Thievery

[Nehemia]

Alright. Based on my experiences and other people's experiences, I'll write a small feedback on Thievery that addresses the major flaws with the current system:

It has been mentioned that the game is too infested with thieves, possible solution:
Remove thievery from starting "classes" skill sets, force purchase. Increase book prices.

Main suggestion (Raw version):
Steal count: If thief gets caught and dies, he receives a theft count, when theft count reaches x. The person is subjected to y% stat loss on death. The theft count should decrease at "fast" rate, for example, 1 hour.

Pilfering & Snooping flagging
- Failed snoop automatically calls in grey flag with chance of 75%

- Any attempt of pilfery subjects the person to a hidden thief flag, this flag lasts for 15 minutes, if the person is hit when having the thief flag, the flag comes visible, then the person is going to get a theft count if he dies, guards may or may not be called upon him.

- Allow to steal only a part of the stack, using SHIFT button to separate the amount you wish to steal.

For preventing abusing of pushing everyone, pushing over 3 times in 1 minute should flag you grey.

There's something to start from and shape it to proper risk vs. reward scenario.

BUGS:
When you transfer worn shortsword to someone when he's cutting wood with pick axe, that transferred short sword can be later on used as a pick axe for wood cutting at least, we'll report the durability consumption soonish if I see that guy again.

Starting from Snooping:
- The skill gain is way too fast [Maxed in 5 minutes]
- With the bugged chat log, it bugs the chat of anyone who gets snooped too many times.
- There's no penalty, either introduce hidden criminal / local allowed flag to a failed snoop to prevent this massive snoop-fest-spam inside the cities.
- It can be currently used as 100% safe and free method to max your Dexterity and Intelligence, which people are currently doing.
- Snooping and pilfering animations are too similar, I personally am currently using this to my advantage and making people think I'm a hidden criminal, even though I'm a blue. (It can be prevented by just pushing, but it doesn't seem like many people know that).

Moving to the actual Pilfering:
- The most critical flaw that actually destroyed the whole system: The chance of succeeding. Its so extremely low against anyone who has over 10 int. Also raising the skill is next to impossible unless you have a friend with 10 int you can pilfer from.
Currently, pilfering is inefficient enough to frustrate the thieves and remove the usefulness of this marvellous feature, make it a bit softer, from bit to bit, for obvious reasons.

- As many people are correct, there is no risk in pilfering, make thieves subject to a small stat loss (Max 5-10%) with limited timer when they can get it. This promotes a risk for thieves and adds a "thrill" factor. Currently, you really don't care if you get busted.


Thievery:
- Even though its secondary, you should make it primary so thieving doesn't fit into every build, thus reducing the overall amount of them. Also this is a good step towards balancing it, since everyone's crying its "safe."

- Or, add more thievery sub-skills (ex. quick hands= Increase chance of pilfer from 0-10%) that are primary, make thieves really to spec themselves as ones.

- The book price is too low (100s)

Suggested skills for thievery:
- Sleight of Hand [primary] (example name): Increase chance of pilfer from 0-5%, increase damage done with daggers by 0-5%.

- Wall climbing [secondary](Skill needs to be "used" - to take a slot from a hot bar, if possible make it look like the character climbs upwards and can be used to climb maximum of 90 degree walls to certain limit)

- Dirty Tricks [primary] (later on special moves, such as a kick to the testicles / vagina for stun, poisons as craftable proc enchants, temporary blindness debuff, etc etc [These are primary])

Originally Posted by deathshroud

- Lockpicking
I think this is also a planned skill, hopefully picking balcony doors and chests within houses will be a possibility, of course making it hard and the high level lockpicks difficult to make.

- Detect Trap
Used to detect a trap upon a door/ container, hopefully crafters will be able to trap doors/ containers.

- Disarm Trap
Disarms a trapped container/ door or a trap found within a pve dungeon.

Statements from other players:

Originally Posted by Electrum

People are not simply whining, they are disappointed with the current state of thievery - and rightfully so - and are suggesting solutions and point on problems.

Originally Posted by killing karma

Devs please listen to half the community when they say they want thieves to have risk.

The current patch has no resolution for the naked zergs thieves; stealing, respawn, repeat problem.

There needs to be risk. Please listen to the community, it's kind of a given. We have been saying it since the beginning of beta when it was introduced.

Thank you.

Originally Posted by Katana622

I have 100 thievery/snoop/pilfer and 92 int.

--I am able to steal a max of 60 silver (.3 weight)
safely from someone with 10 int.

--I am able to steal safely about 45-50 unit-stack of non-silver that weights (.45 or .5) from someone with 10 int.

--I am able to steal safely from 10 int a 1.5 weight single item (like pants or boots)

[REMEMBER, THIS IS SOMEONE WITH ONLY 10 INT!!]
_________

--Then i tried stealing 40-unit stack from a 40 int character and failed every time or went global gray.

--Then I tried a 30-unit stack from a 100 int char and every time was a failure and global gray.

Ok, so this limits stealing from only people with 10 int or stealing very very small amounts, of which isn't worth anyone's time. The people who are in towns are mainly crafters and extractors or tamers. All have high int, making thievery against them 99.9% useless.

Originally Posted by Electrum

In any case, we shouldn't be aiming for matching it's real-world counterpart but rather making thievery balanced, which it is currently not.

I've also tried out theft so far in the game, and I completely echo the original poster's sentiments and confirm his data.

My suggestions, which differ from the original poster include, first, making intellect increase the chance of seeing that you are being snooped, nothing more. At 100 int, you would likely see the message every time. At 50, you wouldn't see it once from a completely skilled thief.

In addition, a thief should not be able to snoop or steal from anyone who is targeting them. If they do snoop, the person will receive a message and the thief will turn hidden gray, regardless of skill. If they steal, the thief will turn gray, regardless of skill. Being targeted should be completely unknown to a thief though.

As for consequence, thieves should have a caught count. Based on the above, since this will introduce skill, the caught count should go up to 25. After being caught (being hit after turning hidden gray or becoming gray) and guard whacked, a thief would gain one caught count, local to each city. When they reach 10 caught counts, they will be permanently hidden gray. When they hit 25 in the town, they will be completely gray there and be forced to move to a new town. These counts would decay rather quickly, at least compared to murdercounts. They should decay at 1 per 5 hours (in OR out of game IMO) and should decay in each town a thief has a count in.

Finally, though it is a big addition, money should be kept primarily in a money pouch (optional and possibly created by a armor crafter). At 100 pilfering, a thief has an extremely small chance to even snoop that pouch, which would be done by clicking on the UI while snooping. Taking anything from this pouch would be 70% less successful than taking from the main backpack, and thus it is much more risky as it has higher rewards. Stealing from the main backpack should be relatively easy, and a thief should be able to take anything in a count less than 500 of normal items, or a full stack of coins.

Originally Posted by Angarato

agree with rathius, snooping around in someone elses bag doesnt seem socially acceptable. at least not where i come from

Originally Posted by javifugitivo

I agree, the thiefs need some riskes. A small statloss would be nice.

Originally Posted by Angarato

I agree with the hidden flag = statloss on death, ill be fine with just 5% statloss but more wouldnt bother me. they need to risk something to get a reward.

Originally Posted by sakkdaddy

There does need to be some penalty though, or the risk vs reward for stealing is completely unbalanced. Naked thieves have nothing to lose.

5% stat loss would be fine. Maybe a very long timer for going global gray when they die so that they can't rez near town unless they wait 15+ minutes so it at least wastes their time for failing.

Originally Posted by Nehemia

Stat loss on busted thieves, (5%) is agreeable once they do some serious recalculations and people are actually able to steal stuff.

Originally Posted by longhairdfreak

There should be the ability to split goods while u steal. It will allow small amounts of anything in the backpack to be stolen. For instance my crafter Vynn has max int and is carrying around 1000 tungsteel. Well, there is no way a thief will take this, however why not peel 2 or 3 off the top and take those. Snoop as normal, shift click target, separate say 5 and take that. It would allow at least some stealing from anyone, even if it is only one ingot off max Int.

I do think it makes a lot more sense that thieves can only steal light amounts, anyone would notice 10kg's removed from bag. Intelligence should affect how likely you would be able to steal from someone. The added protection to crafters offsets most of the old whining, as crafters were hurt most by thieves. I think they are on the right track.

[Thaeric]

I know there's a ton of posts already about this already, but I would like to see this turn into a constructive discussion about the actual risk vs reward, not the mechanics, the skill efficiency, or anything else like that. Please, if you have a complaint to add, try to also add a suggestion for a solution.



In a game where the idea is to balance everything on player skill as much as possible and keep everything fairly even as far as risk vs. reward, do you feel that thieves face enough risk vs. the rewards they are capable of gaining?


Personally, I feel that they have made a step in the right direction with the modifiers like intelligence and such, but frankly, nothing deters a thief from trying. Why? No risk.

For example, if it weren't for red stat loss and inability to access guarded towns, a lot more people would be red. Simple reason; there is a punishment for going red. There are still reds out there, and many weigh the risk vs reward and find it worth the risk.

A thief however, at worst is gray flagged for a couple minutes, no matter how many times they have stolen something, or been caught. They don't have to risk any personal items (ie; armor and weapons that a red would have to risk) to ply their trade. They don't lose stats, and if they do get guard wacked or killed, 2-5 minutes and they're back in the same town, stealing from the same people, again, with no losses. This is what leads to there being a huge number of thieves in just about every town.
Meanwhile, the victims have no way to defend against possible thefts. No trapped inventory bags/boxes, no way to hide what they're carrying, and really, no way to stop a swarm of grouped thieves surrounding them, trapping them in place while one guy steals and runs away.

I think there needs to be a risk for these guys. I don't want to see thieves nerfed into the ground, nor made a skillset never used, but I would like to see them playing on a level play field. At this point I am afraid we are seeing the thief skills and abilities being reduced, and the reward lowered instead of adding a decent risk, and that's not good.


My suggestions;

• Add some sort of flagging system that behaves like the murdercount system. The more times a thief is caught, the longer and longer they remain gray flagged, with a milder cool-down than the red flags. (Lets face it, infamy should be enough to alert guards to not let someone into town to begin with.)
• Add some sort of anti-thief items, traps, or bags. (I believe UO had the ability to trap or poison loot? How did that work?)
• Add some sort of anti-thief skills, hell even make it primary if it's useful enough. Allow players with these skills to detect hidden criminals so they know for sure they can attack them, rather than guessing which of the 5 thieves that were all standing around made off with the loot. Also, a skill that would let them uncover disguised thieves. (see below)

I also think they should modify a few things in the favor of the thieves if they employ the flag system I suggested.

• Make the snooping and pilfering animations much less noticeable for skilled thieves than for those with low skill. Perhaps increase the speed of the animation or the duration its displayed? Perhaps an altogether different animation?
• Different infamy/flag status with different towns. Just because one guarded town is aware of a criminal, doesn't mean they should all be, unless their infamy is so great that their reputation precedes them.
• Allow thieves to disguise themselves, changing their targeted name, and alter racial appearance. Add thief tools, clothing, etc that is required to do this. And make them fairly expensive/hard to obtain. This would promote well known thieves investing money and items into their trade, as well as add the risk of losing something if they are caught!

Please, add your suggestions and thoughts, I would love to discuss this with you all.

[Nehemia]

I was about to quote that post here, but it seems it made here all by itself!

[Maerlyn]

Thank you for your feedback Nehemia. I copied Thareic's post form the Discussion Forum here since they are closely related and shed light on the matter from 2 different perspectives.

Again, please note that the thieving system DOES need balance (be it in the calcualtions or by adding/changing things in the system itself) so keep it coming.
That being said, yes, thievery is a lot harder right now than compared to beta. We feel that this is the proper way to approach balancing, especially in respect to the impact of thievery in beta.

[Nehemia]

Originally Posted by Maerlyn

Thank you for your feedback Nehemia. I copied Thareic's posts form the Discussion Forum here since they are closely related and shed light on the matter from 2 different perspectives.

Again, please note that the thieving system DOES need balance (be it in the calcualtions or by adding/changing things in the system itself) so keep it coming.
That being said, yes, thievery is a lot harder right now than compared to beta. We feel that this is the proper way to approach balancing, especially in respect to the impact of thievery in beta.

It is in for heavy balancing, that is certain, but I believe most of us agree that its better that you started from the harsh side of the things, thieving can now be tweaked to most satisfying result for the both parties, the victims and the thieves themselves.

I'd consider thievery's ultimate goal to be fun and exciting with risk factor included for both parties, that way even the victim can have his or her fun chasing the villain down the street with the guards (once they are implemented as intended).

I'll try to keep this thread up-to-date until next tweaks, and make a separate thread for those tweaks.

[Sebastian Persson]

We will discuss these ideas on Monday, thank you so much for the info, this is exactlly what we are looking for.

Some ideas are good, some are.. maybe not as good and some are pretty much impossible to do with the core-system we have for sending/receiving information from the server. But we will try to get a general feel for what you want and try to make just that for you.

Thanks again

[Nehemia]

Originally Posted by Sebastian Persson

We will discuss these ideas on Monday, thank you so much for the info, this is exactlly what we are looking for.

Some ideas are good, some are.. maybe not as good and some are pretty much impossible to do with the core-system we have for sending/receiving information from the server. But we will try to get a general feel for what you want and try to make just that for you.

Thanks again

Exactly the reason I wanted to try to bring a lot of ideas, as I thought, some of them are impossible to complete, even in theory. The purpose is to give you guys ideas to work on, as my personal opinion is you guys will manage in balancing far better than this community alone does.

I will continue gathering experiences from my, and from the community's view. Gotta thank Starvault for listening to the community to extent that you'll be able to co-operate with the community.

Sincerely
Self-declared thief advocate.