Stealing is so nerfed for any reason?

double post I suck

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I don't understand all this thief nerf stuff. Thieving is difficult and it has consequences as it should. A true thief doesn't just walk around picking pockets. He's a con, he outsmarts not just noobs but vets. If all your biggest concern is higher success on afk players around banks, then you probably should just stop trying to be a thief. You're not a thief, you're a nuisance. The biggest nerf to thieving was easy tracking for players with minimal track skill, and guaranteed tracking for players with GM track. Tamers with side jobs of tracking rare tames would shut down a thief in the world just by running a background track macro, which they did most of the time looking for murderers anyway. Tracking has been nerf'd now so if you want to be a real thief, leave the newb afk'rs and their stacks of reagents alone and go find some real stuff to steal! Pick a target, learn their bank spots, hunting spots, bod spots, houses, etc and then go for the prize. That's thieving. To be a successful thief, that's what it takes. It's an entire play style, not just a few mins on a character stealing in towns. I don't play this style anymore, but I have in the past. I just do't have the play time these days to invest the time it takes to be a SUCCESSFUL thief. If you just want to grief some people and have some fun with them, pick a dungeon, get creative, and do your thing! I've done that a few times, looting their kills, stealing regs, running thru spawn... just being a general nuisance. The more pets a player has the easier it is lol. And remember, a thief is only as good or as fun as the person playing it!

Roger that, I see this is about principle - you have my respect... which you already did before though. As it would barely affect thieving more than as a happy surprise from time to time, this isn't important to me.

The discussion on page 7 is circumnavigating the forensics skill / detective profession.


A member of the thieve's guild imo should have a small percentage of a chance to steal an item unnoticed and remain blue (in name only), however all steal attempts upon another player should incur permagrey status.

This affords the person actually playing the detective role the opportunity to observe odd behavior and put the forensics skill (which I really wish wasn't broken btw) to use via "further investigation of suspicious citizen".

All attempts to modify the game in a way to deter player "grief because UO happened to me" should be avoided like the plague. I don't even understand why it's on the table as an argument point.

You should be subject to crime from theft to even murder no matter where you are and at any time.That's life. Granted, within the "safety of town or in my own home" the odds of having that happen are nill but, with the law of averages It still could happen. Conversely, you won't see me roaming the streets of downtown Detroit on a weekend night because I know the odds of anything bad happening to me increase by 100000000% .... and if I didn't, well I get to learn that lesson... once.

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Time... time is the punishment and going through the suicide process (seemingly brief as it is) is still time the thief is out of the game.... not thieving.

However, I'd like it if the thief were killed within the rules of permagrey status within x minutes, the item stolen is returned to the owner.

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aye

@wylwrk , after carefully studying your body language, mannerisms, and reactions, etc etc, my studies have concluded that you are the occlo detective. I had something bad in store for this character, but since I like wylwrk, I'm considering taking it easy on him. You've been made!

^ made me lol irl


No, I am not the "Ocllo" detective.

I would never "own" up to "it", even if I were.

I'm confused (don't worry, it happens regularly)
Thought there was 3 possible outcomes from a steal, and guaranteed consequence:
I thought you can stay blue after a steal - to all even the one you stole from.
Then you can steal and stay blue to all except the one you stole from.
Then you can steal and go gray to all.

Consequence of stealing anything from anyone: You are always perma-gray to all after any steal until you die.

None of the above applies to guildies and factions, correct?

Thanks in advance for clearing up my confusion!

On OSI there were several phases of how stealing worked.

Before rep patch you went from neutral to dishonorable the first time you attacked (not killed) someone or stole something from someone. You would be grey to everyone with higher notoreity than yourself, but all combat excluding order vs chaos in town resulted in a guard whack, so you were still safe in town. (Too safe - you would steal from people outside town, they would attack you, you would run to protection, wait for them to damage you, call guards and loot the rest.)

After rep patch thieves became criminals and PKs became murderers, so thieves were no longer permanently attackable outside of town. At this point stealing something would turn you grey to the player you stole from regardless of whether they saw it or not, but only turn you actually criminal if your theft was detected. Often your mark would have no idea why you suddenly turned grey. The inability to bank while grey was added later during this era. This was the glory days of the tank thief; stealing, snooping, tactics, archery, wrestling, magery, resist. You did not yet need to be in the thieves' guild to steal from people and if you stole from someone and they attacked you you had every right to defend yourself. (I went for pearl and silk, personally.)

Then in late t2a thieves were pretty much forced into being "pure" thieves. One thing that should be noted is that during the entire time of both above periods, 99% of thieves were 1 hour old characters terrorizing brit bank with 50 stealing skill. Someone got their house looted, their main char killed, their main server was down - whatever; this was the average thief and why they are hated to this day.
This patch fixed this by making it so only npc-guilded thieves could steal from players. I believe 60 stealing as well as a certain character age was required to join the guild, effectively eliminating the annoyance factor of throwaway bank thieves, but also completely killing off the tank thief archetype since thieves would now take murder counts if they killed their marks in self defense.
It was at this point that permagrey was a thing: if you stole from someone you were grey to them regardless of whether they detected it or not until you died and for the entire duration you essentially counted as an animal (IE grey/attackable but not criminal) except that you appeared blue (if you happened to otherwise not be criminal, of course) until attacked. It was also around this time or perhaps a bit eariler that the biggest meta-nerf to thieves came: lock down and secure containers. Before this happened, stealing a house key meant stealing a house; nothing was locked down blocking your way to whatever was in there and no containers were secure. After this the key was often locked down and even if you got in you could simply be banned. This change was more trammel than Trammel itself.

All of this was before Renaissance although I imagine the latter was likely close to its release, but its worth keeping in mind how much it changed over the years when trying to recall how it functioned back then.

The question is what stealing should be in a meta-context (IE. what does it mean for the average player, thieves and non-thieves alike, to play on a server with thieves on it) and I personally think it is by far one of the hardest things to place.

I started UO when renaissance was introduced, yes I was one of the first ever trammlets . I've heard stories of how stealing was before renaissance, but it is only a wet dream to me, as I didn't exist during this time. But you should all feel relieved that I made the mistake of creating my fisherman on the same account as my thief, and for this reason, you all have been able to enjoy relatively no risk while my fisherman is in training. Enjoy it, cuz my thief will return very soon, as I'm at 97.9 fishing. When he comes back, he's taking everything imaginable. Trust and believe that.

When I first joined UO, Lost Lands had not yet come out, but came out shortly after - like right after. I remember all the excitement about the new lands. I played a disarm thief at this time, but not too regularly. I mainly played a mage and a scribe for gold. Gold was not that easy to come by, every spawn had players on it! I don't know if Trammel came out at the same time but I remember needing moonstones to go back and forth between Tram and Fel at some point. I may have quit for a little bit, but the next time I remember playing, Ilshenar either already was out or came out with the paragons. Seems like that time frame was between 1999 or 2000 to 2002 or 2003, but I played off and on, never more than a few months at a time. That was my early/mid 20's so of course when I had a regular woman, I didn't have much time for games! Or maybe it was the other way around, lol. That period of my life is somewhat of a blur and I actually played more Yahoo spades more than anything else. Got to #3 on the ladder rung if anyone remembers Yahoo spades from that era. When I got back in to UO after that, it was 2009, early 30's, and life had tamed me quite a bit for reasons I care not to discuss, but worked out for the best in the long run! The game had expanded quite a bit, but lost its player base. Fel was all but dead. I had a tamer, necro/mage, and a spellweave/thief. I played the tamer for a year or so and then would switch between my necro/mage and thief at fel champ spawns. My thief was a ton of fun, and the regular champ runners would even tell me I was the only thief hitting champs all the time.

The moral of my story is I don't really remember the evolution of thieving from what it was to what it became, and have no idea what it is now as I do't play OSI anymore. I logged in but each of my mains had maybe 5 different full suit combinations depending what I was attacking, and at what level the attack was at. Also a slew of items between jewelry / spell books / even spell casting shields and whatnot and just to remember and redo all the macroes to make those suits usable would have taken me a month or two probably, and I just don't have that sort of time to devote to this game anymore, and I had really lost appeal to do anything but steal at fel champs anyway, and I figured the fel champ scene was probably dead as OSI's ongoing goal was to diminish the relevance of fel. Spent 5 minutes in game, quit, and came here. That was 2 years ago now and I'm still very glad I made that decision!

Ok back to the moral of my story, lol.. my questions above were not about the past, but actually I was questioning the thief mechanics as they are now, here. So, I'll repost, and be specific, this is my understanding of thieving here on UO:R that is currently in effect:

Thought there was 3 possible outcomes from a steal, and guaranteed consequence:
I thought you can stay blue after a steal - to all even the one you stole from.
Then you can steal and stay blue to all except the one you stole from.
Then you can steal and go gray to all.

Consequence of stealing anything from anyone: You are always perma-gray to all after any steal until you die.

None of the above applies to guildies and factions, correct?

Here, when you steal you will go grey to all, unless you stole from a NPC or a thief. I'm not sure about murderers but I think the same may apply as to stealing from another thief.

Gray as in criminal gray or perma-gray?

When I did use my thief here, I stole often without going noticeably gray (criminal).

Both.

If that's true, it's new.. do you know what update this change took place in?
Like I said.. I have stolen without going criminal gray, but stealing I thought always makes you perma-gray even if you stay blue.
@Chris are you able to confirm?

I'm pretty sure Chris has confirmed you cannot steal and remain Blue. Not sure where, as there are so many stealing threads... I remember it b/c he stated that the remain blue was in at shard launch, and it was abused. Something like that.