Karma

[Roja]

Please post here any good, well thought out and detailed, ideas and suggestions on how a Karma system can work in the game.

 

Keep the rules of this forum in mind.

[Vanyel]

Couple ideas:

• karma might increase/decrease with doing quests/killing certain monsters/healing in certain places (beam/wraith);
  
• first and most obvious effect might be different prices at NPC (lower/higher than standart ones);
  
• second; some special (random) events might occure more/less frequently depending on karma level; example: players are healing lots of people so they karma is positive and high. Thus some good gods might look at them more friendly --> more enriched esseences/enriched rings/etc. from good gods. On the other hand, the player might be real bastard and hunting unicorns. Thus his karma is heeaaavy and very black. Mortos might bless him with more damages given or instant raise after death (effect similar to special day);
  

More ideas later.

[Jezebelle]

Couple ideas:

• 
   
  
• karma might increase/decrease with doing quests/killing certain monsters/healing in certain places (beam/wraith);
   
  
• first and most obvious effect might be different prices at NPC (lower/higher than standart ones);
   
  
• second; some special (random) events might occure more/less frequently depending on karma level; example: players are healing lots of people so they karma is positive and high. Thus some good gods might look at them more friendly --> more enriched esseences/enriched rings/etc. from good gods. On the other hand, the player might be real bastard and hunting unicorns. Thus his karma is heeaaavy and very black. Mortos might bless him with more damages given or instant raise after death (effect similar to special day);
   
  

More ideas later.

 

 

I agree with all above.

 

Additional:

*Using faul language might cause lower karma, effecting health(points)

*'offering' newcomers items as armour, body restoration pots etc. to a Karma NPC adds to a players karma

and those newcomers who have a 'good'karma (done the newcomers quests etc) can get a limited amount of items from that NPC

 

Just a few things that come to mind, when i think about 'karma'

 

*hugs*

 

Jez

[RolandR1]

suggestion:

Instead of making charm trade the charm (it says comming in the future) to karma

[Lotharion]

As requested, the original message from earleir correspondence. Topic is celestial dragons, some sort of enforcers of good, harmless to newbs (can't even be attacked under a certain level) but aggressive towards players with b ad karma. They spawn randomly on random maps, so might very well catch you while picking snapdragons, are exceedingly nasty, can heal self, summon lesser minions, and take some serious damage before going down. Naturally killing one also provokes karma. The options in the quote below are not exhaustive, and karma could very well be granted/inflicted for a variety of other reasons as cited above (like mentioned, quests, or even sacrifice to the gods of good). Important is the notion of making pk of players that are quite alot lower in level something that inflicts karma on the slayer. PK is part of the game, but killing 25 hp newbs by 70 70 50 50 ADPC chars is simply unsportive butchery. (yes i know they don't *have* to be in pk maps, but it would be more interesting that players that insist on being "ebul" actually get to feel the consequences of that as the world and the gods react to excessive cruelty.

 

I know you have been toying with the notion of karma in game (wanderingfool,the unicorn etc), and it made me realise there's some very interesting things to do with that.

- Celestial dragons are the vengeance from heaven: they attack those with bad karma on sight, while those with good karma are safe, and those that are too weak are unable to attack it due to it's "majestic aura" (or whatever to prevent newbs from suiciding per accident on the nice dragon). It looks for the most vile karma available near it.

- The celestial could appear in any map, and roam (since newbs and nice players would be safe anyway)

- Bad karma would also be acquired by PK'ing a player of at least X levels lower in combat (X would have to be substantial, like 20 or 30 levels difference, to prevent "wonton newbeeslaying", which nobody likes uinchecked.

- hurting unicorns, etc would also cause bad karma

- Good karma could be acquired by: sacrificing to Aluwen (alot of cash or rare items (eg. bone of death))

- Possibly make following evil gods to the fullest an act of karma accumulation (moderate only)

- healing others (let's say, especially weaker chars) causes good karma, up to a certain extent (never over a certain level of karma (eg. only from -5 to -1, not to neutral or better)

-stuff like that.

 

it would give kids that want to be ebul pk'ers something to think about. the option to pk would not be diminished, but it would encourage looking for more or less equally matched opponents. Furthermore it would offer a measure of protection to newbies when they stray on such maps, but when they provoke the wrath of seasoned players, they still run risk of being smitten, but the pk'er would first consider whether it is worth the possible misery that might follow.

 

Think about it, I hope you see how this could help control exaggerated anitsocial playstyles (eg, make the celestial dragon enforce *some* of the rules automatically :-) )

 

cheers,

Lotharion, Prophet of #Beaver

Keeper of the One-#Hat

 

EDIT: Even though this post was not intentenionally sick and disturbing, it still does not reflect EL in any official capacity. Except perhaps the part about the fur hat, which was a creation by EL, and thus in a sense the One Hat does represent an idealisation of Fur hats in EL to the extent of utopic reveries. Praiseth be the One #Hat!!!

Edited March 7, 2006 by Lotharion

[Ryu5659]

just my opnion, I don't really think karma would work. 2 main things come up straight to mind. PK'ing and giving stuff away. with both of those, people can abuse it. a person can give another person 10k and then th person give it back. if a person wanted bad karma, he can abuse pk'ing with another person too

[Torg]

suggestion:

Instead of making charm trade the charm (it says comming in the future) to karma

Karma is something to be earnt, not bought (or traded for PP's).

 

I would like to see a karma system introduced, but as pointed out by Ryu5659, it would be difficult to get around abusing the system. Defining good and bad deeds in such a way that they can't be easily "done" with a mate to increase or decrease karma as desired is tricky. I'm thinking about it, but haven't come up with anything yet. :-/

[NitageR]

*More karma -> cheaper stuff @ NPCs

[vwpro]

*More karma -> cheaper stuff @ NPCs

 

No, people would make mass Alt chars with big karma

[trollson]

Quick thoughts:

• Some part of karma could be peer judgement, assigned by other characters (praise or shame), though accounting for inactive and spam characters, probably related to OA.
  
• Could characters 'spend' karma in someway? What on?
  
• Negative karma associated with outlaw or antisocial status.
  
• Positive and negative karma are different things (give distinct names?), even an overall effect is given by their sum. Track them seperately -- it will be more useful in the long run.
  
• Charm could be used to offset karma; "You don't believe those nasty rumours about me 8) ".
  

Edited March 7, 2006 by trollson

[Fox Lupine]

how about, scrap Karma, and gop with something similar.

 

Feedback

 

Players can leave feedback for your 'reputation' in the lands, on a raiting of stars, or out of 10 or whatever. This ammasses and it'll basicly be an easier way of keeping track of karma. To ensure its not abused by mass alt creating you could put in the whole 'level 20 requirement,' like with guilds

[jjk]

Karma Intelligence as a perk.

 

For a hefty price, that alt's certainly would not be able to obtain.

 

To do quests, might require a certain Karma.

 

All Karma stays at 0, but if you obtain the perk, your following actions decide your Karma fate.

 

Of corse, like anything you must ask yourself, 'How could I abuse this?'

 

 

This would make the roll of Karma less important to most players, but very important for questing...but is an idea that rids some ways to be abused.

Edited March 8, 2006 by jjk

[dns_server]

I would love a karma system to be implemented even if there is no initial good or bad effects to it it would be a good addition to the game. It needs to be something that can be positive negetive and neutral, I would have a scale from -100 to +100 (or chose a scale you like) both +ve and -ve where 100 is the maximum and 30 and below fits inside the nutral level.

 

There are a veriety of ways that you could use this system.

MAGIC:

Starwars knights of the old republic (seing it is a star wars game) has a karma system where you can choose what side of the force you are going to be on (and you can even be completely nutral if you are crazy. There are both good spells (like healing) and bad spells (like life drain) and there are some nutral spells too, You still have the freedom to use ALL spells both good and bad but there are different costs. If you are good and cast a healing spell you use verry little mana, but if you are bad you use up most of your mana. likewise if you are bad and cast life drain you use little manner but if you are good and cast it you use little mana.

 

Something like this could be used to some extent, there could be spells that are good, bad or nutral, they could have different mana costs asociated with them so remote heal would be a good spell and mana drain would be a bad spell.

 

Gods:

As you know there is already a system of gods that are both good and bad, karma could be used to restrict access to the gods based on the allignmentent ie Aluwen = good, Mortos = bad.

One thing that Fable (another favorite rpg) used is the idea of 2 aposeing gods and that if you wanted to change your alignment you could do so by donateing gold to that god, so with these alignments of gods (and include allied gods) all people could donate money towards a side to ajust thair karma even if they did not follow a particular god.

 

ITEMS:

It would be good to have some items that are restricted to a particular side. One idea would be to restrict a new stronger wepon to people with bad karma and restrict armor (or maybe new crowns etc) to people with good karma.

 

NPC's:

There could also be a karma element to trade, most npc's will trade with everyone at the same price but some would favor people with good and some favor people with bad karma it should not totally restrict people with bad karma but tweak the prices a little makeing some items cheaper or more expensive.

 

SkILLS:

While most skills would not be changed you could use karma to change the balance of skills a little. One possibility would be to slightly increase the attack power that someone who is bad while reduceing the defence that they have ie +1 attack -1 defence if you are bad, -1 attack, +1 defence if you are good. it might work or may completely fail, it's just an idea.

Edited March 8, 2006 by dns_server

[flinto]

Make monster magnetism cloak/perk adjust its effectiveness based on you karma lvl - so that a high karma and mm will protect you against the high lvl monsters and a low karma and mm will not

[WiteNoiz]

With regards to the PKing, it should really relate to the karma level of the person you killed.

If you PK someone with a more negative karma than you, you should receive a proportional increase and vice versa.

 

In this way, hunting down and killing an "outlaw" with really bad(negative) karma will give you a positive karma boost.

 

More general on the idea:

I think it's a good idea, overall. I've seen it used in a few games and the main use is in the attitude others have towards you. Obviously, you can't tell players how to treat other players, but NPCs and creatures/monsters could easily be more aggressive/helpful depending on your karma related to theirs.

 

Guild karma would also be interesting - I'm sure some guilds are more prone to mindless slaughter than others

[Lotharion]

With regards to the PKing, it should really relate to the karma level of the person you killed.

If you PK someone with a more negative karma than you, you should receive a proportional increase and vice versa.

 

In this way, hunting down and killing an "outlaw" with really bad(negative) karma will give you a positive karma boost.

 

 

i like this

[trollson]

Thinking about the issue of unlimited resources...

 

Assume that the easiest, safest accessible resources are already owned by someone: Characters harvesting and mining there are actually trespassing and 'scrumping' , so incur some karma penalty.

 

The same could apply to 'civilised' monsters and creatures -- the deer in the royal park, boars in the farmsteads, Bob, 'good' creatures like leprechauns (?) and sprites in civilised areas.

 

Balance this with a gradual 'decay' of karma levels back towards zero (people forget), and a way to pay-off negative karma -- donations to temples, fines, etc.

[Dunian]

Heres some ideas if Karma was put on a scale of -100 to 100. At -100 you are totally ebul, and at 100, you are a saint.

 

-10 ~~ Random events when harvesting tend to be bad.

-20 ~~ Ros\serp\bags or gold\binding\enrichment stones are much harder to come by.

-40 ~~ The Joker won't give you prizes

-60 ~~ Certian 'badguy' quests are made available to you.

-80 ~~ You are antisocial. (Or maybe those dragon thingys are more likely to appear near you?)

-100 ~~ You are PKable/Able to use a very evil weapon

 

+10 ~~ Mother nature is less likely to whack the stuffing out of you

+40 ~~ The Joker is more likely to give you a 'good' prize.

+60 Certain 'goodguy' quests are made available to you.

+80 ~~ You have a better chance of disengaging from combat

+100 ~ You are able to wield a really good weapon available only to good folks

 

The effects naturally would be cummulative, (If you have -40, the Joker won't trade with you + the effects of -20 and -10.)

 

Maybe you could see a person's Karma when looking at them (i.e. You see a Dunian, he looks like a good fellow), or if you have enough perception, you'd be able to see the level (i.e. You see a Dunian, his Karma level appears to be +42)

 

I don't think having players help determine Karma would be a good idea, it'd be way too easy to abuse.

[trollson]

I don't think having players help determine Karma would be a good idea, it'd be way too easy to abuse.

You cannot say that character input would be "way too easy to abuse" -- there has been no discussion of what form this input would take, and no analysis of where the exploits could be.

 

Character input to Karma would fill a gap that is missing from the game; peer/community judgement of social and anti-social behaviour. So, bag jumpers would accumulate a negative karma from the people they annoy, while healers would be rewarded for their efforts. Think of it as a degree of community policing.

 

So how to avoid abuse of the system? Sources of abuse, and safe guards:

• Excessive accusations from a character? Restrict the number of charges single character can make. Make more accusations and the earliers ones are lost. Charge per accusation (~100gc).
  
• Spam characters? Apply an OA threshold before you can start making accusations.
  
• Inactive characters? Either a sweep of stale characters, or a decay of Karma over time.
  
• Malicious ganging up? Temper Karma changed; Karma changes are applied to a 'target' value, while a character's current or effective Karma creeps towards the target value over time. A malicious gang can't push a character's Karma down to PK-able levels in a single strike -- news and (mis)information needs time to spread.
  

I am sure there are more cases to consider than these; but I doubt they present insurmountable problems.

Edited March 27, 2006 by trollson

[Torg]

So how to avoid abuse of the system? Sources of abuse, and safe guards:

[*]Excessive accusations from a character? Restrict the number of charges single character can make. Make more accusations and the earliers ones are lost. Charge per accusation (~100gc).

This highlights a very interesting point, one that I previously haven't considered. Rather than having karma affected automatically as a result of actions, it would be affected by physical reports made by people. Thus you have a legitimate way of limiting this. Interesting.

 

The problem of course with this system, is that people always talk about and report bad people, but not good ones. If they were both based on physical reports, the bad would outweigh the good very easily.

Edited March 27, 2006 by Torg

[trollson]

The problem of course with this system, is that people always talk about and report bad people, but not good ones. If they were both based on physical reports, the bad would outweigh the good very easily.

Good point. There needs to be a balance between all sources of positive and negative Karma; and so some encouragement may be needed for people to make positive assertions:

• Charge for accusations and not praise?
  
• Have some factor of the cost reflect the imbalance in positive and negative assertions?
  
• ...
  

(rushes off to meeting...)

[Ulrih]

I think that Karma shouldn't affect a player everyday. But it can do some good or bad things from time to time.

 

Some ideas of rewards for good/bad karma.

*Joker might give higher or smaller rewards after finding him.

*Good players might be able to see to location of the unicorn on the map.

*God's quest (someone with low karma would need to get 10% more bones to defence or attack god) - as you have to do them only once. However it can be also based on the alignment of the god.

*Special karma weapons. I.e. some with high karma wouldn't be able to use ebul scythe of hurt as good as someone with an evil character.

 

#I haven't got a nice idea about gaining karma, but the monster invasions could be divided into good and evil invasions. Fighting during the good ones would have a negative effect on karma, fighting against evil invasions could raise karma.

#There could be also "good and evil patch" in some quests - you'd have two ways to achieving the same goal, but it would adjust your karma.

 

I think karma shouldn't give a constant advantage or disadvantage (like shop prices or chances of getting killed/pkable and so on). There should be some space in this game for people with bad karma, and we shouldn't make their everyday life harder, we should think about some benefits for them as well.

 

Game with people having only high karma would be exactly the same as playing without the karma system.

 

EDIT:

*People with high karma might spawn closer to the exit in the underworld.

*People with low karma might need lower levels of defence in order to pass safely a monster area. (you need to have 21 def in order not to get attacked by a goblin, with bad karma it might be reduced as the monsters would fear you).

 

2nd EDIT:

Every god might watch some maps. Low karma players might get a litlle cursed on maps watched by good gods and blessed on maps watched by evil gods. The same with high karma. (I know that people with godless would not be happy though.)

 

Well it seems that I'm shifting from the luck-related definition of karma to a religion-related one. No idea if this is good.

 

(please forgive me my strange English)

Edited March 27, 2006 by Ulrih

[Nyxl]

[...]

Every god might watch some maps. Low karma players might get a litlle cursed on maps watched by good gods and blessed on maps watched by evil gods. The same with high karma. (I know that people with godless would not be happy though.)

 

Well it seems that I'm shifting from the luck-related definition of karma to a religion-related one. No idea if this is good.

As a stubborn miscreant, I assure you that Godless characters just would not care about maps being watched by this or that god. At least, the RP'ers wouldn't.

 

As to the Karma system being religion related, that is more annoying to me. Most suggestions, so far, imply that the karma is related to a "Good vs. Evil" polarity. Let me post my "vision"...

 

1°) Karma, a geometric definition.

 

Karma, in my opinion, should be more of a four-poles entity, with Good, Evil, Entropy Chaos and Order. Most of you are familiar with the "alignment wheel" used in most RPG's, but I'm more attuned to a "Sphere of Alignment", with four poles placed as the summits of an Archimedian tetraedron, each of those being an "extreme" (see the figure below - taken from here). It means that Good is not the exact opposite of Evil, but that the dipole Good-Evil is in balance with the dipole Chaos-Order. It gives infinitely more nuances of personalities (or alignments, or Karma) than a mere line joining point Evil to point Good crossing the point Neutral. And it makes the Neutral alignment even more delicate to maintain !

 

 

I will spare you the definitions of Good, Evil, Chaos and Order, you all know what those are.

 

2°) Karma attribution/retribution.

 

There're two ways to "give" Karma to a character : from direct actions, in an automatic fashion, and from people reports, in a pro-active way. Both have already been discussed and what has been said looks nice already.

 

The first difficulty here would be to discriminate in which direction (toward which pole) one action should lead. When it's obvious that one who kills another without reason or warning is "evil", it's harder to categorize some "crimes" or "good deeds". One who heals indiscriminately, at all times and all costs, may be deemed "good", when one who heals at beam because s/he is under a "patriotic work" compulsion would be "lawful" (goign toward Order). I also have the feeling each deed would be aiming between two poles in some proportions (distributing random items among newbies would be Chaotic-Good, killing someone out of revenge would be Lawful-Evil, etc.)...

 

The second difficulty would most certainly be the prevention of abuses. Trollson already told us about some "memory effect", how to prevent mass-accusations. I was thinking of a careful scaling of the Karma, where the closer you get to a pole, the harder it becomes to get even closer. No sensible proposition here, I'm still in the abstract...

 

3°) Karma effects.

 

A few ideas...

• Relationship with NPC's : it's already been discussed, how "higher karma people should get better prices at merchants'". I'd rather have NPC's with Karma too, so the closer you are from "their" Karma, the likelier you are to get advantages when dealing with them. Joker would then be an extreme Chaotic-Good, and would give better items to Chaotic-Good characters when giving junk to Lawful-Evil people (just rephrasing a used example here).
  
• Access to some areas : some cities, villages, temples could become forbidden places for specific alignments. Or worse, those characters with forbidden Karma might become pk-able while walking those areas (I don't really like that, but I'd rather suggest it immediately than hope noone will think of it). For instance, Aluwen Temple would become a deadly trap for evil characters. Etc.
  
• Random events : people would endure Day-events accordingly to their Karma. A Scholar day would have more benefits for Order-abiding people, a Healing day would be more in favor of Good people, etc.
  
• Specific quests : there, I'd refer to the prior suggestions. With one concern, though : implementing specific quests might bring along a subliminal class system and EL is not class-based. Or I'm misinterpreting this idea.
  

Edited March 31, 2006 by Nyxl

[Kedan]

Ok first i just want to say that i think your Karma if it was bad shouldn't mean it effects you badly, and if its good, just give you rewards, i think that it should come with some good and some bad no matter what it is.

 

Karam Level

 

The karma level is just bascly how you find out what your karma is at, it would start at 0 when you first start the game, and can go from + or - 2^16 (I'm using the ^ to mean "to the power of") making it easyer to program, which is basicly 65,000 each way. and depending on how you play the game you karma level changes. The karma level would be split up into

 

Very Evil - Evil - Neutar - Good - Very Good

with number representing them (eg. over +/-40,000 very Good/Evill -- +/- 39,999 to 5,000 Good/Evil -- The rest Neutral

 

Animals/Monsters

Each animal/Monster would have its own karma level, so at the exteme of good you would have the Unicorn with +2^16 Karma level, have most animals at 0, and then most evil monster being the arctic chim with -2^16 karma level

 

Fighting/PK-ing

 

Attacking

 

When starting a fight with anything monster/animal/player you will get -10% of there karma level. So by this i mean if you attack something with +100 karma your would get -10 karma added to your karma, so if you was at 0 you would now be at -10. Then if you attack something with -200 you would get --20, being +20, so would then go up +10.

 

Killing

 

If you kill someone that you attacked you would get another 25% of there Karma added to your's

If you kill someone in act of defence (so they attacked you) your karma stays unchanged

 

Other ways of changing Karma

 

*Quests - Some quests will have to ways of solving them (good or bad way) resulting in good/bad karma added

*Trading - When you complete a trade with someone you get 5% of there Karma (meaning you don't want to be trading with people to far from your karma (This means other skills but fighting will be affected by Karma)

*Magic - Works kinda like Fighting but instead of killing/attacking it work work per spell, so every spell you cast gives you +/-5% of the persons Karma (depend on if its a spell that helps the other person or weakeds them would be a + or a - of the 5%)

*Manu Type Skills - All things that can be made would have a Karma orgin, so death essence would be Evil, life essences would be Good (i know this would get abit confusing with most stuff as everything can be used in a good or evil way, but we need some way of making this affect more than just fighters so we need to try to give good/evil karma's to almost everything that can be made, but leaving most lower stuff neutral for newbies)

 

NPC's/Town's

 

I think we should have good and evil NPC's, but then we would need to have troll/orc/ogre towns for evil, which would mean more programing, but then this could be used to add good and bads points to karma;

 

Over 40,000 in the wrong Karma

Get Ignored by NPC's.

A Monster When Newly Spawned has a 1/20 chance of ignoring levels and mm perk/cape (they attack you no matter what)

 

Over 5,000 in the wrong Karma

Slightly higher Prices from NPC's

Get ingored by NPC's for 1 hour during the darkest part of the night (hunting's of opersite karma would normally happen at night due to them getting away with it, so NPC's get more protective)

 

Over 5,000 in the right Karma

Very small discount from NPC's

**hoping to edit with another idea in the future (idea's would be helpfully )**

 

Over 40,000 in the right Karma

Bit higher discounts from NPC's

Monsters with same Karma join in the fight to help you if the other person is 5,000 in the wrong karma (as monster realy walk past you when fighting this wont happen that offend)

 

Quests

 

There will be good/evil NPC's looking for only good/evil or even Very good/evil. And you could also have quests that could be solved to ways, either the evil or good way which afecting your karma alot

 

Special Days

 

Two new special days, aleuwn and morto's day (sorry for the spelling mistakes) depending on your karma all you skills and attributes could get a bonus that day. So if you good/evil you will get +2 on everything on your day, and if your Very good/evil you will get +5 on your day. If your neutral you wont get affected meaning staying neutral is slightly bad.

 

Way Of Abusing

 

Training with Friend

Have one good friend and one bad friend taking turns attacking eachother and getting slowly more evil/good

 

*Limit to X attacks on a player an Hour affecting you Karma (problem with this is if they repetledy kill the same player eg. a newbie, it wouldn't affect them, but then if you give it a high number, eg. 10 an hour it wouldn't really affect this)

 

*Trading With Friend

Get a friend with opersite karma keep trading nothing to slowly meet in middle

 

*You wouldn't normally get two people with different Karma's doing this as there is just as much good things happening as there is bad with having each karma. But you could limit it to 5 trades from the same person per day affecting your karma.

 

PS. Please post if you see any other problems and i will add to it and try to think of a soltion

 

You might notice that having a neutral Karma means you are unfected by all of this, which some people would see as a plus, but then again it means you dont get any discounts or the special days giving you bonuses or even the chance of a monster coming and saving you.

 

Basily no matter what Karma you choose to have they will all have both good and bad affects on you gaming, meaning "cheating" to change you Karma will just mean changing the good and bad affects slightly but you will still get them, which should mean people don't try to cheat the karma system

 

Guilds

 

As someone else mentioned i would like to see this linked into guilds aswell, so have all the Karma's in the guilds added up and then devided by the number of players in the guild, giving the mean Karma of every guild, but i would also like to see this done to all skills and attributes which would give guilds more ways to compete than just number of players, pk-ing abilty and money, but this isn't really the place for this so i wont go into detial i'll just leave the idea here.

[Dimov]

The higher the negative aura- the more the monsters like you (they're evil after all)