Ask the disarm thieves about Halloween. @bart simpson cleaned up, and so did many others, with their disarm thieves. I'll concede that outside of town events, specifically Halloween, there is very little to do with a disarm thief.
I know anecdote is useless, but for what it's worth, I believe this to have been possible as well. This is surprisingly one of those things you can "check the demo" for (I know, so cliche to say), and figure out that there are 4 possible outcomes for stealing vs another mobile. 1.) You get nothing, and stay blue - You don't even turn perma in this event 2.) You get nothing, and turn criminal 3.) You get something, and stay blue - You DO turn perma 4.) You get something, and turn criminal From my experience, outcome #1 almost never happened. I also agree with this statement, which is why I grew tired of UOSA and it's never-changing mechanics. I disagree here, because you will ALWAYS turn perma (and thus, grey to the victim) if you actually succeed at taking anything. Think this is due to LOS checks effecting success chances of stealing, which was never in production UO and if I recall, it was added by @Chris about 2 years ago. I think it's a bad change, and more done to trammel the area around the banks a little more than anything else. It never really bothered me too much because I don't do much stealing in town particularly since scamming is frowned upon by staff here thwarting "trade" scams using forum/irc and it's unlikely you will often find much else of value to steal in town just handing around anyway. Sure, one could fake their IP and use irc/forums to scam, but for me, that's no fun, and it's against the rules. I do, contrary to popular opinion, follow the rules to a T. Also I want you to know who I am and that I stole from you when I steal from you. Anonymous stealing doesn't have an appeal for me. If the actual stealing chances were changed or are too difficult, I haven't seen significant data to prove it one way or the other. I will test that myself and comment on it at a later time. I don't think even the data that @Jakob posted recently is enough to be statistically significant. This would be a monumental nerf to stealing. First, why flag them grey for snooping if you're not going to reveal them from a hide while snooping? It doesn't make any sense really. Secondly, for those rare thieves that don't hide, it would cause them to go grey and be immediately avoided. The biggest problem thieves face is "how do I get near you long enough to do my job and then escape or fight". There is a lot of skill involved in being able to snoop a moving target quickly and make the proper choice about what to steal, identify the chances of success, and pull it all off. If you flag grey for simply snooping, you are being attacked before you can make any of those decisions. You mine as well remove the stealing skill at that point, because it would only be good for "bank stealing" from non-moving people anyway.
I don't saying "oh they rake in the loot at events" means much. So does a player farming monsters at these events, PKs killing the farmers, thieves stealing the loot, and looters taking care of the bodies. Because it's particularly useful during a relatively rare situation, that doesn't mean it's not underpowered. That being said, I don't think it's underpowered at all. I think disarm works just fine. I heard a complaint from someone else on the forums that people are re-equipping too fast to steal making disarm pointless, or they are running a razor macro to do it automatically, or something like EUO was stated as well. But absolutely none of these things will prevent me from stealing your weapon anyway. There's a lot of things you can do to instantly lockup their macro and take their weapon if you know what you're doing. Is there a problem though? Yes, but I think it's related to the value and use of weapons. At this point, there's very little value in stealing even a vanq weapon. It's (for me) not even worth the effort in terms of "value". Better runic weapons have faction blessing making them effectively trammeled, and practically nobody will ever use one "on the field". I guess the problem is mostly related to the ease of obtaining magic weapons and wealth in 2017 with 3 accounts and better knowledge of game mechanics. If you want to disarm in order to kill someone though, that's still perfectly doable (save for the fact that it's impossible to catch someone who is running from you unless they are an idiot).
I think that I should get a warning on screen whenever a PK is within 2 screens of me. I don't want "PKs" to interrupt my semi-lawful farming in dungeons by brazenly attacking so I need to run off in the middle of farming.
@snap dragon <3, you're such a peach. Well said, all of it, except the value on weapons part. I was out last night fighting around outside Wrong with some people and one of them (likely Bone Crusher) looted my verite double axe when I died. Now it's not mils but that weapon alone is probably worth a good 50k+ at least. Once of them was nice enough to give me back my katana (which to me was more valuable due to success rate on exceptional quality). Anyway, just wanted to share that high end weaponry is out there, but not everyone's got the gold or the balls to carry it. My partner missed a heal and I wasn't quick enough on my heal wands and shit happens. Also, on the disarm thieving point, I have a toggle key for every weapon I carry and always keep my paperdoll up. I ran around for like 20 minutes messing with this disarm thief who kept trying to hotkey steal my weapon but the second it dropped from my paperdoll, I'd hammer my toggle key. Ultimately they got my weapon after dozens of attempts (I could have left, lol, but it was fun). I think that may have even been ShadowJack, but I can't recall at this point. Anyway, cheers, stealing needs some love.
One is reaching into someone's pocket openly in a guard zone and the other is PKing (or stealing) in a dungeon.
@Blaise If someone stole a (good) runic weapon from you, they effectively won the lottery it's such a rare happening. I've managed to get a few by setting up traps for PKs like mutumbo and google (well, google's axe teleported back to the event area causing @Chris to give me a "I was screwed by a bug" trophy or whatever it was). But by and large, I saw practically none being used ever, and I doubt that has changed at all.
Oh, I know it's rare for sure but will become less so in time. I assure you, I've got plenty more to lose and likely will in the coming months. I haven't even built my next valorite runic hammer but you better believe I'll be crazy enough to field one when I do. Faction blessing only lasts three weeks and I've got spares so once that burns off it'll be the million gold pinata in effect.
Yea, I still regret that mess, but it did lead me to a better understanding of how to hook into the death handler process for players. And how to turn it off effectively when an event is over.
Perhaps this is about perception? Were I to steal from you in town I could percieve it as walking incognito among the other citizens, bump into you, and pick your pocket. This s a part of every day life in parts of the world and I find it very fitting and immersive in UO. I think that's where the detection math should come into play and feel it should become increasingl more difficult with the more potential witnesses you have. Granted, NPCs shouldnt be able to see through walls but that's a different subject.
