Insurance claims = temporary block to play the game

[IceFire122]

Reading about the other space game implementing a player jail, I started to think.

Currently bounties are not very good at keeping players from doing illegal things. The amounts are very low and higher amounts would encourage abuse of the system.
What if, for every remaining day of bounty validity upon a claim, the player is placed in a virtual jail for 10 min (Maximum 7 days=>70 min), before they can take off again?
This might put a stop to suiciding to get rid of the bounty and players might actually keep their bounties (and playing). Lore wise, why would a Bounty Hunter or station release a pilot from custody, simply because he has some money to his name and pays his fees?
The bounty can/should be meant as a motivation for the prosecution, but the punishment can be something more severe. Of course, the conversion rate of bounty validity days to jail time needs to be adjusted, so players actually feel the punishment but are not discouraged from continuing after jail time.
As with mission timers, custody timers would continue even when logged off.

Even with clean players, insurance claims can lead to a temporary hospitalization/doctor visit to check for any damages from the escape from certain death. Or simply, the escape pod needs time to travel back to the spawn station, which could be animated as real time flight.
In both cases, the time could depend on distance between explosion and respawn location.

What do you think? Please discuss...

 

[Shadowdancer]

One does not keep players from playing the game unless they violate the terms of service.

 

[IceFire122]

One does not keep players from playing the game unless they violate the terms of service.

What if the custody/no-flying time can be spend by different gameplay?
E.g. there could be a CQC simulator in the jail cell , which might be too severe for some.

 

[avow555]

Not too keen on this idea tbh.

 

[Scal]

That would be incredibly frustrating and very much open to abuse. It's bad enough losing a good trade route for a week because you accidentally squish a hauler with your T9. Being totally prevented from playing for an hour would actually put me off the game completely. No thanks.

 

[Fen Harel]

Interesting, but to me this seems like one of those ideas that would cause far more problems than it would solve.

 

[Raile]

A lot of people trying to find ways to punish pirates often forget that innocent people get bounties too, such as when a ship bumps you in the mail slot or you shoot an unscanned ship or skimmer that's currently firing at you, or you know, hauling the wrong cargo through the wrong sector and getting scanned.
So yes, you're not just punishing pirates and griefers, you're punishing everyone.

 

[Jmanis]

Terrible idea. At one point I had a 17m credit bounty from shipping UAs. I also had a 3m credit bounty after a protracted conflict to overthrow a target system. Why should I be blocked from the game for actually playing it??

 

[IceFire122]

Terrible idea. At one point I had a 17m credit bounty from shipping UAs. I also had a 3m credit bounty after a protracted conflict to overthrow a target system. Why should I be blocked from the game for actually playing it??

Good point, but the blockage would be limited like the current bounty timer and would only affect you, if somebody claims the bounty.

To lend another idea from the other game, there could be ways to spring players from jail by other players....

As others have mentioned, that a total flight block might be too harsh:
Instead of a flight block, one could be condemned to "community service" in a Sidewinder...

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

Plenty of other things you can do that doesn't involve denying someone the ability to play the game.

Wait to see what FD do in the coming patch (2.1 Engineers) as that will include a Crime and Punishment review.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Awesome, I love spending time in jail, cant wait to experience it in my games!

 

[Weps]

Personally I wouldn't mind the penalty, for the simple reason that it increases the challenge of being on the wrong side of the law, but thinking about the community's desires, I don't think the idea could get much traction.

Sure, it could be refined (only repeated offenders getting the virtual jail time), but the game lacks a lot of other mechanics going hand in hand with criminality for us to think that far ahead (for example the concept of jurisdiction is bypassed altogether at death, while on the flipside, crime doesn't really pay and there's no alternative to the benefits of obeying the law).

Here's a complementary idea: all online players doing jail time are placed in a special chat room which would mimic the actual jail. In this way, they can meet other criminals, share ideas and plans, create crews and so on. As soon as their time is up, players can choose to leave the chat room or remain for a while longer to finish any conversations they started.

 

[mistohise]

I see what you're trying to get at I think, but, in that respect, bounties would be better handled by more effective in-game measures rather than by pushing people out of the game.

 

[CMDR Heisenberg B. Damned]

One does not keep players from playing the game unless they violate the terms of service.

Realistically this sums it up pretty much perfectly. Stopping the player base from playing the game means no (or at least reduced) player base. That's really bad for any game.

 

[Jmanis]

Good point, but the blockage would be limited like the current bounty timer and would only affect you, if somebody claims the bounty.

To lend another idea from the other game, there could be ways to spring players from jail by other players....

As others have mentioned, that a total flight block might be too harsh:
Instead of a flight block, one could be condemned to "community service" in a Sidewinder...

Still think it's a horrid idea.

What would be much better would be that if you're bounty hits a certain level, say, over 100k credits, you get effects similar to what happens when you're hostile to a station i.e you become KOS to the security at that station, no scan required for them to open fire. That said, what's needed is a boost to operating under these conditions. Make certain (profitable) activities available only under these conditions, due to the heightened risk involved, where a "known badguy" is required to complete a task against the faction which you're hostile to/have a bounty with.

It's pretty well known that the game mechanic employed by some mobile apps where you're rewarded for "not playing the game" i.e "get bonus credits if you don't log in for 1 hour" are awful; you don't want a mechanic that encourages you to *not* play the game. Having a mechanic that *punishes* you when you play the game is even worse.

 

[Privata]

Oh I like it !
But I have to be honest I am a horrible person and I like any idea that punishes failure in games...

 

[Ginrikuzuma]

While immersive (muh immersion) I think its safe almost noone will want this myself included.


Besides both buffing crime and buffing punishment is being looked at in 2.1 like Liqua said

 

[Red Anders]

Lore wise, why would a Bounty Hunter or station release a pilot from custody, simply because he has some money to his name and pays his fees?

Presumably because bounty hunters hunt bounties, which means that they want to be paid. The lore of the game doesn't see players 'captured' by bounty hunters to begin with though.

I'm not looking to rain on your parade here but I stopped reading this at the point it became clear you're advocating players simply not being able to play the game for a period of time. Doesn't matter how long it's for, if I want to play and I can't because I'm cooling my heels in an imaginary slammer for some transgression or other, my interest level is going to wane rapidly.

Lore and 'realism' is all well and good but there's a reason games like GTA don't require you to spend 8 years in a virtual jail for vehicular manslaughter after you mow down 25 pedestrians and a couple of coppers. Generally speaking mechanics which actually prevent players from playing the game at all are not seen as A Good Thing.

 

[Tony.W]

This is a bad idea in my opinion.
FD are looking at crime/punishment in the next update, shouldn't we wait and see what they have come up with and then give ideas on how to improve whatever we get? Just my thoughts,

Fly safe Commanders

 

[Jmanis]

Lore and 'realism' is all well and good but there's a reason games like GTA don't require you to spend 8 years in a virtual jail for vehicular manslaughter after you mow down 25 pedestrians and a couple of coppers. Generally speaking mechanics which actually prevent players from playing the game at all are not seen as A Good Thing.

On an aside, in FE2, if you had a bounty over 1000cr with a major power (or Interpol = Independent) you were denied entry to all that power's stations until you paid it. Additionally, if you had even just a 0.5cr fine (usually obtained if you spent every dollar you had and couldn't pay the docking fee) and tried to request launch clearance, you'd get detained by police for attempting to evade justice and it'd be game over.

But FE2 had game saves which meant that sort of thing was instantly reversible, and so this was the good sort of "immersion" if you will.