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Building a Better Theft System
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Comments
The proposal drew me out of lurking, damn you Vayne and sad sack that I am, how to "build a better theft system" is something I still think about, even though I'm not playing very actively any more.
Of course what I really want to do is argue for the old system, but I'll restrain myself. Blujiaslkdjaskj makes some good points on the other side of that argument that I disagree with, but that are totally valid and it looks like the admin came down on that side of the argument and that's that. It sucks, but there you are.
But I do get a feeling that a lot of people (even a lot of people who didn't like the old system very much) think something is missing now. The good bits of theft - the danger, the forcing of self-reliance, the RP initiation opportunities, the mystique, the permitting an interesting RP archetype to play the game, is all gone. Pickpocketing, let's be honest, is a boring vanilla mechanic that's about as much fun as syphilis.
So how can you bring those things back while still addressing administrative concerns?
First, I have some criticisms of Vayne's system. The "tagging", "fencing" mechanic is a bit... one-note. It's a forced response to something that should be fluid. It drives people's options into a narrow band that is pretty boring. (Which is not to say we shouldn't have fences, we totally should, they're awesome - but it shouldn't be the only thing we can have). Secondly, tying recovery of items to PK is going to have some very annoying unintended consequences. It will encourage thieves to wait the period out in their city. It will encourage thieves to congregate in whatever city is the 800lb gorilla in the room at the time. It'll basically make thieves more Glint-like, and that's never good. It is also, I suspect, very difficult to code. You can thieve in a number of ways, and it'll be tricky to flag them all up properly.
But the admin have decided that the anti-theft crowd have legitimate concerns too. I'll try and summarise them as fairly as I can:
(i) precious items can be lost with no prospect of recovery;
(ii) thieves don't suffer consequences; and
(iii) new players get screwed.
I have a particular sympathy with journal theft. Lots of thieves accumulated hundreds of journals that they never read, or did anything interesting with and a lot of players lost hundreds of hours of stuff that was very precious to them and represented a lot of their hard work.
The "answer" to (i) in the old system was selfishness. It's a good answer, but not a perfect one. People get DC'd, it puts an onus on people to be very careful every time they log in, every time they hand something over voluntarily, every time they die, every time they come out of the arena. I liked that kind of world, but I can get that some people wouldn't. My solution to that would be to allow a system for marking precious items so that they are subject to the pickpocket system. And everyone should start out with a journal that is pre-marked. It should be cheap, and easy (maybe every city has one, and it costs a couple hundred gold), but probably limited in some way. Maybe 1 key, 2 items of jewellery - that kind of thing, make it meaningful so that only genuinely precious items can be protected (I'd be totally up for negotiation on the limits). This preserves all the good, fluid aspects of old-skool theft while, I think, respecting people's concerns. On gold, I do think it's legitimate that people shouldn't lose a fortune for a moment's inattention - maybe a gold cap on what can be stolen in any one day? Something like that.
(ii) I think thieves should suffer consequences, I'd be up for discussing whatever they could be. Extending free PK, some kind of NPC hunt system, some way to bar thieves from their cities or safe rooms if they have recently stolen (if it's possible), whatever. I'm sure people can brainstorm things that are exciting enough - although we should recognise it is, in part, a player responsibility to make consequences meaningful;
(iii) For newbie help, again, the sky should be the limit - up the level restriction, make selfishness automatic on log-in, extend the play-time restrictions for thievery. Anything and everything should be open on that front. But I don't think we should let newbie retention remove the whole mechanic or render it inert and pointless and dull. No more than we do for PK, aggro denizens or any of the other fun things that can happen to you as a newbie.
In summary, I think the pickpocket system should be retained in a limited way so that people can protect the things that are meaningful to them, but we should revert to old-skool plus for everything else. Just my 2 cents anyway.
Khalaz.
I personally feel a lot of "thieves remorse" for the thefts I do and that keeps me in check and prevents me from going overboard and taking advantage of every opportunity I see to rob people, which let's face it, is pretty much constantly happening. Consequences for the thieves that cannot control themselves at all and are becoming extremely detrimental to the game because they're making people want to leave, is what is needed in my opinion, and maybe that needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis.
I would still like to see a few more things open to be pickpocketed, especially journals. If your journal is really that valuable to you, you can contact the thief and try to negotiate a return, or put 50 credits into making it returning, or just put it in a container that's difficult for us to get to. There are several options available to victims to make things more difficult for us.
One other thing I'd also like to say is that there's a lot of this "thieves just want to grief and will laugh in your face if you contact them to negotiate a return." This is simply untrue most of the time. While it may be the case for some very griefy thieves, I think for the most part, we'd much rather have your gold than your precious (and utterly useless to us), journals or jewellery.
Laziness. That's what you promote in Achaea now.
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One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important
ilu fancy tart.
I think my issues with old theft do overlap with those three things you listed:
1. It was mechanically impossible to retrieve your stolen items if you didn't have a theft skill yourself. Once a theft attempt succeeded, all the power was in the thief's hands, and getting your stuff back required some form of mercy on their part (eg. them being willing to sell back your item; even if you begged or bullied, they were free to say "no!" and log out, to spite you). This was magnified by common theft targets being unique, sentimental items. This feeling of powerlessness sucked, especially because...
2. Thieves could mitigate all consequences (open PK) and continue to be thieves, provided they could deal with being hunted. Killing a thief accomplished next to nothing, unless you were engaging them literally 100% of the time they were logged in.
3. Theft mechanics encouraged going after the most vulnerable - AFK people and just-past-newbies. These were the people least likely to enjoy it. If you were robbed while linkdead, you wouldn't even know who stole from you. Obviously thieves had no reason to show mercy to people who choose to go AFK, but it was still a system that promoted avoiding interaction.
People are of course never going to enjoy being robbed, but I think it could be much less unfun while still having the sandboxy feeling of freedom old theft used to have.[/spoiler]
Cesarina, don't take my participation in your terrible undead abomination of a thread as an endorsement of necromancy.
Those of you who still remember Trance or Arelas will probably vote for the old theft system as well, those guys made us laugh irl for like half an hour after each attempt.
I believe we can all agree that the implementing of pickpocketing only managed to take away a very important aspect of the game and with that, the drive of many of us to become Serpents.
But you see, these arguments are terrible. You can't rely on "thieves remorse", because not all thieves are as lovely as you. We had some awesome thieves, it's true, but let's be honest, they were outnumbered by the asshats.
Arguing for theft to be extended to journals especially is just awful. That is the weakest possible case. Not everyone will sell journals back at an appropriate price. In fact, the more precious the journal, the higher price likely to be demanded. Most thieves of any prolificity (if that's a word) had hundreds of the things. This is a bad thing. It's a power imbalance, that should be addressed. The single unflexible rule of Achaea is that relying on player restraint is total folly. Any mechanic that can be abused, will be abused. You need a system in place to stop that abuse.
@Blujixapug You're encouraging me to write up a full proposal you know. I hope you know that.