Summary (tl;dr)
With this suggestion:- All players can now report murder to their lawful priests and MCs are applied immediately on killing a blue player, applying a persistent scaling penalty based on a player’s aggression (capped at 100).
- Priest changes allow for priests to be used by all players regardless of their murder count, instead depending on reputation.
- All players can now use Bounty Hunter so long as their nation's reputation is positive for that reputation tied to the town.
- Players with negative reputation while within the territory of that faction, are flagged Red.
How are murder counts displayed?
- An incremental scale from 0 to 100.
What do murder counts impact?
Added:
Upon death the following penalties are applied:- You lose an additional 1% health, stamina and mana reserves per murder.
- Resurrection sickness timer is increased by 1% per murder.
- The amount of reputation gained from any source is decreased by 1% per murder.
- The amount of reputation lost from any source is increased by 1% per murder.
Removed:
- Unable to resurrect at blue priests
- Unable to report for murder
How are murder counts applied?
Murder counts are applied immediately for finishing off a blue (innocent) player, at the point of death and regardless of report.How do murder reports work?
All players can now use town (blue) priests, so long as their reputation with that nation is above 0. The logic behind this change is that because everyone can now use blue priests and report murder in this way, the reputation between players will now be more of a consideration for murdering within a lawful region - see Lawlessness below.Priest & Faction check
Upon death, your position is checked against the nearest priest. If that priest is a blue town priest, the server will record the faction you are eligible to report a murder to and you can either home, nearest priest, or run to a priest of that faction and report the other player for murder.The reported player will lose a base amount of reputation dependent on your reputation state (Disliked 1x, Tolerated 2x, Admired 3x etc.). This affords greater protection to blue players in their chosen home region, who will naturally have higher reputation.
| Murder Count | Disliked (1x) | Tolerated (2x) | Admired (3x) |
| 0 (0%) | -1 | -2 | -3 |
| 25 (+25%) | -1.25 | -2.5 | -3.75 |
| 50 (+50%) | -1.5 | -3 | -4.5 |
| 100 (100%) | -2 | -4 | -6 |
Lawlessness
In areas where the nearest priest is a red priest, these are considered Lawless areas. You will still receive a murder count for killing a Blue player in these areas but you will not lose reputation with any nation. Alternatively do the opposite and give Blue towns a "radius" of protection around them that if you go to far, becomes lawless.
Lawful Areas
Within Lawful areas, negative reputation players toward that controlling nation are labelled as Red.Access to Bounty Hunter
Bounty Hunting is now faction specific as you can only pick up a bounty from factions where you are positively standing with them. Anyone below 0 standing with that faction will be eligible as a target when picking up a bounty.Additionally, with this method of using reputation, the mechanic could prioritise short distance targets over long distance ones as preferred by the community, given the nation would be more interested in you dealing with their problems in their territory
Thursar with positive Risar Horde standing, should also be able to pick up bounties from the Risar Horde, targeting the Risar’s enemies.
Why remove blue priest/murder protection?
Even if you as a player are trying your hardest to remain blue (<5 MCs) in order to use town’s fully, on occasion and due to the limitations of flagging, you might receive the odd murder count. This is why scaling penalties based on murder count serve a better role than outright threshold restrictions. It means that OK, you engage in a fight where you get a few murder counts on the side, the penalties for a few murder counts vs many aren’t as punishing and unlike now, don’t outright prevent you from using blue priests or reporting murders. Additionally, the MC penalties suggested here focus on death/criminal mechanics so as a lawful blue player not engaging with these as frequently, these MCs won’t be felt nearly as bad as they are now in game.The world has many different regions and factions. This is an interesting benefit of the setting of the game. The map is also large enough to encourage living out of specific areas of the map. With this in mind, reputation is able to play a larger role in the restriction of lawful and lawless combat. Allowing players that do partake in lawless activity access to their nation’s priest’s, ensures blue town’s stay relevant and used into the future and also enables nation conflicts to naturally form.
Further to this, by allowing all players to resurrect in town, players will be more concerned with their preferred nation’s reputation, therefore less likely to RPK other blue players close to home who, like them, are more than likely allied with that nation too. ARPK/Militias will additionally feel more empowered to play within their preferred territory.
With the introduction of lawless areas, travelling far enough away from civilization ensures that all players run a greater risk through travelling the world. This has a number of benefits outside of the obvious changes to MC, including encouraging players to group up for protection. While MC penalties are still applied even in Lawless areas, rep loss however and therefore town access, is protected for those willing to assault other players.
Alternative naming for murder counts: Spirit Wounds
"A spirit wound is an ethereal tear in the fabric of one's spirit after performing an act that the spirit cannot bear. A spirit wound directly impacts the spirit's ability to return to the physical world and that of the amount of lifeforce a priest is able to impart."Other benefits & considerations
- Endlessly priest camping players at red priests is discouraged due to application of murder counts at point of death.
- All players can now engage with bounties so long as their rep is good with the town’s faction that provides it.
- Murder counts primarily only impact you as a result of you yourself dying or engaging in criminal activities. This makes accidental murder counts by typically blue players not feel as punishing.
- It doesn’t restrict players from utilising blue towns fully which need to remain relevant in their usage to prevent them becoming sparse as player towns emerge.
- Races that benefit from high rep caps with their nations are incentivised to live out of their nation’s territory.
- Using distance checks to the statically placed blue and red priests means that strict lawful and lawless areas don’t necessarily need to be defined.
- The guild war system can still use MC as a determining threshold.
- By showing blue players the red nametag of players within lawful areas, they have an early indication of threat toward them and can choose to flee or at least engage with the target first to give them an opening advantage. This is a current flaw with the current system that this approach solves.
Steps to implement:
- Change blue priests' check from murder count to reputation > 0 with that priest’s nation.
- Set murder count cap at 100.
- Implement scaling penalties per murder count.
- Set murder counts to automatically be applied upon killing a blue player.
- On death do a distance check to the nearest static Blue or Red Priest. If Blue priest, save the priest’s nation against the player data, allow the player to then enact a report to any priest of that nation.
- Apply rep loss on murder report at priest scaling the amount based on the player’s reputation with the nation and the enemy player’s MC penalty.
- Allow anyone to pick up a bounty so long as they are > 0 rep with that nation.
- Add a periodic client side distance check to nearby static priests which under the compass displays a Lawful or Lawless indicator, based on the distance checks to blue priests (towns essentially).
- Set negative rep players to Red Flag for all other players, when they enter a lawful area for which they have a negative reputation toward the controlling nation.
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