Potentially Unpopular Suggestion and I also dont know what I'm talking about(Discussion on Vox Players)

[Display Name]

Before I get into this, I'd like to make it very, very clear that I have no experience with the karma system and the discussion surrounding it other than awarding and receiving it, no purchases, little background knowledge, whatever.

Anyways, I think that the vox race needs to be on a higher pedestal than all of the other races. Vox shares the highest karma value for species with plasmamen and slimepeople. I don't think that is very equal. The extent to which I see slimepeople consistently roleplay, in my experience, is periodically squishing(genuinely not sure if that is automated or not)and the occasional reference to water-blood. Plasmamen, I rarely see any difference from the generic roleplay of the crew, only the added "benefit" of having to constantly wear internals and a bulky suit around, which I think is more gameplay-oriented than roleplay. Vox, on the other hand, have to integrate roleplay into everything they say(though I'm not sure to what extent auto-hissing aids this), and I generally view vox players OOC as among the most experienced and established members of the community. I've seen purely fluff roleplaying sequences where vox go to great lengths to assist their "kin", possibly attributed to OOC friendship, but I'd like to see it as another example of vox being vox. As a sidenote, I've rarely if ever seen a vox captain during my time on the server. Perhaps I'm biased, but that speaks at some level to the correlation between experienced players and what I see as a relatively overvalued role.

Two solutions, pretty similar in scope. Number one is that vox is elevated to to a karma value of 60. That doesn't seem popular, and I don't really agree with it. The other method would be to push plasmamen and slimepeople back down to a 30 karma value, since I do truly think that those who(hopefully legitimately, though who knows with the playerbase)climb the karma ladder to 45 karma points both deserve and are apt enough at the game to be reasonable expected to carry out high roleplay, and that the other two species don't require nearly as much dedication.

Feel free to inform me about my lack of knowledge of the karma system, automatic systems and auto-hiss. Cheers.

Edited November 11, 2019 by Display Name

[Kyet]

Plasmamen did not RP more when their karma price was 100.

Plasmamen did not suffer a reduction in RP levels when their karma price was reduced.

Based on those facts, I don't think that changing the karma price of Vox, or other races, will affect the RP level of Vox players.

I'm skeptical about the karma system in general. We do not review, moderate, or otherwise verify the effects of the karma system. We just take it for granted that it works. I've never seen any evidence to prove it works. I've never seen any evidence that karma totals measure RP ability/willingness better than pure playtime does. At times, I've been tempted to just abolish the karma system entirely and just use playtime for everything that's currently karma-locked.

[Drakeven]

From my perspective, the amount of Karma something costs does not nessasarily correlate to the amount of RP that role is worth. Sure, some extremely roleplay based roles such as Magistrate or Nanotrasen Rep are locked behind a high karma thresh-hold, but I think the people who want to roleplay will be spending their karma on those roles, rather than less roleplay orientated jobs like Mechanic or Bluesheild. I think it's much the same for races. Someone interested in roleplay may pick up a Vox, and those who are not will pick up something else. Different jobs and races serve different purposes. Some people don't want to talk in Vox all shift, but want to be unique from Humans. 

Heck, the second most roleplay orientated race in my opinion, IPC, is one of the cheapest species unlock.

People will unlock things in order of their preference, and I think raising the Karma price for Vox would just be a waste. It's a nice thought though, and I find myself agreeing with Kyet in the sense that the Karma system can have some issues, but this doesn't seem to be the thread to address them specifically.

[Cazdon]

Vox compared to their Slime and Plasma 45 Karma counter parts, have had the benefit of a long history. They've existed for a longer time and have had huge swathes of lore written for them, making roleplaying as them a far easier task. Compare the wiki pages of the three, and you'll see Vox have the benefit of a lot of background lore, which is huge in the roleplay department, especially if you're roleplaying 'as a race.'  And in terms of race, yeah I'd say Vox players are typically do better with roleplaying because they actually have material to work with, and a whole clique of Vox players enforcing the behaviors socially. However, many Vox still RP very little and stay extremely mechanically oriented, and only usually go far enough to do 'Voxxy Speak'. The 'Voxxy Speak' which I personally dislike, (to me they sound like toddlers) but is justified by a physiological difference in Vox that forces them to speak in such a way, but there's nothing in lore that forces them to write that way, and yet I still see it all the time in announcements and paperwork. The 'Kin' thing is also used as an excuse to do some extremely low RP greytide behavior, and has been way worse in the past. I wouldn't really consider doing things 'just because Kin' as a very interesting or good RP reason. Vox rant over.

 

Now a bit on the Karma system.

The Karma system is weird to say the least. You can get one or two points here and there for helping people, while at the same time you can get massive truckloads for being extremely robust. Another player I've talked with once pulled out an extremely clutch victory for the Nukies on a round that was really close and got 40 karma in one round. In my experience, karma is awarded to those that entertain the most people, usually ghosts. I don't know if it's necessarily a bad thing to be honest, but with how Karma is advertised does conflict with reality a bit.

[Fursamie]

48 minutes ago, Cazdon said:

Vox compared to their Slime and Plasma 45 Karma counter parts, have had the benefit of a long history. They've existed for a longer time and have had huge swathes of lore written for them, making roleplaying as them a far easier task. Compare the wiki pages of the three, and you'll see Vox have the benefit of a lot of background lore, which is huge in the roleplay department, especially if you're roleplaying 'as a race.'  And in terms of race, yeah I'd say Vox players are typically do better with roleplaying because they actually have material to work with. . .

Plasmamen are supposedly religious, and slimepeople are supposedly (former?) tribals. However, not enough (and by that, I mean VERY few) players use that to their advantage, which is why it seems like vox have more indepth lore when in actuality it's pretty much the same aside from the wiki going about on the roles vox arkships have.

[Display Name]

Disregarding the Karma System completely, my request still stands. The server is, of course, a medium roleplay server, so players are left a degree of freedom. In practice, from what I have seen throughout my admittedly little time on the server, this freedom has ended up with little race-to-race differences in roleplay, the most prominent feature being a different language that races can use to slander each other. The sole exception to this that I have seen is "voxxy speak", which is consistently used by vox players when speaking in the main Galactic Common.

As I stated before, I don't know much about some of the more obscure gameplay features, I don't know how vox players consistently adhere to "voxxy speak", whether it is automatically converted from otherwise regular inputs through automation or manually distorted from grammatical English. But, if the latter is true, that vox players have to make a consistent, conscious effort to stay true to the server's roleplay expectations, I believe that they should be placed on a higher pedestal than other races through the server's system of barriers, may it be the existing karma system or playtime or something else, simply because of the very feasible extra effort that they put into every round.

Edited November 13, 2019 by Display Name

[Reyblood]

I don't want to get this polemic but..

 

Let's suppose Slime People start roleplaying as they are supposed to. Would they respect their culture and become a bunch of Ungas? Would Kidans become all Bandits and start raiding the station? No.

It's not about how roleplay-wise some race is being, but it is directly related to the Race's Lore. Vox are the most technologically advanced non-ancient race (taking as a point of start when it was discovered) which implies they have an easier interaction with the high-tech ambient proposed by the game in counterpart to Slime People who REFUSE technology and, as vox have, does not have possession of a special way to talk like vox do.

Thereafter, RP is not purely based on race. I've seen better roleplayers than some Vox, and the most roleplay-wise ALL VOX do is to talk like.. Vox , and be protective when it comes to their kin. That's not High for roleplay standards. Roleplay has several factors here, and i'm yet to see a Vox go play DnD at the library when the librarian proposes to.

I say, if we make some more races have cultures as UNIQUE as VOX have, we'd have some more roleplay elements as explicit as Vox are with their protective instincts and.. Vox-Talk.