criminal activity also has 'stopping people from having fun', of course there will be consequences.
so does constantly killing innocent people in the server, and anyone who is disincentivize enough to quit because of the long ass jail times are the people who find a knife on the ground and do nothing but RDM
this only works for habitual crime-makers, it sounds like this can devolve into
get arrested for shooting up downtown -> gov't takes my bike -> lmao it's just my bike
or
get arrested for shooting up downtown -> gov't repossesses my house -> oh stuff I like my house -> get arrested for a failed heist -> 50% of my net worth remains -> repeat from underline
or
get arrested for hitting someone with a stick -> gov't repossesses my house -> oh stuff I like my house, but I don't want a life of crime -> lose my house forever because I'm not very good at being a criminal and can't perform a heist and I don't want to have a life of crime
You could argue that "it's just a game so it doesn't have to be realistic" but CRP2 is built on the premise of some real-life mechanics and jailing is one of them. If you took out jailing then it wouldn't make sense in retrospect with the other things.
nobody is being forced to do that, while I do think that jail is boring as forget most times, you can always talk to other people in jail...
If there was a way to escape or have someone break me out of jail I would feel a lot less bored considering I have some more things to do in jail
1) the problem is that the cops and robbers dynamic is completely at odds with the block city esque pacifist rpg where you build houses and sell stuff to people for no reason. one aspect completely revolves around killing people and the other aspect is basically designed without killing in mind. in this twisted and terrible flawed dynamic, criminals exist in the lowest circle of hell, the area that everyone is trying to avoid because being a criminal means that the meta is not playing the game. because if you do play the game you'll be arrested and sentenced to 5 minutes of doing nothing. cops are the exact same thing as criminals except they have the power to arrest people. they spawn with guns, have the same capacity to kill people as criminal jobs, but they get to have fun. because their meta is to arrest people.
if you look at all other games, they are centered around having fun. but criminals are centered around self control and stopping yourself from having fun, because the moment you try to do what your very job was designed to do, you are digging yourself a 5-20 minute grave of being sentenced to have absolutely no fun while you... hold on im gonna bold this because its a big word
W A I Tto continue playing the game.
2) its not called realism, it's called selectively emulating the worst and least enjoyable parts of real life and calling that realism. why do people drop $50 for no reason when their wallet is empty? why do people spawn with guns? why can drugs be reused over and over? obviously there's stuff that isn't properly emulated in real life because it's a video game and things have to be abstracted in order to balance the game out. so why can't prison be abstracted out? it's obviously the least enjoyable part OF THE GAME so why can't it be made better with temporary money losses so you have the option to actually act and get your stuff back?
like the whole bank heist idea only strengthens the cops and robbers meta, and if you don't want that already loving bastardized and neutered aspect of the game to be improved then just remove the entire thing then
You can get away with crimes if you clean up the evidence
You can pay off your demerits to reduce your jail time
People can break you out of your cuffs when you're being arrested
When people get you down, you can still shoot at them until you bleed out
You have an entire city you can hide to avoid arrest in
Cops have to literally carry you to the police department to make the arrest
You (hopefully) have a gun that can fire unlimited bullets whereas cops can only handcuff you with a melee item that takes almost a dozen hits to do so
When you do go to jail you can still mine resources and sell them for money for your next killing spree
People can pardon you from jail.
I'm sorry if I don't want to make the server a DM with money. Make use of the features in place to avoid serving a full prison sentence.
I'm going to make a video game where you can take a stuff on the floor.
you can clean it up, you can pick it up and throw it at people, you can build an immense contraption to convert your waste into biofuel and save humanity. you can paint a picture with your own feces.
Now that i've described the central mechanics of my game, how about I one up myself: why not make a game where you don't stuff on the floor? where instead you build a rocket to space, and you can perform intense orbital maneuvers, dock and build space ships, travel to the farthest corners of the galaxy and back.
I just turned 'stuff on the floor simulator' into 'Kerbal space program'. All it took was changing the mechanic to something that wasn't stuffty, and adding features that improved the mechanic. In the end, adding features to literal defecating on the floor doesn't make it less disgusting, it just makes one wonder why they decided to take a stuff on the floor in the first place. maybe instead of glorifying the massive dump on the marble floor that is city rpg's jail system with various stupid ways to basically avoid encountering the immensely stupid mechanic in the first place, how about you make a mechanic that is fun and add features that make you want to explore the mechanic, not avoid it?
like jesus loving christ, you listed 10 different ways to avoid the problem they are designed around. if you don't want a money based DM then remove the loving guns and you'll be left with a money based waiting game. stop trying to justify terrible mechanics that are at odds with each other and just remove the terrible mechanics. it's like those stuffty city rps where there's 40000 guns on the server but if you use even one you'll get banned for rdming. like, why not just REMOVE THE GUNS IN THE FIRST PLACE? if killing people is antithetical to the meta of the gamemode, then just make it so you can't kill people. if killing people is PART of the game, then loving stop making mechanics that stop you from doing something that is PART OF THE GAME