Rogue service proposal

[Methais]

I may not have experience stealing from other people. But over the years I've known many low level characters that were pick pocketed by level 100+ characters that they couldn't do anything about. You can try to dismiss this type of behavior, but it happens in GS. I've provided trap components to help and tried to give advice on the matter. But in most cases the people that tormented them continue because they know they can get away with it on an easy mark. If the low level character tries to stand up for themselves they stand no chance. Does this sound amusing and fun for someone that stands no chance?

I myself was pick pocketed leveling up quite a bit back then. I was given cursed gems to help defend against it. But outside of that there wasn't much I could do about it other then ignore it. Takes a lot of skill to just thieve from lowbies...

I'd like to hear some positive stories about your role playing experiences stealing from people. How about you share some with us? I bet the person you stole from most of the time had a positive experience.

Middle ground solution: NOSTEAL flag only works when there's a 10+ level gap between the thief and the target.

[Fortybox]

Ultimately, I think people are overlooking the positive about the whole situation even for the thief. I don't agree with making punishment harsher on the thief but I do agree with making the whole situation more meaningful for people that want to participate in it. I'm not a big fan of being thrown in jail and having to pay a huge fine for stealing, accidently setting off traps or casting the wrong spell in town. I think that whole system is dated and that system itself has the potential for item loss.

It’s not a positive situation. Most people will opt in for the flag (nobody wants to lose silvers if they can control it). The outcome is thieves will have less people to steal from.

It’s a made up problem. The verb has hardly been used for decades.

A solution that makes it positive for all is to incentivize people for keeping the flag off. That way the snowflakes can keep it on (win). Thieves will likely have a bigger pool to steal from (win). And all who keep the flag off get the boost, whatever that is…doesn’t have to be extreme (win).

Instead, Naijin just wants to ignore it and ram something down the pipeline that actually will cause a lost opportunity in revenue gain. Stillfront execs should slap him silly for what he is doing.

If you incentivize it opens up for a whole bunch of opportunities for new item creation/skill development. His proposa is extremely short sighted. This is the problem when you have dev ignoring business implications.

[Mobius1]

I can’t imagine why things are going poorly for you in discord with the mentality you have here. So you run off here to play the victim and people are buying it after you continue to be dismissive here. How are people buying your fabricated one sided story still? Anyway I’m done trying to bring reason to you when you are acting exactly how you were on discord.

You can continue to go on and play the poor life of a thief card here and dismiss the other side of the coin.

Why don't you go farm boxes instead of arguing about something that you literally don't even care about and aren't impacted by?

I left Discord because when a GM starts literally insulting me, it is obvious that it is not a good platform to discuss this

I've actually acknowledged the other side of the coin here more than once, so either you aren't reading my posts, or it's YOU that is completely dismissing the other side.

I've even explained why having the flag off is a problem, not because I want to be able to trigger those who want nothing to do with it, but because many people will choose to flag from a mechanical mindset over a RP mindset, thus reducing the already tiny pool of people to steal from, to an even more miniscule one. One so miniscule it had so few thefts in recent times. Just me hunting in Atoll is a huge damper, as the only super node is sancted.

Also, saying no RP aspects are lost from people having the flag off is also a lie. I don't think Midgar has been caught stealing or set off a trap in over 4 years. That's because I go to great lengths to be a GOOD thief, not get caught, and NOT push my limits by stealing many times from one person. But with the flag I can only RP getting caught. If I do that I'll quite literally get mocked as being a terrible thief. But you wouldn't know about this because you don't steal and don't have to deal with terrible people.

I have made many suggestions for compromise, such as the victim getting all their stuff back, as well as several other ideas you are welcome to re-read about in this thread or in Discord. But ultimately it's hard to come up with a good fix when a problem is make believe.

I've also been trying to come up with a solution of how my make believe children can deal with rogue unicorns. It's definitely one of the bigger issues I've imagined, and there is no easy solution. It's an issue real children simply do not have to deal with.

[Tgo01]

Middle ground solution: NOSTEAL flag only works when there's a 10+ level gap between the thief and the target.

Makes too much sense, no way GMs go for it.

[Neovik1]

Why don't you go farm boxes instead of arguing about something that you literally don't even care about and aren't impacted by?

I left Discord because when a GM starts literally insulting me, it is obvious that it is not a good platform to discuss this

I've actually acknowledged the other side of the coin here more than once, so either you aren't reading my posts, or it's YOU that is completely dismissing the other side.

I've even explained why having the flag off is a problem, not because I want to be able to trigger those who want nothing to do with it, but because many people will choose to flag from a mechanical mindset over a RP mindset, thus reducing the already tiny pool of people to steal from, to an even more miniscule one. One so miniscule it had so few thefts in recent times. Just me hunting in Atoll is a huge damper, as the only super node is sancted.

Also, saying no RP aspects are lost from people having the flag off is also a lie. I don't think Midgar has been caught stealing or set off a trap in over 4 years. That's because I go to great lengths to be a GOOD thief, not get caught, and NOT push my limits by stealing many times from one person. But with the flag I can only RP getting caught. If I do that I'll quite literally get mocked as being a terrible thief. But you wouldn't know about this because you don't steal and don't have to deal with terrible people.

I have made many suggestions for compromise, such as the victim getting all their stuff back, as well as several other ideas you are welcome to re-read about in this thread or in Discord. But ultimately it's hard to come up with a good fix when a problem is make believe.

I've also been trying to come up with a solution of how my make believe children can deal with rogue unicorns. It's definitely one of the bigger issues I've imagined, and there is no easy solution.

Again, the reason why your discord encounters are going so well "Why don't you go farm boxes". You just see your side and not the other side. You've dismissed anything that doesn't agree with your perspective on discord and take the same mentality where you basically just told me I shouldn't have an opinion on it. You basically just want your way at the expense of others. If I were a thief looking for a great RP Interaction, I'd want to do it with someone that opts into the system. But that's just me.

I wouldn't mind incentives to keep the flag off but would need to be done in a way that wouldn't abuse it. I would be fine seeing less sancs or sancs removed in a lot of areas. I also think the justice system needs to be changed. I don't really like or trust how they handle item management when you get thrown in jail. I've lost a few items from the process and it also has it's own set of bugs. I've gotten a 100m fine once because I had cursed items on me when I was tossed in jail and some enhancives went poof.

[Mobius1]

Again, the reason why your discord encounters are going so well "Why don't you go farm boxes". You just see your side and not the other side. You've dismissed anything that doesn't agree with your perspective on discord and take the same mentality where you basically just told me I shouldn't have an opinion on it. You basically just want your way at the expense of others. If I were a thief looking for a great RP Interaction, I'd want to do it with someone that opts into the system. But that's just me.

I wouldn't mind incentives to keep the flag off but would need to be done in a way that wouldn't abuse it. I would be fine seeing less sancs or sancs removed in a lot of areas. I also think the justice system needs to be changed. I don't really like or trust how they handle item management when you get thrown in jail. I've lost a few items from the process and it also has it's own set of bugs. I've gotten a 100m fine once because I had cursed items on me when I was tossed in jail and some enhancives went poof.

Lol, you literally insulted me and fabricated a load of lies about my personal character. You insult me here and I will fire back. But I will never fire the first shot.

Like so many others on your side, it's YOU that isn't listening and is unwilling to compromise.

I've said MANY times I am willing to compromise, yet somehow I am labeled by you as the one that is unwilling to budge on my opinion.

[Neovik1]

Lol, you literally insulted me and fabricated a load of lies about my personal character. You insult me here and I will fire back. But I will never fire the first shot.

Like so many others on your side, it's YOU that isn't listening and is unwilling to compromise.

I've said MANY times I am willing to compromise, yet somehow I am labeled by you as the one that is unwilling to budge on my opinion.

I'm sorry, where did I fabricate a load of lies against you? Sounds like you have a decent record of blowing this up more than they are from your comments above.

[SlvrNBlu]

At the end of the day though. No one is trying to get rid of pick pocketing. People just have the choice to opt into the system or not. I'm not a 100 percent on this but I thought it was also said you could still steal from the person that opt'ed out. You just don't actually get any loot from it?

I feel like opt'ing into it all solves any of the CvC Problems created by the whole encounter and you get a better interaction that both sides want. I'm just here to point out the other side of the story just like one side is pointed out and making thieves into victims over all these years. We can't just say that the problems are a myth based on 2 months of data that were provided. I've seen a lot of issues over the last 30 years from pick pocketing. Granted back in the 90s it was far worse but we also had 1-2k+ players back then.

I know that the punishment is pretty hard for a thief though when they do actually get caught within Town doing it. I've never actually used the accuse verb before, heck I've never actually even used report to report anyone throughout all my years playing.

You are here arguing in good faith and in a respectful manner, and I do appreciate that. I also do understand and respect your position, even if I totally disagree with it. The core of what I'm arguing is that allowing people to just opt out of things they don't like is bad for game. Ugh, I think is going to be a long post, but I think I need to go down the rabbit hole of where I think something like this leads. I invite people on the other side of the issue to tell me where I lose them.

So, here we have a pickpocketing flag. If I don't want to participate in this kind of RP, I should be able to opt out. Not an unreasonable position on it's face, sure, we get a pickpocketing flag. What's next? Well, one of things that has been brought up in the course of this argument, and seems to be mostly supported by them, is a no-cvc flag. Again, a reasonable enough position on it's face, if you don't want to participate in CvC, just opt out, nobody can perform hostile actions against you. I know a lot of the opposition is still with me here. Personally, I think that takes a meaningful subtext out of the game. If I get in an argument with someone, there is the possibility that it could end in a fight. That's not a regular occurrence, I haven't attacked anyone in the two-plus years I've been back here, and I don't really think I will, but there are certainly lines that could be crossed that would make me fight, and I think it's right that I have that option. Also, conversely, I know that if I am too nasty or aggressive towards someone, they could attack me. It's certainly a dimension that exists in conflicts in the game, and I, personally, think the game would be less if it were gone. But, 100% that will be the next thing on the agenda, and like I say, not a totally unreasonable position, so we have a no-cvc flag. What's next?

Another thing that has come up with this group is invasions. Invasions in town are disruptive. I pay for this game and towns are supposed to be a safe place, if I want to go out and fight monsters, I'll go out and fight monsters. Invasions in town are disrupting me and as a paying customer I shouldn't have staff generating monsters which interfere with my experience. No more invasions in town. I personally think this would be a shame, because while sure, I've been annoyed by a random death from something like this before, I've also had some cool, fun experiences, and the fact that it can happen that the town gets invaded adds an interesting aspect to the game. Maybe I lost some of the opposition now? I don't really think so though, as these are things I have heard these people say. What's next?

Another big fight I had where the opposition was basically all of the same people was over divergence nerfs. My position was that the game needs balance in order for the staff to be able to create new and challenging areas with the accompanying rewards, and the opposition was more or less, "but I have gear I paid money for, and Simu has an obligation to make sure my gear is still giving me the same benefits as it does when I bought it". Sure, that's understandable to an extent. In counter to my arguments that trying to structure general nerfs so they don't effect your items would make it impossible for them to create challenging content, I got the argument "Who says the players want challenging content?" "I want to see a survey where they ask if the players want a challenge" "I like new areas because I like to see the new stuff and the new monsters, but I don't want them to be harder." Actual arguments people made. One of them actually brought up that legal action could be taken if they nerf things after you've paid for items. What's the solution here? Obviously another flag. I should be in full control of my own experience, and I've paid money here, I should have the right to choose whether or not I get a challenging experience. Like a difficulty setting. I paid for my items, and if I want a challenge, I can turn the flag off, but if I want to use my items as I intended, I should be able to choose to do so" So flag divergence=off. I promise this is the dream for a certain chunk of the population. What follows? New areas open with nice loot and cool new rewards, and some people go in and accept the challenge and others don't even change their bigshot routine and just plow through and get the rewards. Some time goes by, the loot goes to crap. If the rewards were character buffs, they just become part of the standard kit, nothing special. On to the next new area of monsters we can just rip right through while complaining there needs to be more end-game development.

I mean, we could on and I could start speculating about what else people may want to control, but let's leave it at the things I've actually heard said.

I mean to me, the game described above is a game that I think is just stupid and boring, but I legitimately think that's the direction some people want to take it in. If you're on the opposite side of this particular fight and I've got it wrong, please tell me where I lost you. But anyway, Neovik, what the novel is in support of why I disagree with you. The pickpocketing flag is a very minor thing in the grand scheme, but it's being done to appease a sentiment that I heartily disagree with: things I don't like shouldn't happen to my character without my consent and agreement.

I predict the next post now: "This is the direction the modern MMOs have all gone in and if you don't like it, you should try a different game or go to shattered." I'm not gonna do that though, I'm gonna stay here and fight the good fight, the way I see it.

[Taernath]

Like so many others on your side, it's YOU that isn't listening and is unwilling to compromise.

The compromise on the side of the flag is that you can still steal from people with the flag on, you just won't get silvers/items. The messaging is IC. There is still opportunity for roleplay. Functionally it's like someone having no silver and their containers closed. Your -character- won't know the difference. You, the player, would probably not know, either.

[Tgo01]

Your -character- won't know the difference. You, the player, would probably not know, either.

Something tells me both the character and player might suspect something is amiss when they literally can't steal anything from anyone.

The flag idea is a joke. Honestly it feels more like a slap in the face to people who wanted to RP a thief compared to just removing the ability to steal from other players altogether. Almost as if the GMs created the flag just to mock those players. Naos sitting there on Discord and calling people who used pickpocket and are now complaining about the flag "trolls" doesn't help the optics either.