Age of Conan - PvP Bounty/Prison System

G4's The MMO Report has interviewed Jason Stone in the latest video broadcast. In it, Jason Stone tells that he has designed a PvP bounty/prison system to be implemented as part of Funcom's launch plan for Age of Conan. Below is a written description of the system:

According to Jason Stone on today's MMO Report, he's designed this very elaborate "prison system" that is AoC's take on anti-griefing, and it will be implemented fairly soon because it's essentially done and was part of the "launch plan" for the game.

In essence, it specifically targets griefers with a "bounty system" coupled with a "prison sentence".

Griefing would essentially be repeat kills of a player that provides no challenge. For example, repeatedly killing a player much lower level than you who has no chance at all to win against you (so some type of level differential). It would also encompass something like too many successive kills in a row or timeframe (I'm reading between the lines of what he actually said here).

So say you do this in Cimmeria. Enough offenses and you get a "Cimmerian bounty" placed on you. The Bounty Hunter NPCs in Cimmeria can then somehow capture you (no details here), so you can choose to flee to Aquilonia or Stygia and do your dirty deeds there instead. If you ever come back to Cimmeria, you will still have a bounty on your head (no time-out, apparently).

If you get caught by the bounty hunters, you can either bribe them to let you go by paying some amount above and beyond the bounty (one type of money sink penalty), or you can choose to serve prison time.

The prison time is meant to be actively unpleasant. You can't just wait it out. You must perform menial, boring tasks such as "take this stick and kill 300 rats" or "carry this stone to the other side of the yard, pick up a stone on that side and carry it back, do this 300 times", etc.

Finally, somehow the "prison" is visible to other players, so that you get the embarrassment of being seen serving your prison time and doing those menial quests.

Thanks zakhal.
More information.

The "move stone quest" is the most preposterous idea I've seen out of a major development house in years. I had a better idea for a prison system back in '03.

Since jail is effectively lost time, time in an MMORPG largely equals XP/levels, and the most valuable thing to griefers is their own power, Simply reduce their accumulated XP. Respawning in jail after being hunted down and killed by bounty hunters de-levels you.

Quick and simple.

Originally Posted by Stormwaltz
The "move stone quest" is the most preposterous idea I've seen out of a major development house in years. I had a better idea for a prison system back in '03.

Since jail is effectively lost time, time in an MMORPG largely equals XP/levels, and the most valuable thing to griefers is their own power, Simply reduce their accumulated XP. Respawning in jail after being hunted down and killed by bounty hunters de-levels you.

Quick and simple.

Now THAT'S a silly idea.

This is a game with open world PvP, and the prison system is just a way of "encouraging" better behaviour.

If they go and harshly punish by de-leveling people for killing in an unfair manner - they'll effectively turn it into a PvE game. No one would ever dare to cross the line, and that would destroy the excitement and nature of open world PvP.

I think your idea is horrible.

Indeed. Deleting XP as punishment will practically remove the option to serve time in jail, because noone is willing to waste time invested in your character. Then there's only bribing left. I guess gold sellers would love this.
There should a legal system in PvP games so you are accountable for your actions when you abuse the rules and to prevent anarchy, but there should never be total security either.

I think Eve does that well - while you're in safe space, you're, well, safe (or at least fairly safe); on the other hand, when you head into low sec, you're on your own.

Embarassment, there is no penality like embarassment to such jerks.

Put them on the market in a rack for 30 days.

Replace his head with a donkey's for a month.

Let the VICTIMS decide on a punishment!

But paying out and fleeing… nah.

Probably far from a "perfect" solution, but at least there will be a system for punishing the I-have-no-life-so-I-corpse-camp-lowbies players. I like the fact that they're trying to get rid of a well known problem in MMOs.

… Just as a throw-in : Olnigg has published his newest satire :

http://www.olnigg.de/jahr2008/olg149.htm

just one question, would there be parole for good behavior?

I made something similar where if a player killed another player who had purchased death insurance, an assassin would show up and try to kill them. A player could only carry one copy of death insurance at a time, and it was rather expensive.

The problem with these attempts at curbing grief players is that they will try to find a work-around. In the system they describe what about 2 or more characters ganging up on 1? How does it differentiate if say 2 or more 10th levels gang up on one? So there is an easy way to circumvent the system. Or the old tried and true method of a lower level provoking a fight with a high level so as to be killed and then avenged by the bounty system? You just reversed the griefing.

If I were to implement something like this I would set it so the player killed had the option to hire a bounty hunter to go after their killer. Only a player so griefed could hire one, and only one, bounty hunter. Then if a player were continuously griefing they might find that they had many bounty hunters coming after them. Soon they would either quit just randomly griefing players, or become much more selective in who they attacked.