why do guns exist if using them punishes you by making you wait for 30 minutes? why do gunshops exist? why police? why is crime, literally the least boring option in a game centered around literally waiting until you get bored (education system lol) punishable by.... get this.... waiting until you get bored?
You can't loving justify this stuff. There's no reason you need to 'do time's at all. Don't tell me it's realism because that's one of the worst excuses for adding stuffty mechanics to your game. Don't tell me it's fun either because being banned from playing the game for even one minute isn't fun it's boring. Don't tell me it makes sense either because why is there a whole weapon system in the game in the first place if the only outcome of using them is being punished?
Once you've committed a crime you have two options: hide until your demerits disappear, which takes say 5 minutes, or get arrested, which puts you in prison for 5 minutes. You can also take the hidden third option, which is to keep killing people so you can increase your waiting time I guess. So in the end crime has no purpose other than to burden players with arbitrary wait times with absolutely no reward. Therefore it's a terrible mechanic and should be removed
Paychecks literally appear in everyone's pockets at the exact same intervals and all money, lumber, ore, and items are dropped on death. The only way I could make it more rewarding without being ridiculous is if you were able to sell their dead body on the black market for cash.
If you read OP you would see that you can actually get away with crimes instead of everybody on the server magically knowing you did something. You can literally kill 80 people and not get a single demerit if you're smart and:
1) Don't leave witnesses
2) Don't commit crimes directly in front of a cop or camera
3) Don't leave behind any evidence
It's also a smart idea to actually see what players are doing before you kill them. If a player walks into a weapon shop, clicks on a bunch of buy bricks to check prices and then heads to the bank, chances are they will be walking out of the bank with cash in hand to purchase said item. Criminals can also pay lawyers ahead of time to bail them out or reduce their jailtime by paying off their demerits before they are imprisoned.
Jailtime isn't a mechanism to punish all criminals, it's a mechanism to punish the dumb criminals. Killing a player in broad daylight on mainstreet will most likely result in jailtime. Killing 5 players inside a food store and leaving behind a stuffton of evidence is a bad idea. Criminals should be forced to balance the risk/reward of committing a crime and be punished accordingly if they get caught. Criminals can also collect and sell resources while in jail to make up for whatever they lost during their crime spree.
Being a
smart criminal can easily be the most fun and rewarding path in the game. However if you're a lousy criminal and spend a majority of your time in prison maybe you should look into a different career path.
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