Too much stealing!

[AreYouKidden]

How do you find something that doesn't promote griefing on a pure griefing class.. ? Any kind of buff or change that helps or doesnt nerf them.. will cause discord to go crazy..

just remove stealing at this point

If you've given up, I'm certainly not promoting the class for you... With that said, when there is counterplay involved, actions from thieves seem less griefy - but without viable counterplay, thieves are always a net negative experience. I think you have to recognize what is seen as grief, and limit those scenarios while enabling the scenarios that aren't necessarily grief-able.

Greif like notions:
Moongate auto script targeting,.
Town targeting (especially at bank using scripts).
Stealing resources so your opponent can't fight
Auto Popping all of someone's trap pouches with nothing in them..
Targeting the same person over and over again..

None of these things is even about thieving for profit, they are thieving to grief. You've as much as said so yourself.

Ideas to toy around with:
Laughing Skulls idea of suspicion tied directly to the character your thieving from means you could actually lighten up town suspicion as it stands - and tie it as town suspicion by character, this opens up lots of opportunity for thieves, while limiting the targeted harassment type thieving.. If you also add in that a player can go gray to more than just the person they are thieving from - then it becomes more counter-able as well, more risky for the thief - which is seen as more counter-able.

Putting items in trap pouches - It was my understanding you can pop a pouch with items under it - with that said if it's buried you can't see it to pop it - maybe putting an item in a trap pouch needs to change it a different color from red, so you can auto pop hued pouches - reality is, there's a 2 sec cooldown before you can open it after popping it, so if the player doesn't counter play by moving away after having the pouch trapped - thieves should be able to dig into it..

Some items just shouldn't be steal-able in my eyes, it's any resource related items, because it basically means a player must now leave, to stock back up so they can play again.. And then they are also forced to leave the area they wanted to farm in, or get thieved from again. Anything lootable from mobs however, should be thievable. If you can force someone out of an area, it's a griefy action - and why thieves get a bad name..

Anyways - trying to offer up suggestions for a class thieves have basically given up on, when in general I see them as a net negative experience.. I don't think most people complain about the drop they just got, that got stolen before they ran it out of a dungeon - those are truly where the thieves should have opportunity, and right now trap pouches are far too easy to remove that opportunity.

 

[StimulusCheck]

What about easing some of the barriers to stealing if we address the griefing part of it:

Easier Revenge:
- Using the stealing skill also applies a hamstring effect to player attempting to steal.
- Bring back Perma Gray status to anyone you steal from

Anit-Griefing:
- Apply suspicion at a player level. (Ex: You cannot steal from this person for another X timeframe, they have recently been stolen from and they are highly suspicious OR apply it to the theif for the same player)

Just throwing out ideas.

There is no fixing it. In essence, it is a requirement to nerf steal here. Otherwise, how the heck are people going to AFK all day without consequence? The biggest measure of a shard's success is how many "active" players it has. AFK macro users are active players.

Why would you need to apply suspicion on a player level? The PERSON playing the game should be suspicious. If a thief is bothering you all you have to do is go somewhere else. This is a typical crybaby solution. It's because you are not even playing the game. You are AFK doing something while someone is actually playing the game and you are getting on THEIR case for actually playing.

A thief is not a "griefing class". In essence it comes down to these crybaby problems:

Crybaby problem #1) All my pouches are being popped!
Crybaby problem #2) Somebody stole my pixels and made me cry. I wasn't even playing the game at the time but still it's not not fair! I'm a big baby.
Crybaby problem #3) Someone is griefing me! They stole my recall regs and griefed me! They took my bandages and I've been... i've been.... GRIEFED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There is absolutely no other real problem. They are all little crybaby nuanced complaints revolving around these three "problems".

The way it used to work was when you joined the thief guild, you would still appear blue but actually be perma-gray and freely attackable to anyone, anywhere. Hence the need for disguise kits that could only be purchased from the guild. Even so, you now have a generic name and people are intrinsically suspicious. If you are standing around popping someone's pouches all day or otherwise making them cry, they can just attack you and then you appear gray to everyone who can then kill you freely. This causes the thief to move somewhere else. The only "protection" offered to the thief in this situation is that the person can't be 100% certain that you *are* in the guild, and if they attack you, they might get guard whacked - and of course they cry about this - their own decision - too.

Can you replicate the above system here? No. AFK macroing is encouraged. The only reason it worked long ago was because such AFK activity was not allowed.

So with the addition of not even being able to pop empty trapped pouches, you are left with only two crybaby problems:

Crybaby problem #2) Somebody stole my pixels and made me cry. I wasn't even playing the game at the time but still it's not not fair! I'm a big baby.
Crybaby problem #3) Someone is griefing me! They stole my recall regs and griefed me! They took this or that! They took my bandages and I've been... i've been.... GRIEFED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For #3, it's an easy explanation: It's no different than someone being PK'ed to the point of feeling so GRIEFED that they have to leave the server. Everytime you get stolen from, you are being griefed, but it's just not bad enough for you to leave. It's like a little mini-grief, or a half grief. You won't join the ranks of those that were griefed so much by PKs that they had to leave. The griefed feels upset and is a giant baby. Probably a 35 to 40-year old man-baby. Everything that puts him in a bad spot isn't fair and it makes his lady parts itch.

The fact is, the only reason stealing is so nerfed on this server is because 80%-90% of the online players are AFK.. Nobody standing at any of the banks are actually there and half of the other people are AFK scripting mining rocks in town, or even the walls of bridges. Or fishing. Or beating the crap out of each other in groups of three for 2 days.

You can't fix it stealing with an AFK system like this. Any discussion about fixing it is a red-herring. That's the dirty little secret.

 

[Laughing Skull]

The way it used to work was when you joined the thief guild, you would still appear blue but actually be perma-gray and freely attackable to anyone, anywhere. Hence the need for disguise kits that could only be purchased from the guild. Even so, you now have a generic name and people are intrinsically suspicious. If you are standing around popping someone's pouches all day or otherwise making them cry, they can just attack you and then you appear gray to everyone who can then kill you freely. This causes the thief to move somewhere else. The only "protection" offered to the thief in this situation is that the person can't be 100% certain that you *are* in the guild, and if they attack you, they might get guard whacked - and of course they cry about this - their own decision - too.

Now, between all the different variations of UO I have played, my memory is quite muddled, but I think this is how I remember the original UO being. I like going back to this idea. I would be curious to hear why they didn't implement it this way, especially if this is how it was originally.

You claim a lot of the reasons rulesets are the way they are is to protect AFK players. This is outlandish and flat out wrong. I've played this game for at least a year. The only AFK players I have seen are those training up new skills or people that are legitimately AFK. With that said, I am glad you brought up the thieves guild and grey status, I am curious to know more about that.

 

[JellyBeanBen]

Trammie.. ^^

yeah yeah... the name calling when someone has a legit point about a broken feature. We know, you want to be invis and able to take other people's gold all day. Sounds amazingly boring while also killing the new player base. Was it just too tough to find afk tamers to pvp?

 

[JellyBeanBen]

Crybaby problem #1) All my pouches are being popped!
Crybaby problem #2) Somebody stole my pixels and made me cry. I wasn't even playing the game at the time but still it's not not fair! I'm a big baby.
Crybaby problem #3) Someone is griefing me! They stole my recall regs and griefed me! They took my bandages and I've been... i've been.... GRIEFED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Crybaby problem #2) Somebody stole my pixels and made me cry. I wasn't even playing the game at the time but still it's not not fair! I'm a big baby.
Crybaby problem #3) Someone is griefing me! They stole my recall regs and griefed me! They took this or that! They took my bandages and I've been... i've been.... GRIEFED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Maybe we could hear from someone that doesn't need to say crybaby 42 times to express themselves? It is griefing, they steal items with out any real value

 

[StimulusCheck]

Maybe we could hear from someone that doesn't need to say crybaby 42 times to express themselves? It is griefing, they steal items with out any real value

That's a great argument. Sounds like you are being a... being a... being a CRYBABY about it, lmao. Your comment says nothing of substance. You are generalizing all thieves under the banner "they" and being self-appointed governor of item values.

Maybe we could hear from someone that can articulate an actual opinion?

#1: Quit saying cry baby
#2: All thieves are the same
#3: Everything they do is griefing
#4: Items have a value that I SAY!

So what items of value should thieves steal exactly?

 

[StimulusCheck]

Now, between all the different variations of UO I have played, my memory is quite muddled, but I think this is how I remember the original UO being. I like going back to this idea. I would be curious to hear why they didn't implement it this way, especially if this is how it was originally.

You claim a lot of the reasons rulesets are the way they are is to protect AFK players. This is outlandish and flat out wrong. I've played this game for at least a year. The only AFK players I have seen are those training up new skills or people that are legitimately AFK. With that said, I am glad you brought up the thieves guild and grey status, I am curious to know more about that.

"The only AFK players I have seen are those training up new skills or people that are legitimately AFK."

Which account for a ridiculously large portion of people who are "playing".

 

[StimulusCheck]

Now, between all the different variations of UO I have played, my memory is quite muddled, but I think this is how I remember the original UO being. I like going back to this idea. I would be curious to hear why they didn't implement it this way, especially if this is how it was originally.

You also needed to have 60 or 70 stealing to join the guild, and your character had to have 48 hours of in-game time. When in the guild you were not able to give murder counts, and your body was *always* freely lootable no matter what your status. You could also be freely stolen from by other thieves with no recourse except trying to steal your items back or kill them. I vaguely recall an issue where you would be kicked out of the guild temporarily (unable to buy disguise kids) if you did something. I think it was if you had a few murder counts or something like that. You could also run half of your stealth steps (10 max).

The biggest protections to a thief were the ability to disarm and disarm-steal to get out of danger from PKs or other people. Hiding was only good 20% of the time for obvious reasons. People see right where you hid. Stealth wasn't great at getting away due to the cooldown. Stealing certain regs was a strategy used to keep PKers and victims off of you after (or even before, but usually after due to the awareness that you are now dealing with a thief) a successful steal. Same with taking bandages if your thief was able to dish out damage. It wasn't always easy to get away, so you had to use attrition on your victim or the PK coming after you. There is not much room for offensive/defensive skills in the thief template - although DP thiefs did have a lot of nice success. That's my experience playing Catskills Buc Den, anyway. Even back then, bank thieves would mostly be whacked right away and never successful. The only people in town you could successfully steal from time and time again were people sitting like 10 tiles away from any NPCs and they deserved it, lol.

None of this works here, and a lot of old players miss it. It wasn't about griefing someone to steal their regs or bandages, it was about the skill of surving and whittling their defense and offense down while you picked them clean. If you randomly got your regs picked, it wasn't someone griefing you, it was a no-money mage theif trying to stock up on a few regs to go play survival. None of it was easy to do. I'd say being a theif is more of a "survival" based class than a griefing class - the majority of time isn't spent stealing, but playing survival, running, dodging, getting away.

 

[Lemora]

The only thing so far in this thread that is actual griefing is going out of your way to target someone over and over again because they are that specific person. Even then, only if it is to be annoying, and not because they are a loot pinata.

Anything else is not grieifng, but "I FEEEEL griefed." Big difference. A projection of motive through emotion and single minded assumption.

Everything else is for profit. Popping bags is to see if anything is in them. Thats a bit of a stretch of hubris and projection to assume someone is popping your bags to annoy you.

Scripted moongate thieving is indeed trash but it isnt griefing. LOL Thats hilarious. Its just abuse like afk recall mining.

Ive run into the same people a few times. You know what one of them said? Dude what are you doing how is there any profit? Let me show you how to make profit he says, as he gathers resources. Typical blue NPC, projecting themselves onto others. I dont care if I make my way by stealing regs (and to be fair, Ive literally never bought regs and have stacks of them, its quite profitable!) or stealing stacks of 250 gold at a time. If that is how I want to make my way in the world then I will.

The assumption that an action not being the most efficient way of gathering items must therefore equal griefing or some other motive is trash, laughable, and projection of solipsism to an extreme. The complete disregard for enjoyment of playstyle is as well. Its completely single-minded and a worldview of the self. It is truly the definition of solipsism.

These threads are always utter trash, repetitive, and inconsequential because they are always populated 50% of people like the above who will never be able to get it or care to but still want to force their emotion based opinions and assumptions on everyone else.

PS the OP was a great exercise in Poes Law and I thoroughly enjoyed it.