Greetings Everyone:
I am from the Kingdom of Kairos on the NA-East server. I intend to make a series of posts regarding legal theories and hopefully provide some insight regarding what we all want from our in-game laws for the developers.
As my first post, I wanted to discuss laws and punishment. I have read a few posts now about law and punishment within the game. Instead of looking at the legal system in-game as one of laws and punishment, I would like you to take a moment and think about it as law and deterrence. I wanted to pose a question for everyone's feedback as it may also help influence the creation of laws within Chronicles of Elyria.
Punishment is a necessary consequence of committing a wrong against someone. In most games, this would be killing that player or having an entire guild swarm into an area. As we all know, this game works differently. Your actions have consequences and your lives can end. As such, I wanted to discuss what makes a reasonable deterrence.
Deterrence can be broken down in a specific and general category. A specific deterrence focuses on the individual criminal and what can be done to prevent them from committing future crimes. General deterrence is when the punishment for a crime is meant to deter other members of society from committing the same or similar wrong. For the purposes of this post, I would like to focus on general deterrence.
Not every crime is the same. It seems unreasonable to put both the murderer and the grain thief to death. However, the level of deterrence must be, at minimum, enough to prevent the criminal from benefiting from their illegal act. For example, someone robs you and takes 1,000 gold. If the punishment is not at least 1,000 gold, then the bandit would just keep robbing players because it is profitable. Another example would be someone gets the same punishment for killing a player as he/she would for killing and taking everything from the player. If the minimum deterrence is not high enough to cause the player to weigh the risk of their action compared to the reward, there is no reason not to keep on killing on looting. There will always be people who play just for the enjoyment of ruining others' experiences. The deterrence should make the game less fun for them as well but not so harsh as to ruin it for everyone.
In the end, this is a game and we want bandits, assassins, criminals, and other shady characters. This adds flavor and challenges to the game that provide for richer stories. However, I am sure most of us do not want pure chaos, mob rule, or play in a kill or be killed world. Therefore, a balance should be found. Should the deterrence be high enough such that the criminal loses everything and is effectively “reset” to the point before the act? How much more of a punishment would be too much? For a real world example, think about traffic laws and tickets in the United States. They could be set for $1,000 for every mile per hour over the speed limit. However, they are a deterrent and not meant to prevent all traffic violations.
My question for this first post is this: what level of punishment would be high enough to make one think about risk versus reward and possibly deter someone, but low enough to not completely turn away everyone from the act?
What would a reasonable deterrent be for the following general acts:
Stealing
Knocking someone out
Murder (A Coup-de-grace, killing blow, which is the intentional step after knocking them out to kill them)
Not fulfilling a contract
Preventing someone from fulfilling a contract
