bla the loosers shape up or quit the game.

My 2 cents.

While maintaining the karma system:

1. Allow 1 character per account while a player is under level N.

2. The death penalty is somewhat controlled by the level:
In this way, the new obnoxious player with nothing to loose, will have something to loose in the beginning (he will also in the end, read on), he would be locked out of the game with no other character for some time. (the time is still also based on karma)

Maybe something like. Deathtime= (badkarma)(1/N)*k, where k is some constant.

3. This all changes when the player reaches a certain level say N.
At level N, the player no longer is punished because of its level. However, a few things are gained.

3.1 The chance to randomly drop an Item upon death now becomes available. **maybe a smooth transition to this?***
3.2 The probability of dropping a good item goes up with bad karma.
3.3 The probability of not dropping a good item is not affected by good Karma. **maybe** not sure.
3.3 The account is unlocked and another character can now be made in addition to the first one.

I think the possibility of loosing items would keep players from foolish combat. It would also reward those brave enough to risk loosing their grandfather to get the guy who has godly karma but has the unique balrog skin (Diablo 2 reference). In addition to that fear, the player could end up locked out of the game for a day or something (back to the karma=deathtime thing). However, since the player has been playing long enough to get to that level, don’t lock em out, let them play another character for a while. As for the under level N characters, I don’t think they should loose items, but they should be locked out much longer than the over N characters for killing and bad karma. I think It would be a great fear/reward system to loose your uber-rare item or gain one, get lucky, role the dice, balance your reputation, balance your experience/level =devotion.

Just my 2 cents on the karma thing, which by itself could be a bit weird as it really doesn’t spawn combat at all, Id like to see players forge factions and try to kill each others group off. Id love to wake up one morning and read on slashdot or something “US East Invades US West”. LoL.

Now Karma with town guards, definitely works, just better have some "fun to kill" monsters.

* note, I know my system does not work at all without the karma one, it is ment to help the karma system. Ohh yeah, and cool rare items (ala diablo). Dont know what a good "chance to loose item" equation would be...

-kilj


[edited by - kilj on October 2, 2002 11:09:19 PM]

kilj,

I looked over your suggestions, and I see how they could be applicable and quite useful in a more combat/loot oriented game. But I''m thinking of karma in terms of an overall game architecture which

- does not have "levels" per se.
- is not "equipment-focused" - the personality and skills of the character matter more than any one item.
- automatically allows body looting regardless. I consider restricting body looting to be an unnecessarily artificial constraint.
- will have factions, but ones which maneuver for political, economic, and supernatural dominance rather than fight directly.
- will definitely not require combat of any character in any way.

In other words, it''s about as un-Diablo as you can get and still be an MMORPG that allows combat. But I can easily see your modifications working great for a more combat-oriented game.

By the way, thanks for calling the karma system "beautiful"... nicest thing I''ve heard all day.

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-SpittingTrashcan

You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".

Perhaps instead of disallowing a evil player to play you should punish them by sending them to a virtual hell. This place would be very unplesant for them and they could not create a new player until they have somehow gotten out of hell.

This way the evil players are removed from the society, punished by being sent to hell, and reformed via the process used to get out of hell. Once this has all been done, the player is deemed fit to start a new character, or continue is old character with some hefty penalties (imposed in hell for instance).

I envision something like this:

  1) When a player has become too evil he is sent to hell with the   difficulty based on how evil the character was and possibly   how many times they have been sent to hell.2) Players are some how punished in hell. For example they might   have to solve puzzles perfectly, i.e. if they make one false   move they have stats reduced, items taken, etc.3) The number of puzzles (or what ever you decide to use) can   be based on how many times they player has been sent to hell   and the difficulty can be based on how evil the player was.4) Once the player has completed all of the puzzles he is free   to return to society.     

The good thing about this system is that is gives progressivly worse penalties. If a player is just mildly evil once nothing much happens to them. However, if they are consistently evil the puzzles may take a long time to figure out while in the process reducing their stats to zero and taking all of there items.


[edited by - Ranok on October 3, 2002 2:16:03 AM]

Ranok,

The idea of a virtual hell is a good one by itself. For a single player game it would be a really cool addition, making things more complicated than simply reloading or respawning. In fact, see Soul Reaver for a game in which the "afterlife" was an integral part of gameplay: certain barriers could only be overcome by repeatedly relinquishing, then reforming your physical body.

But karma is not designed to add to gameplay. It is specifically designed to subtract from it. Think about it this way: if problem players were rewarded with an extra level that nice players would never see, how would the nice players feel? Even if the level is literally and figuratively hell, there are those among the good player community who would thirst for the extra challenge. So in order to get to hell, they would do the very things I''m trying to prevent.

Meanwhile, the nuisance players aren''t really punished by hell because unlike the good players they don''t care about in-game rewards and penalties. All they care about is getting out and dealing more damage to other people''s fun. So among the noxious player community (sadly, it exists), cheat sheets circulate so that the puzzles of hell can be more quickly circumvented. In the end, the karma system wouldn''t do what it was made to do.

The karma system is hard to comprehend by most developers because for the most part we''re also good players, who play games as the designers intended. The thing we have to realize is that there''s a significant community of players out there who play games not to win but to ruin other people''s enjoyment of the game. These are the people who use hacks, cracks, and trainers to get an unfair advantage, or are deliberately obscene or racially/sexually offensive, or try to get the game to crash or behave erratically, or just use whatever means are at their disposal to subvert the intentions of the game, its designers, and its players. The karma system was designed specifically to combat this type of perverse behavior, which no in-game reward or penalty system can affect. It was designed through my collaboration with friends personally experienced with this sort of behavior, having had to deal with it many times in many games. It is designed to have minimal effect on those playing the game correctly (whether good or evil), and maximal effect on those attempting to subvert or ruin the game. Most players will never have to worry about their karma. Given this, do you understand why karma must be a metagame rather than a game-world system?