Justice System Brainstorming

Yes I agree that this system only works for PVP and a big reason I'm for PVP is for systems like this.
I would think town rulers could control the guards there.
Maybe even allow players to be the guards in that town if you can hire enough for that.

Also things like punishment, fines, or bounties.
Do you just charge the thief a small fine or do you sentence him to a dungeon?
Does the thief pay his fine or do you have to put a bounty on him.

Does your town allow bounty hunters to arrest people in your town for crimes commited in another town?
Or will your town harbour criminals.

It could get very interesting very fast.

 

Tossing this out there again, cause I think I posted it once before but no response so here's hoping...

NPC guards (in a town and perhaps posted just outside a town's walls on the roads only) patrol.
A crime is committed, the 'criminal' ends up on some sort of list (not necessarily seen by players) where the severity of the crime and the frequency you commit crimes gives them some 'score'. NPC guards can detect and go after a criminal IF they 'spot' them. The higher your score, the larger the radius is around the NPC where you would be spotted. The thought process being more hard core criminals will be looked for more diligently than that cat burgler who's only ever stolen once. Things like wearing a hood or cowl may reduce the radius by a very very small amount. Things like a disguise would reduce the radius based on how high your disguise skill is. So, if you're a novice at disguise, the guard may still see through it... if your'e close enough. If you're a master of disguise you could almost go up and talk to the guard without being recognized.

I would imagine griefers in towns who aren't going to be interested in spending time putting on disguises, etc, will be less likely to hang around. I also imagine putting on a disugise not to be instantaneous. I don't picture guards going out into the wilderness to track down criminals.

I could see a bounty board that lists the characters name/alias that they used when committing the crimes so players can go bounty hunting. I don't think I like giving gold for this, but a prestige title based off of the number of bounties you brought in and how bad the criminals crimes were might be neat. Disguises would help criminals avoid those people. Maybe some sort of tracking skill could counter balance that, not sure.

As for a crime committed in a town... instead of guards instantly poofing in and instakilling the criminal, what if they had to literally run from their posts/patrols? That would give a criminal time to try to 'escape'. I think towns guards shouldn't ever be able to instakill, but it should be hard to fight three/four/five at a time and win. So if you stick around long enough for the platoon to be there, you're screwed. You should have runned.

 

Bounty systems are a great idea, just not if you design your system like that. Otherwise you get this...



I hope everyone watched that entire 7 minutes, it's only the best western ever made. Hell, I might go watch it again. Plus it's 100% on point for what we're talking about here.

So what happens if the game limits the amount of times you can collect a bounty on the same person to one? That problem is solved.

 

@AuroraWR
Yea I like that system, it does give criminals a chance to sneak around town.

As for other players maybe the criminal flag would not be shown unless they get to close.
Of course if they guy has killed 50 people that should be a BIG circle so I know to run.

 

So make one that can't be exploited. I liked having a bounty system, but hated that it was someones personal bank account. Further reward for killing people.

You have a guild of 30-50 people, you can collect a lot of bounties with that. It takes a bit of time to get it up there, but as I said, I know many people who simply schooled the system by having friends kill them and splitting the gold.

 

My idea for recieving gold for capture of criminals is that the bounty wouldn't be paid UNTIL the criminal has paid or worked off their bounty. This is kind of annoying for the bounty hunter since they'd never get paid if the criminal just escapes prison.. but it would eliminate most or all abuse of the system as the reward for their capture would be indirectly paid by the criminal.

I really like the idea of concealing your appearance with a hood. That's inspired.

Disguises I think really deserve their own topic as they can be applied to other things than just avoiding capture. There is also the skills and materials involved.. types of disguises.. such as physical, magical (illusion).. diguise components.. etc For the purposes this discussion though I think it's fine to discuss them in general terms..

I've also liked the idea of allowing the player to preconfigure one or more aliases that they could use.. so when giving their name to someone who doesn't know them they could give the alias and have it recognized by the game. The mechanics behind that are also probably best left for a separate discussion. I know I've detailed my idea on this elsewhere a long time ago.

Edit: Also the "score" being refered to is more or less one function of the bounty I've been describing.

 

Which is why I prefer prestige to gold as bounty rewards. Maybe even somewhere you can go to see a leader board for bounties, so if you want to take out a personal bounty on someone you can go find 'the best' bounty hunter to employ them?

(Edit, Bowen snuck his response in before I posted mine. Mine is in response to Mystic)

 

That is why I think the criminal that is caught should at least pay half the bounty due.
The other thing we talked about somewhere was when you get a bounty job you don't get to select who you want to hunt down.
I do like your idea that you can't arrest the same person many times over.

 

I've said this elsewhere but one way to manage a reward for bounty hunters is to withhold payment until the criminal has paid off their bounty either through cash or labor.. community service quests or the proposed prison system / labor camps.. The criminal is paying the reward indirectly through this method so it's difficult to abuse for profit. If the criminal escapes prison or otherwise doesn't pay off their bounty then no monetary reward is given. The bounty hunter could still recieve prestige and/or achievements though.

 

If the system is designed so that you can put a bounty out on anyone you like...that will be abused like crazy. People will stop griefing and let other people do their work for them by placing a bounty on their head. So the system has to be systemic and work only against people that have done something wrong (that the game can easily detect - like stealing and killing).

Yes, you could potentially collect "a lot" with 30 to 50 friends organized against the system. But in that case you just say that no one in your own guild can collect a bounty on anyone in the same guild. Plus we don't really know what the death penalty is like. Please allow me the freedom to make some speculative assumptions here...

What if players with bounties on their heads didn't die the same way the a player without a bounty dies? What if the player with a bounty on their head lost more than the player that didn't have a bounty? For example, what if players normally died and kept all of their best items. But when a player died with a bounty on his head he would lose the ability to use anything he had actively used in the last week?

So now when your buddies kill you off to collect a bounty, you can't use any of the items that you touched in the last week. They'll have to give you new items. You start doing that enough and your whole guild will be fumbling around with what items they can and can't use during the week. I don't think anyone wants to do that on a regular basis.

I don't think this is the best solution, but it's headed in a direction that moved the ball down the field. My point is that there are ways that a bounty system could work, even with the obvious collusion of guilds.

 

I think there should be some money taken from the criminal and given to the bounty hunter once caught.
The rest of the bounty could be like you say by serving their sentence.

 

That's a very good idea.

 

Jumping back on something said earlier, do we really want to flag people as 'criminals' for players to see? I mean, I wouldn't necessarily really know someone is a criminal unless i've heard of them.

What if people who made it on the criminal list (for NPC guards to be looking for) end up being mentioned by NPCs around the towns? The bar tender could say something like "Did you hear about that thief, <name here>?". Maybe even a town crier NPC who hangs out in a city's square and 'announces' criminals to be on the look out for.

Along with this, I like the idea someone mentioned earlier about being able to tell NPC guards you saw a criminal in town. That could get them mobilized going after them if the sneaky thief or murderer managed to sneak in past the guards. Again, not poofing instantly to where they are but mobilizing to search him out. Maybe the PC even has the option to say where they saw this criminal and the NPC guards will start there first.

Also, brings up some interesting options in misdirecting the guards to the wrong part of town if you are helpign the theif get away, leaving other avenues of escape open while he guards go the wrong way.

 

If this were to be the case then why not say the bounty hunter has the rights to whatever cash the criminal has on them? You could extend this to include some items confiscated once the criminal is turned in. hmm this is getting interesting..

So what I imagine is this.. the criminal is caught. The guards confiscate their gold and items. The bounty hunter could be paid through loot up to, but not exceeding the value of a percentage of the criminals total bounty (and by this I'm still using the definition of 'bounty' from the OP). With the emphasis being first on gold.

If the criminal dies during the capture attempt they would be subject to any looting rules just like everyone else. It could be in their best interest to simply let themselves be caught and then try to escape later.

I'm not sure if that's too punishing but it would also encourage them to carry enough cash on their person to make sure the bounty hunter gets paid.

I'm not sure how career criminals would feel about this though. I'd like things to be interesting and crime to have consequences.. but the way to avoid a bounty system from being abused is to make the criminal pay the reward. I think this would have to be counter balanced somehow.. like what does the criminal get for successfully escaping after capture? I think it should be a little more than just freedom. Maybe access to other 'confiscated' loot (from NPC criminals) if they manage to recover their belongings for example.

 

Your right, I guess if the bounty was placed in a player run town then only Bounty Hunters in the area near that town or maybe aligning territory could arrest him.
Or each town could decide if they would allow the capture of the one accused of a crime.

Also The criminal should know which land he can move safely on.

 

I like where this discussion is going.. it's really got me thinking now. From a mechanical stand point.. alerting guards (if the person is still in the area) would increase their detection radious as they would be more alert and on the look out.. it could even spawn roaming patrols. This effect to last for X amount of time.. but also still allows the criminal to sneak about and try to avoid capture.

Another idea I just had that would be fun.. wanted posters! Once a game day.. wanted posters around town can be updated with a snapshot of the criminal character and reward for capture. Possibly a list of crimes as well. The snapshot would just be a zoom in on the paper doll (shoulders up) and possibly put through an image filter of some kind to make it look like it was a sketch or something. That'd be pretty sweet.

There'd be a limit to how many different posters there were in a town.. depending on the size.. village, town or city. So only the most wanted criminals would have posters in public spaces. Guards would be more on the lookout for these..

I think career criminals would love to have wanted posters. It would be their version of prestige.. not to mention some players would want to collect them as a hobby. I mean if you were a criminal in a game wouldn't you want to see your wanted poster?

 

@Bowen Bloodgood
I was thinking that a criminal got caught by killing him.
I would think by this time that the criminal had enough chances to turn himself in and would not go any other way then being killed.
But good question, once caught or killed does the Bounty Hunter keep all his things?
Is this a bonus or part of his reward?
Should some items go back to the town?
Should some money come out of the criminals bank to help pay the bounty?

 

I also imagine career criminals getting a kick out of overhearing a town crier or the bar tender mention their name and their latest crime to other PCs.

"Did you hear about that thief, <name>? They stay he's still eluding the guards!"
"Here ye here ye! A mass murderer by the name of <name> has been seen near our village. Citizens are warned to keep their houses locked..."

 

Wanted Posters would be cool and coud be a way to flag somene as a criminal.
This may be to much but what if we had some kind of book to collect wanted posters in.
If you did not have a criminals wanted poster in your book then they would not be flagged to you.
And maybe you could make copies and give out or place posters around town for other players to collect.

 

My thinking on the criminals belongings were that they guards would confiscate them.. then if we had prisons and they tried to escape there would be an opportunity to retrieve them.. this in keeping with other games.. you always have the chance to win your stuff back.

If you payed your dues your items would be returned to you.. also in keeping with other games. So I think this is more or less expected and natural.

The problem with being caught vs being killed.. or at least one problem.. is that we don't know right now how death will be handled. If an avatar is resurrected elsewhere and obtains a new body.. then killing cannot function as a capture because the actual criminal will be elsewhere and their corpse will just be a corpse.

Also I've been of the mind that capture should be in some part voluntary. Not to give the criminal too much slack mind you.. but while consequences of crime should punish the character.. it shouldn't punish the player. Escape should always be an option in a prison scenario but the question is whether or not the 'criminal' community will view being forced into that position a punishment for the player or not. On the other hand an arguement can be made that capture is simply a consequence of their crime. Depending on how fun or tedious having to escape all the time is.

Another complication of capture is what process will the game and players have to go through to determine what the criminal wants to do in this situation.

One thought that JUST occured.. is that the bounty hunter must in some way indicate they are after the bounty and not just engaging in PvP. One way they can do this is to be in possession of the criminals wanted poster.

Now if a "kill" is to be a capture.. then anyone with the criminal's wanted poster will simply KO them and they get sent off to prison or where ever. In short.. being in possession of a wanted poster would deny you the ability to land a fatal blow.. once they're KO'd you can't do any more damage and they get sent to where they need to go.