UO:Renaissance - Thieving perfected (ongoing thread)

I'm not usually one to judge... But I found myself cringing while reading that tale. Maybe I'm just getting soft?

People offer you help, and give you some pretty nice freebies, so you fuck them over as hard as you possibly can? Nice one, hope you are proud of yourself my good man.

You sound remarkably like someone else I know, who also paid for their house.

@Fuji Fu

Over the years in UO, I have played a thief quite extensively. I also used to PVP extensively but retired from that lifestyle. Beer destroyed my amazing hand-eye coordination. I am now a proud PvM-only Trammel Tamer!

However, I will say that there is a vast difference between socially engineering/manipulating the good hearts of people trying to help a new player vs. true thief skills.
Example of legit thief skills:

• Never dying when you steal in town
• Remaining in-disguise to hide your true thief's name
• Reg stealing while being minimally detected in a dungeon so someone can't heal/recall and the mob kills them and you loot
• Reg stealing when people PvP so they die and you loot them
• Baiting - acting like a weak thief so someone attacks you and faceplants due to your GM magery ownage
• Stealthing into houses and grabbing great loots
• Stealth-looting/stealing during champs
• Stealing off high end mobs/bosses/champs and not dying
• Running amibs solo
• Level 4 chest picking adventures without dying

What you did Fuji Fu wasn't an amazing feat or even that hard. Anyone can prey on the good intentions of others and it doesn't really require any special talent or skill. The reason your post is unique to this thread is that most people don't brag or even pat themselves on the back for stealing loose change from the Good Will jars.

There are three points I'd like to make:
1) What you did was douchy

2) It minimally impacts us as most of us have millions in gold and items. The 88k tower plus about 20k worth of barbed leather is literally 1 hour of farming blood elementals. You would have created far more wealth, friendship, and in-game pleasure by going through our taming program and joining us for high end-game content. It's not atypical for us to make 90+ plat each after a half-day of champing and we do champ a lot.

3) Your behavior won't change ours, i.e. we will still continue to help new players on the shard. We will continue to run a guild that fosters a culture of inclusion, team building, tremendous wealth aquisition, and fun. If you'd still like to be part of that team let us know.

Respectfully,

Qi
The Platinum River, TnT

Qi, I like you. Seen you around various places and you seem quite a chill dude. But Im going to respectfully disagree here on some points. If you'll permit me to play devils advocate, Id like to try and convince you that what Fuji was not lame. It may, in fact, be necessary.

As stated, the theft was really pennies. He couldve done way better by waiting a bit, and all he did was rob the charity bucket. So why do it? I do not know him very well, although we've spoken a great deal the past few days, and he does not strike me as a douche. So I'll try to offer why I steal, and why I would do the same thing in his shoes.

A new player posted recently that he saw in Occlo was macro spam and afk when he tried a few weeks ago. When I joined 3 weeks ago, I saw the same thing. Last night, there was a dedicated thief only robbing permagreys who tricked me into guard whacking myself and cleaned out my corpse. The night before, a guy in full melee PvP gear was chasing down me and other thieves. He killed me once and hindered my plans. Next contact I stole my own head back and got chased again(though he had more valuable assets to take).

In every story, there is one concept which ultimately draws the reader in, and allows a character to change and progress. The concept is conflict. Discord, strife, adversity. These are elements that when lacking, make both stories and games boring. Do you think a new player would be bored if he saw a thief get cut down in the streets? I'm dont think so.

Fuji knew the house could be replaced for nothing, and that his theft did nothing besides make him someone's enemy. This server needs villains. Its not about making money. Its about taking money. Its why you'll see me steal a twig if it gets people talking, or why on the forums I often play the role of an arrogant cocky jerk. Its why Im always trying to come up with new ways to steal, even if those ways are objectively inferior(like asking players if the have a moment to hear the Virtues while wearing priestly robes and holding a book).

Yes, he robbed the collection plate. But theres no shortage of wealth on this server. There is a shortage of villains and danger. He did his part to make the server more dangerous and interesting. And while it may seem douchey, remember this is all just pixels. Anything that creates discord or conversation will extend the life of a game.

How could this be a scam? I didn't ask for the house, i didn't trade anything for it, i wasn't supposed to trade anything for it, they literally handed me the house. I had no intentions of getting a free house, that was their own doing. I didn't even lie to them. They just handed me a free house, and invited me in their home not knowing my intentions. Foolish on their part. Pardon me for capitalizing.

That's really my intentions here, is to become a villain. I think i'm already making a name for myself. And in my eyes, the worse i look, the better. You should know that not everyone you come across has your best interest in mind.

No shit i didn't take away things you spent years to achieve. Yeah i basically robbed a charity jar. Sounds pretty thievy to me. In my opinion a good thief can do some con artistry. I didn't even need to use any of my in-game skills to pull this off. I could have made the character 10 minutes prior and still done it. That's the best part. You guys took no effort into getting to know me. And that's a mistake.

@Qi

Why whould i join you when i could rob your charity jar and then still join you on an alternate character? Or just rob you again since you're gonna continue with your foolish ways of handing stuff out, and trusting people.

You spend a couple hours slaying bodies and getting loot and making armor, and i'll just do a little chatting, dragging, and dropping.

To each is own.

I'm sorry but just because you want to try to justify acting this way does not make you less of a douche bag

Fuck them over!? he referred to it as charity!! he said he makes that in an hour. How did i really fuck them over? it was a mediocre grab. No reason to get your panties in a bunch

Well then you can refer to me as douche master flex everyone might want to start utilizing the forensic evaluation skill.

If you look at it like that, i'm really contributing to the game. Now maybe everyone can start including forensic eval in their builds. If they had the skill they could have prevented the whole thing.

it doesn't take any thievery skill to con someone and join their guild. thats a whole different beast. Kinda just shows your not trustworthy. Its a small server man.. what you did is within the rules but anytime the world's this small its not a good idea to alienate yourself.

@Garresh - I agree with your points about needing villains and risk in the game. That's what really makes UO a thrill. =) Just to clarify though - I never called him a douche only that what he did was kind of douchy and the douchiness is achieved via the AND-clause combination of all three items, i.e. pretend to be a new player wanting to join a guild with intentions of stealing from it -combined- with thinking it was worthy of brags in the thief thread -combined- with thinking our guild is somehow so profoundly naive that we never would suspect someone to do what he did.

Of course we know someone may keep the house and loot the free guild armor in the guild-keep. With everything there is a risk profile and we've concluded it pays off more to help out new players and give them initial trust vs. treating new guild mates with suspicion and harshness. The only reason I responded to his post is not because I am sore that he "got us" but that he thought it was epic enough to brag about. And, if his motivation was profit - he could have approached it differently and reaped far greater rewards. He could have built a sweet PvM tamer and joined us on the plat train. It's a train that never ends. I'm disappointed he didn't want to join us on that train. It's always fun to go through the process of helping someone build a tamer, hang out with them on discord, while we all drink beer and champ into the sunset.

@Fuji Flu - Again, it wasn't "foolish" of us. You aren't the first to do what you did to our guild and you won't be the last. You're just the first to think it might be worthy of the thieving thread. But I am serious man - if you want to make a tamer and get on the train - just let us know.

Respectfully,

Qi
The Platinum River, TnT

I'm alienated on one single character... My thief. That's kinda what i imagined when i made him. Not liked, and alienated. No one knows my other characters. So im cool with it.

Ah I suppose that's true. In his defense(and somewhat my own), he's pretty new. We both are. I'm happy to see any thief pull off a theft even if the amount is paltry and the skill requirement low. I mean I feel great if I nab even a single platinum sometimes. On a different note, do you know any good channels to "pass it on" so to speak? I'd like to put some of my ill gotten gains towards new player aid, but TBH you guys have it covered on every front I've seen. Everywhere I look are helpful people. It's impressive.

garresh, what ive been doing is just asking young players you see or anyone that looks clueless if they're new. if they are i normally give them a power weapon of their choice, a horse and a tour of the occlo dungeon. show em where the executioners are and the entrance/exits. get them on irc and then call that that. Good way to redistribute our goods.. im sure most theives have more weapons than they know what to do with.

In that case, ill take a power hally please. ill pass on the tour tho

Yeah that's what I do currently. If I see someone asking advice I'm quick to give it, and readily restribute what I have. My goal, as I said, is to sow discord and chaos, but ideally in a manner which attracts newbs and engages everyone.

sure whats your irc fuji?