Steal & Stealth

[Kinaed]

It's been long on our agenda to combine sneak and hide into a 'stealth' skill and change how steal works so that it is balanced *both* from the perspective of being fun and worthwhile for a thief, but also from the perspective of the risk to those walking about.

Do people have any ideas or requests in this area as we re-examine and rebuild the specifications we're working on?

Let us know!

[Taunya]

I think sneak is mostly in decent shape. Perhaps chance of detection when someone is not watching a direction could be reduced.

Hide on the other hand has a lot of problems. A few improvements could be:

1. Most commands that would instantly break hide should be unusable in hide. 'visible' should be used first. This could be overridden with something like the autofailsafe toggle.

2. All commands that echo to the room that don't break hide should not echo to the room while hidden.

3. the RPXP level on the prompt should not give away hidden characters in otherwise empty rooms.

4. hemote detection should be based on hiding status as well as sneaking status. I think it currently only reduces the chance of detection while sneaking?

5. 'look' should not have a chance to show hiding characters. Discovery should only be possible on 'search' and detection of hemotes. (Witchery aside)

6. Chance of detection by hemotes in large scenes should be greatly reduced.

Hide is especially rough on people new to it because of how many things break hide or give them away that they might not expect. 1-3 especially would help that.

[phoenixdoll]

so i spent several hours writing an effort post to reply to this and i got logged out and then i lost it

so basically i'm giving the tldr version

steal broke

i stole everyone's champagne glasses at the wedding reception, nobody noticed me. i drank from the same cup as all of you, ergo i now understand all of your problems. i only was noticed because i mailed the people the stuff i didn't want to steal from them (ew stinky letters, ew) back to them and sent them advanced copies of my latest novel "the lusty hillish maid" in the post by way as apology.

i'm not even adept steal ok

one time i tried to steal a letter from a dirty hillman and he had like 2 stacks of compost in his inv and i stole all of it until i got the letter. and then i was only noticed on the letter because i was desperate to get it and i hit steal now when the ticker was like.. 20. is this how you want steal to function? it's annoying and a bit weird. pickpockets irl can watch where you put things, and then can steal them from there. i know this because i had my wallet stolen once when someone bumped into me and i only noticed when i went to get to the train

sneak and hide combined is a good idea that will benefit new players.

what even is hide? i don't even know. I ranked it up and it always disappoints me. you disappoint me hide.
i like being able to hide things on my person but it's not actually useful. just put them in containers like everyone else

why can't i steal from containers
why do i have like no % chance of being noticed stealing from inv but can't steal from someone's backpack that is open which legit would be so much easier than stealing from t h e i r hands i mean isn't the inv what you're holding in your hand?
why can't i steal from someone's worn items? why can't i snatch the bag off someone's shoulder, or cut their coin pouch off?

please let me try to steal the rings of king amir's hand, it will be glorious

until then, i will steal all the food you have just picked up at every party until you stop inviting me to parties, and then I will turn up in a disguise / sneak in and keep doing it

Also, being serious now, to set peoples mind at ease, perhaps we could make it that stealing is locked off to new characters to prevent griefing, like how lockpicking is, and to make a character do a cnote about the pickpocketing. Perhaps not in as much detail as doing a house breakin / tresspass, but just to make it easier if it has to be RPA'd?

ta

(The effort post I wrote was literally 10x the length of this one and i went into some more of the specifics of things that I have noticed, being a dirty filthy criminal)

P.S. Peek isn't used by thieves, only by law enforcement.

P.P.S. I'd love to be able to attempt to rob someone's worn container by typing the specific string of the item in the container, replicating how pickpockets steal from people IRL after seeing where they put their wallet, phone, keys, etc.

[phoenixdoll]

another quick post, why can't i lockpick and hide? weird

weird that i can't use hide to hide from an NPC to lockpick a place. Hasn't been a big deal because I'd just rpa to break into a place that's guarded if I didn't want to murder / unconsciousify the guards, but it struck me as really weird and still strikes me as weird.

using pick lock like actually breaks hide ?? but im behind bush...

[Taunya]

using pick lock like actually breaks hide ?? but im behind bush...

Carrying a bush in front of the locked door would kind of stick out...

The little steal minigame is interesting, but I think it should probably be scrapped in favor of targeted stealing. 'steal (target) (item)' and 'steal (target) (container) (item)'.
Peek should have a container option as well to match. 'peek (target) (container)'

A new minigame could still be used, but based on attempting to yoink the item chosen rather than what the minigame chooses.

Stealing a worn item should have a high chance of failure/discovery, but stealing an item from a worn, open container should be fairly easy. From closed containers, not possible.
Perhaps a command could attempt to open them (with a high chance of failure/discovery).

[phoenixdoll]

Carrying a bush in front of the locked door would kind of stick out...

Oh man that's where I've been going wrong... xD

The little steal minigame is interesting, but I think it should probably be scrapped in favor of targeted stealing. 'steal (target) (item)' and 'steal (target) (container) (item)'.

.... (reorganised so i can reply better)

Stealing a worn item should have a high chance of failure/discovery, but stealing an item from a worn, open container should be fairly easy. From closed containers, not possible.
Perhaps a command could attempt to open them (with a high chance of failure/discovery).

I don't mind the steal mini game, but it leads to.. weird situations where i go to steal a letter and I steal a handful of compost literally 10+ times. I think it might've happened 15+ times..
Like. that happened once IC to me. I stood there and had to keep stealing LITERAL shit because the RND hated me. But having the items come up one at a time is exciting.

I agree it would be nice if you could use the steal command, and the items you notice were the ticker. But then you could type the item name you wanted to steal, rather than whatever was available at that moment to steal.. so like, the ticker populated a list.

Peek should have a container option as well to match. 'peek (target) (container)'

A new minigame could still be used, but based on attempting to yoink the item chosen rather than what the minigame chooses.

I honestly think peek should not exist, but peek container DEFINITELY should not exist. There's like.. no bad stuff happening in game already, don't make it harder for crimes and mages to do things for reeves / order to investigate. Law/order players are stuck basically harassing people over petty misdemeanors, which makes the grand epic crime drama real hard, if not impossible, and I feel contributes to petty OOC vibes.

Peek only captures newbies, I feel.

Rather than peek, it could be search person option for reeves / order -- if that doesn't already exist. A frisk command, that someone has to resist.

Or maybe peek could be reworked to just give you a chance of seeing some items someone has, including some items inside open containers. It'd be cool if lower levels didn't just fail, but could, like, see saw something you didn't actually SEE. Like, a minor chance to think you saw something glowing, for example. Or a package that isn't actually there. Less certainty around how magic and how crime be would be nice, and a quick peek at someone shouldn't reveal everything that isn't there unless you're master peek / grandmaster -- not everyone SHOULD be Robert Downy Jr as Sherlock Holmes.

Dunno. Currently peek is one of the skills i regret leveling from 0 and feel it was a waste of RPXP, as I have developed better ways of snooping on people that while take more effort.. don't get me outed as a dirty naughty criminal. Honestly. I wish I could get a refund of the XP I spent on peek, as I never use it.

I AM GOING TO MAKE ANOTHER POST EXPLAINING WHAT I WANT THE STEAL PROGRESSION TO BE LIKE because it bugs me i spent so long writing that up and it got deleted.

[phoenixdoll]

i can't do it RN, got a bit too late.

But basically the idea someone else had is that the stealing worn items should be GM level stuff..

But then, what about if i just wanna cut the bag off and not care about not getting noticed? I think that could be a really fun thing to add in.

[Starstarfish]

Peek only captures newbies, I feel.

It honestly doesn't. You'd be surprised what people (even long term certainly 'aware' people) will totally forget and randomly walk around with from time to time.

[Starstarfish]

Law/order players are stuck basically harassing people over petty misdemeanors, which makes the grand epic crime drama real hard, if not impossible, and I feel contributes to petty OOC vibes.

Sometimes, I feel a major contributor to this is the ephemeral pool of knowing -any- crime and -any- magical goings on clearly must be done by the relatively small player base. Therefore there's working backwards from 'someone must be guilty' and finding a culprit. I think a 'fix' here could be with lower metrics and/or in certain areas NPCs could also steal or do other naughty things to spread out the blame so to speak.

[Geras]

I love the idea of thief npcs pilfering coin (please not objects or you will find me killing these npcs).