What Counts as Stealing?

What counts as stealing at this point? Some of it seems clear.

Taking items from shops in town = stealing.

Taking things from a storage chest in an adventure scene = not stealing.

But some things aren't as clear. Are you 'allowed' to loot anything found in adventure scenes without hurting 'virtue of truth' score? I recall that searching decoration bodies in a scene is a no no. Which makes me wonder: What about taking items from an abandoned cabin in the woods, ect...?

 

I'd really like clarification on this as well.
My truth stat is pretty screwed, I'm a decorator and I need props so...yeah. Screwed.

I don't really understand why there is a connection between 'truth' and thievery, though
I'm not being dishonest about it. I'm blatantly yoinking it in front of their eyes!

I haven't found / don't understand how to raise the the truth stat. My courage stat is HUGE and I have no idea why that is, either or what effects it. I don't really think of myself as particularly courageous. I just kill things that are blocking access to mining nodes or cotton bushes....

 

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...othing-but-the-truth-virtue-discussion.61430/
~TL~

 

steal
stēl/
verb
gerund or present participle: stealing

1. take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it.
   "thieves stole her bicycle"
   synonyms: purloin, thieve, take, take for oneself, help oneself to, loot, pilfer, run off with, abscond with, carry off, shoplift;

Don't take stuff that doesn't belong to you.

 

They mentioned it on the second Telethon this summer. If it looks like it belongs to someone else, then taking it is stealing. If you see a wagon out in the fields and it looks like someone might be coming back, then taking stuff is stealing.

If it's destroyed and the people are long gone... fair game. If you had to kill ruffians for it... fair game.

 

Please be warned: Tenebris Harbour is an Adventure area with hostile Thugs and Satyrs everywhere. Plenty of dead bodies of human guards and villagers to loot as well. However, if you pick anything off the open market (e.g. Tomatoes, cheese etc) from the obviously dead villagers, your Truth will take a hit. Tested and verified.

Thanks Timelord for the link back to the Truth forum post!

 

Thanks for clarifying that. Sounds like being killed isn't quite abandoning the items. Maybe it's because someone could end up alive and have a claim, where something that looks like it's been that way for a while would probably not have a claimant or they would have done it sooner.

 

Except for the stuff we take from the bandits, undead and other assorted things (not all of which are even aggressive towards us) we kill, and loot? Because those things of course' 'belong' to us now.

At least one NPC 'town' that I have visited is overrun with bandits, there are dead guard and citizen corpses in the streets, and none of the buildings are being used by the bandits for their original 'business' purpses, but are still stocked with all the deco materials you may want to make your home look less like an empty shell - but there are also many of the Oracle's 'watchers' wandering about the place recording what we (and presumably the bandits?) do.

Does taking the things from there count as theft, when there is no way at all open to us to clear the bandits from the town and restore things to their original owners or their families?

And if the Oracle's only role in the extermination of a city is to watch the people die and take notes about who was 'good' or 'bad' - it's probably time to unplug the Oracle from it's power supply and write it off as a worthless, sanctimonious and judgemental AI with deluded views about human behaviour. We could better use the power supply to add a few more power fields and towers to protect more towns from raiders, instead of making webcam movies of the raids.....

 

I felt the answer they gave was a pretty big non-answer. Everything seemed open for interpretation and further, the way the game is supposed to work and the way it actually works doesn't sync up all the time.

I've done a few tests at soltown,
Looting from containers infront/not infront of npcs didnt affect my truth stat.
taking deco items infront of npcs certainly affected my truth stat in a negative way.

Mine too! I'm at about -780!

 

~Debating Our Ethics, the Oracle's Ethics or Portalarium Ethics?~

Should it even matter what anyone else thinks or equates your own ethics from ?
~Time Lord~
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/lord-britishs-open-challenge.52798/

 

Because folks are a bit worried about their 'truth' scores I see a whole new market opening up to folks like me with dreads and red bandanas .. my truth is borked I will steal for ya .. for a price Arrrrrrggggg me mateys. LOL.

 

OOps so the candles i took in High Vale is a bad thing. But that candleabra i took was so pretty....so i took it. Not like anyone was using it. The candles werent lit and hadnt been for a while. Hmmm. And i saw some nice paintings on the walls i would love to have too. And maybe that foot tub too....a lady needs a bath from time to time.

 

I don't know about a non-answer. It seemed to me that it was not supposed to be an exact answer, since Richard likes people to make the moral decision based on the story or whatever.

I think the most likely culprit is that the scene builder didn't flag them as "tainted if stolen."

 

I get this. However even after reading @Glantor Edge's thread that @Time Lord linked, it's still very fuzzy.

Why is walking into a Kolbold camp, wiping everyone out, and looting their bodies truthful? I'm the armed trespasser. Does killing them make their possessions belong to me and now 'honest'? Why does my truth score take a hit when I pick up tomatoes from an abandoned burned down pile in a hostile area?

My point is if my idea of morality doesn't agree with the game's idea, I may inadvertently lose virtue misunderstanding the intention of the developers. Maybe it's just bugged right now. We could use more consistency on this, or better guidance at least.

 

when i look at the tab "Price of the Oracle" and realize im missing stuff!!!!

 

I steal everything i can, am i being punished for it yet?? NPC vendors have nice deco!

 

This is a thread you will only find in an Ultima game... aswesome. And yeah if it's a decoration for the homestead I find in the wild - well will probably need to figure out how to be truthful in other ways.

 

It's truly meant to be fuzzy, because ethics are fuzzy ...
This is one of the game's mysteries and a mystery that we ourselves can't even begin to ever agree on because everyone has they own set of values. Yet even more bazar, the Oracle we see is a machine and who ever programed that machine inset those judgment values. This could have been a very sick minded or event effected person for all we know We only know we've come to a planet where a machine seems to be the only one who truly wishes to interact with us as if it's our friendly guide

We all couldn't even agree on what Popeye and Olive Oil could bring to the table within their ethical dilemma. Even if we ever do find out how Richard Garriott would answer such a question, we know he's no dictator within our Portalarium and therefore may even have disagreed with what had been decided on when they programed the Oracle's virtue ethics.

Don't let Richard fool you either, "he's a robot", or was raised as one might be, because his father insisted that he only speak in clear short versions of precise information. It gets even more strange than that though, because his father was the first actual scientist to have encountered and recorded a UFO in space.


"I Robot?" Which of these is the Oracle? or maybe none of the above...



No matter who programed it, how can we argue about ethics with a machine?
~Time Lord~

 

If you don't agree with it, then it should be bugged. Let Richard mull these things over.