[Fern]

Besides some of the things that have already been mentioned, I feel the need to point out how people often desire guards to not be present. And it, funny enough, isn't always because they just want to avoid jail.

I imagine this comes from the cynicism induced by other players in past situations, for the most part. But sometimes people purposefully do their best to take something away from the guards in hopes of avoiding OOC salt/passive-aggression. I may not experience it as much as them since I don't deal with guards too often, but I more or less have seen what they mean. It can make the atmosphere quite bitter at that.

There are goofy people that will OOCly (and due to this, ICly in the worst cases) treat the guards with such disdain to the point the guards get cynical. Some of these cynical guards then, begin a train of passive aggression in LOOC whenever a crime happens, on their own in such a way that would turn off the others from roleplaying.

And please don't get me wrong... I'm not saying the guards are the only ones to blame. I'm saying that, thanks to the worst part of the community, we got a chain reaction that not only makes players want to avoid the guards like the plague from an OOC point of view, but also turns off the guards themselves from doing their job. Not saying it applies to -everyone- but it's common enough to be worthy of mention.

Though, I personally believe the jail time is the biggest issue of them all. Believe it or not, it's part of the reason why a specific crowd dislikes/avoids guards - they feel that the jail is basically a ban from playing your character. And if that's your only character, by chance? That ends up being an unintentional ban from the game. Though hopefully there will be something to do about this.