No you're wrong. You must have stolen from someone who was perma or criminal etc. And that ironically still flagged you as perma yourself even if they were a criminal (which is also incorrect). You cannot successfully take an item from an innocent and remain blue.
I'm rarely wrong. Maybe a recent patch inadvertently fixed this issue while you were busy NOT playing a thief. *snickers*
Log into game on an innocent with a single gold piece in their backpack, and steal every 2 minutes. Let us know when you manage to take 1 coin without turning grey.
From patch 72 We initially did not set the Perma Flag in these situations. However this allowed thieves to basically steal from a criminal/murderer and the target would be required to take a murder count in order to retain their lost goods. In this situation you can remain blue, steal the item, but will have a perma grey flag set. The logic on this as well dictated that this was possible by non-guilded thieves (which still works). This is not considered a criminal act however because you are stealing from essentially another criminal. As for historical accuracy of the change, it is hard to say what is correct. However to avoid abusive situations (even for criminals and reds) this was the proper mechanic. This is the only method in which someone can steal and item, and not receive a criminal flag. Any successful theft of an item from an innocent player will result in being flagged as a criminal. Over the history of UOR we had a variety of mechanics that covered this and they all caused extreme problems with player understanding of stealing. Nothing is more frustrating than having to risk a murder count to try to recover an item that was just stolen from you. The way it works now has resulted in almost zero player confusion in regards to thieves. They still play, they still steal items, and conflict arises from it. There is however minimal frustration from the victims of the theft as the solution to resolve the situation is in their hands. Call guards if the theft was noticed (only if a NPC had line of sight to the theft, and the thief failed a check to be noticed) or take matters into their own hands and kill the thief. Keep in mind when we made this change, we also drastically reduced the mechanics that allowed NPC's to notice a player stealing an item. A NPC will currently notice someone being stabbed through a wall, but for a guard call to be valid for a theft they must witness the crime. Other players witnessing the crime do not count. In the 5 years of working on Renaissance I have heard a million opinions on this, and been able to uncover very little actionable information about the mechanics as they existed in 1999. My personal memory supports the mechanics we have in place at the moment, but ultimately our goal is for a system that players intrinsically understand.
I Don't like being argumentative, but actually it is possible to remain blue if you successfully steal something without being SEEN. I firmly believe there are a couple of factors for this to be possible, although I'm not 100% certain. But it has been done, this I'm certain of, just not certain as to why.
So we are allowed to steal from player without being in the thieves guild? I can't even steal at the moment because I was in a situation and had to take a life. It says I'm currently suspended. How long?
When you have 0 murder counts you can rejoin the thieves guild and steal again. However.... If you aren't in the thieves guild (for whatever reason) you should still be able to steal from greys and reds. Be warned though there seems to be some kind of oddity where you'll go "Perma" even if you aren't in the thieves guild and steal from a criminal. I haven't been able to duplicate this yet, but I do know it exists. Invoker whoop'd the ass of my stealth mage once after I stole from him while he was noto'n in Occlo. My stealth mage wasn't in the thieves guild yet he turned perma anyway So be careful!
You'd still go permagrey though? That is, you appear blue but anyone may attack you because you're actually grey. This is revealed by the forensics skill or when you get killed as your body shows grey (you also go grey for 2 minutes as a ghost).
a little while ago I opened a bag that was inside a blue's corpse in ocllo and I got guard whacked. Like I said earlier, I don't have a thief. But isn't that kinda cheap though. Shouldn't I pass a snooping check to see what's in the bag. Kinda strict that rule..
I distinctly remember a past forum thread where Blackeye and Shadowjack (amongst others) were complaining that the Steal and stay Blue mechanic does not work here. I even remember Chris chiming in that it was impossible to stay Blue like there here on UOR and he was refuting their claims of how that was possible back on OSI. Now if something changed in the months since then, ok. But AFAIK, you cannot steal and stay blue on UOR.
Not an oddity. It is an intentional design. While this is not a criminal act the thief has still successfully stolen an item from a player. The perma grey flag is not linked only to thieves guild membership. It is a function of the stealing skill when stealing from players. While we are not sure if this was a correct mechanic from the UOR era, it became necessary here based on players starting to make thieves intentionally kept out of the guild so they could steal from criminal and murders without any repercussions. A common situation would be two players fighting in town, one of them is flagged, a non guilded thief would steal from the player and if the player attacked the thief, unaware that there was no guild membership involved. He would be committing a criminal act and be killed by the town guards. There is no way a player would be able to determine a thieves guild membership after he was 100% sure an item was stolen from him. Most players in this situation would attack the thief (if the theft was noticed) using felucca mechanics to recover their items. Allowing the thief to remain innocent in this situation would not be a situation that players would understand and would result in frustration and confusion.
If you have a long term murder count as a thieves guild member you cannot steal from innocents until the murder count has been worked off (40 hours each).
One could always use stealing themselves on a suspected blue thief who might've stolen from you. If you aren't in the thieve's guild, you'll only get the failure message if he is permagrey.
if it was, I didn't even kill you, that was someone else. I was just trying to see what was in a bag you had. like I said, I don't even have a thief yet