Petition to Remove Thieves

[jugahbu]

The game mechanics and playerbase don't support Thieves anymore. Being able to steal and pry equipment from someone who invested hours in doing challenge areas to get equipment and getting gold to gamble is a ridiculous game mechanic. Power ranking a trash halfling thief and being blackjacked within a matter of seconds of logging in is a one sided game mechanic.

There have been many efforts to try to "fix" thieves but the fact is, nothing has worked. Thieves are still able to flee and hide after blackjacking and stealing/prying/saccing all your unique and rare eq.

Some people would say "just sit in your hovel" and others would say "just quit", but is that the game you want to play? Do you want to play a game where you spend hours investing in your char just to have it stripped away without a fight? No! Join me in this petition to remove thieves from the game!

[Dogran]

I have killed many thieves by keeping spice in my sack and staying spiced up while a thief is near.

[BlackWidow]

Kalist said "Let's remove steal from the game!" about a year or two ago and got nowhere. I don't know what you expect to accomplish here...

Blackjack only lasts two hours now btw, and there's all sorts of mitigation factors which have been introduced and which make it much more difficult for a thief to actually get anything of value.

You haven't shown convincing logic either, merely an emotional appeal to the crowd.

In short, you're wasting your time with this so-called "petition".

[Andrael]

on the other hand, make friends with the thief they may give you the left overs

[Andrael]

Or better yet, be the thief you don't want to see in the world

[Ashlyn]

Sometimes you live long enough to see yourself become the villain

[Davairus]

There is a concept we can consider called "perception" which would be a measure of your character's visual acuity, or ability to see fine detail. It would help you to notice fast moving objects and actions being performed, like someone sneaking into the room or looting stuff from the floor (or your sack), or swinging a blackjack at you. So that would be obviously zero if your asleep, otherwise it could be based on how much light is in the room, if you are an elf, if you have some kinda buff that increases alertness (spice)... maybe if you type "tar arunore", your perception is better vs arunore. or if you type look, search or scan, your perception is temporarily raised since you are doing vigilant things, whereas if youre standing in a crowded room or a noisy room then its harder to see what everyone is doing, as the most obvious example of lowered perception due to distractions.

So if we had that concept fleshed out, hypothetically speaking, then the blackjack skill would not be just a straightforward KO , instead you would have to actually figure a way to reduce your victims perception enough that they cannot see your blackjack coming at ALL, and only *then* you can try to hit them with it.

One thing we used to do with big pbase was just go stand in the park which meant you could see the thief, since they can't hide in forests, but I dont see much distinction between that and just typing "Tar flinnegan", right.. it probably could be *that* easy to get a quick perception bonus. If you know that thief is an asshole and want to be always looking for him, then sucks for him. also, there is existing counterplay to that one, since the thief could just use their disguise skill to bypass.

It would also help if cityguards were not useless, if the guards had perception as well then maybe they could spot blackjacks from scan range and come ruin your party. so you would have to watch the guards patrol patterns and time it better. It does not make much sense for them to just watch without sounding the alarm when thieves do thief things. town citizens could yell what happened too. I guess beggars would do nothing though.

Anyway, I think that might be fun. I played a load of hitman last year and I loved all the disguises and learning patrols/distracting the mobs. and it was kind of still possible to Rambo and flee after a shoot out. very fun and much of what I wrote above is in that game, and I feel like we have a bunch of this stuff kinda done already here too.

[Kalist19]

In 2021 I posted that thread 'Radial thief idea' where I proposed either removing steal/making pry harder or letting hunger/thirst wake you from blackjack.

The underlying rationale behind the proposition was that thieves were anti-fun and hard to counter. I thought that if someone played an unkillable, highly successful thief it would actually prevent other players from logging on. That's bad for the game if a handful of people all sit down to play and think 'I don't want to get blackjacked and robbed, I think I'll play a different game instead'. I also felt it would be relatively easy to play an unkillable, highly successful thief.

I said it was a wild idea and was very happy to let the issue drop if people disagreed - the post was met with quite a bit of negativity.

There are some tools to avoid or help reduce the risk of blackjack/steal that came into effect between that thread and now - you can use spice to prevent blackjack (not sure if that was in before or after), poison yourself (three eyed root from witch wood, i think there's a teapot in tower of sorcery).

That would be cool if the pharmacy in seringale sold a pill that did low level poison.

Davairus' idea of adding perception to the mix sounds really cool.

[Davairus]

Well I dont know about "cool" but what I wrote would defintely be a paradigm shift,

For instance, forget everything you know about sneak, that would just be a test to see whether you (A) notice anything at all (sight or sound), (B) "someone enters the room" (sound-only), or (C) "arunore sneaks in" (sight-only), and the only thing typing sneak is going to do is reduce your observer's rolls into potentially a lower bracket by attempting to lower how much noise you make. no "trampling around loudly again", that skill proficiency is just lowering a roll.

Similar with hide checks., upon entering a room you might see (A) nothing, (B) "someone is here" (C) Arunore is hiding here, and the only thing hide is doing is making it harder to see him. again, hide proficiency is improving your roll. no "failing" hide, your skill just depends how well you can hide. Having been detected would mean you are visible to the player who detected you until you move into a new hiding place, no matter if 100% hide.

And with blackjacks, thieves are swinging a big dumb sack with a piece of iron of some sort, so you might (A) never see it coming, (B) hear the wind whistling, (C) see it but be too slow and get hit.

Then from there its just things that make the detecting easier or worse, like if you were in crowds, if you were targetted, if the thief is disguised and the disguise is appropriate for the environment, if the room is dark or broad daylight, if you have a spell to help like "sixth sense" or the monk skill "sense motion", or "keen sight". Poisoning yourself does not make sense to improve your visual acuity, but eating spice does. You would have a harder time hiding if you had just walked into a room with mud on your shoes, or if you are smelly. things like "where" "scan" "look" would all increase perception for a little bit until you move rooms. keen sight, detect hidden increase your perception. these would all just have varying effects on how much they can influence a roll for success, and we'd have to have a good list of these with room for some counters for it to be fun and interesting.

There could be something like "overpower" for thieves where you can try to roll your stealth manuver with luck on it. like "lucky blackjack <kalist>" to attempt to hail mary that blackjack. but the luck could maybe go either way on it, as a way to take a chance.

The bigger picture of this idea is that the guy standing around presents a puzzle to be solved by the thief, which at the end of the day is how do you knock him out or rob him. like if you want to go in loud (or have to, because he's "too alert") then that is going to be dirt kick, flee, then steal their sack before they're out of the watery eyes phase.

---

And lastly I think if we're just starting polls (again) to remove thieves or remove things from thieves, the first one to go would obviously be pry. That's not using stealth, its using force. that skill could be something everyone can use on players they have used mercy on, so that you dont have to kill a dude for the stetson. incap him, pry it while he's bleeding out. I think that's probably much more reasonable, although I see the ratioale for it working on a knocked out opponent. Its similar, both are incapacitated states, but I don't see that would be a thief-only thing, why wouldnt a dark-knight do it? also thief does have backstab/dual backstab so that means having them whipping someones ass before they can begin just force-removing all their things seems a reasonable expectation. stealing someones pants while they're wide awake and still wearing them seems entertaining though, but probably better to do it via figuring out some way to reduce their perception so drastically low that they can't feel their pants moving. I think you would have to actually drug them so that they lose their ability to feel. Pry via force doesnt fit in the picture I just painted. I rambled,ugh