Little preamble.
As somebody who's recently started playing a character who's intended focus is to be more on the side of low crimes I find myself getting very frustrated with some of Arelith's systems. It is painfully obvious that there's a lot wrong. This is not to put the blame on anyone, as there has clearly been a solid foundation that then had decades worth of people with different ideas and solutions to hot button topics built atop of it, time and time again.
Currently it is a bit of a mess and I'd like to see this get adressed at some point.
QUARTERBREAKING (Lockpicking, Search, Disable Trap)
DC 127 for locks and traps is a comically high bar to pass. Only using Bard Song can beat it.
A fully specialized Rogue will never be able to achieve what these Bards can do. The same goes for Seekers, Vigilantes and others.
Class fantasy heavily blemished due to this. Only the awkwardly humming "Bard" can open many doors and disable their traps.
These traps and locks can be installed on any player housing door.
The traps alone turn this into an unfun cointoss gamble and depending on your build impossible to survive.
The owner of the quarter/house is facing only increased costs for every DC, in both installation and then monthly rent.
But coin is a false concern. It is an infinitely farmable resource. The costs can be easily outweighed by just doing very basic dungeon clearing. No circle grinding or hoarding of immense wealth required. Even a semi-active player can by themselves finance turning an entire faction base into a nigh-unconquerable fort against thieves and spies.
Broken system due to the traps. Upgrading the locks or the trap strength is not necessary. Just upgrade the trap DC to 127. If somebody can detect and disable that chances are that the DC127 lock would've made no difference anyways.
All in all very immersion, class fantasy and lore breaking.
SUGGESTIONS?
Nerf the currently very few and select overperforming solo-quarterbreaking builds.(Bard) Or alternatively raise all the other rogue archetypes' ability to reach similar scores of the skills necessary to successfully QB. Former would requires less work than the latter.
Remove front door traps.
Maximum DC adjustments. The Big Bad Evil Guy's abyssal doom fortress should retain astronomically high DCs. The random upstairs appartment at the Eagle shouldn't have Gond-forged locks. 3 tiers seem appropriate. A low tier for small solo rooms and abodes. Medium tier for bigger and more expensive housing. A high tier for faction bases and big server-known properties (Icehold, aforementioned abyss fortress, the Banite Church of Minmir).
Characters without a key/faction access to the quarter can not access items inside the storage chest of the property.
The storage is now where the trap is located. Trap is changed to a non-lethal one. Instant fugue gameplay is non-interactive and un-fun. Turn it into a subdual version.
Storage chest instead has an option for intruders to steal from it. Similar to how pickpocketing works. Money is withdrawn from the player/faction owning the property, directly from their bank account.
Money values available for stealing should scale with the security tier of the property and money in the account(s).
No more runic materials and Greater Bags with weeks worth of materials inside getting stolen. More regular income for successful quarterbreakers, less painful losses for home owners. Win-win.
PICKPOCKETING
PP works perfectly fine in PvE. No complaints there. Random assortment of items that can be found keep it interesting.
Blade Orbs are a relic of a time when you were able to steal actual items from inventories. Very frustrating and zero way to avoid them if you have bad luck while trying to make money PPing.
SUGGESTIONS?
Remove natural 1 rolls from Pickpocket in PvP. A master thief should not have a 1 in 20 chance to have his entire business get flung up.
Sepparate the Pickpocket action into two skills.
Quick PP. Can not trigger blade orbs. Otherwise works just as PP currently does.
Deep PP. Only usable versus players. Similar to when attempting to steal from merchant NPCs. Long channelled action. Progressively more earnings, requiring you and target to stand still. Can trigger blade orbs at a higher chance than current PP can. During this time the thief is spotted easier. Hard skill points invested into the Pickpocket skill reduce these penalties. After ending the channelled ability (interruptable at any time) the thief's victim will get a notification about a considerable amount of coin missing after the usual amount of time.