Proposal
Notoriety should feel more immersive and provide real but also manageable risks to negative rep players. The goal of this suggestion is to make notoriety more punishing for negative rep players, but harder to gain and easier to lose. In the process, the goal is to provide some protection for positive rep players that are not seeking fights.
TL;DR: Notoriety shouldn’t be a punishment for bad rep players. It should be a protection for peaceful or good rep players.
Details/background on your proposal
Gaining Notoriety
You will only gain notoriety in cities and other inhabited areas on populated islands. You will not gain notoriety outside of these areas. For example, you will not gain notoriety in the Shining Plains or in Sameria’s desert regions.
- Notoriety gain rate increased.
Town Guards
Every populated town or other inhabited area will have guards similar to Ravenna. When a crime is committed in a populated area and you have 1 or more notoriety, guards spawn around the criminal and aggro onto them. They will not aggro onto high notoriety players, but the higher your notoriety, the faster stronger guards appear. Attacking a player more than once in a town will immediately raise notoriety to 1 star.
Guards at different towns:
- Redwake: Redwake Warriors
- Frostmill: Ravennan Soldiers
- Palo Town: Grand Navy
- Sailor’s Lodge: Sailors
- Sameria: Samerian Soldiers
If the player is out of combat from the guards for 1 minute, the guards will lose aggro. After 1 additional minute, they will despawn. Guards will only pursue players a short distance out of town and will despawn if they stay out of town for 1 minute.
Grand Navy ships, meanwhile, will only spawn on you if you are on the open sea. They will not spawn while you are at islands.
These town guards might seem negligible to strong bad rep players, but by interfering in assassinations, they will serve as a sort of protection for players minding their own business who will have a better chance of fighting back.
Losing Notoriety
You will rapidly lose notoriety outside of these populated areas. Grand Navy ships will only spawn on you outside of populated areas if you have 3 or more stars of notoriety, as is the case for unpopulated islands right now.
Reason to add/change
Flaws with the current notoriety system:
- Its effects will only be felt a long time after the crimes are committed.
- It doesn’t protect good reps.
- It’s too oppressive for bad reps at higher notoriety, essentially punishing them for just playing the game.
The aim of these changes is to improve the assassination system. The goal is to force assassins to finish off their targets quickly, and to discourage long fights or chases in towns. This will benefit peaceful players.
As a minor adjustment, you should gain almost no notoriety from stealing cargo with this system.
On the other hand, bad rep players can now freely play the game without having to face grand navy npcs at any random time or constantly reset their notoriety.