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Much steal. Very hide. Wow.
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Comments
I don't have to, but I will.
Forum rule #8: No spamming.
Disappearing from Achaea for now. See you, space cowboy.
smileyface#8048 if you wanna chat.
It would be interesting if there were less options for stealing from people in terms of gold and items, and more stealing from people in terms of information.
A rebalanced theft system could be a lot of fun for all concerned.
This is all about balance. I'm sure achieving that balance is a difficult challenge, but not an insurmountable one.
I think we're placing too much emphasis on "opt in". As far as I'm concerned I've opted in as soon as I press the "Play Achaea" button.
@Ognog The opt in focus is because people don't want theft at all and that is the compromise that they are offering. I am sure most of the people in this thread when offered the choice between opt-in to theft and no theft at all would pick the no theft option but since that doesn't seem like it will happen they are giving meaningful suggestions otherwise.
And we're also making a big deal about opting in because theft is just this really weird outlier to the other player-on-player conflict in Achaea, all of which requires you to basically go to a specific place or join specific organizations to get in on. Theft is opt in by default, and you actually have to go out of your way to avoid it with triggers or standing on guards. It's just weird and doesn't mesh with the rest of the mechanics.
This is especially weird because killing a player has ton of restrictions on it and can get you shrubbed if you run around killing people without reason to, yet thieves aren't held to that standard at all. And I mean reason beyond "I like killing and it gives me experience", so a thief saying 'money motivates me' is like a killer murdering people without reason because 'levelling motivates me'. Killing someone is not nearly as detrimental in Achaea as robbing them. Anyone should know this implicitly.
Imagine you're bashing and get killed -- not a big deal most of the time. Now imagine you have been bashing for a couple of hours and forgot you pulled your gold out to buy health sips, get truekilled and you lose 2hrs of bashing gold which is gone by the time you get back. Now that sucks way worse.
And theft also takes that gold. So why is a player versus player mechanic (theft) that has greater consequences for the victim less stringently mediated than playerkilling, which basically is forgettable and costs nothing?
In fairness, you can't really bank experience, but you can bank your gold in a few different ways relatively easily.
I think pivoting theft towards information is probably the best way to go. But there's also a subset of players who view things like spying and espionage as "OOCly creepy" despite them being entirely valid side vectors for conflict. So if that does end up happening, we'll just be kicking the ball down the road for a later conversation in some regards.
"Information" already gets "stolen" anyway. Except it's more via people using alts to get that information, then pretending as though their main miraculously knows it, and somehow not getting punished by admin for it.
I guess they have to be as blatant about it as Syndra was, to get slapped for it. Alas.
Disappearing from Achaea for now. See you, space cowboy.
smileyface#8048 if you wanna chat.
I also think part of the issue is compounded by how ridiculously easy it is these days to totally avoid all consequences from your actions with regards to Contracts and Bounties.
It's good to see that some things never change and that the biggest argument against thievery is still thieves arguing in favor of thievery. This includes myself.
Theft is fine. In regards to 'opting in,' I'll include this very old post from @Illarion that pretty accurately sums up my own opinion:
Now let's talk about what we mean when we say "opt in". In a very basic sense, of course, all activity is "opt in" because you could choose to (a) not log in, or (b) log in and then never touch your keyboard other than to qq after an hour. But that's nonsensical right? It applies then to theft as much as it would to... bashing, say. We have to define the term better or it's useless.
So I'd define "opt in" forms of gameplay as those where the universe of costs and benefits that can happen to you are clear, well understood and accepted before you engage in the activity. Does that definition seem fair to you? If not, please suggest an alternative, useful one.
If you accept that definition then I'd say that almost all of the best parts of Achaea are not "opt in". Because if you are going to engage in the world in a living way, if you're going to roleplay, join an organization, participate in an organization, open yourself up to interactions with others, have a fully formed Achaean character, then all of those activities require opting in. With all of the uncertainties in consequence that that implies.
Yes, you can avoid almost all of that by sitting at Centre Crossing and chatting in a way not that dissimilar to how you would chat to your friends IRL but to my mind then you aren't playing the game. The important parts of Achaea (for me) are not all of the interesting mini-systems but the story of it, and the service of that story. If you're not in the story, then you're not really in the game. And you can't participate in the story without opting in, without accepting that you don't know how it ends, that it might go differently from how you expect, that other people might react in a way that you didn't foresee or you don't like.
You'll notice again, I hope, that none of this is about theft. It's still an objection to the attitude behind the argument that only "opt in" forms of gameplay are good.
Yeah this one alone would basically make me reconsider my career choice unless you severely de-limited other aspects.
Like, I spend 5 hours following someone to get a fricking eye sigil?
-translates to : remove targetted theft. Which essentially is fiendishly difficult to get to work as is anyways
-this'd be less bad if you removed the current infamy business but why exactly should a thief not be able to use wings etc when your ganksquads etc can use them? What sense does it make that the thief just has to make an elaborate "walk to" macro?
this already exists with the fence, albeit it gives a lot more time than 10 minutes for the original owner to come get it back
again, I think the fence does this better
A lot of these would kill theft in its tracks. I struggle to see why it needs to be so far "balanced" away from the side of theft when it can quite easily be stopped entirely. Its already so much of a hassle that for the most part only one active player in the game bothers doing it.
If theft is only punishing/dangerous to people who don't do the basics, then let's just get rid of the clearly gimped system since it's already atrophied to the point that it is irrelevant except against people who don't know any better.
"Punishing/dangerous to people who don't do the basics" applies to an alarming amount of Achaea if you think about it, as well as many other video games in general.
Can you give me a specific Achaea example? Because the only ones I can think of open the aggressor up to the exact same nature/level of risk.
@Elyon I can certainly accept that my suggestions don't strike the right balance. My only experience with theft has been as the victim. How can the balance be improved? I'm a supporter of theft being a feature of Achaea, but this thread exists because a lot of people don't think the balance is right as things stand - including me.
This is not a solution, but since we brought up the level thirty thing, I wouldn’t mind seeing the theft “threshold” increased. Let’s face it: it’s way easier for a true newbie to come in and be level thirty before they even realize it.
I suggest that only people who have embraced their class can be stolen from. That’s an actual goalpost that makes sense to me since you have to hit level 50, play a certain amount of time, and/or go through house ranks where they will probably teach you about anti theft with a better chance of being taught before it happens.
To try to be as much to the point as possible regarding theft overall, some potential changes to consider:
I think everything else has been discussed to death in this thread and the previous iterations (I posted a LOT in the last one I'm pretty sure), but I did want to mention that if nothing else I really like the idea of making only gold stealable from shops. Shop theft in particular is one of the dumbest things that exists in the game because the shopkeeping system itself is so outdated and clunky, and missing nearly all of the QoL that other IRE games managed to add. Sitting there and trying to organize all of your stuff is enough of a pain without having to worry about random prisms leaving you completely cleared out.
If we're insistent on keeping theft (and it really appears like we are, given how much we are bending over backwards to find compromises for a mechanic that less than a handful of people enjoy at all), then being thrown this crumb would at least make shopkeeping less of an exercise in paranoia and triggers and more about making an enjoyable, organized shop.
The irony of the two thieves here going on at length about how the mere act of logging into the game is 'opting in,' having spent ridiculous amounts of credits to make themselves as immune to repercussion as can be (like that veil Profit owns, and the amount of gimmicks Elyon relies on to get away from any consequence) is pretty amazing.
If consequences are so cool, why do thieves spend more time and effort and money than any other stripe of player avoiding them?
Re Kresslack:
This is already a thing, more or less. I always suspected that, for example, 'a canvas backpack' and 'an oaken vial' were classed differently in regards to Pickpocket. When the game glitched out a few months ago and was announcing my thefts globally, I tested and saw that containers were classed as 'major thefts' and vials were classed as 'minor thefts,' each with different success probabilities. So, there is definitely some item-based scaling already going on behind the scenes.
Also, Pickpocket doesn't scale according to Vision (that I'm aware of) but Mesmerise does scale based on whether or not the target has Vigilance up. My numbers are at home but a successful Mesmerise takes about twice as long if the target is Vigilant. This actually drastically increases the thief's exposure because it requires them to chain multiple Mesmerise and Hypnosis attempts together to avoid being noticed. It's not a huge increase to danger but it's marked and noticeable because it's very easy to mistime and get noticed while juggling the attempts.
It's very likely we're going to go in circles here because nobody actually involved in this conversation has the ability to affect an actual change. At this point everyone has made it clear where they stand: the entire community asking for theft to be at **least** brought in line with consistent standards of other pvp content, and then the thieves directly benefitting from the wild west mentality arguing against the vast majority.
Where are the admins? @Ictinus @Nicola @Makarios
It's been four days since Fairweather posted their log and probably a hundred posts or more across two threads and the only input from the people who can actually make a call on this was go shoo everyone into the second thread.
Can we get some engagement here? If the administration agree that getting level 30 or logging into the game at all is a theft opt-in equivalent of literally joining Dauntless, I'd love to hear them say that. If the paid staff agree that it's fair that a victim can lose irreplaceable items for momentary lapses while a thief risks five minutes worth of bashing exp in exchange, I want to hear them say that. If they feel that the utter minimal interface between thieves and risk is fine due to the dozens of escape mechanisms they employ, I want to hear them say that.
This silent treatment is getting very stale. Is this going to have to turn into the renown/affordability conversation all over again where the only way for us to get any meaningful engagement from the top down is by barraging this thread with screenshots of people canceling our subscriptions?
I like theft being in the game. I have been a thief before but not for years. I have been stolen from as well, but again not for years. I wouldn't lose sleep if theft was removed entirely, but I do like the 'what if someone steals from me' layer of danger that prevents me from afking on clouds.
I agree the system disproportionately targets newbies, but other than bandaid fixes (change level 30 limit to level 50 or similar) I don't think there's an easy solution to the problem.
The reasons I stopped thieving basically boil down to:
1) Pickpocket system is relatively boring and unrewarding
2) The amount of abuse you receive as a thief even when you try to make it fair and interactive is pretty overwhelming. It's clear that people absolutely hate losing their text possessions, so the reward (see #1) stopped being worth the grief (both inflicted and received) at a certain point for me
edit: @Namino clearly biased and exaggerated statements like the below weaken your moral authority imo
"If the administration agree that getting level 30 or logging into the game at all is a theft opt-in equivalent of literally joining Dauntless, I'd love to hear them say that. If the paid staff agree that it's fair that a victim can lose irreplaceable items for momentary lapses while a thief risks five minutes worth of bashing exp in exchange, I want to hear them say that. If they feel that the utter minimal interface between thieves and risk is fine due to the dozens of escape mechanisms they employ, I want to hear them say that."
Most people are already on your side, and over-the-top polemics aren't going to convince the handful that aren't.
I have no idea how to quote on the new forums
For those curious
Fairweather, Novitiate of Clemency (male Human).
He is 32 years old, having been born on the 3rd of Ero, 831 years after the fall of the Seleucarian
Empire.
He has given up the adventuring life.
He is an extremely credible character.
He is not known for acts of infamy.
He is a Settler in Targossas.
He is a Conscript in the army of Targossas.
He is a member of the Blademaster class.
He is considered to be approximately 40% of your might.
He is a mentor and able to take on proteges.
His motto: 'Further beyond.'
Our Fairweather friend has retired from this interaction.
In no way is that exaggeration.
In PvP, if I want to be attacked by anyone at any time, I join Dauntless.
In theft, to be robbed by anyone at any time, I just get level 30.
They are 1:1 comparisons. Nothing in that post was anything but strictly true.
Dauntless is a flag to PKers that you actively want to engage in PK. Getting level 30 does not signal that you want to be stolen from.
It's rare to lose irreplaceable items, most of the time the thief is risking 'five minutes of bashing experience' for a commodity market letter or a sigil. And they can be hunted down by more than 1 person, more than 1 time, so it's risking a lot more than 'five minutes of bashing experience', if we accept that one death does amount to that (which I don't).
Dozens of escape mechanisms? 24+ escape mechanisms?
Why is rarity of loss relevant? It doesn't matter if it's a 1 in 10000000 chance, if it happens to you.
I can see both sides.
Perhaps @Eryl 's fix could be a bandaid until it can be reviewed further? I feel like that is a reasonable compromise (for now). Though I do feel anything bought/earned with OOC bought credits should not be stealable. It is basically IRE approving of RL theft using their game as a conduit.
IG bought credits should be fine.
You should also try jumping a thief and see just how many things they use to never be in danger.
Wand of reflections, lyre, island wings plus all the other flavors of wings, urn mounts, earrings, constantly keeping up every legenddeck defence like Severians, agith'maal comes out. Profit even has an exclusive pre-nerf veil that despite the staff nerfing it for everyone else, he managed to hold onto, so he's undetectable. And that's not even including serpent exclusive skills like phase and evade, and social things like having a sympathetic city come gank the people trying to actually hold you to account. I'd be very surprised if all the 'consequence avoidance' (TM) techniques I've seen deployed amounts to less than 24, yeah.
@Kog: "Why is rarity of loss relevant? It doesn't matter if it's a 1 in 10000000 chance, if it happens to you."
100% agree. Picking the best outcome on the thief's side (risking 5 minutes of xp) and the worst outcome on the victim's side (losing irreplaceable items) to represent those as the typical theft interaction is exaggeration by Namino though, which is why I was pointing it out.
That's the exact opposite of my point. What the thief risks every single time pales in comparison to what they stand to gain. The worst case on the thief's side is losing xp, the worst case for a theft victim is losing something with significant real-world dollars attached. It doesn't balance out in any way, shape or form.
Not logging in or not getting level 30 is not a reasonable opt-out mechanic. It’s not a mechanic at all, it’s unhealthy for the game and shame on you who keep using it as an argument. Opting out of a particular part of the game does not equate to “don’t log in” or “stay under level 30 and don’t experience 90% of what the game has to offer”.
There is no option for theft. Triggers and selfishness are not opt-out buttons because it doesn’t keep you from trying. I’m not going to sit here and try to make an analogy because those of you who keep defending theft don’t care.
If you want to make an argument for theft, feel free, but stop using false arguments to do so.