Bounties and Beyond — a content proposal

[Aasif Al Jamyl]

Bounties & Beyond

I've been reading lots of opinions on many of the proposed game mechanics, starting with those of GW and moving on to those of the community members. I was glad to see that there seems to be some people thinking about how different mechanics may interact in unexpected ways. As a result, I think that the bounty system might benefit from a re-examination.

Everything that GW says seems to be centered on the concept of “meaningful player interaction”. There may be great debate over what constitutes ‘meaningful’ but I’m going to leave that to another time. Other key concepts mentioned over time have been character role specialization, anti-griefing mechanisms, player/PC organizations, PvE elements, and ensuring that alignment has meaning and consequences. There are other key concepts but they may not be directly related to the bounty mechanic — if you can think of others please add them in your replies!

This post will be presented element by element, both for clarity to the reader and for portability for game designers should they decide they see something they like. (I have a computing/engineering background and significant experience in writing technical documents so I’m treating this post like a professional document.)

1. Anti-Griefing — Capture vs. Killing

In other posts I postulated that sending PvP opportunities, i.e. parties of bounty hunters, to people that love PvP may not be much of a punishment. The punishment in setting bounties lies solely in the death of the ‘criminal’ / ‘aggressive’ character. Death itself inherently has a very limited amount of punishment — a very brief ‘time-out’, and the potential to lose some gear. Please note that this is only a potential, not a guarantee.

A mechanic that presents a more meaningful punishment and may lead to more meaningful player interaction would be preferable to all players and game designers, with the sole exception of players who intend to operate with a fast and loose play style, live in the grey-to-black areas of ‘legality’ and/or simply bully / prey upon weaker characters or smaller groups.

FWIW, I consider all forms of Banditry griefing. The only possible exception to this would be in times of war, and then the banditry would be state sponsored. State sponsored banditry should have alignment consequences for characters, communities AND kingdoms. Perhaps the Criminal tag is sufficient to make this a less attractive or palatable option, I think it remains to be seen. I’m not even certain that GW considers any form of Banditry worthy of earning the Criminal tag! In the examples that Ryan Dancey gave, it seems to me that his opinion regarding the talkative, logical bandits that are willing to take a significant “road tax” and then let travelers go on their less-than-merry way is that they have committed no crime (of note). Logically, I would guess that Mafia protection rackets aren't crimes either.

I contend that capture as a punishment is preferable to killing. It can be argued that lawful and/or good societies may prefer capture over killing in many cases. In an environment where death is transitory this is even more preferable. There has been no mention of capture as a possible game mechanic and I think that is a shame. If anything, it has been implied that the closest to capture that is available in PFO is the ‘Marshal’ ability to immobilize. Given that the Marshal is an NPC role, this seems to mean that PCs will only be capable of killing when push comes to shove.

Let’s fix that.

2. Contracts

Including Capture as a game concept means a small change in the existing contract system. It can be entirely flavor or it can include an entirely new kind of contract.

2.1 Bounties

The PC setting a Bounty can decide whether it is a Dead Or Alive bounty, an Apprehend bounty or a Marked For Death bounty. For Dead Or Alive bounties, the PC opening the contract can offer different reward levels for each outcome depending on their own personal preference and perhaps their alignment’s compatibility with the option. Alternatively, bounty options may be designed to be available only to certain alignment subsets, for example, an Apprehend bounty might be considered too lawful to be an option for a Chaotic PC in a Chaotic community. Similarly, Marked For Death may be considered too Chaotic, or perhaps too Evil, for use by a Lawful (or Good) PC in a Lawful (or Good) community.

PCs that have decided to be professional Bounty Hunters will have the option to gain an ability to capture their prey when presented with a Dead Or Alive or Apprehend bounty contract but not a Marked For Death bounty. At GWs discretion they may also employ this ability in taking down known criminals in appropriate areas. What constitutes “Appropriate” is debatable. Perhaps it is only areas controlled by the Bounty Hunter’s employer, or the Bounty Hunter’s home territory. Perhaps it will also include the fringes of control for those areas. Perhaps it may also include uncontrolled areas. Perhaps it will be entirely unrestricted. Let the debate begin.

Having the option to capture does not mean they must use it. It is just another tool in their arsenal.

2.2 Retrieval & Recovery

If PCs are going to be Captured and Incarcerated, there will be other players/PCs that are inconvenienced or outright enraged by the Lawful society that arranged this ‘insult’. The prisoner’s friends, allies, settlement or kingdom may decide that this insult cannot go without reprisal. Thus a new contract is born, the Retrieval / Recovery contract.

This contract is intended to be used for breaking prisoners out of jail, but could be used for the recovery of stolen or looted items as well. It differs from Transportation and Bounty contracts enough that it merits a category of its own.

Bounty Hunters that have had their alignment shift away from Law or had their reputations eroded to what amounts to ‘scum’ may not be able to secure bounties anymore. However, chances are pretty good that they’ll be trusted enough to earn R&R contracts, for who else would want them? Fulfilling an R&R would almost assuredly result in gaining a Criminal reputation, so expect that those already considered Criminals will feel that they have nothing to lose and jump all over these!

Lawful and/or Good societies will probably never issue these contracts and maybe they shouldn't be allowed to. If a Lawful or Good group felt that one of their own was unjustly imprisoned, they’d be far more likely to try many other ways to secure their ally’s freedom. Negotiation, trade, prisoner exchange, embargoes or outright war are likely all better options for organizations with morals and/or ethics. Does this sound like the kind of meaningful player interaction we want?

R&R contracts are probably fairly straight-forward and may or may not be brutally expensive. I don’t think that is something that matters in the slightest as game economics are dynamic and will determine themselves through game-play. They will be straight-forward because they are so outside what is considered acceptable by ‘civilized’ society that nuance is neither necessary nor reasonable. By default, they could be ‘by any means necessary’ types of contracts. If GW wants to make them more complicated and more widely available, I suppose they could include clauses like ‘no collateral damages’, ‘no civilian death’, or other stipulations that one might not expect from this type of contract.

Finally, it is up to GW to decide whether specific skills, alignments, reputation-levels or other game mechanics are pertinent in who can qualify to accept an R&R contract and who would be skilled in executing one. (My suggestion that fallen Bounty Hunters would be good candidates is just that – a suggestion.)

3. Death vs. Capture

GW has given us lots of information about how Death may/will work.

* There is a lock-out / respawn timer;
* respawning will occur at soulbinding points;
* PCs will have to reclaim their husks;
* only certain items will be available as plunder before a PC
reclaims his/her husk
* players have a finite resource called threads to protect a
limited number of items from becoming plunder
* some items that aren't plundered may simply evaporate into thin
air (a fairly significant economic drag)

The way I see it, death is still going to be big business and profitable under the right circumstances. “The right circumstances” coupled with one type of design will essentially be about numbers. If you can say “my gang is bigger than your gang” you’re probably going to find that PvP death is your friend. There will be major, massively chaotic elements to the game: mob rules, last man standing, etc. With a pairing of “the right circumstances” and a different design choice death may benefit no one as it mainly serves to cause items to disappear into cyberspace rather than get plundered and simply change hands.

From a design perspective, chasing the right (balanced) formula will be quite the Holy Grail. Worse, it may very well be a dynamic and ever-changing problem that can never be solved for any measurable length of time. I figure that whatever design GW chooses may be less about game balance, economics and other issues and more about ensuring that they don’t accidentally shut down all “meaningful player interaction”.

In any case, whatever punishment bounties do present to the hunted is inherently tied to Death. The introduction of Capture doesn't have to change any of those punishments, but maybe it should. Capture will almost certainly mean the hunted is inconvenienced for longer than they would be by transient death. Capture breaks down into a few components:

3.1 Defeat

In order to capture an offender you must first defeat him/her and whomever comes to their defense.

3.2 Transport

Once you've defeated the offender, and potentially their allies, you have to get them back to your or your employer’s home settlement / kingdom.

3.3 Incarceration

If you manage to get the offenders’ bodies back to friendly territory there is still the matter of enforcing the punishment. The offenders get tossed into the big house. It is up to GW as to how long an offender must stay incarcerated. By necessity, it would have to be longer than the ‘time out’ involved in Death, but everything else is open for debate and probably scalable. It won’t be comparable to real life sentences and I don’t think anyone would ever suggest it should. The duration could be related to the offense, the number of offenses, the reputation of the offender, the alignment of the community enforcing the incarceration, or other less ‘fair’ things. Less fair factors could include the reputation or influence of the aggrieved PC that set the bounty. Historically, rich merchants and nobles could expect ‘more justice’ than lesser citizens.

Regardless, part of the enforcement of incarceration is not simply watching a clock and saying “OK! Time’s up…you’re free to go.” It can be completely expected that prisoners will try to escape by any means necessary (bribes, murder, lock-picking, wall-smashing, tunnel-digging, etc.) and further, their ‘friends on the outside’ may decide to reward your enlightened and merciful decision to imprison rather than kill by breaking them out along with all the other criminals, and if they’re lucky, destroy some buildings and kill lots and lots of characters in the process. I think this qualifies as “meaningful player interaction” by prevailing definition.

Mechanically, I would contend that incarceration be measured in terms of active server time. Players shouldn't be allowed to just log off for the duration of the sentence. Nor should they be allowed to switch to another character while they wait for the sentence to elapse. Similarly, they shouldn't be able to go have a sandwich and come back free. GW says that escaping into real life won’t protect you from death (i.e. logging off to avoid danger) and incarceration shouldn't be avoidable by the same reasoning.

So, what can a player do while they are waiting for their sentence to run its course? They can role-play! Role-play options may include: attempting to contact their allies and arrange a jailbreak from the outside; trying to buy/bribe their way out of jail; tongue-wagging to annoy the PC or NPC jailers (within the behavior policy enforced by GW); and interacting with the other prisoners — who knows what plans may be hatched by these unplanned meetings! Handled properly, people may actually WANT to get their PCs captured in order to have meetings with other PCs with whom they wouldn't normally be able to fraternize or even contact. GW could conceivably toss in simple dice or card games for prisoners to while away their time.

Another option that could be considered is that the real time clock on skill advancement is suspended (or at least slowed) while they are incarcerated. This would be a significant penalty and would be a real way to dissuade players from ‘bad’ behavior!

Since time lost to offenders is more significant in Capture than in Death, GW may want to consider reducing the other potential penalties, i.e. loot potential. On the other hand, the extreme increase in risk involved in transporting captives vs. only having to stay long enough to loot a husk may mean that capture would entitle Bounty Hunters to higher looting potential! This is yet another item open to debate and beta testing.

3.4 Release

If you manage to hold your prisoner for the duration of his sentence there is still the matter of safely releasing them back into the game environment. This will be as trivial as the prisoner, or his allies, decide to make it.

3.5 Rehabilitation

This concept should probably be kept out of the game entirely! If rehabilitation occurs it will be incidental and experienced by players, not PCs.

4. Character Role Specialization — Bounty Hunters, Sheriffs and Jailers

It’s been pretty clear that both GW and the community expect that there will be players who choose to have their characters specialize as Bounty Hunters. It has also been stated that the Game Environment will have ‘marshals’ to enforce certain laws within a certain distance of NPC communities. With the addition of Capture as a game concept, additional specialty roles begin to make sense.

4.1 Bounty Hunters

Bounty Hunters should be more than mercenaries that kill killers. They should be specifically empowered to visit grief upon griefers. As mentioned above, one way of doing that is through capturing offenders and their allies / abettors rather than just killing them. Being effective at capturing criminals at large could mean many different things in terms of game mechanics. These would represent player options that enable Bounty Hunter PCs to do what other PCs cannot, but could also have built in costs as well as the standard opportunity-costs involved in all decision making.

4.1.1 Game Mechanic: PC Ability Proposal — Bring ‘Em Back Alive

Possible alternative names for this ability: Always Get Our Man,
Dog-Catcher, Dawg-Catcher, Bounty Collector, Non-Lethal Specialist,
Long Arm of the Law.

The Bring ‘Em Back Alive skill allows Bounty Hunters (and perhaps other potential PC roles, such as Sheriff or Slaver) the opportunity to defeat specific targets without killing them. This ability would only be usable on PCs for which the Bounty Hunter has an Active/Open Bounty Contract and PCs that are marked as Criminals. It would be the Bounty Hunter’s option whether or not to invoke this ability since there may be situations where capture is too dangerous or risky and the bounty allows for killing to fulfill the contract.

Using this ability in combat might be more difficult than killing. This could make an easy combat more difficult, a fair fight hard, or a difficult battle a no-win situation. At the designers’ discretion, the ability would have to be enabled for the entire encounter, or perhaps only used long enough to prevent a killing blow. Further, if group tactics are used, it is a game design decision as to whether one of the Bounty Hunters using this skill is sufficient or whether all of them must have the skill for it to be effective. Finally, the mindset and skill-set required to beat someone down without killing them may erode a Bounty Hunter’s general ability to kill. Perhaps they will suffer a small regression in combat skills in non-capture situations, making this ability a more difficult option to take. Alternatively, maybe this skill requires the use of weapons suited to the purpose. Since PCs can only own and carry a finite number of items, using up a slot for non-lethal methods may be too high a price to pay in order to gain this capability?

4.1.2 Game Mechanic: PC Ability Proposal — Pharasma's Loom

Possible alternative names for this ability: Lost & Found,
Fickle Fate, Thread-cutter, A Fool & His Money.

This ability is entirely optional and dependent on GW's decision on how looting should be affected by Capture vs. Killing. If the time, risk and expense entailed in Capture is determined to be sufficient to warrant potentially better looting than is available from the husks of the temporarily dead then Pharasma's Loom would be the skill that Bounty Hunters must train to pry items out of the hands of their prey.

Pharasma's Loom represents two separate issues — Fate and Bureaucracy.

First, as the name suggests, some Bounty Hunters' become adept at loosening the Threads that bind items to characters, even in death. Whether this ability will ever allow a Bounty Hunter to take a protected item is up to GW. Since this is a Fourth Wall issue, it isn't that relevant to the name or the concept. What the ability would certainly do is increase the number or value of items that can be looted from their unconscious bounty and possibly decrease the number or value of items that would evaporate in the normal ‘unclaimed husk’ scenario. At sufficiently high levels of training in Pharasma's Loom, Bounty Hunters just might be able to pluck ONE plum protected item from their prey’s pocket! This is the Fate component of the skill.

The second component is the ability to convince the key members of the employer’s society (the Sheriff, the employer, the mayor/king, etc.) that the bounty doesn't deserve to keep the gear when they are ultimately released. Sure, in a completely Lawful society everything that didn't previously belong to the PC that set the Bounty contact (and therefore stolen or ill-gotten goods) should be held in escrow/trust until the prisoner is released at which point it is returned. Sometimes, inexplicably, items go missing. This can either be due to Bounty Hunters not reporting an item in the first place, or convincing the right people that returning the item to the released prisoner is just a disaster waiting to happen as it will once again be used in the commission of crimes.

4.1.3 Game Mechanic: PC Ability Proposal — Break & Exit

Possible alternative names for this ability: Bust ‘Em Out

So, we've got Capture and Incarceration as an alternative to death, and we've got R&R contracts as a dirty solution for Incarceration. Such a specialized job needs a specialized skill.

B&E is a skill that would help a PC deal with the logistics of a jailbreak and the unavoidable chaos that ensues. B&E will augment other skills which the PC may or may not have trained. Stealth, the safe handling and use of explosives, implementing effective diversions, stunning opposition instead of slugging it out to the bitter end, disabling devices (locks), and whatever else it may take to get your man out of the hands of the enemy can all potentially be improved by training B&E. The more chaos you create the easier it may be to get in, get out, get away and claim your reward out of escrow. I’ll leave it to the game designers to decide the specifics of this ability and whether it should be something available in the Bounty Hunter career path or is perhaps more appropriate for another role / profession / archetype.

4.2 Sheriffs

Marshals patrol and respond to events in NPC communities. Sheriffs could possibly be an equivalent PC role. They wouldn't be automatically notified of egregious events the way that Marshals are, nor should they be. As such, they would need certain non-combat skills to be effective. Perception would be important. Perception could mean keen sight and hearing but it could also mean having effective networks of contacts. In a fantasy world, not only do the walls have ears figuratively, but travelers, the trees, rocks, animals and even the roads themselves can be credible elements of an information network. GW could decide that Perception and Contacts are separate skill to maintain and upgrade. Either way, both are important for Sheriffs to be effective.

4.2.1 Game Mechanic: PC Ability Proposal — Ears To The Ground

Sheriffs need to be in touch with area beyond the reach of their eyes and ears. Ears To The Ground is a trainable skill that incorporates and represents the ability to collect knowledge of semi-remote locations that are within the fringes of a PC Settlement’s are of control. This can either be a completely independent skill or can provide a modifier to the use of other skills in specific ways, such as augmenting the Diplomacy skill for gathering information about crimes taking place in controlled or fringe areas. Mechanically and socially, members of a community will always be trying to communicate with one another. Unless the community is unusually small the amount of noise (or chatter) in the in-game chat channel will be overwhelming. For Sheriff PCs with a well-developed Ears To The Ground skill / ability, the game itself can cut through the chatter with highlighted A/V alerts indicating the presence and location of such events. Just like Marshals, there is no guarantee that Sheriffs will arrive in time to prevent malfeasance, but they might arrive in time to exact justice or at the very least to minimize the damage caused to citizens and allies.

4.3 Jailers (and Spies)

If there are jails / prison, there needs to be jailers, guards or wardens — the role’s name isn't that important. The role of jailers can be simple or complex. If the role of jailer is allowed for PCs they could be limited to being alert sentries and excellent at defense / incapacitation. That’s fairly simple. Perhaps they can also have elements of spy-craft in their job description, attempting to learn of the intrigues and schemes being hatched by their charges while under their watch. Perhaps they can be allowed a certain amount of duplicity/corruption and can help prisoners escape…for the right price. With the right skills they may even be able to do that without it being obvious to the leaders of the community and they may be able to line their pockets from time to time without raising too much suspicion. There will almost surely be alignment consequences in the long run even if this activity is masked well.

Perhaps this is a role that is, for some bizarre reason, ideally suited for enemy infiltrators! Break out the prisoners and escape with them? If this is true, Sheriffs and their bosses will have to be wary about PCs that volunteer to be jailers, lest they be spies in deep cover.

4.3.1 Game Mechanic: PC Ability Proposal — Hold The Line

Jailers need to be able to stop prisoners from escaping. This doesn't necessarily mean that they have to be able to quell riots or jailbreaks on their own. What’s more important is that they hold the line while raising an alarm to ensure that enough allies respond quickly and with enough firepower to prevent escape. Instead of trading damage with prisoners, jailers can simply try to contain them, parrying blows and making combat maneuvers like tripping and grappling to stall for time. Good jails will use the building layout to give the jailers a tactical advantage even if they are outnumbered by the prisoners. Jailers would have to really drop the ball to lose this advantage. In any case, only in the rarest circumstances would all the prisoners be freed at once but it could happen.

4.3.2 Game Mechanic: PC Ability Proposal — Under The Table

Jailers with the Under the Table ability would be able to take bribes from prisoners with a smaller chance of being caught. They would still have to play out a believable scenario. A jailbreak while they were sleeping or using the water closet just won’t cut it. They’d probably have to be killed or incapacitated by the prisoners or their outside benefactors for their lack of complicity to be believable, but I never doubt what someone might be capable of doing if offered enough coin or other considerations. Since the prisoners are likely to be Criminals blackmail and other threats could be substituted for coin and similarly, Under The Table would allow jailers to avoid some of the nasty ramifications of giving the bad guys what they want.

4.3.3 Game Mechanic: PC Ability Proposal — Alias

If PCs are going to misrepresent themselves anywhere in the game they will have to face consequences. Sure, one way that people have done that in previous more traditional (theme park) MMOs is have a relatively pointless alternate character that they have no emotional attachment to do the scouting and deal making. Nearly all these games had nothing to prevent false newbie PCs from appearing with access to as much wealth as kings and level-capped veterans through a chain of coin trades. Joe Anonymous with a pristine reputation and perfect teeth could arrange all kinds of anarchy and nonsense, sowing the seeds of misery for the real PCs to reap! Since GW has said that this will be much harder in PFO, these fiends — and zealots of all stripes — will have to do their own dirty work.

This will mean either being able to temporarily disguise or mask certain details about themselves, such as alignment, reputation and affiliations or the ability to maintain a “deep cover” false identity. Alias is a skill that might allow the suppression of character details that might make completing “a mission” difficult or impossible, or perhaps even replacing these details with a work of complete fiction. Alias could also be a skill that augments other ‘face’ skills like Disguise, Bluff, Diplomacy and Intimidate but only when utilizing a false persona.

These are the bread and butter tools of a Spymaster and what role could be more satisfying to a Spymaster than infiltrating an enemy stronghold and obtaining the release of all you friends without your nation/faction having to give up anything in return? If this ability becomes available every society will have to watch their backs for they’ll never truly be 100% certain who it is they are dealing with when they hand out contracts or assign jobs…like Jailers.

5. Construction and Settlement Development

If Capture and Incarceration are going to be concepts in PFO then one of the construction projects that may be undertaken in a settlement must include building prisons.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

All these proposed mechanics, roles and abilities try to decrease the value of ‘undesirable’ behaviors in the final cost-benefit analysis. Further, for those that want to engage in these or even similar behaviors they are simultaneously meant to make them lead to more meaningful and consequential player interactions and hopefully a richer play experience.

Comments are heartily encouraged!

[Being]

Makes my thought of the automatic posting of "Wanted!" posters with the ingame image of the criminal in all similarly aligned settlements look like a fleck of quartz among faceted gems.

It will take a bit to think through, but at first blush: nice work!

[Dario]

The only thing on here I don't disagree vehemently with is the Alias, and only then if there is *something* settlements/other players can do to counter it as well.

Banditry is, according to Ryan and the GW team, a valid play style. I'm sorry you consider it griefing, but the design goals for the game do not. As for incarceration, this is a terrible idea. It just encourages people to log out and go play a game that doesn't require them to sit in a box for an hour. And guess what? If they're still in it when they log back in, they won't bother to log back in. Not to mention all the windows to griefing it opens up.

[Marthian]

As Dario said. This one game I played that had a jail system, it didn't work out so well. I ended up in jail once (I did deserve it, I was talking about waffles on open chat, and english officers are offended by it.) All I did was log off. Next day, bamf out, and I had an ok day yesterday.

In addition, death actually can be dangerous. In the older version of runescape, unless you had teleport runes, you could end up dying in the wilderness, and NEVER get to reclaim your items. I believe it will be a similar case here: Odds are if you kill someone in a LG settlement, I would bet you would lose your soul binding to that settlement, and if you die, you are going to have to go a long way to get your equipment back. This is made worse by the fact that if you were able to kill someone, you probably spent a bit of money to do so, so lost some money and your goods. You'll also most likely be KoS when you come back, not to mention if there indeed was a bounty on you, and the victim was vengeful, he could apply a bounty on you AGAIN and again. Not to mention the initial death, he can make a vengeful prayer (or whatever it is) to loosen the threads on the murder's equipment, meaning he may lose even more.

[Blaeringr]

"A forum post should be like a skirt. Long enough to cover the subject material but short enough to keep things interesting."

The OP here is like a burka.

[Dakcenturi]

I disagree with jailing as well. As Dario noted imposing no-play time on players will just end up having them stop playing.

[Calidor Cruciatus]

It looks like you put a lot of thought and effort into the post so it really saddens me to say that I cannot support it. "Banditry" is a valid playstyle. I'm sorry that you consider it griefing, but it's not. Griefing is when I go out of my way to make your life miserable. Like killing you over and over again. Spawn camping. Things like that. Simply playing a rogue who is gooing to waylay travellers and try to steal their possessions is quite different.

I know people get their shackles up when another "player" kills them, but why is that any different from some AI controlled Orc?

Personally i think that the mechanics are very much slanted against evil... and I worry that there will not be enough villains to go around to make the game interesting. Just take a look at the list of Chartered companies.. the vast majority are good. Life is going to get plenty boring without the looming threat of "bad guys" coming to threaten us.

I am seriously considering making one of my characters evil just because it seems to be lacking so much.

[Kryzbyn]

Jailing wont really hurt people so much. They still will get the same amount of training per month. But it would affect resource colelction and the like. May be a fair trade, if you're acting like a dork.

[Dakcenturi]

I plan to make 1 character evil as well just to try and some spice to the world. My goal, the first Lich in PFO :)

In any case, as an aside, we might see a lot of the Good chartered companies start to slip to neutral and maybe even evil over time as if they don't have bad guys to fight against they will eventually start fighting with one another and it could be a self adjusting thing.

[Being]

It is a sensitive issue and the OP clearly put quite a bit of work into his idea. I think he deserves cudos for the thought he has put into it.

We should respect his work whether or not we agree, and do it justice.

And rather than just shaking my finger at the community and trundling along on my own merry way, I'll try and respond in detail. After all: other than the incarceration proposal he basically suggested one misconceived thing

Aasif Al Jamyl wrote:

Bounties & Beyond

... PvP opportunities, i.e. parties of bounty hunters, to people that love PvP may not be much of a punishment.

Yet the game is not about punishing, but about reward for appropriate play. We are trying to discourage the criminal yet encourage meaningfulness. By sending the bounty hunter we do encourage the criminal to role play his chosen expression of play without entailing the griefing of innocents. The bounty hunter is a volunteer, (more likely several of them together) persons of somewhat good or neutral alignment who in fact do wish to PvP. By becoming criminal the griefer has actually provided opportunity for Good or Neutral aligned players to engage in PvP while doing no harm to their alignment or the community.

[Dakcenturi]

Kryzbyn wrote:

Jailing wont really hurt people so much. They still will get the same amount of training per month. But it would affect resource colelction and the like. May be a fair trade, if you're acting like a dork.

Keep in mind that even though skill progression continues while you are logged out you can't advance to some skills without actively doing something. See below from Ryan:

Ryan Dancey wrote:

Because we need to enable lots of different kinds of characters to fill that big world concept of lots of roles, we're using a skill-based system. Like EVE Online, your characters will train skills in realtime, regardless of your on-line presence. But unlike EVE, characters in Pathfinder Online also have to achieve various in-game objectives as prerequisites before they gain a mechanical advantage. They have to train, and they have to do.

[Being]

Criminals cannot use fast travel. Can criminals train?

[Being]

Dakcenturi wrote:

I plan to make 1 character evil as well just to try and some spice to the world. My goal, the first Lich in PFO :)

In any case, as an aside, we might see a lot of the Good chartered companies start to slip to neutral and maybe even evil over time as if they don't have bad guys to fight against they will eventually start fighting with one another and it could be a self adjusting thing.

There must be conflict in the world for there to be story. I will consider it.

[Darcnes]

We've seen some of the OP's ideas pop up in other threads, particularly those regarding bounties and banditry.

We've also seen the concepts of capture arise.

Let me distill the issues down to two things:

• Player downtime.
  
• Subdual.

The second issue is relatively minor, the devs have stated that subdual damage won't be available initially, that's something that I sincerely hope becomes available at a later time. Without a form of non-lethal damage implemented, capture becomes contrived and needs to be shelved until subdual becomes viable.

The first issue is by far the most important of the two. Player downtime. Just like you don't mess with players skills, you ought not mess with their allotted playtime in a permanently disruptive fashion. As mentioned above, once a person is no longer capable of doing anything.. they may as well just log out for all the enjoyment they're likely to get out of the session, and oh gods, the griefing potential here is enormous.

Simple solution to an otherwise complex issue: suicide. A player should always have this option available to them. It has potentially dire consequences if used irresponsibly, but it should always be an option. If you've already been beaten into submission, it would have required the same amount of damage to be done as what would have killed you anyhow. You have the option of playing it out, or depriving them or their fun and using your innate ability Alter Form: Husk (usable while unconscious). Note: Knocking someone out should account for the same level of Criminal consequences as killing that person outright.

It's all contigent on subdual damage being added anyhow, but suicide is a completely viable alternative.

[Provos]

I like everything in the op. No where was it stated how long the person should be in jail or that it couldn't be fun somehow. If I play an evil character I would be bragging about the number of times incarcerated. I am assuming all alignments would look a capture/kill in different ways. The idea of capture/jail is very logical from a LG standpoint. There is a lot of information to take in and try to see the fun and thought put in to it.

[Keign]

I agree that the idea of a capture system would add a lot to the game - after all, you don't always simply kill someone.

However, I also agree that locking a player up is simply going to make them log out. This is inconvenient, but particularly if you offer a chance to pay a bail, bribe a guard, talk a guard into getting close to the bars, etc. to get out and you make the jailing times reasonable, I don't think it would be TOO inconvenient and drive players away. (Especially if they know they can call their buddies and get busted out - that's classically fun roleplay.)

Now, if you make the jailing progress in real-time the same way that training does, so that the player can log back on after a few in-game days,(or several real hours) the punishment system kind of kicks in at that point - or at least teaches you not to get caught. If you do, make sure you know how to get out of trouble easily to minimize your punishment.

Make a jail a player-constructed building, give it levels of security, and give criminals a chance to get out depending on their skill-sets. It doesn't sound unreasonable to me - it actually makes me want to play a crook.

Also, seeing Darcnes note on suicide: yes. For the impatient, or for those who think they can get their buddies together fast enough to go raid that jail for their body and equipment, suicide should be a way out of trouble - since it would roughly equate to having been killed in the first place.

Plus, that makes me want to get in jail, play dead, and ambush a guard. Jailbreak!

Oh! And a captured player should have every opportunity to escape from his captors while in transit to a facility. Of course we'd wind up with criminals tied to saddles, but Escape Artists can get out of that and run off. Got a wagon with a mini-jail cell on it? Tough to get out of, but either I'm picking the lock or my friends will come free me from this little caravan.

I'd also like to see some method of turning yourself in / a way to declare intent to capture without combat. "Yes, I'll come along freely. You got me."

Also, no way should you be able to fast travel while transporting a prisoner.

[Being]

Still... doesn't it depend on the jail?

What if it were a dungeon with a tunnel dug long ago into someplace...interesting?

[Balgin]

I like the diea of skill progression slowing down when in prison. Very Elder Scrolls.

Is 20-30 minutes on the naughty step really that bad it would cause people to log out? I think people are overlooking the fact that the punishments would need to scale rather than simply being days or weeks.

[Balgin]

Just adding a thought, if the jail is player constructed it could be as basic as a pig sty if they couldn't afford to build a decent one. Does anyone remember that famous Swiss folk tale in wich, when captured, the heroic thief claims to be terribly ticklish and begs to be tied up with anything but ropes made of straw?

[Keign]

I believe such interesting dungeons would have to come as part of the Dungeons that become inhabitable after clearing them. To have them as something you could build yourself might end very badly.

Though, if dungeons ended up all connecting into a vast underground tunnel system...

[Being]

..or perhaps into deeper older dungeons that connected to a vast underground tunnel system... they might end up in the river, or.... guests of Drow?

[Drakhan Valane]

Balgin wrote:

I like the diea of skill progression slowing down when in prison. Very Elder Scrolls.

Is 20-30 minutes on the naughty step really that bad it would cause people to log out? I think people are overlooking the fact that the punishments would need to scale rather than simply being days or weeks.

1) Slowing skill progression is taking their money away. No go.

2) Yes, a 20 minute "jail" would really cause people to log out. What's the point in hanging around staring at the screen for 20 minutes doing nothing?

[Balgin]

If people are going to be able to tie up prisoners and deliver them to abse I have a proposal.

Ability Cut a String

This ability releases the prisoner from their bonds, allowing them to go free. However, as you cut them loose you additionaly sever the string binding one of their safe items and it falls into your grasp.

I like it. It's a pun. The symbolic cutting the prisoner free from his bonds and the mechanical kick in the goolies of taking one of their treasured items without all the inconvenience of death and trying to recover all their gear.

[Provos]

Your puny jail can't hold me copper!!!

[Calidor Cruciatus]

If you are going to allow "evil" characters to be captured and put in jail then it would only be fair that "evil" characters be able to kidnap "good" characters and ransom them :-)

Turnabout is fair play afterall...

[DeciusBrutus]

How about the equivalent evil act of holding a good character for ransom? Doesn't that sound like fun for the captured merchant, calling his vast network of economic shakers to break him out of a prepared defensive position?

What isn't good for the gander isn't good for the goose.

[Being]

Calidor Cruciatus wrote:

If you are going to allow "evil" characters to be captured and put in jail then it would only be fair that "evil" characters be able to kidnap "good" characters and ransom them :-)

Turnabout is fair play afterall...

Ours should be a well-balanced world, should it not? General concensus however appears to be tilting in favor of no jail time, despite the potentials.

[Dario]

Drakhan Valane wrote:

2) Yes, a 20 minute "jail" would really cause people to log out. What's the point in hanging around staring at the screen for 20 minutes doing nothing?

Doubly so when you consider this line from the OP:

Quote:

Mechanically, I would contend that incarceration be measured in terms of active server time. Players shouldn't be allowed to just log off for the duration of the sentence. Nor should they be allowed to switch to another character while they wait for the sentence to elapse. Similarly, they shouldn't be able to go have a sandwich and come back free.

If you expect me to actively sit at the computer while my character is locked up, you are locking me up and taking away my time. *I* am not going to spend even five minutes in "jail" for playing a video game. I'd go find something enjoyable to do with my time.

[Balgin]

Why should evil characters get put in prison? surely it's the chaotic ones who'd be more likely to get arrested :P.

[Blaeringr]

I'm surprised so many people have taken the time to read the op in so much detail.

"Brevity is a virtue"

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough"

[Marthian]

Being wrote:

Calidor Cruciatus wrote:

If you are going to allow "evil" characters to be captured and put in jail then it would only be fair that "evil" characters be able to kidnap "good" characters and ransom them :-)

Turnabout is fair play afterall...

Ours should be a well-balanced world, should it not? General concensus however appears to be tilting in favor of no jail time, despite the potentials.

If there was a way to do it and actually be meaningful, it would be pretty awesome. However, again, if I'm jailed, I'll just log off and wait it out. Similarly, I don't really think holding people for ransom will work out well. If I'm captured, I may very well be able to just log out.

I'm actually now curious as to how log offs will be handled. If you log off away from your home settlement, will you stay in the same place or end up back at the settlement?

[Dario]

I would assume you reappear in the same place. That's sort of the standard, and I haven't heard anything to imply otherwise. Returning to settlement on log-in would basically be a recall home on no cooldown.

[Being]

@Blaeringr

The contributor is bright.

While many focus on brevity others recognize that to attempt translation of a complex system simply is to misrepresent the case. When people demand simple words, the eloquent wince that the full breadth of the language is unused. There is power in language, yet when the culture demands shallow grunts instead the poet must weep for his beloved.

Longfellow advised us: "Never use two words where one will suffice."

Yet the people as a result are losing the majesty and richness of the English language.

Besides, it strokes the writer's ego.

[GameGeekRob]

Similarly to the issue of having a jailed played sitting around doing nothing, I can imagine the prison guards would be equally bored having to watch the prisoners sit there.

Maybe a capture and transportation mission might be interesting. Perhaps you need to transfer the target to the issuer of the bounty before the normal death timer runs out, while the target resists and maybe freed by friends. If the target is delivered, the bounty is paid and maybe the target is looted by the bounty issuer as compensation for the wrongful act. Again, I still fear what happens when you take the control out of a player's hands and put them in th corner, even just to be transported.

What happens, in any case, when your captive logs out right after you capture them? You could have them in the back of a wagon, taking them wherever you need to go, and suddenly they poof. That's a tricky one...

I like this kind of discussion. We're given an idea, and though we may not like it as is, we're still trying to see how it could work and become something that'd be enjoyable! Crowdforging as it is intended!

[Keign]

@Blaeringr: Is that your way of saying "tldr;"? Seems a little wordy, to me.

To the idea of a merchant being held for ransom: eh, suicide sounds like the choice. Seems unlikely he'd be carrying anything that he couldn't keep threaded anyway. Hard to make a ransom stick when he can just end the imprisonment. And as a turn-around he'd still be able to take retribution in the form of bounties, at the very least.

The imprisonment itself only really becomes a problem when it interferes with the player being able to actually do anything - then in removes fun from the game. If you grant them the ability to escape, via roguish skills, then it's just one more difficulty to overcome, and that's the whole point of the game. If they commit suicide, which would operate as a normal death, losing items - then being captured is not any worse than being killed in unwanted PvP.

[Keign]

The logging out mid-transport would essentially be giving up and allowing the abduction. Their location is inside the wagon, not that coordinate on the map. Assuming the wagon successfully reaches its destination, the character token is then transferred to a cell, so when they log in again, they can attempt escape through whatever means, or simply wait long enough before logging back in that they have served their time.

[Blaeringr]

@Being I'm not saying he isn't bright, I'm saying he's making his idea far more complex than it really is.

I'm not asking that he translate a complex system, I'm asking that he not do the opposite.

[Richter Bones]

Suicide seems like a cop out and abuses the death system, as much as dislike it, as it is.

Darcnes wrote:

...suicide is a completely viable alternative

I might have to pull my ACE card on this one.

[Provos]

Kidnap and randsom could be great features. Taking the head of a guild and trying to arrange payment without being captured yourself would be fun. So would tying someone up and dropping them in a goblin camp.

[Keign]

Provided you limit the ability to use suicide as an ability outside of situations where you've been captured (or something very similar, though I'm not sure what it would be) - I see no reason it would be abusive or a cop out. It's voluntary death, and aside from the simple fact that (generally) nobody likes to die, there is also the potential for loss of equipment, which also makes it undesirable except as a last resort.

Would it seem less abusive if committing suicide caused you to sacrifice a threaded item, which you would not ordinarily be able to lose?

[Richter Bones]

If you commit suicide then just make it so you can't spawn at a graveyard and it won't be a cop out.

[Being]

I'm uneasy with the idea of doing anything to suggest suicide as a way out of anything. Human beings learn through play. We have done it since childhood. Through it we learned our social skills, our sense of fairness, and friendship. To use such an act raises difficult ethical and even moral questions that should be handled with extreme care. We do not know who might play this game nor what their context might be. I wish to strongly recommend turning back from anything that might lead there, lest even one innocent be lost irrevocably.

Please: consider the potential implications.

[Keign]

Oh, I agree with you about the risk of the implications... frankly, I find it unlikely that GW would be willing to implement a 'suicide' feature at all, as it is admittedly a bit crass. And yes, it could lead some astray.

However, a mechanic that functions this way would not necessarily be described as suicide - astral projection, or a form of meditation to shed your body and willingly reincarnate may work.

I'm unsure, on this, however I do believe that giving players a way out of imprisonment that is roughly as punitive as death would be reasonable, and a good way to prevent in-game prisons from frustrating players out of playing the game.

[Richter Bones]

Do I think people are going to consider suicide because they see it in the game. No. Can it make people insensitive or indifferent to suicide, possibly but not likely.

Committing suicide because you can't deal with captivity, maybe. Committing suicide to get out of captivity because you will just resurrect somewhere else, silly.

The fact that I've said suicide five times in this post, makes me very sad.

[Keign]

Silly? Sure, but dying and resurrecting for certain all by itself is silly.

They have made it clear that it's going to be that way, however. If the penalties for death are right, nobody is going to want to voluntarily submit to it, and it will be a last resort. It should be a devastating decision, and preferably one that has an even deeper impact than an average death, to prevent from trivializing it.

But it's a game, where death is already trivial. We can only grant it so much weight.

[Summersnow]

While the game is open world meaningful pvp I doubt there are very many people that want to spend a significant part of there game session unable to control there character, in essence being reduced to the status of an NPC, in order to entertain and provide content for another player.

Anything that takes control of a character for anything longer then a second, i.e. stuns, roots, etc is usually a very, very bad thing.

[Being]

We might disbelieve, we might find it silly... but we are us: you and me. All it would take is one who believed differently, whose thought process were shaped by other circumstances, a different history to prove us tragically wrong. Do not go there.

[Richter Bones]

Being wrote:

We might disbelieve, we might find it silly... but we are us: you and me. All it would take is one who believed differently, whose thought process were shaped by other circumstances, a different history to prove us tragically wrong. Do not go there.

While I'm itching to get into a deep philosophical debate I don't want to derail the topic anymore then I already have.

If imprisonment were implemented then there should be enough options to allow an escape attempt to keep it interesting. If unable to escape then you should be able to log off and play either another character or do another activity until it was time to be released.

[Keign]

Thinking about this idea today, I believe I may have come up with something of a solution for the risk of being involuntarily captured - you simply refuse to submit, forcing your attackers to kill you or leave, rather than capture you.

If a player uses a trigger to indicate that they are attempting to capture, rather than kill, their target, (This could be an earned ability, or using a weapon that deals subdual damage, or something a bit different, perhaps.) then the opponent/victim would gain the ability to submit, at any point before, during, or even after combat, when they have been 'downed' but not actually killed. If they refuse to submit entirely, their attacker is either forced to leave them be, potentially losing the reward for capturing a bounty alive, or they must kill the potential captive entirely.

This would still enable completely unexpected abductions - sap to the head in an alley, anybody? - but only on players willing to play through a scenario where their character is imprisoned.

It would add to roleplay, because there are many types of characters ready to cry "You'll never take me alive!", while there are just as many who would likely submit immediately - either to lawfully serve their sentence or to attempt escape later.

While I must admit this is still a bit following the route of suicide, I do feel it is more genre appropriate, and gives a great deal of the choice (and choice is fun) back to the player being taken captive. (Or not.)

[DeciusBrutus]

Keign: That is a great idea, and now we've entered the territory of 'things that would eventually be awesome, but would require time right now that must come from other features'.