Community Exploration: Soullight Penal System - Phase 1/5

[Divide]

The Soullight system is the last bastion of morality in a world where 'get ahead at all costs' is the motto of even those on the lowest rung. With warring factions, and personal vendettas, murder can come in any form - swift and business-like, slow with a twist of pleasure, or totally random and probably gruesome like that scene from Event Horizon where that person is cut from stem to sternum and spilled open for the world to see.

I digress.

The sl system is a critical component in a game with a truly persistent world where killing players can occur normally. The experience of death and killing is something that Neocron does extremely well-- in my mind, it is one of several key components that set this game apart from others. Death means something. Killing someone means something. Say that about WoW.


Why is it so good? The system imposes multiple types of risk and multiple types of reward. Attempting to kill someone has multiple risk factors - for argument's sake, we're talking friendly factions in PP1

All of these factors are at play from the moment combat begins.

-Loss of fight/peen (subjective/cascading risk factor)
-Loss of item (cascading risk factor)
-Death and associated timesink (subjective/cascading risk factor)
-Loss of sl (cascading risk factor)
-Loss of symp (cascading risk factor)
-Potential to gain new item (cascading reward factor)
-Victory/peen (subjective/cascading reward factor)

These are just the pen/paper factors that I can think of for the moment. As you can see there is complexity built into the fight beyond win/lose, try again. This is why fights feel so good in Neocron.




There are problems though, as we all know. The sl system is a bit heavy-handed at times while, counter-productively, allowing forms of dishonest/illegal actions it should really safeguard against. There is no arguing this statement, because this is the beginning of a five phase exploration event where the SL system will be torn apart constructively in order to allow solutions authored by the community to be presented to the VolCrew(tm) for their consideration.

The Five Phases are as follows -
1 - What is the problem?

-Literally, define the problem in simplest terms.

-Top 5 (by concurrence) issues selected for exploration

-Example: kuling pplz mk mez -100

2 - Why is that (that thing, from number 1) a problem?

-Filter out the white-noise/duplicate efforts and select 3 Key Issues

-Example: caz -1oO cnt gr

3 - What would the opposite of the problem be?

-If we can't imagine how a scenario would look if a problem wasn't in the way we've got a bigger problem.

-Example: i keil pepl nd gt cndy

4 - How can we get to number 3?

-If we don't know how to get there, there is no reason dreaming about 'there'

-Can we actually get there?

-Example: u chg sl no penlty; u send mony fr all cndy. ps im 500lbs

5 - Wrapped-up, community authored, hit list. That must, excruciatingly be reduced to 2 two too to suggested changes.

-Change is easy. Prediction is hard, and so is damage control. Any/all changes need to be lock & step to evaluate post-implementation impact.

-Example: CyCrOw-sTrIkE!1!11oneoneoneeleveneleven

This will be a 5 week event. New Phases will be posted as new threads by 11pm MST every Monday beginning tonight 10/13, concluding 11/17 with the results presented to the community and VolCrew(tm)





That said--
What is the problem with the Soullight system?