Shattered Kingdoms

if u dont want to do the tiem dont do the crime lolol


edit: omfg baldric said the exact same thing

haha

Engaging in PK promotes roleplay and conflict and creates opportunities for roleplay far beyond the initial scope of the event in question.

Most people are more easily found within cities than in the wilderness. Because of this, most PK will occur within cities. Because most PK occurs within cities, most PK will accrue jail time.

Jail time prevents characters from interacting and continuing storylines within the mud. It essentially reduces the mud experience to sitting and idling on the game, while providing no stimulus and offering no activity of worth to the character. The alternative to serving jail time by idling mindlessly in the mud is to remove the character altogether from the mud by allowing them to serve their time offline.

So the character is "rewarded" for promoting roleplay and conflict within the mud by either idling in a jail cell with literally nothing of value to do, or by being asked to take a "time out" from the mud altogether. This serves as an OOC deterrent for great villainy. This policy works against the rich roleplay and conflict-filled environment that SK claims to embrace.

The argument from realism is not useful in this situation. Most individuals with the lengthy lists of crimes possible on the mud would have been summarily beheaded or hanged. In the mud, death and confiscation of property are more than sufficient as IC punishments. Enforcing boredom on the playerbase as a reward for engaging in the activity that the mud encourages is counterproductive. The actions that led to the punishment were not OOC, so the punishment shouldn't be experienced as an OOC punishment.

Especially now, presenting players with an "IC" punishment that encourages them to log off the game and go find something else to do is extremely short-sighted. Punishing them because they enjoy the game enough that they want to spend their time on it even when the code has effectively put them in "time-out" is equally so.

The game shouldn't reward conflict and roleplay with enforced boredom and idleness. There are better ways to handle in-game punishment that don't encourage players to play something else.

jail ain't meant to be a reward


you can avoid jail by not losing


just sayin'.

For those who missed the point of what I was saying because of:
tl;dr

Jail is an OOC punishment for an IC crime. Making people idle on the game or log off altogether isn't a good way to retain the interest of players and promote conflict, both goals expressed by the immortal staff of this game.

Just sayin'.

I want to highlight what I think is an important line in my post.

REMOVE JAIL TIME FOR ASSAULT ON NPCs BECAUSE THIS IS A GAME, NOT REAL LIFE.
REMOVE JAIL TIME FOR ASSAULT ON NPCs BECAUSE THIS IS A GAME, NOT REAL LIFE.
REMOVE JAIL TIME FOR ASSAULT ON NPCs BECAUSE THIS IS A GAME, NOT REAL LIFE.

Sure give us jail time for assaulting PCs, but putting us in jail for getting some loot sucks, not everyone can request ya know and sometimes no matter how hard you try you get reported.

I saw what you did there.

Jail looks pretty IC to me, sister. It don't delete you or nothin'.

You seem pretty conflicted about jail ....... mission accomplished, amirite?


Just because cops n robbers shouldn't end don't mean the cops should be powerless dingbats, ya know. It ain't the staffs job to make city raids easy mode.


ITT: players of bad guys cry about in-game consequences

My character happens to be light aura and I still hate jail.

my character happened to be light aura and a bad guy. woo hoo.


Law is a feature of the game. HTFU and deal with it. Bounty NPCs have already been nerfed. Characters who want to be aggressive in cities must be aggressive to remain free--conflict comes full circle. What's so hard to come to terms with about that?

HTFU