Shattered Kingdoms

Things are certainly going to get interesting if the jails are tweaked like that. In that case, can we have sentence limitations? No one should have to do 200+ days in jail, especially when you know that some people won't ever let a character or player out of jail because of who they are. The question is, how do you keep Zhenshi unspoiled? It's the only kingdom without a death penalty (other than Uxmal) and well, that adds a ton of flavor IC. But at the same time you can't have someone who just goes about killing hundreds of NPCs and such and just get away after 5 days.

Any way to cap sentences without killing but keep Zhenshi's tradition? I honestly can't think of anything..

I hate saying this over and over but don't rack up the jail time then. Find simmering more productive to do then steam roll newbs and rack up wanted posters.

Were they all changed like that, then jailbreaks would only occur when tribunal members aren't online, or when you have a huge group and can just steamroll through the city and kill the 1 or 2 defending people.

Not the result I was hoping for, but I can at least take solace in the fact that I doubt any builder in any other kingdom is going to go out of their way to do that.

Did the last jailbreak happen when tribunal members were online? No. It never would have happened while my character was logged on either. You're also distorting the facts of the matter.

In any case, you shouldn't go out of your way to rack up 740+ days worth of crimes, and then complain when you actually get captured . It's a problem of your own doing. It's essentially you wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

I've never once complained about the length of my sentence. I've only complained that of all jails, Exile's is insurmountably harder to break people out of.

That's the -reason- why no one is going to break someone out of Taslamar's jail while you're online. It's a suicide mission, and only so because of the no-recall rooms + bounty NPCs.

Is that balanced? No, because Exile's jail is the only one like that. But Dulrik has said that he'd rather all jails were made impossible to break out without an overwhelming force/no trib members online, so it's clear that Exile won't get changed anytime soon. Fortunately, I don't think that other jails will get changed in the same way, which means that characters who get in over their heads still have an alternative to waiting until the trib members are logged off.

The only other thing that I will contribute to this discussion is that I won't reduce jail times. I updated the code awhile back so you do serve your jail time (at a reduced rate) while offline. If you rack up some obscene sentence, log off and start an alt. The very fact that it takes your character off that side of the board for your opponents is a benefit for them, but you aren't forced to be logged on doing nothing (or cheating by multiplaying).

Killing an opponent is a big enough benefit already to the team doing the killing: Jailtime is already a full loot and in most cases ends in execution anyway. There's a difference between beating an opponent and griefing them: And extensive jailtime really crosses that line.

To put things in perspective, if I were to log off of my character and play an alt until he was executed at the 1/10 rate, then I'd be playing that alt for three months. In the meantime, all the people who played with my character would be one friend short, and I would also be unable to perform any tribunal commands like inducting people. It doesn't really do good for the game, IMO, when people who lose in PvP just log off and start playing their alts instead, which is basically what extensive jailtime encourages per your own statement. No one is asking to make their huge lists of crimes meaningless. They're just acknowledging the fact that -no one- is going to serve an IRL three month sentence. 100% of those people break out of jail. So why not limit it to something more reasonable, like one RL day, at the end of which there's a more debilitating affect like spirit disorientation applied upon release that could last much longer in-game than normal SD?

Do SOMETHING other than incure legal penalties.

How hard is that to comprehend?

Long story short: don't grief the law system, and the law system won't grief you.

People can't mock the bounty system and the legal defense system by spam-killing NPCs up to hundreds of days of jail time, maximizing BH spawn rates, and then play the "don't grief me bro" card. It has been your complete choice to rack up the consequences of griefing the law system, knowing full well the outcome. You can't ignore that fact and say you're getting griefed. In reality, you griefed first. This is not an unavoidable aspect of the game that requires changing. It is within your complete control to not get wrecked by the law. If people have a law list like the one you had, those people deserve to be the horror stories. I would argue that all warparties should be buffed dang-near exponentially to make a full party required to jailbreak someone.

Jail time: the real teeth of a system that everyone says is too easy to abuse and dominate, yet without fail the abusers always complain the moment they get bitten.

Characters that rack up lists like that, that can't RP diplomacies to reduce sentencing/gather parole, deserve every last ounce of what they get.

True story.