Mod Request: Can We Do Something About the PID Please

[Scygnus]

I have not actually clashed with them yet. Found out about the Wildlife Sanctuaries after trying to go to one, and it's just so stupid I can't handle it.

Let me quote my rant posted elsewhere:

Quote

I'd like to talk a moment about the use of law enforcement as a punishment in video games.

GTA. The originator of the whole idea, probably. You get one star, you run, escaping is relatively easy. Keep doing more bad s#*!, stars go up, the difficulty of escape gets exponentially harder. This varies from GTA to GTA, as well as its clones, but they generally seem to keep it workable.

Cyberpunk 2077. The original release, haven't played the newer versions where they, I think, cleaned it up a bit. You can run across groups of beat cops in cloth uniforms trading shots with gangs, usually at a 1 to 2 ratio and losing their asses until you jump in. You clip one idiot civilian after they jump in front of your shot, the whole f*#@ing department drops on your head like a ton of bricks, endlessly spawning virtually on top of you and tearing you apart.

This is the wrong way to do it, especially in a game where you are a criminal by default.


So I've been playing Palworld. I decide to check out this island off the coast, flying over there. I get close... and get a big red CRIMINAL ACTIVITY warning. I turn around and go look up why I'm getting that because having to fly back out to get my items would really suck, especially if they fall in the water and I then cannot.

That's how I found out about the game's law enforcement system. Endless spawning cops. How do you get them off of you? Hide or die. Those are your only options, and I'm not confident in the first. Get too far away? They spawn back in on top of you.

Normally this might not be too bad, in a game where you rarely need to do anything technically against the law and there are so few people that getting caught almost has to be done on purpose.

But the island? Wildlife Sanctuary #1, where there's a Pal you need to catch to complete your collection? It's full of cops, and if they see you, it automatically triggers the infinite bullet machine because you're trespassing. It triggers it harder if you actually catch anything there.


You have two options for law enforcement in games: as a punishment when you aren't supposed to do bad things, and as a challenge when you are. Punishments can be as harsh as you want because the player shouldn't ever trigger them unless they're really screwing around. Challenges have to be reasonable, though, because the player is supposed to face them.

You. Cannot. Punish. The. Player. For. Required. Content.

 

There are a few ways it could be made more reasonable with being completely unbalanced. Having a limited response (they stop spawning after you kill so many,) or making the PID at the sanctuary hostile but not marking you as a criminal so you just have to deal with the ones already there. A great, immersive way to deal with it could be a side-quest that gets you a 'hunting pass' so you can enter and hunt the Pals there; you could even make it a separate pass for each sanctuary, with quests of increasing difficulty. Bribery, perhaps, would fit in with the game's harsh lore.

 

I am playing single-player so I can just save and break the criminal charge, but the cheapness of the law enforcement system just really bothers me, so I went looking for a mod and didn't find one. If there's anything that can be done I'd appreciate it, if not, feel free to ignore me and I'll go do it the hard way later.