Criminal ratings

Very simple system inspired by/ripped from Elite.

Three criminal ratings:

* Clean -- You've committed no crimes. Good player. Everyone starts this way, pure as a mountain breeze.
* Offender -- Oh no! You broke a (minor) law. Now you must pay. Pay a fine, do community service (ie, kill N mobs but you get no exp), or wait out a short stint in jail. Or if you avoid capture long enough, you'll go back to clean.
* Fugitive -- Horrors! You've done something heinous (or committed too many small crimes). Either pay a big fine or spend a long time in jail or we'll hunt you to the ends of the earth.

I am thinking of crimes defined in the game world -- such as not repaying a loan on time (see below) or murder (when PvP comes out) -- not KSing, stealing from trades, etc (can we not start that discussion again?).

Enforcement is obviously by the guards in and around Stoneglow. They take no action against offenders -- players turn themselves in voluntarily. But they will attack fugitives on site (when they kill you you are caught and given your choice of how to pay your dues as well as suffering the usual stat/exp loss of death). Whatever your status, once you have taken your punishment you become clean again.

If you kill guards your rap sheet grows longer and your 'bounty' increases.

This suggests bounty hunters. Yep, in PvP if you kill a fugitive this is not murder, you get a reward! And the fugitive is still a fugitive. Let this be a lesson kids: crime doesn't pay.

If you're a bigtime fugitive (say a dozen murders under your belt) the guards will come looking for you (ie, they appear in a dungeon and attack you and only you).

Criminal status affects your dealings with NPCs:

* Shop -- While you're an offender or fugitive the shop won't have anything to do with you.
* Church -- While you're a fugitive the priest won't have anything to do with you.
* Bank -- While you're an offender you can't get a loan (see below). While you're a fugitive you're account is frozen too so no interest (see below), deposits, or withdrawals.

Anyway, with that explained...

How about making the bank more banklike by having a simple system to borrow money and get interest on your savings?

Loans

When clean, you can take out a loan of up to 5x your balance. This must be repaid with interest by a certain time or you becomes an offender (or possibly a fugitive if you've already offended). The interest is calculated according to your Cha at the time you take out the loan.

Interest

If not a fugitive, over time you get interest on the cash you have in the bank. This shouldn't really be affected by Cha but because it's a game maybe it should be.

Note on time -- Time is real time. This is so players in jail can always log out rather than have to sit there online doing nothing but pressing a button every few minutes to prevent being kicked. Maybe, though, time could take three or four times as long while the player's offline to encourage people to actually play.

Cna we get some of their treasure for killin em? Otherwise y would anyone killl anyone in the first place?

just a thought on your loan idea. what is to stop a person from making many new characters and giving all the money they have made on their main character to them one at a time to get 5x loans, each time the loan rising at an exponential rate due to gold of the pervious loans?  then they could just scrap the characters they made to get the loans, never having to pay the bill. money would cease to have value in the game.
you have to think like a criminal to beat the criminals. :D

@Kime, good point. Damn good point. Damn. Damn!

@Bob, presumably there'd be no need for loans then as players could simply dig up the pot of gold at the end of their personal reputation rainbow. Or is that just silly now?

A few quick suggestions:

Loans: to make for kime's damn good point, maybe loans should only be available to people that complete certain quests or characters that have some time in the game. Treat this as a "loans only for long time accountants". Maybe loans could only be given to people who have and "indication" of town authorities. Another idea, and a damn good but more complex one is that the bank could only loan the money that it has... and that's the people's accounts money. When the debt is paid (with the normal bank plusses, like real world), the "money" of the bank increases. So if many people get loans and don't pay... the bank could be broken AND your money there would be unretrievable until the debts get paid. This could be a nice "quest", retrieving debtors and making them pay... to save YOUR money. This option works better with PvP reality.

Interest: could be based in a percentage of the banks earning with loans.

PvP: now comes my interesting idea: Citizenship Status. Everyone starts as a citizen (and, in the case of a reputation system, with a neutral reputation). As you play, complete quests and gain "reputation", it will affect you in many interesting ways. One of them is the NATURE of the crime of killing you. If you are a citizen, killing you is nonetheless a crime and if the perpetrator doesn't turn itself to the jail soon, he becomes a fugitive and loses citizenship status. A fugitive could be killed without any penalty. Besides, killing inside the town would always be a crime, and the penalty is jailing, death AND confiscation of goods and money. Besides there could be an "Call the Guards" option like in UO for citizens. Quests could arise if criminal hunts and bouties could be issued for the "head" of a long time perpetrator. If the rules for dying are made harsher, being killed by your crimes would be EVEN harsher and undesirable. Another idea is making PKing only possible in certain deep wilderness areas. If you go there, be advised. These ideas work well with the reputation system i've suggested.

what do you think?

Interesting.  Just a note though, maybe the church should not turn away a fugitive.  Could they not offer them santuary?

Just a thought.

[Edit] sorry about the double post, stupid dial up.....moderator please delete!

I think a murder charge should only apply to say....A 110 player killing a much lower level. Say if like Igontin were to come and kill me. That would be overkill...just plain wrong.

I think PvP should only be allowed with like level people- say I am level 54 - I can only fight levels 45-65 or something.

I wish it were possible to kill NPCs. I know it wouldn't be feasible, but I want to kill the church priest just once.