There's been a lot of different subjects raised about thievery but for the most part were off-topic. So here's a thread to discuss some of those things. Try to take yourself back to econ101 & put yourself in the thieves position. & also try to keep the short "nerf the shit out of it" posts to yourselves. EDIT> Other thievery discussions: Thievery: What We Want A recent Envoy update. Starts on page 9:
I've been a thief in beta, after release, & messed around with it some recently... & I honestly have to say, It was a lot more fun back then, compared to the mess it is now. The flagging, & the way people "see" you snooping or pilfering completely ruins a lot of the things that first drew me into thievery. There are a lot of people out there that think thievery is just a griefing skill because "there's no risk on the thieves end". But in reality, it's the gross amount of risk thieves have on them that keep them from doing downright stupid things like wearing gear, and having valuables on them. I think for someone to catch you snooping or pilfering, they should need to have you on their xhair, mage targeting style. Same goes for town guards if that's even planned. >edit>Of course the person you're snooping would still get a message if you fail your snoop(you would go locally allowed for them), or pilfer(you would go globally allowed). The person should have to target you while you're going through the animation, for you to get flagged. I think you should be flagged locally allowed if someone catches you snooping, & globally allowed if someone catches you pilfering. I think you should be flagged hidden criminal for as long as you have a stolen item on you. As soon as you no longer have a stolen item on you, you should lose the hidden criminal flag. I think you should be able to stack stolen items to hide the fact that they are stolen, yes, removing your HC flag in the process. If you take the risk of having silver on you, or gold, or anything else, you should be able to mix the stolen items with those. Having the HC flag being based off of the contraband in your inventory, makes a hell of a lot more sense than however the hell it's working currently. Current system ex.: someone "sees" you doing something and you are flagged HC, you either relog & wait 10 minutes or walk/ride around for a few hours for the off chance that the flag might drop. Unintentional effects these things could have... People will be able to pick up stolen items without everyone magically knowing. Future smuggling skills could allow you to trade stolen items(both people could need skills, or just the person receiving the items) or pay off bankers to take stolen items(money-sink for thieves, but I'm sure people would gladly accept it on both sides of the fence.Thieves having to carry money adds risk for them), or even allow someone with certain skills the ability to obtain these items without being flagged HC(of course if stopped by guards, those skills will need to be put to the test again). had to retype this entire post sorry.
Something else that could be discussed... Simply pushing someone who is hidden criminal to make them globally allowed doesn't make much sense when you have no clue whats in that persons inventory. Maybe make it so you have to call guards to check someone for stolen items. Depending on if the guards decide to execute the hidden criminal right there and then or just confiscate the item & send it to its original owner in the mail(I know this is possible, as stolen items currently do keep track of their original owner), is up to the guard, & whatever persuasive abilities the thief has over the guard. Of course if a guard is just doing a routine check, they wouldn't be checking you for stolen items. You would need to remove the "/guards" command to make this fair for all parties.
Hmm, well, if thieves should remain then I suggest that they get an ability to go incognito. Right now I can single out a lot of thiefs because I know exactly who they are, if we can also blacklist people from town in awakening that basically means your thief becomes worthless real quick. Beyond that though I would like to keep seeing a message 'someone is snooping in your bag' if their skill fails to hide them, maybe even a sound indication. I should not be able to know who did it however, I don't have eyes in my back.
Yeah if they are going to add a blacklist function to towns they need to give people the ability to hide their identity. Because basically it boils down to, someone doesn't like you because you have a thief character & spreads the word. They ban all your characters, including your potion crafter/herbalist from a few towns, and all you have left is gk... gl there, & good luck getting all your mats out of those towns. True I didn't even think to touch on that topic. Of course the person whose pockets you're rifling through should still get messages if you fail snooping or pilfering & the person spins around and targets you while you're going through your animation, that would basically mean that specific person caught you snooping their pockets(you'd go locally allowed for them), or trying to steal from them(you'd go global allowed). Let me throw this at you tho. A thief fails a snoop attempt on your hybrid fighter. He is locally allowed to you, but the system is less risky now so he is fully geared. So now, do you go at each other in the middle of town & risk hitting a blue(or punk griefer), or do you spit at the fucker and say fuck off? This is what I was talking about with thieves having too much risk currently, if there was less risk we would see more people taking chances. Come to think of it, I think this is the kind of fun little action I remember a bit of from back in the day... could be misremembering...
In theory that sounds good but in practice that sounds like something griefers could abuse. I take for example the idea that a thiefs is trying to steal from a crafter, the thief fails to snoop in the crafters pocket but doesn't run away because he knows that the crafter can't do anything about it and tries again and again. Meanwhile the crafter has no way to prevent it from happening even though he knows exactly who it is and has friends nearby, they simply can't help the crafter because it would turn them grey and the thief could call a guard for aid. If the crafter fights back then suddenly the geared thief gets the right to kill the crafter in town and take everything from him, beyond that he can only wait for the thief to actually steal from him, which also risks him loosing his items if the thief runs away before he gets killed by the guards or other players. Perhaps this system could work if local criminal exists in a slightly different form, what if, for example, if local criminal was exactly the same as local grey but others are allowed to attack him without penalty (revealing his local criminal to them), the twist however is that they can't see that the thief is local criminal so they'll have to trust the word of the crafter, thus it becomes a community thing. And no, I do not want people to call guards on Local Grey, if someone tries to grief me in town (for example) I want to be able to fight back without the guards if I so desire, if the attacker is allowed to call the guards because I fought back it would be too much like reallife for my taste.
Thieving in beta was a god damned nightmare, and anyone who thinks it was fair to the rest of the game is a moron; I'm sorry, really am, but there is no other way to describe it. Was it more fun? Hell yes I'm sure of it, running away with 1000 Steel which you robbed blind from an extractor at a furnace and then getting chased down by an entire guild does sound like fun, but trust me the fun is only one sided. I don't think thieves should get any buff, but instead more items of the nature that a pick pocket can steal should be put into the game. High value, light weight items that allow thieves to pick-pocket people. Also until the ability to actively defend against a thief, it should remain the way it is now. It has it's uses and a good thief will be able to strike a jackpot every now and again, but they shouldn't be able to rob a town blind. At the same time the status of a thief should be tied into the guard system, meaning that if they got caught too many times, the guards will actively and automatically chase the player around. Only once more advanced mechanics that allow passive and active defence against thieves should they be buffed in any sort of way. Things like expensive disguises, and thieving tools of some sort also give the thief something to lose should they muck up. Thieving should be a high-rish, high-reward occupation, almost like a PvPer, the way it is right now is "Medium-Reward, Low-Risk". During the height of theiving you would have a bunch of idiots just box you in and mug you blind, with not a thing that you could do to stop it.
This post is stupid-- I will explain why. People that cry about the fun being one sided usually just AFK at the bank, with a bunch of crap on them, and expect that no one will mess with them (stupid right?) That's not how this game works. If the guards remembered a thief after he got caught too many times, you would have to delete your thief after enough use (stupid right?) These kind of people don't want to take responsibility for themselves, and the fact that right now it is very easy to avoid getting stolen from (stupid right?) Also comparing thieving with PvP is downright retarded-- it is not the same dynamic, it is not the same thing. The only people who complain about thieving are the same people who never leave town because they are so scared to lose 1 imaginary pixel of an item. Their "solutions" are only "NERF NERF CRY." This game is not a safe game, there is danger lurking at every corner. If you just want to get on and peacefully extract, then you are playing the wrong fucking game-- because I will take your shit no matter what-- especially if you are the type of person that's only going to cry in retaliation instead of taking action. This is a fucking sandbox, the Devs don't have to do everything for you. If you wanna ruin a thiefs livelihood, right now it's very fucking easy, the only problem is, you actually have to do SOMETHING about it, instead of just standing still and applying no effort what so ever while you cry on the forums about "fairness." If you don't currently play a thief, you should probably restrict your commentary on this thread, because it will just make you look stupid.
Clearly you haven't seen what happened in beta, and it also seems like you only read the first paragraph, and then nerd raged your reply out.
I don't fully understand how thievery works in this game. At the moment, the way it looks to me, it's as if there is no risk whatsoever to the thief. I could be wrong. I've been snooped many times, had many failed attempts against me, and even though I see them doing it right in front of me, they are always blue. I don't get how that's fair. I may be missing something - I don't understand the "hidden criminal" thing - but something is wrong if a thief can just sit there snooping all day while I watch them do it to me and I can't do anything about it.
Right now thieves will not turn blue unless attacked or pushed, if they have failed with trying to steal something, snooping itself I believe is a non-criminal action. Upon failure thieves will get the "Hidden Criminal" flag, which will remain on them for 10 minutes (Or until death). The hidden criminal flag appears as blue to everyone until the thief is attacked. Other than this, there is no other form of punishment on thieves, as such you will often see them running around butt-ass-naked snooping everyone for everything. Death itself is not a penalty when there is a priest right inside of a town which will ressurect them after they turn back to blue. Fabernum is even worse because it has a priest right outside of the city. Today thieves lose nothing, and as a result they have been gimped pretty harshly, though there are still instances of where thieves run off with house and keep deeds. The occasional gold and silver are lost as well; however it's nowhere near the levels of thieves being able to steal and run away with stacks of steel.
Even if they aren't going to change the thief system they need to fix the bug where if you go hidden criminal you have to die to go fully blue again. So you could go hidden criminal and make it out of town and have them chase you but you won't lose your hidden criminal flag until you die.
Is that a bug or was that intentional? There was a point in time where it was a bit back and forth...
I honestly feel like its a bug because thats a little silly that if you can avoid them for that long you still can't go bank it as you'll most likely get pushed and guarded before you can bank it or you successfully steal something leave come back and bank it yet your still hidden criminal and need to go suicide to lose that flag which is a little silly.
It does feel a little bit silly, and in most cases it's just a minor nuisance anyway, because if you managed to lose your perusers, you can just kill yourself, and pick up the ill gotten loot.
I don't know how many times you have brought up the beta thing but it needs to stop now. No one wants thievery like it was in beta so stop bringing it up. I don't want to ever hear it again. It was a broken mechanic in a beta game so stop it. STOP USING THAT ARGUMENT I haven't read the rest of this thread because I am busy right now but I thought you should know this, going forward on the thievery discussions.
It went from one extreme to another. Instead of being able to run off with 1000 steel, now most thieves can't even touch steel. This could be easily fixed by being able to manipulate the targets inventory. Picking stacks apart piece by piece would be a reasonable fix, and the longer the thief is there the more likely he is to get caught. No one is going to carry them around, just like all other high value lightweight items. Thievery: COUNTERED. Countering a thief is the easiest thing in the world. Just look at him and he cannot do anything. Currently in game, a thief cannot rob a town blind and I do not know where this misconception comes from. If a thief snoops when anyone has him targetted, it is nearly a gaurenteed death. With expensive tools and disguises there needs to be reward also. A massive problem I see with thievery is that most people simply do not carry anything that is worth stealing, or items that simply cannot be stolen. You can get lucky and steal a cronite sword, but how many people actually carry those? You can get lucky and find someone with coins, but how many people actually carry those? You can get lucky and steal a deed, but how many people actually carry those? With this point made, stealing from NPC's would be a great way to come to a non-"griefing" solution. This will take the focus off of the player target aspect. Of course, anti-thief players could still take that role by protecting the NPCs. If we look at potential, the thief is medium risk with an average of low reward, with the potential for extremely high reward (case and point the draco book that was snagged). The amount of time a thief loses in an attempt to gain anything very much offsets the actual reward. With the current mechanic of snooping causing hidden criminal (and the fact that it is BUGGED AND STUPID), it is impossible for thieves to do anything like that. Overall thievery is a broken system that needs an overhaul, and a change of focus. While pickpocketing from other players still needs buffed, the main target should be high value NPCs. I am glad lockpicking is coming in, and doesn't require being hostile towards other players.[/quote]
