They could have simply meant that they couldn't implement it due to other players being able to enter the house and live their as well.

Haha, fair enough.


I agree, but I'm afraid to take words from devs. at anything other than face value. Too often, one falls into the trap of reading far too much into it. I like to think that they, over the five years they've been working on this, have just been keeping an eye on the forums. Seeing the kinds of things we want froum housing, and all that.

A single Pickpocketing skill is much easier to put in and balance than player housing for 100000+ people. I.E cooldowns and other item restriction set on the skill. Player housing is a huge can of worms.

I may be one of them poor souls that always ends up reading too far into things.

Possibly. One of the more likely explanations. Hopefully they can either come up with a solution to that problem, or implement instanced housing at some point. For all we know they already got some form of housing and a good stealing system... We can hope, at least.

Edit:

@Boreilx

True. But that can'o worms mainly entails having the ability to steal from player housing. I'd be for no stealing from players so long as we get homes. Good trade-off in my mind, but that may just be me...

No that can of worms is player housing alone, adding the ability to steam from another players house is a whole new can of worms, so that makes player housing in this context 2 can's of worms.

I haven't played a graphical MMORPG with player on player stealing but I used to play these text based online rpgs called Dragonrealms/Gemstone III back when they were on AOL and for a while once they went independent. Here is how their system worked:

All players had a stealing skill but it progressed so slowly that if you weren't a Thief it was a waste of time. All players also had a perception skill which was used for detecting hidden players, MOBs, objects etc. If your skill was high, you would be harder to steal from. So essentially there would a skill vs skill plus a die roll to determine if A) you stole some coins and were not detected stole nothing / not detected C) stole coins but were detected or D) stole nothing and were detected. Each attempt at stealing from the same player increased your chance of failing. There were all kinds of other factors involved such as location (thieves received a bonus the longer they remained in cities and gradually lost this bonus if they were in the wilderness or were caught stealing). Rangers had a similar bonus to their Survival skills but the wilderness/city situation was reversed.

A couple others notes: you could also steal gems in addition to coins if your skill was high enough. Players had to prepare against theives by either lining their pockets with copper to decrease the chance that platinum would be stolen or get a bank note which could not be stolen for a small fee. You would always want a note if you were going to buy something from another player or were travelling to another city.

A lot of rambling here, but these games were probably my favorite online rpgs and the stealing system was just a part of it. I'd like to see something like this in a modern day MMORPG.

It hasn't been confirmed, but I will bet you a barrel of Skooma that thief skills will be hotbar/cooldown and will work like they work in almost every other MMO.

you annoyed my with your comment about the steal button. But you're just trying to piss me off with the Skooma begone brigand!

It either won't or it will be painfully lame. Sad...Mortal Online has a great pickpocketing mechanic, very well balanced.

With the modern pussification of mmo's I would almost go as far as to guarantee there will not be any sort of theft.

They are gearing this game for the mass that wow attracted, and those people will cry if they got their epic loots stoled by some noob thief.

My guess is that it's just the traditional MMO class "Thief"
basic use of Daggers with skills/perks having some sort of relevance to theft and does damage yet it has no affect on players as it's only used on enemies throughout the game.

I too am VERY interested in if they will allow for the common "evil" TES gameplay to exist. If I want to have a character that I loot and rampage with, I should be able to, as that is a core TES experience. Everything I have read so far talks about being a "hero", but they are making a huge mistake if they don't allow players to be whatever they want to be like in the single player game.

Hmm, could be interesting if they do it like this.

You can steal from people up to a small percent of what they have. Like 10% of all their gold on them. Assuming there is some place they can deposit excess gold. This ties into the next point.

Only certain items are able to be stolen as well, like potions and other similar items.

Cap the amount of gold a player can have on them too. Something high but not ridiculous.

Make valuable items very hard to steal and bulky items impossible.

Once a thief steals something from you a message 30 seconds later awknowledges this. This time will diminish based on some kind of awareness you may have like a perception attribute or your own security skill and the thief's own security skill.

Have a tracker marker appear on any thief that attempts to steal from you and fails for a set amount of time and if any guards witness it they help you assail the would be thief. If they witness even a successful theft they will tip you off and other players can always tell you someone is stealing from you, or not.

Have thefts require a very short amount of time.

Anyone want to add to this. I'm on a mobile device so it's kind of a [censored] to type anything out and be easily coherent right now.

Thieves can work. I don't think we will see other players being able to steal from you though. At least not in the sense we are all thinking of, no doubt.

Pickpocketing can and should be used on NPC's. It could be used on players as well, but perhaps it would be like farming mobs. You have a very low chance of getting anything other than some small items or perhaps 1-2% of the gold that player is currently carrying. You have a small chance to get vendor trash, potions, harvestables and other small items. An increasinlgly smaller chance to get any weapons and armor. And zero chance at taking anything equipped. Stealing from players can't happen inside town, only outside of the city walls. If players are moving, theft is impossible. So you literally need to stalk and get to someone who is AFK or not really paying attention. This can't happen in town because you need a safe area, and with an auction house, it's kind of hard to prevent these things if you are busy looking at a page of items you are trying to buy or sell.

Or, they could design it where you actually won't get anything the other player has. It will just be randomly generated loot created by a pickpocket loot system.

As far as the Dark Brotherhood goes. I'm not sure about this. I can see kill quests for NPC's happening. Perhaps a kill quest for the player emperor with a huge reward if completed. Hunting down actual players may be hard. Will there be a form of tracking? This faction seems like it would be tough to implement with any amount of variety.

Or it could be NPC only.

The mirculous Kulin predicts: the thieves won't be able to steal anything. Probably they can lockpick a few treasure chest or similar things.

You won't be able to steal from other players.
You won't be able to steal from the NPCs(probably in some quests).
You won't be able to rob the player house, which btw. wont exist anyway.

Why? Because they think BALANCE is everything and because they are cowards.

So... stop the dreaming!

What CAN and what WILL happen are two different things entirely. You're right.

I also believe there won't be any stealing from players. I don't see why you can't steal from NPC's though, at least most of them. They are touting their world interactivity in how there will be barrels, chests, cabinets and so forth for players to open and loot. I'd expect for locked chests to be littered around cities. I also expect to see the same thing in dungeons and in certain story type quest lines. I can see lock boxes dropping from mobs as well, where other players will have to seek out theives (similar to WoW) in order to get them unlocked. It may be enough if done right. Also, in dungeons, there needs to be locked chests for bosses. Thieves need a role to play.

Cowards. Yes. They are cowards who lack vision. Agreed.

They may have a vision. But they won't get any money for a "vision". They get money to make money. So they let some "anolysts" "anolyse" the mmo market. They are going to predict: "WoW-Style-Concept = Success and loads of money!" Then the boss - a man with a doctor title in economics studies, who has never played a single mmo game in his life - decides: "lets do this to make some money!" They think its like every other market... "WHOOT? APPLE IS MAKING BILLIONS WITH TEH SMART PHONES? LETS DO THIS, TOO! I WANT TEH BILLIONS!!!1"

And then they fail. If not in terms of money making atleast in the eyes of their fans.

Likely both. They may have a vision of dollar signs, but not the proverbial "vision" required to create something truly great.

Wrong, there will likely be a thief class in game, however whenever you try to even loot something that is currently in the process of being rolled for your character will say in a stupid voice "that would be stealing!" and refuse to pick it up.

As for thieves guild quests I wouldnt expect much more than "steal 6 pocket watches from the corpses of ", Dark Brotherhood quests on the other hand I assume will most likely involve waiting for a unique mob to respawn.

LOL, this is exactly how it's going to go down people.

And what are you impressions based off? Blind faith?

Do you know Rogues in WoW? ...

Seriously though, the chances of being able to steal other people's loot from their houses (if there are houses...) are zero to none, I fear. Although it could be great... They could create a penalty system, player and npc enforced. There could be banks and safehouses, special lockboxes, magical boobytraps. Stealing valuable items would be a very difficult taks (if the owner takes care) with very high risks involved... it would be exactly the type of revolutionary MMO gameplay I'm hoping someone will make one day. Alas, my hopes are tiny and often crushed.

Make one day? It already has been done multiple times. Just look at ultima online. And it has been done in similar ways in eve online(you have to smash the enemy first, to get their stuff).

Yes, we already HAD good MMOs with tons of interesting features(Housing, Thieving, Crafting where you actually feel like you crafted something, PvP with Purpose, Player generated Content, and so on). Then came wow and told everybody: "this features are not neccessary to have fun. All you need is combat and good balance". BLEH! And that was it. In fact every new mmo is only easier but in no way better than the old mmos. Even WoW Cataclysm is going in this direction. Compared to wow classic this is just a lame copy for the dumbest possible player. I've seen not a SINGLE MMO since EvE Online(Character Development) or Vanguard(Diplomacy) that offered something really new.

You're right, actually I guess I hope someone will do it again, and better as well. I think EVE is probably closest right now, but it's just not my cup of tea. The old SWG was a good example, until they "wowified" it...

The "problem" with MMO's is that any company able to invest enough to make a AAA title, wants to have huge subscription numbers. To get these, they will try to make a game that offends the least amount of players. So there has to be balance. Everyone should have acces to everything. Etc. etc., we all know the WoW-formula I guess. Now I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad type of game, I enjoyed a few for quite a while. And even though I am done with it, lots of people stil enjoy these games.

It just puzzles me that no company seems to think "hey, the WoW-like market is cutthroat competition and loads of games fail, but there are quite a few MMO gamers who want something different... maybe there's money there!?".

I must admit, though, that I haven't really been keeping up with all the new MMO's lately... I hear Darkfall mentioned often when "sandbox" is brought up, and they have a 14 day trial, I might give that a go.