Swirlby

What is wrong with handing out goodies via a checklist? It gives people a consistent way of unlocking things, instead of being at the whims of random people around them at the round end. People who break the rules can just have those goodies revoked, or be disqualified from receiving them. The current system doesn't feel rewarding to me at all. I play a fun round with some nice people, we all make it to the shuttle, and I get no Karma. Another round I'm alone for most of the shift, and then someone randomly gives me a Karma point. Then why bother restricting these minor roles behind the Karma system if they are so inconsequential? And if they are reworking the Karma -locked races to be hardly any different from regular races, why would you have to purchase them? I'm going to be honest. All I want to do is play a Vox. It's been almost a month, but I only have four Karma points. Just now, I played a fun round as a roboticist. I interacted with people in a fun way. I had the other roboticist put my brain into an IPC's body that was borged. I saved a pAI from being unjustly reset. I got no Karma points from that round. I work six days a week, and my internet is really poor. It only works until about 5 PM. After that, it becomes almost useless. When I try to play SS13 after that time, I get insane amounts of ping, something like 800-2000ms. I usually get home from my job around 5:30-6:00 PM, so I can almost never play during the weekdays. Saturday is my only free day. At the current rate that I get Karma, it will take almost a year to unlock Vox. I asked around, and there's no way to circumvent this. If I ask for Karma, I get banned from the Karma system, and I can't unlock anything in it. I can't get whitelisted for the race, either. I follow the rules of the server, and I am willing to put in the extra effort to roleplay a Vox properly. I don't understand why I have to be restricted like this. Everyone tells me I should just be patient and not worry about it, and I'll get Karma, but the more people defend the system, the more flaws I see in it.

If someone spends a lot of time on the server and doesn't break the rules, then he should be allowed to play any role or species they want. If he's been on the server that long without breaking the rules, he is clearly here to play the game properly. There's no reason to restrict him just because he doesn't leave a significant impression on people. The Karma system is already a grind system. It's very similar to how loot in MMOs works with how you repeatedly do a quest or dungeon until you hopefully get the desired item. If there was just one way to consistently get Karma, it would be leagues better than it already is. There are people who have been on the server for years and have barely unlocked anything. That fact by itself means the system is fundamentally flawed. What about the solution I proposed? What was wrong with it?

I've been playing on this server for almost a month now. So far, I've really enjoyed my time on this server. The only thing I've really got any major gripes with is the Karma system. I know it was implemented to prevent inexperienced players from playing species or jobs that require a higher level of roleplay. I do think that the system does this fairly well, but it also has some glaring flaws. The Problems It Has No Consistency My biggest issue with the system is that there is no consistent way to get Karma. You could have a great round, play your job well, and leave a positive impression on people, but receive no Karma. It's up to the whims of whoever is in your general vicinity. You could potentially play ten rounds and not get a single point of Karma, despite following the rules and being a good roleplayer. While you are more likely to get Karma if you do this, it's not guaranteed. There could be someone who left a slightly bigger impression on people than you, and he ends up getting the karma points from the people you were playing with that round. It Restricts Rule-Abiding Players Another issue I have with the Karma system is that it arbitrarily prevents people who follow the rules and play the game properly from playing jobs and species. Someone told me that they've been playing on the server for two years, but still haven't unlocked everything with the Karma system. This seems incredibly unfair. There is absolutely no reason to restrict someone who has been on the server for years, followed the rules, and played the game consistently from playing any jobs or species that they want. It Can Be Difficult to Give Karma There is also a restriction on who you can give Karma to that is based on who your character can see. If you can't see someone, you can't give them Karma. You could play a whole round with a new character someone made that you really like, but get separated at the end of the round by circumstances beyond your control, and be unable to give them your Karma for the round. Some people will just abstain from giving Karma in that situation, but others will just give Karma to a random person nearby, which goes against the system's entire purpose of rewarding good players. Possible Solutions Replace It With a Different System I've been thinking about this a lot, and I think that the Karma system should be replaced with a system that rewards people based on the number of full rounds played. Every time a player starts a round from the beginning, meaning from the ready up screen, and plays all the way to the end round report, it counts towards their total rounds played. Even if they die before the round ends and don't get revived somehow, they will still get a point as long as they are not AFK or disconnected when the round end report comes. Once this total reaches a certain threshold, they become eligible to unlock something. I think that this could be done by giving people the opportunity to unlock something once they reach a certain number of rounds played. The things they could unlock could be organized into tiers, with the player being required to unlock everything on one tier before being allowed to unlock things on the next one. Or they could simply unlock an entire tier once a rounds played count has been reached. If a player breaks the rules, they could be punished by reducing their rounds played count, or bumping them back a tier. This way, people who have been on the server for a long time and follow the rules are not restricted in what jobs and species they can play. During the change to this system, everyone will retain everything that they have unlocked with the Karma system, and all of their current Karma points would be converted into rounds played. The Karma total could be converted into two or three rounds played per Karma point, depending on how the new system will value how many rounds need to be played to unlock tiers. Make the Current System Slightly Less Bad I understand that completely overhauling the system that people use to unlock things is probably difficult. There are some ways that the current system could be improved. The most obvious ways that I see are to allow people to give Karma any time during the round, give people three points instead of one (but still restrict the amount of Karma someone can give to one person to one point), and let people give Karma to any mob on the map. Maybe there could be a separate verb for giving Karma to nearby mobs and a verb for giving Karma to mobs all over the map. I know I'm fairly new to this server, and my word doesn't hold much weight around here, but I just wanted to state my problems with the Karma system and how it could be replaced or improved.