CRIMINALS CODES

[mansa]

Hey,

Recently, I heard a story of a player who did activity that they didn't think would get them wanted, and got wanted and eventually killed by soldiers, and I was thinking about the whole series of event that happened.  My hope is to give suggestions to the game to make it more easily understood to the players the criminal code

To start:
A) Pausing an activity, forcing input from the player to confirm that they want to do criminal activity.
- This suggested was turned down because players in Discord said they didn't want to keep typing 'steal - yes - pick lock - yes'.  Rather than confirmation of activity, have a nosave criminal flag that would prevent ALL activity that would cause you to get wanted.   Autodefault on.
This would force players to turn it off.   Forcing players to turn it off is accepting all risks of all future commands.

b) Making the echo that you get criminal flagged 'bigger' and more noticable.
- BOLD, all caps, 'YOU ARE WANTED!'
Some people suggested the BEEP command, but I appreciate that the BEEP command is used only for character deaths.

c) Have soldiers act differently, rather than running into a room to kill you.
This one is tricky:
soldiers should have mercy on
soldiers should have clubs
soldiers should act differently once you're ko'd

- surrender command:
drop your weapons, opponent sheathes theirs, combat stops, you become subdued
force some nosave flags to be turned on.   forces you into a LONG LAG for coded commands too, so you can't just surrender and then flee.

What ifs?
soldiers could be bribed?  (that could also be in jail)
a ranking of crimes, different jails for different crimes


d) letting the player know that they are criminal flagged after the fact 'better'
- [if wanted status is known to player]
Wanted status in Prompt, NPC Merchants saying, 'I don't sell to criminals', random echos of vnpcs shying away from you.
Rahnevyn - "Have NPC soldiers way you to get you to submit." - I dislike this idea but i'm putting it in anyways.


Is there any other ideas or suggestions that we could put forth about the criminal code?

[surveyvon]

c) Have soldiers act differently, rather than running into a room to kill you.
This one is tricky:
soldiers should have mercy on
soldiers should have clubs
soldiers should act differently once you're ko'd

I have seen this behavior in game multiple times, and I quite like it. It might be the case that not all NPCs follow this behavior, but it felt very fitting when they did.

+1 for the surrender command.

[Rogerthat]

c) Have soldiers act differently, rather than running into a room to kill you.
This one is tricky:
soldiers should have mercy on
soldiers should have clubs
soldiers should act differently once you're ko'd


I think soldiers should act different for petty crimes. The crime which I was killed for was because I was subduing a criminal and NPC soldiers didn't know if I was helping the criminal or taking him to the soldiers. I think they should act differently just as do the NPC's do at the gates when you smuggle shit in. Ive had to pay coins when I got caught before.

[WanderingOoze]

I suggest removing it completely.

[BadSkeelz]

I've suggested removing it completely before as well, but the fact is you need some automated law enforcement in order to keep the game from becoming a complete hack and slash.

https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,49826.msg901059.html#msg901059

I do think it should be made much less prevalent (where getting mugged in daylight on a street is an actual risk) and less invariably lethal when it is executed by NPC soldiers. Suggestion C has my full backing.

There was a discussion in the discord about the prevalence of VNPC soldiers and how they could be dealt with. One suggestion I really liked was the introduction of a command that would let you know what kind of reaction you might expect in a given room.

"Vermilion Zelda"/Blue Alice - Today at 5:59 PM
With the idea of making it clearer how many npcs are around, maybe to reduce spam there could be code to group npc lines like there is for multiple loaves of bread etc "You notice there's more than a couple of soldiers wandering past in the crowd." etc

I would really like to see something like this added, combined with a reduction of soldiers. Let criminals know when they might hazard a crime during the day, and given soldier PCs something to play against. I would also like to see the Byn and others hired for bodyguard work and less reliant on an omnipresent, infalliable, ultralethal hit squad. This would extend to the bodyguards themselves not having to get incriminated for doing their jobs. Maybe it can be a perk purhcased from the templarate and bestowed by a medallion or other item?

Also remove all half giant NPC guards except from strategic locations.

[Delirium]

remove all half giant NPC guards except from strategic locations.

yes, yes, yes and yes again.

also no more templars toting around half-giant NPC soldiers. You're a goddamn warrior mage, stop adding HGs on top of it that never mess up or become a liability or babble information they're not supposed to, etc etc etc.

[Inks]

remove all half giant NPC guards except from strategic locations.

yes, yes, yes and yes again.

also no more templars toting around half-giant NPC soldiers. You're a goddamn warrior mage, stop adding HGs on top of it that never mess up or become a liability or babble information they're not supposed to, etc etc etc.

This, a thousand times this.

[Bushranger]

I do think that people have a point about less Half-Giant guards. Gates and Temple I can understand but wandering around on their own whacking minor peek pockets is overkill.

[Hauwke]

Honestly, other than the issue of crimcode on them, I dont get why people dont use PC's as guards.

You are a noble and have two or whatever slots for an aide, fabulous! One for an aide, one for a guard.

Templar? You have soldiers who can be told to stand near you, they dont even need to worry about crimcode affecting them.

[Riev]

As it DOES relate to crim code, nobles can't have PC Guards because Noble Guards are technically immune to criminal code. It would make a non-AoD PC capable of incriminating, or at least killing without consequence.

Less Half-giants the better. Up the stats a little on human guards, or at least their ranges, if you feel the need.

Also, less soldiers summoning TEMP soldiers from the aether. If a rat gets attacked and soldiers intervene, they call in the whole fucking cavalry.

[Brokkr]

If there are noble NPC guards that are immune to crim code it is because they have been clanned incorrectly.  Please bring which ones you think this is the case for to our attention.

[sleepyhead]

Yeah noble NPC guards are not crimcode immune. At all.

[najdorf]

Mansa are you suggesting something similar to below?
I think the issue is always "nosave off", cause I often intend to do that, and I bet others too.
How about if nosave arrest is split from nosave off, meaning that nosave off will say "You are now attempting all saving throws, except arrest."
And for arrest, you'd have to specifically type nosave arrest.

[Riev]

If there are noble NPC guards that are immune to crim code it is because they have been clanned incorrectly.  Please bring which ones you think this is the case for to our attention.

Then this has been a change without informing the playerbase, because staff have mentioned before that this is why PC Noble Guards are not possible, due to too much confusion with crim-code.

[sleepyhead]

I played a noble years ago and they told me my guard couldn't be crimcode immune because I wasn't a templar. I could not order it to do anything illegal anyway (kill/subdue/any combat starter)

[sleepyhead]

Believe me, I wish nobles and their guards could have crimcode immunity. Not to act like templars, but just so rando commoners don't act like nobles are not really scary because they can't codedly do anything to you by themselves.

[mansa]

Mansa are you suggesting something similar to below?
I think the issue is always "nosave off", cause I often intend to do that, and I bet others too.
How about if nosave arrest is split from nosave off, meaning that nosave off will say "You are now attempting all saving throws, except arrest."
And for arrest, you'd have to specifically type nosave arrest.

No.
The idea was to tell the player that <action> would give you a criminal flag, -before- you attempt to do the action.

The problem was that someone did something they didn't believe would get them wanted.  How do you modify the system that could do that?

Aka, when your Dungeon Master says, "are you sure you want to do that?"

[BadSkeelz]

I wouldn't like a system where you need to confirm a criminal action because sometimes time is of the essence. At best it would be an irritating step.

[Riev]

I think the ORIGINAL issue could simply be solved by subdue checking whether or not the target is wanted and, if so, returning a Confirmation if Tribes doesn't return Servants of the Dragon.

[mansa]

I wouldn't like a system where you need to confirm a criminal action because sometimes time is of the essence. At best it would be an irritating step.

That was the resolution of the conversation.  Rather than confirmation of action it would rather be a flag that prevents all actions.  You can opt out.  Nosave Criminal

[Eyeball]

I do think it should be made much less prevalent (where getting mugged in daylight on a street is an actual risk)

A nightmare for new characters (who are obviously easy marks). And likely to discourage people in general from going out into the city and moving about.

[chrisdcoulombe]

There are places people can be mugged.  If common sense is used, its best to use the guise of darkness, but there are places.  I agree with the punishment being uber murder ganks squad being out of hand for stuff, but alot of that is already fixed in Allanak crim code.  Of course there is still the other places.

[Fathi]

I'm kind of torn on this. On one hand I don't like the current crime code setup very much and I do think we'd benefit from fewer half-giant guards running around.

On the other hand the human soldiers are reeaaally not that tough and I worry that a lack of half-giants would lead to some silliness. It wouldn't take much for any old dwarf warrior to run around slaughtering soldiers left and right with the right stat roll and a few days of training.

Some years ago I played a character who was warrior guild but hadn't been around that long. Stats were OK, nothing special. At about the 12 days of playtime mark I got crimflagged accidentally due to a guarding/subduing snafu. I was told to flee out of the room so the templar involved could try to fix things. I fled and a bunch of soldiers chased me. This was in the days before you could nosave_combat and not attack back.

I killed TWO OF THOSE DUDES before a staff member pardoned me and my PC wasn't even close to dead. 

I'm not sure it makes sense to have the human soldiers be that weak, so maybe that's why all the half-giants were added. I'd like to think there's a middle ground somewhere between "most warriors can cut through human soldiers like butter" and "instant death by giant squad" though.

I'd really appreciate it if there was a tiered system for criminal flagging for different offenses. Something like:

tier 1
pickpocketing/theft
picking locks
spice

tier 2
assault
murder
illegal literacy (wouldn't be kill on sight because they'd want to find out how you knew!)

tier 3
magick use
defiling/gathering

Where if you were a tier 1 criminal the soldiers would chase you out of the immediate vicinity but not very far. Tier 2 they'd chase you until they could arrest you with primary intent to subdue. Tier 3 they would try to kill you unless you had nosave on.

This is a really badly thought out spur of the moment sketch of how it'd work, but that'd be my preferred general idea. Less adjustment of what type of NPCs and more adjustment of how severe they'd treat your crime based on what you actually did.

[CodeMaster]

At about the 12 days of playtime mark I got crimflagged accidentally (...) I killed TWO OF THOSE DUDES before a staff member pardoned me and my PC wasn't even close to dead. 

I can understand the sentiment - maybe they should be smarter.  But 12 days is a lot! That's almost 300 hours of playing the game.  I say you should be able to give the soldiers some grief, have a fighting chance if you decide to be the villain, etc.

I remember back in the late 90s if you made it to 10 days with a warrior then you'd "made" it.  Might have had something to do with people not being able to view their skill levels.

[Feco]

remove all half giant NPC guards except from strategic locations.

yes, yes, yes and yes again.

also no more templars toting around half-giant NPC soldiers. You're a goddamn warrior mage, stop adding HGs on top of it that never mess up or become a liability or babble information they're not supposed to, etc etc etc.