OMG This sounds awesome!

You will really need to learn the "streets" and know lots of people to be a good investigator. Otherwise you get the clues but do not know what they mean.

Big thanks... really helpfull. But I got 1 question more.

Would it be possible to trick someone else into a thief? If I will be a thief neran and i stole sth. And deposit it in another neran house?

Or would it be possible to get the truth. Or is it only a search for a person... not an item?

Posted By Snipehunter at 12:00 PM - Tue Sep 11 2018

For example, you may reveal that thieves' tools had been used to force a lock and take that information to a tinkerer to ask them who might purchase thieves' tools or who might make them. That then points you to someone else, who hopefully points you in the right direction until you have a name for your target.

One can assume, for obvious reasons that a PC tinkerer will not give himself away for making such tools, or to whom they may have sold such tools. With that in mind would an investigator be able to question an OPC tinkerer and get a more truthful answer?

That all sounds amazing. Pteroguine hair for tailoring confirmed? :) I love seeing Snipehunter's in depth responses. Thank you Snipehunter.

Posted By Snipehunter at 4:19 PM - Tue Sep 11 2018

There is an interrogation skill in the Lore section of the skill flower that sort of pairs with misinformation skill in the Guile section of the skill flower. These two function as counterparts to each other. When a detective interrogates someone, the idea right now is that they will enter into a special mode for the interrogation where both characters have to use the knowledge exchange system to answer the questions. This will force players to either refuse the questioning entirely, or use misinformation to lie, which will allow players' ability to lie to be pitted against the detective's ability to detect a lie. There are still several unresolved questions about how that experience is going to be presented though, so I couldn't call it a finalized implementation though.

Hope that helps! :)

While I think its very innovative to approach this problem with a kind of "social pvp" paradigm, I do hope there is a constant self-critique going on with the mindset of a metagamer looking to break this system as quickly and easily as possible.

For instance in the example just described, there seems not to be much stopping the questioned player to simply avoid being in the area for a while so his "knowledge base" of incriminating knowledge is simply never accessed. I could come up with a number of metagame ways to avoid all of the anti-crime investigative countermeasures that have been described in this thread.

The more complicated this system of investigation of crime becomes, the more easily reds and deviants are going to break it to avoid legal punishment.

While some have concerns about deviants abusing the system, my question was more in line with the law abusing the system. Meaning that an OPC may make choices based on it AI/AE, but those choices may not be one the PC would have made and could lead to the PCs arrest. So either OPCs would have to "take the fifth" during questioning or deviant PCs could write "interrogation" scripts for them, which sounds really interesting. Unless I'm missing something...

Posted By Jourfrend_Jojo at 7:31 PM - Tue Sep 11 2018

While some have concerns about deviants abusing the system, my question was more in line with the law abusing the system. Meaning that an OPC may make choices based on it AI/AE, but those choices may not be one the PC would have made and could lead to the PCs arrest. So either OPCs would have to "take the fifth" during questioning or deviant PCs could write "interrogation" scripts for them, which sounds really interesting. Unless I'm missing something...

If you have ever seen real Prosecutor questioning -- or read or heard tapes of real interrogations of actual professional criminals, you would see that running on scripts is actually a very close reproduction of real life criminal investigation and prosecution.

So, the forensics system is going to take a long time to implement, this could almost be a game in it's self. If it's not that straight forward. Same thing with the interrogation system. Are these planned to be here at launch? I just know that the aspirations for the AI in this game would make this game have among the most advanced AI in almost any game to date. If this is implemented we essentially have an Noir game. When that is a small focus of the development team.

I am not that sold that it'll make it to the game. I hope it does but it doesn't seam feasible for a development team this small and release the game in around 2 years from now.

I think the balance alone on such a system would require months of testing to get right. Given there are so many things that need to be balanced as well combat, trading, crafting, and now lying....

I hate to agree with the naysayers but we might be approaching feature creep. If it can be done awesome but interrogation isn’t something the vast majority of the player base will ever see let alone use routinely. Is it really worth going that in depth with it? It already seems like there are lots of avenues and foils already for the system.

It is needed to go that deep. I love this aspect... it makes to be a thief challanging and interesting.

Also some people dislike pvp the normal way.

Now it can be

Thief vs detective

Fighter vs fighter

Poison maker vs apothecary Eg

I think I have to agree with Mondra on this one.

If the crafters are going to get an in depth play system and the mappers/explorers are going to have one, etc., then one should also exist for the deviant player as well.

And this system seems to provide that. In spades.

As well as a counter system to equalize the equation.

And I understand the argument that more is sometimes too much, but while this may not apply to every player, there is still a strong component that will be drawn to it because of it's depth.

Just in the same way that while I'm not all that interested in the genetics of breeding particular plants and animals, it doesn't mean that it isn't in of itself a core attraction for somebody else who may think this is the only game that has ever gone into the right amount of depth regarding their particular passion.

My own opinion is that having a more detailed and well thought out one is far better that leaving it open to exploitation by those that we all know will try to do just that.

Lot of people like to play the bad guy. This gives those that do a playable "option" without having to resort to just mindless griefing.

@SnipeHunter The more involved and time consuming it is to "paint a picture" of a crime then go interrogating people, couldn't a criminal just make so much distance that tracking him down would be pointless and therefore basically voiding him of the crime? Every second it takes for you to piece the thing together is a another second my horse is going full speed to the next target area.

Will there be a way for tracking to keep up with that distance assuming the forensic level and skill is good enough? Will the tracking system work through disguises or can they just move a county over and throw on a kit and I would be SoL automatically? Sure there is a chance for it to fall off but if I am looking for a tall blonde brown eyed character and he is disguised as a medium red hair green eye guy, there would be no reason for me to stop him to even attempt for a disguise-off. He wouldn't be suspicious and I would have no cause to stop every single citizen in the county and try to get disguises off them. Even if I tried that, that would likely just alarm the guy I am here and he gets away again.

Just thinking about it in my mind not having the knowledge of the system you do, it seems like cheap hit n run tactics are a huge weak spot in the system that can possible make for nonpunishable criminals.