The amazing, instant speed zalanthas justice system.

[Anonymous]

The way it is really starting to sound to me is that not many players play criminal pcs and the truth of the matter is that since they don't they are much happier having the crim system be unreasonably accurate and fast, since OOC they know that npc criminals don't steal from their chars and only pc criminals will.

I don't think that's a fair statment.

I've played thieves and rulebreakers and I'm glad that the crim system works the way it did.  My thiefy type PC got caught in Allanak a few times, but he'd get away (crim-flagged or not) 80-90% of the time even in the early part of his thieving career.

Nosave is your friend but often times my PC would get away by simply watching where he was going and not attempting crimes unless:

• Visibility was low and he was near a place he considered a safe hideout.
  
• He had a clear path back to his "safe" spot if he was venturing a little further away and visibility was high.
  
• There were no visible city militia anywhere nearby.
  

Trust me, an ounce of leniency would result in almost noone getting caught and, IMHO, there's been too many past cases of people spam stealing to justify inserting some latency in the time it takes for your description to be wayed around to all of the militia.

I'm seeing some absurd things said just to support the ridiculously supreme justice system.

I'd replace the word 'ridiculously' with the word 'necessary' in the statement above, personally.

Realism gives way to playability issues in this case due to the recurring abuse of thiefy type PCs.

Anything other than an immediate crim-flag will result in a lot of code exploitation, IMHO.

[Angela Christine]

The crim code is unrealist, no one disputes that.  It is too effective, and at the same time too easy to circumvent and too lenient.  Untill we get to the point where there can be 50-100 militia/legionaires/city guard on all the time, we have to suffer with the bumbling NPCs, and NPCs are really, really stupid.  I've known hamsters smarter than the average NPC, and that's pretty darn stupid.  The code and the law enforcement NPCs act in unrealistic ways, but hopefully they are balanced.  They act faster than PCs, but they have no inititive and forget about things pretty quickly.

I've played every non-karma class there is.  I'll admit I prefer Rangers and Merchants, but I've played the thief classes and rinthers before, and I expect I will again.  OOCly I have nothing against thief PCs.  Sure, I like that successful thieves are kept down to a clever minority, because a few intelligent thieves are better than dozens of so-so theives.  There have been times when people were getting their weapons stollen off their belts 2-3 times in a RL week, and that gets to be a pain in the ass.  There have been times when people find their locks picked every single day, eventually forcing them to stop buying non-virtual furnature and makeing PC housing almost worthless.  But having no thieves at all would be bad too.  

Some people have advocated adding a karma requirement to the thief classes.  I don't think that is desirable, or necessary.  The difficulty in being a successful thief keeps the numbers reasonable.

AC

[creeper386]

Acctually, I live in a small town, very small, the streets are empty at five o clock, but if you go out doing bad things, someone almost always notices. They may not know that it's you, but they'd see it out their window or something driving by. Even if it's in the middle of the night very rarely does a crime go by without being seen.

Now, bigger cities, yes your going to find empty alleys and such, but people are still about. They are in buildings, they are on the streets. They have ears and eyes. It seems to me that Allanak and the other cities are like medevil cities for the most part. It isn't dramatically large compared to it's population. There is people all over the place. You'd have to be careful, and if you screw up your going to have troubles. If you succeed you probably well pull it off.

Now, I don't see how you can say people OOCily support the criminal code because they don't like getting stolen from... NPCs kill some PC thief or throw him in jail and a templar kills him. PCs loose there things. PCs have NO recourse against thieves, even if they hunt them down. If something gets stolen from you it's basically gone, you have little chance to get anything back. Which REALLY sucks.  And considering I've had many character that go about and get robbed nearly every time I log on... And the thieves I've played have little problems failing too much when stealing... It must not be that hard if you play it smart.

Basically, don't expect anything to be easy... For the most part it's nothings easy in Zalanthas. And you think the crime code is bad... Should go out and get insta killed by ONE spear. Not even with a chance for poison to set in, it's thrown and your dead. That sucks alot more then spending a few minutes in jail.

Creeper

[Rindan]

The way it is really starting to sound to me is that not many players play criminal pcs and the truth of the matter is that since they don't they are much happier having the crim system be unreasonably accurate and fast, since OOC they know that npc criminals don't steal from their chars and only pc criminals will. I'm seeing some absurd things said just to support the ridiculously supreme justice system.

I have played a fair number of thieves in my days, and a fair number of them lived to grow old.  Is the crime code unrealistic?  Absolutely.  However, I have yet to see anyone offer a suggest that is reasonable to code that makes it more realistic.  True, there are things that could be done to make certain aspects of the crime code realistic, but one piece can not be hyper realistic while other pieces are not.  Namely, you can't make it 'realistic' in terms of NPCs inability to spread word of your misdeeds quickly, and at the same time keep it so that they are too stupid to actually chase you or respond to a crime by sending soldiers to investigate.

Making the crime code into something truly realistic and interesting would require one of the most dramatic overhauls of the game to date.  Perhaps at some point an ambitious coder will take it up to code militia who have to react in a realistic fashion yet are also intelligent enough to make escape not something that is terribly easy.  Any such project would be far from minor and not the sort of thing you can really demand an imm to do.  It is one thing to ask for archery to be tweaked so that shield block arrows more.  That is a relatively painless change.  Something like completely overhauling the crime code system is something that is very painful and requires some serious programming skills and dedication to the project.  There are a lot of systems in game that could be better.  Combat, mounts, desert travel, delays on skills, and weather are all things that I am sure most people agree have some room for improvement (there is always room for improvement), but messing with these systems is simply hard.

More important then having a realistic crime system, especially when a realistic crime system is not a very feasible option code wise, is a well simulated crime system.  In other words, it is more important that the crime system reflect roughly about how often a criminal gets caught then it is to reflect the way a criminal avoids getting caught.  It is much easier to roughly simulate the outcome then it is to simulate all the steps in between.

In the case of the crime code, once you start to learn and understand it, you will realize that it is very forgiving for most things.  Once you figure it out, it is very easy to avoid capture.  Avoiding capture almost without fail is simply a matter of staying away from militia NPCs.  Before committing a crime just make sure that you have a way to a safe spot.  You will be more restricted in where you can do your misdeeds, but you can get away with what you do do almost without fail.   A careless thief will find themselves in a locked cell often.  A thief who plans a little will general find that the crime code just means he has to sit still for a few minutes while his wanted flag wears off.  

To give you an idea of what is possible; my most recent thief was never once caught by an NPC militia man.  The crime code is very forgiving to those who are prepared.  Additionally, if you want to do something special, just talk it over with an imm.  For instance, if you want to assassinate Lord Inbreed Oash in the Traders, and you have come up with a witty way to escape the soldiers that would of course answer such a disturbance, then talk to an imm about it.  The worst they can do is tell you no.

[Lazloth]

When we talk crim code, I assume this is Allanak.  I think the whole paradigm is poorly implemented, personally.  After three hours of euchre, I'm seeing spots, so pardon the random blather.

A possible short-term solution:
a.) strip the wanted information from score.  Having this OOC construct available at your fingertips just encourages twinkies; [note, regardless of any future changes to crim code, I would do this]
b.) increase the timer on being wanted;
c.) implement a delay before the wanted affect is incurred based on, for example, some of the stuff in John's discussion (how populated the area is, blah blah).

[crymerci]

I second all of Lazloth's ideas, and add my own:

d. The ability to surrender (not via nosave but via a surrender command) for a slightly reduced sentence. (Would have to be combined with a short delay before arrest when in the same room as a soldier.)
e. The ability to pay the arresting soldier a 'fine' instead of surrendering weapons and serving time.

[creeper386]

Problem is... Normally you could tell when people are actively searching for you. Now, once they stop searching for you probably going to be alot less people looking for you. Maybe a PC or two. Then it's be difficult to tell...

I think leaving the wanted in score or wherever it is, is something thats acctually benificial. Just because if your strolling around... You don't GET the chance to run away when that soldier spots you and charges your way, your just instantly subdued, which isn't cool.

I think that wanted wherever it is... Is just to say, if you go near soldiers, they well be coming after you. Which it's easy to figure out most the time. The crowd spreads as the soldier draws his weapon and charges your direction and such... Yeah.

Creeper who says, ignore me.

[Angela Christine]

Yeah, I was surprised the first time I became wanted and saw that you can tell in a sort of OOC way when you are (or aren't) wanted.  In a hyper-realistic simulation the soldiers wouldn't all forget about at the same time; the half-giants might forget after just an hour or two if no one reminds them, the others would vary with some hard-asses possibly remembering you for months after your crime, especially if you are a repeat offender.  In a hyper-realistic setting you wouldn't be able to sit in a hole and know automagically when they have given up hunting for you.

On the other hand you probably could hire some rinth kids, a begger/snoop, or a couple of your buddies to scope out the town and see if the heat is off yet.  Unfortunately, this won't work.  As far as I know, even a militia or templar PC can't tell if you are wanted just by hearing your name and description, only the NPCs know for sure.  So you can't even have your buddy bribe a militia man to tell him whether they are still looking for you.  Since these practical and IC ways of finding out are unavailable, you get that niggling little line listing all the places you are wanted.  It's a little too accurate, but better than nothing.

See, I'm not totally committed to screwing over criminal PCs.  

AC

[crymerci]

Oh, I thought of something else, not really related to how you get arrested but:

It would be nice if you could pay to retreive your weapons after being released from jail. Obviously you might not care about those 5 wavy-bladed bone daggers you 'just happened' to be carrying, but if you had a weapon with particular sentimental or other value..

Ooh, or the templarate could auction off any particularly nice pieces they accumulate over a month/year.

[Shinigami]

This is already in place, crymerci.  For the low, low (sometimes astronomically high) price of a templar's bribe you too can retrieve your father's sword from the templarate storerooms.  Just seek out a pc templar, describe what was lost, and pay the appropriate "fees".  Of course, some things do get *ahem* lost in the shuffle, and who knows... maybe the templar knew your father and has a similiar feeling towards his steel longsword.  :wink:

Also, templars are known to carry around a fair bit of confiscated items from time to time, usually selling them back to Salarri merchants. So who knows, maybe your sentimental piece of stone is still out there... somewhere.

[John]

I like ALL of these ideas for getting your weapons back. I also propose a third idea. Have a chest that the NPCs put the weapons into (without a lock). Then make a check so if any non-militia touches that chest (unless their successfully hidden) the guards say "oi! don't take that" and it gets closed again. This allows uber-skilled thieves to steal weapons from the guards (cause I imagine that room would require you to be uber-uber-uber skilled in hide) but it also allows your every day militia to get the weapons and do whatever.

I also think weapons that are uber expensive WOULDN'T be sellable back to the criminal. This is because they'd most likely be shown to a Templar.

[Bakha]

All I can say is that anyone wanting to play a successful thief, should re-examine Rindan's post. I almost hate to point it out again, because it borders on the point of explaining game mechanics and giving potential thieves' too much of an advantage. However, I think it's totally acceptable and provides a realistic and effective way to successfully get away with a crime.

Jhunter,

Your ideas are valid. However, I know that you're fairly new to the game. I would suggest that you try out some of Rindan's pointers before continuing to criticize the criminal code. I'm not convinced that you've fully grasped all of the ways that you, as a criminal PC, can realistically get away with a crime. I'm not telling you to suck it up, but I am telling you to give it some time and continue to explore the possibilities before dismissing offhand the system that is already in place.

Cheers,
Bakha