Thieving and crimes, plans for the future?

[poltifar]

Lately, crime has become more and more prevalent in all parts of the game world. The new additions to anti-thievery (ranging, walls...) have proven far from enough to discourage alts and exploits. So I wanted to ask the devs, what exactly is their vision for how the game will look like once its 'done'? What are the things planned for both thieves and anti-thieves?

Alts are one of the main problems when dealing with thieves. As outlined in some other threads, hiding items with alts, or stealing items with alts, is nigh unstoppable and untraceable. The thief at most loses a single character, and keeps the tons of steel, silk, and whatever else he steals. Even worse, actually training thief-alts is very easy. It takes a day at most, and with a pickaxe and a bear cape, can break into palisades. Sure, it takes a while to break into a palisade, but if the owner of the palisade is not on, what are the chances of him getting on before the deed is done? Also, a single thief alt can steal from many, many houses and towns in a single day and stash them somewhere, before anyone finally gets to tracking and killing him. Thus, are the devs going to implement some way to stop alts, or do they just dont care?

Another annoying thing semi-related to the alt thing is the untraceability of individual items. For obvious reasons, this makes it impossible to retrieve stolen goods. Will the track feature for individual items or something similar be added, or not?

Other than that, jorb mentioned adding even MORE tools for thieves to proliferate. What kind of tools, and will anti-thieves atleast get equal counterparts to fight them back?

Because of all these points, it is currently MUCH more profitable to be a thief than to be anything else. Why make steel through the long and tedious process that takes weeks upon weeks to get a character to max industry, then get all the iron required, make it into wrought, and keep on fueling the steel crucibles for 56 hours, when you can just make an alt in one day, and steal from 5 houses, maybe one bar of steel from each house, or 3 bars of wrought, anything really, in much less time and effort. And then, no one can catch you. Since the stolen goods are given to the main character.

I understand that the devs are free to develop their game as they want. I am not going to order them to change anything, I am just asking to know if this game will be to my liking (being the big carebear that i am). If not, I can just move on to another game, without getting endlessly frustrated in this one.

[Rugs]

If you don't want people wandering onto your claim and taking things, build walls. It is as simple as that.

[Rift]

I believe his point was that, atm, because thieves are garenteed to leave scents when commiting crimes on property [and unless they have insanely high stealth, someone will no doubt be able to be hired to find the scents], that thieves have little way of not being caught by a prepared individual. If that individual has say, a brick wall, then the thief has to risk a character that has A LOT of time put into it, when they are basically garenteed to get caught, and killed, losing that.

As for more tools, the entire point of being a thief is that you can steal, but that you are risking your life to do so... So i believe anti-thief measures will simply be things like making people more invested in their character before theiving with any chance of success.. ie.. Maybe having to have more skills/lp to have any chance of successfully stealing something from a prepared person.

[poltifar]

If you don't want people wandering onto your claim and taking things, build walls. It is as simple as that.

Rugs, you of all people should know that breaking walls (atleast wood ones) isnt too hard. I did build walls after you stole from me, and I actually thank you for that 'cause you didnt steal much but made me want to build walls.

[poltifar]

I believe his point was that, atm, because thieves are garenteed to leave scents when commiting crimes on property [and unless they have insanely high stealth, someone will no doubt be able to be hired to find the scents], that thieves have little way of not being caught by a prepared individual. If that individual has say, a brick wall, then the thief has to risk a character that has A LOT of time put into it, when they are basically garenteed to get caught, and killed, losing that.

As for more tools, the entire point of being a thief is that you can steal, but that you are risking your life to do so... So i believe anti-thief measures will simply be things like making people more invested in their character before theiving with any chance of success.. ie.. Maybe having to have more skills/lp to have any chance of successfully stealing something from a prepared person.

I understand that thieves are part of the game, but till now, it seems that you dont actually have to risk a strong character to get in (unless its brick walls), because of all the newly added STR foods and the easiness to get enough LP for the thieving skills. That way, no one can actually track down the stolen goods, which isnt fair either. And not everyone can make/afford brick walls.

[Rugs]

I believe his point was that, atm, because thieves are garenteed to leave scents when commiting crimes on property [and unless they have insanely high stealth, someone will no doubt be able to be hired to find the scents], that thieves have little way of not being caught by a prepared individual. If that individual has say, a brick wall, then the thief has to risk a character that has A LOT of time put into it, when they are basically garenteed to get caught, and killed, losing that.

As for more tools, the entire point of being a thief is that you can steal, but that you are risking your life to do so... So i believe anti-thief measures will simply be things like making people more invested in their character before theiving with any chance of success.. ie.. Maybe having to have more skills/lp to have any chance of successfully stealing something from a prepared person.

I understand that thieves are part of the game, but till now, it seems that you dont actually have to risk a strong character to get in (unless its brick walls), because of all the newly added STR foods and the easiness to get enough LP for the thieving skills. That way, no one can actually track down the stolen goods, which isnt fair either. And not everyone can make/afford brick walls.

if you steal anything of value that is a guaranteed character death. It is as simple as that.

Right now it is not worth investing time in thief characters because of how ridiculously easy it is to kill them. The whole offline mechanic is just ridiculous.

[poltifar]

But you dont need to invest time in a thief character in most cases. Unless you consider one day and a large amount of beer alot of time and effort, you can make an alt quickly and steal stuff, stash them somewhere, and bam, no one ever finds the main character or the stolen stuff. You've been doing that alot yourself, Rubs. I just saw you running around today as Rubs III.

[Blaze]

That's why we're supposed to get stealth and intelligence?

[Spiff]

As for more tools, the entire point of being a thief is that you can steal, but that you are risking your life to do so...

The bigger problem here is that thieves use alts because otherwise their mains would be *guaranteed* to die. Once you fix that and make it a risk, not a guarantee, we won't see this problem.

[poltifar]

I agree with Spiff. I'm not sure how it would be done, but it should end up as something like, the more is stolen, the higher the chance, so thieves would only go for the good stuff most of the time.

Also, a game mechanism to stop alts would be highly appreciated once this 'balanced' thieving risk is in the game. Not just to stop thief alts, but general grief alts. Not sure how stopping alt creation would be possible though.