Pickpocket Nerf

Managing to the exception never turns out well.

You left out the part of my post where I gave some ideas on how to allow players to mitigate the risk. My point is that there are other ways to address concerns by empowering the potential victim more rather than neutering the pickpocket.

I completely agree that the mez and night step changes were warranted. That's not what the OP is discussing though.

 

Your idea of how long it takes to wipe Someone out is so off. Have you at least tested this skill more than once to comment so hard on it? Even so with misinformation and exaggerated ideas. There is also a good reason to just quit with the mess lock stuff cause that was fixed way before R38. Stay on topic man

 

I think if everyone was honest with themselves, you'd admit that pickpocket was overpowered. However, in exchange, I think the choice mechanic is a good option. For every successful theft attempt, an RNG picks 5 (or some other number) of items in the inventory and lets the thief select which one he wants. This way you cannot spam theft over and over in a short amount of time, but each successful attempt means more and potentially nets the thief a better item.

 

I like the idea of allowing the thief to make choices. I also like the idea of allowing players that loot other players they've killed to make those same choices.

I've always felt like people that put 1000 pieces of junk in their inventory are not really playing fair. Sure, it's a smart tactic, but it only works because the game limits what thieves can get. So anything that makes that more fair for both sides is good in my book. However, not every pick pocketing success should be for someone's best items. Being a thief isn't supposed to be convenient, it's supposed to be challenging. If you're bad at it, you're not supposed to make a large profit.

So I would recommend allowing a thief to pick from one to five items based on skill level (but since they haven't actually obtained the items yet, they should not know exactly what they're picking!). For example, here's all you know about the five items you get to pick from:

Item 1: Two-handed weapon, heavy, dull
Item 2: One-handed weapon, light, special
Item 3: Jewelry, heavy, interesting
Item 4: Consumable, light, very interesting
Item 5: Parchment, light, interesting

Now which one do you pick? Is item 5 a map? a book? a note? Is item 3 a necklace? a ring? is it enchanted? You're in the process of picking someone's pocket, you'd better hurry and pick before they notice you there!

I find this to be far more engaging than what we have now. But it's easy to come up with ideas like this since I'm not the one that has to implemented it. My point though is that whatever system we put into place it has to be fun for both sides, and if one side is not having fun, that's a fail. Still, if one side is not having fun because they just want to have an easy time stealing from everything that moves, who cares about those people? Not me, because that just means there's going to be a lot of people on the other side of the fence that are not having any fun. We can't make mechanics that are inherently so unbalanced that it's impossible for one side to have fun. I don't think that's what is happening right now, I think there are just some people that are not interested in being challenged, and now that they are they're upset about it.

 

(sorry for the long post, didn't read too much of the previous posts, I am not up to pace with the META of the pvp community at the moment so theses are just my opinions on pick pocketing, pvp risk.)

We dont need to keep cutting off the limbs of our already small pvp community.

-Players that are flag for PvP should understand the risks involved in being Red..

-PvP should have some form of risk involved, because that is the nature of what makes pvp great. There are duels if you want to just fight other players casually. MOST players play because they have a small chance of possibly getting a surprisingly good piece of loot, body parts for trophies and also having the risk of them themselves loosing an item. It goes both ways. There isn't one person just terrorizing poor people that are red. If there is, than the pvp community needs to take notice of that and prepare themselves for that abuse from that player(s). What makes Null sec in EVE so great? Its that risk you might run into an *******, but also take an ******* out or just have a good ol well matched fight. Yes MOST people do not like assholes, but there are assholes in the world and we shouldn't make PvP in Sota a "safe space" like college campuses. IT doesn't mean you cant go to college (pvp) because there are assholes, you just know that they are out there and HOPE the rest of the PvP community aren't assholes. Which i believe that MOST the pvp community aren't asssholes, we all are here playing a game to enjoy ourselves SOMETIMES our choices of enjoyment conflict.

-Players should not be punished at ANY level of PvP from unintended mechanic abuse. I belive the previous state of the Mez in my short pvp experience was too much and was fixed. I agree on that change. If you mez someone and then you go in their bags that should break the stun lock. The Smelling salts or stances or mashing the space key should only help prevent the duration of the mez.

-A player that is able to successfully pickpocket someone should be able to have access to all the risk mechanics that are involved with PvP. You get one piece of loot from a successful pick pocket.

-If a player is poorly educated on the risk mechanics of pvp they should take it upon themselves to understand the consequences that could happen. If a player is mezzed and smelling salts or stances or mashing the space key is not an option they are at the risk of loosing an item from a successful pick pocket. Now if the player does not take it upon themselves to remove themselves from that situation they are at risk again of the pvp mechanics in place. Either kill the pickpocketer, call for help, run away, pad your inventory to prevent risk, DO NOT FLAG WHEN YOU CANT AFFORD TO LOOSE SOMETHING. If you do none of the above then you are again at the risk of the pvp mechanics. There should be no penalty skill pickpockter. If you happen to be having a sleepy day where for some reason you forgot remove 1000silver ore and you were flagged red. well ooops sorry, you should know the consequences. I gambled 60k of my gold at hopes of winning a raffle i didn't get anything. I knew the consequences. Next time you will most likely remember, or have another oops moment, but that is not the PvP mechanics fault. It is user error.

-Pickpocketers already have to find someone that is red, go up to them, hope they dont move around, hope to catch them un aware and then execute the pickpocket. I've been flagged for a week and I will tell you those ? are scarce. So now we are going to fracture the PvP community more by cutting another limb off by nerfing an already nerfed playing field? I believe if you are able to be skilled enough to go unseen and successfully pickpocket you should get an chance at the RNG and get a piece of loot. There should be no fault on the pickpocketer for the victims ignorance. We need BUFFS in pvp NOT nurfs.

-This phantom bogyman PvPer that is out there to grief you 24/7 kind of needs to stop. I would love to one day see players able to PvP at ANY level because the PvP COMMUNITY allows it, again there are assholes and people that will abuse the pvp mechanic. We shouldn't nerf the system more because of that, we should just educate the community to make a healthy playing field.

-So what if there is a phantom bogyman? We should communicate with others and get rid of the bogyman with the pvp mechanics that are in place. Guess what that does? It stimulates the pvp community. Cause i guarantee you there are more people that would want to pummel an ******* than there is abusing the pvp system.

-If you are a player that are flag because you are looking for a few good fights and you like the competition or you like the idea of PvP and you find yourself in a situation where PvP would seem unfair, communicate to that person. /z *raises white flag* now if that other player chooses to kill you that is their choice. You did your best to communicate your intentions, now if that player kills you once and takes your skull over some code of ethics "I must kill all reds." Than that is fine, that is their chosen play style. We shouldn't nerf their game style. Now if you showed you aren't interested in fighting this person and you dont remove yourself, you cant fault the player for using the pvp system. They could just be an *******. Best case scenario you could call on the community to help get rid of this *******(which could create patrols of players willing to help those unable to defend themselves). BUT more likely than not you wont run into too many assholes, Sota is already a small enough community that most people will kill you once or twice and be at that. If you communicate in /z im sure most will work with you on a compromise.

-We are the only ones that can kill our community we are defiantly the minority in Sota so we have to come to common ground.

-Thank you for reading, I hope I communicated my side well enough. Or just beat the dead hose some more. *shrug*

Safe Travels

Ox

 

Hello Ox, I watched your live stream the other night and enjoyed it a lot. During the stream I was impressed with your ability to process risk and communicate a strong desire to help build the pvp community. But I have to say that I'm surprised by many of the comments you've made in this post. I will now pick out a few that I find particularly troublesome.

Right, of course that's true. But the game is still in development and pvp mechanics are in their infancy.

If we had a fully functional game that was balanced I would be happy to lead this cheer and tell people that consented to pvp that they need to stop crying when they lose. But that's not where we are, we have mechanics that are highly exploitable, unfinished, and in some cases haven't even been designed yet.

To expect players to step into pvp and get taken advantage of because of poor game design and implementation (as well as players that could care less how fair something is) and then tell them NOT to complain about it on the forums and seek better design and implementation is fool hardy. That's exactly what we're supposed to be doing in development.

I watched you on your live stream "compete" with a thief and I didn't find anything the thief did to be worthy of the word "skillful". You and Alexander John would kill that guy and he'd come right back and try to harass you again. You'd kill him, and he'd come right back again. He announced on discord he was trying to kill you or steal from you, he was on the live stream chat (under another name) announcing he was trying to kill or steal from you. He eventually had "the thieves guild" show up and in front of a live and recorded audience began to show off the names of other thieves for anyone to take notice of.

This entire parade of unskillful thievery was a byproduct of two things:
1. Bugged and poorly designed pickpocket mechanics.
2. Players that had already determined that the risk of being known to the world as a thief, and the risk of being killed multiple times, and the risk of being caught stealing multiple times was so small that it didn't matter one bit what they did there was ZERO accountability for being a thief in Shroud of the Avatar. Stealing was easy, the risks were next to nothing, and players didn't have to concern themselves with any other aspects of the game if their only focus was on continuously bothering anyone flagged for pvp.

That's not good. And the correction for that was not a "nerf" it was a needed fix to a completely unsustainable pvp system. Now I'll be the first to say that it's not the greatest pickpockting system ever invented, but if we're going to error in creating that system, let's at least error on the side where we're not allowing people to abuse a system to spite the rest of the player base.

You're going to get a number of people in the forums to agree with you on this point. Because in their minds, PVP is simply an unfair fight that happens between people that hate each other. You have your group, I have mine and we endlessly fight each other, disrespect each other, and that in turn escalates into more and more people playing PVP. I don't think that's really what happens though. I believe what ends up occurring is that people that are inherently looking for a fight will go out and spend their time doing that almost exclusively. Which would be fine but for the fact that whenever people PVP there has to be a winner and loser. So if there are people out there always losing, they're going to quit playing PVP.

No one signs up to be the loser in PVP. That's a concept that a lot of PVP "hawks" don't understand. But despite some of your comments here, I know you have the capacity to understand what I'm about to say based on what I heard in your live stream.

Imagine for a moment that you're going to go play dodge ball with your friends. (just pretend with me) And one of the people on the other team just starts throwing baseballs at everyone. They hurt, one of your friends gets his teeth knocked out, another has to go to the hospital. In the end, the other people beat the hell out of this guy and they tell him never to come back. He's crazy!

That's what open PVP is when you have crappy mechanics. You have one part of the game population that is just looking to have a fair and fun game of PVP. Then you have other people that don't give one crap about fair and they're going to throw baseballs at everyone they see. Now before you tell me that the PVP community needs to rise up and kick the crap out of the baseball throwing players, you have to understand that the mechanics we have now don't allow for that. The mechanics we have right now are not designed for that. There's nothing you can do to a player that is 100% hunting all the time and doesn't give a crap about how many times they die or what their reputation is going to be like.

Ya know what these guys hate the most? When they get banned from someone's PVE POT and they can't even get into the place to cause trouble. That's not a good mechanic, but it's an effective one that had to be implemented because there was no other way with the game we have right now to stop idiots from tenaciously throwing baseballs at everything that moved. The other players couldn't do ANYTHING but get hit with baseballs.

So going forward, what we need are good solid mechanics that create reasonable expectations of risk and reward so that more people WANT to PVP and when they do, they actually enjoy it. Because until we do that, just throwing players into the deep end of PVP risk and telling them they're not special snowflakes is NOT going to build up this community in a healthy or sustainable way. And before you tell me you disagree, please understand that it's been possible to PVP in this game since R9. So we've had 30 months of open pvp with very little oversight and we haven't grown at all.

It's time to start building PVP for a more moderate crowd that wants a meaningful and integrated system of risk vs. reward and not an arena death match.

 

Since this turned into another PVP bash fest.
Simply put. ( as someone who HAS been that victem and on the * loosing side *)

Mez pick pocket was broken.
Good fix.

Destroying the skill after?
Why?

Do i think its fair someone afk looses some of their stuff? A - your flagged.
B - 1.3 seconds and ive initated an exit game in an emergency.
C - whats the preventative measures of spawn killen an afk guy over n over? Hows that dif?

example of being on the loosing side is weak. At ANY time you can unflag.
Should you choose to SETUP in a pvp zone (house), that risk is your choice.


So glad i only put a small time into pickpocket. I feel for ya.i
Dumb change IMO.
Avery basically nails it 8 posts back.

Least i no longer need to carry 20 rusty daggers to piss off the pickpockets. Good luck with that 1 per min even if i DO go afk. Lol

 

What if they're ghosting through no fault of their own and they don't time out of the game correctly?

Are you still ok with it?

I mean, we're talking about an AFK player here, so if they're AFK what's stopping the thieves from just stealing from them unlimited times? Nothing. The only change was that the thieves had to slow down and not take everything continuously.

It's pickpocketing, it's not a grocery store speed challenge.

 

So if they are afk. You get the same amount of stuff, just over a longer period.
So really the nerf only hurts stealing from an active person? Something already challenging. Especially with the mez fix

And if their ghosting, maybe the focuse should return on fixing the sync ( tho thats basically better now )

Srry. Get the mez fix.
Dont get the other.

 

No, the change impacts the rate at which you can steal. It doesn't impact AFK or non-AFK any differently.

If people are complaining about this then they don't want to be challenged. They want to find someone that is vulnerable and take everything they own as fast as possible. This simply slows that down so that someone that is mildly distracted with REAL life doesn't have to return 30 seconds later to a character standing in their underwear.

Remember, it's a game. Fun games have fair rules.

 

I just disagree.
I think your exaggerating the effectiveness of thieves with the mez fix now.
An active player who chose to flag, and having ANOTHER flagged person standing next to them making obvious motions, 1 item every 8 seconds ( especially with this ransom system ) is preeeetty much fair.
Ever tried to rob someone? Its hard as hell to not only get there un noticed, but for them to stand still long enough for you to steal.
Stealing already isnt an easy feat, and hardly any active player is getting robbed clear in 30 sec.
This change makes a theif basically ignorable, simply due to the fact you alrrady need to do 40-50 robs to get something decent.

The oddball time an afker will actually be gone, in an openly pvp zone, and HAPPEN to have a thief next to them ( and not just someone who kills them ) is already low.

Fair and balance can be a point of perspective.
And id even argue the classic Sota argument * Anything he can do, you can do too!* = fair.


Im all for a challenge, but i encourage you to try and * rob someone to what you would deem painfully * with the new changes.

Honestly i feel for anyone who tried to play thief.

But who knows. Maybe they have bigger plans coming in with lock picking or w.e.
Ahh well. Like i said, less junk to carry when i flag lol.

Edit - and who knows. Maybe itll be applicable if / when theres actually situations you can steal, and its not just kill on sight ( pvp towns with active guards or something who knows )

 

Can't we just call this what it is...nerfing an overpowered mechanic? Why do we always need to couch things as some sort of "social good" to make things "fair". AFK really isn't the issue (although I'm sure that's a convenient rationale). It was just too easy to pickpocket. Now there is more challenge.

 

Yes.

It wasn't hard actually, it requires discipline. And the thieves that are poor at will not have any. They'll blunder around the game all but walking right up to people and telling them "I'm here to steal from you."

It's a skill that is supposed to take patience. It's not a skill that you actively run around attempting on everyone in the game.

That's what the problem is here, you have people that everyone knows is a thief, they've all seen or heard that they're trying to steal. If you asked them they'd tell you flat out that that's all they do all day long.

If thieves were actually trying to be thieves they would never do half the dumb stuff they've been doing the last 10 releases. They'd work in teams and there would be people that had no reputation for stealing helping to get people into vulnerable positions. Or they'd get lucky and commit crimes of opportunity. But they wouldn't turn the game into the video game THIEF. That's not what this is about, it's not designed to make that your 100% primary function before breathing, eating, and sleeping. It's not grand theft auto. These are real people, of course it's supposed to be challenging! Why would real people sign up for a part of the game where they're going to be stolen from the moment they stop moving or paying 100% attention to everything?

It's not reasonable to expect large amounts of people to sign up for that type of experience.

 

When I say fair I mean balanced.

 

Since thieves are supposed to target the most valuable items on their target just tweak the pickpocketing system so that the most valuable items are first on the list. Journeyman thieves get a random pick from the first 30-50 most valuable items. Master thieves from the first 10-15. Any crap stuff in the inventory should have a very low probability of being in that list.



Bags and pouches should also be equipable with locks. A good thief would then have to sneak behind his target, pick the lock, pickpocket the item then make a clean getaway.

I can imagine a gang of thieves cleaning out a store or warehouse given one or two hours. Pickpocketing is a hit and run tactic and a completely different scenario with only a few minutes as a safe window and just a few choice targets on the the victim . I think we need a different kind of immersive thief mechanics in the game and the most common tactics previously used and now nerfed weren't it.

 

*chuckles*

You know, this works perefectly well both sides. Do not PvP/pickpocket... if you do not want to accept the risks involved

We need bad guys. However we need only certain type of bad guy. Bad guy who is bad in game, not bad out of game, we need bad guys who steal and kill, not bad guys who exploit and do not bug report.

 

Some bugs/exploits are obvious......others are not......I would go so far to say that some only become labelled as exploits when a handful of lobbyists decide to make it so.

To stay on topic, lets take stealing for example. Is using 5 cards within your combat deck an exploit? no it was as intended........some may argue it wasn't intended but why would you create a completely different card mechanic for stealing?. Is using mesmerize an exploit? It was overpowered and needed tweaking however if you look under the subterfuge tree you will see Sap.....that skill where you sneak up behind someone and mesmerize them........as you can't steal whilst moving, if sap wasn't put into the tree to aid a thief I don't know what was. Should someone be punished for using an overpowered ability? certainly not.

Stealing is now a dead skill, it has little to no use in PvP and has no use at all in PvE. The game is now a little bit worse for it.

 

I want to UNLIKE this Are you sure?

 

In UO it was my bread and butter in combat... But ok you take a different approach in design.. Thats ok.

But now tell me how stealing makes sense now? The other guy has to be AFK effectively or not moving at all. I steal a RANDOM stack and have a very high cooldown... This is not going to happen.
I would have suggested that at least I can snoop what the player has and can try to get all this effort into a high value steal... but for random chance this is really not worth it currently.

In very early releases I suggested that thieves get a reward similar to the skull, hand or jawbone item. Like a heirloom or watch or anything else, to increase the value of the ransom. Then you could balance it again I guess.

 

I like this, that would be fun. +1