Thief Content Discussion

I copied this from the Dev Forum to get more discussion going.

Background:
Thieves are a historically underutilized and misunderstood class. A UO thief steals stuff. Either from chests, monsters or other players. It is the players that have the most potential for items worth stealing. As a class, thieves are reviled and hated almost universally. Hated even more so than a PK. But the difference between the two are very slight. In the end, if either is successful, they have your item(s) and you don’t. With a PK, you also get dead in the process. With a thief, you can attack them at will and never take a count if you kill them. This only works with a PK that’s Red. A blue PK you have no idea of their intentions until they act. With a thief or Red, you don’t have to wait. Thieves are generally seen as griefers.

Back in the day (actual Renaissance) UO had a tough learning curve and folks learned hard lessons fast or left. Back then UO was new and attracted new players faster than they lost them. Fast forward to today and FreeShards, new players are tougher to find and attract. Replacing lost ones is hard. Replacing lost UOR Vets is even harder.

Tamers, resource gatherers, champ spawners kill off their prey at a rate that would depopulate, deforest and strip mine an entire planet dry in no time at all. BUT that prey has no feelings, can be infinitely renewed, can be summoned endlessly and keep coming back for more. However for Thieves (and PKs) their prey are that precious, limited resource known as other players. It is not infinite nor easily replaceable and will dry up fast if they are over harvested.

UOR staff to date have exhibited a natural desire for population growth and have shown that they see safety in towns and houses as an important part of that growth. Players have shown that they like playing here for the Felucca aspect and the mechanics of the game as it was during the Renaissance era. These two desires have clashed at changes & actions recently that try to protect the rare commodity of people and have reduced the risk inherent in a Feluccan ruleset. If you have doubts as to whether or not risk has been reduced, I ask you to go to the item DB for yourself and examine the amount of resources (regs, wood, ingots, cloth etc..) along with the amount of gold, platinum and checks that are currently out there. At my last check, we were reaching over 1 billion gold, 6-8m of each reg. These are not transient numbers, these are numbers that have been steadily growing and represent their existence in the world. A lot of these resources get used I grant you, but they are being harvested and created faster than they can be used and at an alarming rate.

All the above has just been a warm up or basis for the discussion (along with suggestions) I want to have about adding thief content. Of all the professions in UO, Thieves are the most significant that cannot operate the way they used to back in the day. Their harvestable mob (players) are an endangered species and rightfully should be protected if this world (UOR) is going to survive. Ok, you can make an argument for PKs as well, however, I am not trying to solve the PK issue… YET. So if Thieves are reviled, hated, discouraged from culling the herd, what do they do? So far I have only seen discouragement of their playstyle, changes to the world that make their playstyle more difficult or non-viable. I think the playstyle should be just as encouraged and accepted as any other in game. I ask that your suggestions be about improving the class, keeps or increases the risk associated with the class and considers the overall impact to the world and players.

Thief Definition:

What is a Thief?

For the sake of my suggestions and when I reference the class, it has some basic characteristics

1. They have GM stealing - Min Skill level for new "End Game Content"
2. They are a member of the NPC Thieves guild - This is a basic risk foundation for the class, anyone else is a rare hunter or a treasure hunter and they have their own perks

Remember these are all predicated on being GM Stealing AND in the NPC Thieves Guild - Perma Grey

My Evolving Suggestion(s):

1. New End-Game content that gives meaning to the class and shifts focus from harvesting players for fame & fortune

• New Dungeon Chests with "real" loot. Must be stolen from, cannot pick or open. Put them in high risk areas, WW Den, AW Den. Or even better, randomize their spawn location.
• Thief Master Shopping List - Get a list of items from the Thief Guild Master that must be stolen from NPCs & Monsters across the world. Once completed, turn in and receive reward and opportunity to run The Gauntlet
• Thief Duel - Challenge a thief to a duel. Each put up prize $$/Reward on the NPC Referee. Each contestant gets a token. 5 min countdown to start - 1 hour time limit. Area is limited to town guard limits of the NPC Referee. (Conversely set up a CTF like instance). First one to return to the NPC Referee with both tokens, takes home the purse. Tokens are only stealable or lootable by the participants if in the over world.

2. Specific items/rewards/bonuses that reward the desired gameplay

• Mask of Shadows - increases hiding by 3
• Mask of Silence - increases stealth by 3
• Mask of 5 Fingers - increases stealing by 3

3. Events, quests, other improvements to existing systems that are more inclusive of the thief class

• The Gauntlet - Timed Thief instance event that pits the thief against traps, monsters & vigilante NPCs. They must navigate these obstacles and steal from Chests, NPCs and such to find riches and Thief Master quest item. Reward is choice of Mask.
• CTF Change - Allow thieves to steal in CTF
• CTF Change - Allow thieves to hide and stealth while carrying the Flag
• Remove Auto Guard Call - replace with Guards always come when called by the victim
• Reduce weight of spawning rares to a stealable weight
• Reduce commodity deeds to a stealabe weight - ITS JUST A PIECE OF PAPER
• Reduce all one handed weapons to a Stealable weight.
• Make all weapons stealable if they were just disarmed - weapon falls to the ground concept

Others who have previously replied, feel free to copy over your response, or participate here. I am hoping that by opening it up to a wider discussion, we can get an idea of how the majority of the players feel about Thief Content. Access to the Dev forum is limited to donators, and while donation is not required to play here, it shows you are supportive of the entire server, not just the parts you like... HINT HINT...

I'm going to edit and add to this probably 100 times. I'm not going to respond to anyone's feedback in this post so it can stay on topic, this is just my brainstorming.

I like all of the ideas.


The bonus masks are cool, but would need to be +10 stealth and stealing to be useful, I don't know what hiding over 100 would do.

I like most of the ideas. I do like leaving the wep weights as they are though, that's more in line with UO style play and it provides anti thief chars with weps of choice. It's a classic feel thing I guess. Adding a chance to steal heavy weps while wearing a mask and using the disarm skill is cool.

The auto guard kill is a great idea, that would encourage town thieves to carry supplies and be more active with pvm, this combined with an adjustment to weight success and skill success would make the char more useful/viable/fun

Let runebooks be directly stolen, make bod books random steal

let teleport and invis jewelry be introduced and only usable by gm thieves. You can use them to teleport while hidden (for limited charges) like on classic UO and this is fun to do (even when you're aren't stealing from people)

New paper doll titles if possible, pickpocket is meh, even Thief would be better

House deco - this could be a fun brainstorming idea altogether, stuff along the lines of the stolen gift bags, shackles, three prong lockpicks, thief training dummy, etc are already in the game, a variety of items from the dark assassin side of rogue behavior to the light hearted type thief deco could be possible, along with items that are stealth lockpicking oriented.

Special clothing, dark or blood type of hues only wearable by gm thieves, such as special spellbooks you can steal while holding, hooded robes, named masks, sandals, etc..

introduction of more rares to boost player market and provide stealable items! Rare means bloody rare here, even with bods and spawning rares, etc, more rares in players hands - more to steal, same with plat and holiday coins!

Thief town, re-purpose Cove to be a smugglers town and add a stables, thief npc, rogue themed shops, some pirate stuff at the docks


Oh and you mentioned letting the thief training dummys take you to a higher skill, I think this is a really good idea, maybe even have reward ones that train to 100.




My Evolving Suggestion(s):
1. New End-Game content that gives meaning to the class and shifts focus from harvesting players for fame & fortune

• New Dungeon Chests with "real" loot. Must be stolen from, cannot pick or open. Put them in high risk areas, WW Den, AW Den. Or even better, randomize their spawn location.
• Thief Master Shopping List - Get a list of items from the Thief Guild Master that must be stolen from NPCs & Monsters across the world. Once completed, turn in and receive reward and opportunity to run The Gauntlet
• Thief Duel - Challenge a thief to a duel. Each put up prize $$/Reward on the NPC Referee. Each contestant gets a token. 5 min countdown to start - 1 hour time limit. Area is limited to town guard limits of the NPC Referee. (Conversely set up a CTF like instance). First one to return to the NPC Referee with both tokens, takes home the purse. Tokens are only stealable or lootable by the participants if in the over world.

New Dungeon chests - rewards from using lockpicking, stealth, remove trap, detect hidden, and stealing

Thief master shopping list - stolen from players too!

Thief duel - this would be fun and a variety of games could be put in

We definitely need a way to earn more plat, the goal is to play a thief as a main and still be able to have things like blessed runebooks and ethys and not be forced into the tamer paradigm. Also thief specific rares that we can use or sell to make gold would be nice. Instead of being able to farm massive amounts of gold, a thief should be able to obtain items to sell to the gold farmers to obtain wealth.


I would really like to see an overall re-purpose of the entire treasure chest system in the dungeons and towns. Look at how many empty chests there are, and how they could be used to gain remove trap and get rewards. The loot system can be adjusted to give out supplies, sellables, low end magics, etc for the low level town/dungeon boxes, high end ones need a loot revamp because why would anyone hide a chest in a dangerous place, trap it, etc to put a bunch of trash scrolls weps and clothing in it, the loot should be items like plat, gold, gems, power weps above, fort armor above, tmaps, so on and so forth, things that would actually be considered treasure. Trade in tokens for rogue rares would be cool. Also have a rare chance for a Khal type puzzle box to spawn in the dungeons/towns and contain a special chance at more plat and a rare or something.



The possibilities are nearly endless, I really hope as a community we can come together and really give the class some meat to go with the classic style of play.


[Additions]

Get rid of being able to use a cheap lock crate to prevent stealing, this wasn't era accurate and is silly. We could use tinker traps as a safety thing with having the remove trap skill negate them somehow? (Is that even possible?)

This is kind of a joke, but I want to be able to steal almost every highlightable item that is in town

Have the chests in the banks or certain areas be difficult and dangerous to lockpick just for fun. Robbing the banks seems like a common sense thing.

Newb or blessed lockpicks for quest completion that never break for 100 lp skill use only. In classic UO we'd save our starting lockpicks and instruments to use when we gmd.

If the always go grey when stealing thing is kept (This is not era accurate at all and a gm thief should be able to steal without being noticed.) or even if not, having an npc char in towns that would let thief guild members open a bank box would be nice. A short timer on banking stolen items would be a fair balance for this.

if we made Cove a rogue town, then had Xeg and other orcs get a movement going with the orc fort there, we could have a lot of fun events and fights and stuff.

From the other thread...


The main appeal of the class is definitely stealing from other players. Adding more thief PvM content is a fun detour, but its not the main event. And the player theft system is definitely not perfect, so I'd say UOR should tweak the player theft systems before adding more monster-related thief content.

The problems, as I see them currently:

1. Victims are often confused as to why the guards don't react when they are called during a theft. How many times have you heard in IRC "he was gray, but nothing happened when I called the guards!" This is an EXTREMELY frustrating situation for newer players, and even most experienced UOR players don't know the ins-and-outs of UOR's theft system on when or why the guards can be called. It is not intuitive at all.
2. Player theft in towns is very binary and completely driven by the RNG. You either get the item or get insta-whacked by NPCs calling guards, which results in a several minute timeout. This is not very fun or enjoyable for the thief.
3. A lot of items have unnecessary or weird theft restrictions. Talking about potted plants, statuettes, and similar caliber items having 11+ weight... and runebooks and BOD books that can be stolen randomly, but not by targetting... (Note: I applaud some theft restrictions in place here, such as the 20-second trade-window protection. Removing that is just asking for rampant trade scamming. Thieving good, scamming bad.)

Here are the changes I'd make to thieving:

• NPCs no longer call guards. It's up to players to call guards or defend themselves.
• If an item is stolen from you, guards always come when you call them. Thieves can remove their 'guard-call' flag by getting X tiles away from the victim of the theft, or going invisible.
  • This gives victims a tool to reliably protect themselves.
  • This creates a fun 'get-away' type of scenario where the thief can plan for an escape.
  • This provides incentives for thieves to be sneaky and creative with their thefts, rather than just pressing a button and hoping the RNG decides they get to live today. It might even create incentive for thieves to work together. Another player engaging the target in conversation would be a wonderful tactic to set up a theft.
• Always display a message to the victim that they are being stolen from. Theft messages to nearby players can be RNG-driven, based off of theft skill.
• Reduce the weights of several high-end items to be 10 or below.
• Either allow BOD books and rune-books to be target stealable, or create a new item tag that makes them immune to theft. The current in-between of them being only random-stealable is confusing.
• No more being able to use regs and other supplies that are in locked boxes in your backpack. That shit just doesn't make sense.

I like almost all of your points except for If an item is stolen from you, guards always come when you call them, that's another non era accurate nerf that will cause more problems than it fixes. I think it would end up making stealing in town impossible. I'd suggest something like no auto guardwhack but player initiated guard whacks only on fails, which would need to be adjusted for the gm level to not be 50-75% of the time. The way stealing worked on prodo wasn't hard to understand, using newbs as a reason to nerf thieves is terrible.

Stealing was perfectly fine on prodo, why not just put the original system in place and keep additions like the trade window protection.

lets not forget about the useful skill of forensics !! if more people would utilize low end skills such as this' the dynamics of thieves could change. However; there are no incentives; except pure role play and stat boosting(camping).

Make stealing era accurate - fixed. The end.

Were any of these idea implemented?

No.

I wish... they are fairly good ideas.

Yes they are....

Especially like the stealth mask...

Tamers have a mask. Mask with +2 or 3 stealth steps would be an amazing end game reward.

Sadly, seems priority is on other things at the moment.

I was recently discussing some stuff regarding Thief content with Chris. Some of these ideas have been thrown around.

I wont get in to the details here but there might... and I stress might be something in the works sometime in the future.

I think he's been busy lately and discussion has been slow, so don't fire up the hype train just yet. All I can really say is that he is interested in developing something.

Huzzah for something!

I would say that the 1 thing that everybody could agree on is some RP'ish thief content that involved searching out NPC's and Monsters in forms of quests.

Also, there is precedent for having items in NPC's / Monsters packs that are only stealable, but do NOT fall to a corpse when they are slain. That would be a nice addition to the semi-rare / rares aspect of thievery. Actually, i'd friggin love seeing that expanded upon so that every NPC and Monster had a "rare" associated with them.

I really like the idea of adding content for thief templates. Adventures, quests, rares, etc....

I think giving every town "a money handler of questionable scruples" that only responded to GM thieves would be acceptable as long as the "entrance" to his domain was in some location not right next to the bank (have to make your getaway) and it took you to a non-recall "basement" under the city where guards could not be called....dungeon area in a sense.

That would be a neat content addition in my opinion.

Also, I simply think it'd be neat to have items get a name. "a bag last stolen by CrazyJoe" for example. With the "last stolen by CrazyJoe" added to items that are successfully stolen and banked with a money handler.

Along with that, it'd be neat to have a Thieves Leaderboard that, if you wanted to could be set to private, but could show who the truly successful thieves are and what items have made the rounds being stolen time and again.

The beauty of specific item ID's is that you can show that this particular "a bag" has been stolen by every thief on the shard and after an item gets stolen a certain numbers of times, it could get an additional label: "an ill-fated bag last stolen by CrazyJoe". Could even have tiers that show how many times an item has been stolen with corresponding words similar to the fame/karma charts for paperdolls.

I doubt this next one would be added because of.....feelings......but I think it would also be great to have the victim get a title if robbed a certain number of times, also. Yes, the victim should get peer-pressured to not keep making the same mistakes. If you're constantly getting stolen from, you should get known throughout the land for it, in my opinion. Consider that the 3rd leg to the Fame / Karma chart or something. Fame / Karma / Reputation. I'm heartless. I know.

I've always thought that the best way to fix Stealing was not to limit and hamstring it, but to expand it and make it multi-faceted.

Being stolen from (negative reputation):
0 to -1249: No Reputation
-1250 to -2499: Naive
-2500 to -4999: Unwary
-5000 to -9999: Deceived
-10000 to -32000: Swindled

Stopping a thief in one way or another (positive reputation):
0 to 1249: No Reputation
1250 to 2499: Cautious
2500 to 4999: Heedful
5000 to 9999: Watchful
10000 to 32000: Vigilant

There should never be peer pressure in a sandbox game.

When an item gets stolen, if it sits in the thief's pack until they turn blue, it should warp to an auction house. 7 day public auction in gp, viewable via bank message board. High bid for 24 hours gets messaged to the victim. They get the right to match the bid and win their item back. Otherwise high bidder gets it. Thief gets the high bid from the winner minus 5 percent house fee. The high bid gets added to their lifetime total and they get a title based on that (pickpocket, grifter, swindler, con man/woman, etc)

I hope you're right... but heard similar things 18 months ago..