I never really liked the system in oblivion or morrowind where if you commuted a crime it was instantly reported if ANYONE saw it. The person who sees it should have to tell other people before the entire world knows exactly what you did and who you are.

Maybe you could even bribe someone to keep quiet or hide the body of someone you murdered so that nobody finds out.

Any thoughts?

I hope you can commit a messy murder as long as there are no witnesses. Even if there are witnesses, if they are killed, you should not have a bounty...nobodies BBM'ing these crimes.

I think I agree here. :goodjob:

Wouldn't it be great if commiting a random murder sparked a Radiant Story that involved the guards trying to discouver who killed that particular victim and if there was a witness or some other sign it would lead back to you? Allowing you to truly get away with murder depending on how careful you are.

If you do get away, wanted posters with your face would be wonderful.

What's more, I'd love to see Radiant Story recognize if you behave like Robin Hood. By simple virtue of robbing from the rich and then giving a portion of your gains to the poor, you spark an event that involes a sheriff attempting to hunt you down, similer to the Bounties in FO3, but the other end is that you have gained the trust of the prols, who might even harbor you against the guards.

I'd like to see that sort of thing make it's way into a thieves day to day life.

I've often dreamt of the detective thing with the guards, it just seems sooooo far away... But still, we have no clue what the radiant story can do so maybe something like it at least... :dance:

Hopefully the city guards won't have telepathy. I hated how if I killed a random guard on one of the trails (no witnesses) another one would come sprinting from a mile away as I trotted along.. Suddenly.. "STOP! you've violated the law!" I just don't want that. I'm sure it's been fixed though. I mean in fallout as long as you were hidden there weren't really any repurcussions. Not so much with oblivion.. So I'm assuming there is no 'bbm'ing' as someone else mentioned since it was fixed in fallout. Though it is a new engine, they learned their lessons. If nobody can report it, it should be filed as a cold case (not literally) and your bounty should NOT be raised. No APB's or wanted signs, etc, etc. Tl; dr realistic.

@Clark- that sounds like a brilliant idea.. Another great way to incorporate the radiant story feature. I'm also really interested in seeing how citizens and proles behave and interect with each other.

It probably won't work, at least not until the third patch.

If it was similar to Red Dead Redemption I'd be happy, where if you're spotted doing a crime by someone they flee to the nearest guard but if you can take them out without anyone seeing you're home free.

I would like to see Dr. Xavier running at me and shouting "Stop right there, criminal scum", whenever I punch a drunken Nord.

/irony off

Dr. Xavier can't run :sadvaultboy:

I never understood how if you attacked someone with no witnesses that they could somehow report it to the authorities (if they had high responsibility) before they died even if there were no guards around. The whole stealing horses thing in Oblivion was completely out of whack and a good example of how not to implement crime and punishment - if the horse saw me mounting it even with no-one else around I would get a bounty (are they all supposed to be Mr Ed or something?) I mean that was just ridiculous.

No to psychic guards and tattletale horses.

@ Clark Parker, great idea but I doubt we'll ever see anything like that. I wouldn't believe too much about the Radiant system they're telling us, I mean look at what they said about Oblivion's system. I guess a good way to handle it would be to have people report your crime to a guard before a bounty is put on your head, however there might be balancing issues?

I think it would be great if crimes were handled completely differently than in Oblivion.

It would be awesome if it was like Anglo-Saxon England where if you committed a crime you had to pay a compensation to the affected person/people.

Well thats kinda how the real world is..witnesses tell the guards if they see it. Should make it where they have to actually find a guard before its reported.

Hopefully it'll also be regional based. Commit a crime in one region and in the another they have no clue about the crime.

...Radiant Story IS NOT random generated quests. Quests are pre-set. All it does is mix it up a bit.

Player A can take Quest X and get sent to Location 1
Player B can take Quest X BUT get sent to location 24.

Thats how it works I'm pretty sure.

Not only should witnesses have to inform guards in person, guards should have to inform other guards within the city with word of mouth and possibly posters. Messengers should have to be sent to other cities, which the player can track down and kill to prevent other cities learning of your crimes. Killing messengers could start an investigation and possibly lead to a search outside of the city for the player.

No more psychics please.

I definitely like the idea of context affecting how the guards or other people react. If you go up and hit some random person in a market, people notice and do something, if you're in a crowded bar, people shrug it off unless it gets more serious. Maybe each NPC reacts differently, one time, everyone will either laugh at the guy getting hit or do nothing, maybe one time someone will know the guy and step in, or if the owner of the place is fed up of this sort of thing, call the guards to get rid of you.

No psychic guards indeed.

Something like that yeah. Personally I wouldn't get too excited about this whole 'radiant story' concept just yet. That didn't get us anywhere good with Oblivion's Radiant AI demo...

That is an aspect of it but their desciption of it goes a lot deeper then that. Certainly the main quests and factions will be hand rolled but there are to be many smaller subquests that tailor themselves to you, your skills, your perks, your weapons... So a mage may quest to find the rare blue flower that grows on the eastern slopes, while a warrior will be asked to defend a village from attack and thief of course may develop a cat and mouse relationship with the law.

I loved playing in the Dark Brotherhood, and in Morrowind I loved the Morag Tong. I think that in order to make it a more involved experience, being able to hide the bodies of those you murder would be awesome. It would make it seem much more like a professional assassin would do.

Unless of course, the object of the contract would be that the body is found... but that's a whole different can of worms. lol From a programming stand point, it wouldn't be that much more difficult to code into the game. It actually wouldn't be hard at all.

And I also agree with the above posters on another topic. I think that as soon as you commit a theft, assault, etc., not everybody in the province should mystically know who you are and/or that you did something wrong. I think it'd be much more realistic of a scenario that if you escaped from the guards (assuming that you were seen at all) then word would slowly spread across the Province of your deeds. Slowly (over a couple of days) wanted posters for your characters would start appearing, etc.

Also, if you "accidentally" kill one of the guards or Imperial Legionnaires without witnesses, you should not get an immediate 1000 gold bounty on your head. If no one saw you kill the guard, how would they know to put a bounty on your melon? I think that all of these systems would make for more immersive gameplay.

I would love it if when you killed someone and no one saw, you would go around the town and hear the townsfolk have conversations like

"Did you hear that npcX got murdered last night?"
"No! Do they know who did it?"
"No! There were no witnesses! But they're investigating it."

Maybe later a guard could ask you about the murder and your business in the town since you're an outsider, which would be a situation where the speechcraft skill would come in handy.

Beautiful. Just an elegent idea.

Oh absolutely, if a lot of people in town like you because you've helped them out then you would be beyond reproach, but if you're new in town you should be under suspicion and that could be a really good use for the speechcraft skill, if you were able to talk to the guards and convince them "it wasn't me officer" with a high speech skill rather than just the usual fine/jail/resist arrest options.