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Okay, this is the other half to my virtue system. I know that this
system is complex, but so is human behavior. It would also take a while to implement,
but I've made it through beta, server crashes, notoriety wipes, and massive
bug exploitation. I can wait for these types of changes...
First, scrap notoriety. The idea that murder, theft, generosity, and being
a delivery boy can all be tracked by a single variable seems a bit far-fetched.
Then you throw in the complexities of human behavior and the fact that no computer
can make a good judgement on whether a player is willing handing over his gold
or if he is doing so to save his skin, and you can understand exactly why I
have so strongly disliked this system since day one.
At the same time, a world like Ultima Online could not exist without some type
of system in place to promote good behavior while punishing bad. My virtue system
is intended to promote the good behavior. My justice system is designed to punish
the bad.
Judges
First and foremost in my system are the player Judges. These are players
who have completed the Justice quest. As part of my virtue system (which needs
to be updated), some of the virtue quests are going to require that you have
completed other quests and have positive action values (I'll explain action
values below). In the case of the Justice quest, ALL action values must
be positive, and you must complete the Honesty and Honor quests before being
able to undertake this quest. This will keep out the majority of people
who would abuse the powers of Judge.
Next, Judges have some serious restrions placed on them (this is the part of
the virtue system that needs to be reworked). Judges have the ability to brand
criminals, but they must see the crime being committed as determined by a criminal
flag. A Judge who attempts to brand someone who has not committed a crime
is immediately stripped of his power. The only players a Judge can attack
are those who have an active criminal flag, but if a judge brands a criminal,
it turns off their criminal flag for that crime. Also, if a judge attacks a
player, he cannot brand them for fifteen minutes real-time. This keeps
Judges from double-penalizing players, but at the same time allows a Judge (or
eventual Avatar) to defend his allies and punish evil-doers.
Criminal Flags
This is very similiar to the crime flag that is already present, with simply
some detail added. Each neagtive action is given a flag, and each flag has a
length that varies depending on the crime. Players who commit crimes against
flagged players are NOT flagged. Players with active flags CANNOT call guards,
and even if the guards see the player with the flag being attacked, they will
not aid them. A thief who is seen stealing in town could have a mob attack him.
A would-be killer cannot run to the safety of guard protection to avoid his
intended victim's wrath. Some suggestions on time for flags:
| Snooping/Looting (not tracked) |
5 minutes |
| Stealing |
10 minutes |
| Attacking / Provoking good |
15 minutes |
| Corpse mutilitation |
15 minutes |
| Murder |
30 minutes
|
Action Points
A computer can track a single action, or a pair of opposite actions effectively
using action points. One of the major failings of notoriety was attempting
to lump all the bad and good player actions into one variable. Killing criminals
and killing innocents can be tracked by a single positive-negative value. So
can theft/generosity, attacking innocents/being helpful, and healing people/destroying
corpses. This creates four areas of actions for the system to track, and every
time you perform one of the acts, you move one point either way on the scale.
However, the only purpose in tracking these is determining whether or not a
player qualifies to undertake a virtue quest. A murderer who has never
been caught should not be able to undertake the quest of Compassion. A highly
successful thief who has gone unbranded is not a good candidate for Honesty.
The citizens of Sosaria might not know of your crimes, but they are in your
soul, and the Shrines of Virtue see that soul.
Elected Officials
Then, we get player governments involved. right now the biggest advantage the
bad guys have is superior organization. By creating player elected positions,
we not only start organizing the good guys, but we start creating a sense of
community amongst the players.
The first step in having elections is that players need to declare citizenship
in a town. They can do this simply by going to the town hall or counselor's
guild and declaring themselves. They can only change citizenship once per month,
which coincidentally, is how often we should hold elections. A players
citizenship, or lack of, should show on their paperdoll (ie. Elawyn of Yew,
Calandryll of Trinsic).
Next, we have the different positions. There cannot be a single player in any
position within the government due to the fact that players have real lives
outside UO ('Tis unfortunate. I know). Each town needs councilmen, sherrifs,
and justices of the peace.
The councilmen are involved in giving people a place to lodge complaints and
to help the new or inexperienced members of the community. They also serve
as advisors in trials and as a check on the justices of the peace and the sherrifs
by informing the people when they believe a justice or sherrif to be corrupt.
They are paid a 2500gp / term (month) salary for their duties.
Sherrifs are given the task of organizing bands of heroes to track down known
criminals and bring them to trial. If a band of highwaymen are terrorizing
travelers, they go out and CAPTURE the felons. To do this, they are given a
badge that teleports people with active criminal flags OR negative action
points in at least one category back to the city prison for trial. Use
of the badge is not automatic. First, the sherriff has to target the fugitive.
Then the villian must be brough to 0 hit points, but he won't die, instead this
is the point at which he is teleported. If the sherriff dies, or the villian
can get out of range, the badge ceases to target him. Also, a sherriff
cannot target more than one villian. Once a villian has been taken prisoner,
if a justice of the peace doesn't start the trial within five minutes, the prisoner
is automatically set free and all criminal flags are set to off. Sherriff's
are paid 1500gp / term.
Finally, the justices of the peace are Judges, and required to have completed
that quest, but with the ability to brand captured prisoners even if they didn't
witness the crime. They also start trials by double-clicking on prisoners in
jail. This teleports them, the prisoner, any people near the justice to the
courtroom. During the trial, the prisoner is paralyzed, but can speak.
The justice listens to any witnesses, the advice of his councilmen, and the
prisoner before passing sentence. If the justice decides to brand the prisoner,
the prisoner is exiled (teleported outside of town) and is branded a felon.
Like branded murderers, branded felons are killed on-site by guards until the
complete a redemption quest to remove the brand. Justices of the peace are paid
1500gp/term.
Because the officials are elected by players, it will be difficult for unknowns
(possible throw-away chars) or known criminals to be elected. And if a corrupt
official (I know, corrupt officials are completely unrealistic *grin*) does
get elected, he most likely won't be re-elected as the citizens of a town will
actively inform everyone else in the town about the corrupt player. (Xavori
the Sherrif of Vesper will most likely never happen...) Plus, no one official
has enough power by himself to cause too much havoc. Sherrifs cannot brand people,
justices cannot capture people, and council members cannot do either. The salary
is a decent incentive for people to want to be an official, but it is not so
high as to be the sole motivator (I can earn much more gold than that in a couple
hours without killing people, even more if people refuse to surrender).
The Avatars
As the embodiment of Virtue, Avatars have demonstrated a strong sense of right
and wrong. They are also given special abilities on top of all the virtue bonuses
to help them defend the weak and punish the wrong.
First, Avatars can "see" active criminal flags. This can be done
simply by making people with the flags glow a different color depending on which
flag is active. Snooping glows yellow, stealing brown, attacking orange, corpse
mutilation dark green, and murder red. Next, by opening the paperdoll, they
can see any negative action scores a player has. Simply place colored squares
near his name that go with the action scores using the same color scheme as
the crime flags.
Using these abilities, an Avatar should be able to effectively protect the
innocent from criminals and warn others when someone with less than an honorable
past is around.
Summary
Like I said at the beginning, this is a complex system and would take some time
to implement. However, I feel it would be much more effective than the current
band-aid, catch-all notoriety system we are currently using (or exploiting depending
on your point of view). Also, a whole lot of peoples ideas and comments to me
and the message boards went into this (I'm actually going to put up a seperate
credits page). As always, comments and criticism are highly encouraaged.
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Stratics Central
