Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
- 6.2K All Categories
- 3.1K Everything Achaea
- 1.5K North of Thera
- 26 Archives of the Terraformer
- 257 The Matsuhama Arena
- 885 The Golden Dais of Creation
- 299 The Scarlattan Theatre
- 149 The Blank Canvas
- 2K Getting Help
- 412 General Questions
- 258 Quick Class Questions
- 1.3K Tech Support
- 313 Client Help
- 486 Curing Systems and Scripts
- 841 Off-Topic
- 255 The Wander Inn
- 586 The Universal Membrane
- 298 Class Discussions
- 298 Individual Class Sections
- 20 Alchemist
- 9 Apostate
- 30 Blademaster
- 9 Depthswalker
- 14 Druid
- 4 Infernal
- 20 Jester
- 19 Magi
- 34 Monk
- 11 Occultist
- 8 Paladin
- 7 Priest
- 29 Runewarden
- 18 Sentinel
- 26 Serpent
- 20 Shaman
- 9 Sylvan
Theft Updates
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
"Ultimately, we do not want Achaea to become a completely safe world for your characters. That there is some risk in the game that is not entirely opt-in or administratively-created and initiated is, in our opinion, a good thing and something we want to keep."
Why is this a good thing? Isn't the #1 priority for players to have a positive, enjoyable experience playing Achaea?
I don't understand theft at all. Does anyone enjoy going to work and then having someone steal their wallet or break into their home and take their stuff? Is there anyone who says, "I'm really glad this risk exists!" Everything in Achaea has a gold value, which can be turned into credits, which has a USD value. Criminal behavior is very profitable for the very few criminals who do it, and very harmful for the many victims. I do not understand why a game allows one player to steal $50 from another player, and how that risk can be seen as a good thing. Maybe if the game was called "Theft" and the entire point was for everyone to steal from each other, and people joined the game for the sole purpose of stealing from each other.
Surely the desire for realism is superseded by the desire for players to have a positive, enjoyable experience playing Achaea. If you want theft to remain in the game, make it a victimless crime to those who don't want to be victimized by it. Eliminate the possibility for people to lose money, and create a system of rewards from an NPC for the thief. Thievery could work the same except people wouldn't lose stuff and the thief would get a cut/other rewards from an NPC (something like how you take a trophy from a sea monster for a reward). In addition to monetary rewards (whether items or gold), thieves tend to like fame. Have NPCs say, "Traveler, watch out for the thief Elyon in these parts." Or have graffiti messages of that nature pop up in towns and villages where a thief is successful.
The idea is that people who want to thieve can have the rewards of money and fame, but not at the expense of others players who don't enjoy being stolen from. For many people, a positive, enjoyable experience playing Achaea means not having to always be on edge.
Why is this a good thing? Isn't the #1 priority for players to have a positive, enjoyable experience playing Achaea?
Safety doesn't actually mean that an experience is enjoyable, or positive. Bungee jumping is dangerous, but it's thrilling (or so I hear). You can't have a living world with no risk, and no danger. The key is that it's possible to provide danger without it becoming toxic.
While I agree that at the moment the risk to reward ratio is still somewhat skewed towards thieves, the fact that they're now open PK means that there's a much stronger disincentive to engage with them. The challenge we'll see is that at least one city is more than willing to go attack people for fighting off a thief.
"Ultimately, we do not want Achaea to become a completely safe world for your characters. That there is some risk in the game that is not entirely opt-in or administratively-created and initiated is, in our opinion, a good thing and something we want to keep."
This message does feel a bit at odds with how cautious we need to be when it comes to PK, such as during raids, which is generally also a far less punishing thing to fall prey to. How come we can't be a little more trigger happy with PK if we want risk to be a thing in Achaea? You can't even hit a soldier before sanctioning a raid, and you can't even hit those outside of the city during one without other opt-in mechanics, when all they stand to lose is a bit of xp and two minutes of embracing death.
If the goal is to make Achaea a little more dangerous of a world, there's more interesting ways to do it, is my main point. I'd even argue that theft only really makes the world more dangerous for the inexperienced and underprepared, while most people find it more of a nuisance to have to stop whatever they're doing and get away from the Serpent following them, sometimes for several attempts. Only a small subset of players can chase a Serpent down succesfully, and generally not alone. These players are also not as likely to be targetted in the first place, or not nearly as often. Lyrin's case was obviously a big exception, with different issues for different reasons.
tl;dr Loosen PK rules if you want danger.
Next on the list:
After all, if you're a thief you are choosing the profession and Achaea is a dangerous world with consequences for actions. 😜
I agree 100% and I don't even engage in PK....I would MUCH rather be subject to the more occasional death than have the risk of large scale theft.
These are, undeniably, great changes to the system. They also don't address the biggest issues, they just sand off a few of the roughest edges.
I'm all for a sense of danger, but theft is a terrible mechanic for creating it. If we want a more dangerous world, it would be much better to delete theft and try and create some new mechanics that can create danger beyond permanently losing your stuff if you're not on guards, that can create conflict beyond endlessly chasing people who have no incentive not to run infinitely.
Any kind of change to the worst parts of theft is a good thing. But it really does feel like we're stuck in this loop where every 3-4 years we get minor changes to this system because the game is just married to this mechanic that a huge portion of the playerbase does not enjoy.
@Akri
I will definitely agree that PK has been experiencing something of a rules creep, and I am not against having a conversation about that with the team. Updates have been implemented as situations arise and perhaps we all need to be a little less worried about XP loss and hurt feelings in the moment.
Delete theft and make everyone open PK for one death per RL day. Maybe it can be fancy and blue in the honors or something. "This person hasn't received their daily beat down yet."
we all need to be a little less worried about XP loss and hurt feelings in the moment.
I'd say people aren't worried enough about XP loss, which is contributing to why we're in this situation.
The thief wins 100,000 gold or the sentimental wedding ring from someone who is afk. They get hunted down and killed and lose a fifth of one percent. Nobody gives a damn about losing XP anymore, and that's part of the reason this system is broken. The only reason PK has even worked this far is because both the victim and the perpetrator are risking the same thing: experience, which nobody gives a damn about losing.
XP loss isn't nearly punishing enough a consequence to stop someone from participating in an activity where they can acquire massive gluts of wealth.
I’ve poked about this already, but any chance we can change all class skills that require selfishness to be down to work with it up instead? It would also be nice if you could give a plant/mineral with selfishness up for some force actions that are used in combat. Monk immediately comes to mind. As it stands you can be stolen from while fighting and putting selfishness down/up mid fight isn’t viable.
You make more gold per hour bashing than thieving. Dunno where people get the idea that theft is a get rich quick scheme
One of the bigger cons to theft is the guardstacking it has resulted in.
There are great places to role-play affinity to and could develop an identity and reputation for being associated with, but any time spent there comes with an increasing risk of being targeted for theft and eventually being caught with your guard down or an internet hiccup and losing everything.
The "you can usually find him reading in the fishing village where he grew up" or "go ask so-and-so, she spends most of her time in the bogs and may have some insight into that type of infection" types of characters a severely limited and I think fear of theft plays a part in that.
If we really believe that theft makes people believe that Achaea is "dangerous" and "risky" then make theft an NPC mechanic. It would have nothing to do with remaining idle for too long. You would always have a VERY small chance of an NPC stealing gold, maybe vials and other things from you. Your thief would then try to make a getaway but would defend itself if attacked. NPC level would scale with your own, as obviously it takes a more brazen and deadly thief to consider stealing from a dragon while the newer, younger thieves prey on the level 30's. Maybe an honours-level quest with the thieving organization could render you immune for a time. Infamy and other types of quests or time spent in certain areas or killing thieves in their den hideout increases your chance of being targeted.
XP loss is only a real concern to a portion of players right around level 80, or who are in the mid-eighties pushing up to dragon. It actually -can- be a sucky cost to engaging in combat if it means you're losing a large chunk of hunting time with every death.
I saw this with the Reckoning a lot, where we definitely had people dip out because they were just dying way too much and were losing hours of bashing time for engaging in combat, something already not their favorite activity.
However, if you're dragon level then experience loss becomes basically negligible. And this goes double if you know how to fight, because the catchup experience for player kills can slingshot you back up in just a handful of kills (I ended up -up- on experience after the Reckoning, for instance, despite hundreds of deaths).
The result is that XP loss is important only to people who are newer, less experienced, or who don't fight much, who are likely to lose more and have less ways to get it back. If you're a thief or a raider the system is designed to affect you less. It's only a disincentive to exactly the people who we want to be encouraging to be -more- involved with conflict systems, and meaningless to the people who maybe should actually have a disincentive to what they do.
@Argwin I said it in the last thread that promo items can't be the targeted
@Namino a group of people with no idea what they are doing shouldn't get to instawin because there's lots of them. Plenty of people can take me out alone. If a whole raid group screws it up then it's kinda on them for being bad
Glad to see the changes to protections, it's largely an asspain to go rob some big evil guy only to find him just returned
Biggest issue for me here is that I'm not gonna be able to see who's just fishbotting but w/e I'll way up the pros and cons of getting 5manned by folks over it and or just making my system avoid everyone as opposed to just a select few for the sake of trying to get something good
I'm largely cool with these changes. I do agree with the sentiment that protections should extend to people under 21 years old and under level 30. Realistically, I'd probably make it under 21 years old and under level 50.
Under 21 years old alone is just kind of dangerous... a lot of actual new players don't play super often, so they age quicker than they level. This could result in, like, level 10 players getting robbed because they only played once a week for the first few months. I don't think anyone wants that.
Other than that, hard to object to any of these changes.
I too appreciate this changes because they are in the end meant to provide a bit more consequences to being a thief.
However, as man y have pointed, this still does not address the crux of the matter, the disparity of what is risked between target and perpetrator. Even a long string of deaths are not equal to the loss of a sentimental item or any such physical item.
Just as important, though, is the point @grandue raises about how theft as it presently works stifles the game world. You rarely find people out in the woods, so to speak, and that has much to do with annoying types trying to steal from you sometimes not once or twice but over and over until eventually they drive you away.
The world would be so much richer if people felt like they could actually make use of the sprawling world without fearing such is tantamount to either losing shit they care about or just being interrupted by repeated attempts without doing anything to warrant it.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
Also no thief who list
If you're going to do it at least put it on wanted posters throughout the city
That would be super cool
Except the group knew what they were doing, brought classes specific to countering your own (BM for hamstring and DW to damage burst), and you just bought your way out of it by chaining together multiple artefacts -- WoR, lyre, and urn -- because you're actually terrified of the thing you think justifies theft in the first place: in-game consequences.
I'm very happy to have a sense of danger and excitement. It'd be nice if thieves embraced it and experienced it once in a while themselves.
At what point are multiple attempts to steal from you, considered harassment? At what point does it become not okay to make it so that playing the game becomes impossible because you can't do anything without one of them being there? because this doesn't deal with that at all.
It's interesting how in a world fueled by conflict with a hint of danger, there are so many ways to avoid or circumvent both. Either people just stand around on guard stacks all day treating the game like a virtual chat room, or utilize any number of artefacts that for some reason keep getting added to further enable people to escape retribution for their actions. Apparently the world of Achaea is only as dangerous as the depth of your pockets, or at the very least made much less so as a result.
@Namino you don't think having to escape constantly is " in game concequences"?
You just think that oh, you did x so now you should just stand and let us kill you.
If I used my artefacts to escape your group then your group screwed up and my plan worked, simple as that.
As for danger and excitement, I got that from the chases, learning to counter pursuers etc. If that's not your thing that's fine but in what world does it make sense to try to fight a battle that you can't win simply to give your enemy the satisfaction of killing you? If I really wanted to cheese the system I'd just let you kill me so that my infamous status would go down as soon as I killed someone
@Gwi theft is open on anyone at any time. Way theft works now is that you need to use multiple attempts in order to have any modicum of success. If you want to be protected against thieves just employ competent antitheft, your city will be able to help you with it
@Kresslack artefacts are part of the meta in pretty much every part of the game. Gather herbs? Artefacts. Pvp? Artefacts. Theft? Artefacts. All possible without but they do give you a modicum of success. (Though actually it wouldn't really stop thievery if I didn't have them. I'd just die and respawn and do it again I guess with a minimal chase)
Like all things considered , I bought artefacts that made what I do easier or more fun or more survivable, same as everyone else in pvp I guess
@Elyon This is completely reasonable, and almost to be expected, from an individual perspective, especially as a thief. The idea of any thief is to, ideally, minimum risk while maximizing reward. I think a lot of the frustration is at the (supposedly unintentional) result that a lot of artefacts, especially when it comes to PvP, make escaping PvP after actions that would initiate it, easier to accomplish. It's just like people who pop into a city to attack someone, people rush to attack them, they urn out, try again a few minutes later and rinse and repeat that. It results in a noticeable imbalance with how retribution is supposed to be pursued and reasonably accomplished, which is an issue for the Administration to be cognizant of and adjust as necessary, in my opinion.
You would not believe the amount of anger that comes from a death from some even in modern Achaea where the penalties for it are nearly trivial.
I think these changes are fantastic, and a huge step in the right direction.
My only suggestion at this point is that the feeling of being constantly harassed/hounded was not addressed, because the thief can still follow you around and try to pickpocket you all they want to. Either until they get bored, or you go to a location they can't reach like city guard stacks.
My two suggestions for this:
1 - Include generic <pickpocket> in the CD that happens when you try to pickpocket <item> and fail. Vigilance and bell tattoo become more needed if you're going to be outside of your city.
2 - Since the above effectively makes every theft attempt a one-shot situation, adjust Mesmerize so that when you appraise someone with an orb, you still get to see if they are selfish or not, rather than not being able to see it at all currently, or just have Mesmerize bypass shimmering orb period (does it already do that? Never tested). With good timing and all, you can still suggest generosity and pickpocket an item or generic for anything, but it's a one-shot chance with a hard CD on that person (maybe make it a static 1 hour). I could see it being adjusted so that targetted pickpocket has a better chance of working at base, but that is the point of the casing system. These suggestions essentially blankets the entire interaction under the same CD restrictions that are already in place for casing/targetted pickpocket so that you're not being harassed with repeated generic pickpocket attempts when everything else failed/is on CD.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
@Kresslack yup. Same stuff is used by the people who 6v1 earring gank (or did before nerfs) or people who come into cities to attack folk. If you really wanted to do something you could put a 5 min aggression timer on all forms of quick escape and thus take out the whole problem but then you'd have a lot of pissed off people who bought artefacts for that particular reason , thus ticking off people who bought artefacts like that with the sole purpose of using them to ditch outta fights they don't want to be in (which is like 75 percent of urn/earring/etc buyers in general let's be honest) .
If a thief wanted to mini max and metagame and be a dick about it they would just stay low level, pickpocket, backpack gold and just let people kill them i guess. At least the artefacts give a chase or something and allows you to play escapes without just being a LOL UGRACH and means the conflict lasts longer than just "oh he stole 100k from me" "oh I killed him well there we go that's done"
@Atalkez I'd support a cool down if the chances to fail on theft were removed. Targeted already has a reasonable cool down but untargettrd failing to get anything on a dude with 2000 letters then saying lol you can't steal from him would be kinda silly.
Truthfully I can see this update as being the death of untargetted theft since it simply doesn't seem worth the hassle unless you're going for a backpack or something good so I don't see it as being likely needed
Elyon, I don't think 100% success is at all warranted, but I would not oppose seeing the base chance increased like I mentioned if every theft attempt is a single shot at the person per hour or whatever. I don't know the full ins and outs of the casing system, but maybe instead of losing all cases on death, it's an incremental decrease or something? Correct me if I'm mistaken in how that part works.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
@Atalkez the biggest problem with untargetted theft is really that people were wandering around with 700k in their packs and hanging around outside of their city afk or something with either crap or no antitheft. Essentially limiting untargetted to a single theft would be "remove untargetted theft" because noone is going to be interested enough in getting a blank letter, 5 sigils or 5k gold to go through the rigmarole of actually having to deal with being a thief.
Most actual victims of it in regards to me lost a few sigils or a couple gold or something, nothing soul crushing with the exception of two people who were old enough to know better than to keep 700k in their pack
@Atalkez I only mean 100percent on untargetted which seems to be limited to sigils, letters and capped at 10k gold per (if your mark is carrying like 500k plus). If you were guaranteed a theft of your thing the cap on untargetted wouldn't be so bad but truth be told it just sounds like it'd make thieves just more likely to case you repeatedly to get your good stuff than just try their luck for some sigils to annoy you
Cases yeah, you lose all cases on death to that player or that mark right now and uh, I'd be in favour of it staying that way as it gives marks and the player a reason to actually pursue the thief. If I lost like, a case from you killing me it'd be a lot less risky for me to build up a ten stack of cases and go for your good stuff
I mean it'd take a few RL days but it would kinda take away a lot of the risk from casing folks