swaith

One of the bigger things making me worry about commiting hard here, is that I have been informed its pretty much free running in regards to punishment, free resurrection, lenient prison times and from what I understand no real RP penalty for doing bad things bar maybe being ostracised 

There will never be a system that works for everyone unless you do a centralised system for all nations as myself and Dromui suggested, if we can establish a system that works for the majority it would still be better than a system that allows chaos to roam free so long as it has an alt. 

While courts can be good fun they can also slow down things and make it difficult to deal with crimes in a timely manner when they are fresh in people's minds, for example do you hold them pending trial? arrange to meet when all parties have the time? 

A simple way to avoid unfair imprisonment would be to require a forum post under specific faction section where the law applies and or was broken to explain the prison time. 

That way if a post is not made, or the reason does not match the law – the prisoner can appeal the prison time via staff or support and be freed, use an infraction system or warn those that improperly imprison players with a severe warning, and I’m positive you will not see people falsely imprison people if they run the risk of a ban. Simply be harsh about it, if the law is not officially posted in the correct way, so that players can be aware of them. OR the imprisonment does not have a notice posted in the correct format or location then they are freed from jail and the jailing party is punished harshly. 

Completely and I mean, foot not trodden soil, new here – but perhaps as there are faction cities and such there could be a faction/sect of the monks system (again im super new so might be missing the mark here) where there is a central penal colony, and instead of time, the prisoners must mine/work for a prison currency that they then purchase their freedom with, repeat offenders or certain crimes are charged with X amount of cost gradually going up if re-offending. 

That way its centralised so all prisoners can RP together, they can do some sort of task or work together to get out of jail, and there can be organised raids and events for prisoners,

Similarly each nation/city that makes use of the central prison can then post a guard to interact with the prisoners, as part of their guard RP or volunteer systems etc or as a way for players to earn out of jail money. Requirements being such as having never been imprisoned themselves (to avoid conflicts of interest.) 

It ticks all the boxes as far as I can see, could be implemented in the new map effectively. Can be themed around whatever nation hosts it (and for example if it IS one nations responsibility to build and host, it could be cheaper for them to buy said nation ((I saw briefly some sort of bidding system when I read a little about ver.7 so perhaps I misunderstood this))

With regards to prisons in general I feel they are a brilliant platform for RP when done properly, however they are often left understaffed. I spent a good amount of time on various other servers running a private jail, providing RP for the inmates, and work for them to do (farms and such for me to profit and feed them from) and it solved the issue perfectly, think of a really tight security tavern. 

I think the idea of doing a crime, and putting the character on hold without having to serve the time is ridiculously lenient, it's like giving an ankle bracelet to a family member when your on house arrest. All good RP is risk vs reward, without the risk? where is the challenge or enjoyment? Punishment is integral to society and should not be so easy to circumvent.