RAGE POST! Stealing.

What do you guys not understand with : "Its not about money"...

Who cares if anyone catches a million bounty, if the skill loss costs the equivalent of 3 times that period in farming gold n ressources ?

Nobody would do it for money, or they would be like this :

 

The way pickpocketing was handled in d20 3.5 was best imo. Pickpocket skill vs. Spot skill. There was a success chance based on the pickpocket skill, and a chance to notice it based on the victim's spot skill. In Sota you are really just getting a free notice, so if the system is broken, it is that you have a mechanic that automatically tells you that you have been stolen from, which would make it broken in favor of the victim. To make it worse, based on the image posted of bounties, if someone were to get lucky and steal a belt, the bounty is only 40 gold, again breaking the game in favor of the victim.

 

Yeah we're not too sure the idea of a thieving skill is politically correct enough for our medieval sims anymore

 

LOL

 

From what I remember - if you killed the thief, he could go into a protected guard zone and if you tried to attack him you were the one who got guard wacked and he could loot all your stuff. But outside of the guard zones you could attack the thief at any time. If he had an active criminal flag, he would turn grey when you attacked him.. but if he was freshly res'd it would turn you grey when you attacked him.. his corpse would be blue, but you didn't get a murder count.

Seems like there should be a way for the game to keep track of all of this though.. even though it's meta or whatever. Some method for retribution against thieves, if they're going to use the PvE system to avoid conflict and only steal from PvP flagged players.

 

You are right, great memory I just knew it wasn't exactly like you said it.

It's much easier in unity because of all the logging to keep track of stuff... thats why I go bonkers when a dev or someone else says "but this or that will be abused" ... yes sure... but it will pop up like a christmas tree on fire.

 

games complex such as ours cannot do without moderation, devs usually see it as a chore but its in fact a liberation of artistic freedom.

 

au contraire,

tis not always such a simple thing although I do agree.. there is nothing quite as satisfying as killing a jerk and dancing on their corpse as you prepare to desecrate it.

The thing is... there are some psychopathic types who enjoy preying on those weaker than they are. Idk what drives them... but in those cases... hiring a hit can at least grant a level of satisfaction otherwise unobtainable.

Hopefully we'll see some kind of virtue system implemented so that the killing of Joe (or Josephine) Dbag will grant a + to virtue.

 

Basically what I was describing, just with lots more words. Here is one of many examples I could come up with where this achieves balance: In UO, the skill Resist Spells costs an inconceivable amount of reagents to grandmaster, yet is considered necessary by most to be viable in PvP. If you get stat loss to like 88% Resist Spells, you get to spend millions and millions in gold getting that skill back, or, waiting for (40xKillCount) hours waiting to res. IIRC, its about 100,000 casts of an 8th level spell to go from 90-100 skill in Resist Magic (so thats also like 3 days worth of casting non stop, btw). Itd never be worth it to try and game the bounty system for this, and many other examples. And thats just one skill. Healing has an associated cost to retrain. Magery is very expensive, and also somewhat slow. If youre on a server with the Inscription bonus, thats also crazy expensive to get back. Plus the time invested...

Trying to powergame through bounties with the UO system is not going to play out well. A solid PvM (PvE) build would be a far more efficient way to get into the "middle class" of your average UO shard. So I would hope that any PvP reputation system (i.e., "murder" system) would have similar dynamics: anything is possible, but its more likely that collecting bounties is the sugar on the top of your hearty RP PVP experience hunting some player villans and making some local town outskirts or dungeon spawns safer for your fellow blues.

I seriously believe that complete PvP for all players can be achieved in a way where almost everyone enjoys it, simply due to having a robust reputation system that ensures most people are going to side blue, and most people are going to play cooperatively and group up against reds. It can be built in a way that griefing is something you cant feasibly pull off over time, and most of the stronger anti social behaviors just result in relevant, story-centric, immersive punishments. The UO system is not strict enough, and not robust enough to meet the expectations for player experience by today's players. I use it as a baseline, iterating on its concepts would lead to a great system for SotA.

 

Haha beautiful, and diplomatic

People who go on rampages usually want the attention, that is what drives them

Sometimes virtue is not about killing the bad guy remember, mercy is a function of compassion.

 

It does not take 100,000 casts to go from 90-100 in a tier 5 skill. Its all dependent on your pool size. I have seen it done in ten minutes.

 

Asking for an alert that you have been pick pocketed is the same as asking for an alert when a flagged player is behind you getting ready to attack. I say if you flag you know the risks. So either deal with what can happen or just do not flag at all. Pretty simple really.

 

You mean the spot skill ?

In UO there was a chance you could get spotted even without a skill or by a NPC, but it kind of make sense that you'd notice someone going through your things in more than one way : noise, pressure, heat, smell...

I think the odds are fine, you attempt to steal one item, you risk dying and losing two

 

Well thats wrong, there should probably be a pool reset that goes along with it, point is, its adaptable.

 

1

In SOTA You -can- get spotted pick pocketing in game. It even gives you the message and the thief is stunned for a few seconds.

 

That was with a pool of 122 million, it took a long time to save up that pool, why should I not be able to save on regs on stupid summon spells by doing that?

 

there is something odd about this thread,

Saladid has been permanently flagged since he started the game. This is not a "I happened to be flagged" type of instance. Everyone that flags for any meaningful amount of time gets pickpocketed, in POTs, NPC towns, everywhere. This must have happened before.

 

Yes this is true and its happened before, but this is the only time he actually lost something so he is kind of upset It is more of a "how do i denounce this system rather than logically accept my own faults" Aka witch hunting

 

Mercenaries, Guards and Jail System, please.