Stealing is so nerfed for any reason?

Discussion in 'Renaissance Discussion' started by MaryKate, Jun 26, 2017.

  1. itslike

    itslike Member

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    ???? I've had stolen platinum coins and slayer/vanq weapons at various places which is hundreds thousands golds and I think there are plenty of thieves on this server already. I am sure other players also have some bad experiences with thieves here. And literally it is a small chance to kill the thief or get my items back when he dies in gray in the city or on mount whatever. If stealing is broken, no one would play thieves like nox mage but are there no thieves on this server???
    I don't understand why people complaint about for not buffing the system like to piss off other players like stealing and house looting. Such a crime world uo.
  2. Chris

    Chris Renaissance Staff
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    @snap dragon covered this players concerns pretty well. But I will breifly weigh in on the stack stealing issue. Because various items weigh various fractions the server code does not attempt to do the math and determine an amount of the stack to "attempt" to steal. It is on a sliding scale to a max of 100 I believe. Given that fractional stone items all have varying weights this was probably done for simplicity long ago.

    This is a known issue and will be addressed down the road. There are a few issues that will will need a determination on such as stealing gold vs holiday coins vs platinum.

    I believe the players have covered the other concerns voiced by the OP. People should keep in mind that we have only tried to fix stealing that is inherently broken in RunUO to this point. We did not create the stealing mechanics here, we have only been working to fix them from the trammel state they start in. This is made difficult by so little actual verifiable information about the function of the stealing skill in 1999. This slows down our response to fixing/changing things as we have to spend more time making sure the change is correct.

    We will, as we always have, continue to work on improving the skill and its accurate functionality with respect to keeping the server appealing to new players by maintaining common sense mechanics that players can intrinsically understand.

    If players want to see what has been done to stealing on UOR, you can find the information by searching for stealing in the patch notes sub forum. http://uorforum.com/forums/patch-notes.14/
    Last edited: Aug 17, 2017
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  3. Duz-luk

    Duz-luk Active Member

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    I don't roll a thief yet, but I'm pretty sure you can use the incognito spell or the disguise kit to keep your real name from being uncovered.

    Interestingly, this brings up two questions:
    1. If you die does your corpse still keep your undercover name or does it reveal your real name?
    2. What are the advantages the disguise kit have over the incognito spell and where do you attain one?

    If anyone is familiar with these answers could you please enlighten us?
  4. elite-

    elite- New Member

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    1. Corpse keeps your disguise kit name

    2. Incognito lasts 2 mins, disguise kit lasts until death

    Once you have signed up for the thief guild say "disguise kit" to the thief guild master and they will sell for roughly 500gp
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  5. El Horno

    El Horno Well-Known Member
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    The corpse keeps undercover name but the cut up head reveals the current name, so once your disguise kit or incognito wears off its back to your original name.
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  6. RIN

    RIN Well-Known Member
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    My 2 issues with making stealing more viable is this:

    1. It mainly preys on newer players. As Chris has said numerous times, he evaluates everything to maintain a balance between the way it was, the way it could be to be better, and how it should be that promotes a healthy shard (inviting so more new people join).

    2. If it is so bad why are people like Pockets aka @The Crooked Warden still stealing successfully? He stole a vanq from me at Ocllo bank on like my second week here. And this proves my point in #1, a vanq weapon is cheap here for any established player. But for a 2 week old me, that wiped out a good chunk of my financial worth.

    Is stealing in the best possible balanced state? No. But I agree with shard management that UOR shouldn't delve into a cesspool. Town killing, scamming, etc... does not promote a healthy shard. Stealing can be a productive member of the shard, but it must be implemented cautiously.
  7. snap dragon

    snap dragon Well-Known Member

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    1.) The corpse keeps the undercover name. BUT there is a bug on UOR where once the corpse is cut up, the items show your real name. Basically, if you are disguised and don't want to be discovered, you better keep disguising to a new name every 15 minutes or so (so the website doesn't cache you), and also don't die or let anyone get any item with your name on it (gm crated items, body parts, etc)

    Additionally, any ghost there when you die will see your real name on the ghost. Or if you accidentally tab into war mode when you die, you show who you are. This is not correct to UOR era UO. On OSI you kept your disguise for 2 hours, even after death, no exceptions. In fact it STILL works this was on OSI if you were to log in and check (well, at least up to about a year ago when I checked last).

    2.) It won't wear off after just a few minutes.
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  8. snap dragon

    snap dragon Well-Known Member

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    A PK could have killed you and taken your vanq and everything else you own. Besides that, "well, X stole a Y from Z just last week" isn't really worthwhile evidence as to the current state of stealing. Ask any of the players that are actually thieves what they think about it. There's only a handful of us. I don't comment on how good/bad or balanced PvM is here, because I don't pvm. I do "have" a pvmer, but I don't think my criticism has any weight compared to say, @El Horno who actually plays a pvmer and doesn't just moonlight as a newbie farmer.
  9. Aragorn - OCT

    Aragorn - OCT Well-Known Member

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    Would a look at improving PvM thieving help? I've tried out a burglar who stealths through dungeons and steals from monsters and after making it all the way to the ancient wyrm hidden and being killed a few times (for me, a fun adventure in itself...), I find that the best I would have done was a stack of ~200 gold. I can see that it would be easy money if it was too profitable, but perhaps increase the weight that can be stolen from monsters? Or perhaps add the chance of rares to drop, to include PvM only stealables from higher end monsters?

    Again, I know there is an aspect to stealing from other real players that appeals to a lot of people, but perhaps this is a compromise that makes the thief a little more playable while not causing problems in other areas?

    *Note: I don't really follow all the discussions of the issues surrounding thieving, so take this with an amount of implied ignorance.
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  10. Jakob

    Jakob Well-Known Member

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    I think this would help wannabe-thieves, aka PVM-tamers that wanna do something else for a change. Pure thieves wouldn't appreciate it to any greater extent I think. I'd probably play around with it once in a while but not more than that. I want to play out/create wonderful stories with other players.
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  11. RIN

    RIN Well-Known Member
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    You quoted my post, but didn't really respond to any of my issues correctly in the message they were conveying...

    No, he/she wouldn't. Never stated I was afk during this stealing example. If a PK/town killer tried to kill me, I would've guard whacked him easily. I just didn't notice the steal line in the corner of my screen or Pockets going gray.

    My anecdotal example is merely an accurate display that thieves who are skilled and know what they are doing can still acquire things from others. You can't refute that claim. I wasn't implying that my example means the skill as a whole is fine as is. You are making assumptions of my intentions in what I wrote. I even state plainly towards the end of my post that something needs to be done to improve the skill.

    Not being/playing a thief character on this shard does not mean I do not have an opinion that could be as equally valid as yours. I have played a thief before, just not here.


    Overall I respect your opinion and I hope you don't take any hostility from my response. But I truly wish one of the several vocal thieves on the forums actually respond to the one thing I said that I feel is always missed:

    "As Chris has said numerous times, he evaluates everything to maintain a balance between the way it was, the way it could be to be better, and how it should be that promotes a healthy shard (inviting so more new people join)."

    It could be possibly that Stealing needs to be difficult to do properly (against era mechanics) so the shard has a healthy population.
  12. wylwrk

    wylwrk Well-Known Member

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    You must study for proficiency in "stealing" and prove retention before I'll ever let a comment like ^ slide, sir.

    I'll begin by challenging you to tell us the %chance to succeed on the specific weapon (see: weight) to steal and include the number of viable witnesses in the steal zone.


    Healthy dialogue is healthy.
  13. El Horno

    El Horno Well-Known Member
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    Stealing is overpowered in my opinion. I should note, I do not have a thief, but I use the stealing skill probably 5x a day, which is likely more then @snap dragon. So in a way, I am more qualified then her to speak to the power of the stealing skill. I don't want to make this about Snap but I would be remiss if I didn't mention the rumors swirling around the dark alleys of Sosaria that the thief guildmaster was even considering booting her from the guild since she apparently has turned her back on the more traditional practicing of the art!
    Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Whenever I see a shady looking person in game, I use the stealing skill on them. This will tell me if they are perma grey or not so I can kill them. 0 skill invested, lots of information gained.
  14. RIN

    RIN Well-Known Member
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    I'm not sure what you are actually trying to say.

    It sounds like you are saying I should be a veteran thief who has been here a certain amount of time before I can offer my opinion. I must humbly disagree. I am a UO veteran who has played on many player operated shards and also on OSI. I can say that many mechanics some people dislike here was a refreshing change of pace for someone who has played on other shards. Namely the lack of town killing (compared to other shards) and scamming. My ultimate point is yes, something should be done to help Stealing, but it should be done cautiously such that it isn't a negative impact on the shard as a whole.

    I'll agree that stack stealing needs to be looked at.
    • Maybe look at some of the 0 weight items to maintain a balance.
    • I'm not sure about HCoins or Plat. I'd lean towards not as steal-able as others simply because of their value, and because many new players rely on the welfare plat to allow them to buy many things.
    • Other things like stealing from monsters, always going gray when stealing even from a red, etc... Sure, it needs to be fixed.
    • Calling guards through walls is dumb.
    • I'm ok with the extra guards.
  15. Chris

    Chris Renaissance Staff
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    This is being fixed. There was an issue with the head code where the name of the head was being saved as a string, with the name at the time of the cutting. However in our efforts to keep save times down, and manage the item count this was moved to a player serial identifier. Roughly a 75% savings in memory space for heads.

    Note: For server health you want to avoid naming things with names like "the head of Bob Thunder" as you end up using save time/memory to save the string "a head of " a million times. The client in the client localization has coded lines of text that include "a head of %" where % is the player name. So if we simply store the players name on the head (in this case by unique char id) all we have to store is that value, and the player gets the same result.

    However in this case it does serve as a way to know what someones name is, magically, halfway around the world. A solution is being developed that would return simply "a severed head" vs the players name if the player has changed the state of their name (name change, incognito, disguise kit).

    Note: There are currently 18,754 heads on the server, and for some reasons I cannot explain people have 1,862 in their bank, or on a character that is logged out and not used for months.

    While these changes seem trivial, the application of hundreds of small changes like this are how we achieve save times of 6-7 seconds on a server this size. Anywhere else the save times would be 15-30 seconds at this point in a servers life.
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  16. OptimisticSam

    OptimisticSam Well-Known Member
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    Keep up the great work. I am sure I am not alone in saying that I enjoy hearing the logic behind certain mechanics - helps provide context for the way things are, and where a change could occur. Thanks for weighing in @Chris
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  17. Cheapsuit

    Cheapsuit Well-Known Member
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    Hey if thieves get a boost, I won' complain one bit lol. I play a thief and I know how to safeguard against them, or pretty much shut them down. I'm only stating that there are a lot of things that so many don't know about when it comes to the mechanics of stealing. I love stealing here but I'll also take a boost :).
  18. snap dragon

    snap dragon Well-Known Member

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  19. InnocentCrafter

    InnocentCrafter Active Member

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    Hey all. Great discussion. Just wanted to weigh in as I've been playing a thief for a few months now.

    Not trying to nitpick here but for the purpose of getting facts out there:
    Unless you mean permagray here, this actually isn't true. It's extremely rare; I'd estimate about a 2% chance, but I've successfully stolen an item and remained blue to everyone 2+ times.

    Regarding stacks: Sure this could probably be fine tuned if you wanted to steal more gold or reagents. However for platinum it works fine IMO. I've stolen a stack of 9 plat and was more than satisfied with that amount. I don't really care to steal more gold but it's a welcome buff if deemed necessary.

    I'm not sure how thief used to be as I'm new to the thief class and UO in general, but I like how thief is here on UOR. I don't feel gimped or anything by playing one. Thanks for all you do @Chris :)

    Regards
    Last edited: Aug 18, 2017
  20. Chris

    Chris Renaissance Staff
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    Just remember when you look at stealing as a system keep in mind that it is not the way it is because we designed it that way. We have taken what was available in RunUO and across a variety of patches have been working to move it more in line with relevant era mechanics while being understood by all players (Thief and Non Thief alike)

    If you want to read up on the changes that have taken place in regards to stealing on Renaissance you can read them here.

    http://uorforum.com/search/7103656/?q=Stealing&o=date&c[node]=14

    There is no point ever getting frustrated and doing the "Its this way because that's how the staff wants it." 99% of what you experience here is simply work in progress. I have probably 100 bug's on my fix list, and easily 1000 other items to spend time on. Running a UO server is a marathon not a race. This is made more clear by a server owner just gave away his server last week because he burnt himself out (best guess) and just abandoned it. We methodically move along here with the understanding that quality takes time, and sometimes to do things right you do more listening, talking, testing and research than coding.

    So if you want to see something improved with stealing. Make a case for it, cite history, cite sources, and made a logical reason for why it should be like this. Don't worry about player opinions, or a view that the staff is totalitarian and only wants it their way. Just make your case, be clear, and be prepared to discuss your ideas with the staff as we fill our roles as defender of the code and devil's advocate for all new ideas/changes.

    We have exceptionally high standards for making changes to the server code, but we will never ignore a good idea or common sense change that will improve the nostalgia feel of the server while maintaining our appeal to new players (who know and do not know this era)

    For 5 year this has been my official moto, and next to "History Perfected" a close 2nd for the server moto. It has served as well as a mantra for our development here.

    "When you do things right, people won't be sure that you've done anything at all."
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