Karma

[DemonCowboy]

i like nyxl's idea best if that can b done like that honestly but i would like the effects kedan mentioned blended into it somehow i like nyxl's version of karma system because that's the way my character works my char follows Selain and Unolas (waiting for Elandria wish i knew what was missing besides programming there so i could help) but always works towards the right ends - it's his METHODS that would be questionable so my char would be chaotic good - under just a evil - neutral - good system i'm not even sure how my character would fit in

 

and w/ the god's - my char only follows them becauseof the advantages he recieves and since he's never seen an invasion or nothing he can't explain completely he attributes the following them to a sort of just in case thing that he partially believes is just luck and is slightly more intelligent than most for the added exp. he makes a good leader being this paranoid only because he has the ability to read ppl and is usually able to b proven right when he does voice his cynical opinion but stays quiet when there's a doubt

 

and the reason he is chaotic-good is because he is a firm believer that the ends CAN justify the means and while he persues honorable goals he will use whatever methods whether they be good or evil to achieve the best and most efficient result - and on just a flat scale of evil-to-good it'd b REALLY hard to place him because if it was done by actions he'd jump WILDLY all the time in the system doing something VERY evil for a minorly good deed or something mildly evil for a VERY good deed and any/all combinations in between that's y i think we'd need nyxl's model to explain y a character like mine could function like he manages to and could encourage other players that RP to make characters w/ THAT much flavor and variety

but i do like kedan's suggestions about the guilds and think that would b a WONDERFUL way to rank alot of them because then u could have the most honorable guild - listed on a scaleable measure and guilds wouldn't have to rely on just the strongest players or the most players or the richest u could also have the most honorable, the least honorable and the fey guilds all measurableand then if learner wouldn't mind could even make a sort of listing in these dimensions for the best guilds in each area and i think it would add ALOT of flavor and richness to the game

 

sorry if this seems scattered but 1) i just woke up 2) i'm dealing w/ multiple things at 1ce right now but i hope even inspite of that i got my thoughts across

[petersohn]

Determining karma from acts towards other players like healing them and pking is not easy, and can be abused easily.

My idea is to associate karma with gods. There are gods with different alignmens, evil, good and neutral. The monsters also have an alignment, but they also have a value. Instead of gods being enemies of each other, you automatically can only serve gods with the same alignments. The karma replaces god levels, so the higher karma you have, the more exp you get. You can do favours for the gods to increase your karma, which are like god quests, but more difficult. If you have higher karma, the god will do different services for you, the higher your karma is, the cheaper they are.

The way of gaining/losing karma is about attacking monsters. If you attack monsters with opposite alignment, you get karma, if you attack one with same alignment, you lose. If you attack a neutral monster and you don't serve a neutral monster, your karma level is not affected. If you serve a neutral god, you get karma for killing both good and evil monsters, but less than if you served a good/evil god. The amount of karma gained/lost depends on the alignment value of the monster and your karma level (you gain less karma and lose more if you have higher karma). If your karma level goes below 0, then the god gets angry to you, and you will lose them. Animals have no alignment, killing them don't affect karma level.

Monsters with the same alignment as you won't attack you, and a monster with a very high opposite alignment ignore monster magnetism.

If pking also affects karma, then some method must be implemented to prevent abusing. Like if you kill someone with opposite alignment, you gain karma, but if you die form someone with opposite alignment, then you lose karma. If you pk with people with same alignment, the attacker loses karma, the other one's karma is not affected.

 

An extension is to make both good-evil and lawful-chaotic alignments. I don't imagine it like nyxl does, I mean it as two independent axis. Then there are the 4 quarters good-lawful, good-chaotic, evil-lawful and evil-chaotic. And there are also good-neutral, neutral-chaotic etc. Then you can serve any kind of gods, except the total opposite, and you have different karma levels for different gods. This way, determining what monsters you fight is not as easy. For example if you serve a good-chaotic god, you gain much karma for killing an evil-lawful monster. If you kill a good-lawful monster for example, the amount of karma you gain/lose depends on the karma of the monster. So if the monster is more good than lawful, you lose karma, otherwise you gain. But it can also depend on your karma level. And if you serve an evil-neutral god for example, then it doesn't matter if the monster you fight is lawful or chaotic, only that it's good or evil. You will lose karma for slightly good-neutral monsters, and gain some for very good-neutral ones.

In this option neutral-neutral gods have no use, neither for neutral-neutral monsters.

[Tigs]

OK, first I think this is a quite complex system of Karma. I think that is a *good thing*. It also makes it difficult to implement fairly all at once, though...

 

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.

 

 

 

[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

 

I will not comment on most of the original post , as I have no thoughts good or bad about most of it. I think the hardest thing to implement well would be fighting Karma, though, because of friendly training. So I will comment on this. In a wholistic way, a training agreement between ppl shouldn't affect their karma, as it is just training each other and not a fight to the death. (Think of martial arts dojos). Perhaps Karma should only affect if the person is killed. While this happens sometimes in training, people usually try to avoid it in training, so it would not affect Karma levels, unless by accident. This is reasonable. If you were training with someone in the realy world and accidentally broke their neck, there would still be negative effects from this .

[Foehammer]

Why does bad karma always result in negative things? It reminds me of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (one of my favorite RPGs), players on the dark side (low karma) could easily bully merchants into getting stuff for free/lower prices. I see how we could have higher prices, but maybe also have an option to try to intimidate them into giving lower prices.

[Bharain]

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.

 

I don't think you should get any karma based on what monsters you fight, who fights a monster because it's evil? I fight them because they give me exp. Also, if evil monsters improve your karma then pretty much everyone will have good karma.

 

I like your idea of a negative percent of the players you kill/heal etc however this has a couple of problems as i see it:

 

1) Players of the same alignment healing back and forth until their karma is maxed in whichever direction they wanted

2) If all karma change is relative there needs to be an external input. In my opinion monster kills and essences made aren't right.

 

I've puzzled over how an automatic system for karma could be implemented, i always end up in the same place:

• Intent
  

How can an automated system tell what the intention behind an action is? When I mana drain my ally (same karma level) am I doing it so I can better fight against a common enemy or so he can't heal himself and dies? Have I taken someone's deathbag so I can return it to them or so I can keep it myself?

 

In my opinion the only way to award good or bad karma is through player feedback.

[Draym]

Well, imo, not all monsters have to be evil. Monsters like goblins, orcs, ogres, trolls, cyclops, fluffs, chims... would be evil, so, give you "good karma". But on the other hand, killing others like brownies, wood sprites, animals... should give you "bad karma", specially if you kill animals like panda bears or THE UNICORN. But I think that this would be a too difficult to organize system anyways.

 

EDIT: typo me...

Edited May 27, 2006 by Master Maxim

[sparhawk]

Who says monsters are evil? They serve a master like we do, they kill like we do and they plan like we do. Our God tells them to kill them and thats also what their God says. Their God is evil, but they are not all evil. Like us, we have evil humans and good humans.

[Earl]

My Karma Idea;

 

Step 1: Add at least 2 Karma specific items into the game such as the Good Idol and Evil Idol as monster drops. Fairly common drops for this plan.

 

Step 2: Allow the Good and Evil artefact into the manu window and add them into manufacturing formulas. Say someone wants to make a fire essence, they get a red rose, a snapdragon, a sulfur and then add an idol as well. The result is... a normal fire essence. If the fire essence granted 9 exp then the addition of the idol granted 9 karma points as well. Whenever someone adds an idol to their mixture their karma adjusts itself by the ammount of exp.

 

Step 3: As Karma is ammassed going up the same level system we have now (So you need more and more for each level) new enriched items are unlocked. Say someone has Good Karma level 15, maybe then an energy essence (with a good idol ingredient) might morph into a Peace Stone or something.

 

Step 4: Add things like Peace stones into formulas for new items such as jewellery or armour. Wearable by people with significan correct Karma.

 

Quirks and balancing: To prevent the need for a massive number of new items into the game Karma produced items should be uniform across the item range. For example making any essence with Good Karma has a chance to morph into a Peace Stone or Bad Karma has chance to morph into a Dark Stone. The same rule for swords, any sword has a chance to become a dark blade or light blade.

 

The two essences produced the most frequently are Health Essences and Fire Essences, due to this quantity less frequent essences should be made available to the Karma property first, such as spirit essences. That delays the item becoming plentiful as soon as most players unlock the ablity on FEs. The same rule applies to sword and medallion manufacture, unlock the enrichment ability for the least produced pieces first like the titanium long sword.

 

Pure fighters get the drops but cannot gain Karma themselves under this system. This can be balanced by being able to equip the Good or Evil idol as an invisible weapon with a high breakage rate. When equipped the attack exp should be added to their Karma rating.

 

Possibly raise the fail rate a little on mixtures using idol ingredients, most players will prefer the long term gains against the short term losses.

 

Using this system you might even be able to add a good and an evil enrichment monster for summoners.

 

Please ask questions if I overlooked some basic principle. I was just pondering Karma in the shower and this beats crossing something off a list.

[Bharain]

My Karma Idea;

 

Step 1: Add at least 2 Karma specific items into the game such as the Good Idol and Evil Idol as monster drops. Fairly common drops for this plan.

 

Step 2: Allow the Good and Evil artefact into the manu window and add them into manufacturing formulas. Say someone wants to make a fire essence, they get a red rose, a snapdragon, a sulfur and then add an idol as well. The result is... a normal fire essence. If the fire essence granted 9 exp then the addition of the idol granted 9 karma points as well. Whenever someone adds an idol to their mixture their karma adjusts itself by the ammount of exp.

 

Step 3: As Karma is ammassed going up the same level system we have now (So you need more and more for each level) new enriched items are unlocked. Say someone has Good Karma level 15, maybe then an energy essence (with a good idol ingredient) might morph into a Peace Stone or something.

 

Step 4: Add things like Peace stones into formulas for new items such as jewellery or armour. Wearable by people with significan correct Karma.

 

Quirks and balancing: To prevent the need for a massive number of new items into the game Karma produced items should be uniform across the item range. For example making any essence with Good Karma has a chance to morph into a Peace Stone or Bad Karma has chance to morph into a Dark Stone. The same rule for swords, any sword has a chance to become a dark blade or light blade.

 

The two essences produced the most frequently are Health Essences and Fire Essences, due to this quantity less frequent essences should be made available to the Karma property first, such as spirit essences. That delays the item becoming plentiful as soon as most players unlock the ablity on FEs. The same rule applies to sword and medallion manufacture, unlock the enrichment ability for the least produced pieces first like the titanium long sword.

 

Pure fighters get the drops but cannot gain Karma themselves under this system. This can be balanced by being able to equip the Good or Evil idol as an invisible weapon with a high breakage rate. When equipped the attack exp should be added to their Karma rating.

 

Possibly raise the fail rate a little on mixtures using idol ingredients, most players will prefer the long term gains against the short term losses.

 

Using this system you might even be able to add a good and an evil enrichment monster for summoners.

 

Please ask questions if I overlooked some basic principle. I was just pondering Karma in the shower and this beats crossing something off a list.

 

That system doesn't really have anything to do with karma, someone could get themselves really good karma and still go around doing bad things.

[Earl]

That is a concious decision, I am against the simple telling of Karma that goes, Do good things and good things happen, Do bad things and bad things happen.

 

There should be as many advantages and disadvantages to someone choosing the either side. It also aids roleplay and lets people know whether you'd want to be perceived as hero or villain.

 

I'm also against a feedback system such as on certain forums as trades and parties tend to go all ebay style. Begging increases, Need ++ piontS!

 

The roleplay version of the idea is a character the is intentionally trying to "spread a little happiness" or "spread a little sorrow" with each item they make. If both starting items were equally common to strike market balance, in the long run you get an equal number of good and bad characters, with a proportion staying neutral. Which seems like a good balance. I don't think that a system where you can predict the future actions of a player based on their Karma rating is feasable and is probably somewhat controlling, something the game generally goes against.