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Comments
Soon to be a relevant pic for the current discussion.
The new system is pretty boring, and is far from as profitable from random short mistakes. However, that doesn't mean it can't be used for gains, it just requires bigger mistakes by the target. On separate occasions I've gotten 300000 gold, 196000 gold, a shop key for a lot of items + over 100000 gold, and tons of smaller amounts of gold that probably adds up to a few hundred thousand. Was it simple? Sometimes. Was it quick? Not at all. 300000 took about 20 minutes of pickpocketing on loop while the person just sat there doing nothing. There is still a risk to going very afk, though not quite as steep of one. Smaller specific thefts, with current pickpocket this would be keys, can happen very quickly if you know what you're doing. Generally this still requires the person to be afk or slacking, but it can happen quickly.
While I don't think the pickpocket system is perfect, I do think it is a huge upgrade from the old theft system in terms of not being a giant 'f- you' to victims. I would like to see the list of items that you can pickpocket expanded a bit, though I'm not sure what would be acceptable. Things like pipes can be relatively cheap, cool novelty items to steal, but opens up the chance to pickpocket a target when they're fighting, steal their pipe for valerian, then slickness/leg breaks/gank type stuff. Would this be ok? Not my call.
tl;dr new pickpocket is meh, old theft was dumb, please improve but don't revert.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
We do not have enough players as it is, the last thing we need is to lose them over something like this. And, let's face it, most thieves are not really nice people, having someone rob you of like 300 cr worth of non-decay personal items and then start being a rules lawyer to you about how you're not IC enough for him or how you actually don't have cause on him... yeah.
I always felt theft was a horrible thing, and I was glad when they removed it. And many other people were too.
Now let's move to the future. Understanding the game to a very meta level, balances, systems, and even the forum-politics. Suddenly theft seems very unfair and there is a lot of bitching about it. I feel like if I was in my same newbie shoes today, I'd have never been stolen from. I'd have never gotten that HDF for it, I'd never have found out who will help me get my items back, and I'd never hear the long winded lectures about attention to detail. This was all a very important part to my characters development.
So, I'm a minority. I honestly think the forums are the largest cancer to achaea, as it gives people a sense of entitlement. I have newbies these days going and bitching right at the forums, rather than trying to keep it all IC.
The real problem I actually had with the rollover or change of theft, was the fact it was half assed and quite blatantly so. I'm not going to bother to pull up the post but we had Tecton giving us a very "Billy Mays here, and do you like theft? Me neither!" kind of speech. I really don't mind hearing the developers comments behind the choice to remove theft (Which once again I had to run to the forums to find the real reasons and statistics) but I found it very rude and offensive to attempt to rally people to your cause and convince people of this new "great" change while giving the finger to every serpent in existence. It was a bad change, did not feel thought out, and had several shoddy moves right before it (Phase door opening). This means the idea was under scrutiny for a long time, but it was not really brought up with the general populace at all, which I believe in a game where "WE" make the world, it should be.
In the end, I'll say that theft is better off gone, however there are several things that it used to be used for. Serpents would sometimes have to steal back items from people who left/qq'd the guild or house, and kept items. This was theft used to RETURN valued goods. Some serpents were actually known as thieves. (I can only think of @Arelas right now) but they were so sly, witty, and even kind about their thefts, that it made sense for their RP. It was also a very large part of serpent RP. Even the SL were known for being "Spies, assassins, thieves" or something like that. There were facets to serpent RP that are utterly and completely gone now.
I'll say that theft was ruined by a few very rude people, mainly glint and his kin. They are the ones that showed us that there is a true risk/reward that is completely in the thieves favor. I remember him heartstopping as I webbed him. So not only could I not get my items back. I couldn't even get some XP from his sorry bum. Suddenly, the game is broken. I'd like to see an advanced version of old theft come back. Like people becoming resistant to multiple action chains, or something like that. (Mind you, would have to be balanced for combat).
So, I don't know where to stand. I know a lot of you will just say theft is unbalanced and shit, but remember what it was like as a newbie? Even though it was bad.. was it not fun? just a little bit? did the heartpounding, fingershaking goodness not come the first time someone tried to snap you?
But, as I get older and end up being around the realms for well over 100+ days of pure playtime of my life.. it gets hard to justify why something expensive keeps getting slipped from my fingers.
Edit: Also, I don't think it was theft ever causing bad player retention. I think a lot of it was.. from 2008-2012. Nothing happened. It was boring. Achaea was really, really boring. Or maybe that's just me.
Yes. When the world was vast and full of wonder. Nostalgia. *1tear* But I also remember getting that adrenaline rush from PK, CTFs, raids, and intense RP events. And those things all still exist.
내가 제일 잘 나가!!!111!!1
It took me four or five years before I decided to try out the game again, and that was only because the other muds I played had deteriorated to a point where there'd be 3-10 people online at the same time.
From what I've heard with other people and theft, there have been players who outright quit because of it (a certain long-named Magi with who shall not be named for example) and it does cause a bit of, "aw man, sorry to see you go" when you hear of it. Theft was good if you could do it right and be creative about it, but it is true that there was no way to get those items back but really, that was why Houses had such intricate anti-theft methods set up to avoid such issues.
The system now pretty much has be walking around with selfishness down because not many people will bother to nick my (now 40) vials or (other than vagrants) corpses. It's a bit meh, but there are other forms of conflict to be had, so I don't miss much of it.
Losing their light in the glorious sun,
Thus would we pass from this earth and its toiling,
Only remembered for what we have done."
Site: https://github.com/trevize-achaea/scripts/releases
Thread: http://forums.achaea.com/discussion/4064/trevizes-scripts
Latest update: 9/26/2015 better character name handling in GoldTracker, separation of script and settings, addition of gold report and gold distribute aliases.
Site: https://github.com/trevize-achaea/scripts/releases
Thread: http://forums.achaea.com/discussion/4064/trevizes-scripts
Latest update: 9/26/2015 better character name handling in GoldTracker, separation of script and settings, addition of gold report and gold distribute aliases.
My thoughts on this are complex, evolving and ranty; so I'll spare you them (for the time being). But I did want to chime in on this. Statistics can be as misleading, and misused, as anecdotal data - more so sometimes, because they inherently have a veneer of mathematical authority.
I was always very sceptical about the statistics you reference, because there was no comparison against a set of people of similar level/experience who were not robbed from. Without that, you can't even argue causation - just correlation. Which isn't nothing, but it isn't very much of something either.
I would like to know how much newbie retention has improved since the deletion of theft. I would like to know whether the number of dormancies of active players has increased, slowed down or remained the same. I think I know the answers to these questions, and I think the answer is that the removal of theft has had zero effect at all. The same trends that were in evidence during theft's existence are in evidence now without any demonstrable change (as far as I can tell anyway - @Tecton, @Sarapis, please fee free to correct that misunderstanding).
To address these to points there are so many factors to even pretend to make a fair comparison. Look at all that has happened in the realms, losing theft I am sure has retained some people and has also probably lost some people. I would like to think killing off a series of gods also does that, but I also think the amazing support staff keeps people around. Bottom line is are there more people, or less, and make moves to retain more people.
As for theft, it was stupid before, there were some thieves you could work with and talk to and actually RP, and there was other people that just didn't care and hided behind the "you should know better it's mine all mine"
As for Achaea being soft, the relaxed PK rules make me think this is not entirely true, people who want conflict find it, and people that don't are shielded a little more from it.
To address some of the complaints: Often times people would say they were disconnected (which some may have been but many were just AFK since their triggers were firing). This is why I rarely ever allowed this to work on me because so many would take advantage of it.
I do think old theft was ridiculous -- I purchased quite a bit of artefacts using theft-gained gold. It was hard for the thief a long time ago (when I was age 70 in the game, so 6 years ago or so) but then things got easier and we weren't hunted as hard. I think the change was because cities like Ashtan started defending their thieves when they'd get attacked and people like Glint would just heartstop/die. Veils also helped me after I got enough gold stolen but I still think it's a big game imbalance and this was far after I realized thief hunters died down.
Current theft is even a great problem but only to the people that would have been devastated by old theft: AFK and or disconnected. The only difference is it takes longer.
Is the game safer? For newbies yes, but Achaea is a business, and other then theft I don't think things have changed that much to be considered padded.
@DontarionDrakor for twitter boredom.
Well, hang on there. That is actually an argument that any statistical analysis of what encourages player retention/loss is pointless because you won't be able to isolate any causative effect. Now, I don't think I buy that argument but even if I did, it would support my post which was based on the fact that we shouldn't pay any (or very limited) heed to the statistics quoted in favour of deleting theft.
The rest of your post then assumed your argument instead of making it (i.e. that deleting theft brought more players in/helped with player retention). There are qualitative arguments on both sides there for sure, which I'm trying to avoid getting into, but you don't make any.
There seem to have been two camps of players-- One that saw a problem and sought to remedy it using available means, and another that would complain hard enough until a change was hardcoded. "Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice, petition Tecton."