Shattered Kingdoms

Hi folks. We need to have a talk. Make yourself comfortable. Get a drink, get a snack. Light your bongs.

Let's just take a minute to review.

Under the current law system, anyone who carries on a regular 'war' in another country, will get outlawed unless they do a bunch of restrictive, gimmicky stuff or use certain cabal abilities.

If they do get outlawed, they have one of two options. The first, is to not surrender. The second, is to surrender.

If they do not surrender, every time they try to move in any inner area of a country they will spawn a bounty NPC. If they kill this bounty NPC, they will have to kill all the NPCs in the room, and quickly, or they will be reported for killing this bounty NPC. If they are reported for killing this bounty NPC, the fact that they have been reported will cause more bounty NPCs to spawn in a city, for them to kill, and for them to be reported for killing.

If they are in a country with pushover bounty NPCs, the NPCs will seem kind of cute, at first, but they will eventually build up to a crippling disadvantage to any PK that was meant to happen in that area.

If they aren't in a country with pushover bounty NPCs, the NPCs will be a crippling disadvantage long before they ever build up into a giant ball.

One way or another, it will end with this person being unable to effectively PK against any halfway worthy opponent, until they either get caught accidentally, or turn themselves in. If they don't PK, they don't PK. Maybe a really vindictive player will charm them and drag them to the country to be arrested, but they'll probably just be retired from ever fighting there again, unless some wimp gives them a pardon over CRS or something.

If they do PK, they will be unable to do it effectively against an effective opponent, until they get arrested. If get arrested, three things will happen.

Firstly. Every country in this game has the magical ability to steal all the money from the bank account of anyone who lives anywhere else. They will use this magical ability.

(That's right, folks- if you live in the Empire, bank your money in the Empire, and go attack Zhenshi, which is at war with the Empire, and get caught, then somehow, Zhenshi will take all your money from your bank in the Empire.

How does this happen? Let us pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Surely, the Council of Blossoms goes and picks the lock to the adamantite vault in Menegroth Savings with their level 51 rogue, or perhaps simply sends a letter to the Emperor, who, though usually aloof to such injustices, felt personally moved to levy the accounts of the soldier of his who attacked Zhenshi- the Knightlord, for example- and give that money to Zhenshi.)

Secondly. All your loot will be taken.

Thirdly. Your character will have to spend a lot of time in jail.

If you didn't turn yourself in, and don't want to be in jail, don't worry. You can still have someone come and break you out. This might be difficult for them, however, especially if they themselves amass a ball of bounty NPCs. Even if they don't, they'll need a few party members, or need to be somewhat elite, to do this even if nobody tries to PK them while they do it.

If someone does try to PK them, they'll need to have a pretty overwhelming advantage in numbers or in eliteness to still pull it off effectively and safely. If they fail, they will probably all be stuck in the same situation as you.

If they succeed, you will still be naked, and broke, and you will still be an outlaw, and you will still have to be jlooted and levied, and begin a new stare at the wall for anywhere from half an hour to nine days. If you do not, you will not be able to PK effectively in that country, or able to lose PK in that country without getting stuck in that situation again. Even if you did do all of that, banish pretty much guarantees that you will be attacked on sight by standard law NPCs anyway, which is in itself somewhat miring.

Now, if you went to turn yourself in, willingly, I'm sure that you already stripped naked, took all the money out of your bank account and put everything in your cloak, and left that inside your cabal HQ, buried in some obscure location that absolutely nobody knows of, or with a buddy who can carry that much weight for longer sentences, and then showed up with a bunch of junk gear from a bin somewhere for them to confiscate.

In this case, you may have saved the hours of playtime represented by your money and equipment, if you have a decent value in either. You will still, however, lose the hours of playtime that you will have to spend, not letting your character disappear into the void while you 'roleplay' staring at the wall. Or, if you're not interested in this 'roleplay', you can risk being caught for setting up a botting trigger to prevent you from disappearing into the void while AFK.

One way or another, sooner or later, one of four things will happen if you try to PK in hostile tribunal territory.

1: You will use certain cabal skills, or refrain to somewhat class-specific support tactics, to never be seriously or banishably outlawed.
2: You will be outlawed and give up.
3: You will be outlawed and never be defeated, even in a game whose combat is cruelly prone to chance.
4: You will be outlawed, eventually be defeated, and lose hours and hours of playtime, replacing lost stuff and/or roleplaying staring at the wall.

With a larger playerbase, party tactics can phase out risk and make it relatively easier to deal with bounty NPCs. With a smaller playerbase, such as the one we currently 'enjoy', the bounty NPC system becomes relatively more powerful. One way or another, the afore-mentioned quadrilemma will eventually arise. People who want to PK, can either "Be gentlemen about it and take it to Uxmal," sacrificing *any* tribunal advantage, or they can dive into the event flow chart I've just outlined. The flow of this flow chart, as I've done my best to illustrate, ultimately drains into giving up, going unchallenged, or being jlooted and forced to RP staring at a wall for half an hour to nine days.

Thankfully, the playing field can be evened by one element.

if a character is defending a country instead of attacking it, and they aren't in that country's tribunal, they may have to deal with the exact same thing. It doesn't matter if they're in a cabal that resides in that country, that has an alliance with that country, and they're fighting a banished criminal.

There might be a tribunal leader around to pardon them, but there won't always be. Dulrik wants tribunals to be necessary, and he succeeded- they're necessary buttonpushers for the cabals. In such a case, the defender will, themselves, have to fight the law NPCs of their own country- even if they're both lighties- and themselves risk being jlooted and forced to stare at the wall.

Still, this situation can be cut back on, as long as the playerbase is large enough to support two active leaders in each tribunal.

Oh, wait.

It isn't.

I wonder if any of the game elements I'm discussing could have anything to do with that?

Now, before I go further, I want to say, that I am really, personally not into griefing people in this game. My current character has never even looted anyone, over anything, ever, and will never, except in extremely unlikely circumstances, junkloot anyone, over anything, ever. Alas, the fact that there are the kind of griefy player elements in the game can kind of stifle conflict.

There are always a few bad apples when the game grows to any size, and there have been and will be player elements that would, for example, spam chain voodoo a grumpy priestess of the Eye, because she stole all the Yiggmas presents from under the trees and locked them away in her temple. I try not to be one of these bad apples. But that doesn't prevent me from realizing what I could do, in this game.

I could, theoretically, make a diabolic, sadrite/dabiite deep-elf harlie sorc, make some enemy, fight them, and try to charm them, which always has some chance of success, even if the player I'm fighting shifts the risks in their favor in multiple ways. Once I charmed them, I could take all of their crap, junk what I didn't want, and use one of a few items to prevent them from communicating in says or tells, possibly from recalling, or from communicating in any method but pray and cb. I could then use a certain fade-on-logout but easy to aquire item to essentially carry them in my inventory in this state.

I could then dump them out of my inventory with this item, into one of many forgotten, locked, possibly no-recall areas in SK where they would have no means of killing themselves, of communicating, of death or escape, without having even witnessed how I got them into that area, leaving their actual whereabouts a puzzle even if they managed to communicate through cb.

Hell, just for fun, I could have someone help me cut all of their limbs off. How's that for "Punishment: mutilation?"

Should I be able to do that? No. Would I? No, except maybe- probably not, but maybe- to an extreme, extreme griefer.

(Like, for example, the player of hellion number one, who also plays a certain paladin number one, who has their paladin kill hellion number two, the same hellion who started a conflict with the player's hellion number one. Perhaps, the player whose paladin then grabs hellion number two's sacred gear, and logs out with it, and never logs back in with it.

The player who would sacrifice an essentially inactive character to cause hellion number two to not have their sacred armor until it fades off of the inactive character, because hellion number two spited their main character. I would wonder if such a player knows any better than I do, about how long it may take for those items to crumble while offline, under the current code to dehoarde inactive characters.

But, let's not digress.)

One way or another, if I ever behave in this way, I will be scorned on the forums more than any player of this game has ever been, and I will probably deserve it. Here's a better question.

What would be the difference, between if I did that to a player, and if a player, under the current law system, got arrested for a string of 40+ crimes including at least one high murder?

1: The player who was "arrested" would have a better chance of being broken out.
2: The player who was "griefed" would still have all of their coin in the bank.
3: The player who was "griefed" would probably be rescued from that situation by one of our "new wave" non-coding immortals before the player who was "arrested" had their jail time run out.
4: The player who was "griefed" would be alive, but would need to be stunned for someone to remove the mute item from them, while the player who was "arrested" would be dead if not in Zhenshi.
5: I would at least be flamed, probably cursed, and hopefully deleted for the "griefed" player.

6: The Powers That Be may or may not continue to kind of quietly disapprove of the code that put the "arrested" player in his/her situation, but either way will remain unable or unwilling to change that code. The playerbase would say nothing, accepting this state of affairs- which has not always been as it now is- as a cemented and immovable fact.

So, here's a few more dumb questions.

Why do we need bounty NPCs?

Why do certain tribunals seem to have much, much better units than certain other tribunals?

(No, Balacha is not as good as Losquez. If you put equipment on him, then fine, you put equipment on him. Congratulations- you're an idiot. The North can still use its three level 50 GM supernatural barbarian NPCs as disposable fodder.)

Why not have any banished criminal be killed on sight, rather than arrested, or magically teleported away?

(I do not think that most necrophidius, upon finding a vulnerable, straggling paladin adversary, would stun them and then suddenly be possessed of such humanity and such sorcery that the necrophidius would teleport them away, rather than, say, kill them. Let's be a little serious, here.)

Why not have any criminal who owes more than X jail days, be automatically executed and cleared instead of imprisoned for RL hours to days?

Why not let tribunal leaders banish whoever they want to, instead of forcing them to watch their guards ignore their enemies, if those enemies happen to use certain cabal abilities or tactics to avoid being wanted?

Why do people get wanted for attacking and robbing banished criminals?

Why is the playerbase, despite a recent surge, showing a longer pattern of decline?

Conclusion / TL:DR-

The law code itself is griefing players in worse ways than players can usually think of to grief each other. It suffocates all of the life out of PK in hostile / vacant tribunal areas, which most conflict seems to naturally happen in. The current code is assisted suicide.

Thanks for your time, folks, and for your answers to come.

um tl;dr squared. Law code sucks, won't change. don't do the crime or just deal with it....

its about the best answer you are going to get.

Thanks.

However, I have a suggestion to a "change" AFter a certain amount of days you get executed and banished. Or max the cap at about 50 days. but doubt thats going to happen just my 2bits.

You're aware that the bank system encompasses every kingdom, aren't you? You don't have a separate Empire account, and one in Zhenshi, etc. This is indicated by the fact that no matter where you go to deposit coins, you can withdraw them at a different place later.

I'm not finished with your post, and I'm not entirely sure I will finish it, but that's just how it goes on that point.

Good Lord, I read all of that.


"Why not let tribunal leaders banish whoever they want to, instead of forcing them to watch their guards ignore their enemies, if those enemies happen to use certain cabal abilities or tactics to avoid being wanted?

Why do people get wanted for attacking and robbing banished criminals?"


1. It used to be like this, and was heavily heavily abused. You could be banished (or deathmarked as it was at the time) for merely having a title that a Cabal leader didn't like.

2. No idea, I don't think they should be.

And what convoluted market force, pray tell, causes there to be One World Bank and One World Bank only? I would gladly pay 5% of my annual balance to be immune to other countries' confiscation, even if I could only deposit and withdraw in one city.

In b4 "If you can't do the time don't do the crime"

Also, Evena.

I'd rather be arbitrarily banished by anyone who dislikes me, and therefore forced to deal with their country's law NPCs, minus bounty hunters, and have those NPCs threaten me with nothing more than a jloot and a death.

That seems like reasonable, player-driven consequence, instead of just getting mega, mega griefed by the code if and only if I step on and not around its big, clumsy toes.

in b4 "If you can't do the time then don't play SK"