Pay bounty or spend x amount of time fighting for your faction in Cyrodiil, you cant use your own weapons or armour, these will be provided by the relevant quartermaster, if your sergeant gets killed in combat you can desert, but without a horse and only a special thieves guild trafficker can smuggle you out of Cyro, this would clear your bounty and return all your inventory etc
Whilst branded deserter, guards inside Cyro will arrest you on sight, which will restart the above.
There are many ways punishment could work but I don't think they'll change the current system..

My guess is because they would make the Jail exactly like the Wailing Prison which NO ONE EVER WANTS TO DO AGAIN....

Jailing was also suggested as another option for people to have their bounties reduced. I even made a post last year about how they could have done a whole quest line on it and escaped through a series of tunnels but @ZOS wasn't interested. They'd rather just have OP guards that people want to kill but cannot.

Katahdin wrote: »

Sitting and staring at my character in a jail cell for 15 minutes or having to do some stupid mini game to get out every time = log off

Well the end result (logging off)is the same 90% of the time I can't pay my bounty. And if you read my (OP) suggestion the time limit wouldn't have to be so long, 2-3 minutes MAX unless you have a ridicoulously large bounty like over 1,000.

The minigame and other suggestions, while I do admire their creativity, is far extending what I'm suggesting here. Just a simple 3rd option that allows you to bypass being slaughtered by invincible guards and reduces the time waiting for bounty to drop. I don't see why some players are so opposed to the idea of a 2-3 minute time in a jail with the option to break out (bounty does NOT return if you break out, you can NOT retrieve stolen items either). How is this not better than being farmed by guards?


EDIT: So to tweak any former posts I made to be in line with this, your bounty would have to be set to 0 upon arrest leaving you with a timer (can be a set amount of time, 1-3 minutes, or dependent on the size of your bounty?) and breaking out would then leave you a free player with no bounty but you lose your stolen items still. Or you can wait/log off if you don't want to/can't break out. I suggest you keep all the lockpicks in your inventory (or +1 if you have none for whatever reason) and the lock is a master difficulty.

Serenityx wrote: »

I'm tired of being forced to log out of a character until bounty goes away if I don't have the gold on hand to pay it...

It's the price you have to pay for being bad. Don't steal and you won't have to log out.