Are there guards in shard events? If not, this could explain why thieves do well as there are no NPCs calling guards. Then your comparison would apply to outside of town stealing but not in-town stealing. Some ppl have suggested removing the feature that NPCs call guards so that players themselves have to pay attention. Perhaps this would make in-town stealing as good as event stealing. Maybe then there wouldn't need to be any other change. If the problem to thieving is not mechanics, but number of victims, we should better the mechanics so that those few times a thief finds a target they have a good chance at succeeding. Maybe stopping NPCs guard calling is the best way here (which is a mechanic though?), as the victim could still call guards, or hunt down the thief. I'm open to banning stealing on events as long as we get a buff, then the issue you're raising would be solved. I don't like the situation explained by Cynic where ppl who normally don't play thieves switch to their thief characters for events. If event stealing is the major argument against a stealing buff, event stealing should just go. Currently it seems rather to be a boost for ppl who regularily don't play thieves, to go on their thief at rare occassions and earn something extra. If it is this particular feature that stops making stealing better it really penalizes dedicated thieves who go with the playstyle on a daily basis. For stealing to be fun and to make fun stories, you'll need expensive stuff to steal. It's not very fun to make a story of a stolen piece of kindling (even though it's possible within certain contexts of course). I myself would like to earn stuff through my stealing while still recognizing that it's not the only point of it. If I'd make a l33t-pvp-PK I would probably mostly do it for the sake of PVP skill, maybe post killshots on the forums, etc. There would perhaps be the occassional vanq weapon dropped by someone, but it would mostly be a bonus. Why wouldn't PKs be able to recall within 15 secs? They're penalized with a bunch of stuff, as you pointed out, and blocking their recall for 120 secs so that their victims could have the time of calling in an A-PK gank squad from IRC is unfair. Those 15 secs still provide a window of punishment. One could propose other time limits as well though, 15 secs is a suggestion. I believe that a thourough discussion where ppl have the chance to give input lowers the risk of that kind of behaviour. Even if it relies on other players there's a balance somewhere, I think, where most thieves would agree on what limits etc are reasonable. There's no problem in stealing time from players at the level of thieving today, and you also need to compare the time it takes the regular grinder to regain the value of the stolen item. Say it's a rare item worth 60k-100k. Well that's an hour for a tamer perhaps, given BlackEye's quote. How many hours did the thief invest in finding such an item to steal? Thieves should be rewarded for snooping bags and stealing items; it's a major part of UO stealing is it not? I think we need to recognize there might be a variaty of thieving playstyles, some go short some go long. Infiltrating guilds could happen as well (http://uorforum.com/threads/franz-pfniffel-and-the-infiltration-of-aod.4033/), but you couldn't require that. This is comparable to house looting which I addressed above. It's not obviously an activity restricted to thieving playstyles. You could be a mage just as well doing that kind of thing.
After reviewing all opinions imo the only thing that should be considered being "changed" for thieves is the ADDITION of NEW content that has nothing to do with current thief mechanics. Something like a zookeeper quest or similar would help make up for the LACK OF NOOBS they usually have available to grief on production shards. I strongly disagree thieving mechanics need any boost or less severity in failure. Perma blue thieving would be broken as hell, etc.. Its perfect how it is now. In fact it should be nerfed even more.
Towns have always been relative safe spaces for the entire history of UO, which was the purpose of having guard zones and not guard zones. This was in place from the beginning of the game and for as long as I've played. People play UO for lots of reasons, the vast majority of them do not play UO to steal and murder. The play UO because stealing and murdering are possible and legitimate playstyles and they are on this server. You guys essentially think thieves should be able to victimize as easily, with as little risk, and with as few repercussions as possible. That's a poor way to create an environment people think is fair and want to participate in. To give the people they attack a meaningful chance to chase them down and kill them and to give the community a meaningful way to kill murderers. 15s is way too short of a time for anyone to respond to help the person being attacked or for the victim of theft to realize what happened and to respond to have a chance to kill the thief. I specifically outlined how the 2m restriction is easily dealt with and your response was that even that is too much for a poor thief to do. At least you're consistent, but the reason why people play UO is not so they can murder and steal. They play UO because it's a fun system where players can do all sorts of things in a sandbox. Part of that has always been the meaningful ability to punish criminals or murderers. It seems you guys want to be able to engage in criminal acts against other players and make the likelihood of you being killed or failing to be as little as possible without any respect to how that affects players generally, the server population, or your victims. There really isn't much else to discuss there. Stealing mechanics are just fine on this server. If they weren't, you wouldn't be able to do so well at server events. I've played thieves stealing in town and the rates of success/guards/etc. seem totally reasonable for thefts in town on your ghost robe thieves. Adding content or restricting other content so one has to have a thief template is a good idea. Stopping silly things like being able to lock boxes but still access stuff inside them is a good idea. Good talk!
Where in any of my comments which I have ever written or implied that pking or thieving is not an important part of UO? I've never written or implied anything like that. People play UO because murdering and thieving exist, the vast majority never played UO in order to steal and murder.
The vast majority of people do not play UO primarily because they want to steal from others or to murder others, they play it because it's possible to do both of them and adds to the sandbox. Servers where all everyone wants to do is steal from others and murder others and it's very easy to do without repercussion die out because the people who make UO great, the vast bulk of players, leave and then you have nothing to do but complain about the lack of players and things to do. Stealing and murdering is not only very possible on this server, it is easy. You can set up a macro to auto steal coins/maps/trophies/and more from a bag you have snooped by type with a single button. You can set up a gate macro or a gate bot to make it so you steal with near impunity. You can run forever on this server. Your guys' view of difficulty is totally out of whack with what I experienced when I played a thief.
Put something very valuable in your main pack on your character and have your char follow an npc in Ocllo and see how long it stays in your bag. Since stealing takes a skill and nothing else on a death robe thief with a horse which is blue, even a low chance is definitely possible. You can have a character gate to chaos or outside of town and try indefinitely only to stop to gate/res.
it would make sense that it is more likely to have an npc call the guards on you if you try to steal an item in the middle of a bunch of npcs in guard zone than you get the item on your deathrobe thief, risking nothing, and walk away to hide and then bank it 2m later
Many people that talk about thieving have no clue about the reality of UOR's thieving. You don't know what items are too heavy. You don't know what items can't be stolen at all. You don't know the real thieving mechanics; e.g. when do NPCs call guards and what are the statistical chances for it. What are the formulas/statistics? You just talk or do polls without knowledge. Jakob did something a worthy thief would and should do: He had a open question about weights and success rates, tried it out and published his statistics in the OP. That's how a serious thief proceeds. This is a fraction of the basic knowledge necessary for anybody that wants to discuss this crap. There is way too much basic knowledge missing in the community to even start discussing what should be changed. Just some very few examples: How many of you know, that CBDs couldnt be stolen in 2014, were made stealable after I talked with Telamon in IRC back then (it's in patchnotes somewhere from that time), and now again can't be stolen anymore for some reason even Telamon doesn't know? I talked with him a while back about it, he couldn't explain why or when CBDs were made unstealable again. How many of you know, that all smith BOD rewards can be stolen, but that the tailor BOD rewards can't be stolen. Naturally I reported that to Telamon a long time ago, too. Most likely some Staff member just forgot to take away the newbied tag from the tailor BOD reward items and deeds when the system was created, but it has never been changed or patched. How many of you know the weight of platinum trophies and the corresponding success rates? It's crazy low 33% according to the OP. You turn 67% of the time you try to steal ANY plat trophy grey without a trophy in your bag. For 2 minutes. Naturally I reported that to Telamon a long time ago, too, and he told me he will look into that matter and change it eventually soon(tm)... One fail is enough to blow your cover and have all the players be careful from that moment on. Some also start to track and hunt you down. Events can be great, but most of them aren't per default. Only when certain things happen, a thief excels. For example, when people start dieing with loot in their bags due to the difficulty of the monsters. Also people started to use tracking 1-2 years ago. In principle just 30 points in tracking are enough to protect any Champ and Harrower from thieves. Most people seem to realize that tracking is crazy OP, and not just since today but since some years. There have been many discussions, but it was never changed. How many of you know that 90% or even more monster statuettes can't be stolen at all due to their weight? I failed to steal a freshly dropped mongbat statue during Valentines 2015 and only then realized that most statues are 11 or 20 stones heavy. Naturally I reported that to Telamon a long time ago, too. Everybody claiming that events in general are great for thieves is talking bullshit. Some can be cool, most aren't worth the time invested. Not even nearly. I could go on with pages full of thief knowledge that you only get when you really PLAY your thieves. For many hours a day, for many months. From managing 5D for more than 2 years, I know that most thieves stop playing their thieves very fast. It's like 90% drop out in their first month. 8% get their thieves out once in a while, e.g. during events. And perhaps 2 out of 100 thieves keep playing their thieves constantly. These are usually the known ones that actually are able to gather knowledge important for this discussion. Honestly, this is my advice for everybody that reads all these thieving threads: DO NOT TRUST ANYBODY (INCLUDING PRO-BUFF & PRO-NERF PLAYERS) THAT ISN'T A KNOWN THIEF WITH EXPERIENCE. Do not trust anybody that claims to have thieving experience without any proof. Statements like "events are great for thieves and when I play my thief, I steal sooooo much rares and loot!" are just bullshit made up by people that want to pretend they have experience. But also the opposite shouldnt be trusted. If somebody says, you can't steal in towns and guardwhacks are handed out all the time, they simply don't know the mechanics and what goes and what goes not. Stealing shouldn't be buffed, only because new thieves have no clue what's going on and no patience to time their steals right. Now my final opinion is: Most of the thieving system any OSI thief or player from another Shard would expect, isn't working here. It's broken for them and they stop enjoying it soon. You can have success and get rich, but you have to adapt and invent new methods. You have to constantly think, how you can circumvent the Trammel-like security that is active here. And also you have to expect, that once you succeed, Staff might change the mechanics to prevent you from repeating your success (so that the amount of help requests is minized and less players are driven out of the Shard by thieves). For example, many of the methods and tricks I invented, that never involved cheating, have been criticized in private chats with Staff and were considered to be changed in future if I keep doing it. The mechanics here aren't favoring the thievish gameplay. And my guess is, there won't be any major buffs to it. However, you could at least start creating bug reports and/or PM Telamon directly with your suggestions once you find something weird out (e.g. above mentioned CBD stealability). But to be honest, I wasn't able to have much (anything at all?) changed in the years that I reported stuff and suggested improvements. You have to become creative and think of new ways, e.g. when custom content is introduced. But once you have the basic knowledge and think of new methods, you can have alot fun and have real big successes. Actually, that's the main good thing about thieving: It might not be profitable, but you can still have alot fun from the player interaction without being succesful at all. But if you want to buff thieving, how about starting with the small details and bugs instead of big mechanic changes?
You could have just rephrased this into "I know nothing about Era accurate UO, I know nothing about stealing, I'm a trammy loving newb who doesn't want thieving changes because I couldn't hack it in real uo, only this dumbed down softcore version of it.
Because little no brain pop culture wanna be cool guy he's a baitin (not the type he usually does alone crying at his pc) Going by his little theme, it's most likely just a troll bait, but figured I'd throw some shit talk back his way. Even though his own comments do more to disparage him than my little barbs.
