My thoughts in this post vary as you read each paragraph... I didn\'t have a set direction with this, so sorry, but you\'ll have to read the whole thing to understand why I wrote it.
Perhaps another direction on this idea would be allowing Player Inventories to be pickable, whilst Chests act as the sacred safe-haven for people\'s valuable items?
Chests would be non-degradable, but come in a variety of sizes. New players wouldn\'t need to spend much to buy a little lockable purse for their money (a limited amount), which would stay in their inventory, but be unpickable. Old players might need an entire room of storage space, and would buy it as an addition to his house, if he has one.
Alternatively, players could use their pack-animals as chest-like storage. But if the animal dies, perhaps everything is dropped, free to be looted... (by anyone? Or just the owner?)
The bigger the chest, the heavier it would be to carry. And of course, you can\'t just leave it lying around on the floor. So perhaps an early approach to solving this problem could be to use the \"magic\" excuse.
Chests that are summoned, used, and then disappear again untill they are needed by the player.
In the future, perhaps more grades of player housing might be considered, such as little slum houses made of sticks and hay, for the poorer players to keep their chests. I don\'t really like this idea, to be honest...
Reading back on this post, I can\'t help but think there should be
no safe-haven storage. I do find it extremely unfair and frustrating, as do most other people, when something very valuable and costly is pilfered straight from my pocket in various games that allow this ability. The worst part of it is not knowing who was the culprit, especially in a crowd.
Thus if there were to be no safe-haven storage at all, pickpocketing should require high skill and alot of luck. The amount taken, and
what taken, should be random- and have a % chance decreasing with increases in the potentially stolen item\'s value (So with a player\'s inventory full of sticks, and one Uber-Axe-of-Doom, you\'re far more likely to get a stick. Every time. Going for the axe would be too noticable to succeed unless you\'re married to Lady Luck and found 9 four-leaf clovers this morning).
But pickpocketing is a gamble, with
some chance of success, so it will be quite popular. So aswell as failing the pick, you might do a rather terrible job of withdrawing your hand unnoticed, and the player would realise you\'re up to no good (name turns Red, or something). Your PK would be turned on temporarily, and you\'ll have to flee or potentially be sent to the Death Realm by the very angry victim.
As an addition to this, stolen items could have a flag in the DB to say who was the original owner of the item. If the thief is killed, someone could try to loot his body. If he has any items in his inventory which were stolen from you specifically, you can take them back. Nobody else can do that for you, however, to prevent obvious abuse. And if the thief managed to get away long enough to deposit your item in his chest/house... tough luck, unless you take the fight to his door.
With that said, I think too many games these days pander to players\' needs for keeping their loot safe, to the point of hardcoding it into their program that loot
cannot at all be stolen. This is wrong... it removes a massive aspect of roleplaying and renders the \"thief\" class in most games completely useless as anything other than an assasin. Like I said, I understand how frustrating being looted is, and hope it will never ever happen to me ingame. But fair do\'s if it does- that\'s life, and that\'s good roleplay. Maybe I\'ll hire the Mercenary Guild to track down the thief and take back what I own...
Just some extra thoughts for people to mull over.
I vote \"randomly pickable\" by the way, as it best sums up the mess I\'ve written in this post.
