Shattered Kingdoms

1. Unless someone was lying to me last evening, at least 2 individuals were thrown into jail reported for 'murder of a golden griffon' when they were in fact killed by said griffon. To the characters tossing an attitude my way for investigating to near the point of harrassment, I have already reported the NPC agression/law issuesto Wert and have been told what to do from there.

2. One of these individuals said he was casting spells to try and defend himself as the NPCs were fighting him. Of course each cast = a conviction. This hasn't been deemed a bug, but in conjunction with the building change (NPCs to aggro in a town defended by the law) seems to have created an undesirable/unintentional side effect. Players abusing the system to rack up charges intentionally to harass tribunal members who are rather helpless to do anything at this point borders on foul play, using the code-change to justify overly vicious verbal exchanges.

3. There seems to be a weird time delay bug here. A character was thrown into jail at a time I saw ZERO charges at the judge in Nerina. Character informed me has convicted of 8 crimes (I'd asked them what the guard NPCs said). He went to the governor to RP the people attacking him, and he was of course attacked and jailed on the spot.
Five minutes later or so the convictions showed up in Zhenshi, after the player was already in mail. EH!

My STRONG advice is for those people who know IC that things have changed and a lot of bad things could happen to pass this information along, and keep others out of these present death traps.

C.

I would need more information before I could sort this out. I can see someone who was killed being charged for murder if say the griffon died to magma after the pc who was killed died but I don't know. There's just not enough here to consider. That would be my opinion for points one.

For point two I would say that any person who intentionally racks up a bunch of crimes so they can bother a tribunal member about it can suffer. Let them go to jail or enjoy trying to pass through zhenshi as outlaws and face the dreaded griffons.

I myself have fallen victim to point three. I don't think it's a bug. I think maybe Dulrik coded it so people can't just bury their gear or dump it in a cabal HQ and go turn themselves in and basically suffer no penalty for law breaking. That's just a hunch though.

Yep, thats a bug.



Assuming he wasn't in direct melee combat, yes, each cast is a conviction. It sux, but hopefull D will find a solution soon. I'm not sure what you are trying to get at with the rest of what you are saying.



It primarily sounds like, as I have said many times, the law system could use an entire overhaul. Patch jobs probably won't get it done I think ...

sleeper

A log would verify what happened and at least isolate the bug, if there is one. It doesn't sound like the correct behaviour.



'Defend himself' is not the correct description here. You're either healing yourself (no conviction there), healing your friend/pet who is taking damage (nope), or leaving the scene. Any offensive spell cast on a law enforcer results in a crime being recorded - there is no modern-day concept of 'self-defence' that would excuse you of guilt.



This sounds like chinese whispers. A log or some testing might shed some light on what is really happening. Sneaking NPCs can report crimes rather quietly - moreso if the judge can't see them to state the usual 'Thank you for your co-operation.'



Avoiding lands where you're an outlaw is generally a good idea.



Says he who hasn't seen the code.

I expect the problem was the same as the old Everclear NPC that would backstab people not of white aura (who has been removed). They would get outlawed for defending themselves because NPCs are not considered by the law code. When Chib went live with Aggro NPCs the same problem would have happened.

Err, yes, that was part of the problem, and has been RP'd out & notated on a local astral board near you. However I was just relaying just aspects of the code itself, not just building 'after effects.'


#3 in partciular is a weird bug, and hard to 'log' as it begs 'how do you log a timing delay that is noticed via tells in game. XXX was reported by NPCs to the Governor in Chib. When XXX walked into the Governor, he was told of his 8 convicted crimes and hauled off to jail, where I am told by XXX of what happened in Chib. I go to Nerina, and type 'outlaw list' and see no charges. I go and drag Endrial and Elirush to Chib, and recall. At this point (a few minutes later) I go back to the judge, and XXX's charges now show up on Nerina's list. Is there some intentional delay in the law code between the city the charges occur in, and the main city the jail is in? I hope this clarifies the odd phenomena I saw.

Yes, and no. It sheds light on what you're trying to describe, yes. But we're no closer to discovering what's really happening.

The 'delay' theory you're describing doesn't exist to my knowledge. I'm not aware of any kingdom with any coded extradition or jurisdiction-sharing arrangement. In effect, all outlaw boards of any kingdom all point to the same list. Typing OUTLAW LIST at one should always give you the same values at any of the others (provided they're both in the same kingdom).

The changing nature of the list is due to either (a) more crimes being reported, or (b) criminals being arrested and/or serving their time. There is a third alternative involving immortal intervention, but I think we'd know about it if that happened in this instance. The kind of testing I mentioned in my first post wouldn't be very in-character for mortals, so leave it with us for now.

Last I checked, you were allowed to used equal force presented by your attacker. (Its this way in the US, and I'm pretty sure its this way most everywhere else). So if Alshain, the law abiding citizen, were to attack me with lethal force, I could do everything in my power to defend myself, including killing him. While killing Alshain in that situation may be frowned upon, I am allowed to do it. Now if Alshain, the law enforcer, were to attack me, then I'm kinda screwed. Best I could do legally would turn myself in, as killing him or running away would result in another crime. It basically boils down to who the NPC is.



True. Do notice however, that I at least left a little room for the possibility that patch jobs will be the fix.

sleeper

Way to confuse the issue! As I said, real-life laws and their enforcement do not apply. Let's start over, using IN-GAME references...

1. If you're not in melee combat (eg 2nd/3rd row, by-stander etc), then you're not being attacked. If you choose to initiate combat by casting spells at someone who is attacking your friend/pet then your actions are on your own head - you could have walked away.

2. If you're in combat, being pummelled by somebody and casting spells to defend yourself, and getting multiple crimes for each spell cast, then something sounds wrong because it's all part of the one crime.

3. If you're not an outlaw, and bounty NPCs 'appear' and attack you, then something sounds wrong because they'll only appear if you're wanted by the law. If you're complaining about being hunted while an outlaw, then I'm not really going to listen much [The latter also due to the fact that Zhenshi isn't my area].

Let's separate bugs in existing NPC/law behaviour to anyone's preferred behaviour. After all, this is the Bug Forum.