Modernizing ARM's progression system

Something my nine deaths in Apoc have inspired me to do. Essentially, replace the Karma System with a Point-Based one.

Points only apply when your character dies. When you make your next character, you get to spend any points you may have acquired in that character's life. Time played, skills gained, and a few extra points if staff thinks you've contributed or other people sent you kudos.

Stuff that would be 0 Karma doesn't cost any points. Low cost buys include things like coming out of chargen with skill bumps, boosted stats, or other special things. Mid cost buys would be playing a Mage Guild or a race like a Mul. The most valuable purchases would be the strongest of the strong; being a Sorcerer or a Psionicist. Or perhaps being a mundane who has two main guilds. Warrior/Ranger, people?

I like this idea, but it has an obvious "flaw".  Staff would have to be on point watching pcs and recording points earned.   How much of the point gathering could be automated?

I wouldn't trust a human to be objective. Not staff, and certainly, not any player.

The bias on the arm staff, is not unique to the arm staff. It's a problem everywhere, where people are able to show favor. Human failings are nothing, if not predictable. Automated points would be better, but then you need some criteria that cannot be exploited. If it's time played, there is nothing to stop people, from just hiding in some corner all day whilst afk / at work / whatever, to essentially never log off, and rack up maximum points. If it is based on emotes, see bots. If it is based on player opinion, see bias, as well as rigging the system. Think about all those garbage vets, running in their meta cliques, character after character. You think they wouldn't organize to game a point system, if they were given a means to do so?

Tbh, the karma system could work, if it were changed to everyone having three karmas. Everyone. Even brand new players. Everyone has 3 karmas, and you spend them per character, and they regenerate over (a much shorter period of) time.

There doesn't need to be a scale, by which someone is "rated", in order to have an chance at trying something.

Nobody has to feel excluded, or that they're viewed as second or third rate players, or that someone is out to get them, and I believe that is half the battle, in getting people to play the game, or come back to the game. No BS karma reviews, no having to kiss ass, or suffer the yoke of a horrid sponsor role for literally years of your life to "earn" it, just... play what inspires you, or interests you, or makes you curious. Play the game to enjoy, instead of feeling obligated to compete in the fucked up popularity pageant, like so many obviously do.

I don't care if some brand new player rolls up, makes a celf fighter/krathi, and wants to be a noble wizard who fights orcs. Sorry, I mean, "gith". He'll learn, and he'll be happier figuring it out, whilst playing something that got him fired up. Waiting six months to a few years, before he can even hope to play something interesting, is a huge negative. Life, imo, is too short for that BS.

Systems that force people into pecking orders, is exactly why arm is so full angst and metashit. Its why people think they're too good to rp with "lesser" players. Fuck all of that, imo.

Everyone deserves a better, easier, more fair system.

There is no achievement in Arm, or I'd assume Apoc, though I've never bothered to check it out.

I believe that, ultimately, they're games to be played in the moment, with no expectations of some grand closure, monumental achievement, or lasting impact. I retire pcs, like a bodily function, either because they get boring because they live too long, or I want to do something else as a lark, or get griefed to the point the recovery time is greater than the time it'd take to reroll and reskill, etcs.

None of them matter, at all. If you're playing the game, in hopes of achievement, or recognition, or whatever, I'm sorry, but disappointment is your destination.

Its why I cannot fathom why people insist on aggressively protecting their pc to the point of cheating, or cheese, or flushing away all kinds of opportunities for conflict, fun, or competition, because they want that pc to "live a little longer". You can't accomplish anything, nothing matters. Staff have ensured that you, your pcs, your opinions, are all totally irrelevant as a rule. Instead, have fun right now, challenge yourself, and forget the ideas anything you do will ever last, or matter. Those people, desperately working for rl years, to change a room description or add a new room, or whatever? And then they turn around and THANK staff, from the bottom of their pitiful little hearts, for finally doing it for them.

Takes, like, maybe, 30 seconds to change a room desc... but staff have people so beaten and broken down, that they're literally grateful, that after a year+ of working 30+ hours a week at a text game, they got to "leave their mark on the game!"... lol, God above, what a fucking joke, no? Immortality! Wow! Haha! They won the game, I guess!

Maybe, it's why I keep playing, where a lot of others quit. I don't have any fucks, at all, to give, about any of it. I do what I want, take what enjoyment I can, and I'll drop it when it stops working for me.

The karmas system, as it is, is a carrot too far, for the how hard most people struggle and strive to get it. Too many people have come and gone, and NEVER got to play that role, or that class, or that thing, that really, really interested them, because they failed to suck the right cock, or had too much integrity, to scrape shit long enough, to earn a pat on the head. What a waste, its almost criminal. All to make a handful of people, feel like they're better than everyone else. Most of them, are total hot, wet garbage.

Forget accomplishments, or pleasing staff, or leaving your mark, or worrying about other players distorted standards. Go do you, have fun on your own immediate terms, and walk once it's not fun anymore.

Life, friend, is too short, to worry about something like arm/neo-arm/whatever.

The introduction of subguilds with crafting skills changed Armageddon substantially, and not really for the better.

Crafting skills are what devalued monthly salaries and bribes as a way of motivating people. They made common crafters richer than the nobility, taking money away as an important form of nobility's influence. Same for full merchants, whose power was always supposed to be economic. They made risking your life for a hundred coins ridiculous as a Bynner, with weak justifications like "grebbing is beneath us" to compensate. The speed at which coin can be generated is ridiculous.

Now even the classes are full of crafting skills, making it worse.

The staff have been trying to deal with this by bandaging symptoms, like putting incremental taxes on bank balances, forcing quotas on sales and wildly inflating prices, instead of dealing with the root cause.

In my opinion, crafting skills should be limited to the most merchant-like of classes. Even they shouldn't have them as part of the class, but they'd be the only ones allowed to select subclasses with a small set of crafting skills. That would get rid of the "one man can make anything" absurdity too. Instead you'd have real specialists like jewelers or armorsmiths.

You could retain a minor level of crafting abilities for other classes, but only to make crappy, rudimentary forms of things that sell for a couple of coins.