Shattered Kingdoms

Problem 1: Jail time SUCKS. every day ICly spent in jail encompasses at least 20 minutes of time IRL. During that time, your character (As far as I've noticed) can't even improve at any skills. The only thing you can do is send tells. Face it: You're going to either get broken out or go afk. And going afk is not very RP-inducing.

Problem 2: Those enemies who end up with 100 days or so of jail time always end up getting broken out. Well, either that or they've run out of allies and will probably delete. 100 days, seriously? That's at LEAST 33 hours IRL. That's more than a DAY of REAL LIFE going afk. Gross. Just gross.

But I have a solution!



Judgement will appear on one's affects list as "Judgement" And disable him from using any skills or spells above Journeyman status. Similar to spirit disorientation, it cannot wear off while the affected is dead.

The length of Judgement would depend on the outlaw's crime list, and will not be used against anyone with a crime list of less than 5 days. (Or perhaps less than 3 high murders or 5 low murders, similar to the banishment code) The maximum Judgement length is 10 days, and as such the maximum jail length will be 5 days. Judgement is applied at the end of one's sentence (Therefore still allowing for one to broken out of jail before Judgement is given)

Here's an example of Judgement in action:



Of course, the numbers could be played around with, but a hard cap on both jail time spent and "Judgement" time is definitely necessary.

Another option I could think of would be for Judgement to either reduce your skills levels (Similar to wearing armor too heavy for you) or reduce your stats even further than spirit disorientation does. I say this because some people might have a hard time swallowing that every lawful country has the power to remove a priest or paladin's spells.

Commence the thoughts and suggestions!

Or you can do these ten things

1 Don't [REDACTED] and moan if you get caught! Don't want to do the time don't commit the crime. There are a lot of places people frequent that do not have laws.

2 If you DO commit the crime. When you have four or more crime things, do the "L33T" tactic of remove all, withdraw all give to friend do time. This way when you do get caught it isn't for some ungodly amount of sitting at a computer screen.

3 RP your sorry [REDACTED] out of the jail cell or bring a book and read till you mastered that written language. I guess you could also talk to yourself but you might go crazy IRL because your talking to yourself in a game talking to yourself.

4 Don't get caught. The light hearted of this game have learnt that if you want to go on a killing spree go to teron, no laws = not time in jail and can the do some bullpoop rp reasons on why your such a naught naughty boy or girl that they had to come and spank you. Usually it is principled peopel that do it which is rediculous.

I mean seriously as soon as a principled person kills an PC they should be bumped to scrupulous. If they have a valid reason send a PM to a Imm or their imm to get the aligment of principled back. Way WAY to many principled people are killing and are only using the principled alignment to get that extra boost when they kill undead or evil things.

5 Join a tribunal and go nuts when your foe enters your land. Squish him like a bug. Making RP is not hard when they complain to the imms. "He is my foe therefore he is this kingdoms foe and I do not think banishment it needed at this time.

6 Another leet tactic is to go and gather a team for a good old fashion whooping and be on mode stun. Twice the fun as killing solo and half the time in jail.

7 If you get a fifty hours RL of jail time the game should automatically banish you from that kingdom and be ejected out of jail (PC crimes only, not NPCs they should not count towards banishment in this sense) honestly fifty hours is ridiculous and you should be punished for it.

8 Break out, if you get over twenty hours worth of crimes you should have some sort of connections that someone would eventually want to break you out of jail.

9 Start yelling in the jail cell. There is a chance you will be either let go, broken out and beaten to death or eaten by a god. At which point your out of jail. Although I do not recomend this one.

10 Finally unless you are PKing in kingdoms with laws, it is VERY easy never to be caught for crimes. So PK at your own risk and don’t [REDACTED] when the law catches up.

"Don't want to do the time don't commit the crime. There are a lot of places people frequent that do not have laws. "

This sentence here I just find funny. Seriously. How many lighties do you see actually sit and RP in Teron? Only the crazy ones as most are off in their lawful areas. Darkies kill. It's what they do and it's what makes the game interesting. While the game should have a punishment system, there shouldn't be anything that literally makes you immobile for more than 2-3 hours. Not everyone has a lot of time to play the game per day, so logging on for those 2-3 hours you get per day just to sit in a jail cell is just not cool.

Not only that, slip ups can be made and anyone can get thrown in jail. No matter how "easy" you claim it is to not get thrown in jail, it can still happen, and eventually will happen more in likely. Go up to the north and raid a bit and rack up a 30 day IRL jail sentence then eventually get caught. Five dollars says you'll complain about it to. Why you ask? Because it's a game man. They're meant to be fun, now mind numbingly boring like 90% of your MMO's have become.

Also, on another note, not everyone can break you out. Why? Because there are sometimes where lighties or darkies will DEFEND their prisoner's location from being broken out. I've seen it happen and I've seen multiple PC's get jailed because of it. What happens when your whole faction gets jailed due to spawning NPCs, GM guard NPC and 3-4 GM pC's defending the cell? Who's going to rescue you then? It can happen, though it's worst case scenerio.

Finally..

If everyone followed the statementin quotes up above, then we'd have to rename it to, oh, I don't know, "Fairytale kingdoms" or so. I don't know about you, but games are meant to be fun. Not sit in a cell for 5-10 IRL days doing nothing while you wait for someone to break you out etc. The law system SHOULD have a limit.

You also seem to neglect one small little thing with your banter. This game is about Kingdoms at war if I recall correctly. So if going to war with a kingdom is going to end up costing you hours with the ability to stare at your screen as you can do nothing else. Then why would anyone want to play this game? I don't care about penalties to breaking the law, but to be able to do nothing with your character in a game that already consumes time is kind of counter productive.

But then again, this is from the guy that brought you the CRS system, so really can't expect all that much now can we. Well, except Minotaurs. *hugs his minotaur*

I stopped taking you seriously at all after that part. You obviously have no idea what you're talking about.

I am honestly trying to take a serious and practical approach to a part of the game that has always been sub-par, and made even worse now. Being imprisoned is the worst possible thing that can happen to most PCs. It's WORSE than being j-looted, because on top of losing all your EQ and ending up dead, you lose all the coin in the -bank-. On top of that, you get to spend (for some players) upwards of 10 IRL hours in jail if no one is able to break you out.

You can't yell, you can't read (because all your stuff has been taken), there's hardly any way to improve your character, RP-wise or skill/spell-wise, while in jail. It's just dead, dead, dead, dead dead time.
Since bounty NPCs were introduced, it's also a GREAT deal harder to break people out of jail.

I'd like to hear more feedback on this: I honestly think that a capped jail time accompanied with a harsher carry-over penalty would be a huuuuuuge improvement instead of getting sentenced to 50 IC days in jail, at which point you'll just have to go afk for most of it, or log off until the right combination of characters are online to bail you out.

Here's my reasoning, in-short:

Tribunal leaders have realized that for the most notorious criminals, even the most secure jail cells cannot hold them, and for these individuals, a more effective and long-lasting form of punishment has been derived: Judgement.

Kerrien...

ROFL.

Get a substantial and more applicable point of view, and consider the longevity and fun of the game. This isn't 'Cuddle Kingdoms', damn it. People die. People get backstabbed and hunted down like filthy, rabid animals. That's why SK is fun. You can squad up and wreck just about anything.

That crime/time cliche makes me want to kick you in the mouth.

Stop being silly, kid. The law system needs alternatives desperately. I know there were times Inzaarid and other ridiculous outlaws had accrued more than 120 IC days in jail. Slayne topped that once. We were fortunate enough to be badass enough not to get caught--many others have deleted for lack of connections. The down time spent staring at the screen is the most boring thing I've ever had to do in ANY game EVER.

I'm going to dedicate the rest of my character's life to murdering whoever else spits that tired, wobbly cliche about crime and time. And then I'm going to kill their kitten, too.

Long lasting inescapable gimpiness is not the answer. This idea sucks so bad, I don't even know how to convey how much I hate it.

A LONGER punishment that allows you to walk around but be MEGA GIMPED?
Hell, even if it wasn't longer, I'd opt to keep the present system and simply resort to making OOC connects to get out of jail. And I never OOC, but if I had to face mega jail time or an insane gimp, I'd definitely O-O-see (hehe) my way out of that situation.

Get more creative, not stricter. You'll be buffing 'lighties' if you make jail time any harder. After all, few 'lighties' ever get locked up for long periods of time in the Empire or in the North.

You're not listening: The punishment would -never- be longer. I'm saying that we should cap jail time at say, 2 IRL hours, or even one, and have some other status affect that follows them around afterwards for a similar amount of time if they aren't rescued. It doesn't have to be a mega-gimp, I'd be fine with an stronger spirit disorientation from the execution, loss of combat endurance, or some other random debuff. Maybe even only skills/spells that are veteran and above, or something along those lines.

If the North doesn't report people for crimes, that's one thing: I'm trying to make the game less mentally-challenged by NOT forcing people to auto-surrender every few crimes. That makes no sense at all. I'm trying to bring back the spirit of the law, and not the letter of it.

I don't know how you could see taking a 100 day sentence and turning it into a harder-to-escape 10 day sentence (5 day jail time, 5 day debuff) is that horrible at all, because here's the kicker: You never get the debuff unless you finish serving your crime, which means that your record is then cleared, save banishment. You following me yet?

Oh, and the reason many "lighties" don't get locked up for long periods of time in the North (Besides from never getting caught) is because Krychire has very short time spans for its crimes: They just usually end up in execution.

What I would like to see instead is this:

Lower the time in jail a lot, but each crime also comes with an XP penalty.

Maximum sentence in jail should not exceed 5IC days. If it does, they get executed at the end of the 5th day. XP penalty should not exceed 1lvl (I could see 2 happening).

This still keeps the jail system but actually adds a real punishment to the crimes.

Bring back old banishment, with the following changes to laws. All crimes have expiration dates.

attempted theft, attempted mugging, etc. the crime jumps off of your record after 2IC years.

theft, mugging, etc expires after 4IC years.

low murder expires after 8 IC years.

high murder expires after 10 IC years.

Banishment expires after 15 IC years and if your record is clean, the time is cut by 1/3.

Muktar's idea 4 the win