Cut off their hands!!!

[Vengeance]

Another great post, Rockhoof.  (I'm seeking out your posts now.  )

I agree completely.  Our intent is to basically do #2 and #4 on your list.  These are already partially implemented and will get more focus when other areas are more stable and complete.

- Venge

[Aori]

Some of what I'm about to say may have been said in other posts but, I didn't see it here.

PVP should perhaps be restricted to a certain area. A wildnerness zone, so to speak. It may seem a bit arbitrary and 'unnatural', however, as this is a game some aspects will need to be slightly unrealistic in order to be fun (for the majority of players). This has been implemented in other games and works well. Another options is: PVP can happen anywhere but only between players that have a 'flag' up. Again, I'm sure many of you are familiar with these systems from various games.

 I'd then suggest that PVP-T was restricted to such a zone if it is implemented. That way, people that go to this zone know full well that they are going to risk their life and money. Stealing items is a little disturbing. I'd say 'no' to weapons and armour and perhaps 'yes' to smaller items, such as money and potions. I favour this over the method of theving by discernment of droprate. I think this, as I see it being less harmful and less of an annoyance to players yet still allow theives to have some fun. If the droprate scheme was implemented as proposed, then the theive would need to carry an encyclopedia of knowledge on each and every item in order to know what he can and can't steal (given that he can see someone carrying it).

Otherwise theiving from NPCs and trap detecting/setting is a pretty good idea. It seems to work in quite a few other games.

[derwoodly]

I dunno, IMO, the first three rules of good game design are:

1. Never punish a player for actions beneficial to the game (not the same thing as 'actions that would be 'beneficial' to other people...').
    We WANT them doing certain actions, including being 'thief-like'
2. Never give other players the power to punish a player.
    This will lead to abuse.  Punishment should only ever be meted out by someone who is answerable to some form of authority outside of the game.
3. Never punish a player for actions outside his control.
    A player cannot control the actions of another player, never EVER cause one player loss through the actions of another. This is a corollary to rule number 2.  It's open to abuse.

Very good post.


I question the rulebook that you are using for good game design.  Player vs player combat is a given in most of the games I play.  MMORPG’s are more of an exception to your rules of game design than they are the norm.  Games like baseball, soccer, dodge ball, and tag, are all player vs. player.  Limiting the rulebook to computer games, does not change anything as most of those have player vs. player options.  If you limit the rule book just to MMORPG’s  then your points have truth to them.  However, despite the challenges most mainstream MMORPG’s  at least pay lip service to PvP.

MMORPG’ PvP combat can be thought of as a card game.  Depending on how the deck is stacked one player will have a significant advantage over the other.   Knowing when to go all in and when to fold is key to winning.  Punishing each other for not playing the game correctly is what true PvP is all about.  Finding examples of PvP MMORPG’s is not hard either, and some of them are fun to play. The real challenge to PvP is making a PvP game that people will not whither and die over time. 

It really comes down to what the PS dev want to see as their creation.  If raw numbers is what counts then PvP is not the way to go.  As games like Shadowbane have shown, the player base for a PvP MMORPG is smaller than a PvE MMORPG.  If role-play is important then PvP is also a bad choice.  Some would argue that PvP can add to role-play but the added headaches that come with PvP detract more then they add to the role-play experience.

However, I believe Guild Wars is proving that with the proper controls on the MMORPG parts you can have a successful PvP RPG based game.  Of cource the argument could be made that Guild Wars is not a MMORPG.  Going back to the card game analogy, MMORPG PvP can work if you give players the ability to fold or go all in.

How does this apply to the post? Well the solution I had posted a while back included the option to back out of a PvP fight initiated by a thief stealing one of your items.  I had originally thought that a 33/33/33 chance would work.  However, I think this is way too high.  Thieves should be like predatory animals.  A one in ten would be better I think.  Restated, 70% of the time a thief should fail, with no detection, 15% chance of fail with detection, and 10% chance of success with detection, and 5% chance of success with no detection.  70% of the time the thief would just have to wait for his pick pocket skill to refresh. 25% of the time they would be targetable and could have their hand  removed.  5% of the time they would get away free and clear.  The victom would then have the option of combating the thief or posting a reward for their hand.

What is lootable is another debate, but my preferences would be any non-equipped items including money up to 100 pieces.

[Ziljaden]

From reading the past few pages I've seen some very, very interesting points that I would like to bring up again briefly.

The punishment of removing a hand with a high price to have the severed hand replaced seems a bit obsurd to me. From the vantage point of someone whose pockets are getting picked, the punishment would seem fair. From the point of the thief, say a new thief for example, it's a price that you couldn't possiblly afford to pay because you are very likely to fail on account that you lack the experience. Everybody has to start somewhere and with a pretty low level to begin at. If at first you fail catostrophically you would never try again on account that the character got mutilated to the point where it would be an obscene amount of work just to get back to the zero point of having your hand back. I think instead of having mutilation as a punishment, a new rating could be put in place. The new rating would be reputation. If you fail horribly when there is only one person around you become freely available for PvP only by that person for a while if they so choose it and the reputation would spike negatively for a while. If you fail horribly in a large group the entire group would have the PvP option so as to stop the thief and the reputation would remain strongly damaged for a much longer amount of time. This would be because word of mouth would get out exponentially quicker than just one person starting it.

The Reputation rating could possibly also be linked into a bounty system. If the rating were to reach a certain point a bounty according to the rating would be issued. If a bounty were issued but the rating dropped back down/rise up to an acceptable level the bounty would become inactive and no longer valid.

The random drop ideas along with the score for steal-ability on an item could possibly be put through a system of 4 points-
1.) Evaluate all items in the player's inventory to see what is present.
2.) Randomly select X number of items to be visible to the thief.
3.) Re-evaluate the randomly selected items using a scoring system on the items due to value, availability, and method in which to acquire said item to determine if it is even able to be stolen.
4.) Assign a proper value for chance of success and failure. (perfect success, mild success, mild failure, horrible failure, etc)

This would also take into consideration such things as visibility of the object(hidden item maybe Vs. something hanging freely off of a belt), if the object is able to be moved or not (a dagger in a sheath or a set of armour), and so on.
Another part that this would help with is how often a thief is able to strike. If a thief were only able to strike once per day it would take far too long to become any good at the craft and also finding a good mark would be increasingly difficult. If a character could only be a victim once per day what would keep them from finding a thief, having the thief steal a small item only to be returned immediately after it was stolen to make sure that they would become impervious to theft for another 24 hours? It would of course be against the rules to pay off the thief to basically give you immunity, but since when have rules stopped someone who was serious about committing to an act?

Another thing that should be taken into consideration should be the fact that if the target is in a mob, this person is in a mob! A mob consists of a large number of people and any large group outside of town would undoubtely see something fishy going on when a stranger wades between the members of the group and gets a little too friendly with a few coin purses. In town it would be harder to spot the stranger, but still it would be easier to spot a poor quality thief with a few dozen pairs of eyes wrather than just one pair. In the case of towns if the thief was caught and began to flee, wouldn't the victim shout and act to the best of their ability to point out and stop the thief from getting away? That would probably even entail having a few good citizens who might hope for a reward step in to kill the thief.

There's my two bits.
            -Ziljaden

[derwoodly]

You bring up a good point about fledgling thieves being forced to play one handed for 1000's of hours to be able to buy back their hand.  I think the fix for this would be to make the "new hand quest" scaled to the players skill points.  As they progress in total skill points then the dificulty of the new hand quest would get harder.  Maybe at high levels, the quest would not be available at all, forcing higher level thieves to nagotiate with the guild that has their severed hand.

Ideally, both the thief and the victom would enjoy the whole process at least as much as people currently enjoy crafting skills in most other mmorpgs.

[The Shadow Nose]

Some ideas:

1. give all items in PS an 'Ownership' field. when bought or traded then ownership is properly transferd over to the recipeant. When stolen then it retains the origional owners name on it and ownership doesn't change when traded.

2. NPC shop owners have persistant inventories. So if you sell an item to them then it becomes possible to buy it back. Also, it is possible to steal from NPCs.

4. When a player is victimized, the theifs name and the stolen item is recorded and the victim has a certain amount of time to report it to the police and place a reward. At this, then the police generate a specific quest. [Find <theifs name> and recover <victims name>' s <stolen item name>]  People can then get the quest as normal and then find the item.

5. If an NPC gets the stolen item [such as through the thief stealing it] then they automatically go to the police to return it, the victim gets their stolen item back for free.

6. When a player with the quest finds the thief, they can automatically bypass the no-Pvp and attack the thief [though they automatically say something like "Take this Thief!" in different colored text so people know what is happening] if they defeat the thief and they have the stolen item then the stolen item is dropped or made lootable by the one with the quest.


7. The one with the quest can then return the item to a policeman to get the reward, the police then '/tell' the victim the item was recovered and they can pick it up. Note that the quest-taker can easily just keep the item for himself and the quest never gets completed. Then others that accept the quest get a free shot at pvping the theif even though he no longer has the stolen item.


Not sure how to handle if money is stolen.


Basically, if a person steals then others can get quests that let them bypass their no-pvp option. There is also the risk that if they don't have the item that it might not get returned by one with the quest and they really get in trouble. Perhaps add a way for them to replace the item they stole to make the police stop giving the quest.


But there should be the option for thieves to steal from NPCs like Harnquist [If he's going to keep wandering around like this he deserves it...] or from enemies like Rogues [I think it would be pretty understandable to steal daggers from a rogue without having to kill him... though stealing the hide off of a tefusang would be pretty unrealistic]

Beginner thieves should be able to target NPCs and enemies to train their theiving skills and then work up to stealing small change from players who agree with it. Add a Thieving/non-theiving option as well Just like how we currently have PvP/non-PvP option.

And as for cutting off hands... just don't. Adding something like that to this game will likely cause all sorts of bugs and weird effects that will bite everybody. Simple fines and limiting the PvP option should be the main punishment unless it doesn't work when the skill actually becomes available.

[derwoodly]

Some ideas:

And as for cutting off hands... just don't. Adding something like that to this game will likely cause all sorts of bugs and weird effects that will bite everybody. Simple fines and limiting the PvP option should be the main punishment unless it doesn't work when the skill actually becomes available.

Having a visuall effect that showed a missing hand is not absolutly nessasary.  Nothing has to change visually when the thief is killed.  The killer would just loot a hand icon from the corpse. I am sure people would complain about the realism factor, but sometimes you just have to use your imagination.  Although I think it would be technically possible to have a thiefs hand transparency set to 100% I would prefer any graphical fixes to the game be done to more important items than thieves hands.

I think the general idea by the original poster, UTM (tm) was that cutting off a hand was more in character than going to the police/guards. 
[edited to improve grammer and clarity]

[Kiamors]

I like RockHoof's ideas about making rogue specific areas or tactics on missions. The one thing I don't like is how you could steal from another player and get money that is not theirs, as he pointed out, people will take advantage of these options, especially the rogue characters, after all, they are thieves. What is to stop a rogue from just running around stealing from everyone, If it doesn't hurt the player, then they aren't going to care, so there would be no reason for them to challenge the rogue. I think that there should be a thieving or non-thieving marker like shadow noes suggested, but that only common or uncommon items that are not equiped should be allowed to be stolen, such as food, some money, potions, or other unequiped items that could possibly be stolen. This will keep people from stealing rare and ultra rare stuff, which would upset everyone. It would be better if you could set it so that your rare stuff could be stolen, but I think no one would use this option, so its not worth the time it would take to code it. also, if a theif choose to attempt to steal items such as an unequiped weapon or set of armor, which are large items, then it would greatly decrease your chances of taking it.