ePrison?
Day 400, 16:13
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Published in USA 
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by
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by BravoRomeoDelta
UPDATE AT BOTTOM
Recently, an excellent article published in Iran described the idea of opening up the spectrum of punishments available to the administrators to punish certain user behaviors. This has come after a spate of bannings of high level players who have been involved in the game for quite some time.
The ideas are novel, and I thought it might be worth fleshing out the concept a bit more,
Players could be sent to a jail or prison. There are already cases in which an employee can't quit a job (barring questions of pay or raw materials), but must instead wait to be fired. If one structures a jail like that, such that you can't be released (i.e. fired) until you've served your term. You get paid in Q1 food, your housing and all other inventory items are "donated" to the prison warden (i.e. general manager) for the duration of your stay, the production/work system would remain the same, except the prison would have no ability to have raw materials in stock, so therefore, you couldn't work or get paid beyond your Q1 food. It is an open question about whether you should be able to train for the military or fight, and I would suggest no.
Anyone in prison will accrue experience at one point per day (from eating their Q1 rations), be unable to raise their skills or get stronger, would derive no wellness benefit from their house or even be able to donate to other players. Perhaps by setting the prison to a place in a sort of artificial country, such that you would have to leave the prison country - be released, in other words - before you could purchase something.
Some other options, perhaps to scale the degree of the punishment, might be a lock on involvement in monetary markets, limits on shouts or emails, etc. A person could even be put in solitary, unable to recieve or send any communications.
There might be some merit in adding other touches, such as limiting access to newspapers, etc., but I don't know that it woould be worth adding to what should be a relatively straightforward solution.
I would welcome any other thoughts that people might have on the matter as well.
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Update:
It appears that some people may be unclear on the concept I am driving at. This is not a national prison, this is not government jail - that involves a judiciary and is bound to be subject to all kinds of abuses, forced labor and the like. This is a mechanism for the game administrators to punish people who are cheating or breaking the rules, and do so in a way that allows options other than simply banning people - either temporarily or permanently.
Recently, an excellent article published in Iran described the idea of opening up the spectrum of punishments available to the administrators to punish certain user behaviors. This has come after a spate of bannings of high level players who have been involved in the game for quite some time.
The ideas are novel, and I thought it might be worth fleshing out the concept a bit more,
Players could be sent to a jail or prison. There are already cases in which an employee can't quit a job (barring questions of pay or raw materials), but must instead wait to be fired. If one structures a jail like that, such that you can't be released (i.e. fired) until you've served your term. You get paid in Q1 food, your housing and all other inventory items are "donated" to the prison warden (i.e. general manager) for the duration of your stay, the production/work system would remain the same, except the prison would have no ability to have raw materials in stock, so therefore, you couldn't work or get paid beyond your Q1 food. It is an open question about whether you should be able to train for the military or fight, and I would suggest no.
Anyone in prison will accrue experience at one point per day (from eating their Q1 rations), be unable to raise their skills or get stronger, would derive no wellness benefit from their house or even be able to donate to other players. Perhaps by setting the prison to a place in a sort of artificial country, such that you would have to leave the prison country - be released, in other words - before you could purchase something.
Some other options, perhaps to scale the degree of the punishment, might be a lock on involvement in monetary markets, limits on shouts or emails, etc. A person could even be put in solitary, unable to recieve or send any communications.
There might be some merit in adding other touches, such as limiting access to newspapers, etc., but I don't know that it woould be worth adding to what should be a relatively straightforward solution.
I would welcome any other thoughts that people might have on the matter as well.
====================
Update:
It appears that some people may be unclear on the concept I am driving at. This is not a national prison, this is not government jail - that involves a judiciary and is bound to be subject to all kinds of abuses, forced labor and the like. This is a mechanism for the game administrators to punish people who are cheating or breaking the rules, and do so in a way that allows options other than simply banning people - either temporarily or permanently.
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Comments
An interesting idea that can show promise.
Very interesting. I would like to see this put in place.
good. i will add this to my article right now.
Guantanamo Bay should be the country name...heh
Country Name - The Rock
Country Flag - Nicholas Cage's Face
Yes! Guantanamo Bay!!! The best detainee camp ever! I really like the prison idea though, definitely should be implemented immediately!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I want to work at a jail for Christmas 😃
How about this...
People who are sent there work for free... get exp but no money.
The items are sold by the Government! Each Government selects 1 item to be made and sold!
QUESTION: How r you sent there and Who sends you there?
This would be a mechanism for the administrators to punish specific people. I think the idea of having a national prison and giving the government the ability to jail people starts to introduce a whole new set of unneeded problems, includng prison camps, political prisoners and the like. Given that there is no particular advantage to having the game administrators start becoming a part of the economy it doesn't make sense to have any sort of mechanism for working in jail - especially if we don't want to make prison a skill-enhancement program.
Like real jail, the jail should work to help the community. Maybe it could 'pull raw materials out of the air'. The government could control what materials is taken out.
Punishment and prison should not exist unless there is a legal system setup to determine Guilt and assess punishment. Without such a system, punishment could be unfairly assessed by the whims of individuals.
Or we could just let the admins continue to ban stupid people...
Implementing prisons would encourage lawlessness because everyone would want to "try" the prison out. I've played games with jails before. People just break the rules and harass the admins more because the jail is "cool".
All this talk of prisoners producing things for the government to sell without being paid wouldn't work. Companies couldn't compete with government prisons, because they have to pay their employees.
wouldnt work how games set up they can just buy a moving ticket and say bye bye
A judicial branch would be good. They'd need some actual power to be effective though.
@Troy: We'd need some way to have extradition in the game. Maybe give the Pres/Congress the option to prevent extradition to certain countries if they want.
@Troy
They can't buy a ticket, as they will be living in a region with no companies to make moving tickets, and a perpetual trade embargo with the rest of the world, so nobody can import tickets. There is a question of how it could be set up such that the person cannot accept a donation of a ticket from somewhere else, but I don't know the game internals well enough to know how doable it is to block donations. One method would be simply to keep running a script that detects when the person's inventory has open slots and every time a slot opens, fill it with prison rations - the Q1 food.
@ Jordan,
The things you mention are a distinct possibility, which is why other measures - perhaps fines (or even instituting liens on earned wages) confiscation of property even skills becomes another option to make the sentence stiffer. At thew end of the day, the admins still can perma-ban someone, which is effectively a death sentence.
@Endy
The amount of complexity and abuse a national penal system, run by players, would involve is somewhere beyond astounding. There's no functional way to do it without opening up huge and immense potential for almost immediate abuse - like jailing political rivals and so on.
@Bravo: Does pose an interesting problem. I was thinking of a Supreme Court with new members proposed by the Pres and confirmed by Congress. Probably only allowing a single term in the court would be effectively the same as RL life terms. Should be impeachable by congress to provide some checks and balances.
@Endy,
The questions at play are larger, however: what laws are to be enforced? Who investigates crimes? Who represents the defendant
The whole ilne of questioning opened up by this will swamp the main objective - allowing the admins to punish in game without banning players and therefore losing experienced, bright people who have invested a lot of time, energy and creativity in the game.
What happened to due process?
@Joe,
This is why I am suggesting it as a tool for the administrators. Right now, people just get booted and vaporized. No recourse, no anything. The point of this is to get the admins away from using the banhammer as their only tool for enforcing the rules.
who would give up their country to use it as a jail and do you honestly think other countries say in PEACE wont screw with our prisoners and just give them a ticket to fly to one of their countries and join their side
@wTroy,
The point isn't to set up a prison for use in game, the point is - as you can see from the linked article - to address the fact that admins seem to have only one method for enforcing rules: banning. The idea here is to give the admins SOME other way to deal with people who they think are getting out of line without having to boot them from the game entirely.
I think this might work.
To answer your questions - nobody gives up their own country.l The admins can create new countries. They would create a new country for the purposes of acting as a prison - for those people the admins would otherwise just kick out of the game altogether. Secondly, the question of breaking out of jail depends on one of two things. Either, there has to be a way to block people from leaving isn't that hard. I already explained that all you need to do is make the normal three-day "can't quit your job period" indefinite. As I said in the article, the warden would let you loose by "firing" you from prison.
what would be the difference between this and temp banning
It's adjustable. Whether or not you cut off communications privileges, add a fine, or so on all now are tools in the kit. Temp banning is - essentially - putting someone in solitary confinement. It might make life easier for the admins to have more options to address the problems they run into with players, short of evaporating them. That was the point of the original article I linked to. This is a suggestion for implementation in-game that might not involve a whole slew of coding.
V O T E D
V-0-T-E-D
It would take some serious reprogramming and maybe the setup of an eJudicial branch, but it's definitely worth developing.
Nah, people who get banned for using multies or exploits broke the rules, they knew what the rules where, knew what the punishments where, but still continued their malpractice.
Now you suggest that we put these people who have shown to corrupt battles, elections and whatnot, in prison and release them after a while so they can continue?
yay
True. Maybe just kick them off.
I like it
I don't think they should get ANY XP though while in prison
And training they should be able to do, inmates work out all the time
Amen!
This game's fun quotient is low already. Why would anyone stay and play more if they're in jail?
Interesting thought...
any possibility of bail?
Once a cheater, always a cheater. It's not worth it.