People have been imagining "bandit towns" for a long time, basically since the open and unprotected nature of the game was announced. But I doubt you will have a single town that is entirely split between lawbreakers and lawmen. When you commit a crime and are caught, there will be some form of punishment (to be determined), so it would be in the lawbreaker's best interest to eliminate any detectives in the area, if they wanted to control a town.

Alternatively, are you proposing a situation in which people "grind" off each other, leveling up the skills by continuously stealing the same things and being caught and released over and over?

Posted By BioRules at 4:42 PM - Thu Oct 04 2018

People have been imagining "bandit towns" for a long time,

Alternatively, are you proposing a situation in which people "grind" off each other, leveling up the skills by continuously stealing the same things and being caught and released over and over?

Excactly

Well my hope would be that just like we've seen in thieves dens of various Elder Scroll games.

That there will be training dummies where you can practice your deviant arts.

Sure they wont give as much experience as doing it on living character.

and then of course "practicing" on fellow thieves at the guild.

The original detectives were thieves you changed sides. That was true of both the Bow Street Runners and Vidocq. (Vidocq’s “autobiography” is a fun read.). I think COE will allow the same career path.

There are books and teachers to consider as well. As other people have mentioned, training those mentioned skills with practice tools or some such would also be possible. However, most books can only raise you up to about Apprentice (one level above Novice). Practice tools, according to the official wiki, seem to only raise your skill up to Journeyman (one level above Apprentice).

So, in effect, the best options you really have are getting a teacher (who needs to be experienced in some way with the skill), and getting experience. It'll be an interesting dichotomy. The best way to raise your Inquiry skills are to actually investigate real crimes, which is unfortunately circumstantial. But by that same token, the best way to raise your Guile skills are to actually commit real crimes, which are risky. So it seems to balance each other out.

The next thought goes to cheesing the system. Using your thievery skills repeatedly on a voluntary target to crank your skills up. Inquiry skills could, in theory, do the same thing. Rob someone volunteering, break into a volunteers house, incapacitate a volunteer, then analyze the clues. Or allow someone to do that to you, or, better yet, to another volunteer, and then perform investigations.

Whether the game will prevent those methods from functioning, we'll have to see.

The more difficult task you try to perform the more skill gain you get. So yes, you will be a known petty street thief before you become a master thief.

Posted By Beathan at 7:38 PM - Thu Oct 04 2018

The original detectives were thieves you changed sides. That was true of both the Bow Street Runners and Vidocq. (Vidocq’s “autobiography” is a fun read.). I think COE will allow the same career path.

Considering the Met's first CID was closed after barely a decade due to corruption they didn't change sides all that far.

As to the OP, I find the idea of a town split between criminals and detectives to be fairly ridiculous but training centres for organised crime are perfectly viable and probably likely to exist.

The ability to use each other and use 'guild' buildings for practice will be one of the advantages that organised criminal groups will have over lone wolfs and freelancers.

For groups focused on internal security, the primary skills any investigator needs are the ability to ask questions and the ability to draw an inference from testimony and data. These are probably less likely to be character skills than they are to be player skills. Yes these are improved by practice - but that's why you send junior investigators to investigate petty theft, burglary and volume crime and senior investigators to investigate robbery, violent crime, and homicide.

Posted By chipla at 05:52 AM - Fri Oct 05 2018

For groups focused on internal security, the primary skills any investigator needs are the ability to ask questions and the ability to draw an inference from testimony and data. These are probably less likely to be character skills than they are to be player skills.

Actually it is a character skill.

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.

Source

Posted By Malais at 3:54 PM - Fri Oct 05 2018

Posted By chipla at 05:52 AM - Fri Oct 05 2018

For groups focused on internal security, the primary skills any investigator needs are the ability to ask questions and the ability to draw an inference from testimony and data. These are probably less likely to be character skills than they are to be player skills.

Actually it is a character skill.

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.

Source

I was talking more about the inference as player skills and really the knowledge of which questions to ask is a player skill.

As an example of inference - if you have evidence that a burglar recently was a tall thin male with weirdly unproportionate arms you can infer as a player that it was likely a dras, if the entry point to a residence was 3' tall and 1' wide you can infer that the person using that entrance was either a kypiq or a child.

As for asking the right questions, as someone who has taken a lot of statements and done a fair few suspect interviews, I can tell you that asking the right questions is very important, especially with witnesses and victims. While ingame investigators probably won't have to contend with R v. Turnbull (1977) mnemonics like ADVOKATE are still likely to be useful for determining how useful a witness is (if they saw the suspect for ten seconds at 1000 yards on a foggy moonless night their description is less valuable than someone who saw the same suspect at 5 yards in a well-lit tavern for 10 mins).

Suspect descriptions are also hard to get right, you have to keep prodding witnesses - people are always surprised at how much they actually remember though this may be suppressed by the adrenaline of the event and object focus (especially in violent events). While prodding, however, you have to be very careful not have them describe the events in the way you have a preconceived idea of how they went, nor to suggest things to witnesses (did you see if the clothing had any branding rather than was it a nike jacket etc).

While I'm sure the interrogation system can determine what the questions and answers are I feel that it would be a much more interesting and involved system is player skill was as much a part of questioning (and maybe even answering) as character skill.

@chipla

The problem with player skill becoming as much (or more depending) important as the character skill is how would the system know you know the description points toward a Dras?

Say I am robbed by someone I know in RL. I tell you Bob did it. Bob is a high level thief who has a good disguise skill and leaves only the minimal evidence allowed behind. You are a mid level detective and suddenly because of meta data namely I know my robber you are able to confront him and arrest him while the system only thinks you know the basic description “tall with long thin arms”.

Doesn’t that render the cat and mouse system moot?

I do think basic logic and some inference on the players part should be considered but ultimately for the system to be balanced a detective should still have to go through the motions even if they are a RL Sherlock and figure out who is guilty based on just a scrap of evidence.

I think asking the correct questions wouldn't make being a detective fun for people who don't have an interest in it. If you need to have outside knowledge of how the in game system is work then most people will find it frustrating. Especially, when it comes to a profession that will have a slower pace than others.

Player skill will come into account when trying to catch players. Especially, the higher level criminals, they will be so creative that you need to be able to gather evidence from anywhere. I'm assuming a lot of people will build their home with aesthetics in mind, leaving multiple entry points wide open for criminals.

When it comes to meta data, I'm assuming you will need to gather a certain amount of evidence before the game will let you arrest anyone. If Bob admits to committing the crime in discord but we have 0 evidence in game, npcs won't see him as a criminal and that's the important draw. The punishment for criminals being caught committing the crime is the huge social impact it has when you are just trying to live from day to day. On top of that, having no ingame evidence makes the law system look bad to npcs. You would be arresting an innocent man and the corrupt government let you do it.