Casing and Fencing

edited July 2019 in North of Thera
New theft and stolen-item mechanics!

ANNOUNCE NEWS #5081                                     (07/29/2019 at 01:40)  
From   : Nicola
To     : Everyone
Subject: Events Stole My Subject!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
With the heavy weight of the Jaguars Syndicate being brought brutally to bear upon the unlicensed
thieves of Achaea, we have some big changes to theft to introduce!

First up, Serpents get CASEing!

Each time you case an individual you will gain a better grasp of their belongings and how they store
them.

This information becomes outdated over time, though repeated cases will allow you to maintain your
knowledge and so improve upon it. You can only case a target every so often(*).

* Around once every 50 minutes.

Casing a subject in this way significantly improves the effectiveness of attempts to pickpocket
specific items from a target. You will lose all of your accumulated cases on an individual if that 
individual slays you or a mark does so on their behalf.
 
Pickpocket chances of success for targetted items are VERY low without casing.

And we have some recourse for the unfortunate victims of Achaea!

The Jaguars have set up fences around the land.

When an item is picked from your pocket it goes to the fences to be sold off!

Anyone can visit a fence and use the FENCEboldwhite}FENCE commands to place a single, maximum bid on
any item being fenced.

This is a silent auction, no incrementing. Top bid "wins". This auction period lasts for fifty days.

A fence can be found in Delos, there are more scattered around the lands.

If your bid wins and you were the thief, you get the item and a cut of the gold.

If your bid loses and you were the thief, you get a cut of the gold.

If your bid wins and you were the original owner, you get your item.

If your bid loses, the thief did not win the bid, and you were the original owner, you will be
prompted to buy out the item with the bid to match. This happens when an auction period ends and is 
the final opportunity to retrieve the item. You have twenty-five days from the auction's end to do 
this.

If you bid on an item and you are not the thief or owner, you will either win, or lose. Losing will
return your gold to you.

For all winning bids, the item is transferred directly to your inventory.

BUYING OUT AN AUCTION OR WINNING AN AUCTION IS THE ONLY WAY TO GET YOUR PROPERTY BACK.

Chits
-----
When a thief steals an item, the item is passed along to the fences, and the thief gets a chit. This
chit can be turned in for the thief's cut of the gold once an item is fenced.

HAVING A CHIT DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOU WILL GET YOUR STOLEN ITEM BACK.

ONLY WINNING THE AUCTION WILL ACHIEVE THIS.

A theft victim can kill a thief and the chit will become theirs.

A theft victim can hire a mark, if said mark is successful the chit will be transferred to the
victim.

Any Champion of the Ivory Mark can kill a thief, and the oldest chit owned by the thief will be
returned to the victim.

Any Quisalis assassin can kill a thief and earn the oldest chit held by the thief for themselves.

A thief cannot kill you because you killed them to claim your chit back.

About Your Valuables
--------------------
- Resetting items cannot be stolen.
- If you keep your valuables in a resetting container and this container is stolen, the container
will be returned to you, but your items within (if not resetting) will be fenced in a separate 
container.
- All gold stolen remains with the thief.
- Items being sold by a fence will not decay during this period.

Commands
---------
Anywhere in the land
   FENCE STATUS BIDS            - View your current bids.
   FENCE STATUS BUYOUTS         - View your currently available buyouts.

At a Fence
   FENCE LOTS                   - View the list of lots currently being fenced.
   FENCE LOT <lot ID>           - View the details of a specific lot.
   FENCE PROBE <item ID>        - Probe a specific item.
   FENCE BID <item ID> <gold>   - Place your bid on a lot.
                                - This is a silent auction style, one bid only.
   FENCE BUYOUT <item ID>       - If available, buyout an item.
   FENCE TURNIN <chit>          - Turn in a thief's chit for their gold cut.


HELP FENCE has been added with all of the information!

Penned by My hand on the 11th of Valnuary, in the year 806 AF.

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Comments

  • RyxRyx North of Northreach
    Does CASEing go through shimmering orbs?
  • edited July 2019
    Looks like it does, Ryx.

    EDIT: Nope, it doesn't.
  • Seems like an artifact pack just got a pretty huge nerf....if you were quick enough or triggered to recall it you could get all your stuff back, not the case anymore it seems :(
  • People probably won't bid on random things with outrageous amounts when the system has been out for a while.  I think it's a good system, about as fair as it can be.
    Deucalion says, "Torinn is quite nice."
  • From what I can tell you can case someone with an orb, but it doesn't allow you to appraise differently.

    For those not serpent: Case is a channeled ability that gives you no actual information, it gives you a buff that allows pickpocketing of specific items from that specific person to be easier, I am guessing about equivalent to what old mesmerise used to do.
  • Something people seem to overlook is: If your bid wins and you were the thief, you get the item and a cut of the gold.

    If you steal something and you want it, you have to pay for it now. Before if you succeeded you just got the item, now you have to put your money on the line and you can't just put a million gold down because you will lose a chunk of it.
  • Case does increase infamy.

    As a note, if you find something that you think shouldn't be pickpocketable that is (usually something you've bought off the website), do let us know. We've tidied a lot of that up with this rework so the risk of losing your monitary investment shouldn't be a concern anymore - the old system wasn't very robust in this regard.

  • Yay for another nerf to one of my artefacts.

    This is why I don't buy stuff from IRE anymore.
  • Well I have a question @Makarios, if you have a pack which is reseting (Pack 1) within another pack (Pack 2) which is also resetting and you get stolen from do you still get the stuff that was in Pack 2 or how does that work? With containers within containers?
  • The system accounts for that, yeah. You don't have to worry about losing something unstealable if its in a nested container. No matter how deep that rabbit hole may go.

  • Torinn said:
    People probably won't bid on random things with outrageous amounts when the system has been out for a while.  I think it's a good system, about as fair as it can be.
    If you have an artefact pack of any sort (Dragonskin pack, banded chest, birds nest, etc) all your stuff goes into a new container to be bid on at this fence. They're not buying random things, they're buying a lot. Established people will always have more gold than me. I simply can't play enough to earn the tens of millions someone 500+ years old has. The last auction proved that to me. If we're able to have two artefact packs, one inside another, to bypass this system, I'm down. Got to out-clever the thief.

    Accipiter said:
    Something people seem to overlook is: If your bid wins and you were the thief, you get the item and a cut of the gold.

    If you steal something and you want it, you have to pay for it now. Before if you succeeded you just got the item, now you have to put your money on the line and you can't just put a million gold down because you will lose a chunk of it.
    So what. If they just want gold and the thrill of stealing (as Profit mentioned), they can just sit back and collect a cut. If they steal your pack (somehow, triggers or lag fails) then they will most surely have more gold than you to win it. It really sucks. 

    Can there be some sort of gold-cap on auctions? 

    Makarios said:
    The system accounts for that, yeah. You don't have to worry about losing something unstealable if its in a nested container. No matter how deep that rabbit hole may go.

    So if I keep all of my belongings inside of an artefact pack in another artefact pack (the one I wear) and the worn one gets stolen, do I lose any belongings?

    -----
    This is a toxic system and the absolute worst part of Achaea. I would love to just enjoy the game without having to worry about this one-sided encounter spoiling my day. 

  • I don't understand how anyone sees this as anything other than an improvement. As it stands now, you have to be AFK for a VERY long period of time, to the tune of several hours, for a thief to have a chance of stealing your shit. You then have to not have the basics of antitheft, such as rewearing your pack if you take it off.

    In addition to this, the way it reads (at least to me) is that you can hire a mark on someone for casing you, and if the thief dies, all stacks of CASE go away, resetting their progress. You honestly have to be willfully idiotic to be stolen from with any sort of reliability now. 

  • Antonius said:
    Is being cased visible to the target? That doesn't really fit with the theme of Serpent as a class, but if it isn't then killing/hiring resetting case is irrelevant because you don't know it has happened.
    It is, if you have vigilance up.
    A shadowy figure circles you, taking inventory of your possessions.

    Supposedly on the second case you see who cased you, but the stacks keep resetting too quick to actually see that.


  • I feel like without numbers people are jumping to 'everything I have is now able to be taken at any time' which I don't think is fair.

    If a single case is the same as the old mesmerise chance then this is pretty much 100% better for victims as you have a hard coded way to get your stuff back now.

    The buff seems to fall off quickly after the cooldown is up (according to Pylori above) so it allows thieves who want specific items off people to get them with a few caveats: they have to still be in the game an hour later, they have to be reachable in the window, and you have to make a choice whether to go for it now or wait another hour to make the choice again.
  • The buff falling quickly is 100% a bug. It falls off long before their case cooldown is up, so they can't stack it like it's intended.

  • Pyori said:
    The buff falling quickly is 100% a bug. It falls off long before their case cooldown is up, so they can't stack it like it's intended.
    Well hopefully once it is at the proper time it isn't more than 12 hours or so to refresh so you don't have people stalking forever.
  • Accipiter said:
    I feel like without numbers people are jumping to 'everything I have is now able to be taken at any time' which I don't think is fair.
    I don't understand how people are jumping to that conclusion.  Reading these changes, I don't see how theft can actually succeed on someone paying even a tiny amount of attention over the course of several hours.   This makes theft harder to accomplish in every way, and hasn't made theft easier in the slightest.
  • My concern is that if your gold is in your resetting pack. As nestled or not. It is kept by the thief, not fenced in the lot. This is a major issue if the thief manages to get it removed, the losses can be much higher than them getting an amount repeteadly.

    image
  • As i understand it, if a serpent steals something of mine it'll go directly and automatically to the fence, instantly. Right? If so, could we please allow IDM to bypass this in order to still train serpents who wish to become thieves? IDM can't be forced, and it'll allow trainee thieves to practice without us actually losing things.

    Second, theft from houses and stockrooms is clearly defined as theft in HELP THEFT. Is there anything set up for this as I could see this being a minefield. Non personal allies in a house pick something up and it immediately goes to a fence?. Cooper and his game breaking Falcon script takes something from a house or stockroom, is that included? I prism into a stockroom and grab 300k and about 200 items, does any of that go to a fence too?

    (Party): Mezghar says, "Stop."
  • Fences are only for items that are specifically pickpocketed. It has no bearing on picking stuff up in burglaries or whatnot.
    "If you build it, they will come."
  • edited July 2019
    I think a lot of people are overlooking the fact that yeah people have more gold than you, but they're not going to pay millions of gold for some crappy journal of yours unless it is something very interesting or you did something to annoy them and this is how they're getting back at you :p
    Deucalion says, "Torinn is quite nice."
  • Sobriquet said:
    As i understand it, if a serpent steals something of mine it'll go directly and automatically to the fence, instantly. Right? If so, could we please allow IDM to bypass this in order to still train serpents who wish to become thieves? IDM can't be forced, and it'll allow trainee thieves to practice without us actually losing things.
    It doesn't affect non targetted pickpocket, so that seems to be the training thing.

  • Trey said:
    I don't understand how anyone sees this as anything other than an improvement. As it stands now, you have to be AFK for a VERY long period of time, to the tune of several hours, for a thief to have a chance of stealing your shit. You then have to not have the basics of antitheft, such as rewearing your pack if you take it off.
    This assumes that worn things cannot be stolen.

    Last time an admin said they can't be, they were wrong, didn't bother responding to me when I told them such, and later on apologised for it in a random thread that I never saw until someone pointed it out to me.

    So I don't exactly expect good things here from an already buggy system.
  • Worn things cannot be stolen directly unless you are forced to remove them. If there is a problem, file a BUG.
    "If you build it, they will come."
  • edited July 2019
    Can confirm that worn items cannot be stolen.

    You can't even start a pickpocket on an item if it is worn.
  • You don't need pickpocket to steal anyway.

  • Ictinus said:
    Worn things cannot be stolen directly unless you are forced to remove them. If there is a problem, file a BUG.
    Profit said:



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