bounties on thieves.

You know, a day or two ago I was lecturing another player that had a run in with ShadowJack that as soon as you interact with these types you've already lost. While I was speaking I couldn't help but realize that I'd given nearly the same advice to one of my real-life students just hours before. That's what I like about UO. It reminds me of real life except instead of being teachers or computer programmers or taxi-drivers we get the chance to be heroic warriors and wizards. At least most of us choose that notion of our UO alter-ego but I commend the lowly bank thief for picking up the slack and playing UO's counterpart to the lowlife, ne'er-do-well street-trash that we all know goes along with any civilation.

Either way, if I get some regs stolen off me at the bank it probably happened when I was dropping thousands of gold off from my hunt that took about as long as the poor thief took to find someone to steal from and gamble that he might not get guard-whacked. Were a thief to steal a server birth off me I could earn enough money to buy it back twenty times before he could hope to make another score like that. These poor mofos aren't taking advantage of the system. They invest a great deal of time into making you all despise them and they get almost nothing. If thieving is unbalanced it's due to the amount of time they spend seeking relatively little reward. I think it would be awesome to have some sort of enhanced bounty-system to entertain us but not at the expense of others. . . Even if they are thieves. . .

All good points! To which I do concede. I concede primarily because, the prior changes I proposed I imagine would no doubt take an inordinate amount of time to program and, if failed then it would be for naught.

What if, instead of doing anything to change the risk to thieves ill gotten gains, we set up a system like the 'virtues' for a thief hunter? So just like you have to escort 100 NPC's in order to gain enough compassion to rez with 80% health, you have kill X number of perma grey thieves to gain enough credibility to impose an extra 4, 6, 10 minute timer on NPC healer and shrine rez? If you have X amount of credibility then you get an optional title (you can turn on or off from [wallet) and the 'healer' rez penalty for the thieves is increased if the final blow is landed by the thief hunter with sufficient credibility.

I imagine this would mimic almost exactly the Compassion system. You can only gain 'so much credibility' in a day. Once you have reached your daily limit, you can continue to kill thieves, but you will get a message like "Thieves are no longer willing to give you credibility. You must wait one day before you can gain any more." The Credibility charges would also decay much like the compassion charges so thief hunters would have to stay active.

This would prevent 'thief' hunters from exploiting the system by 'harvesting' credibility counts on an alt thief or at least slow them down.

Could this be incorporated as part of the Justice Virtue? Knive suggested that this be put in place for Justice.

Thief Hunter Status Poll

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2886

VOTE HERE!

Fix the QOL issues for thieves, like NPCs calling guards through walls, and a full-on thief hunting system would be brilliant.

Next patch, I think, will see line of sight requirements for NPC Guard calls.

Agreed.

assault and murder is murder and not an arrest, if you want to kill them - kill it, but not speak it arrest


you arrest a thief, he came to life again, he ran, and you arrest him and once more, the so indefinitely?

if it is to arrest all of his past criminal should be abolished, and all the players who victim, it will now not be able to attack thief after arrest, and Thief Hunter cant murder thief tbefore the thief will steal something again

thought on this system

wanted to do the type of police service, but took only one possibility out of the system, "the ability to kill others without any consequences"

then let's expand opportunities
- Take away from other players punishing thieves (if player punish the thief himself, then he will be a thief)
- looting other players this theft?
- As written before killing by hunter completely clear karma over other players
- let's give some points to thieves, for a long time if the thief can not arrest, he is an experienced thief can steal from other players and do not get noticed, a veteran thief can break into the house and chests

and may other...


my main character Crafter and I love playing for the second character a thief, in fact I don`t know the other mmo rpg where you can steal from the players(you can steal if you fool players), and it's a very good system, but what about the proposed hunter guild flawed
now it looks like "guilds to protect the animals," if someone kills an animal that can be tamed or tame the animal and give to it command to kill some one, let's "arrest" of such players


the system now: create the second character thief and improve рoints on it, and all the players who did not enter into a thieves guild enter at hunters guilds, and all can permanently kill the thieves


my english not good, I communicate through Google translator, and I hope you understand what I mean

People sure seem to be down on thieves. Seems like they are even more hated than PKs.

Anyone who thinks thievery is a lucrative profession is just kidding themselves. People complain about how little risk there is, but there's also little gain. I can see the need to have the thief always go grey to the victim after an attempt, but part of the reasoning to GM stealing was the rare possibility of remaining blue to others (non-victims). Making the professions "more challenging" will drive many folks away from this profession. I see this as a care-bear tactic - next stop: Trammel!

Just my 0.2g

I agree with this. GM thieves should have a chance to stay blue upon success. Is this not the case? again while I despise thieves I do think of it as a completely necessary part of UO. I am just trying to support discussion of changes that will encourage thief Hunters. I'm hoping that this discussion will lend some good ideas for the justice virtue.

*hands you your ticket to Trammel*

Bus leaves in about an hour.


What you want is Trammel for thieves. I think perhaps only flagging to the victim is ok, but otherwise, all the changes so far have been good. It's rather pleasant to not see the banks littered with thief corpses from people who trained up a skill and risk absolutely nothing in their quest to relieve people of their earned items or other.
Just like begging, low/no risk, low reward. Stealing can be HIGHLY lucrative if you choose your mark wisely and play the skill as best it can be. Just ask the successful thieves on the server who have not only made off with 100s of thousands of gold worth of my items, but also made tons of gold from me buying that stuff back just to save the hassle of replacing it.
Yes, people hate thieves. Maybe more than PKs because at least PKs risk a longer time-out if they fail (statloss) and actually require resources to enact their dastardly deeds.

In short, I agree on the flagging concept.

Perhaps slightly increase reward and risk for thieves? I think this will make the role much more enjoyable to play... here is what I propose:

1
Thieves with 90+ wrestling can steal held (non-newbied) weapons/items from players who are not engaged in combat. Success for stealing held weapons should be less than success rates for stealing from player's backpacks.

2
Player 1 (any player) - while near a guard - may place a thief-catcher's bounty on any other player (up to 1mil -- or some other cap we determine is appropriate for the system). To do this, Player 1 must actually give money (from their bank/person) to the system... just like PK bounty. When a thief-catcher returns a thief's head to the guards, Player 1 will receive a 80% refund of their bounty.

3
Any player who uses the forensic eval skill successfully on a thief (who currently has a thief-catcher's bounty on their head) and is able to return the thief's head to a town guard will be rewarded 15% of the total bounty on that player. (Note: not any player can return the head... it must be a character with forensic eval who successfully used the skill on the thief)

4
Any thief whose head is turned into the guards as noted in part 3 (and had a bounty in their name) will be jailed for 24-hours of play-time for each 100,000g in his bounty. At a 1mil bounty cap, this would be 10 days of play-time.

5
Players may pay to have a thief removed from jail early. For a thief's sentence to be reduced by 100%, a bail of 20% of the bounty price must be paid. These funds will be prorated on an hourly basis. In other words, to have a thief's sentence reduced by 1 full day, a player must pay 20,000g. To get a theif with the maximum (1mil) bounty out of jail immediately, a player must pay 200,000 gold. These funds are non-refundable.


Pros:

This system provides a money-sink for our economy where I think one is due. The bounty funder receives only 80% of his funds back... and only if the thief is caught. The thief (or his friends) must pay for him to be to be released from jail early, and the thief-catcher only receives 15%. In a scenario where the theif stays in jail for the entire sentence, only 5% of the bounty is removed from the system. All funds paid to get a theif out early will be removed from the economy.

This system cannot be exploited for an unfair financial gain -- although a theif could have this thief-catcher friend kill him and turn his head in. In this scenario, the two would still lose a total of 5% of the bounty cost. The only money to be made is for being a thief catcher and being unassociated with the thief.

This system offers thieves many more opportunities to take what isn't theirs, but more risk for doing so.

Cons:

It's friggin complicated.

A thief with a catcher-alt could spoil the fun of the system to some extent. (maybe this could be fixed by tweaking the numbers? or making a change somewhere... this is all train-of-thought from tonight)

Players would have to carry back-up weapons in the event a theif steals their equipped one... this would mean having a vulnerable weapon in your pack in addition to your equipped weapon. Sort-of a huge inconvenience for most people. (also only hurts non-mages)

The thief is pretty balanced on this shard. Stealing is more or less useless unless you are willing to put in a significant amount of time to steal something as part of a grand scheme. I've not seen any bank thieves here, and I know the flagging and recall changes here have kept me from stealing much. Stealing and surviving is hard unless you come very well prepared, at which point you are risking significant resources.

The reason for no bank thieves here is that no one is ever at the banks unless they are AFK macroing.

I was expressing endorsement of that fact.

Great. I didn't assume otherwise, but thanks for making that clear.

About OP, a bounty system for thieves sounds cool and adds an interesting part to the game. Franz Pfniffel have already got a few bounties, however only spoken in words. So would be fun to see an appropriate bounty system. But to make that system so that things get even harder (or perhaps should one say "less worth it"?) for a thief seems quite unjustified. One could still make it worth hunting thieves while not making it harder to be a thief, as OP suggest. Some ppl already pointed to it. Are thieves really that big of a problem to ppl?

About the thief class in general. Some have stated in this thread that since thieves risk nothing, we need to change that. But how much does a provo bard really risk when they go to a dungeon with a newbied lute and some recall regs? Then compare what a provo bard makes compared to a thief.

Finally, I don't like that you can't recall as a criminal. I don't get why you shouldn't be able to either, just seems strange. Although, I admit I haven't read up on the particular discussion that lead to that change (suppose there was one?).

For starters, no one actually PvMs with newbie instruments. Instruments break and GMs are far superior, so that part of your statement is right out.

As for the Recall thing, much like the ability for thieves to immediately bank items, is part of the victims having %100 no recourse available at all. Sure, they can kill you after the fact but what does that get? Lost resources in killing you for no returned goods and putting themselves at risk of death if you're a capable killer and thief.

The criminal flagging of thieves preventing recall is a VERY SMALL window of opportunity for victims to exact justice (especially considering guards don't care anymore). I feel the restriction should also be applied to bank access, if it doesn't already.

Ok. But you do perhaps agree that the risk of loosing an instrument is not a very big deal? Especially compared to what a provo bard normally makes per hour.

Not even when you're able to recall as a criminal it's easy to get away as a thief. One would just need to hit you to interrupt the escape, and mostly thieves operate unmounted to be able to stealth while most others in the wild are mounted. So running away and then recalling is mostly never an option. Actually, if not removing the motivation to thievery for some, I suppose that disabling recall for criminals could increase town thievery instead of thieving in the wild (since there you're chances are very low unless you're a pvp thief, which I for one is not since I play a thief since I don't enjoy pvp fighting).

I believe that accessing the bank as a criminal is a default setting, or at least old one. It's in effect here. That makes sense since the bank system, of course, would be under the King's or city's jurisdiction, they wouldn't allow a criminal to use their service. But that I wouldn't be able to use one certain magical spell (while I can use all others) since I committed a criminal act, well, it just feels illogical. Of course this is not an RP server where one would have to take such things into account. But still.