Steal & Stealth

[Starstarfish]

As far as trinkets go ... one option would be for an NPC in the Brotherhood HQ that takes said items and gives a set amount for them.

(Maybe the amount offered could vary by Metrics somehow?) As loathe as I am to suggest that poor Tristan gets robbed all the time.

[Satoshi]

Hi guys, I played Aukanaii (Tua), who, for the longest time, was Champion in Sneak and Master in hide. With a 95 in dexterity, I can very strongly say, as a player who specialized their character in this skill, it felt... utterly worthless the majority of the time I had it. With Eavesdrop broken as it has been, which works off of the sneak skill... essentially ALL sneak is good for is sometimes hiding when you leave/enter a room or hiding repositioning. And given how HIGH my skill and relevant stat was in that skill, it was utterly unrewarding as well given how often people noticed me doing it anyways.

I've heard that Eavesdrop is being adjusted/etc so I'll leave that part out, but having a main functionality of a skill be essentially non-functional definitely made the rest of the system feel worse--if it had been functioning as intended my opinion of the systems might have been better.

The good:
• Having a high sneak skill and actively sneaking makes your hemotes harder to see. That makes making subtle, hidden gestures WAY more rewarding, particularly if you reposition slightly to be able to do it. Reliably, with Champion sneak, I was able to be confident that only the person i targetted with a hemote would be seeing what I'm putting out, while there still being a chance of it to be noticed, until other things like thieves cant.
• Sneaking hides lots of threads, such as the threads for hiding. While you're sneaking, you're able to trade MV for silent hiding. It takes more effort to do so, and still runs the chance of flubbing or being seen by high wisdom/mages.
• Hiding turns a variety of other commands into hemotes like applying or dusting yourself. Unsure about the room, but it felt nice to be able quietly huff drugs instead of announcing loudly to the room what drugs I was taking.
• High level hide makes you able to hide stuff so good no one will find it for weeks. The worst easter egg hunt ever--no one finds anything.

The meta:
• Wisdom is a stat that almost every player has raised, to the point where I have to just assume everyone in a room has high/max wisdom. People be paranoid. Code doesn't take into account things like whether the character is distracted, how busy the room is (in fact I believe there's a penalty for sneaking into a room with a lot of people, VS only a few. Every single time I tried to sneak into a room with 2+ people, the vast majority of people noticed, as opposed to rooms with just one or another person.)
• Even if you are sneaking/hiding, the rpxp counter goes from 'none' to 'low' etc if someone enters. Some people have gotten suspicious just from entering an 'empty' room and seeing the rpxp counter change, even when there's no reason to, ICly. While that's something you'd have to bring up as policy, it still felt discouraging and often kept me from engaging with the person from stealth.
• In all honesty, already being hidden in a place worked FAR better than sneaking in and trying to hide, in every instance, which could feel meta-ey on the sneakee's part or just cheap. Plus you gotta get there BEFORE someone.

The bad:
• Without eavesdrop, sneak is only used for hemotes/masking enter/exits. MV drain is so high you need to begin sneaking fairly close to where you're going to be slipping into or else eat so so many rations. Since so many people still notice you anyways, it's not really rewarding or felt reliable.
• Even without people using watch, it felt like I was noticed far too much for being champion of the skill. I cannot imagine someone dabbling in it trying to get any functionality. You shouldn't need to master/grandmaster a skill just to get it sort of reliable. Master/grandmaster should be when it's confidently reliable (excepting freaky mage-senses)
• Backstab doesn't exist anymore/doesn't work, meaning that sneak/hide has no combat functionality. Hide takes so long that you'd need to outmaneuver someone chasing you before you can hide, or risk trying to sneak back the way you came to try to give a chaser the slip. In an actual combat situation
• Sneak makes you move so slowly you can't really 'tail' someone either given how the follow system works. typing 'scan' worked better and that felt lame.

My lunch is over so I'll have to return with suggestions later.

[phoenixdoll]

I agree completely with Satoshi's points, actually.

One thing I am wary of with these requirements like the RPXP ticker is that they are not considering the effectiveness of Stealth and Steal vs. doing anything else in code.

We have a lot of code options that in theory enable players to be real jerkheads, do not feel fair to the victim, and are not stealing. The combat code just works and it lets you break peoples' legs or arms or outright kill them. The arrest code just works and can leave a player stuck in a locked waiting room for IRL days. The most popular and mean magic just works (once you are over the hump of newbie magedom).

Taking a thing from someone,which can be bought back or replaced, has far gentler and far less permanent consequences to the victim than any of the above. In that sense, stealing should just work.

I didn't think of it like this. I've changed my mind, it'd be really nice if there's nobody around if the steal skill still would work, especially if effort is given into creating NPCs that function as trinket steal nodes.

Trinket spawning NPCs would only have those trinkets stolen is there was an actual minimum price / reliable way to convert the trinket into something worth something. I like the suggestion of an NPC that gives coin for trinkets.

Being a known pickpocket makes everyone move away from you, worse than the time my character was very stinky..