Functioning Prisons?

Criminals should be wanted. NPC Guards should attack them. Players should be able to exact justice. But I don't think a prison system would be fun or fair. I could break every law in the books and sit in jail for a week. So I log off and just play another game, and then come back and repeat my crimes. It isn't really a punishment.

It seems to add complexity to the game that doesn't really fix the problem.

 

You don't appear to have read the actual suggestion. You'd have to work off your bounty.. time spent off-line wouldn't apply.. neither would just sitting there on-line afk staring at a wall. You mine, or craft.. or fight in the arena etc..

 

If I may chime in here, it seems like people aren't getting a point. No one wants to sit in a prison cell and stare at a wall forever and actually be punished in-game. But there still hast to be a concept of punishment, as bowen has said. The way I see it is that it's designed to keep the player engaged without being tedious or taking time. It punishes the player in the sense that they loose gold/time they could spend doing something more usefull, but keeps them interested and enticed, mine a certain quota of ore, get a gathering skill up, forge some swords for the war, get a crafting skill up. I guess you could say the real life equivalent would be doing pushups to waste light. It gives you something to do, but also punishes you, bad example. It's not saying that "I want to be evil so according to this I have to stare at a wall;" but rather if you keep getting caught; you're a terrible criminal, and henceforth have to spend maybe like 5 minutes mining ore. An inconvenience, but one that benefits you, but not as much as it would mining the ore yourself, and selling it for gold. You're basically skipping the second step to pay off your bounty.

 

I hate necro'ing posts, but you asked for it.

All of these ideas are the same thing. They're time sinks, or gold sinks, or resource sinks. As such, they're encompassed by Lonestrangers suggestion of "Puzzles" that need to be solved to get out of jail.

Boring, dull, tedious or repetitious tasks will not be tolerated in 2013/2014. Any jail system must have a deadmans-timer to handle ISP outages, at minimum. As such, if players are going to simply CHOOSE TO disconnect after they're in prison and re-appear on the overland map after that timer has expired, because the content is boring, dull, tedious or repetitious, all you've done is encouraged people to logout. And no, you cannot distinguish between a player who chooses to, and one who just had his wireless router fried by lightning.

Clicking 100 times on the same rock? Not fun.
Being forced to fight if I'm a player who has no combat skills? Not fun.
Being forced to craft if I'm a player who hates crafting or has no crafting skills? Not fun.
Being forced to gather if I'm a player who hates gathering, or has no gathering skills? Not fun.
Being forced to do "_______" when I have no interest in that, in a game I paid to play my own way? Not fun.

For me, it comes down to a punitive mechanic or a fun and challenging one. Which is this? If the puzzles are clever and let the time sink pass while attempting to entertain me, they might be fun.
They might be fun the first time. They might be fun the second time. Probably not the third, unless dynamic/unique/personalized/procedural in some way.

If criminal activity is a legitimate path in SotA, caution should be exercised in the design of systems that punish this legitimate path overmuch. In other words, if being a criminal is allowed AT ALL, then preventing me (for hours) from getting back to being a criminal is unwise. I would say 30 minutes should be a maximum (and probably would end up being less, after testing) for a jail scenario. If I am quick and skilled and clever, I should be able to be out in far less time.

I see no point in creating content for jails, as you've outlined above, that would take longer than 30 minutes, ever, to complete. Why? See the last paragraph below.

Further, redemption is not the only path players will want to play. Sometimes, I want to perform criminal acts in game, such as theft, burglary, espionage, treason, rebellion, corruption or fraud. As such, I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in any of these redemption mechanics in jail. I just want to escape to get back to my legitimate play style: Criminal.

However, if jails are purely meant as a system to discourage anti-social behavior, and not as a result of playing the game as intended, I see no reason why they should be anything but punitive. And players will hate them, and it won't go well for SotA.

Which brings up the issue of why you would have jails at all for serious crimes. If the goal is to get the offending Otherworlder/Avatar-esque criminal out of your region? Banish them, then kill them. Add the jail in if you want them to escape the land-hex to suffer their banishment, but banishment is FAR more effective than jail for capital crimes, in this context. As was mentioned in other prison related threads, MUDs have used banishment for years, very effectively.

Finally, customers WILL NOT TOLERATE being forced to endure an in-game-time-only timer for jail time, especially for durations over 30 minutes, no matter what you offer them to do, to pass the time. IMHO: It won't happen. They will stop playing, it's that simple. Players stop playing for far less inconvenience, these days, especially in a new game. That's an unfortunate market reality.

 

If you choose to play as a criminal, and expect that there will be no repercussions from your actions, I don't think you really have any interest in role-playing. This is a role-playing game, not Grand Theft Auto: Mideval Edition. In this world, players who "die" come back to life, and the population knows it. Death is not a punishment. Therefore, some system of Justice is necessary. If its a minor infraction, perhaps there will be an option of "time served", and you get out after 30 minutes. Otherwise... does it make you play a minigame you are not fond of? Perhaps, but then you have a choice: keep acting out criminally and keep being forced to engage in activity you don't like, get better at being a criminal so you don't et caught, or change your ways and stop committing crime.

I just had a quote from Liar, Liar come to mind...

However, the thread was originally about how to make this a non-punitive system. If you WANT to play a criminal, you can learn to escape, or deal with other criminals and perhaps get better at your trade. You can work off your debt, and earn some items toward crafting or other skill games that can be used or sold. You can fight, arena-style or gank-the-cellmate, and get whatever benefits there are for you.

I hate to have to add this, but seriously people don't know how to read anymore:

;TLDR - Do the crime, do the time.

 

@vjek You didn't really read this carefully did you? I think you rather misunderstand how it's supposed to work. No timer. You get out by paying off your bounty. You can't do that by just sitting there. If there is a timer then obviously it stops if they disconnect. That should be obvious.

You're not specifically forced to do any one thing. You get to choose what you do from a variety of options specifically so you're not stuck doing something you don't want to do. Plus you seem to have missed the part about opting into the system in first place. If you don't want to go to prison there are ways to avoid it.. such as not turning yourself in.. fighting to the death rather than surrender.. etc... and there is always the escape option if you wish to maintain your criminal status. If you don't want to engage in the system then don't.

Please if you're going to post a long arguement then do the courtesy of understanding what you're arguing against.

 

Yep I read it, (and quoted it, partially) and responded to the points that make it unworkable. If you disagree, no worries, I understand.

 

*sigh*

You seemed to have missed the part here about there not being a timer. Logging out and waiting wouldn't work. You're also making the assumption that all the tasks would be boring, dull, tedious or repetitive. Give the devs a little bit of credit as it falls on them to make sure that combat, craft and harvesting or whatever else does not fall into that description. If they do their job than these tasks are no more so in jail than they are out of jail. This arguement is also making the assumption that jail time is unavoidable even though it's been stated in this thread that that shouldn't be the case.

Where is escape NOT an option?

Not effective in the slightest. This isn't a MUD. First off how would you enforce banishment? 2ndly.. the guards are aware that avatars don't die permenantly. From their point of view simply killing you is a slap on the wrist since you'll only be back a few 'hours' later. Do you really think they'll consider that effective?

You've missed the point entirely with this one. Once again let me state the intention is NOT to punish the player but provide an optional, interesting and fun experience. If you don't agree it could be that's one thing.. but misunderstanding it's purpose is another.

Nearly every one of your arguements has already been covered in this thread. Which is what led me to believe you haven't read it.

 

No, i got the part with no timer, the problem is, without a timer, those caught and thrown in prison are there indefinitely. That's unacceptable to playing customers. You can't place a player in a jail for playing the game the way it's intended, without an auto-eject timer in 2013/2014. Customers won't play it. They'll play the 20+ other persistent multi player online games that don't have this system.

With respect to it being unavoidable:

Why have the ability to commit crimes if it's not a legitimate play style? Put simply, you can use all the wiggle words you want to try and make this sound like it's not punitive, but if a player uses a skill in the game, that brands him a criminal, and as a result you teleport them into a prison or jail where they must perform actions they do not wish to, for HOURS, you're punishing them.

If the tasks can be completed while out of jail, then you're describing community service/work camps, not jail. Which would be an entirely different topic.

How would you enforce banishment? Easy. You can't enter a land hex you're banished from, via the overland map. Or you can't enter an entire region and adjacent wilderness land hexes, of an area you're banished from. As far as being effective, sure, you can make the banishment as long as necessary, and add fines on top of it if you want.

We agree on the punitive front. I wasn't disagreeing. You'll note the "if" in "If jails are purely meant as a system to discourage..."

I have read every post in the thread (now, twice). I just disagree with your system as described and implementation mechanic details. That's fine, as I said, if you disagree, there's nothing wrong with that. In my opinion, I believe what you're describing is a work camp or community service system, not a jail. Which I fully support, and you've got some innovative ideas for. But not for jail.

 

No where is it suggested you simply get teleported to prison the instant you commit a crime. I was talking about how you get into prison once you're actually caught and surrender or possibly as part of a bounty system. You're not going to want to sit there and watch yourself being drug off to some prison.. so you'd have to do a teleport in that case.

If the player drops connection for whatever reason.. (presumably a legitmate loss of power or computer crash).. you either assume they got away.. or if it's just a connection loss you can resume whatever is leading to their death or capture locally. You'll recall they've talked about being able to play temporarily offline for several hours.

Ah well I wish you had pointed out that bit earlier. I'd point out then that obviously HOURS is too long generally speaking. Precisely how labor is handled being within a work camp or inside the prison itself doesn't really matter to me but I can't agree with a timer. I'd rather they just escape if they don't want to do the work. Otherwise you really are just encouraging them to go AFK or log out.

 

If you assume they got away, and that's a good thing, everyone will "disconnect", while being pursued/chased/taken away. That's part of my point about the timer.
If you assume they got away, and that's a bad thing, everyone will complain they were punished for something outside of their control.

However, if you have the timer, it doesn't matter if they get disconnected. If it was legit, it's not such a bad thing, they just wait it out (if they even have to, by the time they reconnect). If it wasn't, well, they got a little bit of a time out that they can work through faster if they want to.

 

As far as the timer goes, I've always thought that it could have two rates of passage. One rate while logged in, one while logged out. If you have a 30 minute penalty, then it takes 30 minute to wait it out -while logged in-. If you disconnect, then the rate slows to perhaps 1/6th of that. In other words, it would take three hours for the penalty to dissipate. If you reconnect after an hour and a half, you're down to 15 minutes of logged in waiting.

I think this makes a disconnect for any reason a less useful method of avoiding your punishment.

 

If they're already caught they're caught. Disconnecting at that point shouldn't make any difference. I was trying to think of a situation where they were fighting it out with the guards. Then again if they're fighting guards they should have the option of fighting to the death or surrendering or fighting to unconscienceness and being caught. Not quire sure how to handle that scenario. If you simply disconnect then I imagine your game goes offline but you'd still be playing. You are either hosting or become the host of the instance you're in and the scenario continues uninterrupted.

From an execution standpoint it may be best that guards can talk to first.. pay off bounty.. bribe.. surrender or resist.. if you resist you can fight.. incurring a higher bounty but you either win, lose or get away. The game should handle disconnects the same way as it would any other combat scemaro.

If we're talking a timer on time in prison then I don't think this is an effective method. It reminds me of the skill cap we had on our NWN server which recovered much slower while offline. The idea was to encourage people to RP and the cap would recover faster online. It never stopped anyone from logging and waiting it out even though it took longer.

This is another problem I have with a timer for actual jail time. It encourages players to do something other than play. Whether logging out or going AFK. If they don't want to have that experience they should get out of it by one of many alternatives. A timer simply doesn't add any fun elements.

I think the greater point of concern is the process by which a person is incarcerated. Nobody should feel like they can or would want to avoid it by dishonest methods (like purposefully disconnecting or shutting down their game).

 

Well, then perhaps the puzzles method that I suggested would solve that problem?

 

I'm not opposed to having puzzles but I am having a hard time envisioning how they would fit? Unless there's some kind of skill based task that could apply. I did have one idea that you could spend time solving complex locks while the guards weren't looking or something.

 

Yes, that's exactly the kind of puzzles they should have. To keep things from getting stale, I would change which puzzles were available for that session. So picking the lock might work one time, but not the next. I know RG likes giving the players options for solving a problem, so maybe there are a couple ways. Procedurally generated puzzles would be grand, because you can learn the process to solve, but the solution isn't the same each time. Mastermind (try a similar game here) or other code breaking games are perfect too.

Bribery could be an easy way out, if it's available. Sticking a shiv into a guard might work too.

Either way, once you escape from the cell you have to get out of the building, and perhaps (since we know some kind of stealth aspect will be in the game) that might involve sneaking past guards patrolling in some kind of patterns.

 

Sounds appropriate for an escape scenario. Like changing locks on the 'evidence chest' if you want to get your stuff back or freeing other prisons to cause a distraction.

The caveat I think to the escape scenario is how combat should be handled if you get caught? More specifically what happens if you get caught and lose? Do you get killed? In which case are you free but lose your stuff? Or do you just start back in your cell? Or do they knock you unconscience.. raise your bounty and you start back in your cell?

I am assuming for the time being that you do not need to return to your body after being killed to be rezzed. So if you died in prison you'd end up rezzing elsewhere.

 

As for prisons, I could see a map that the player has to find his way through picking up his items as he goes but after the escape he is still just as much a criminal if not more when he gets out.
And after how many prison escapes till they give up on putting him in prison?

Maybe after prison and dungeon escapes criminals caught should be sentenced to death.

I know it may not be fun for the criminal but having in town punishment might be good overall.
For small crimes yes just some public humiliation.
But for crimes after prision failed to work then maybe some hangings or beheadings should take place.
This would be a very short event and come with some stat loss.
I don't know.

One thing I do agree on is that the more he commits crimes the more he should be shun out of towns and cities to live in the wild.

 

Well if a player just likes to get arrested so they can escape.. maybe there should be harder and harder prisons? If you're just wanted locally you get sent to a local prison.. but if you commit enough crimes.. escape enough times or get a high enough bounty you get sent to a tougher prison. Locks are more complicated.. guards are tougher and more of them.. escape route is more dangerous etc.

Eventually you get a prison that is so hard to escape from that it always remains a chellenge no matter how skilled you are.

I realize there's eventually a limit and some players will try to reach it. That might be part of the fun but I don't think guards would ever stop trying to deal with you. There could come a time when they'd just try to kill you but I just don't see that as effective punishment.. I think they'd only go there if they were at a loss for what else to do.

 

Arche Age (currently in Beta) has a justice system, and a jail system. All it does is piss people off.

Who is to judge what is right and wrong? How is it going to be tracked? In Arche Age players control the court and judge and they make the verdict.

Honestly I would be very upset if the put in a game mechanic to throw people in jail for PKing. I see WAY to many ways that could be exploited to ruin some ones day.

With the way they are doing the Opt in and Opt out of PKing with the way the server will shard each instance you are in, I don't see a need for a system created by the devs. As has been stated before, let those who want to punish and fight the PKs come and do it themselves.

If you are too scared and don't want any PK interaction they have stated you wont.

Let those that want to PK and those that want to punish PKs do it themselves, don't make the devs put a system in that will piss people off. People in Arche Age already have found multiple ways to break out of prison quickly and it just is an annoying time waste and a total waste of developer time.

Let the developers spend time working on the combat/crafting/quests and let us PKs deal with us PKs.