I'd like to see a thourough thieving discussion, so here goes. I say thieving instead of stealing as it's not just the stealing skill mechanics that are central. I'm throwing some ideas in here and hope this may kick off the discussion. Remember to stay on topic and focus on mechanics, possible changes and balancing. I'll try to cut in if there's too much off-topic stuff. As UOR:s guideline is "History Perfected", arguing from era accuracy is a rather moot point. I'd rather see thieving be completely era accurate but I just don't see it happening. Let's try not get stuck in the usual trenches. Main questions 1. How should the mechanics be to make thieving perfected? 2. Is thieving to be equally balanced compared to other playstyles? Or is thieving supposed to be harder in comparison, e.g. because thieves are bad for the playerbase? Goal - Get some alternatives going, make it an active topic so we may see change in a future patch. Why - I think thieving is not perfected, and nerfed rather unfairly. So, here's a list of some nerfs and suggestions that I could think of, I don't think it's exhaustive so others might wanna fill in: 1. Can't recall as criminal (~120 sec timer) I remember that the incentive for implementing this was to give victims a chance of retrieving stolen goods. Sounds reasonable. However, I don't think it's reasonable with the standard 120 secs cool-down. This change made stealing in towns more of a hassle, but I don't think it's game breaking. If you're in for a steal where you need to be dismounted and stealth around, It's not too hard parking a mount nearby. Stealing in dungeons, however, is another story. Parking a horse is possible but not "playable" I'd say, considering aggroing mobs, stealthing long distances and the suspiciousness of a random horse in a dungeon. There's the possibility of ethereal mounts but this is hardly an option for a new thief. It can't be a requirement to have a 5 million item to do dungeon stealing. Now, without a ride the thief is already at a disadvantage. But the odds are worse as it's likely facing a combatant. Here I don't think it's fair to require non-combatants surviving for 120 secs against combatants. There are ways to survive, sure, but our matter isn't possibility but rather playability. At some stage things get too tricky to be enjoyable. The playability as a 'thief' is forced towards taking on a combatant role, but this isn't really the purpose of playing a thief (even though some do thief-pvp). Adding the recall-block was to even the chances. Now, the unmounted thief contra mounted combatant isn't very balanced. I have two suggestions: a) Give thieves an ethereal mount available only for thief guild members, mountable only after using the stealing skill, lasting for 120 secs). Or b) Reduce the recall-block to 15 seconds. This allows alert dungeon adventurers to kill the thief, while retaining the advantage of the thief's surprise. 2. Stealing success/fail rates - feels like gambling rather than performing a skill I've done some testing on success rates, providing some results I didn't quite expect. I thought stealing 1 stone items would be less successful and especially the 5 stone item. It appeared they succeeded every time. I don't know if my samples of 100 attempts are enough though. I just tried to do at least some tests. 1 stone item Successfully stolen: 100/100 Guard-whack msg: 22/100 5 stone item Successfully stolen: 100/100 Guard-whack msg: 26/100 10 stone item Successfully stolen: 33/100 Guard-whack msg: 23/100 10+ stone reg stack Succesfully stolen: 90/100 Guard-whack msg: 20/100 Note: I was in-town stealing from an alt. I was in a basement below some NPCs. One common aspect here is that the risk of guard-whacking seems to be about 20-25% regardless of weight. I'm unsure whether the 70%-ish failure for 10 stone items is good or bad; what success rates would you expect for other GM skills when doing the hardest thing? 3. Always going publicly grey I think there should be a check whether you go grey or not, that is, regardless whether the item is stolen. Going grey should be linked to the guard-whack msg above. 4. 100% stealing-secure inventories Players may access the contents of their locked containers - isn't merely explaining this mechanic enough as a refutation and reason for change? 5. Rare item weight Rares have been made heavier to lower risk of theft. I think this sounds kinda reasonable, large items weigh more. But it's kinda kicking the one already lying on the ground unless thieving gets a boost. First-time-stolen-from-pop-up? Also, quite another suggestion. I know Chris puts alot of emphasis on education and easy access of information for new players. Perhaps there could be a pop-up the first time you get stolen from, listing the 5 or so most important things to think about stealing. How to protect yourself, what to do and not to do, remember that xxxx can be stolen, etc, etc. What about that? When discussing thieving and risk I think BlackEye put it kinda straight-forward. Unless we agree that thieving should be harder in comparison than other playstyles, his words may be kept in mind (UO:Renaissance - Thieving perfected (ongoing thread)):
You've done a pretty good job at devil's advocating your ideas across. I also applaud your organisation and clarity. This thread has a small chance of being something productive. I will say that getting an ethereal mount for two minutes post steal and reducing recall blocking to fifteen second both sound like radical moves. What if while on you two minute steal timer you get unlimited stealth steps? How do them apples taste?
Thank you, I'd have hoped to develop ideas further but I've had this in mind for quite some time and felt it needed to get going. Also, it's better if ideas develop together in the community. I think this makes thieves OP, but I wouldn't be crying if we got such a change instead! I think it could be exploited for any occassion where I'd like to stealth; it wouldn't be a stealing buff really but rather a stealthing buff. Just use the stealing skill and get unlimited stealth, or steal from an alt in case it only works after stealing from a player. Even though there's a skill cool-down of 10 secs I could just cast invis until that is finished, even if the victim constantly reveals. Even doubling the stealth steps up to 20 is powerful. As I learnt in the military for escaping, you wanna pick one direction and just run straight; this quickly expands the area that chasers must cover. So, I can choose to walk straight in one of the 8 main directions for 20 steps, unless the victim has tracking he's got about 1/8 chance of finding my chosen direction. Also, having walked those 20 steps the skill cool-down is probably finished and I'll walk another 20 steps.
that's why I just said unlimited... because with 20 steps, your skill check timer would clear before you hit those 20. I figure so many people have tracking. and you would still need to evade the attacks till your skill timer reset from the steal before you could use hiding... there is a window of opportunity in there for the victim to run you down. even if you do manage to hide the reveal spell is quite powerful here and a couple mages casting randomly might even pop you. of course you would need to use the steal skill on another player to get this kind of bonus. you could station a blue alt in a dungeon and use him to get the two minutes, sure... but then you are either stuck staying within a tight radius of that toon... or once you get far out you have to reveal and run back [or slowly and drool inducingly crawl back] to re-flag. on prodo shards they eventually made stealthing this way all the time and it made the skill much more enjoyable to use without OPing it. granted, there are other factors in play on those shards so I gotta be careful when making those comparisons. but it's worth toying with?
Alright, gotcha! I could mark a rune to my alt's location, make a gate, steal from him and get back stealthing. Then I could stealth infinitely-ish. Also, if the infinite stealthing is linked to my criminal status and not actually stealing, then I could attack a blue while hidden, become criminal and stealth around. As long as I'm not in range of punching the blue my toon won't be revealed but I will have already clicked through the criminal warning pop-up. I had another idea, what if members of the thieves guild could buy some kind of concealment powder? When cast it'd give a hiding or stealth buff. Perhaps it'd just hide you? Or make the reveal spell less effective?
ah yeah, good call on the whole gating and re-stealing mention. that definitely changes things. I think we should explore our options that don't involve adding new items first. Just imaging myself in the place of a coder/programmer and seeing new materials to create makes my mouse wander toward the <- button. but maybe that just speaks about me and my own work ethic...
I've been drinking and I didn't read anything in here, yet. You're welcome. I would love to see a slide variable gump for stacked theft. For example, when you use a steal attempt on a stacked item, you get a slider to select your preferred level of difficulty, not 'amount'. Slider all the way to the max would be a 1% chance to take make weight possible in one grab, as an example. How much of that item could be based on the basic 10 stone limit wherein 10 stone of an item would be the most difficult. blah blah
As it has been discussed on the forums prior, I believe players with GM stealth should have a decreased mount time for ethereals. As it stands, it's almost impossible to mount after you've stolen something if the target isn't AFK. OR be able to mount while hidden
Great work here, and hopefully this is a productive discussion. I've only been on the shared for ~5 months, and love the thief class. It seems a situation (at least from what I've seen) that almost everyone agrees that the class is nerfed relative to both "history perfected" and OSI era. Hopefully we can advance the ball here a little on what small changes may help that (e.g., stacks and timers). Regardless, thank you all for making this such a fun place to play. Without other players, the class is useless!
Hi, I will try to set a list on mechanics that somehow hindered thievery templates. From my personal experiences in the last years playing mostly thieves templates. List is in no particular order and will try to keep it to simple things. Mechanics I think have a direct effect on Thievery templates: -RARES We don't see this one brought up too often. But it is supposed to be one of the aspect of the game where Thievery templates thrives. Even to this date you need Stealing to get the rarest spawns on OSI. On here, all you need is a mage with 100 int, a bunch of runebooks, a spreadsheet and a whole lot of reagents to recall. With some work, this could easily become a fun part of the game again. Add locks and traps on containers. Guards npc that patrols. Ground pits and traps and for god sake pls revamp the spawns ! I would like to see all the "house deco rares" coming from bods hidden in the overworld instead. Fight on! -MONSTER LOOT*** Upon further testing it seems we are able to random steal items in monster's containers. Woot! This one really took a big part of my gameplay away. When the monster's loot got added into a container, it made stealing a monster completely worthless. It was implemented to prevent some razor looting abuse in the events (correct me if im wrong). When running around in the deserted wilds, deserted dungeons , deserted towns, I would turn my attention toward that Air Elemental's loot or that Pirate NPC.... But no longer can we. Reverse this change, thieves got punished and razor is the culprit! -EVENT LOBBY When time allows it, I think an automatic gate closure need to be added. Safe trammel areas are more that often host of the most nefarious schemes! -HOUSE SECURITY The server got it so close to be perfect! Good job on the settings, mechanics are as close as I remember back on Renaissance. We should be able to cast "offensives" spells inside as long as line of sight permit. Extra lock downs and secures ? Direct effect on a stealth house breaker template. 1 house per account ? (secure storage per player) -TRADE TIMER Another annoying mechanic for the honorable thief. Was added to prevent "trade scamming". In game scamming should not be regulated. Educate the new players if it is a concern. There is many way to prevent that particular kind of scam : Reveal spell, Detect hidden, tracking, trading over a table. While adding a timer to prevent thefts right after a trade do not ensure a 100% safe trade, it does ensure a 100% fail for a 3rd party thief hidden close by. -BLESSED ITEMS / BODS While I am not a trade skills expert, I really do appreciate the work behind the crafting system. It is absolutely awesome work overall. What I will suggest will never happen, but this being on the list of what directly affect thievery, I feel like I have to try. Bods are the ultimate source of all the blessed items / clothing (events aside). Blessed deeds,fortification powders etc etc etc. Everything to make your UO life safer, more colorful and that special 14 million mask last forever. Bods rewards revamp. Make bless deeds as rare as it was on OSI Renaissance! I used mines on a normal fancy shirt and a kilt and both got destroyed by a macer the next day. Basically anything newbied and blessed items should be as rare as mongbat dung. -DISARM I never tested disarm back on OSI so this will only be about my UOR experience. Been running with a disarm thief as my first character hoping to catch nice weapons and pickup town fights. I can remember getting to use it once, in a faction fight, and failed my roll. 50% success ? Sound good in theory, in practice it makes the skill worthless or close. The skill cost stamina and all the victim have to do is re-equip the weapon : Boost to 100% success. -MUGGERS A master thief once taught about the difference between a thief and a mugger... All I remember is that it is that pesky type of thief everyone hates and think of when "thief" is mentioned in UO. They try to pick fight with their victims and then proceed in stealing their reagents ,weapons, bandages or anything that helps in combat. They bring some risk in towns. Why is it on the list ? If you try to steal a stack of reagents or bandages you will most likely fail totally. When facing a seasoned pvp player, even though the mugger template is a close match to a PVP template, the GM mugger stand no chance if he is going to fail on basic steals. I think stealing a stack of light weight items (golds,regs), a GM thief should almost always succeed. The amount stolen should be randomized according to the thief Skill and item type. -LOCKED CONTAINERS (in backpacks) Anyone who use this trick ? Where you lock a chest and yet can still have access to it. Dishonorable for the least. In all seriousness, it need to be fixed. -TRAPPING This one have enough cover : http://uorforum.com/threads/tinker-traps.3357/ -Bards Why bards ? Bards are musicians, mages and thieves! Alas I believe it got forgotten with time passing on UOR. This is on the bottom of the list but bards need to be able to provoke on other players. This is a first draft of what comes to my mind. I kept away from some obvious mechanics that are being discussed over and over. Perfect thefts, recall timer, detect hidden vs gm hide/stealth. I cannot remember good enough.
Nice write-up. Thieving: I think it's important to have an honest discussion about thieving, the purpose of thieving, and the effects of thieving. Unlike other player-styles (except for pking), you require victims to victimize. It requires people to play poorly, to not stack bags, to not use locked containers, to not detect their homes, etc. Your playstyle is dependent on an influx of other vulnerable, noobish players and your actions have a direct effect of reducing that number constantly and for the server as a whole. The more you thieve, the fewer victims you have to steal from. I get it, you have tons of fun stealing things from other people and looting their houses, but thieving takes two people and the other person is always a victim. Because of this, we need to have real discussions about the balance between the ease to victimize other players and the effects it has on them and the playerbase. So, let's be reasonable. It's not hard to find brag comments or threads about the recent items you stole or houses you looted. Thieves relentlessly pick on vulnerable players they know can't defend themselves and haven't learned ways to mitigate the risk of thieves. Any shard event might as well be a special event specifically for thieves given how much you can pull in compared to any other playstyle at them from slayers, runics, and other drops. It's such a thief's wonderland that players who normally never play thieves rush to log them in. Thieving is not hard, it's not harder than other playstyles, and it can be very lucrative. One can be a thief with minimal or even nothing to risk on themselves. Dying on a thief doesn't matter as they're typically all-but naked. The problem with thieves here is there aren't enough vulnerable, noobish players for them to farm constantly out and about. When there is, like at shard events, we see just how not-limiting at all the thieving mechanics really are (60k-100k in minutes, not an hour). Let me address some specific points: 120 sec crim timer: 1. This can be circumvented entirely by casting a gate with a scroll which takes about a second or by using a gatebot which can be done before you even try to steal anything. 2. You can stay on screen, cast invis, try to mount horse, and then cast on yourself and you will mount your horse before almost all players can reveal you and attack you. Then it's off to the races. Because there is no pet stamina on this server, a mounted thief is essentially an uncatchable thief. 3. You can use stealth to target the item you want to steal, run away, mount your horse, run back next to the person and use last target on the item you had previously selected. 4. You can simply run away and use hide and most players are not attentive enough to find you. 5. Thieves don't need to be stealthed or hidden to steal anything. They don't need to dismounted to steal anything. 6. Or you can defend yourself with pop-boxes, regs, wands, and the magery you all have just like everyone else does when they're attacked by another player. If anything should be changed, it should be changed so you cannot walk through a gate with a crim timer. Whenever I read these comments by thieves wanting their playstyle to be buffed, I always wonder if they have actually ever chased down a thief and killed them. The complaint becomes, "why can't I walk up, hidden and undetected, take something from another player and very easily get away on horseback, while carrying next to nothing and not being able to competently defend myself, and not being prepared with another account to gate me out?" It sort of answers itself. Now, thieving is a valuable part of UO and the UO experience, but claiming their playstyle is unfair and needs huge buffs like mounting ethy horses while hidden so you can run endlessly and then recall is ridiculous. Playstyles: Claiming that because thieves don't make the 60k-100k an hour that other playstyles can make (one which does not require that player to take the 60k-100k from other players), their playstyle is nerfed, unfair, and unbalanced is silly. The reason those templates make that money is because what they're farming is constantly respawning monster npcs and not other real players. The reason thieves don't on a constant basis is because their victims aren't anywhere near as plentiful. When they are, like at shard events, they make plenty of pixels arguably more than any other playstyle there. Theiving is a unique playstyle. The closest comparable playstyle, one which only benefits from bad things happening to other players is pking. Do you think thieving is less lucrative to pking? Do you think it's harder than pking? Even if you think it is, pks have downsides which thieves do not have. Let's do a comparison: Person-killers: need to kill their victim cannot simply run forever while still killing victim take murder counts and can suffer statloss cannot go into town easily identifiable always attackable without penalty Theives: does not need to kill their victim can run away forever while still getting item no murder counts or statloss, 2m crim timer is it can go into town not easily identifiable not always attackable, which can be fun given different characters with the same name thieving sprees have no downsides other than a 2min window where npcs cannot resurrect you So, frankly, the need for buffs to the thieving template vis-a-vis other players is way overplayed. Content for a better experience npc or pvm-wise so thieves have more to do is a great idea. A slider gump for stealing from stacks is reasonable as well. When you commit an aggressive act against another player, you should go grey. Attempting to steal is an aggressive act. The rates for successfully stealing and gaurd-calling seem reasonable to me. tl;dr: The reason why you don't make 60k-100k an hour that other playstyles make (why this comparison is reasonable escapes me), is because there aren't enough noobish, vulnerable people for you to victimize. At the end of the day, that's really the problem with your playstyle... it's that you don't have the easy, vulnerable victims to easily and risklessly take advantage of here. If there were (like at shard events), the mechanics here would be just fine for you to make oodles of pixels. The reason you have a tough time is because most players are not noobish and vulnerable.
Great response Iago, and well thought out. I agree with almost everything. It seems most everyone is aligned on the need for a stack-based change to that element of the skill.
This happens from time to time, you get the guards can be called message (this time on a 2 stone item) and then I was guard whacked even though there was no guards called. Earlier the town crier called with his back turned twice, but it shows up in the journal when an npc or player calls. The last lines are just typical of what we deal with here.
Just some recommendations from a non-thief, take it with a grain of salt I guess. I think this is fine the way it is in town. There are so many escape options in a town IMO, including parking a horse nearby. I may be persuaded to see a etherals mounted while hidden, and it doesn't unhide you. I would be opposed to this applying only to thieves. If I were running a dungeon thief I would use a second account to reverse-gate my thief out post steal. PKs use this same tactic. PK goes out to kill in dungeons, steps in shit, uses 2nd account to reverse gate into a house. So there is an option for thieves, albeit not ideal. I'm not one for the math here. I think that above results are very reasonable. I can fail a 7th circle spell numerous times at GM, I can fail an 8th circle spell dozens of times at GM. I can fail a provoke using a slayer instrument at GM a fair amount of times too. Same with poisoning a weapon with DP at GM poisoning, etc.. Personally I don't think any criminal action should go unpunished. If you aren't caught by an NPC then I don't care if you remain blue to everyone else, but staying blue to the victim doesn't sit right with me. Access and use are 2 different animals. I can "use" regs but can't access my bandages. These lockboxes are really only good for regs and plat/gold. I understand that to a thief those are 2 major components. I'm not sure I can be persuaded to see this changed. I think it's obvious from town events alone that the majority of people are naive to this trick and those that aren't are at times too lazy to go forward with it. I think at this last town event I saw more thieves than I did tamers. I think that's proof that the skill is healthy on this server. I was even in mumble with guys on tamers who got fed up and swapped to their thieves. Valentines will be another event where thieves surely do thrive. I could be persuaded to see this tactic done away with if actual trapped pouches worked, instead of doing 1 dmg. Magic trap will trap a container that will result in a certain amount of damage compared to the casters skill level. Something like this I guess. I'd like to be able to protect myself as well, my pack shouldn't just be an easy mark. Item weights definitely need to be looked at. I used to think that platinum should be heavier since it's value is extreme as compare to gold. 100 plat =/ 100 gold thus it shouldn't be as easy to steal. I've since changed my tune. If you are stupid enough to run around with 100 plat in your pack, eat it. A pop-up in Occlo would be a neat idea, but I don't think it's essential or mandatory. See, here's my problem with thieves. For the most part it's a risk free endeavor. You see these guys in town all the time, those obvious death robe thieves just picking away at your regs until they either get all of them or they get bored from being whacked. It shouldn't necessarily be like this. If you want reward, there should be some risk involved. Death robe thieves=no risk. I don't show any pity for that thief in town who couldn't care less about the whack since they can just come right back and try again (with someone afk or not paying attention). In a dungeon or out in the world I'm a little more inclined to see a thief have a chance at success. For example, at a champ spawn, valentines event, dungeon, etc.. I did some stealing at last years Valentines. I thought it was absurdly easy. If I got caught i'd run. If they caught me with a stun then I'd lose 3 of each recall reg and 5 of each gate reg. If I didn't get caught then I got away with some good stuff. Most commonly were the hcoin, but I did get away with a few rares too. Worst case scenario I'd successfully steal and the victim would be able to kill me, what did I lose? Nothing really, just time, that hcoin wasn't mine to begin with. I'd just come right back until I got bored.
I don't have locked containers in my house and I don't carry valuable things. I use only bank, always full. Anyway I don't want to cheat the thieves, so one day a week i leave one of my char afk with something to steal. For example yesterday a thief named azruk earned some flip bods.
I was thinking- what might be fun would be some custom PvM type content - perhaps some semi rares spawning on NPCs very very rarely in town (like AMIB rates). Would give us thieves something to do outside stealing from other players, and introduce a fun new element. Why couldn't carpenters, blacksmiths, town folks occasionally have fun items on them? I'd love exploring, snooping, try to steal from them, etc. Anyone else like this idea? I think it could be fun!
Listing buffs you all want from Santa isn't going to change anyone's opinions. Yes, we all understand that people who play thieves want their playstyle to be buffed and are tripping over themselves suggesting ways (from reasonable to totally ridiculous) to buff it. Why don't you guys address the actual issue with thieves? Why don't you address the effects you think thieving has on the server, the benefits stealing rares and big value items as well as house looting provides, or how you think these acts affect other players or the server population? The thief playstyle requires there to be other players for you to victimize and because of this there needs to be a balance between the ease of which it is to victimize other players and creating an enjoyable environment where their victims think it's fair and continue to want to play. Why don't you discuss decent comparison playstyles? There is actually only one other playstyle which is similar in this aspect and that's the pk. You guys don't address the comparisons between the thief and the pk, e.g., the downsides to being a pk or the relative difficulty between attempting a steal and killing someone, you just and simply assert your playstyle is nerfed and it's unfair. You simply assume you should be able to easily steal from ppl in town risking nothing on your ghost robe thieves, you assert you should be able to steal any items with a chance for it to be unnoticeable, you assert you should be able to mount horses while hidden, etc., etc., but you don't really address why in a way others are going to be convinced. I attempted to throw out some comparisons above. Thieving changed quite a bit on OSI throughout production, claiming that during one particular publish thieving mechanics were X is not enough of a reason to expect it to be implemented here. There were lots of dumb bugs, balancing decisions, and other mechanics ripe for abuse which have thankfully been fixed here. I've played thieves, on OSI and here, and I've played them at server events. If thieves are honest, they will admit server events are like a candyland just for the thief playstyle. This should show you the problem is the lack of easy victims and not a problem with mechanics. Your playstyle requires other players to victimize and each time you steal you reduce that number (either through them adopting better tactics or stopping play). Let's create a situation where people want to engage instead of ones where you assert the real problem is it's not easier for you to steal a 1.5m scroll on your ghost robe thief in town without there being a good chance an NPC gets you guardwhacked.
