Thievery evolved from just running behind people standing still at the bank/broker/veredari to a more social approach where you set up a meeting to trade in person to parkouring and portaling into bases. All of these have had a way for players to defend themselves but over time it made thievery less about the actual thief skills you train and more about how can you use the systems in the game to take from other players. I'm sharing some scenarios from Mortal Online 1 and posing some suggestions. All of this is based off what was in Mortal Online 1 so maybe some systems changed and hopefully this can make someone who dedicates their character to thievery have a more enjoyable experience. This is still a game and it should be fun for all players types so I welcome you to give your own suggestions.
Problem: You needed 0 points in thievery for that and you can come out with so much more value than a thief would be able to using pilfer.
Suggestions:
Problem: Reading the book to 70 and needing to attempt to take something out of another players inventory hundreds or thousands of times to max the skill.
Suggestions:
Problem: The worst you face in the game is waiting around dead just to come back at the priest and do it all again.
Suggestions:
I'll edit this when I think of more
Why steal when you can murder?
Scenario: You get some mages to cast earthquake in the bank killing all of the players while you are on top of the roof and just crawling hand it all away to a spot without guards and without anyone respawning at a priest and finding you for 2 minutes.
Problem: You needed 0 points in thievery for that and you can come out with so much more value than a thief would be able to using pilfer.
Suggestions:
- Have the guards react to channeling evil alignment spells
- Put the guards on alert after a nearby murder to watch for suspicious activity (this could be channeling evil spells or turning crawling hand from neutral to evil)
- Make it so players can be held responsible for group activities and extend punishments. If the mages are going to get murder counts and turn red then the crawling hand player should get some sort of punishment like being exiled from the town for an equal amount of time the mages get red status.
Breakpoints to learn new skills
Currently I think the only thing that changes between 0-100 snooping/pilfering is the chance you have at being detected snooping and actually taking something from their inventory. I would say put more involvement in the players decision to train thievery. This way someone can choose to not be a master thief but still have access to the basics and maybe they want to get it to a certain level and stop there for a particular perk.
Problem: Reading the book to 70 and needing to attempt to take something out of another players inventory hundreds or thousands of times to max the skill.
Suggestions:
- Levels 0-30 Read the book and unlock snooping (just right click and item in someones inventory to pilfer)
- Level 30 the duration at which you remain targeted by another player is decreased.
- You can continue to pilfer and gain the same base EXP but now you get bonus EXP the longer you stay in a town and remain untargeted for a period of time and then pilfer.
- Say it takes 1000 xp to level once. Each time you pilfer you get 10xp. If no one targets you for 1 min and you pilfer you get 50xp, after 5 mins you get 100xp, after 10 mins you get 300xp, 20 mins 800xp, 30mins 1,500xp. The idea here is that it promotes a thief hiding and waiting for it's target but if someone is suspicious of you and watches you for over 10 seconds your timer for the bonus xp resets.
- Level 50 get a decrease in time your items are illegal goods.
- Another xp gain bonus unlocks where you gain more xp for each item you've stolen and sold to an NPC in town.
- Level 60 you get a little bonus item for selling stolen goods. Maybe you get 30 lockpicks or a disguise kit or a dagger or something depending on the value of the item.
- Another xp gain bonus where you get some for making use of the bonus items from Level 60.
- Level 70 certain normal seeming but corrupt vendor NPCs unlocks a special option with you where you can now sell certain items to them for higher value and if it's stolen even better. Would have to put some sort of restrictions to avoid having friends just steal from each other to sell for more.
- Maybe xp gain bonus for selling to the corrupt vendor an item from different players.
- Level 80 you can break items off of a stack when stealing.
- Bonus xp for doing this
- Level 90 you can look and steal from inside bags now.
- Bonus xp for doing this
- Level 100 you can now steal more weight and units
Special properties or effects
We could be rewarded for our skill proficiency or there could be more items in the world that have hidden properties.
- Thieves Gloves that increase your chance at stealing. (Could raise your cap so something like Level 110 further increases the weight or units you can steal.
- Lockpick Gloves that give you lockpicking attempts but runs down the durability. Depending on how rare maybe it could give 1000 attempts total or 200.
- Darkness Gloves increases the radius of your Darkness spell.
- Decoy Pouch allows you to swap this 6 slot bag with another players. Maybe there can be different sizes of bags to match the regular ones but they are rarer similar to spirit boxes.
- Assassin's Dagger gives +10 movement speed
Consequences of stealing
I don't believe thieves should be no risk with just plain rewards.
Problem: The worst you face in the game is waiting around dead just to come back at the priest and do it all again.
Suggestions:
- 3 strikes and you're sent to jail. The guards catch you once or twice and you have the option of returning the stuff to the player you stole which will send it to that player in the veredari straight from your inventory. The third time you're caught you get teleported to jail where you must do the time with that character.
You can even make it interesting where other players can come visit or harass you or even break you out of jail if they can figure out how. Multiple options could be kill all the guards, another thief steals cell keys from the guard (or maybe even you do when he passes your cell), finding hidden buttons that need to be pressed within 5 seconds of each other to unlock the cell doors, fight your way through the sewers maze to the cell and escape, etc.
This could also compound the consequences if a jail break is attempted and failed where you and everyone involved are then sent to a maximum security prison where the only option there would be to have a big group of players kill lots of guards.
- If you're caught in 3 or more towns by the guards perhaps you can be exiled for a period of time from those towns or all towns leaving you with guardless towns only.
- Require a little pouch that a player needs to have equipped that stores the stuff they steal instead of having it go directly into their inventory. If they don't have the pouch they can't steal as much. A thief at 100 has a permanent pouch which they can't remove except for lowering their thievery skill so this way if they dedicate to being a thief they are dedicating a certain amount of inventory slots to only stuff they steal.
- The way you had to call guards in MO1 was to have that player targeted and then don't target anything else might be tricky in a crowded area but if you witness a thief stealing and running off you should have the option to run to a guard instead and report the player's name from a list of who you recently targetted or just input it if it's a simple name so you don't have to worry about Iliiil type names. This would put the guards on alert and they would approach that player which could add another use to the social skills Connections, Bribe, and Threaten.
I'll edit this when I think of more
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