Yet another PK proposal

[Irgendwer]

Problem:
The game is currently geared towards the law abiding citizen and hero types.
Believeably playing mean/evil/sinister/... characters is virtually
impossible. This hurts roleplay, as it does not allow intresting situations
to happen. A system for player kill (PK) would spice up the world and force
people to give more thought about their role, as their actions might have
consequences.

Use cases:
Barbaric Bruno walks around Hydlaa in full battle gear with drawn weapons.
Whimpsical Willy, deems it his duty to step up to him and lecture him about
the law. In a realistic environment, Barbaric Bruno would likely answer this
by breaking some bones.

Barbaric Bruno walks around Hydlaa in full battle gear with drawn weapons.
He is spotted by several members of the guild of law enforcers, who
immediatly request him to sheat his weapons. Bruno's player being lazy can
simply ignore the request and walk away.

Cutthroat Charlie comes along a lone miner digging up gold. Realistically,
he would rob him, but his "money or life" thread is ignored.

The "the guardians" guild wants to offer their services of protecting miners
from the likes of Cutthroat Charlie for a small fee, but since Charlie is no
real threat, nobody will pay and there is no actual work to be done.


Proposal:
Add a new faction "murder" ("criminal", "law"?). Every time, a player sends
another player to the Death realm, s/he loses faction points. The amount of
lost faction is small in agreed duells and big in forced ones. Once the
"murder" faction drops below zero, the player gains the right to force
duells on other players, but in return cannot decline being challenged
him/herself any more.
Being a murderer has dire additional consequences to prevent people from
choosing this career path lightly:
1. The lower the faction drops, the more infamous one will become. Viewing a
   murderer, his/her infobox would not only give the an esteem on player
   strength, but also a rough idea on how much of a menace to society s/he is
   ("is rumoured to have killed someone", "is known to have killed
   someone", ... , "Wanted posters litter every corner").
2. Whenever a murderer loots an NPC for money, a certain percentage of this
   money is set aside in a loot chache. Whenever someone kills a murderer,
   s/he gets paid out of this cache (to encourage bounty hunters tracking
   down murderers).
3. Merchant NPCs will buy/sell at worse conditions. The extra money is set
   aside as well.



Additional rules for balance:
- Killing a player with a negative faction only makes the killer loose
  faction, if his faction is negative itself (a lawenforcer can kill a   
  murderer without penalty). Killing in the death realm never has faction
  affects.

- Murderers are not subject to autoaccept duells while in the death realm
  (prevents lawenforcers to follow murderers into there and grieve
  them).

- Every murderer should be able to find his way back into society by doing
  good deeds, that slowly bring his/her faction up again (one malicious PK
  would require several good deads to make up for it). These should
  probably be quests. Attoning for crimes should also recover some of the
  money, which was set aside.

- Forced duells should have a big on screen warning and a short delay before
  starting, so the challenged player can ready him/herself.

- Murderers cannot force a duell on new players and places in the direct 
  vicinity of guards are off limits (make more of them patrol like Bevon).

- Add an invisibility spell, which just lasts long enough to sneak up on
  victims, past dangers or being surprised by a strong party oneself
  (running or attacking while invisible immediatly breakes concentration).

[Under the moon]

Personally, I would remove the 'killing' of criminals to catch them, and replace it with an /arrest or /capture after knockdown, followed by a trip to a prison map (ala 'Escape from New York') for a nice, happy vacation.

[Kaityra]

A system for player kill (PK) would spice up the world and force
people to give more thought about their role, as their actions might have
consequences.

Sorry, the only consequences I see is that certain powergamers do whatever they want and only what they consider fun. I'm totally against "free" PK-systems as they tend to be abused by powergamers and are bad for the cassual gamer. And considering the half hour curse...

[Irgendwer]

Sorry, the only consequences I see is that certain powergamers do whatever they want and only what they consider fun. I'm totally against "free" PK-systems as they tend to be abused by powergamers and are bad for the cassual gamer. And considering the half hour curse...

Read the rules again, they are specifcially crafted to prevent exactly this situation.

If you want to use this PK system for playergrieving, you'll quickly find yourself digging your own grave. You might be able to kill a handfull of people out of the blue, but after that, you'll have your murder faction maxed out. This basicly means, that you'll have very little income and high living costs (remember: Part of your income will be set aside for the bounty on your head, merchants and trainers will rip you off). Also your characterinfo will contain the equivalent of a flashing neon sign yelling out "More evil then satan himself". With that you can count on the majority of players being after you because they either hate you personally, on principle or simply want to cash in on the bounty on your head. Instead of running around and boasting about your strength, you'll have to move with extreme caution not to draw attention to yourself, as you'll be spending a lot of penalty time in jail/DR otherwise. Should you choose to pick on the little guys, it'll be very likely, that the big guns in their guilds will come after you (or hire people to hunt you down).
You can easily max out the murder faction, but the price simply is having your mugshot be placed at every corner. No matter how tough you are, there will always be players at least equal in strength, which you will not be able to defeat, if they team up on you. Having a maxed out faction would require you days of undisturbed questing to recover, but being truly infamous you'll be a moving target. The general notion is: Be carefull being an outlaw, you can easily trash your precious powerleveled char with it.

Can it still cause playergrief? Certainly, but it would also do a lot of good things:

• Put an end to mindless taunting in the taverns. People will actually have to think about who they taunt, as they might risk getting a slap in the face(possibly, but unlikely even a trip to DR - Maxing faction with taunters is not really worth it).
• It would put an end to godmodders and people who want to "roleplay" fights, completely ignoring the game mechanics just because they do not suit them.
• It forces a lot of interaction between players, which is the prerequisite for roleplay to happen. The ability to actually play villans opens a myriad of possibilities for a lot of player content.
• Put an end to mindless killing in duells. You'll really have to think about whether or not you want to sent someone to the DR or spare his/her life, as it will have consequences for yourself, too. This will also be beneficial to roleplay, as the DR will be taken more seriously.
• Every murderer will have a bounty on his/her head. This will open up a new source of income for those, that find mining, crafting or killing the same constantly respawning mob over and over again too boring. Think about it: An intelligent mob, you could roleplay a bountyhunter.

[Vannaka]

It sounds like a good idea, however all the penalties for being a murderer only have real significance if the player doesn't have another character.  Sure, killing a ton of weaklings may bring out the big guns from their guilds, but will that do any good if you simply play another character instead of facing such powerful enemies?  and yes, as a murderer you may have very little income and high living costs, but once again, an alternate character can, and most likely will, provide an evil character with anything they need.

[Under the moon]

That is simple enough to fix. If you have a 'good' character who deals with a high 'bad' faction character, your good character will start to develop the same factions ala "Have you seen who Vannaka has been hanging out with? Only a loser would deal with that kind of scum."

If someone logs out as their bad character and never comes back to avoid punishment... isn't that punishment enough? I would rather spend a week roaming a cool prison map than log out for a month fearing ending up in that map, or keeping my bad character in hiding and out of play while other characters 'feed' him. That is part of the fun of playing the evil guy, trying to avoid the punishment, then taking it if you are caught. Heck, with a cool prison map, people might commit crimes just to go there. Roleplayers would love the prison/punishment system. Trolls would hate it. Win win.

[Prolix]

Just a few things to consider.

Logging out to avoid combat would be a viable option especially with the delay. Ignorant bad guy can log out before combat starts and login with a spare character to watch for when the coast is clear then log back in and vamoose. Powerful good guy character with evil twin can supply him by using freshly created intermediary character to take the guilt by association penalty, rinse and repeat as necessary.  Nasty player could even disarm his evil twin and launder his profits through his good twin.

[Under the moon]

I actually had an idea on that a while back. A person who committed a crime would have to log out in a safe house or hiding spot that was 'safe' from authorities. If they just bugged out of the game to escape they could be captured and log back in to find themselves in prison. Proximity to guards or 'guard' faction players would increase this risk. Log out within sight of a guard would be 100%, while off a road somewhere far from a city would be 1%. Players passing over the spot you logged out with a /search or some such on would also increase your chances of being caught. Only a safehouse would be 0%.

Protection from disconnects would have to be included, of course, such as a grace period for logging back in and a short safety time where you could not get caught once getting back ingame. I have been killed before while the loading screen was still up, so I know how much it sucks. Multiple disconnects would not be able to have the same protection for abuse reasons, and would have to rely on fellow player good sportsmanship.

[Prolix]

Houses cost too much for unguilded players to access casually. Were you thinking of having public access safe houses?
Com to think of it YIR would be a perfect place, anyone wanna donate a house or otherwise make my dream come true?  Alms for the poor!?

[Vannaka]

Having to log out in a safe house or hiding spot is possibly a workable idea, but it should be noted that in order to be fair there would have to be a lot of them.  I know occasionaly somthing comes up and i'll have to log off quick, and i wouldn't have time to sprint through hydlaa to get to the safe house.  There'd need to be safe houses everywhere, but that could take some time to accomplish.  Perhaps another solution (and yes i know this is off on a tangent somewhere) would be to create two "super guilds" that are in a permanent state of war.  One for evil and one for "good" players and those other players willing to be at risk from the evil players for the sake of RP.  Rather than being like a normal guild however, the "super guilds" could be guilds that only guilds can join, and not individual players.  So say the guild "hypothetical muggers" wanted to be able to murder at will, their leader could have the "hypothetical muggers" join the evil super guild, and all members of the "hypothetical muggers" could then attack players from guilds who joined the other "super guild"  It would take a lot more planning i realize, but i'm sure many guilds would be willing to put themselves at risk of attack by evil players for the sake of role play.

[Irgendwer]

Logging over to an alt to support your murderous main is not not really a problem. People doing so quickly realize, that they end up leveling two characters instead of one. Logging out to avoid being captured can be solved by transfering control of the character to the npcclient for several seconds after logout or directly autoloosing the fight. Anyway, you have to come back some time and finding yourself to be the "special" buddy of half the community (the buddylist will probably the most usefull tool for bountyhunters), will probably make you consider twice about randomly murdering rookies.


Some more loose ideas:

* Lets use the "law" instead of the "murder" faction. That way, Pickpocketing (or any other unlawful action) can be handled with the same interface (less coding overhead).

* The prison map should be some kind of prison mine (probably somewhere around BD). In order to leave it, you have to bring back your law faction to at least zero. You can do so by asking the guard for a mining quest. Completing it, will restore a fixed amount of faction (so people that are a real thread to society have to do it over and over again).

* Instead of the system putting cash from your income aside to cover your bounty, a certain amount (depending on faction) of your on hand money gets confiscated once you enter the prison. If you don't carry enough money, the system will autosale weapons, armour and raw materials you carry (do I get a vote from the crafters here *g*?).

* You can of course also escape the prison by commiting suicide, but in that case you are guaranteed to loose all weapons, armour and raw materials you carry (did you expect, you could simply /die among outlaws without someone taking your boots?).

* Since you are potentially broke when you enter the prison and may or may not have a rockpick and mining training, there should be night mushrooms (or other plantlife) spawning scattered all over the place. You can collect and sell them to the guards. The money earned can then be used to buy a rockpick and mining training.

* Maybe there should also be a prison break option for people who want to stay criminals, but feel using /die inappropriate. For them, I'd suggest a "tunnel of perril". Principially an area which is considered to be subject to "cave ins" and therefore not guarded. You'd have to make a series of dificult jumps to get through there and balance over narrow rims. If you trip, you'll fall to your death.

[Under the moon]

/die would not be a quick exit from the prison. The player's spawn point can be moved to the prison until they are released. If people respawned in the map they died in, this would not be an issue at all.

Of course there would be ways to break out, but all would be very very difficult and would put you on the realm's most wanted list.

[piprees]

My main problem wiht all of this is one of setting,

PS is medievil - if a murder had have been apprehended at this time, they would have been hung, drawn and quartered.

[Irgendwer]

/die would not be a quick exit from the prison. The player's spawn point can be moved to the prison until they are released. If people respawned in the map they died in, this would not be an issue at all.

Of course there would be ways to break out, but all would be very very difficult and would put you on the realm's most wanted list.

I'd find it rather inconsistent, if dying in the world of the living would put you anywhere else then in the deathrealm. If the you could not escape the prison by commiting suicide, that would mean, that the goverment somehow has mastered death. Well, you could argue, that the guards are very powerful healers, but putting this much effort into keeping the scum of the earth alive? Also, whats wrong with getting out of prison the quick way? You end up in a public place with death curse and your negative faction. I'd say, you are automatically on the realms most wanted list, as your head is worth something and you are at half your strength and it does not require any extra code .

My main problem wiht all of this is one of setting,

PS is medievil - if a murder had have been apprehended at this time, they would have been hung, drawn and quartered.

Not really a problem. People in PS are more or less aware of the fact, that death is something, that can be overcome. Killing someone, of course still is a crime against society, but unless true death is inflicted (a thing, players cannot do to each other), it would rather be considered as assault.

Government on the other hand probably is intimatly familiar with the deathrealm and should be well aware, that hanging, drawning and quartering does not accomplish anything other then sending the culprit to the DR, from where s/he will easily escape. Hence a prison mine where you have to work of your depth to society would be considered educational and the only form of punishment, that is actually working.

Ok, we could bring this to the logical conclusion, that when you have maxed out your faction and get caught, the judge will decide, that you are beyond help and true death is the only way to deal with you  (meaning it's worth wasting a pterosaur to take you to the crystal). But this would pretty much mean you get your character deleted - I don't think it needs to be that "realistic".

[piprees]

OK, what about a variation of the death curse that could be imposed by the judge on the character with VERY long lasting effects.