>>16664385
Forgot something: There was something that started pissing me off until I realized how it actually works, and why it works.
Posting so other anons don't butt their heads on the same wall:
Crime & Punishment
If you read their forum, the Crime system is treated like a weird mystic science that people can't figure out, but it's actually rather simple:
Say you enter a farmhouse out in the sticks, you stab the wife and the husband sees. He runs away to call the guards.
Two things happen: if he gets close enough to a guard, your crime is reported. This gives you a bounty, and the guards will come to the crime scene.
If you're long gone, all you'll see is the bounty. If you're still around, the guard will search around and if he finds you, try to arrest/kill you.
If however you kill the husband before he reaches a guard, no crime will be reported and no bounty will be applied. The guards will not do a thing.
Now, the funky thing is that parallel to this whole thing, there's the reputation system.
From experimentation (and it might be wrong, take it with a grain of salt), there's two events that can fire.
Same example: you get in, shank a bitch and the husband flees. First, you'll take a hit to reputation when the crime is reported.
But you'll also get a reputation penalty once the body is found (or it despawns).
The problem and confusion arises when people murder the wife without being seen, or murder the couple, and there's no crime.
If you pop up the Reputation screen, you'll find that you have no bounty and your reputation didn't change. All seems well.
But once you leave the scene, and walk away, a couple hours later you'll open the reputation screen and find that you've lost some reputation.
An important detail is that you don't lose as much as if the crime was reported. That's because you only take the second penalty (body found), and not the first (crime reported).
Stealing is similar, it will take some reputation from you, and unless you're spotted, you'll only see that drop in reputation a few hours later.
Now, there's a question that pops up in my mind after testing this: "What the fuck, why?"
Well, this is one mechanic that was seemingly developed as a gameplay limitation that disregards realism in favor of increasing the challenge.
If you try it, you'll notice that stealing, backstabbing and being a dick… is pretty fucking OP. You can get really good gear, lots of money and potions, and with a little investment in the sneak skills, you can't be stopped.
So, in my opinion: the Crime Report system is there as a punishment for failing the "sneaking" game, so to speak, while the "Reputation" system is there to prevent over abusing it.
You can play a psychopath that back stabs everyone, but then, except for story Quests, no one wants to help you. But you can also use a lot of activities to raise your reputation to let you steal some stuff, and even back stab a random guy here and there.
For an in-game reason, I guess people just grow suspicious of you. Some guy arrives in town, people start dropping dead from dagger-related-poisoning, and when the guy leaves the killings stop?
Yeah, makes sense they wouldn't trust you, even if they can't prove anything. It's a minor thing though, and it seems mostly a gameplay mechanism, more than a lore/realism one.