If killing merchants is really considered a "cheat" --- then would it be possible to make their inventory unavailable when they were killed. Or just make them immortal.
That might be too harsh--as you say, if a player wants to rob a merchant, they should have the freedom to do so. It is a cheat if they rely on dying to keep the stuff, but not a cheat if they are able to get away with it honestly, and we want to keep the option.
@Levis But I agree with Talisman that a skill loss is not the way to do this. A new player who wants to rob merchants and then die won't care, low level skills are easy to increase anyway.
If you want to be both realistic and remove the kill merchants exploit, then you could just have the entire inventory of currently carried items and all gold be removed from the player on death, so they still have stuff they carefully saved by placing it in their ship's chest. Why would the player's enemies not loot his body of all the nice stuff currently carried? Players can still protect their stuff by storing in the ship's chest.
(and then make a toggle, and default this to OFF for arcade mode, ON for realistic, or maybe ironman, and user configurable)
It will still be exploitable by a careful player though (rob the merchant, run to the nearest chest in the town scene, dump everything into it). But maybe we think a clever player who thinks to stash his ill-gotten gains before being apprehended deserves a reward.
So not sure if it matters too much, as people who kill a merchant and keep all his stuff after dying probably know they are cheating anyway, so it's not like an honest player will often stumble into this unawares. I think
@Talisman is right about that, they know what they are doing here, and no particular need to prevent it if they want to play in an obviously cheating way.
Still, might be nice for realistic or ironman mode, as being looted by the enemies makes sense. But then again may just cause people to load saved games.
What I would really like: Guards apprehend you rather than killing you if you commit crimes (with a dialogue option, and if you 'resist arrest', then you will permanetly die if killed), your items are confiscated and some of them (not all) stored in an evidence chest the prison scene, and then you have to break out of prison like it works in some quests (gambler/rogue openeing, or ardent opening, both have fun prison sequences), or bribe guards, or other options with risks rewards (like in elder scrolls games).
Another option would be the sid meir's pirates route, where if you are apprehended, you go to a seperate "prison" screen, and some months pass before you can escape. So you lose more time. And then you still have to do an escape quest maybe. Eh, if only we could wish these things into the game rather than have to mod them in with work.
