Let me start off by saying this. If you know me you may dislike or even hate me but you know I truly care for Fractured and want to see it succeed.
Ok. Lets get started.
PROBLEM: The MINIMUM sentence for turning criminal is 24 HOURS. Twenty. Four. HOURS.
You have not killed a single player yet. No crime at all. Yet you are already getting a TWENTY FOUR HOUR sentence for a single death. If you keep this broken system, criminals need the option to gain POSITIVE KARMA to avoid sentence time on death.
- A player logs in on Friday night and gets a 24-48 hours sentence.
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*What does this player do if they have no other option but to wait out the entire sentence?
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I can tell you the most likely scenario: He spends his weekend playing something else and potentially never comes back. Every second someone plays another game is a chance they realize they are having more fun in this game rather than Fractured. I can tell you 100% without a doubt that I would be having more fun in quite literally any other game other than Fractured when the only available content in Fractured is sitting in a jail cell.
SOLUTION: Remove the jail system entirely. I propose a system that alerts all Sheriffs to the location of recent criminal attacks. Just like the legends appear with a red ! mark on the map, add a map logo to show the location of the attack. Sheriffs gather their groups and the hunt commences. The criminal player(s) can quickly find themselves outnumbered and quite dead. This promotes MORE player interaction and PvP and adds more danger to Evil players. A group of bounty hunters and do-gooders hunting down bandits? That sounds awesome and I would actually consider playing as a Sheriff permanently with this system.
POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT should be the design goal. Reward the good players but don't punish the criminals.
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SHERIFF STATUS: The fact that any good player can become a Sheriff at any time means that....THEY ALL WILL BE. There is nothing special about being a Sheriff because it's available to everyone. Why would you not take Sheriff status when it can ONLY help you? Extra gold baby!
SHERIFF SOLUTION: Require a certain amount of criminal kills to rank up to the Sheriff rank.
Ever play Classic WoW? The honor system ranks players up depending on how much honor they get. They increase in ranks on the weekly reset day(Tuesdays) if they obtained enough honor to do so. There is a limit to how many players can HOLD each rank(only impacts the higher ranks). Ranks decay over time if the players are no longer reaching the required honor goal.
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There are game studios that design their games to be as addictive as possible in order to keep their players....well...playing. Psychologists have been hired to support this exact goal (right Epic Games? lol.
What Fractured is doing with this system is literally the exact opposite and it's the worst possible thing you could do for the health of your game.
Currently the system deals in absolutes. There is no reason to be a criminal when the potential loss is infinitely greater than the potential gain.
With the system as it is you are hurting both the criminals AND the good players that want to fight criminals. Why? Because criminals have literally called it quits already, either swapping to good or just leaving the game(I would name drop the players I know of but this post is not about insulting people and I actually agree with their choice).
- I question why this system was added to the game in this alpha when there is literally no other PvP option in the game other than to be a criminal. No factions. No militias(lets be real that's not a thing anymore as I have spent over 50 hours in game at this point and have seen literally 0 players in a militia). It seems like the right thing to do would have been to wait for the demon planet then add the jails to the human planet.
Locking players out of playing the game is essentially the same as having instanced content in Fractured. You removed those players from the world. They are no longer contributing to gameplay. No longer participating in anything meaningful.
One final statement: Players playing Evil are not evil in real life. Stop making them out to be bad human beings. It's a playstyle and it's an important part of Fractured's social dynamic. Without them how are you going to be the bounty hunter you always dreamed of being?
Future video to come on this as I am a better talker than a typer. I am up for a community discussion video where we all talk about the pros and cons of the system.