Shopkeepers , Thieves, what they are allowed todo and what you can do about them

[glodin]

Shops ... Welcome customer!

• 1.Additionally to the current way, Items can be dropped into the world, flagged as "owned"
• 2."Owned" items do not vanish after a while
• 3."Owend" items can only be picked up normally by the owner
• 4.If the owner moves away from his items by a certain radius, the "owned" flag is disabled and they become normal dropped items again
• 5.The owner can assign a "pricevalue" to the dropped items, which can be seen by other players via /targetinfo
• 6.Other players can buy the "owned item", either via a command like /buytarget or/and a icon interface
• 7.The defined "pricevalue" is AUTOMATICLY transfered to the owner, the owned item is transfered to the buyers inventory
• 8. If the owner has lost serverconnection or leaves game, all "owned items" will be moved into his chars inventory.

The idea behind this should be obvious: Players could open their own shops. Imagine the posibilities! An Adventurer can place his precious looted artefacts around him on the placa and people can come and buy them. Because of 7., you can even go afk for a while. Miners can drop their ore on the ground , assign a price to them and keep on mining. Traders could buy this ore , bring them to the city, and sell them with profit(a good possibility for noobs to earn some tria). If there ever will be tailors and the other jobskills implemented, they can have their own shops where they can present their wares to the customer. 4. ensures, that this system is not misused to pollute the world with permanent items. This system can also be used for special events, like weddings or parades, for decoration(Just assign a pricevalue of 40k to it, if people buy the away, you want care int this case). Additionally to 1.-8. there could be a "counteroffer" option for the customer. This could look like: /counteroffer <target> <price>. The owner of the item will be prompted with a Dialoguebox like this:"<Player> has made a counteroffer to <object>(<pricevalue>). He offers <counteroffer>. Do you accept? [yes] [No]". I dont want to replace the current tradesystem, this should be an additional option. You ask why someone should use the current tradesystem when this one is more comfortable? Well for every advantage ...



... there is a disadvantage

• 9. Players can use the command /trysteal on an "owned item" (here can be also a iconinterface for this)
• 10. The chance of sucessfully stealing the "owned item" is based on the players pickpocket skill
• 11. The chance of sucessfully stealing the "owned item" is altered by the items "pricevalue"
• 12. If the player fails to steal the "owned item" he becomes attackable by the items owner AND the members of the items owner group(the group will be prompted with a message like "<player> tried to steal <owned item>")
• 13. The item owner must be the groupleader
• 14. The thief can attack the owner and his group only if they attack him
• 15. The right to attack the thief expires after a while(30 min for example)
• 16. A thief can only try to steal from the same owner when he was hunted down by the owner and his group, or when the right to attack expires
• 17. "owned items" can only be droped in city areas or mines.

So everyone who is using the shopsystem takes part in "the game". 10. will prevent noobs from stealing all stuff. 11. will make it nearly impossible to steal really expensive wares.  With 12. a Shopkeeper can hire guards to protect himself if he is not a good fighter. 13. can prevent shopkeepers from just grouping with everyone in the city, because every shopkeeper would do so but you can be part of only one group. 14. prevents players from forcing duels with shopkeepers. 15. Gives the thief the chance to escape. The guards wont chase him for 30 min just because of a stolen rathide. And he might evalute if it's not simpler to be hunted down and go to the death realm than to run for 30 min. He can also try to surrender and beg for mercy, and the guards could decide what to do with him(there is alot of RP potential here). Finally 16. will prevent thiefs from training their pickpocket skill with friends. it's still possible but time consumming. And why not? Thief's can teach each other this way. But at a cost of course ... there can be criminal organisations which watch their monoply in thiefscholarship, 17. will help to watch over their "terretory"(again great RP stuff).

 I think in the game, the chances should be in favour of the owner. He can decide to not chasing a thief because it's not worth the effort. But he should be able to get back his possesion or at least make the thief pay for his crime. So what happens if a highskilled pickpocketer with uber fighting skills steals something? That can be handeled ..


Wanted: Dead or alive! The license to kill.

• 18. If the owner or a member of his group has currently a "owned item" selected as target and the thief steals it with sucess, the theft will be noticed.  Noticed thefts will be prompted to the owner and his group, the thief becomes attackable
• 21. If the thief is killed they are allowed to loot his inventory
• 22. The right to attack expires when the thief dies
• 23. It expires after a (long) time (some relatime days)
• 24. It expires if the owner decides to forgive the thief(command like /forgive <player>)
• 25. (Now it gets interesting) If the thief kills a member of the group, the owner has the right to put a bounty on the thiefs head
• 26. The owner has to specify the bounty ammount, he must have this ammount currently in his inventory(... /setbounty <player> <bounty>)
• 27. The specified ammount will be "frozen" for the owner, he will not have access to it
• 28. The owner can give the bounty order to every player, which makes them bounty hunters, which they have to accept
• 29. Bounty hunters have the right to kill the specific person and to loot their inventory
• 30. The hunt expires with the thiefs death
• 31. The hunt expires when the owner decide to forgive the player

With 18. you have a certain control over the situation as a shopkeeper. You can only target one item at once so you have to hire one guard for each item to watch them all. If you find people willing to do this and if you can pay them you are free to do it. The thief cant see which item you have selected, so he has to take a risk. If he is cought he risks to loose his invetory(of course he can go naked without any tria into your shop, but that will make him suspicious. Besides, he will be an easy target without armor and wepons). Even if he escapes he cant go near your shop for several days without beeing attacked on sight, so you wont be robed frequently. If he is more a brigand-like and he kills you or your guards you can make his life hell. You even have not to put a big bounty on his head, because you will find enough people who will kill the criminal for free. The possibilities for RP here a endless. What hero brought the bandit to justice? How high is the bounty on your head? Who is this shameless thief who stole the dwarfs diamond last week? et cetera et cetera ....



I hope you like my ideas. Please discuss them.

[Parallo]

Thats a very nice first post. One thing however is that allowing prople to go afk while they are making money is something that will not happen. It would fall under botting.

[John80sk]

easily solved by giving the owner a "player x wishes to purchase item y, do you wish to sell item y to player x?"

[Lanarel]

easily solved by giving the owner a "player x wishes to purchase item y, do you wish to sell item y to player x?"

Or by:
/say Hi there. I would like to buy that apple pie. If I buy two, will the price go down?

I like most of the posted ideas about showing what you sell and owning/stealing (although most of them are not new). Replacing player interaction by point and click is a bit too far though (and is not necessary unless you want to bot).

[drah]

I'm a little weary about the thief being attackable... AND not able to defend himself until it's too late.

Maybe a forced auto-accept to the challenge and give the thief a few seconds warning (from the server) so he knows he's being attacked. (to try to keep things balanced)

Otherwise you'll get a hoard of people looking for a name-tag above a chars head... hitting attack without anything occurring first.

Either that or reduce the amount of time the thief is vulnerable... so they can lay low.  Maybe 2 days in-game-time, 'til the heat dies down.

This also doesn't account for thieves that are sneaky enough not to get seen or recognized, but I won't nitpick on that.

I REALLY like the ideas proposed.. but.. still think there's a few things there that need refining.

[glodin]

I dont understand the worries about botting. It is not botting if it's integrated into the game and everyone can use it. There are a lot of other automated prozesses too, like you dont have to do every hit during an attack yourself, or you must not constantly do something for digging. It's is so because it does make sense, and it would be an imposition otherwise for the player. An automated shopsystem for players may go a step further, but on the other hand you cant really expect that somebody sits there for hours in his shop and waits for customers to come.

The idea is not about replacing player interaction, but to add a tool to the game which allows to amplify the illusion of a "real world". You still can interact, thats an option you will always have.

I'm a little weary about the thief being attackable... AND not able to defend himself until it's too late.

Maybe a forced auto-accept to the challenge and give the thief a few seconds warning (from the server) so he knows he's being attacked. (to try to keep things balanced)

Otherwise you'll get a hoard of people looking for a name-tag above a chars head... hitting attack without anything occurring first.

I agree. A warning with a attackdelay

Either that or reduce the amount of time the thief is vulnerable... so they can lay low.  Maybe 2 days in-game-time, 'til the heat dies down.

This also doesn't account for thieves that are sneaky enough not to get seen or recognized, but I won't nitpick on that.

I think a warning would be the best idea. On the other hand, when you have been caught in act, you should not take a walk on crowded places ..

I REALLY like the ideas proposed.. but.. still think there's a few things there that need refining.

Well let's discuss it . I had a aditional idea which I did not post because I'm not shure about it myself. What if the item a thief has successfully stolen does not disapear instantly, but leaves a "phantom object" behind. This phantom object vanishes after a while or when the owner or a member of his group select it. This way a succesfull theft, wont be detected ooc instantly, and a good thief can stay annonymous.

[Zan]

Personally I don't think they should get a warning. A thief needs to be aware of the risks when he steals and being attacked is one of those risks.

I do envision this all happening in combination with shady skills like "Hide in Shadows" and "disguise". These skills will improve the thief's chance of getting away with pickpocketing and not being found so easily if they're on the wanted list.

[emeraldfool]

Seems to me you could just avoid having your items stolen by simply using the regular method of trading.


Not to mention that if you go afk, you're pretty much ensuring that you'll be robbed... I mean, the thief can't be attacked if the shopkeeper has gone brain-dead.

[Garon]

• 9. Players can use the command /trysteal on an "owned item" (here can be also a iconinterface for this)
• 10. The chance of sucessfully stealing the "owned item" is based on the players pickpocket skill
• 11. The chance of sucessfully stealing the "owned item" is altered by the items "pricevalue"

I think there should be 3 things:  they get caught (in which case they are fined and perhaps put in some sort of jail or otherwise suffer an injury to more then just their pride), they steal the item but are noticed (not including the whole target-item thing), or they steal the item and aren't noticed.