Edit- Didn't notice the announce post.

Wow Admins here work fast...

Further evidence that shows that Lusternia is filled with a dedicated administration!

I liked the karma system but this is a fair adjustment. People were walking around with 3 or 4 blessings and maxed karma. So instead of a bonus boost which is what it was intended to be it had turned into perma blessings.

I got no complaints, Im liking it.

I think Curses are being ignored and that the Karma system is just recieving a nice sugarcoating to distract us from the abominable state Curses are in.

Right now it is very likely that many people will take a death and then curse and relentlessly hunt whoever for 25 or however many hours it takes them to get the karma necessary to remove the curse.

Solutions:
Cursed list - if you get placed as a suspect with someone you've cursed, your Curse on that person is removed
City/Commune Karma quests - right now power quests and rats give meager karma. Something needs to be added to the only places that are somewhat safe for people to regain karma once they're cursed.
Curse upkeep- 1 karma per day to maintain each curse placed.

A little off topic but... eh, I agree. I still think karma should die but judging from the recent reactions of the Divines, I have high hopes that everything will turn out alright in the end.

I think Curses are fine... in the sense of how they are, and they should be used as punishments. The only problem I have with curses, is that they appear to become more severe as your time with the curse goes on, until it reaches an insanely amount of severity. I could do without the last parts: Karma Curse of Knowledge affecting someone until the skills are Inept, Karma Curse of Harmony stealing 100% xp of whatever you kill, Karmic Curse of War making the cursed to deal no damage... and so on. I mean, the whole idea is awesome... I just hope the amount of time it takes for Curses reach that point is very well delayed.

I really like the idea of having upkeep to curses as well as blessings, maybe even have the upkeep stack, so at some point you have to choose whether to bless yourself or curse someone else, beyond just getting the initial karma.

Well, I know for sure (cause its in the help file) that with the Karma Curse of Knowledge, your skills return to normal after the Curse is removed (and I assume wears off too) so its not like it's permanent. And if that one isn't I'd assume the others aren't permanent either. Just for the duration of the Curse. And by the time you got to having 100% of anything taken away, you probably don't have much time left on the Curse anyway. So, yeah, sucks while it's active, but that's it. You aren't ruined forever or anything.

Curses aren't permanent, true, but it would still be incredibly devestating to have more than two curses on you at any given time and with the recent changes to karma collecting, it will only be harder. It'd be nice if they were toned down a bit or limited to only one or two curse at any given time. Oh well, at least we get karma from enemies in villages and cities now.

It's always good to see discussions on things. But really, how can you honestly complain about something when:

1. It's not there to see yet
2. We've already told you it's being changed, things just take time

Somedays I just wake up, read forums and

Then I want

Thats the point. If your running around killing random people, your a bad bad man. Hence your karma is gonna get you.

It's not necessarily random people, though. Like if I kill Bricriu (HARR, not going to happen, but you see the point) to make sure she doesn't raise Crow in Glomdoring, if she's doing the ritual or something, she gets suspect and can curse me.

*sigh* For someone that reads every post before it's even posted, you amaze me.....Go back and read the thread started by Estarra about declare/defend. Then read your own post again, then you will be blessed with the frustration.

*think* Um...how does that stop it? *ponder* If I have to kill her for raising Crow, I declare, not her, because it's not enemy territory, and she still gets suspect, am I right?

There are a lot of things declare and defend won't help with. If Narsrim comes in and starts killing Ladantine, and I'm forced by city power quests to keep him alive to do the quest that lets us do our power quest, then I have to try and stop him. If he isn't attacking ME, then I have to declare...and if we kill him, WE lose karma AND get cursed. I realize this problem has also been identified (Estarra mentioned it) but as of yet, there's been no stated way which this is going to be fixed. As of now, I'm spending 99% of my time in the realms trying to defend quest mobs from people who have a lot more time to go get karma and blessings. I've NEVER had the chance to get more then 4% karma and I lose every bit of it when I kill someone who comes to kill Ladantine and I. This isn't just a future balance problem, this is a large NOW balance problem. You can't say "you can get the blessings too" because actually, I can't, unless we just want to let the Necromentate run loose on the city.

I think the mods are well on their way to balancing it out, I mean how fast do they have to work out all the kinks jeez. Give them a little time...

I think this is what Buho was referring to:

A point I think alot of people have been missing (presumably because they don't have any blessings themselves) is that even if you can't pay the karma upkeep, all that happens is you lose an hour from the blessing. For example, I got myself a blessing, which naturally had 24 hours on it, but I had a little extra Karma, so it has remained at 24 hours. If I ran out of karma, it would count down. Thus, its virtually 50 karma for 24 hours of blessing, and in addition, there is a 1 karma per hour maintainance fee, so assuming I had 74 Karma when I initially got the blessing, I would effectively be buying 48 hours of blessing, rather than 24.

On another note, perhaps Curses could be changed to be vengeance-related, rather than suspect related. Some of the Curses are far more damaging than calling vengeance down on someone (assuming they can't remove it), and it would remove the basis of just about every complaint I've heard here, being as you shouldn't get vengeance against you if you're PK CAREFUL.

Something I thought since I first saw the Karma system though is that there ought to be a skill, perhaps in Environment or Planar, that allows you to share your karma, just like the one with power. That way, people who are too lazy to get their own karma could buy it, if they really needed to (or have it donated).

Correction: It seems I was wrong about the upkeep, though I'm certain that is a change that has come into effect since Upkeep was first announced, because I remember seeing it count down to 23h 1min, then taking upkeep, then going back to 24h. Perhaps that was a bug.

If thats the case, I'm not sure what to make of it.

Blessings should be lasting 25 hours, not 24... are you sure it wasnt just counting from 24hr1min?