Now that we're about to embark on a new, slightly more civilized age (with the eventual completion of Port Merrick at Golden Sands), it might be time to consider what that means on the Seas!
In a port city, I don't think that the businesses there would appreciate the type of behavior currently tolerated on the uncivilized outposts... it would drive away good, paying customers.
While I don't think there should be any sort of fake "safe zones", I do feel that there should perhaps be some rules or laws in certain jurisdictions, starting with the first port town on the Sea of Thieves.
How would this work?
Well, if you engage in combat in the port, your reputation there would be lowered (so, we'd need an extension of the reputation system). Attacker or retaliator, no matter, both are frowned upon. But also, if you are the victim of a crime in the port, you can optionally put a bounty on the player (once you returned from the Sea of the Damned :), and post it to the bounty board. You would be responsible for paying the reward, so when you place a bounty on the board, the reward would go in escrow.
This bounty would be able to be accepted by any and all players on any server (they could only take one at a time). Additionally, until the bounty has been cashed, the mark would stay with the player across sessions and servers... there's no escape, unless perhaps they pay off their own bounty... (we would need some sort of jailor/bounty officer at the port who manages all of this).
So what say you? Time to turn the treasure boards into bounty boards? I'm sure there are holes to poke in this idea, but I wanted to keep the post relatively short, so let's figure out what they are and see if this could work!
