A Thief's Tale (Idea for more thieving)

[ZantetsukenX]

I made this post in the siege thread but realized it would probably be better to give it its own thread to discuss the topic. Here's what I posted then:

Honestly, I'd say stop focusing so much on sieges, maybe make it possible but extremely hard to do, and instead introduce some form of wall scaling to allow for thieving. Make it so you get a debuff called "Thief Status" which prevents you from hearthing while on another person's vclaim/pclaim after you scale a wall. Have it also prevent you from being able to destroy/build/kill anything on the claim also to prevent griefing. Introduce offline guarding mechanics like traps or guard dogs. Make it so succeeding in climbing the wall results in an HP hit so you are always at a dissadvantage if you encounter someone inside the claim. Then finally, make it so you can't carry shit while climbing walls, so they can only steal what they can carry in their inventory and have to climb back over the wall to get away with the theft. Introduce locks for houses that can be lock picked with enough time and skill. Adding on to the stress while you are stealing from the place.

Sure it'd probably result in multiple walls to make it more annoying for theft to happen, but there will always be solo people with only a singular wall for you to try and steal from if that is where you get your jollies. It's always possible to come back from someone stealing your items, but having your entire industry destroyed usually means a complete game over.

The idea is that this way, people who are interested in less than nefarious means of acquiring items can go about it without causing "too much" harm to the group they are robbing. The Thief debuff would help prevent griefing but is only acquired when you scale a wall to get into someone's base. It would always come with a risk of being caught (and not to mention all the scents you'd leave behind) but that's where all the planning would come in. If you wanted to increase your odds of successfully stealing, then you'd camp out a little and investigate when people are most likely to be in the base. To prevent too much alt spamming, you can make it so that it takes a fair amount (50+?) of constitution or strength to scale the wall in addition to the skills needed to get the ability. The offline guard mechanics would definitely have to be flushed out more. Would it work that you could build guard dog houses in which a dog will wonder a set "range" and the bigger your domain, the more guard dogs you need? Completely open to ideas. What do people think?

[Jackwolf]

I think it sounds pretty neat and adds a lot of more complexity to the system, but might need some additions. Dexterity affects the speed at which you climb (as it most certainly shouldn't be immediate), and potentially agility affecting the likelihood of damage caused when jumping down from the wall.

Climbing should also be possible to be interrupted by damage. Palisades could possibly cause extra damage when climbed given the spikes at the top. Guard dogs and things would be pretty cool, traps are always dope as well. Even making traps now in game is pretty fun. It would be cool over all, but it adds a diverse set of new problems to the game.

[ZantetsukenX]

I think it sounds pretty neat and adds a lot of more complexity to the system, but might need some additions. Dexterity affects the speed at which you climb (as it most certainly shouldn't be immediate), and potentially agility affecting the likelihood of damage caused when jumping down from the wall.

Climbing should also be possible to be interrupted by damage. Palisades could possibly cause extra damage when climbed given the spikes at the top. Guard dogs and things would be pretty cool, traps are always dope as well. Even making traps now in game is pretty fun. It would be cool over all, but it adds a diverse set of new problems to the game.

Definitely good ideas on the other stats affecting things. Originally I was thinking make it take a fairly long time to succeed, like 60 seconds or so. As for the extra damage when climbing a fence, I was thinking maybe add steel wire to the game, adds a new layer of mid-game defense in that you are spending steel, something that takes forever to make, to guard your base and make it more "unfriendly" to thieves.

[xdragonlord18]

This will just encourage people to log off with anything of any value and also is just not a very good idea. I'm not a fan of having player's zone of safety secretly violated. If you're going to ruin someone day it should be loud and obvious.

[ricky]

I made a thread similiar to this (see: viewtopic.php?f=48&t=58216&hilit=thief&start=10) a long time ago. Looking back on it, I think the ideas mentioned here (and in my thread too) would help make siege less binary, as some of the top minds were discussing in the other siege thread.

Honestly, as a player I wouldnt mind having petty crimes be commited (to me, or by me) as long as consequences werent always devastating (commited against me, or by me).
A thief breaks into my base and steals an inventory of stuff? alright, he cant hearth for a week and i have scents out the ass on him, he's risked quite a bit. maybe I can catch the perpetrator and get my revenge.
A dedicated group of individuals camp my pali walls for 8 hours and break in with the intent of destroying some infrastructure? kind of super shitty, but ok, it's not a total loss.

these ideas however are hard to implement in a way that allow both the victim and the perpetrator to act without risking everything. copious alt usage disallows victims from getting proper revenge, the only REAL revenge a victim can get is to kill the perpetrator, there's really no good grey area of 'what punishment is fitting for what crime?" its either full blown razed village, getting your main clapped, or copious alt abuse.

[Audiosmurf]

You can already put locks on houses, and pick said locks.

[ZantetsukenX]

This will just encourage people to log off with anything of any value and also is just not a very good idea. I'm not a fan of having player's zone of safety secretly violated. If you're going to ruin someone day it should be loud and obvious.

I'd rather my day be ruined than to lose hundreds of hours to some trolls being bored and destroying everything. As for people logging out with all the good stuff (i.e. bank alts), who cares. The point would be to steal higher quality stuff like crafting material, high quality seeds, random equipment possibly sitting around. If you get lucky and find something truly valuable then all the better. You'd leave behind scents and so someone could come to your base to "return the favor" if they wanted and steal your shit if they were so inclined.

All in all, I'm just trying to think of ways to increase the amount of time that someone might play the game. Adding in an effective theft system that isn't completely defeated by walls is a way to give people an outlet if they get bored playing the game in a very PvE sort of way. I'd probably never do it unless it was previously done to me. But at the same time I could see myself giving it a shot if I got bored with the game and was intent on quitting eventually. If I had fun doing it, who knows, it could breathe new life in to the game for me in this scenario. Or if I found myself being robbed often, I'd probably re-arrange stuff in such a away that would make it harder to do. (Which is why there'd need to be some form of offline defense. Such as guard dogs and traps.)

[Aceb]

Nope. A way to thief all the items for cost of HP only is bad. Even if You introduce some form of "offline protection" it will never win against more than 1 thief, which might render one claim be completely stripped from items. Or in case someone didn't get fast enough offline protection it's even worse.

Also, a bored fighter could enter a village like that and get attacked from inside, which would still lead to a solution where You can watch getting robbed or die / get smacked.

Doesn't fit. Would be abused greatly. Introduces only mechanics that allow one to bypass all form of protections and takes everything that is not an object.

[stya]

So what if I build 2 walls with 0 tiles apart, what if I build 1 outer wall and then one inner wall with a layer of things you can't destroy on the outside to prevent further climbing?

I don't see how you would counter all the corner cases and I don't want to have more convoluted bases to counter theft.

-1

[pppp]

I like the idea in general and I was inclined to propose it myself. At the same time I recognize it as extremely difficult to properly balance and prevent abuses.

Consider alt spam or theft by a large group to carry away all useful stuff. This can be mitigated by counting globally crimes committed on a claim and increasing costs of each subsequent crime. That way amount of stuff taken can be soft-limited. But then the defenders can commit daily some crimes to increase theft costs upfront. This again can be mitigated by attaching a delayed cost for defenders for each crime (e.g. cleanup) but then defenders are double punished by each real crime and can be attacked over and over again to drain the resources until they cannot recharge defense.

Since such break-ins are supposed to happen when inhabitants are inactive and only the bot would be periodically committing crimes at that time, the solution might be to take away offline benefits, for example remove accelerated healing in bed and TW restoration when the claim is in alerted state. This still can be circumvented by sleeping on a mine claim or on a donuted claim, but then I doubt a simple thief would be able to penetrate all defenses such a base may have.
That would still not defeat bots that may watch for people trying to break in and only then start committing "anti-crimes".

Translation of the above to actual mechanics:
- Allow lockpicking of gates instead (or in addition to) wall scaling
- Count crimes committed on a claim and apply an "Alerted and disturbed" buff to the claim, increasing with each crime. The buff would increase HP cost of each crime committed, scaling with 2 or third power of crime count. At the same time the buff would decrease effective bed quality on affected claim, scaling with inverted logistic curve 1-(2/(1+exp(-an))) where a is an arbitrary parameter.

All that makes sense when applied to theft crime, allowing vandalism is totally different animal. I can already see people circumventing 7 days siege and breaking a claim in no time thanks to theft mechanics. Also, consider someone breaking in with stolen slave key and opening non-visitor gates from inside.

Wall scaling can be replaced by lockpicking gates, mechanical obstruction is less of the problem. The real problem is to accurately dose allowed damage.