Stealing is so nerfed for any reason?

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.

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).