For Great Justice!

Jarryzzt

There are two entire DLCs built explicitly around murdering and thieving (or, for those of the opposite political persuasion, thieving and murdering). In addition, at least a few Morrowind quests have the player break into restricted areas (or in one instance pickpocketing an NPC in town).

Before changing any part of the current "law enforcement" system, whatever is proposed must be reconciled with these DLCs and quests so as not to break the entire experience.

Furthermore, ESO is an MMO. It is not a Dishonored clone. Trying to make one into the other would require rewriting megatons of code, which ZOS is exceedingly unlikely to do.

----

It's nice to want things. However, at some point reality must at least be consulted in passing.

TheShadowScout

Katahdin wrote: »

If I had to sit in a prison or stocks for 10 minutes, not be able to play my character or have to play some stupid minigame to get out, I would just log to another character or log out completely.

See? it -would- be a "punishment" you'd care about. And the waiting time would not run down while that character was offline, so... no escaping the law that way, hear! (the bio or coffee or snacktine or cigarette break on the other hand... )

But it -would- be incentive not to get caught, riiiight? And -that- is the general idea!

Katahdin wrote: »

Having a permanent bounty would prevent people from playing that character altogether because you could never go into a city.

It would not be "permanent".
It just would not degrade automatically over time.
They simply would have to pay it off, either by fence, or by punishment.
Which at times -may- require approaching the city carefully and using the outside entrance to the outlaw refugee to get to the fence to do their bribery. Or keeping some of those "forged pardons" around (which totally should be purchasable from some thieves guild vendor as well - for a bit extra!)

vyndral13preub18_ESO wrote: »

I just don’t see how you make guards a real threat and have them be killable.

Balance them -just- like the PvP guards in cyrodil.
For a newbie, one of those may probably be too much (they were for me when I was new).
An endgame character though can deal with two of them (I have done it on occasion), but most will be in trouble with three... (though the masterkillers may be able to take those on as well, no idea, I am not that good to say where the limits of truly skilled players really lie...)

The idea is, when you get "criminal" enough to have those come after you, you get the feel that you have a fighting chance, but not a good one. But its still dependent on racking up a LOT of bounty, so... smart criminals who visit their local fence to slip the right bribes into the right hands to make their bounty go away all the time never need to fear things get so bad they might have the guard send someone after them... only those outlaws who rack up many thousands of bounty in one go will.

Also, those "hunters" should still be evadable. Should still have a limited "pursuit" range or time. Run away fast enough and long enough, and you might escape.

But it should take some -effort-, to make people realize the outlaw life is not all stealing, murdering and rap.... the thing Molag Bal is known for that I should not mention at the forums. There is a reason medieval outlaws usually did not live long enough to become noteworthy (with one very notable exception in sherwood forest)...

Kiara wrote: »

You misspelled scum

Oh, noes, the grammer police caught up to me! Whatever will I doooo! Guess its off to the spelling cells with me! -grabs soap on a rope, just in case-

DoctorESO wrote: »

There is a massive multiplayer online text-based RPG (http://www.gemstone.net) that will put your character in jail or in the stocks for committing crimes. The amount of time you receive depends on the severity of the crime. You have to be logged into the game for the time to count down. Also, to make sure you aren't AFK, you have to answer questions or type a particular piece of text every so often.

I am not sure I would want people to be -that- vexed for just stocks. AFKing a little to take a break would be fine with me for the lesser tiers of punishment...

...after all, I used a similar mechanic for the prison as "top tier" punishment, those who want to leave it the proper way need to engage in monotone activities (minigame?) to "work off" their bounty. No afking will help you there!

Jarryzzt wrote: »

There are two entire DLCs built explicitly around murdering and thieving (or, for those of the opposite political persuasion, thieving and murdering). In addition, at least a few Morrowind quests have the player break into restricted areas (or in one instance pickpocketing an NPC in town).

Before changing any part of the current "law enforcement" system, whatever is proposed must be reconciled with these DLCs and quests so as not to break the entire experience.

So?
My ideas would not preclude murdering and thieving, burglaring or pickpocketing.
All of it hinges on -getting caught-!
...or not getting caught, as the case may be.
If you don't get caught, you won't get a bounty, the guards won't be after you with increased vigor and dedication to drag you off to some of the imagined new punishments...
This is how I imagine things should be!
I see the ideas as an -enhancement- to those DLCs, rewarding those who steal or murder -smarter- instead of just -more-, and punishing those who are way too blatant about breaking the laws of the lands because the current guard reactions are too easily evaded and current "punishments" are laughable for most gamers...

darthgummibear_ESO

Well this is certainly cool. Would be nice if they implemented some of that because the guards are easy to avoid and once you first fill the bar, additional bounty has no effect at all.

ZOS_RogerJ

Greetings! We have closed this thread. Due to it's age, the information here may be out of date.