Some items cannot be taken

I was exploring some areas a bit and every time I saw a cushion on a bed or a floor I wanted to take it. Same for a shovel in the earth or an axe in a treestump. But it didn't work.

I was hoping that we could take all items as it was the case in the old Ultimas...

 

I too don't care for the decorative items that should be usable items, but are not. Perhaps these are just placeholders until they have usable items that are fully placeable, but so far it doesn't look that way. This drastically reduces the interactivity of the world.

 

More problematic for me are the items you can take but you can't decorate with. I'm also disturbed by items that respawn several minutes after you take them. I don't know how Ultima games handled that, I assume that there was refresh of items in those single player RPG's, else what would happen when you needed items to complete a quest or advance through the story but you accidentally used the item in the wrong way.

I realize that one of the main goals of SOTA is "if you can see it, you can interact with it". But for balancing reasons, I don't know if that is a realistic goal for every single item in the game. What does that get us in the end if we can enter the game and immediately start looting furniture and wall decorations?

There is such a thing as taking this too far. In a recent conversation about the tax rates in the game, someone said it was interesting that the effective tax rate for housing was over 30%! As if that number actually means anything within the world of New Britannia, when you consider the fact that a person can pay off a months worth of taxes simply by spending 3 hours killing the same thing over and over again (that's a fact btw). So as we look for immersion in this game, I wonder if sometimes we fail to balance that with the limitations of the gaming world and what's best for the overall playability of the gaming world?

Because if we can truly take ALL items, beds, dressers, spice racks, etc... Then it would seem that perhaps we should also have stronger weight restrictions and be held more accountable for those actions? It would appear that we should also have item decay on decorations and no respawning of items that are taken. Of course NPC's would need many of those items to live and so the more you looted the more NPC's would die from starvation or lack of shelter or the ability to earn a living.

I guess what I'm saying is that, being able to take every item in this simulation is not really that immerssive if we think about the true impact of what that would actually mean.

 

Of course we should only be able to take items according to their weight and size. There should be a limit as to what we can carry. For example we should not be able to take beds, tables or wardrobes as they would be too heavy and bulky. But cushions or an axe in a treestump? Why not? This makes the world feel more realistic and interactive.

 

The first rule of any good RPG is take everything that isn't nailed down, and then use an axe on the rest to see if the nails will come loose

 

The system will have to somehow balance out between a quick item respawn vs leaving the room looked empty because the deco being taken away by someone (didn't some players already complain about that?).

 

Well, furniture is heavy, and players start with fairly low strength. It shouldn't be difficult to set this appropriately. Also, stealing should have consequences, always.

Beyond that, I get that there are some items they don't want you to take. You can't steal the ore cart in the mines; got it. But why are the picks and shovels not usable? Those actually exist as usable objects, but the decorative versions are not.

 

I always thought it was to break me of my bad habit since way back when we weren't crafting stuff. I'd keep help...err, borrowing all my weapons instead of buying them from the npcs. Guessed it was bad for the economy, so they started nailing things down. At least, until the npcs can do something back to you in a reasonably nasty fashion.

 

Those would be the consequences!

 

Honestly, I never got why this is such an "immersive" feature. I am all about immersion and role playing. But realistically, who goes around just grabbing everything they see and taking it with them? Is it just knowing that you can do it that brings the immersion?

 

It's weird, in older Ultima's they solved the problem of people taking things in game by having guards and people notice it. Now, so many years later it seems like a foreign concept.

 

Or when your party members turned around and started beating the crap out of you

 

Yes...heh almost forgot about that. But really...why is this so foreign now?

 

Cause it's an MMO as well, I don't remember what UO had.

 

A mmo can't have NPC's paying attention to players actions? I don't believe that.

 

I'm no developer. But it's not generally done. I have to presume it has to do with the amount of muscle needed server side to handle the tracking of that stuff.

As it is, I'm pretty sure all the deco items that you can pick up are dealt with client side. SRPGs don't have to worry about any server side tracking and computations.

 

UO, at least in the early days, allowed you to steal items from NPC buildings, but if an NPC was nearby and noticed your actions, they would summon the guards.

Edit: Tested this back in 1998 by going through Lord Blackthornes castle and stealing all of the eating utensils off his dining table.

 

I got carried away....



But seriously, if it isn't nailed down and looks like you can interact with you, you should be able to pick it up. If it's too heavy, whatever. Nobody's complaining about somehow putting all those large decorations that really weigh a ton in their inventory and carrying that from the bank to their houses.

But sure, we can be reasonable about this especially for the MMO (online modes). NPCs should be able to detect if you're stealing things. Heck, even some single player games, especially ones that have gotten GOTY aways 100x times over simply flag every object you take as stolen, regardless if anyone saw you. We're not beholden to any of that, just come up with something we can agree on.

As for items respawning, again, due to the MMO (online modes). The item has to respawn fast enough for other players in the scene to take as part of their quest...for example, the books that respawn every 15 seconds. Single player mode can just turn off that respawn logic.

 

I don't know about taking every single item ever, but UO handled this in a pretty eloquent way, and I'm pretty sure at least that could be done here?

 

FYI, we mobilized a small group of community members at @Attenwood's request, last release, and combed every zone listing every item that could not be picked up and/or interacted with.

As per one of the latest standups, the Devs are going through and reworking each scene so that everything that looks like it can be picked up, can be picked up, and if it is something that should be interactive, and isn't, it will be.

Patience, padawans.