Stealing is so nerfed for any reason?

I've started a thief and the only thing I can see is that It's a waste of time.

First of all, stackables, what the hell? I see a pile of 5k gold (what a treasure!!!) and I try to steal it... for 100g
Then I go to Ocllo bank and there's no little chance guards see you, literally no chance!
There are plenty of newbied items, but disguise kit isn't one of them, and then you realize that it doesn't change your title and you have to be disguised for 2 hours!

I'd suggest to debate changing this issues or, at least, warn new players on the stealing page...

Oh, I forgot... Bank checks! seriously!?!?!?

I imagine house/boat deeds too... Everything is newbie in this shard?!?!

Ok so you have been here what 5 mins, and you got this place figured out already? GTFO, yes all bank checks have ALWAYS been newbied. Boat keys are not. Houses get looted here all the time because of very relaxed housing rules. Stealing is based off of weight. Gold is heavy, so YES it takes many attempts to steal it all.Thank you tho, for your short sided narrow minded shity approach to tell us you dont like our world. YOU joined US not the other way around.

Wow, that's the type of kind response I was expenting...

Anyone polite can explain why is stealing so nerfed? I'm sure there's a good reason I can't see.

,

Tramel players, I understand

,

http://uorforum.com/threads/uo-renaissance-thieving-perfected-ongoing-thread.7945/

It is not so much a waste as it is very challenging. There are some very good thieves out there, learn what is profitable (slayers/bods/platinum/holiday coins) and target those...also gate hop and try your luck at house looting. Taming is all the rage here, tamers use gates, post up near a popular stable and let the adventure begin. Or learn some cleaver town mechanics(los/walls) and try your luck at the tailor/smith bod farmers.

All that would require time and skill though!

Thank you very much! So there're valuable items that are not blessed / newbied!!

Great news, that should be explained at stealing page!

Where the heck were you playing that stealing was not weight based? Has been that way for a very long time. Also, disguise kits have functioned as you mentioned since production shard T2A, maybe before that, I didn't research further. After 20 years of gameplay most people are decent at theft prevention, that being said I have made some decent grabs here on UOR, patience is required.

Why is the attitude in this response in any way appropriate to a seemingly new member? Usually ppl are very welcoming to new players, but this one had the wrong views so he gets this? Thief oppression!

Well that lippy pile of garbage @Larloch jumps all over you.

You're GM magery, have you ever failed a first or second circle spell?

How come a GM thief fails to steal a 1-2 stone item?

Stealing isn't suppose to be a get rich quick scheme. I understand that it can be frustrating for someone to have come from a shard where it may have been easier to steal your way to riches but thats not really how it is here. But great thieves have and do exist here as you can see in the link Cero provided. It could always be worse with insured items and houses that wouldn't even allow an unfriended person to step foot in. But even as a non-thief i have enjoyed going through that link and admired the patience of the great thieves of UoR's past and present. Good luck in whatever role you go with here or anywhere you choose to play.

Stealing is mechanically broken:

Stealing non-stackable items is fairly normal. However, the moment you attempt to steal a stacked item, you will most assuredly be guardwhacked 90% of the time even if the stack itself is just 1 stone.

There is also an issue with the code that decides just how much of a stack you attempt to steal. On OSI it worked like this: You steal from a stack of let's say 10,000 gold. First it checks your stealing skill, if it's GM you can steal up to 10 stones, and so it would get a range from 1 to 1000 gold (100 gold weighed 1 stone). It would then take a random int in that range, let's say your dice roll gave you 600 gold (6 stones). Then it does the steal check on that as if it was a 6 stone item. On UOR you tend to "attempt" very little. Most people carry either 50 of each reg, or 100 of each reg (fun fact, you can tell they don't use restock agent if they have 99 each reg), and on OSI and other shards this meant that 1-3 steal attempts will clear out an entire reagent. Not so here, so "pvp thieves" beware, it's going to take you longer to remove that mandrake.

As you will soon see, stealing a stack is a death sentence in town near an NPC. Outside of town, you will completely fail to steal anything, which from my experience was unheard of on OSI. You always seems to sucessfully take SOMETHING from a stack, even if it was just 15. There's something very wrong about stealing stacks.

Stealing is missing the "success and stay blue" state. If you take something, you will go grey, always.

We all know the "locked box" trick where you can keep your goods in a locked box to prevent stealing. UOR takes this to a whole new level by allowing some containers to be entirely non-snoopable without even being locked. Some players know this, and exploit it to their advantage fully.

Additionally, tinker traps (that work) are NOT here on UOR. If you make one, it will not blow up if someone opens it. However, if you have it in your bag, YOU can open it, but if a thief snoops it, they get hit with the trap magically.

Stealing is trammeled:
Guards are unnaturally added to all banks, conveniently just within range of eachother so that they can see everyone at the bank and call guards when stealing occurs. They can also reveal you if you are hidden too close to them.

On UOR, only 50 gold is 1 stone. This reduces the max amount you can even attempt to steal. Doesn't matter much though due to the failure rate anyway.

There seems to be some secret trammel thing happening to plat coins increasing the failure rate of stealing them. Sure you can steal 1-5 coins successfully (still will be whacked in town), but from a big stack you will almost never get the same quantity as you would if it were gold. Even though they are the same weight.

Many plat reward items, event items, and "actually valuable" things are newbied or blessed. Some things that are not, like statues (which can convert into plat) weigh 10 stones. Item weights are inconsistent, and do not favor thieves.

Plat from champs and bosses, holiday coins from special monsters, statues and other "actually valuable" rare drops go straight to the backpack of the highest damager. Monster statues are actually unstealable anyway, so don't even bother if you see someone killing a boss monster. If they get the rare drop statue, you're not stealing it friend, move along.

Areas like the "duel pits" will allow murdering and criminal actions, but not stealing. Stealing is prohibited in a few admin-added regions. It cannot be used in scheduled events like CTF (which is understandable).

People can choose to trade in the event center, which has trammel ruleset and is generally open about once a day. Sometimes it has stayed open for days in a row. It's annoying, but not very common since they can trade in any town just as safe because there is a fairly long "cool down" timer on items that are recently in a trade window. If you approach me to steal my valuable sword, I can simply open a trade window with anyone nearby with it, then you can't do anything for quite a long amount of time. I could even keep trade-windowing it ever 15 seconds or so making it impossible to steal entirely. The thief however will not know this, they just get the "failed" message, there is no indication of trammel here, it's hidden trammel.

Stealing is not very good as a product of the shard ecosystem:
Most people play mages, and have little to steal aside from some regs, maybe a healing wand, or other lesser things. Vanq weapons and things like that are not too valuable anyway, and most dexers do not even have a worthwhile weapon to steal. People will tell you it's great for thieves to steal a 1M gp slayer weapon etc. Reality: These weapons do not leave trammel, they are used in AMIBs and in trammel events. The best you can really hope for realistically is an agepite runic weapon with reasonable value, but it is not common. People will say "well I stole a valorite kryss from Blaise", but there are always outliers.

The profitability of things like Bods, Fishing, and Amib/Holiday-events, means that people can earn a profit without risking being robbed. Or PK'd for that matter. Well, you can PK a fisherman, but it's unlikely you will be able to loot them, and you can "enter" an AMIB gate technically, but it's unlikely that one will be open outside of a locked house after the owner has detected hidden and banned you. This means there are just fewer people out there farming the traditional UO hotspots to steal from.


Stealing has some minor benefits:
One good thing I guess is that NPCs will not call guards through a wall to whack a thief. Players can still call guards through the walls. If an AFK player is macroing "guards" spam at the bank, you mine as well just quit trying to steal, and focus on murdering that individual in town first. At least there is incentive for a thief to steal with at least some regs, so they can cast wall of stone. Better than death-robe bank thieves right.

For what it's worth, you can "train" stealing by simply stealing right from the ground, or from a container on the ground. No need for a pack horse or guilded character to train on. So I guess that's nice.



In Summary:
Stealing is mostly just an annoyance to people. "Bank" stealing is less profitable than on other shards or in-era OSI due to the above reasons. This is particularly devastating to players that want to have a main-character thief, as the earning potential here is much greater than other shards and OSI. So the amount a thief can make has MUCH less buying power.

My main character has been a thief, pretty much since 1999, and finally on UOR, i no longer play a main-character thief. There is simply no point to doing so. Instead, I just keep a thief ready for when I do spot a rare situation where I can steal something valuable like a tamer-quest scroll from @Phillip . But these situations are an outlier, and more a product of other skills and work that I put in. Most people should not expect to make any money.

Thieves are guardwhacked so much here, they basically travel with no equipment at all so they risk very little. They get caught in the endless cycle of stealing 15 mandrake at the bank and getting guardwhacked that they are more or less just doing it to be an annoyance at this point, there is no profit in it, and (to me) very little fun. The players here have an unfavorable opinion on thieves, moreso than other places I have played.

It's not as bad as shards with item-insurance I guess, so that's something. If you want to be a PVP thief, that is very doable and can be fun if you like that sort of thing. At least this server does not have house mechanics where every item is locked down, or trammely things like item insurance in the typical sense.

It is easier and more time/cost effective to just murder someone here.


Before someone brings it up, this post is specifically about "stealing", with the skill. House looting is not the same thing. House looting has it's own problems due to trammel features, population, and the ecosystem of the shard. I see some people have already comment about "well a thief can loot a house and earn 50 billion gp, so STFU and GTFU". Firstly, shame on you. Really? This is a new player frustrated about the template they enjoy not working as it did in the real UOR era. There is a legitimate problem here that I doubt will ever be remedied as most players here are content with farming trammel rares without the risk of thievery. I think some venting is permitted. Secondly, I believe my guild and I have looted more houses than anyone else on the server, and I can firmly say that it's not because stealing is overpowered so we should all STFU and GTFO. It has it's own problems that are off-topic from this post.

If you have questions @MaryKate , you are more than welcome to ask me or any member of our guild (cA). Stealing or non-stealing related, we are happy to help. I am snap[cA] in irc.

I might be remembering this wrong, but shouldn't disguise kits be able to be used from inside the bank?

thanks for tagging me and reminding me of the hatred i feel. Hope life gets better for you

Your points are valid.
Your approach sucks.


Established players have been caught creating alt forum accounts and have written their complaints in the same manner as you have.

So yes, you are correct. The stealing skill is not era accurate here. However, if I interpreted the official response correctly it summarized to... working as intended for now.

Stealing is a game of finesse and skill. There's an art to it, and a lot to learn after you hit GM. Think of magery -- there's the run-of-the-mill para-explo-eb mage, and there are the battle-hardened PVP mages that know how to use the whole spellbook to counter and interrupt while being mana-efficient.

For example, you can learn:

• to snoop someone non-obviously
• to quickly identify if there's anything worth stealing
• when to steal
• where to steal
• turning the odds to your advantage
• staying undetected until the last second
• the get-away
• to be a thug thief
• disarming (my personal favorite)

There's so much to it, and it takes time to master. This shard's configuration's merits can be debated all you want, but I'll say this -- it's never stopped me from having fun.