Thieving..The World according to TeaLeaF®

[dragnoor]

 Thieving..The World according to TeaLeaF®


I created a Grandmaster thief in Ultima Online. Back in 1995. I deleted the same character in 2002. For 7 years I robbed players and looted their homes. I did things ingame that made the heart pound unlike anything I've ever experienced. By far a Thief is fun, perilous, maligned, & alone in the world. Im not talking about gangs of  Bandits, but a character custom made to relieve players or houses of valueable items.
This post is about what in my opinion, should be done. Through bitter experience I learned the hard way.

1) Training a thief.

My first observation is how relatively easy it is to train a thief. repeatedly stealing off npcs,animals with packs or collegues etc. This should not be implemented. This way thieving will take ages to max out.
Power levellers will have to find another class. Thieving must be made the hardest of character classes to train.
How then I hear you ask.? Simple. Steal off players. The arena for example. Or the plaza in Hydlaa. Anywhere.
                                                                                                                                             Thieves should be prone to being attacked no matter where they are. By whomever chooses to do so. No challenge needed. A thief is "Known", by virtue of his name. This is his undoing. So stealing from players should not be taken lightly. Though as I've already said that training a thief can only be done via players being the victims. You can imagine how hard it would be to develop.
                                                                                                                                              Stealing items from backpacks should have basic restrictions. Weight  of said item & its size. Stealing a claymore would be almost impossible in my opinion. But glyphs would not be so hard. Unless a glyphsack is used And in this case again almost impossible. Im not saying stealing the whole glyphsack. Just 1 or 2 in it. knowing how hard it is to aquire glyphs, players would take great care. Trap said sack with poisons or explosives hehe. A nice deterrant & Alchemists would have a booming economy supplying these devices/potions.
                                                                                                                                               Thieves should not be able to train their dark arts on one another. Again making it very hard to develop.
And finally in the training catagory. There should be a hard LIMIT to how many thieves that can be allowed ingame. Cap the class to say : 100 players. Most of those will give up the ghost or be caught and imprisoned, effectively banned from the server. Others will be too well known and either killed out of hand or chased out of citys when they are recognised. The net result being not alot of good thieves about. This is both realistic & a reflection of just how hard it would be to develop this class.
One of the biggest Thief class essentials ingame is snooping whilst hidden. An art that would be very difficult to max. But once mastered would allow thieves to look at a players inventory without being revealed to his "Mark". Again a novice thief could not possibly get away with this without being "spotted" by the victim or a passer by. The thief would approach the Mark walking whilst hidden(another hard skill to master), then snoops risking his neck if revealed, has a good rummage and legs it with an item of worth.

2) Playing a thief.

So you the player have spent a year or 2 training, and you are now a competent thief what can you do? Well having purchased a "Disguise" to cloak your well known name, off you go to steal from players. Fine weapons, glyphs etc. And assuming you dont get caught alot, can make a nice living. The aformentioned disguise has a finite ticking clock before it wears off so dont hang about. And these kits are few and far between..plus you cant stack them and they weigh a ton..Consisting of clothing and makeup. Being also very expensive to purchase. A lonely existance. You steal a players choice glyphs. You escape unscathed & can either sell those glyphs. Or /Tell the victim & demand a ransom. Again rich gameplay. Players houses are not implemented yet, so looting a players house isnt possible. When it is, firstly the dev's MUST ensure strong locks of various complexity with inbuilt security measures are ingame. This would be the same for a guild house.  Locks that self seal or release a lethal poison/explosive.
                                                                                                                                                One ban should be the bank once its enabled. A defined area around the bank should be made impossible to any thief to rob/snoop players in that area. This ensures players peace of mind when they are most vulnerable. And avoid clusters of thieves in any given area.
Thieves should not be allowed any hardcore combat capabilities. Sure they can cast but it must be capped to lvl 30/40 etc. But if caught a thief would soon see the death realm. Most thieving is carried out without the victim even knowing at the time. This is the only thing that helps a thief. If he is quick. but if revealed an auto message in main tab will tell everyone within a certain area what is occurring. The victim would soon have other players helping him to catch and kill the thief. Again more rich gameplay.
                                                                                                                                                  As general advice a thief should choose his victim carefully. Based on intelligence he is aware of. A rumour that the player has a book/glyph/weapon of value. Or just the opportunist thief. Trying his luck.
                                                                                                                                                   No particular race apart from high dexterity Elven folk are attuned to thieving. Any race should be allowed. Players would have to look around before opening their house, even then they are vulnerable as thieves are almost always completely invisible. Stealth is their art. Movement is slow in "Stealth mode" & according to level....very risky in populated areas.
                                                                                                                                                   Ive covered this class in its most basic form. The devil is in the detail & would love to help in this regard concerning the classes implementation. Obviously my existing character would not be a thief. And this is the most important point. The class should not have the option of alts or other main characters. Another account should not be allowed. If this is abused it should result in the thiefs immediate deletion. A good deterrant.
                                                                                                                                                   A plague of thieves would destroy the game.

Dragnoor

[Kwip]

So a thief should be subject to the tennents of physics and societal pressure?  Hmm... some of your suggestions to implement this seem indeed fair, though I do dislike the limiting and the idea of persecuting the thief.  A thief will automatically be persecuted against if he is known.  A good thief will find a way to not be known.  Indeed it should be fairly hard and the cosequences of getting caught even harder but if they are never caught why then cause them harm?

[dragnoor]

If you catch a thief u kill him...get your stuff back...the devils in the details... 

[Satha]

I really like your ideas... 

...The thing that bugs me though is the cap on the amount of players that can be thieves. Other than that, I think it's all pretty cool. At the current state of the game, it probably wouldn't be too bad. But by the time all of this could be implemented, I would think that number might be too limiting. Going around deleting old accounts that just so happen to have a thief in it because the cap has been reached, or killing off bad thieves, or whatever... doesn't seem fair. From my knowledge of the ingame law, you would only get banished or something if you stole... you only get perma death if you perma kill, or something really bad like that. I could be wrong, lol.

Also, how would you tell if someone was exactly a thief? The way things are now, it doesn't really give out exact classes. You could be a bit of this and a bit of that... is it based just on the skill they are advancing? An assassin might use some of the same skills, so it's hard to place a cap on thieves without hindering other types of people. Unless it was only on the pickpocket type skills, I guess... but even then, people who didn't think of themselves as a complete thief might still have it for reasons of their own... but I suppose you trying to make the skill hard to learn would stop most of that. Or at least, it would stop a random person becoming 'uber' at it, anyway.

So, yeah, let me re put down my thoughts here, I'm getting a bit muddled...
It seems like it would be hard to cap the amount of thieves in the first place, since it's hard to tell who is a thief. If a person try's to train in a skill, say, pickpocketing, they would get the message: Ooops! Sorry, there are already too many thieves in the game, heheh! Too bad!
Or if a person wanted to make their character have a specific background according to mechanics, and it just so happens that they get one point in pickpocketing... they suddenly have to rearrange everything because they get a similar message.

You get my point?


So basically, you want to make a thief hard to train and hard to keep? =p

[dragnoor]

The current mechanics would have to be altered. Atm any char can train in thieving skills as you pointed out. This would have to be addressed. Fundamentally a thief steals..This is immoral and a crime. current mechanics do nothing to address this crime being committed.
As I said the devil is in the details...I will attempt to clarify.
The current skills though not implented must only be availiable to a thief. No other class should be able to do the following skills.
1) invisible mode both static and moving.  - exception being assasins. known as "Stealth"mode. Or Hidden.
2) snoop
3)pickpocketing
4)stealing (the act of actually taking an item(s).)
5) snoop whilst hidden.
The last skill is the mother of all skills & extremely difficult to master. Harder than mining or metallurgy/smithing/magery.
The above skills apart from an assasin as shown, must only be available to a thief character.
                                                                                                   After all its a crime to steal and the game MUST reflect this hence not perma death but the thief being "flagged" as a thief to all and sundry who are in the vicinity. Unless of course he is successful in which case not even the victim is aware till long after the thief has gone. The point being total disaster if caught redhanded doing any of the above skills. Though being caught hiding would be difficult.
                                                                                                   The Cap is due to what i'll predict will be a plague of thieves at initial rollout of the class. This would almost certainly cause alot of players who are honest to think long and hard about the game as a whole. I dont want anyone leaving PS no matter what they do. Thieving is fraught with peril. Think long and hard before you embark on this class's progression. The Death realm will be your home for alot of the time...Hehe.
Thieves in my opinion are the most devious of classes and we all know PS players normally play chars within their own personal idiosyncratic self.

[dragnoor]

i forgot to mention lockpicking as a unique skill to thieves.
Another skill but not to thieves would be crime detection. Players would have the option of training this skill in order to avoid being stolen from.

[freeharte]

The current skills though not implented must only be availiable to a thief. No other class should be able to do the following skills.

Class? 

Steal once, and you're a thief.  Do it all the time, and you're a career criminal.

When did classes get introduced?

[Satha]

Yeah, to really have this work the way you say... drastic changes would have to be made. Not just the addition of new skills, but also 'classes.' They are not really a part of the game mechanics at current, and I do not think they are intended to be in the future. Classes are more of a thing someone will tag themselves as, rather than the game doing it for them. True, you can choose a few pre-set out stats at character creation that are named certain classes, but they are not really... classes... you know? 

I do like the idea of these skills you mention, they would be good to have around... however, limiting them to a class... when there are no classes... seems hard. If there could be another way to do it besides using classes, that would be good. I can't really think of any, though. =o

By the way, lockpicking can be quite useful for an assassin, in my opinion. xD

[freeharte]

By the way, lockpicking can be quite useful for an assassin, in my opinion. xD

My excuse is that I keep losing my keys.

[Candy]

Heck, it can be a useful skill for someone that keeps locking their keys inside...










Not that I do that..._often 

[Feline Prince]

Everyone could be given a single opportunity to steal. If they are caught, whoever they are stealing from can decide the consequences:

• Let them get away with a warning
• Have them punished
• Have them 'branded' a thief. That character can then never steal again... the rp reason can be whatever

Choosing your victim well then becomes imperative.

Upon their first successful theft their character asks them self is this something they want to do as a career. If they reply yes your scheme then applies.

[Parallo]

You guys are limiting too much by mechanics. What if my thief character isn't known as a thief? Will he still be able to be attacked automatically by anyone and everything? What if I am branded a thief? What could possibly stop me stelaing again?

[freeharte]

Well, the "mechanics" have us all wearing great big nametags up over our heads.   So if the word gets around that "Twinkletongue Featherfinger" is a pickpocket, then anybody can spot her from far away.  Not exactly an environment for crime to flourish (and it's the kind of "unrealism" that's a roleplay breaker.  In order for there to be career criminals, there has to be some way to be anonymous - in other words, you wouldn't be identifiable except by people who had already "met" you.)

[Parallo]

The mechanics also have us all looking and dressing identical. If you seriously think it would be good and conductive to decent rp to have a huge range of possible actions automatically and permanently disabled for a character whenever he first commits a certain action and gets caught, you quite fankly need your head examined.

[freeharte]

The mechanics also have us all looking and dressing identical. If you seriously think it would be good and conductive to decent rp to have a huge range of possible actions automatically and permanently disabled for a character whenever he first commits a certain action and gets caught, you quite fankly need your head examined.

If your reply is to me, it's completely non sequitur.  I never suggested anything of the kind.