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| Topic Started: Nov 15 2015, 09:30 AM (205 Views) | |
| Jance | Nov 15 2015, 09:30 AM Post #1 |
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Mega Venusaur
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So we've had problems with criminal activities in the past and how to regulate them. Used to we'd have a timer for thefts and folks would have to just quietly wait out the timer and if nobody posts then they could get away with whatever it was they'd tried to steal. We found that this system could be abused, plus we had few people who'd respond to such threads at all. Really there were no reasons not to steal and thieves rarely faced any consequences. Other sorts of crimes such as murdering NPCs and such occurred rarely and still had little to no consequences attached to them. Any NPC police a mod threw in wouldn't stand a chance against some of the folks who committed such crimes either. And Player vs Player crime was non-existent as folks didn't really appreciate other players attacking them, nor was it particularity feasible with our limited posting system. Plus players with low level pokemon wouldn't stand a chance against players with higher level pokemon. We talked a little about reviving crime in the discussion thread and I'd like to implement a better system for it if folks would like the opportunity to be a criminal again. So I'm looking for thoughts and suggestions on how to make crime 'as fair as possible' for any player victims and be something that isn't just 'do whatever you want and get away scott free all the time'. Criminals would face real consequences for their criminal activities making being a criminal more challenging but rewarding. Player victims would also have multiple opportunities to retrieve their stolen goods if they desired. To prevent higher level players taking advantage of lower level players, lower level players would receive various options, such as immediate police assistance or other such aide, to help them combat the higher level player attacking them. Players attacking higher level players though would be on their own. Some consequences of getting involved in nefarious activities, could be the reimplementation of the bounty system, more immediate response to criminal activites, if a player doesn't intercede (player intercession would be highly encouraged) a mod would have to, all criminal actives would have to be responded too, no response would result in no completion of that criminal activity, a 'bad' reputation that would damage your overall interaction with various NPCs, any stolen pokemon would refuse to cooperate with the thief, a bounty hunter might get on the thief's trail depending on how high the bounty is, ect. Crime would require a bit more moderation than is typical so would progress more slowly than standard threads. There could be varying limits on what you can steal and how much which could then be increased via specializations or with special items. If we brought back teams, criminal themed teams would look more fondly on fellow criminals, perhaps criminals could have access to a special black market. Anyway this is just a thought, what does everybody else think? |
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| Curtis | Nov 15 2015, 11:19 AM Post #2 |
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Articuno
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Speaking from someone who was writing a thief character for some time, I have to admit... the system was fairly broken. Even back in the days of a timer it was hard to get a police mod, despite my very openness about stealing from pokemarts in my thread. Eventually one did chase me down, and I just had to kill him too. So, I think there should be more to this system as well. Stolen Pokémon definitely should not obey some weirdo who just ripped him away from it's usual owner. Another thing I really like the sound of is immediate police assistance, and more than anything.. the BOUNTY system. Now, I believe there should be both Player, and NPC Bounty Hunters. The NPC Bounty Hunters would become active once one's bounty got high enough, or after a thief(Like Myself) has killed a police officer. Another cool thing, at least I think. Would be a Jailing system. Say a thief is caught, or defeated... where would the Bounty Hunters take them you ask? What about an actual Jail where your character is forced to be "put on ice" until a predetermined amount of time passes. A week, maybe even 2 if your crime spree was notorious enough. Also, if your in Jail you lose all stolen pokemon, and are forced to bring your zenni down to 0! Then there's the things thieves would need to help balance this. A blackmarket would be a nice touch, but might get abused fairly quickly. I think this should be a one way 'Market' in which the Thief would actually have to travel to a specific location where he could sell off his stolen goods, items or Pokémon. (this wouldn't be the end for the stolen pokemon though since it's just in some shady person's inventory.) Edited by Curtis, Nov 15 2015, 11:19 AM.
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CURTIS MICHAELS | |
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| Fordy | Nov 15 2015, 12:36 PM Post #3 |
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ain't no new thing
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the mechanisms should be up for debate but the consequences should just be logical- we want money to be back to scarce again, so fines can actually mean something, you character can be jailed, shit we can do whole courtroom roleplays. the problem is, i dunno, a few people seem to want a dystopian setting... i'm not a huge fan of that for a few reasons, one of them being that there's no logical way to enforce laws in that setting. stealing WOULD be broken in that scenario, and there's no way around it. but overall we need to go back to a place where players can interact negatively with each other and the environment, we just need better controls on it. if you can't handle the idea of someone potentially stealing your shit... you need to suck it up |
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| Sala. | Nov 15 2015, 07:40 PM Post #4 |
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the bird of hermes
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I agree with most of your points, Jance. Thievery and the sort wasn't such a big deal back in my day, though that's more because people didn't seek to bother with it. Had I been around back then, my police would have actually had teeth. You shouldn't commit a crime and expect to get away with it unless you show you've planned well and can anticipate the consequences, and even then, contingencies that you haven't thought of should still exist to challenge you to prove your worth. As a side point, if you kill anyone and you leave behind enough evidence to incriminate you without a reasonable doubt, you deserve to have the stigma of a criminal follow you around and its associated drawbacks. Why do you think Team (bad guys) never ran around collecting badges, shopping in towns, challenging Gym Leaders? You can't have it both ways, getting the benefits of living a proper life while committing crimes and ignores the rules when it suits your purpose. You want a character who can commit crimes, then accept the consequences of what kind of life that entails and roleplay it properly. Maybe your character is so rich, you can bribe the police. Maybe you have pokemon that can perform a Jedi hand wave and get the police to forget they saw you. Regardless, at every moment, you'll have to deal in some form with the hand of authority, fighting it at every turn while it seeks to snatch you and administer justice. Per what Fordy said: Not everyone is cut out to have the resolve to be beaten mercilessly by a trainer with far stronger pokemon just because the other trainer wanted a crime, not to mention the things Pokemon could do to trainers if nudged in a dark light. If a negative interaction can occur, it has to occur where both trainers are given the case to state their intention, and someone needs to judge on the effectiveness of their individual plans. If you want to steal a simple item like a potion, that takes some effort. If you want to steal a pokemon, you'd better have a damn good plan, and the other trainer should have significant options available to them to prevent such an event. In a single string of posts, all of the effort, all of the posts, all of the time that person spent trying to get a pokemon can simply be denied by an adequately prepared and ingenious thief, and that will sting for a lot of people. If one was particularly spiteful towards someone, one could simply steal a pokemon and hide it somewhere or never use it in order to deny someone from using it, and what's to prevent that course of action? In essence, crime should be hard. Very, very hard. It should have adequate rewards for someone who can live within that frame of reference, but should present a challenge every which way. |
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| FuzzyMittenz | Nov 16 2015, 02:38 PM Post #5 |
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Pidgey
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Crime Of all of the systems that I was involved with back in my day (haha), crime was the one that I broke and abused the most frequently. In one of the stupidest moves I have ever made in a game, during what must have been my third or fourth month at Legacy, a Mod was very kind and decided to spend some time and introduce an NPC trainer. It was supposed to be that the NPC would travel alongside my PC for a few posts, and be an interesting side-quest for me. The thing was, this particular NPC had an Eevee. I ganked him, stole the Eevee, immediately began mass-breeding it, and the website was flooded with one of the rarest Pokemon in the handheld game. Of course everyone wants an Eevee, right? There are some HUGE contingencies that must immediately be addressed in a reboot: 1.) Theft of Pokemon from NPC Trainers: If you are going to allow NPC trainers to have their Pokemon available to be stolen, Mods must be extremely careful with the Pokemon they put in an NPCs party. This could be done by requiring approval from an Admin before introducing any NPC that has a Rare Pokemon in their party. No more "willy-nilly" arbitrary decisions involving mechanics that could potentially break the game. 2.) Theft of Pokemon or resources from PC Trainers: If you're going to have a crime system, players need to be able to prey on one another. This mechanic makes sense. Why was it better for Ash, Misty, and Brock to travel together as opposed to solo? Traveling in groups means that you're less likely to be attacked on the road by rogue Team ____ members. This means that there needs to be some kind of mechanic to allow Trainers to defend themselves. Some ideas: - If a Trainer defeats you in a battle, they would have the option of looting 1 of the Pokemon currently in your party. - We could introduce a new kind of Pokeball, one that has the ability to break the PC registration function that all Pokeballs seem to have, and that would replace the current owner's information with the Criminal's information. They would be extremely expensive, but would have a relatively high success rate. However, they would be Blacklisted from the PC system, meaning that any Pokemon that are "stolen" must remain in the Criminal's party, or traded per the black market. These Pokemon would also be unable to be healed at Pokecenters (the specialized Ball would be flagged, and anyone attempting to heal a stolen Pokemon at a Pokecenter would attract police) 3.) Law Enforcement Law enforcement was an actual joke back then. I mean, people laughed when you mentioned police. I say that there are a few ways that you can handle this: - Make specific NPCs that fulfill functions such as "badass bounty hunter", "badass special agent", and "the military". These NPCs would be on standby, and once a PC's notoriety reached a certain level, or if a Mod has deemed their actions egregious (setting fire to an orphanage to distract police, for example). These NPCs wouldn't necessarily be MacGuffins, but they would walk around with a team of level 35-50 Pokemon and would essentially be a badass challenge, even if they were outnumbered 2:1. - You could, on top of the aforementioned idea, actively put in place a Policing system that -heavily- rewards those who play the part of a "good guy". This means that there would be actual rewards that would offer alluring incentives to playing the part of a protagonist. Players would be able to request "Police" missions (think Grand Theft Auto when stealing a police car), which would increase their "Rank" on the force, and make them eligible for better rewards as they continue to improve the world. - As an absolute last resort, you can have a MacGuffin. Something like a Legacy-created Legendary Pokemon that would show up and basically veto something that is or has been determined to be too destructive to the Legacy environment. As a DM/GM/Admin, I am loathe to put "THE UNBEATABLE BEATDOWNER" or some other crazy-powerful, time warping, Mewtwo-esque creature into the game...but when it comes right down to it, the Administrators might not have a good answer for every situation. An example of this would have been: After I had beat the NPC trainer up and stolen his Eevee, I could have returned to the Pokemon Center only to find that the Pokemon I stole was just a Ditto that had retained it's form from the last battle the Trainer had been in. ________________________________________________________________ Now, with all of this being said, here's my caveat: If you allow players to be criminals, you must allow for the possibility that the criminal might just win. If I have spent eight months building a team of Pokemon specifically designed for crime, and I have a concept or two that means that I could potentially pull off a heist, and I role-play well enough that the Mod is sitting there going "...There's no way he would get caught" then I should be allowed to get away with that crime. This doesn't mean that there can't be slight MacGuffins (perhaps a security camera, or something that I didn't think of or specifically mention), but it does mean that a single PC has the ability to drastically alter the gaming environment by going rogue. I picture someone walking into town with an Alakazam, a Scyther, a Gengar, and a couple other Pokemon that have abilities that could just lay waste to a town. How would other PCs respond? Also, how would we manage timeline concerns; for example, if two big Criminal PCs planned it out, and they each attacked a different town at the same exact time, how could we stop them both? Assume that neither area had any big PCs immediately available. Assume that both Criminal PCs are strong enough to warrant bringing in an NPC. Do we then allow one to get away with their heist, but stop the other via a MacGuffin? Or would we just let the cards lay as they fall? _______________________________________________ The alternative to all of the above is to just NOT LET PCS BE ANTAGONISTS. That seems cheap, but...it leaves other options open and available to staff. Teams, and therefore most crime, would be controlled purely by Mods and Admins. Storylines would be less complex, but we wouldn't have to concern ourselves with these questions. I hate the concept, but if it's the best for the website moving forward... |
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| Tsunami | Nov 16 2015, 11:26 PM Post #6 |
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Pidgey
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I agree with Mittenz on all of that. I would also suggest as a deterrent to weak police in giving them the ability to harm or kill trainers and pokemon at a certain level of notoriety. For example, a PC trainer attacks a village, burns down some buildings and cleans out the Pokémart. Thats a ton of property damage, grand theft, possible attempted murder and abuse of pokemon. While the police might go for an arrest, possible higher level agents might aim to take out the player. Maybe make a consequence possible forceful retiring of a character through death. |
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