Wandering guards for the criminals

I brought this up on the regular forum.

EDIT: Updating the description to remove misconceptions.

I honestly think it would be a good thing for the game if known criminals in the game are hunted by NPC guards (who match their level, so it's always an appropriate encounter).

The list of criminals could cycle and send guards after these players, complete with interrupting whatever it is they may be doing.

It could be stealing from someone, attacking people.... camping... looking for food because they can't go to towns...

It would make the criminal style characters even more risky to play, and would provide a pretty interesting challenge to them, outside of normal criminal activity.


Criminals will enter the wanted list via being reported by other players. Once there, the list will send patrol encounters out to those criminals.

Should the criminal survive, they wont see another encounter for some set delay, based off the severity of their crimes.

If they die, well, mission accomplished! They won't be pursued for those crimes again, and will be removed from the list.

After a set amount of time, crimes can drop off, also, to lessen the frequency of encounters.


The guards will not just die/send a new patrol after the criminal forever until the criminals are dead.

There will be set intervals between encounters. A sane interval. One that would require testing. I would suggest maybe every other day, with the interval shrinking based off crime severity.

So, maybe go down to once a day, then every 12 hours, every 6 hours...



So, it won't be something to the tune of "Once you're targeted, you're screwed."

 

If there are criminals in the same vain as murderers in UO, I would prefer to see them policed by players themselves. I don't like to insert NPC's into the world when players could accomplish the same task.

 

I prefer the idea of hiring NPCs to escort or hunt with you but I think you bring up a worthwhile theme that criminal types should have to watch their back. It is too much of an advantage i being able to pick and choose the times you want to be labeled a criminal and open to those repercussions in other games.

 

Not disagreeing with you as to intent, but as to ability -- players are in the game world at odd hours at their leisure, and for fun, not for work.

NPCs are on duty 24/7/365.

 

Exactly.

This would guarantee that criminals always have to watch their back and will not be able to take advantage of "oh, it's dinner time. Now's my chance to go not get jumped by PC vigilantes!" or "I know everyone is at work right now! Time to destroy this camp!"

While we are all asleep, the police are still out doing their jobs.

I'd also like to see this because it truly does guarantee that criminals won't be able to live the easy life out in the wilderness, free from most possibilities of being killed by non-monsters.


Also, if for some reason the PKing criminal types get out of hand, NPCs are pretty easy to buff up to match the challenge level in cases where the PCs may not be.

 

I would argue that there is a significant population of players to which hunting criminals is one of the most enjoyable activities they can participate in. There may be times when everyone is asleep and criminals can roam free, but that could change at any second.

 

Well, we could assume the criminals on high alert (an APB of sorts) could be checked in town... so, hunt for them, or pick someone else?

There will likely be plenty of criminals to go around!

It would be excellent if their wanted ads came with a "last seen" section that updates whenever someone happens to run into them and report it in town.

 

sure ! But we need the oportunity to do the criminals !

 

I'll just add a few thoughts here.. NPC guards should be regionally appropriate. If you're near Brittany then it should be Brittany's guards you find out on patrol. If you're far enough away from any town you probably shouldn't be seeing any guards hunting down anyone. Bounty hunters are perhaps another issue.

I would also like to point out again that if you're a criminal, the local guards are probably also aware that you're an avatar in which case simply killing you in order for you to reappear later is not likely to be considered an effective punishment. They would more than likely want to incarcerate you in a dungeon should they be successful against you in combat to ensure an appropriate punishment is handed out.

Death vs incarceration is another topic to be discussed elsewhere but I have suggested an idea that I hope would be imprisonment within a dungeon a reasonably fun experience for the player so I hope the notion isn't dismissed out of hand. We obviously don't want to punish the player by making them sit in a cell staring at a wall.

 

There should also be options for the "criminal" character such as bribing the NPC guards. Something that could potentially be opened up to PCs too but definitely more complex to implement, e.g. bounty vs. bribe reward with the bounty on more serious criminals increasing and hence the potential bribe too.

 

That is the problem. NPCs are on duty 24/7. Why should anyone actively seek the assistance of your friendly neighborhood Anti-PK guild. That would be encouraging player interaction. Why should we be interested in fostering that in a multi-player game?

I think NPC guards would serve to eliminate any source of risk in the game. Overcoming risk and adversity adds interest. Players who want to eliminate risk have SPO/FPO/OPO(unflagged). Don't make OPO PvP play risk free as well, otherwise what is the point?

 

One of the things I will say is that this world has to make sense no matter which players happen to be there or not.

Therefore, I think there have to be NPC guards if this is going to be a realistic world. Towns that only depend on random players coming in from outside to protect them? Please no. Towns should be realistic whether players who hunt criminals are there or not. Of course towns and cities would all welcome the help, or players might even fill particular jobs in a city guard, but there has to be something that goes beyond relying only on players if this world is going to make sense.

Adding to Bowen's "regionally appropriate" comment, I do think as has been said somewhere before in the developer chats that certain areas (and not just pop centers, but also particular roads or important sites) should be more heavily guarded, while leaving room for plenty of lawless areas. This gets to my making sense point. A real world could not exist if they only protected people in cities and then let you get attacked as soon as you stepped foot outside. A city that is isolated like that is not at all real. No farming, no trade, no connection - this is just silly.

Have highly protected pop centers and roads, and lawless areas. This makes everyone happy and makes the world make sense.

 

One of the things I always wanted in ... another MMORPG ... was a "bounty" system.

Allow me, or my guild, to say "Wilhelm is a PK'ing jerk, guilty of the following heinous offenses: XXX, YYY, ZZZ. We will pay a bounty of 100gp for the first 50 people to kill him," and have a system where the "bounty hunter" is auto-rewarded for taking the jerk down, or they're given a token that can be exchanged for the reward at a guild hall, etc.

You can set it up so that you have to "accept" the bounty first (ie, if you just happen to bump into Wilhelm and PK him yourself without knowing about the bounty, you don't reap any reward), and even let the "bounty offerer" know who is hunting their prey, success rate, etc.

 

@Owain I totally get what you're saying which is why I started thinking about limits. Guards wouldn't generally venture too far from their town to track someone down.. and if they're just out of patrol along the main roads it stands to reason they aren't actively looking for bad guys off the road. Nor do I think they should look for criminals that aren't wanted in their region.

In short, I think there's a right way and a wrong way to do this.. the wrong way is as you're concerned about.. the right way is very limited with plenty of room for criminals to get around guard patrols.. and encounters with NPC guards or bounty hunters tracking you down off the beaten path should be rare enough to not diminish Anti-PK activity.. but often enough to keep you on your toes.

But also take into account that generally speaking.. no matter how good the AI seems to be.. NPCs will always be at a disadvantage against seasoned PvP criminals. Besides I think the target goal of NPCs are also different than Anti-PKs. At least how I envision this.. you are out to kill offenders.. repeatedly. NPCs would be out to capture. I do think there is a little room for some overlap there.

 

@Bowen - always good points there. Key is that these issues are neither YES or NO. They require design and a certain amount of careful balancing to be done well. Everyone's ideas can be meshed together...

And lest we forget, Ultima has always had NPC guards from the beginning, no?

 

I do agree with the point about avoiding artificial NPC run systems if players can be encouraged to and are expected to manage said system themselves. I think it is important that cause and effect features heavily in the world but players have as much freedom and consequently realism in their playing experience as possible.

 

If criminality is decided by the laws of a settlement, faction, or kingdom but elsewhere the laws may differ, then NPC guards enforcing the laws of one kingdom are prey for another kingdom, and would be good for the game to have. At issue should be what laws the server can adjudicate to identify 'criminals'.

A hero in one town may be a criminal in another.

 

And what if you are a criminal in some places for doing nothing wrong?
They've hinted in the story that avatars are not looked upon very kindly... what if they criminalize anyone who says they are?

These could lead to some really interesting aspects of gameplay.

 

I am against NPC actively seeking out PKs and criminals. The point of this game is not to ostracize a community (whether it be PK or PK hunters), we create the world we want to play in. PKs/Criminals will already be punished by having advertised bounties and I am assuming rampant murderers will find it *very* difficult to enter towns and interact with citizens (although hopefully it won't be impossible like the insta-guard-killing in UO).

I do like the idea of NPC guard patrols, though. Each city/town/etc should have their own guards do active patrolling of the very nearby farmlands or whatever is around.

NPC guards should not be invulnerable or omnipotent but they should be tough and feared. Maybe if you are good enough you can kill a guard, but it should be *not* be easy and you are immediately put at risk if anyone comes around and joins in on the side of justice.

 

I had an additional thought of perhaps limiting these kinds of NPC encounters or adjusting the frequency of said encounters based on PvP and SPO status. That is assuming it's possible to use those settings while a criminal. This would ensure that you can't completely hide behind game settings until the 'heat is off'.