Player character annoyances

[Link]

While we are at it lets make Total Chaos, every man for himself, if you cant afford food, then you die. You should have hunger! after running and stuff you have to eat and sleep. And if you dont, you die and someone can take all your stuff including your store.

[Keldorn]

Originally posted by kyalin
and theres no pk so u cant attack them, theives could do whatever they want, repeatidly try to steal, and u wouldnt be able to do anything to them

but what if someone who steals something becomes an outlaw and becomes pervious to harm (from other players). Then you can hunt him down. (if he can get away he loses this status)

PS. Pay carefull attention Relentless and Kyalin cause i will say this only once: THIEVES!  

[Pheonix]

I dont like it. Ppl with really nice stats could basically do whatever they want.
THey steal they run and log out for a while then play like nothing ever happened.

If thievery is to be part of the game then there should be great risks involved. I think those risks should be equal to if not greater than the risk that the shop owners are going to have to manage.

What the risks that they should take I dont know yet but being susceptible to the chance of pking for a while doesnt seem enough for my liking.

Perhaps if you have a guard and the player is caught
he kills him automatically. No escape no chances.
Perhaps even a blackmark goes against the player making costs for items go up by double. Making him likely to want to adopt a life of crime since things our now outrageously priced.

Just a thought

[Relentless]

I am still thinking in terms of Neocron where you can pk anyone anytime if they enter of the pkable zones of the game which make up 99% of the game, so if it is not possible in planeshift, just smack me.

High level theives(get used to it, \'i before e\' is discrimination, especially with that whole \'after c\' thing ) would be able to easily steal, yes, but they would be completley and positivley inferior in every single combat type to a combat class(unless you want to do a *DAoC thing with infiltrators which is actually quite fun, I will explain at the bottom of my post.)  Therefore, a bouncer tank person would easily be able to kill the theif and get the stuff back, i.e. bounty hunters.


*Said DAoC thing:
In Dark Ages of Camelot, there is a class called \"Infiltrator.\"  The infiltrator sucks at combat, it will get killed in 2 seconds in a fair fight, so what does the infiltrator do?  Fight unfairly.  The infiltrator has a hide ability where they are invisible(what level you are to how many points in stealth determines how efficient your hide is and how close someone has to get to see you.)  While hidden, they have a series of combat styles (Critical Strike) generic only to them, the most popular is different levels of a backstab.  The opening backstab and following critical strike moves can easily take out half a persons life.  On top of that, infiltrators can poison their blades with harming poisons, slowing poisons, poisons to prevent hp recovery, so on.  With all of those skills combined, an infiltrator can take out someone of a higher level with no problem, with one catch: they must be invisible and behind the person.  If they person sees them, the infiltrator is dead.  If ther infiltrator isn\'t behind them, the infiltrator is dead.  If one of the guys friends comes to help, the infiltrator is dead.   Fun thing about infiltrators is that: if you get pretty far into your fight, even if you die, your poisons will finish the job.  Basicly, when the infiltrator dosn\'t have the suprise, the infiltrator loses.  If the infiltrator gets the suprise, there are 2 possible outcomes.  1.The infiltrator wins the fight. 2.The infiltrator dies, the poisons kill the other person, and the infiltrator wins the fight.

[langwiz]

It\'s the size of the object stolen and the person from whom it was stolen.  Theft could work as long as there are limits.  Master thieves shouldn\'t be concerned with the new guy in the corner hoarding his 2 gp.  Those guys are small potatoes.  Thus a level limit on the low end would protect newbies from master thieves.

Ok, here\'s what you need if you include pickpocketing.  

#1.  A Fence.  Someone who buys stolen goods and sells them at a profit.  He pays the theives (or the Guild Master for being able to run his business).  Fences don\'t care who they sell to and usually don\'t care what the item is.  Although if the item is too hard to get rid of, the fence won\'t buy it.  Leaving the thief with...an item he doesn\'t want?  Sure that leaves room for griefers, but what if after a certain period of time, news leaked out that you had something that was stolen?  With something small like, say, an amethyst, it\'s no big deal.  Probably about to be used in a tradeskill.  But the sword of Uberyleetness is gonna stand out.  And the item should stay in the database for a while as being stolen.  The fence can\'t take an item that\'s worth more than a certain amount, because he can\'t sell it, because there aren\'t many buyers for rare items other than players.  And if the rare items have a flag for stolen on them, certain authorities should find out and start asking questions.  (aka possible GM intervention?)

That brings me to my second point.

#2.  A rumor monger.  That\'s right, this guy loves to get the dirt on everybody.  Including PCs.  So Mr. Thief comes in with that sword of Uberyleetness and wants to sell it to the fence.  The rumor monger sees the fence turn the thief down, and rats him out for a fat tip.  And possibly the gratitude/protection of the person the thief stole from.

Which brings me to number three.

#3.  A code of laws that penalizes certain actions.  This could include jail, possibly pillory time (getting stuck in a wooden[stone?] contraption while everyone sees who you are and knows what you did), or maybe more drastic measures.  Of course when you have people carrying out those laws, you come to:

#4.  A couple of corrupt people who are carrying out the law, but are also on the take.  They periodically let important people out of jail, for reasons they probably better keep secret.

Still, to avoid all that time and effort being gruesomely stripped from him by a potential competitor (nobody said the rumormonger couldn\'t also be a thief), he\'s prolly not going to grab the biggest, most expensive item he can find.  Probably the smallest, most expensive item he can find.  It\'s a lot easier to sell something small and turn a profit than to hoard something big and hope for a buyer.  

[Fantasyfiend]

I liked the way they did justice in Morrowind, I think it worked really well. If you perform a crime, you get a bounty on your head, and 1 of 3 things can happen.

1) You can turn yourself in and get a discount at th bounty.
2) Resist Arrest, probably get killed realy fast-like by the all mighty town guards.
3) Do hard time, and what makes this intereesting. If you can\'t pay your debt, you go to jail and your best skills deteriorate depending how much time you spent in prison, which depends on what crime you did. Sleeping in the streets or something is only about 5 gold. Murder goes at about 1000. Very Expensive. This would mean that thieves would probably have it really tough.

P.S. I like th stool pidgeon idea.

[Fiere]

Sounds interesting.
I missed Langwiz\'s post before I love all the ideas!

[Dumb Woob]

how abotu the cities have building zones, so shops can only go one area, and houses another, and the people vote to expand it when they are overcrowded.

[Snodgrass]

The advantage of NPC shops is that they can be multitasked. There is a zone programed in the game to allow the player to open the shop screen to conduct business. That isn\'t possible with a single player to player interface.

Then there is the problem of programming this thing. Where are you going to get the product to peddle. There has to be a rather complex economic system programed into the game engine complete with warehouses bulk pricing manufacturing and alike. That may be to much detail to bother with. The game just giving the items away to shop owners to sell and make profit isn\'t good for game balance.

Then there is the problem of maintaining the shop. It\'s a full time job!

There may be a decent plan B . Have a flee market. You show up and sell what you have. You can rent out a tent and when you are don you can store the stuff in a storage unit for a fee. You can move to a deferent city  in a caravan.

[Relentless]

Why couldn\'t you hire npcs for a salery?  You could make/sell the stuff at first like a small buissness and eventually buy more people to sell and a bunch to make the actuall product.  In theory, you could make a monopoly.

[Snodgrass]

Good question!

You can do what ever you like. But some pore sot has to program it in. The question isn\'t if its posable, but if it is feasible to program \"Sim economy\" into a fantasy role playing game. If the programing resources are as tight, as I hear, then expect it later. Like way later. So for the time being we want to try for something easy like a player to player transaction. Money for goods.

[kyalin]

Well, about the player made items against shop items, i kinda liked how they do it daoc, u could go to a shop and buy items, and theyd be ok, shop items would have a quality of 89.  Player crafted items had higher qualities, therefore last longer and dont deteroriate as fast, and were more powerful because they were made better, so people sought out to buy those, and decent crafters could make money that way.

[Fantasyfiend]

If I could just set up a pavillion for people to shop in, I would bee happy.

[David_HD]

I\'d personally love \"Sim Economy\"... for one thing, it\'d make many issues deal with themselves, and for another it\'d add a whole new level of realism. Shop owners could set up inventory lists and say \"Buy n units of item x from this person for this price every week,\" and then that person would have a guarunteed sale of it, if they could make it... or they could go around hunting down bargins each week. The latter type of business owner would make more money, probably, but may be less fun to play for most people. Most serious business owners would probably have some sort of mix of the two. Then, on top of that, you\'d have to pay NPC wages and upkeep on the building (and possibly a lease, depending) and all in all it\'d take a bit to keep a business running. That way, they wouldn\'t be scattered far and wide, because they\'d lose money, and there would be (moderately) interesting things for business owners to do to improve their business. Perhaps you should also be able to open something more like a pawn shop, where people come with whatever, and you set a price and buy it from them and then sell that item. You\'d more likely find more interesting items at that type of shop, but you\'d go to the others for more standard items.
In any case, the proprietor of a store would also be able to talk to customers whenever they are there, which the more serious roleplayers would find interesting, particularly if the store was moderately busy.

[David_HD]

Originally posted by Relentless
What is the point of a theif character that can\'t steal?

Well, in the original Final Fantasy... oh, wait, that character WAS pretty worthless (\"Look at me, I can run away a little faster!\")