What I suggest is implementing a sort of Karma System. For those of you who don't know, Karma "is the concept of "action" or "deed", understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma). Basically, every action has a consequence.
What would this mean for Salem? This is what I propose:
1- Karma bar
Every player would have a karma bar, going from -x to +x, passing through neutral karma (0). A positive value would mean good karma and vice-versa. Besides granting some bonuses and debuffs, the values could also be reflected cosmetically, as suggested in another thread -> http://forum.salemthegame.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=4201
2- Bad deeds = bad karma
Every bad action a player would do would decrease his karma. Now what exactly are those "bad" deeds? One I think everyone can agree with is crime. So invading, looting, destroying and murdering would yield bad karma for those who did such actions.
*This is the main reason I thought of this mechanic. Right now, alot of people are complaining about defences, raiders destroying so easily what was so hard to build and raise. The problem here isn't raiding at all - it's griefing. Currently, these 2 entirely different activities are pretty much treated the same way by the game: you attack a player/claim, get debuff, leave scents. However, the game doesn't take in mind the core difference between them, which is purpose.
To simplify, I'll consider 2 types of criminals: raiders and griefers. For me, a raider is a player actively looking for targets worth attacking (by worthy I mean targets that are meaningful to the raider because they have valuables, control over resources, or simply on a "Kill or be killed" basis); on the other hand, a griefer is a player who just goes on a rampage, destroying and killing everything he can in his path with mostly no gain from his activity besides the "fun" of it (which most of the time means pwning n00bs). There is a huge difference between these 2 playstyles: raiding is a means of accomplishing something in the game - you take valuables from others for your own good, you destroy the competition and establish dominance in your region, you kill that annoying neighbour who keeps dropping loads of frogs in front of your gates, all that while having fun-; on the other hand, griefing is simply attacking and destroying for the sake of it - since noobs are the targets most of the time, there isn't anything actually valuable to the perpetrator, all is done for the fun (this is a massive issue since for 1 griefer to get his "kick" many others have to suffer the frustration of seeing their efforts destroyed - this is the reason griefing is so harmful to any game's population, since these situations are a big turnoff specially for new players).
Since raiding and griefing can be so much different, the game needs to take that difference into consideration, penalizing griefing to a point where it would be frankly unappealing and thus forcing these players to find a different way of having their fun. The karma system could be a way to deal with this problem - it could calculate a sort of development rating for players/claims (for players: calculated from humours and proficiencies, maybe with a contribution from amount of silver on the player; for claims: area of the claim, type/amount of buildings, type/amount of goods inside the claim) and compare those ratings between the victim and the attacker (the bigger the difference, the more negative karma is yielded to the attacker). Since the difference of ratings between a noob and a vet raider would be considerable, this would help reduce the appeal of attacking small newbie camps compared to more developed settlements, while still allowing raiders to do so if they're really determined. And why would this happen? Because there would be penalties for racking up bad karma, of course.
By raising the negative karma past certain thresholds, people would get debuffs. These could be limited to combat actions or also affect other activities, such as farming and crafting in general. One way for these debuffs to severely harm griefing would be making a character who racks up enough bad karma either 1) remain in the world persistently, even after logging off (so it could be tracked and dealt with) or simply 2) have the scents allow for summoning from anywhere in the world. Of course, for this to punish griefers without harming raiding, the rating comparison would have to give penalizations appropriately.
While my initial thought for bad deeds were only crime activities, the system could be extended so that non-pvp actions can also be considered "bad". These could be chopping down trees, killing wildlife, draining resources from the land (iron, lime, clay, ...); the negative points gained with these activities could be balanced out by crafting stuff using those resources.
3- Good deeds = good karma
All actions contributing to greater good or one's own well-being should fall in this category. So cooking, farming, gardening, building and crafting in general would yield good karma. Some of these good actions act as balance for bad ones - example: if you hunt deer, you'll get negative karma, but also a hide, a brain and meat. By cooking some of that meat you'de get good karma instead, evening out the bad one you got from killing the deer.
These activities would allow players to work off their bad karma (from raiding or any other activity), allowing them to avoid bigger penalties from racking up too much. It would also do a great damage to the current problem with raiding alts, which have basically the skills needed to get the crime skills, and are used solely for that purpose - this would force players who have these alts to invest more in them, get more skills besides the crime ones (in order to have the means of working off the karma) and actually use them for more than just raiding, because if they don't these chars will just keep accumulate karma and get summon-killed or logged-off-killed freely (this way, reducing significantly the viability of this kind of alts).
On the other hand, having good karma would also give some buffs past certain thresholds. Since you'd get good karma from crafting, farming and such, the bonuses could be like +plenty added to fields when farming, bonuses to soil digging/carrying, etc etc...
Again, this idea started out as a way to reduce griefing ingame, so I haven't put much thought on how it could be applied to non-pvp aspects. It could also be that crime would be the only bad karma generator and everything else would yield good karma. However, the system must be set up in a way that allows raiding to be a viable playstyle, turning it into a more meaningful and planned activity, while also penalizing griefing to a point it would be pretty much inviable to be practiced.
I trust you guys to point out all the good and bad stuff about my idea, ways to make it better and hopefully something good can come out of this thread that will help the game
/discuss away!
