The Outlaw
The scum and villainy of Tamriel and my future role within the world. It’s going to take more than just sneaking round and stealing items to become a well-known outlaw. Performing unlawful deeds in the other Elder Scrolls game didn’t require you to constantly be looking over your shoulder. ESO is an online game, with real players helping the NPCs with law enforcement--a player could come around the corner at any time. You’ll need to plan your thievery out if you want it to go off without a hitch.
As an outlaw you’ll be able to pickpocket, kill, and steal from NPCs. Now before you all start thinking of how much fun it’d be to kill King Emeric or any other special/iconic character in the game, it’s not possible. They’re making it so you won’t be able to interfere with any other player’s gaming experience by griefing their quest related NPCs. The same goes for the city guards: you won’t be able to kill the guards. A lot of people are not going to like this as they are used to the single player style of the justice system where your actions only affect yourself. The NPC guards will have their powers boosted so they are almost unkillable. I say almost because we all know the MMO community will find a way to do it. The primary design point of the justice system is to have the players be the ones engaging each other and less so the NPC guards.
As you approach NPCs while you are stealthed, and are an Outlaw, you’ll be able to pickpocket them. You’ll be given a prompt that says “Pickpocket [Insert NPC Name] (50)”, that number within the parenthesis is the percent of success. Where the mini game comes in is, if you sit and wait for the NPC to move, for a second or two that number will jump to 75. You’ll be able to loot items, gold, and possibly even their underwear (think Zoolander). I don’t know about you, but I definitely want to see the value of a NPC’s under garments. They made mention that some of the more valuable items could include an ivory style horn, with silver banding, and hand done etching. This horn may also be hollow and contain a secret cache of Skooma.
Each time you perform an unlawful act and are witnessed doing it, based on the severity of the crime you will either be accosted by a guard, and have a bounty placed on you, or you’ll have “heat” placed on you, or both. Heat, to use an easy reference, is like your stars in Grand Theft Auto. The more heat you have, the more the guards will want to catch you. Heat is an addition to your bounty; if you’re caught doing something, you’ll always have a bounty placed on you. Depending on the crime, or how many crimes you’ve done in an allotted time your heat will continue to grow. For example, if you steal an apple off a merchants cart, you may only get a bounty of 1 (scale of 1-20), but you’ll have a heat level of 5. So a guard may not pay much attention to you as your crime isn’t worth his time, and all the paper work required for such a small crime. However if you stole that apple, and then got witnessed trying to break into a house, your bounty would go up from a one to possibly a 10 or so, but the heat level which would have been at five, may have spiked up to 20. The instant you are witnessed you’re given a much higher heat level.
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If you run to an Outlaw Den, or just leave the city and stay away from all cities in Tamriel, your heat and bounty levels will dissipate. Eventually you’ll be able to go back into the cities and begin harassing the citizens that live there again.
If you do accrue a bounty you have two options: either run for your life and hope you get away, or get caught by a guard and pay them the bounty. Say you pay the bounty or die, you’ll have all your stolen items confiscated from you. However, if it was an Enforcer that killed you, you can resurrect and begin chasing down that person and hopefully kill them before they return to the Enforcer Tower. Should you kill them you’ll be able to loot your stolen items back off them.
This has to be one of the most exciting aspects of the justice system. Not only can you loot the underwear of unsuspecting citizens of a city, but you’ll also be able to loot high value rare items such as gear, making these items highly sought after by Outlaws, and Enforcers. Watching players fight back and forth over a single piece of gear would be amazing, and having additional Enforcers jumping in to help our their pals, or even more Outlaws jumping in for a complete free-for-all. No honour among thieves, after all.
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While at the guild summit, we asked the question, where they plan for this system to go from here? They said nothing, instead they just showed us an ominous image: a black hand on a piece of parchment with the words "We Know" scrawled out upon it. So obviously this system is going to play a large part in the Dark Brotherhood aspect of the game when it finally comes to fruition. Being sent on assassination missions. Wonder if the Enforcers will be aware of these missions and they’ll be trying to stop you from doing so. So many questions!
If you’d like to know more about the justice system check out the raw audio from the guild summit here.
