LP from players

[Skyrage]

Yes it does, alongside with incentives to actively hunt these criminals. Creating dynamic gameplay is only good and the freedom to kill others is all nice, but needs to be properly balanced against consequences of doing so.

Introducing notoriety:

The above-mentioned idea of getting LP from criminals etc is good, and on top it is extremely easy to make it non-abusable AND at the same time add a cat-and-mouse system.

Basically, a player who commits criminal acts get some sort of notoriety score. First of all, a player with a notoriety could gain some sort of LP bonus or whatever, that increases the more notoriety that player has. This will effectively encourage people to do bad stuff if they want to pursue this path.

However there is a catch to this: the most obvious one being that the one that catches the naughty player and kills him will gain a reward based on the notoriety. (Preferably only a player that has a bounty contract on said villain). In addition, as notoriety increases, the culprit's identity will be more and more known (as in other players will instantly see the name of the player). Centre of the radius could be the player hearth fire of course, which increases with the notoriety. This will hopefully end up acting as a deterrent against mindless killing just because they can. Stealth/Intelligence could also play some role here like reducing the radius effect somewhat.

Now, as to how the notoriety can be increased:

Murdering/attacking others: this is a no-brainer. Newbie characters/characters that have way less LP than the villain give nothing - characters on the same LP level as the villain give so-so, and obviously characters that have more LP, give extra. Excessive murdering of newbie characters could always result in some form of punishment, like an extra boost in the identity radius.

Stealing/vandalising/trespassing etc etc: the bigger the claim that is being affected, the more notoriety. However, there will only be a one-time notoriety gain per action per claim. The act of taking a claim down and putting it up again in order to farm notoriety this way should obviously not work. This will force the player who wants to get notoriety to actually travel around the game world and "visit" other players, and probably in the process end up pissing more and more people off which in turn results in more and more bounties being placed on said player.

In the end, what you will have is a nifty little setup where bounty hunting and crime are really viable careers. On top of that it will be an environment where bounty hunters and criminals also compete amongst themselves of who is the best bounty hunter/criminal. Criminals will have a hard time living in a normal settlement and will be forced to hermit or have settlements populated with those that side with the baddies as their identity will just be instantly revealed save unless they decide to travel really far from the fire, which would also be a risk in itself. Of course, those that have notoriety should in no way have any ability to return to their fire if their travel weariness is limiting them to. This includes the "Start from your hearth fire" option in the login menu.

I'm sure there are a few holes here and there, but this is the general idea of the notoriety suggestion.

[Jackard]

Introducing notoriety:

How unoriginal. Yes, lets add what is essentially murdercounts. And automatic identification? Please.

Your talk of "these criminals" and "bounties" and "balancing consequences" makes you sound like a child. Scents do not discriminate between "good" and "evil" intent. Bountyhunting is already viable; read the Congress forums for examples. Rangers are paid by villages one way or another.

At least I don't need to worry about devs implementing terrible ideas considering most of the threads in this forum go overlooked.

[DaMaGe]

At least I don't need to worry about devs implementing terrible ideas considering most of the threads in this forum go overlooked.

1 year later-
Jorb: *searches archives* Oh, yeah, let's start that bounty thing they were talking about.
Loftar: That sounds great!
Jorb: OK
Jackard:

[Jackard]

counterargument: unimplemented dev-approved 1-2yo threads in forum

[Danno]

I like some aspects of the notoriety idea in that it doesn't require the forum for playing the game. The forum is some magical device that allows us to easily trade with people who have the highest quality tools/resources and otherwise communicate in ways normally not possible. You could say the necessity/advantage of the forum is just part of the game, but I think it'd be better if the game could stand on its own as much as possible. There's little incentive to communicate with the players in your region since you can just use the forum.

I don't like the proposed auto-recognize idea since it doesn't require player interaction, really. I think it'd be better if the victims had some active role in it. There'd have to be some word of mouth to make a heinous criminal recognizable. Getting them to memorize a criminal, manage to survive, and describe that criminal to everyone in the region is pretty unreasonable, though; I'm not sure what would be a better way. Maybe have bloodstains on murderers that make it so you can memorize them from a farther distance or something like that... or maybe victims could "copy" details about a scent to a parchment (like copying maps) and add their own details, then they could distribute the parchments and players would be able to memorize the criminal with that.
I agree with Jackard that the game shouldn't decide what's right or wrong... I don't think looting an abandoned claim is a bad thing, and I don't think random rangers should be encouraged to get a free kill and reward. I think a crime is only bad if there's someone to notice and complain about it; that is, if it takes away from someone.


On the original subject, there is incentive for killing other players... sorta. If you kill them and take their key(s), you could raid any curiosities they've left in their home. There's no point killing a random person since you don't know where they live, so murderers would have some reason/information before meaningfully killing someone. The problem is with people not carrying keys since they can just warp out of their home to avoid such risks. Maybe one day people will actually need to have their key(s)...

[Jackard]

On the original subject, there is incentive for killing other players... sorta. If you kill them and take their key(s), you could raid any curiosities they've left in their home. There's no point killing a random person since you don't know where they live, so murderers would have some reason/information before meaningfully killing someone.

You can steal from the mentory.

[Grog]

At least I don't need to worry about devs implementing terrible ideas considering most of the threads in this forum go overlooked.

1 year later-
Jorb: *searches archives* Oh, yeah, let's start that bounty thing they were talking about.
Loftar: That sounds great!
Jorb: OK
Jackard:

i laughed so loud