Topic

Karma

Karma as an addition to Energy and Mood has been mentioned before. And I find myself thinking about it from time to time. Would it help the community staying sweet and cozy? Or is it overrated?
Karma points, as I imagine it, could for example be gained by gifting people or radiating. And lost by killing trees.

What do you think?

Older posts:
Plurp says: In GNE, Karma was a great way to encourage simple social interactions: giving things to people and the like.
beta.glitch.com/forum/gener...

Cap'n Bob talks about a karma system connected to the giants.
beta.glitch.com/forum/ideas...

Posted 20 months ago by Mina Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • I like the idea of Karma.
    Posted 20 months ago by Murri Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Tree killing hurting karma will punish people when there is a game-advancing reason to kill trees such as the need for planks or more digs.  I like the idea in general, though.  It's similar to how The Rook will work.
    Posted 20 months ago by Tingly Claus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I don't think anyone called Mahtma Ghandi "sweet and cozy".  But I'm darned sure he has a lot more karma than most of us.

    What, exactly, would karma be awarded for?
    Posted 20 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I personally think that Karma meters are kind of like a giant throbbing boil on the face of gaming, because they're so hard to do well. Most of the time they're just stupid (e.g. Epic Mickey, the Fable series, Fallout 3, the Overlord games, I could go on) and don't really make sense. In fallout I could murder innocent people and steal all their stuff on a regular basis, and I would still be "good" because I did a few quests. Even when they are done well, they don't really ever add much depth to the game. All they really do is add a second ending so you have to play through the game twice to see all the content. 

    The one mistake they all make is making the karma meter visible, because how much thought is the player putting into the ethical implications of a choice when he's thinking about how many karma points they'll get? None.

    If you're gonna put a karma system in Glitch, it's important to think about how it would be used.
    - "Good" and "Bad" endings: not really possible, since the game goes on indefinitely.
    - Long term buffs and debuffs based on where you are on the meter

    Additionally, how will one gain and lose karma? Assigning good or bad values to actions is awfully arbitrary, and defeats part of the purpose of the game. After all, we are supposed to be culture building here, and part of that is developing a set of values of what is good and what is bad. If the devs merely assign karma values to those actions, that gets removed.

    How quickly will a player be able to change their established karma score? If it's too fast it'll become meaningless, but what if a player wants to start playing on the opposite spectrum of the karma meter than he was before?

    All of these are some pretty significant design problems with putting a karma meter in. I liked Cap'n Bob's idea of actions awarding favor or disgust from the giants, but that's more of a change to the existing favor system. I vote strongly against a karma meter.
    Posted 20 months ago by Tofu Casserole Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I agree with Tofu.

    We in the west have some overly simplistic notions of karma - what it is, how it works, etc. - when in fact a person's karma is very complex and seldom understood rationally, ie. who really knows the laws of opposites and how this law effects us and governs our actions as we play out our drama on the state of life.

    Not to say a more sophisticated system couldn't be designed, but maybe later once Glitch is launched, bugs under control, world-scale issues tackled, content developed, and lots and lots of players are in-world - at least maybe 50 - 100,000.

    In the meantime - good work Tiny Speck sys-gods, artists, contractors, staff - you're on your way to developing a new gaming paradigm!
    Posted 20 months ago by MeherMan Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Who says tree killing is a negative karma thing. It's essential to balancing the world, and has been for a very long time. Poison has been around for months, and was provided to make the task easier. It's well established at this point that there are very valid in-game reasons for the function. To assume any game action is 'negative' seems a faulty premise... using the karma logic, wouldn't mining also be a 'negative' thing? Seems to me yanking something out of the ground with a pick is a pretty violent act. Try suggesting a penalty for mining, watch that fly like a lead brick. For that matter, 'harvest' should be negative, since it's removal... we already have a 'karma meter' it's called Mood.
    Posted 20 months ago by Travinara Subscriber! | Permalink
  • One of the hardest roles for me in games is the "neutral" role.   I usually fall into the "good" alignment, an almost natural paladin.

    The idea that neutral is about balancing, not running around doing good, is difficult for me.  If karma is introduced, it will need to be about balance, not about a world where the only alignment allowed is "good".
    Posted 20 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • One game I play uses karma as a control for taking things from a clan's stash.  It works slightly like give a penny, get a penny.

    Karma can work as a balance like if you kill 5 trees, your karma goes down.  Plant 5 and it's back in balance.  Plant 5 more and your karma goes down.  Kill 5 more and it's back in balance.  Except figure out a system that actually works unlike this example.
    Posted 20 months ago by Tingly Claus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I don't like the idea of Glitch being a moral universe which assigns the arbitrary values of "good" and "bad" to actions which are arguably relative. On a personal level, I wouldn't want in-game actions to be crammed into "black" and "white" space when I perceive everything as being gray. I agree plenty with what Tofu said. If we count destruction as "bad" and creation as "good", then we've already got our examples of senseless creation wherein an area has over 100 animals. I really think that the world should remain amoral (not immoral, mind you), and the players can decide for themselves what is good and what is bad for their own cases.
    Posted 20 months ago by Vexia Subscriber! | Permalink
  • My amendment to mina's idea says only balance can good or bad.  Anything can work for or against your karma depending upon how much you do it compared to everything else.  Forcing everyone to be in some acceptable area of balance may not be good for the game, but the acceptable area can be gigantic, covering all but the most extreme cases (which may not be good, either.)
    Posted 20 months ago by Tingly Claus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Perhaps if you get enough Karma you could use it to blend into the background - that way you would be a Karma Chameleon.
    Sorry.
    Posted 20 months ago by Bob Apple Subscriber! | Permalink
  • LOL @ Bob
    Posted 20 months ago by Pirate Apples Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1 vexia for posting what i was thinking
    Posted 20 months ago by proxy metafax Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1 To Bob Apple for punniness and for getting that song stuck in my head.

    @Tingly Given the current situation, I'm not sure that would work either. Right now, there are often too many trees in an area, so if you were obligated by karma to re-plant some after you poisoned some, we would still have that problem. Did the game start out with any trees outside of the tutorial at all? If not, then once people had planted trees, the only way they could get their karma back would be to kill trees. Even if the game did start with trees in some areas, new streets which appear are treeless. I think with a system like that, we would see people killing trees and harvesting the planks, digging up the patches for their needs, etc., and then immediately re-planting them. It would be more taxing on one's currants than if someone could poison a tree, get the planks, dig the patches, and move on while the spot was still bare.

    A similar yet less rigid system the devs might consider is "kudos". A rough possible outline could be that players could give other players kudos points for doing things that they approved of. In that manner, we could decide for ourselves who gets rewarded for doing what, and those rewards could be granted on a case-by-case basis. Maybe kudos points could be spent on something; I don't know what. The only thing I could forewarn is that it would need a cap on the number of kudos points a player could give or receive in a given amount of time.
    Posted 20 months ago by Vexia Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It would depend what the karma involved and how much killing you could do before karma goes bad.  You could theoretically balance it by harvesting, hatcheting, petting, watering, digging and/or tending.
    Posted 20 months ago by Tingly Claus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Ooh, I like that, Vex. Maybe a certain amount of kudos points would add up to a karma point, and when you got, say 5 karma points you would start 'feeling good' about yourself, and your mood would automatically increase over a short period of time?
    Posted 20 months ago by Cupcake Subscriber! | Permalink
  • This is starting to sound like a  popularity contest, complete with player-awarded "like" points. 

    Karma was never about being liked by other people.  It's a religious concept, and depending on which religion you believe in, it may or may not have anything to do with your current behavior.
    Posted 20 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Windborn - Be that as it may. You can't deny that the word itself has taken on a secondary meaning since its introduction to the western mind. It is thrown around haphazardly; nobody in here is actually talking about Hinduism.
    Posted 20 months ago by Lyndon B Johnson Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Right, WindBorn, but the problem with Karma is simply that it is religious and based upon variables such as "right" and "wrong". Just like good actions and bad actions vary from religion to religion, they also vary from person to person. Killing trees isn't always the right answer; planting trees isn't always the right answer. I suggested kudos points as a way to encourage people to do things that pleased the community, but I purposefully didn't mention an anti-kudos type of mechanic because that makes it more optional. Also, the daily/weekly/monthly limit on the amount of kudos points a person could receive would keep others from becoming too powerful because I realize that not everyone would be getting kudos points all of the time.
    Posted 20 months ago by Vexia Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It still amounts to a popularity contest, with hurt feelings and tears when you aren't appreciated enough by the folks around you.
    Posted 20 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The large majority of people here are very appreciative, and the rest aren't worth it. There are some people on Glitch who play completely solo, and that type of person wouldn't get as many kudos, but that type of person also wouldn't get 'hurt feelings and tears' because they didn't participate in group activities and therefore didn't get as many kudos. It's a cycle - you're social, you want kudos, you get kudos, you're not social, you don't care about kudos, you don't get kudos.
    Posted 20 months ago by Cupcake Subscriber! | Permalink
  • eh .. don't like this idea so much, either karma or kudos.

    i suppose it could work if done well. maybe.


    basically agree with tofu casserole's post.
    Posted 20 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I would love this idea ONLY if its implemented like in Fallout.

    Meaning: good and evil don't have any impact on your character, only the type of people and quests you can get. If you are evil, evil characters will respect you and give you quests, but good characters will be scared of you or try to kill you. If you are a good character its the exact opposite.


    I wouldn't want the game to punish players for bad actions, but it would be interesting if you had different options depending on your alignment. 
    Posted 20 months ago by Yaya Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thought:  Instead of thinking of "karma" in terms of "good" or "bad," why not have it be more like a more "wobbly alignment" amongst your personal "giantish nature?"  For example, if you spend more time using your Animal Husbandry skills, your "Humbaba Karma," goes up somewhat, and maybe some from Friendly and Mab, too.  It wouldn't be like divine favor, though--more related to either temporary bonuses in locations related to said giant (Humbaba, in this case) or possible changes to an "aura" that the character might have, with the aura perceivable by someone with a new "Aura Perception" skill related to Meditation.  In the latter cases, it would advance the social element of the game because it would help people find players with certain types of skill.  ("Oh, you like working with animals?  I need your help...")
    Posted 20 months ago by Hazmat Subscriber! | Permalink