najdorf
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 265 
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Post by najdorf on Apr 25, 2024 9:14:00 GMT -5
No one knows. Any hypothesis is as good as any other. For instance:
it's because some people lobbied, most of them 2X chromosomed, and staff did it. it's their way of simping for attention
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Patuk
Shartist
Posts: 552
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Post by Patuk on Apr 25, 2024 10:37:03 GMT -5
There's no need to really guess at their motives. Staff isn't lying or anything: they clearly and openly state they have noticed a decline in roleplay, and want to reverse course on that.
This is a good thing to strive for! Their implementation, however, is genuinely not great. That's all.
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mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,695
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Post by mehtastic on Apr 26, 2024 5:41:51 GMT -5
It's also worth noting that staff's openly-stated goal is to be able to see, at a glance, what a player's overall value is to the game.
The staff have resisted calling this a "trust level" which is fair enough. Given the karma criteria, it's more representative of what a player actually brings to the table rather than whether staff can trust them or not. So I'll call it a "player value".
When Shalooonsh's player account, Blaze, was banned from the game, it had 3 karma. That converts to 6 under the new karma system. By staff's logic, any player with less than or equal to 6 karma brings less or equal value to the game than Shalooonsh did up until the moment he was banned.
One argument against this logic would be: well, Shalooonsh is banned. That more accurately reflects his value to the game than his inaccessible account's karma. True! But it also shows just one of many perils of using a near-contextless number as a way to figure out which player is fundamentally more valuable to the game than another. The only context that exists is the crtieria noted on their account as being fulfilled.
As an example, these are two actual players in the game right now with 7 karma. I'll bold the criteria that one player has but not the other.
Player A has: RP Novice, Fair Play, Communication, Culture & Racial, RP Journeyman, RP Advanced, Community
Player B has: RP Novice, Fair Play, Magick, RP Journeyman, Communication, Community, Supporting the Game
Let's say both of these players apply for a secret sponsored role that represents an antagonistic sorcerer. Do I, the staff member in charge of this sponsored role, give it to Player A, who is a more advanced roleplayer, or player B, who has a more proven record with magick and supporting the game? Did player B get their "supporting the game" karma by helping out newbies or by creating plots or by playing inclusively? Is player A really better with cultural stuff or does player B just really like playing humans in Allanak, and hasn't had a chance to express the breadth of their knowledge?
Then of course, there is the sheer subjectivity of the criteria themselves, especially the roleplaying criteria. Once the game opens, I can guarantee you that the first big karma-related conflict between players and staff will be because a player lost their "RP Advanced" point. Players really like being told that they're good. They generally do not appreciate unsolicited criticism, especially if it results in them losing privileges they once had. But managing that, vs. other games' methods of simply showing people the door when they are bad RPers, is a different story.
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