A take on the issue of Bounty System to deal with PK's

A bounty system has been a common way to deal with PK's in the past alongside the player being marked as a criminal forcing them to stay out of towns they are recognized in. But the problem with a bounty system is that the criminal in question could simply wait for it to get high enough, commit a suicide and have a friend collect the bounty. This issue is caused by the fact that a death tends to be merely a slap on the wrist in MMORPG's, unless their corpse is looted.

Now, permadeath in my opinion is out of the question. It ruins the work of the PK instantly and they have often worked for their character just the same as anyone not killing other players for challenge and fun. Being unable to play is also a rather bad punishment for the same reason.

Therefore I propose a system that eliminates the ability of performing a "life insurance scam", as you could call it, and still keeping the player in the game and without limiting the PK's friend from turning on him to collect the bounty by stabbing in the back.

To achieve this the player that killed the PK with the bounty would have to collect the PK's body still alive, her dead corpse, or merely the head, in order to collect the bounty in a city. And once the bounty is collected the PK is placed in a prison either within the town or in a larger city for this purpose. If she is dead at this time then this shall be the place she's resurrected in.

Now, the player who is in prison should still be considered as part of the game. They could still do crafting, practice combat and perform other activities within the limitations of the prison. I would even go as far as suggest having an arena where prisoners, and other players, could do combat. And a successful prisoner could earn his freedom through this. It is, after all, called "Forsaken Virtues."

Please do submit any comments, critiques or further ideas to expand on this.

 

Some ideas:

1. Make the death/resurrection penalty reflect the size of the bounty as well as the number of victims involved. This may need to be adjusted with inflation over time, but it could act as a deterrent for excessively large bounties.

2. Tax the collected bounty and donate a portion of the taxes back to the victims.

 

@RichardMeyer: Ah, the mechanics of the bounty system. I left that open. I would imagine for each kill the PK gets a small cumulative raise on the total bounty, if any. But the major part of it should come from the players. Perhaps each time you are resurrected you get the choice to add to his bounty from your gold in the bank. Or simply by going to the authorities and adding an amount.

But nonetheless, players should be allowed to set an amount on any player's head. The bounty notifications simply noting if the person with the price on her head is considered a criminal or not.

But yes, I agree that the size of the PK's crime should directly affect the size of their punishment.

 

I think these are all great ideas, and I believe the system could be quite easily automated. The time you spend in jail would seriously deter mass murderers, eventually they would tire of being limited to only crafting or having to face up another pvper in hopes they can get out early. It would also deter them during times that they are planning activities with friends.

All of this of course would only be possible with other players toggling on fully open play, but might give some people who would never turn it on the courage to do so, knowing that if they are killed "illegally", the murderer will be punished eventually. Even if you give up your bounty to a friend it would result in the murderer still going to jail as gingerale mentioned.

This is also further compounded by the simple fact that you will only have a single character slot. I'm sure you could find a way to have multiple accounts as people always will, but it wouldn't be as simple as going to jail and then just swapping to another one of your five characters during the timeout.

 

I should point out that's entirely possible that there won't be PKs. In a faction game (e.g. WoW) killing a player from the opposing side is morally justified. They're "evil" as far as you're concerned. Fighting someone from an opposing guild (from the $2m stretch goal) is possibly always justified as well. They're the enemy and PvP is generally considered consensual. It sounded like they were also planning scenarios where you're character would enter a morally grey area (you're a temporary smuggler for some greater good). In this case, again other people are justified in attacking you and you, knowing your greater purpose, are justified in fighting back.

I really have no idea what system they're putting in. But I can certainly imagine one where there are so many PvP opportunities weaved into the story that you can have a meaningful game where you're always fighting for some cause and never really are just murdering innocents.

 

@gingerale I agree, players should be able to contribute what they'd like to the bounty. I was focusing on how the reward is collected.

For example, when winning the lotto there's a tax collected when claiming the prize.

I was thinking that the money from that tax could be donated back to the victims, perhaps on a ratio of what the player had contributed to the overall pool. I don't think it should be more than what they had contributed though, to prevent exploitation. At least they can at least get their money back that way.

@PrimeRib What if the player wants to be the "evil" one? What would be more evil than to kill good, innocent players? The choice to be evil would have great consequences, and it invites good heroic characters to come forward. Restricting the darkest of evil to NPCs gets boring really fast, and there's nothing more challenging than playing against another human being, especially when it is good vs. evil gameplay.

 

I sincerely hope player killing will not be disallowed. It is part of the world. I personally have always played as a non-combatant on these games but it brings certain something to the game to be on your toes all the time. Certainly the areas near towns could be patrolled by guards but I believe the wilderness, where the major content is, should be a free for all PVP where killing innocents marks you as a criminal and will put a bounty on you but does not cause any instant aggression from town guards.

I would personally love there to be towns that could be described as a "hive of scum and villainy."

 

I'm not sure I would view the jail time as a punishment, precisely. They still get to play the game and there could be interesting things to do in prison. If a person is playing a bandit, for example, that can enhance the game if done well, and they should not be punished for doing so.

Honestly, I'd like to see a system that encourages playing a proper villain, but I'm not sure what that would be. A proper villain can be fun to fight against.

 

On the subject of Jails, I think that should be restricted to players who are caught cheating, exploiting, and just downright being cruel. PKs that camp a newbie zone for example; if they're not banned, kill and jail them and make them actually have to work their way out of prison (forcing them to mine x number of resources for example).

 

I meant to say, it's not so much a punishment for the PKer, but a way to put the excessive PKer out of the way for a while. They still get to do stuff, so unless PKing is the ONLY thing they enjoy they still get to enjoy the game.

 

@cheshire: Yes! That is quite spot on! Putting the PK out of the way for the time being without putting them out of the game. A clever player could even run their guild from inside a prison where they're practically untouchable by the opposing PK guilds.

 

Indeed, I could see a moneyed but jailed mastermind using the prison as their base of operations, depending on how it goes.

 

Territorial prisons, attached to resource locations such as mines, forests, etc.

The punished PK would have to work off his penalty by harvesting resources, which can be collected and used to help with rebuilding towns after sieges.

You could even extend the concept to evil NPCs that are jailed through missions/quests, which could then contribute to the regional economy (within limits of course). Could make rebuilding towns cheaper for the community.

 

So I don't forget... As brought up in the chat, the time served could be reduced depending on the rate in which the prisoner produces resources. The faster they harvest, the amount of time served can be reduced.

 

While there won't be the traditional PK'er in this game (PvP is only consentual), I do like the suggestions here for a Justice system. I hope that they allow for players to take the path of evil, and have the storyline and features unfold appropriately.

 

One more or less simple idea:

- Killing "innocent" players unprovoked, and other unlawful acts, gives players a kind of negative karma. The UI should clearly show when killing someone will give negative karma, preventing accidental PKing. Players in places meant for FFA PvP might not be considered innocents, and other exceptions might apply.

- Being killed with a negative karma costs the player a fine (in gold) and reduces the amount of negative karma. If the player doesn't have the needed gold he either goes into debt or else his negative karma is just not reduced.

- Whoever killed the negative karma player gets to keep half the fine. This should prevent the player from just scamming the "bounty" by having a friend kill him and share the bounty, as the player loses more money than the friend makes by killing him.

- The victim can choose to place a bounty on the one who wronged him; the effect is to merely increase the negative karma. The bounty for each act should have a limit, if possible tied to how much of a loss the "unlawful" player caused to the victim.

- Everyone can see that a player has negative karma (and, thus, killing him will net a bounty). Akin to red names.

- Getting any negative karma flags the player for PvP for some time (I would suggest an hour or so). Above a certain amount of negative karma the player is permanently flagged for PvP until his negative karma drops below that threshold.

- Negative karma decay is not really needed, as it is reduced by deaths. If decay is implemented, keep it quite slow.

- A way for the player to reduce his negative karma without death, by donating gold at a shrine or something similar, might be a good idea also, but the total cost to reduce negative karma should be balanced with being killed and fined.

 

I like the idea of jail, because that means Jail Breaks. Suddenly, thieves can do a whole lot more than picking on other players. Maybe truly skilled thieves will be able to escape from within the prison. I could just imagine the culture that would spawn from a prison that is infiltrated to the point where certain guilds have the right people on the inside at all times to turn a profit from anyone wanted to escape.

As to whether or not PKs will like it, they will love it and hate it. The chance of punishment is fun, so long as the risk doesn't seem unfair. Griefing lowbies always had it's downsides, but I normally only did it in other MMOs to spawn some good non-structured PvP. Nowadays, the MMOs seem to think that PvP belongs in certain arenas instead of organically throughout the world. No bueno.

 

I still think "evil", "innocent", and "PK" will be relative terms. But as far as the faction that you've wronged is concerned, they can certainly put a bounty on your head and enforces all of these different penalties on you, as long as in makes for interesting story and gameplay.

Someone asks you to "retrieve" something for them.
This quest gives you +rep with faction x and -rep with faction y
You may choose this quest with PvP or even just have to deal with opposing faction NPCs who will attack you and jail you if caught.