Stealing

I think there should be a Stealing option, Cause If your playing a Evil aligned character; then why not have a Stealing option?

I mean, Stealing is bad and Murder is worse so why can't you steal.

 

Should there also be a child molestation option? That's bad. What if I want to role play one of those? Should Portalarium allow me to post kiddie porn pics around my character's house because it's "just role playing"? Or if I want to be the next Edward Snowden, and I have access to NSA files? I should be able to release them online via Ultima, right? Or how about if I want to role play as someone who has stolen Lord British AND the Oracle's powers? Should I be allowed to hack the game code and make myself invincible and fifty feet tall? What if I want to role play GOD Himself? What if I want to role play as the Queen of England, and issue royal edicts from within Brittania?

The fact that you, or someone else, may want to role play it establishes a MARKET. Portalarium is not obligated to SELL to that market, especially when doing so might cause other problems. Such as causing sane humans to vomit.

The theoretical desire to play a thief comes up against the very real desire to not play a game where you can get robbed like that, and we are discussing whether or not it has real value, and if so, under what circumstances. 'I wanna' isn't really an argument unto itself.

 

I dont know about all that kinda hurt my head reading it. It was enjoyable in previous ultima titles and it should be apart of this one.

 

"Acts Inappropriate for Gaming"
Stealing in itself is not the evil, it is what you do with it that makes all the difference, "Which does set it apart from other hideous offences" which have no Yin/Yang decision properties.

"Judgments in the Virtues"
One of the primary draws of the inventive way our Richard Garriott brought our Ultima first to light and will do so even further here, is for each of our actions in skills to be weighed in the light of how we use it which then effects our Karma. In UO, there was a great attempt to include such judgment calls that would then directly effect our Karma, yet the UO Game's design limited the ways in which that could be done, now with the gaming mechanics of SotA, that will all change and free our Lord Richard's abilities to test us all even deeper to our virtues.

"Our Gaming Experience Safeguards"
This is an "inventive thread" and meant for a much deeper look into our acts of stealing, so that we can better integrate it's needed skill into our game.
"Our protections from ever being effected by the act of stealing, will always have safeguarding opt in/out options to protect any user from harming their wanted gaming experience"...
~Time Lord~

 

Imagine needing really high skill to steal from npc for quests rare items and epic rewards.. if you fail the guards come and beat you!


^^^^ for my pve friends ^^^^

 

My Lord, it may be time to form the unofficial Thieves Guild? What shall we call it, Brotherhood of the Shadows (too misogynistic...), League of Nocturne... Perhaps the Guild of Calamitous Intent (borrowing that from Venture Brothers)?

Also, I think this thieving skill should take a long while to master. It would be fun to have to run from a prospective mark because he felt you rifling through his coin purse (not sexual at all... ).

 

"Boats Brothels and Beer!" There has been talk of pirate guilds lately. Maybe a guild along those lines? Would be interesting to have a galleon or something like that as a guild hall, and move it around from port to port hehe

 

"Guilds and Fellowships vs What is Needed" ...(for all those that wondered why I support multi-guilds, or a more free way of gatherings)...
Many subject we approach here regarding our SotA, we ether use knowledge of what we came to know as UO, the old Ultima prime series, or from late D&D historical thinking which was played as almost a board game. Yet our Richard Garriott comes from a time of very early D&D thinking, when the game was played on not much more than graph paper and pure imagination. It was almost as if reading a book, where the reader was forced to wonder what the next line to be read would read. A dungeon map was created beforehand by the dungeon master, yet only revealed by each step into it that the band of adventurers would take.

I believe this is important to the subject of stealing (as well as many others) because of the proses by with caused the player's themselves to ask questions of the dungeon master as to what they see if each player would look "this way or that way" within each step they took. This becomes important to remember in such a world as our Lord Richard is now creating, "where it is by the observer and the observant" that many opportunities could become discovered only by those who were observant, or looking for those specific things to be done. In thus, are the very old ways, where we will not know until we do look for them.

So, we think we know what is needed in skills to be a thief, yet it is the theft that will take a cunning eye to discover how to pull it off. Yet deeper into Ultima, certainly the common pickpocket would be a skill that could prove useful, yet also the mountain climber, the wall climber in all of our stealthy forms will also be of usage. Yet still never forgetting, the tinker that found he could create the strange inventions that "seemingly had no purpose" for being in the game, yet somewhere in our world, such a thing could be used along with others, to provide the observant a reason to seek them out to obtain.

The art of gathering a Fellowship takes on a very different form when we think in our "old gaming Guild mindset", when we will need our friendly connections in far different ways when we think of what and who is needed for each encounter's gathering.

Guilds are very nice and encouraged, yet it is the special Fellowships in the form of needed specialized skill groups, that will become the key that will be opening may doorways that seemed not there in any game ever before.
Never stop thinking of "Ever Deeper Ultima"
~Time Lord~

 

Just to weigh in on this topic, I think stealing should be considered as a skill in SotA. This is, by my early gatherings of this game, a renaissance of the early thinking of MMO's and an attempt to bring back the true sandbox world to adventure in. Personally, I am a fan of a world where danger is present and when you see "You have left the protection of the town guards" appears there is a cause for concern. To me this is both fun for the player saddled up to head towards adventure, riding out of town with his guard up and ready to defend themselves from bandits and ruffians that may be present, and for the thief waiting in the shadows for his prospective prey to fall into his trap.
Consideration should be given to the players that have no interest in participating in this type of gameplay, but also to the thief that wants to steal things as a profession. When you consider the changes in UO that came with AoS to thieves it made it harder for them to function but it did not remove their ability to practice their craft. They just had to be more creative. I think if the skill is to be implemented in the game then choosing the profession should be a high risk/high reward path (just as in real life).

 

Highly subjective. Personally, I see player looting and stealing as adding nothing, at all, that can increase my enjoyment, while adding a lot to frustrate me.

The reason I didn't play UO at first is because it had non-consensual PvP, player looting, and stealing from other players. And the reason I didn't try UO after Trammel is because, due to thinking that the devs would never go back on such core aspects of the game, I completely stopped following news about the game, so I didn't see when Trammel was added and made PvP (and looting, and stealing) mostly opt-in.

And no, I never played UO. But I did play other smaller games with looting and stealing. That is, up to the moment I was looted or stolen from the first time, at which point I would usually leave the game, uninstall, and never return.

 

Pve stealing in uo was pretty fun and had nothing to do with player vs player. Though ill admit I enjoyed the pvp side much more but each to his own. Actually I remember pve stealing in the other Ultima games and I enjoyed it there as well.

 

Personally, if I was making a guild based around thieving, it would of course be PvP. In time, it would get it's fair share of big bruisers who ENJOY having people declare war on the guild, it's what they live for. And of course, as a guild of thieves, you would have to keep track of where the good stuff was so you knew where to send your members, so methods of monitoring various players wealth and income would become important.

Knowing all this, there is only one thing I could bring myself to name such a guild, if I were creating it.

"The IRS"

 

I was thinking more along the lines of "The NSA," just kidding.

To be honest, I don't really know if I would want to have an actual thieves guild, I would probably be more comfortable with a loose network of clandestine, standalone players. Perhaps for the community of the thief, we could an expo or workshop where we learn from each other.

 

Quite true, we probably should consider the workings of such a unique and atypical social group.

Maybe those who walk the thief's path don't so much socialize with each other by choice, as by necessity. It's not a guild, it's a link forged by their illicit behavior. They don't have to work together, get along, or even be able to stand each other in direct company, but since they are all members of that world, and depend on each other to some degree to keep The Law out of their business, some form of communication would be needed.

If it was just a private drop-box system run by the NPC fences, it wouldn't actually take that much extra programming... just a mailbox/quest hub/ auction house system that didn't let everyone use it or post on it. Basically a copy of the existing systems.

 

Mmhmm, because there is no honor amongst thieves, we are a nefarious type. Perhaps we can set up a series of "dead drops" in certain hexes, in order to pass information on (this would be very Cold War cloak and dagger). Though I don't know how the hex system is going to work right now when it comes to instancing. Talking about all this makes me wonder if we should start dealing in information as well. Who will be the Master of Particulars? So many things we can do through subterfuge.

 

I'm sincerely asking this out of curiosity and not trying to be argumentative, but why wouldn't you just play a single player game? Leaving a game because you were stolen from seems like maybe mmorpg sandbox worlds just might not be your thing.

Consider the players that enjoy the thrill of sneaking around and trying to peruse someone's bag all the while having a high likelihood of getting caught. Or what about the adventurer that is prepared with magic trapped pouches just HOPING that some fool is silly enough to peak in their belongings so they can separate their head from their neck.

Personally if I wanted a game that there was no risk of anything bad happening to me I would probably just stick with spider solitaire. But this is a game where hundreds/thousands of people interact with each other and not all of those people are going to have the most lawful of alignments.

That being said I think their should be areas where you don't have to worry about those things happening (such as your house or guild hall possibly). But in general I think it makes sense that players can steal from and loot the corpses of each other players.

To circle back around I guess I'm wondering what it is you are looking to get out of this game; and how does the inclusion/exclusion of stealing impact that?

 

MalakBrightpalm hahahaaa!!!


DizzySol Said;

Mmhmm, because there is no honor amongst thieves, we are a nefarious type. Perhaps we can set up a series of "dead drops" in certain hexes, in order to pass information on (this would be very Cold War cloak and dagger). Though I don't know how the hex system is going to work right now when it comes to instancing. Talking about all this makes me wonder if we should start dealing in information as well. Who will be the Master of Particulars? So many things we can do through subterfuge.
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~TL~ ROFL! Bring back the Cold War Indeed!

I wouldn't be surprised if there won't be a few drop boxes around here with quest stuff inside.
It just so happens we are getting some satellites in SotA's public release that will be able to show us the best times when to steal something. But there will still be much work through observations in order to know those times. So in that way, it's like staking out a bank when you don't know where it is, but you know the time to rob it.
So keep me in mind after our game goes into public release, and we'll see what we can find in some real stealing skullduggery
Just keep that in your drop box for now~Time Lord~
X

 

Because I like playing with other players. I like about everything to do with playing in a group as long as it's consensual, not forced. Single player games don't offer that.

Only if you subscribe to the theory that player conflict is an integral and necessary element of sandbox MMOs.

I don't.

Either I get the choice to completely opt out of those, or else I'm not playing the same game as them. I don't care if other players like some content, I only play what I enjoy. My leisure time is too valuable to waste with content I can't enjoy.

That being said, as long as the content I won't play does not negatively impact my gameplay, I don't mind its existence at all.

I want a game with a great story that I can play either alone or with others, with the option to choose when and how I play with others; in short, what was promised during the Kickstart. There are other things I want of the game, of course, but I got on board basically for a multiplayer game akin to the old Ultima games where I can choose to which extent I will interact with others.

As for what the inclusion or exclusion of stealing will do for me: as long as I can completely opt out of being stolen from by other players, nothing at all. I'm unlikely to even use this skill against NPCs because I tend to only roleplay good characters. On the other hand, if there was no way to opt out it would mean I would flat out refuse to even try the online version of the game.

 

Stealing is PvP..... we will be able to opt out of PvP, therefore it's one in the same
~Time Lord~

 

I've got nothing but time to stake out the world in which we will reside. We have many friends to make and a great many of their enemies to sell their secrets to.