Much steal. Very hide. Wow.

[Deleted User]

As a minimal bandaid, I think that WHO and similar lists should rank alphabetically or by some criteria other than activity. The concept of being able to spot someone as AFK is not particularly immersive (and, like many things involving theft, can be mostly mitigated by scripting). If you want to check whether or not someone is paying attention, you should be actively monitoring them up close.

EDIT: This also increases the danger element since the thief is more likely to be wrong. Seems like a better conflict generator that would even the scales a bit more.

Kshavatra

@Namino I have personally orchestrated killing Profit (with friends mind you) and getting one of those memento daggers so we could find him later. It's difficult but it's possible to catch and kill the most slippery person in the game, so by extension it's possible to catch and kill everybody else.

@Kog I might be misunderstanding your point then, but I didn't say it balances out. One of the main reasons I don't do theft anymore is because of the anguish that people clearly feel at being stolen from. I don't agree that their reactions are reasonable in most cases, but it is undeniable that it was upsetting for them and I don't like to disregard others' feelings just because I don't agree with them.

I'm just giving my opinion since this is a public discussion and I want my view to be represented in the discourse. I wanted to point out where I believe Namino's post is/was misrepresenting the situation, especially since it was a specific call to action to the administration.

Treyal

Wait, Who is ranked by activity???

[Deleted User]

This is why you're always at the bottom of any WHO list you check, because that was the most recent command when it was sent to you.

Big Papa Jomi

Ur mum

can we make theft doable by everyone? Turn it into some 350-1200 cr artefacts like everything else

Fairweather

@Big Papa Jomi

They would 100% make a 300cr artifact that gives everybody the ability to steal before they do anything impactful about theft in any form.

Namino

And it's not an exaggeration. Even the 'average', not the worse case scenario. You know what the average theft failure looks like? Thief hits a trigger and duanathars and sits on a guard stack. No loss to the thief for failing.

The 'average' success gets them an item -- perhaps something quite valueable -- or on an afk target whatever gold they were carrying at the time. No xp loss.

It is extremely rare for a thief to actually be killed while trying to rob someone, and requires a coordinated hitsquad of multiple actors, who still usually fail. From Atalkez:

Brought a BM to stop evade, Ugrach's scorpion and a DW and the thief still is just laughing as they easily escape.

Big Papa Jomi

@Fairweather

im sorry u retired, u were funny in discord. Come back to Hashan I will bash u up and protecc from @Elyon

Fairweather

It wasn’t even Elyon. I think he hit me in the beginning.

I went to play the game that I don’t have to worry about stupid mechanics AND that gives classless people statpacks and increased damage on weapon attacks.

👀

Kresslack

As ridiculous as it is to pin down and actually kill a thief that doesn't want to die (as exampled by Namino's snippet above), it's a moot point because death has never really been a deterrent for most dedicated thieves. I remember Fen getting killed probably 10-20 times a day a few years back due to his theft attempts, successful or not, and it never discouraged him.

Kog

Wasn't Glint like level 52 by the end of it?

Kog

I'm a coward I'm not touching the edit button- it'll invest all my money in beanie babies or something.

Level 71, I stand corrected.

Big Papa Jomi

@Fairweather :(

Kshavatra

Thieves get one reliable command on a target per hypnosis, the rest have unreliable timing. If the target is selfish, that command must be 'generosity' or they're not getting anything. That means that it can't be 'remove pack' or 'get gold from pack' or whatever else.

Against a target with curing on and selfishness handled by serverside (there might be a use case for curing off or handling selfishness clientside only that I'm missing here) that means anything in a container is safe, anything worn is safe.

If you put irreplaceable items in containers or wear them if that's possible, they're safe when you have selfishness up (items that can't be worn or feasibly go into containers aren't covered by this scenario; to me that is a reasonable limitation). You can make triggers to rewear important items and put them back into containers if they're removed. Unfortunately this is code burden, which most agree is bad. I hate coding, but I don't find 2 triggers per container and 1-2 per valuable item to be too onerous

If you are disconnected, curing can cover selfishness but not rewearing/putting back into container. This is obviously a problem that needs to be solved since you can't control when you disconnect and it's unfair to lose things through no fault of your own. My proposed solution for this would be some sort of grace period when your selfishness is stripped by another person, in which it can't be stripped again. Maybe until the person inputs another command (which they wouldn't do while disconnected).

If you disconnect WHILE selfishness is down and therefore not in your curing priorities for redeffing, then you're in a bad position since you have no protection whatsoever. My proposed solution for this would be that pickpocket attempts put selfishness up on the target for free, or make forced generosity only active for X seconds before selfishness comes back up automatically. Combined with the previous paragraph's solution, this would cap disconnected thefts at one per disconnect.

Regarding newbies, I'm in favour of making level 50 and below immune to theft, or X amount of hours played or whatever. I don't think there is any argument for targetting newbies.

Reyson

@Namino bUt CoNsEqUeNcEs ArE wHaT mAkE aChAeA fEeL aLiVe

Kog

I wish Nexus worked on phones, BT deletes my triggers/settings constantly and it's a nightmare to do anything on so I mostly just sit around spamming gut or radiance at raiders. It'd be cool if I could wander around without code, but I'm not gonna take that risk.

Namino

Seriously, the fact that we write multiple paragraphs describing the scenario that goes on to make things hard to steal (keepup selfishness, triggers, always being aware and paying attention) as if it's fair or reasonable...

You know what you have to do to avoid being PK'd?

Nothing.

You do literally nothing.

Kresslack

Can confirm. Haven't been PK'd in a long time since I stopped willingly getting involved with it.

Iaxus

I'm all here for calling out admin on refusing to respond. This is at five pages now, I think it's time we get something of a response, even if it's just "We're talking about it and will get back to you all soon(tm)". Repeat of the cause of my forum signature incoming otherwise.

Kshavatra

edit: nvm, agree to disagree

Namino

That's a lot more than the other answer which was: you don't have to do anything. Smile.

Iaxus

Tbh I'd even be okay with admin responding and saying get fkd. Just any response, so we can stop having this conversation.

Thaisen

I bet if you started a new thread you would get a response from the Admin.

Namino

"Duplicate thread, locked."

Do we just make a new thread every 24 hours on the dot until the whole front page is just theft stuff?

Eryl

There are a lot of inflated arguments flying around, and I think that's probably why the admin are staying very clear.

For instance, Fairweather didn't retire because of this (and even said so themselves). Fairweather also has a known history of trying to bash to a goal classless and getting frustrated because it basically wasn't possible. Even if Fairweather didn't clarify, it's not okay to imply causation where you can't prove it.

Also, let's be real here. People like to throw around examples of sub-level 30 players getting "irreplaceable" items stolen from them. If you are below level thirty and own an "irreplaceable" item, you probably already know way more than just anti-theft. Nothing a level 30 without prior game knowledge has is going to be irreplaceable (with an exception if things like ldeck cards that were purchased through a promo can be stolen but let's be real that shouldn't be able to happen if it can).

The people who truly get fucked by theft are established players, not newbies. Newbies generally aren't getting everything they own stolen from. They generally get a bitter interaction and citymates who step up to replace what was lost. The ones who lose everything and start threads like this are, historically speaking, people who have been away for a while, came back, and pretty quickly lost a lot because of being newly back.

While that last thing is honestly a pretty horrible thing to happen, it's also a very predictable thing to happen. If people are acting within the boundaries of the game rules, you need to be prepared. This doesn't change because you took a break.

I think the argument needs to shift far, FAR away from "oh but the little people" because face it: the little people aren't losing an arm and leg from theft. If anything needs addressed, it's returning players being blindsided. IMO, that's easily fixed by offering returning dormant players (dormancy defined by being exited from xp rankings due to not logging in) a very visible grace period that also has an OOC announcement (similar to walking into Annwyn or Underworld, where you're warned anyone can kill you). Let them have an hour to sigil everything and remember their shit, then announce privately to them OOCly HEY SINCE YOU'VE BEEN GONE, REMEMBER YOU CAN BE STOLEN FROM NOW, SO BE CAREFUL OKAY.

Vasher

I think theft has a place in the game, but there are also fair points about opt in.

My ideal solution would be to make theft opt in and that gives you a mechanical benefit for doing so. 10% extra XP is one of the simpler less complicated issues.

People would then be free to opt out and just not receive that benefit, and then of course with that comes Long cool downs, and if you go dormant, disabling it. I think this solves a lot of the issues brought up in this thread without deleting theft.

Archaeon

lol   

Fairweather

@Eryl oh no, it was 100% the theft

I came back after a few months gone, a bunch of shit had decayed (including my pack) - someone made a comment on me being naked, so I sold my last unbound credits to the city, bought some killer pink pants, swapped blademaster, learned my skills, and went out to test some things before I did any crazy artifact tradeins or purchases. I don’t know what all got taken, but I know my gold was gone, and I didn’t feel like messing with things any more after that.

You can argue it’s my fault, I guess. I don’t really care. It’s not like IRE isn’t getting any more of my money, it’s not like my leaving Achaea is some big tragedy, but I would absolutely still be playing the game if it hadn’t happened in the circumstances it happened in.

It’s entirely possible that the cost analysis on removing theft has proven it makes more money to keep it in. It’s entirely possible the Powers That Be were denied being sneaky antagonist rogues in an AD&D game in 1993 and now baby the mechanics of theft as a vicarious win from years ago. It’s entirely possible that the administration simply does not care so long as the mechanics of theft aren’t breaking anything in the code or from a severe customer service standpoint.

If I was playing wow and an undead rogue could pickpocket stuff I’d spent multiple lockouts to earn, and the only thing I could do about it is hope my class has built in anti stealth and lots of hard cc just to kill the rogue, and then I had to go back and do a bunch of other arbitrary stuff to get back the thing I ALREADY WORKED FOR, I’d just go play a better mmo.

Profit

@Kshavatra

If the time you got me is the one I’m thinking about, I was super surprised and proud of your group for setting and committing to that trap. It’s very, very rare that someone in Achaea is more patient than me and you guys stuck with the plan until it worked. It was flawless.

I do wish more people would put in that kind of effort. Set traps, be patient, and hatch plans and backup plans. Anyone can be gotten.

Accipiter

@Eryl returning players are functionally equivalent to newbies. If the have been gone long enough to lose their system, the thought process shouldn’t have to include “but if I return all of my stuff will be stolen”.