Hmm, the Faq did say spirit loss, and i (probably erroneously then) attributed this to life-span. What exactly is spirit loss?

"Spirit" is some quantifiable factor that makes it easier for you to spirit-walk back to your body when you die. Presumably something like the more spirit you have, the more time you have to navigate the spirit-walking phase to get back to your body. Not 100% on the exact mechanic, though.

Spirit Loss is effectively life span loss. However you misunderstand one important thing; you only have that spirit loss applied if you are caught for your crime.

Killing someone will not automatically shorten your lifespan. However, when you kill someone illegally that person can then basically apply a bounty on your ass. If you are caught and found guilty of your crime you then get that spirit loss applied.

It's a bit more complicated than that, but for a quick primer, it works.

There is also this in the FAQ:

"In Chronicles of Elyria, crimes such as attacking other characters is punishable by time in prison. The more time someone spends in prison, the shorter their playable lifespan, the more their skills atrophy, and the less powerful they will ultimately become. So, we've kind of removed most the incentive around griefing."

Like i said, i don't care for bindcamping or other forms of actual griefing, they're pretty much a waste of my time, but 9as an example) i do want to be able to kill someone i see farming, take their shit, and their farm spot. Or if they can beat me, they take my shit and keep their farm and the spot. Not a fan of such simple, staple, pvp interactions being punished.

Only lose spirit if you get captured

This is literally my one gripe with this game as i absolutely love pretty much everything else. I want to play the roving bandit and take people's shit, avoiding/escaping from the group coming to punish catch me. I'd be cool with the spirit loss is i get caught/killed (and i suppose the intelligent way to do this is to scale with some form of notoriety points).

one thing i'm wondering about is if i kill someone 1v1, there then be no "witnesses" in a way, meaning if I'm slick i might not be "known" as a killer as far as game flagging is concerned. But It seems the murderee IS a witness based off some other stuff in the FAQ. This is odd since the devs mentioned they want assassin gameplay too, which will require some form of killing in town and getting away with it (and im not even planning to do it in towns). Could anyone clarify this? If all witnesses are killed, can you till flag people as murderers? If so, the game needs some way to disguise your appearance/name (which opens the gate to a whole host of other issues, especially with some people investing lots of RL money for titles and such)

I think the concept is that if you are caught and found guilty of a crime, society puts you in prison. This is supposed to be a punishment.

Well its no fun to have a character that is in a cell. They cannot have an escape mechanism because that defeats the purpose of a punishment. So you would have a character that was essentially unplayable for 2 real world day (in the case of murder). It becomes a Temporary Ban. Well that makes the PvP and PK play style really really not fun. So what they did was they took that prison sentence and put it at the of the character life span. The prison sentence is essentially lost play time so that's what they made it.
What your not considering is if you won the fight you don't lose spirit upon killing the other character. When you do lose spirit is when your CAUGHT, which would be a DIFFERENT fight that you did lose. If you are not caught you don't suffer spirit lose. Another character (Player or NPC) has to identify you, physically locate you, and then subdue you, and on top of that they have to have a bounty token to do so to not risk the same fate.

You have ability to impact other peoples pocket book its only fair that your pocket book can be impacted too. So if you are really good at PvP and you don't lose any fights, you will not lose any spirit. Your only fear should be your victims finding out who you are and where you are.

Posted By Benevolence at 12:08 AM - Wed Oct 19 2016

This is literally my one gripe with this game as i absolutely love pretty much everything else. I want to play the roving bandit and take people's shit, avoiding/escaping from the group coming to punish catch me. I'd be cool with the spirit loss is i get caught/killed (and i suppose the intelligent way to do this is to scale with some form of notoriety points).

one thing i'm wondering about is if i kill someone 1v1, there then be no "witnesses" in a way, meaning if I'm slick i might not be "known" as a killer as far as game flagging is concerned. But It seems the murderee IS a witness based off some other stuff in the FAQ. This is odd since the devs mentioned they want assassin gameplay too, which will require some form of killing in town and getting away with it (and im not even planning to do it in towns). Could anyone clarify this? If all witnesses are killed, can you till flag people as murderers? If so, the game needs some way to disguise your appearance/name (which opens the gate to a whole host of other issues, especially with some people investing lots of RL money for titles and such)

That's pretty much how it is. You wont know a player's name unless they introduce themselves, in which case you'll then always see that character's name thereafter (although disguises are available to hide that).

So if you gank someone and they don't know your name and there are no witnesses then there's a good possibility you could get away with it. Just like IRL, travelling alone between settlements will be very dangerous.

Thanks for the responses folks, see you on the battlefield!

You don't need to know someone's name to identify them. You can identify people by looks, so whether your victim knew your name or not is irrelevant.

I feel compelled to provide my opinion here. Heh.

First off CoE an open PvP world. There has to be a consequence of actions. If the Kill penalty didn't exist in the game mechanics, it would be utter chaos with Grievers and not much fun for anyone.

In CoE your actions matter, and if you want to be a Serial Killer or something of that nature, then you are going to have to take the time to strategize your attacks, or you are going to get caught. Not only do you need to make sure there aren't any witnesses, but you best be sure not to leave any evidence for that Forensic Analysis to find. (Part of the Bardic tree)

I love playing Evil PCs, and CoE has taken it to a whole new level cause now; there is that fear of Death!

Just my two cents. :)

As for the Forensic part, that is something they want to add to crime scenes, based off your deviant skill and the skill of whoever is investigating they might find clues that point to your identity when searching the scene but as of now that's all conjecture and caspian saying that it would be cool to do it that way but there is nothing saying that it is even possible lol