Without going too deeply into details (And who I am on a thief... Ehehehehe), most of the shard mechanics are fine. Here is my view on a few things that could be looked into though... 1. You spend 300 points in Arms Lore, Wrestling, and Stealing to "disarm" steal, for people to rearm just as fast. Now, being a veteran at this playstyle (And playing on several servers and such that use "Illegal" programs), I can almost instanteously sync this and steal the weapon. But, with macros and -insert not so legal ways here-, the rearm shouldn't be instant in my opinion. 1 to 3 seconds would be fine. Maybe a formula like.... ([Arms Lore+Wresting] minus Weapon skill) divided by 33 = seconds before rearm allowance. That would make GM Lore + Wrestle give a 3 second delay before rearm against GM weapon skill. Feel free to put a 5 second cool down on this if you feel its OP. 2. Stealing low weight items with GM should be a bit higher. I tried to steal items like Katanas&Krysses and failed a good 5-6 times in a row. The frustration is real lol. 3. Custom items need looked into a bit. At GM, I should not be failing to steal 1-3 platinum or holiday coins lol. That is 1 stone VS a GM skill. 4. Locked boxes should not be accessible to anyone. Once locked, the box full should disappear and you can't access it. You can't open a Gump from your house or bank and go PVP or PVM and access it can you? Same concept. Simple as that. And I would like to point out, I --Hate-- when people consider the "death robe" thieves real thieves. If you have 5 of each reg on you... If you steal from AFK people getting whacked continuously... If you walk around snooping people and popping their trapped pouches... If you steal stupid things like 5 regs from people training on a loop... YOU ARE NOT A REAL THIEF. YOU SIMPLY HAVE THE STEALING SKILL. People should also be aware of this also. Stop lumping them in with real thieves. For those of us who do it right... They always use a disguise kit. They run around stalking prey either with stealth, or just in a nonchalant way... They wait for you to recall and drop your weapon, or see a spell cast and quickly take advantage of your false sense of security... That is a real thief. I could tell you my thief's name, but it wouldn't matter..I disguise kit into REALISTIC NAMES, NOT THE FIRST ONE THAT POPS UP.... I have 5 + change of clothes/colors in my bag and bank. I have 5 different mounts in my stable for quick changes. I use hair dyes like they go out of style. That's a real thief. Sure they could use a bit of a buff. But real thieves... We improvise. And that's what makes us dangerous.
I've played a thief basically since 1998. I'll summarize my ideal mechanics and why I think they are ideal. I'll highlight main points in blue. If you have questions, just ask. Stealing percent chance should be default UOR era. There was nothing wrong with them, they are fine. There is no range check to determine stealing chance. This just nerfs stealing in town, and promotes "bank thieves" which is what most of you complain about anyway. It removes the skill required to determine the correct time to successfully steal, allowing (good) players the opportunity to actually have a stocked backpack and play the game, and not resort to the "res and try again" annoying bank thief style mostly played by people's alts, and not "thieves" anyway. Etheral mounts should be entirely removed. But I doubt you guys want that, so at least forcing an unhide, and requiring a delay to mount an etheral, is an acceptable compromise. NPC should not call guards through walls. I believe a LOS check makes stealing more predictable, and even makes avoiding theft more predictable. This is not the "default" mechanic, but it makes logical sense in my opinion. It is fine how it is though, BUT if the mechancs are "npcs call through walls" AND "npc range determins steal chance" then it makes stealing pointless and is terrible. Snooping never reveals someone. But it will generate the "you notice X snooping through.." message when failed. Snooping is based entirely off the skill value. GM snoop = never be noticed, 50 snoop = 50% chance. This is the default mechanic, it's fine this way. I think it's best like this since it forces a thief to take 100 snooping, even though 50 would suffice. A thief sacrafices skill points for their craft, as any other character would. This makes them less advantageous in combat, and keeps it balanced, but also allows "combat" thieves to take less snooping since they don't really need to secretly snoop as often. Without this, a "combat" thief is stuck with 5x GM at most, but it's more likely they will have some hiding or other skills making them even weaker. Stealth: I have no problem with stealth here at all. Even though it would make my life easier, as I am probably the #1 stealth user on the server, I am against 'infinite' steps. Forcing a 10 second cooldown on stealth use, and allowing at max, 10 steps, was not randomly decided, it has a purpose. Assume you are in a dungeon and walk up to some target and steal his gold. You then cast invisible on yourself to avoid the hide skill delay and start stealthing. From the moment you hide, the target knows for certain that you will be within 10 tiles of him for at least the next 10 seconds. This is more "predictability" which is important to the mechanics of UO. It adds skill, and benefits those skilled at the game, since part of the skill is in determining "where" to stealth. From my experience, they can cast reveal 2-3 times in that duration, and a wise thief knows where a target is likely to cast the reveal and thus, where to stealth away to wait for the cooldown timer and not be revealed. This balances stealthing AND the reveal spell. Stealing stacked items: I think it's fine how it is in the default UO way that has been unchanged for 20 years. There is no need for a "select how much you want to steal" gump, or anything like that. It would nerf good thieves because it's an added click. We already have to be close to you, snoop, set targets, keep track of our skill delay, steal at the right time. It can take great skill to snoop and set a target on a fast moving player, which, in 2017, is basically everyone. This game came out when people were using dial-up, stealing has only gotten harder. The amount you try to steal is NOT entirely random. A gm thief should almost never attempt to steal "1 nightshade" from a stack of 100. They should also not always try to steal the max amount that would fail the steal check. From my experience, default UO stealing from stack of 1000 nightshade, would generally let you steal about 70 every time, turning grey like 60% of the time. Default mechanics are good here. "Random Stealing": I think it's fine. You target a monster or the player, it takes a random top level item and tries to steal. No problems here. Here is what I think COULD improve: When new events, mechanics, or items are added, stop "including" thieves by allowing "use" of the skill in a way that is not player driven. For example, there's a new rare that spawns, you need to use the stealing skill to take it. There is a quest-line that you can kill monsters to get a key to open a door, OR a thief can steal it and open the door. This is not something any thief has asked for. Who asks for this? Leet rares collectors who happen to have a thief character. Is there really a need for a skull candle rare in a box to require stealing skill? Yes because all items in NPC chests are stuck in containers and it's consistent with the rest of the game mechanics (predictability, right?). But does it add anything to the game? No, not really. Does it "give thieves something to do", no it doesn't. Do you know what thieves want to do? Take items. How do you give thieves something to do? Give items to other players. If there is a GM-controlled monster event, put items that are stealable on the boss monster. Not "from" the boss monster, but from the players that loot it. Right now, I hate automated events. Why? It makes all the people playing the game, stop playing the game, and go to trammel for an hour. This gives me less to do, since my playstyle relies on players, actually in the game-world. Let thieves participate in events like CTF by stealing the flag from other players. There's no reason not to, and it won't change the meta-game of capping the flag and all that. People will still play it just as it's played now. That's better than nothing. Even better imo is, have more events outside of "trammel". More carefully determine the weight of items in the game. This is one of my biggest annoyances with UOR. I really appreciate all the new mechanics, items, and staff participation in the game. But new items created for players are unbalanced. Rares and rewards are often not stealable. Their weights should more accurately depict the weight that item would naturally have. Don't make all the good items newbied/blessed: Okay, plat rewards are a gold sink, that's good. I think some reward like a bear rug or something should be stealable when it's not placed. Plat, hair dye, rares, basically everything should be stealable. Theft is 100% preventable. Only lazy people get anything of value stolen. Things that should not be stealable though, I think should be permanent gold sinks that are not tradable. If you can re-sell it, or trade it, and the weight makes sense, you should be able to steal it with very few exceptions for things like items whos "value" is the fact that it can't be stolen (blessed runebooks, etheral mounts, etc). These are luxury items, no new player is getting scammed for these sorts of things. Owners should know how to prevent being robbed by now. I make an exception here for house deeds, which I am okay with not being stealable because nobody likes the rigor of tracking an area, and placing houses at 3am, or gating in a house placer at an idoc, and all of that. The frequency when you could steal a house deed is so low it doesn't really matter anyway. I mean, on <other shard> I have stolen MANY house deeds (before it was nerfed), but it was still very infrequent when gold/checks exist, since nobody is selling a house deed or has any reason to carry one unless they are placing a house, and your chance of being there at that exact moment is slim (but entirely possible and fun). Some holiday type rewards might also be an exception. There is no point to having snow if nobody else has snow. If snow is stealable, nobody will carry snow. Snow should remain newbiefied. Holiday time-pieces and other "not too rare" clothes also apply here. There's no point in having some memento of a holiday or time period if you can't use it. But some one-off GM-controlled monster drop neon pink 5 stone katana that isn't really good as a weapon anyway? That should be stealable. Faction Blessed Weapons: Remove them please. Is there a valid reason why this should exist? My thought is that there are some weapons so powerful, that people are afraid to use them. This mechanic is taken advantage of to allow them to use these weapons without risk for a certain timeframe. After that timeframe, they will likely never be used again (Well, I still use them, and maybe a PK would, but I doubt it happens often). The top level weapons in the game put you at a HUGE advantage. I think that if you have a huge advantage due in no part to your actual skill at the game, you should also deal with the huge risk associated with it.
I'll try get one going when we've got some of the mainstream ideas/positions crafted in this discussion. Right now we've fired some first salvos.
There's a whole bunch of stuff I need to read up on and respond to here. But as we're currently seeing a shard event, I wonder if @Iago could do some stealing and provide some info/pictures on gained score, supporting this statement: I did stealing for 2-3 hours last night and got a couple hc, a love scroll, a goblet and a champagne I think it was. I'm having a hard time buying your statement.
Show yourself you coward, the one who stolen my hard earned xmas secret santa gift, 200k and the rest. http://uorforum.com/threads/secret-santa-2018.37151/page-7#post-370446
bruh he already did. http://uorforum.com/threads/uo-rena...ected-ongoing-thread.7945/page-51#post-370454 lol
