haha mine is bigger
Player Jail Times Should Be Scrapped As A Mechanic
effort
2.833333333333333
12
quality
3.2
10
reasonability
3.0
19
I’ve been trying to think of a way to replace/change the entire jail mechanic without making outright gone that isn’t just a time reduction (because there ain’t no vetex is scrapping it outright no matter how much we ask) and i think i finally came up with an alright compromise:
Instead of removing jail sentences… Why not make them optional?
- Dying under the execution threshold puts a prompt on your death screen stating “The navy captured you. Your sentence is [x minutes], but you could escape unnoticed…” and allowing you to chose to serve your time or make a run for it offscreen
- Dying over the treshold does the same, but instead you get to pick between “accept your fate” and “stall for time”, the first choice sending you right to palo town to get shanked, and the second one giving you the prison time
- Choosing to skip would have a specific cost (Galleons? Bounty? Locked access to criminal shops/cargo theft for a period of time? Not getting a notoriety reset?)
- Skipping is completely free if the navy influence is low enough for Silverhold to be abandonned, giving villains a reason to go for it besides just the title and bragging rights.
Ofc the entire renown thing needs to be reworked enough that people have more of an incentive to go villain besides RP, and the skip could probably also cost you access to whatever that incentive is if dying becomes just a slap on the wrist for criminals
This retains jail as a mechanic for the people willing to engage with it, turns a “Oops, you lost, pain upon ye” punishement into a “Do i accept wasting time to make my death less costly, or do i accept a heftier price to get right back to it” choice, retains the execution mechanic and ability to prevent it, and gives both the navy and villain characters an actual reason to fight over influence besides just silverhold, while also giving people who’d really just rather face anything but jail an out.
This is very much a bandaid fix on the broken discrepency between heroes and villains, as even with this put in place, villains would be at a disadvantage, and probably has to be implemented alongside other fixes to the renown/wanted system.
2 Likes
this is.
what I said.
originally.
I like that you glossed over literally every aspect of my post (having a cost, still allowing you to do jail if wanted etc) to pretend this was exactly what you meant in your first post.
it was not.
because having a cost is just another disadvantage on the already gigantic pile negative reps have to deal with?
1000 extra galleons per death, yay!!!
This cost also means people could still be forced to wait out the timer if they were low on money, completely defeating the purpose.
The idea is: Everybody who has delt with the jail system hates it and nobody should be forced to sit and do nothing.
Nobody and I mean nobody clicked “play” to sit in a box and wait for a timer to run down.
Who wants to sit in a box and do nothing in the exploration game?
Genuinely. Tell me who would EVER choose or want to be in jail.
I am convinced at this point that you can’t read. I have helpfully provided emphasis to help your illiterate ass.
People who wish to avoid the aforementioned cost or who have friends on standby for a break-out?
That’s fair, good point. Might want to make the skip free for low level/low bounty players, or if you’re outright unable to pay it.
This could work but if the cost is too expensive than everyone would rather wait it out despite it being incredibly boring. If the cost doesn’t exist than everyone would skip the execution other than in specific circumstances, which begs the question as to why jail time exists in the first place.
Galleons and bounty are a bad idea for a punishment as those would encourage waiting it out, which is objectively more boring. And like I said earlier if the amount lost is small then it might as well not exist, thereby making jail time useless.
Locking access to criminal shops and NPC’s and stuff is a bad idea, but maybe it has some merit? I don’t like to immediately write off ideas, but if you like this idea then I would encourage expanding on it, since it seems a bit awkward.
No notoriety reset is an interesting idea. It would only work if notoriety was reworked first of all, but if notoriety could be leveraged as a positive in some way then that might be an interesting tradeoff. There’s still an issue which is that if you want to reset your notoriety, which in this change would be a viable option, you have to wait 10 minutes which is stupid. Unless if jail had some sort of benefit to it, so it’s not just 10 minutes of waiting…
If this is your point then why not work on those other fixes to the renown/wanted system before throwing more trash at villains.
Oh yeah no it’d absolutely be a fine balancing act, and i’m absolutely not gonna be the one to find the right middle ground, which is why i didn’t say what the cost should be and only listed ideas of what it could be without specific numbers.
I don’t think anyone could find what the right cost/penalty for skipping could be without first reworking the entire crime/hero system, tbh. This is just an idea.
This is a question that has no short answer but the tl;dr is “I am not a dev and got no clue on how to fix the hot mess that is that system but i know vetex is stubborn as hell when it comes to changing game mechanics so this could be a temporary fix/a fix out of many simultaneous fixes”
Finding the correct penalty could work, but if it was perfect (which would be the average amount of galleons you could obtain in 10 minutes) then your decision wouldn’t matter. Also a galleon or bounty penalty is really boring and even if it was balanced correctly, there are still better and more fun options.
the most fun option being not needing to deal with the bullshit in the first place.
hence why nearly every player is a hero.
or alternatively, could suggest to have syndicate members kidnap positive rep players for ransom just to see how much positive reps hate the idea when its thrown in their direction lol.
Legit? Yeah. One of the many issues with the system is that only half the playerbase has to deal with it which does cause a crapton of bias.
That and ATM assasins are just regular criminals with bonus cloaks which is boring as hell.
like I said, I almost wish heroes had to deal with an identical system because I am near certain they’d end up agreeing with its removal after experiencing the frustration first hand.
also yes. completely.
I just hope whatever is done with them doesn’t make them identical to the Arcane Govern- I mean Grand Navy.
Villian is unplayable by yourself
bad idea, being unable to be hunted for 10 minutes after death means u can just reset
I still don’t understand how these people keep making middle grounds when the concept of prison time has literally 0 redeeming qualities or potential to be a fun and interactive mechanic.
no matter how you shape it, its forcing the player to do something they didn’t want to do.
let it be waiting, playing minigames, combat, or going through an escape sequence.
if they were forced into it against their will then they aren’t going to enjoy it.
the goal stops being to have fun (the entire purpose of games), and starts being to get it over with.
I have never bed repped however as a dude who was addicted to WoM I really do feel like doing what WoM did and have bounty be an indicator of how much you were wanted would fix this heavily as then Jail would be more justified and rarer, and made jailbreaking idiots more fun as it’s rarer. Hell why can’t jailbreaks in AO feel more like jailbreaks and not just “nuke the city”? THen again so was the silent tower.
truth be told I don’t really know what you mean by any of this.
your bounty does determine how much bounty hunters want to kill you.
your notoriety (obtained from doing anything as a villain) determines how badly the navy wants to kill you.
I mean like seperating rep and bounty like in WOM since fame and bounty replaces the rep system. Basically you get jailed based off of notoriety and stuff.