Shattered Kingdoms

I don't think the in-game punishment is excessive. I've spent more than an hour waiting for a resurrection. Why is it too much to ask lawbreakers to spend 20 minutes per crime, assuming they get caught and can't get break out?

The idea is to discourage virtually RP-less PK, such as the great majority of wars I've seen, let alone the silly killing-sprees. If you're not willing to spend time nursing your character in the slammer, maybe you don't have enough motivation for that PK.

[And in response to Kin's comment: if your entire faction is in jail, maybe it's time for unconditional surrender. But if you'd rather serve the jail time, feel free.]

XP Penalty is not the way to go. Especially with the way familiarity is right now, and think about this: The only class that can drain XP currently is necros, and that's limited to one tick an hour (Or something along those lines). Making -all- tribunals capable of draining XP in any way, shape or form is completely overpowered.

Expiration dates is a decent idea, but I think that it's better to keep that handled through character interaction instead of through code. I can very easily see how tribunal leaders would not want crimes to ever be expunged without their direct consent.

Ability would be abused and is too powerful to be feasible.

You can't abuse something that you can't directly use: This is something that would only be used -once- for every time that a player managed to rack up more than 10 days of crimes.

Again, no. I can't see a single reason to implement this idea, and I can see plenty of reasons not to.

I guess I'm just trying to change the fact that once you get more than 30 days of crimes against you, there's no way in hell you're not going to get broken out. And once you get broken out, your crimes stay, sitting there, like a big joke to the tribunal.

With my method, or a similar one, it won't take 10+ hours of going AFK to get out of jail, but it will still sting to get caught.

I just want to hear a decent argument as to why its bad. Does anyone -like- getting put in jail for 30+ days? All you do at that point is quit, logging on occasionally to see if someone can break you out, because there's no way a tribunal leader with a good head on his shoulders will parole you or let you out of jail early.

You said it was abusable, but it's impossible to abuse something where someone has to commit a great deal of crimes just to have it used against them once. You also said it was too powerful, and you're probably right about that. How about just a few more spirit disorientiations, or preventing skills/spells above veteran? -Something- that carries more impact for the criminals who will just end up getting broken out of jail anyway, but that allows those who desire to serve their time to do so without having to go AFK forever and a year.

If the tribunal is so offended by seeing the outstanding days they can always grant a pardon.

The fact that jails can be broken out of means one thing: they are supposed to be broken out of. The mechanic works well. Jails are a short term measure to keep a person from bugging you for a small amount of time. If they are a major enemy of the state with major connections they will get out.

That's exactly my point. I am trying to make jail both less useless (as if anyone serves 100 day sentences) and more useful (Making a shorter, harsher sentence) with the same feature.

I guess I'm the only guy who wants to fix the breaking point of jails: After 15 days or so of crimes, reporting crimes isn't even necessary anymore, because having a bigger sentence doesn't matter.

Hell your right, people shouldn't even have jail time. People should be rewarded for killing and PKing stuff. Hell a platinum per murder. In fact every time you murder a player a global announcement should be shot out saying "Hey x killed y, good job!"

You all want jail time to be reduced to ticks instead of hours IRL. Its you own fault for the crimes to be stacked so much. Your telling me you couldn't have lessen the time by willingly going to jail every once and a while so there isn't that much of a sting? Oh its not how you play your character that he or she would not go to jail? Then STFU when you have ten to hundreds of hours just sitting there looking at a screen, typing who every five minutes.

If at the very least offenses are cut in half, people will still gather hours and hours of time. Lets take your example 120 IC days in jail. Even if crimes were cut in half its still 60 days. Hell D can cut jail time by half and people would still [REDACTED] and get hundred of hours.

People like it when their foe is in jail for x amount of hours because they don't have to worry. They can actually have some fun and play the game and not worry that they are going to get ganked. However your right this isn't 'Cuddle Kingdoms'. People die. People get backstabbed and hunted down like filthy, rabid animals. So people should pay for it. Not get pat of the fing back and "good job" by the imms.

What you all do not understand is jail time is to denture you from senselessly killing people. You want to do that? Go to teron, deep-elf city, outerplains, ect and kill till your hearts content.

However Inzy brought up a good point, this isn't Cuddle kingdoms so lets go dark. Lets bring out a new skill called torture.

Want to get out of jail, have hundreds of hours? Have the guards torture you. Loose a permanent random stat point forever. Lets say you are a sprite, max dex is 25 now its 24. So when you go to jail and have over 100 hours and they ask do you want to be tortured? Just say yes and your out in a few ticks. Happens more then five times its two permanent random stat points. The disclaimer says not suitable for aged 13 and below so we should be covered. Yes GS and haste would still work because they already boost you beyond your max.

I despise the jail system at its current implementation. It's boring, it inhibits constructive interaction between the lawmakers and the lawbreakers, and worst of all, it's unimaginitive. It offers nothing to the game except an extra moment to swear at the screen, when you realize you've been disabled from playing the game for multiple hours. That is, at its best, what jail time is - the game forcing you to not play the game, yet still be logged in.

Personally, I have no desire to see jail continue in its current manifestation. Even if a jail sentence is only an hour long, that's an hour of absolute [REDACTED]. For that reason, I'm still not fond of this idea.

At best, the system currently expresses the attitudes of each kingdom through severity of jail time, and the rather binary option of whether it executes its prisoners.

My vision for the solution is a quest system. Upon capture, you are required to do work for your captors. The work you do is unique to each nation, and contributes to the wealth of that nation. The amount of work is dependent on the severity of the crime. The locale of work would be no-transport, and well-guarded. The most severe crimes would, of course, be punished with execution, but the nature of that execution would vary depend on the nation. The fate of your equipment would also change.

Here are two examples of what I envision.

1) You are caught for the petty crime of attempted theft in Ayamao. You are taken to a remote area within Ayamao: a patch of forest recently burned by a fire, and upon arrival, the guard informs you that if you attempt to escape, you will be killed. He doesn't mention that if you do happen to escape, you will be treated as a fugitive from justice, and punished to the fullest extent of the law - which in Ayamao, is execution. You a stripped down and handed an Ayamoan prisoner's uniform, as well as a bag and a shovel. Inside the bag are seeds for trees. Your duty is to plant the whole bag of seeds. When you are done, you return to the guard, and he escorts you back to the nearest city (Elisaire or Sith or the centaur place, randomly chosen), and informs you that because your crime was attempted theft, half of your total wealth has been taken by the Guardians, but you are allowed to keep all of your equipment.

2) You are caught for the crime of low murder in the Empire. You are escorted to a remote Imperial mine. You are given the same speech about death and escape, and once again stripped bare and handed a prisoner's uniform, and this time, a mining pick. Your job is to bring iron back from the mines. Once you collect enough iron, the guard takes you outside, and gives you back some of your equipment - you notice that one of your necklaces and a ring are gone, probably taken by a greedy guard. Your equipment also seems a bit beat up - it looks like they didn't treat it very well, while it was out of your possession. The guard doesn't mention it, but all of the gold you were carrying is gone, too - but your bank is still intact. Right before it seems like he's about to let you go, though, the guard cackles and chops off your arm and shoves you to the ground, still laughing as he heads back inside the mine.

It's a rough sketch, but such a system would enable significantly more creativity and interaction. A leader could come visit his prisoners, and if he felt the desire, relieve them from their work, or even torture them, if so inclined. It enables the flavor and attitude of each kingdom to be expressed.

It allows some choice on the prisoner's part, too. If they feel morally opposed to the work (the North's work might be very evil, or their hatred of the nation might be too great to allow such contribution), they can commit suicide, either by escaping, or by trying to attack a guard.

I know it's a lot to ask, but I'm not a fan of dreaming small.