Pickpockets in the Shadovar Trade Post

[Eyeliner]

A vague thought but.. Maybe subdual could be allowed?

Honestly think subdual after pickpocketing should be the default somehow anyway. Getting caught at such a minor crime should be a beatdown not a death penalty.

[godhand-]

I propose the opposite end of the coin to what Scurvy peresents..... the current state of pickpocket is arguably broken.

I do the opposite, because I am playing a role play game, i pickpocket people i am ROLE PLAYING with.
I walk past people, non stealthed, and engage in roleplay with them and come up with a reason to be near them.
"Oh your muscles are so big" *squeezes arms*
then i pickpocket.
99/100 times, I am successful, noone sees the pickpocket.
99/100 times, the person will turn around after 30 seconds (the timer on notification) "HEY YOU THEIF" before they turn around and begin attacking me.

having played numerous pickpockets recently, the ONLY way to really pickpocket is from stealth, doing what scurvy cur suggests, Because why? Because of the above. Because people cannot take a loss, because people cannot accept losing money, they will metagame. I've literally had players mid conversation "HEY, YOU JUST TOOK 301 GOLD PIECES FROM ME! GIVE IT BACK OR DIE"

which makes no sense! You're talking to me and focused on a conversation. I am talking to you as a distraction.
Are you talking to me or looking through your coin purse counting the total value in your purse at the exact moment we're having a conversation???

I believe the pickpocket system needs to differentiate between a stealth pickpocket and a non-stealthed pickpocket.

A stealthed pickpocket, should have an 18 second (3 round) notification on the person who pickpockets you.

However, if you pickpocket from visible/non-stealth, the notification timer should be significantly expanded, potentially to 180 seconds.... , because 99/100 players CAN NOT help but metagame and attack you for something they cannot prove IC.

WYSIWYG after all? except for OOC notifications like getting pickpocketed.


Cliffs: There is no incentive to RP with your target with the current implementation. It rewards stealth pickpocket.

[Scylon]

Well, we need some other ways to address grievance. Our options are "hey, stop that", or just to kill them.

Personally, I think there should be no ooc notification if you are pickpocketed successful. It would add more reason to stick around and rp.

Also there needs to be. Prison system for lesser crimes. Can make it some time in a cell, and/or time with a debuff like res sickness

[The GrumpyCat]

Also there needs to be. Prison system for lesser crimes. Can make it some time in a cell, and/or time with a debuff like res sickness

I mean, PC guards are free to subdue the thief and put them in a cell for a bit, so long as they continue to provide the thief with some rp sure! (note that you shouldn't be holding someone in a cell for say, more than an hour or so without roleplay).

It's the old Freedom vs Consequence issue.

Right now we're heavy on Freedom, death has little mechanical meaning, and it's genuinly hard to mechanically hurt a character. This means that we have a lot of freedom to play our characters how we want, and it's geninly difficult to 'grief' another character with mechanical means. It can be done to a degree sure, but not as much as say, introducing a PvP 1 life than deleted penality - for example.

The downside of this is that there's less in the way of conseqence to actions - ultimatly if doesn't matter how many times you've PvPed GrimDeath Blackheart, he can always choose to respawn. It's up to him how his story ends, or (to a large extent) what effects him and that can be frustrating, I get that.

With Pickpocketing, pickpockets do have a minor way of mechanically effecting you (taking up to 3k gold once per 2 hours. And you have ways of effecting them (exile, pariahship, death come to mind immedatly, there are likely others.) We can add more ways of effecint PPers, or indeed characters in general - which I think is more where your suggestion is. But keep in mind if I we do this, then it might be used in ways you don't like, and we need to design it in ways that don't enforce penalities that can be too detrimental to players on a whole. E.g. - being able to imprison someone without roleplay for ooc weeks at a time.

[Rei_Jin]

I understand that for many the idea of having a character locked up for a long time after being found guilty of a crime is horrible.

IMO, that’s part of what makes playing an antagonist appealing; there’s some real risk to it.

Regardless of your alignment, when you go up against your enemy you are gunning for an outcome that means something.

If I, Holy McHolypants, catch Doom McTyrant trying to poison the city’s water supply, then I want to not just kill him (which he will come back from in 99% if situations), or exile him (he already breaks the law, like he cares), I want to imprison him so that he has some actual consequences for his actions.

And if I am Doom McTyrant in this scenario, I want to poison the city’s water supply, and I want to have an actual in-game effect; as an example, perhaps a notice is posted in town by a DM saying that X number of people/dogs/kittens were killed by some evil villain poisoning the water supply. Maybe some NPCs disappear for a bit. Signs get put up about it. People start agitating for more action from government, etc.

Because consequences are good; they give us a reason to do things.

At the moment there’s very few tangible consequences for anything that happens in game. It takes a lot of the thrill out, because honestly, who cares if you lose some coin or even get killed? Mechanically it means almost nothing. And that has its own on-flow effects, to where some have functionally griefed their chosen foes off the server, as there is no in-game “win” available that has any meaning.

[The GrumpyCat]

You've got a great point Rei-jin. I'm... relitivly neutral on this I think? I'm not saying that Cosequences (to within reason) are bad per se. Maybe adding more consequences for minor crimes and such is a good idea! My point is only that we need to consider it carefully,

For example - the ability for guards to imprison someone for a rl hour or so? That doesn't seem too bad. But what if it were a RL week?
'Sorry but a friend scried you and heard you worshiped Bane so now you're going to prison for the next RL week. Oh and when you get out? We're putting you right back in again! Now go away and make a LG tormite character!'

Or

The Bad Guy poisons the water supply, and this instantly kills any npc/pc in the city. Sure it's cool but it's also really unpleasent for the people who insta-die. Or even worse - lets say the badguys want to raid the bank, and succeed - Should we remove up to 1mil (or 'all') the gold from all Cordorian accounts? What if this became a regular thing?

I'm not saying that consequence is Bad, so much as it needs to be measured by
*That makes the game playable, how much 'fun' it takes from the player.
*What can be griefed.
*What makes roleplay and what can be used as a bludgen against roleplay.

[AstralUniverse]

Do not let the pickpocket know when they've been detected, and also delay any gold payout for a successful attempt by a few minutes, to prevent the connection between "didn't get gold" and "therefore got detected" from being so easy to immediately draw.

You'd also have to address the fact failed attempts break stealth mode and also give off the result right away.

[magistrasa]

Related to the topic of criminal consequences, there's an MMO that did an absurdly good job with its crime & punishment system that we might be able to draw some inspiration from. ArcheAge was a Korean MMO that allowed players to steal from and murder members of their own faction, with a bounty system that attributed "crime points" to the player depending on the severity of the crime. A player could voluntarily do daily "community service" quests (kill x mobs in y location, or turn in z items) to reduce their crime points. Once you reach a certain threshold of crime points, you become "wanted," and if a player with a specific item kills you when you're under that tag, you're sent into a holding cell while 5 other players from your faction are summoned into jury duty. You're allowed to plea your case before the jury who then votes as to whether or not you're guilty or innocent. If you're innocent, your crime points are scrubbed and you walk free. If you're guilty, you go to prison. While in prison, there's various minigames you can play by yourself, or you can interact with other prisoners, or you can even break out of jail and run home free - with the caveat that your abilities are restricted and you can't fast travel. Additionally, as part of the crime system, if you reach a certain amount of crime points, you get kicked out of your original faction and join the pirate faction instead, which can only be joined in this manner. Members of the pirate faction can still be sent to the prison of their original faction if they're killed by a player wearing that special item i mentioned before. Also, non-criminal players can get into the prison themselves to hang out with their friends until their release, although they'd get the same debuff that restricts abilities and travel. Incarceration periods could range from minutes to hours depending on how many crimes you've committed.

A few highlights from this system that I think would translate well into Arelith:
1) The system is open to and encourages player participation, but several key components are automated, including one's release from prison within an appropriate length of time
2) The bounty hunter system could be tied to the various guard factions throughout the isle, or potentially be a perk of classes like the Vigilante, or even a new NPC faction altogether, perhaps giving its players an item that will activate in the same way as the Assassin dagger
3) giving players things to do in prison, and the option to escape if one follows a Shawshank-Redemption-inspired mini quest, adds an element of interactivity and fun that makes the experience less of a chore
4) some manner of crossover with the pirate faction on Arelith could also be pretty neat

I feel like there's all sorts of fun and interesting ways to reinterpret ArcheAge's prison system into arelith, but obviously a one-to-one simulation would be a bad idea for a lot of reasons. I mostly just present it as something to take inspiration from, because I personally had criminal amounts of fun participating in it.

[Rei_Jin]

I'm not saying that consequence is Bad, so much as it needs to be measured by
*That makes the game playable, how much 'fun' it takes from the player.
*What can be griefed.
*What makes roleplay and what can be used as a bludgen against roleplay.

I 100% agree with this, but, as an example of what I’m thinking about?

The “No PvP” window after a death is 48 hours now, right?

So why not have a 48 hour consequence window?

Badguy got caught trying to poison the water supply, so he spends two RL days in prison and being tried, at the end of which time he’s set free OR exiled OR w/e

Badguy succeeded in poisoning the water supply, so for two days some of the NPCs are missing and the water sources in town are poisoned and there’s signs put up about it or w/e

48 hours is not a long period of time for consequences to play out in terms of being a cramp on people’s stories, but it does add some weight to actions and outcomes. It makes it feel a bit more like what we do matters.

And, yeah, it’ll require some stuff to happen in game. But we are playing on an action-roleplay server! This shouldn’t be an issue.

[Kalthariam]

Honestly I don't understand people trying to downplay the gold lost from pickpocketing.

No one likes their things being stolen, it doesn't matter how much it was, it doesn't matter if it's only 1500 gold, how many times did the thief steal without being caught? How many times might they have just simply stolen from you and it silently came out of your bank account and you had no idea and you could be down tens of thousands of gold? Can I mention I really hate that not even my BANK is safe from pickpockets? I personally think that's absurd.

The notification system being in the combat log isn't the most fool proof way of figuring this stuff out, especially when your in a busy place with a lot of other people talking, plenty of notifications can just get washed away and you'd never know it, or you looked away for the two seconds it was up on the screen and you just never know.

With all that in mind, it's hardly surprising people are immediately hostile towards pick pockets, and I personally think all the animosity is 100% deserved.

You are actively performing a hostile action against someone else when you choose to pickpocket, it's not an accident like accidently hitting someone with an AoE spell, it's deliberate and planned, you know what your doing, you know what your getting yourself into. I've never had a pickpocket actually RP with me before trying to steal from me, they just walk up, attempt to steal from me, then generally dash off before I can even respond.

I'd personally rather pickpocketing wasn't a thing.

[TurningLeaf]

It's too easy and mindless, just some mechanical gold poof blah blah blah. What would have been a fraught situation in PnP with real consequences turns into just a reminder of the limitations of NWN. I mean that's basically what this thread is about right? Someone figured out an engine limitation angle with PP yet again.