TomeNET Forums

When I was a rookie I wrote about stealing - "Sheriff idea": http://www.tomenet.eu/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=699

Right now I'm playing thief myself. Its fun to steal something in a shop, but its not fun to wait 10-40 minutes till next attempt. What could we do to make waiting more interesting and still do not give thiefs too much profit? Mini-games!

After each failed stealing attempt your character go to jail. There you could:

1) just wait till release
2) pay a bribe to jailer (depend on you crime - value of item which you tryed to steal). If you pay - you go out, but with criminal record for some time (high prices in shop and unable to steal)
3) run from jail - mini-game like "Dungeon Keeper", exept there is no Reaper, but Jailer; also there is no lava to spawn, but more jailers appear in time. If you win - you do not have criminal flag. If you get caught - time in jail increases*.
4) you could play "Go" with jailer and if you win - you are free and do not have criminal flag %) if you loose - your time in jail increases*.

*another option to pay fine for attepmt to run from jail or pay a loss for Go, so time in jail would be the same

Why its good:
1) thiefs gameplay become more interesting.. you don't have to afk for ethernity if you wish to steal more often. But its not so easy to run from jail or win Go game
2) "Go" game becomes more popular. I have no idea how to play it yet, but willing to learn.. it would be good motivation

As for now, it could be more simple solution:
make speed of criminal flag worn off depend on character movements. If character staying at one place - speed is 75%, if moving 150%. So to steal more ofter you have to move around At least some staff to do while waiting for flag release

you can just go to some dungeon, or disable auto afk function, leave character in bree or in tavern and make other stuff.
You can't starve, so unless you place your char in place when monster can spawn, you will be safe.

If you want go to jail just swear a little in public chat, and you will go to jail

Afk doesn't turn off criminal flag wear-off anymore

As I said, its not fun to wait 10-40 minutes after you failed to steal something till next attempt. Idea is to make waiting more interesting.

Do something in real life, read a book from Pern series for example:D

We are talking about TomeNet gameplay there, not about real life

With mini-games there would be a possibility to make stealing like real "craft" profession. Right now its just an entertainment for semi-afk players.

another idea about thief: to add new situation - when you stole item, but it was noticed by owner. so you got an item in your backpack, but can't continue to steal for a while. Right now there is only two states - got item and failed.. So maybe it would be interesting to have something in the middle.

I got an idea about different approach to stealing. We could make it really active profession %)

1) make separate stealing tamer to each shop. So if you fail to steal in one shop - you could steal in another
2) drammatically reduce chance of stealing success.. Make it 20% of what we have now, for example.

How it would change stealing? Thiefs has to walk and travel a lot to steal something, not just be afk near Bree BM all the time Its more realistic and fun. From one town to another... Like in thiefs in real life And stealing in Lothlorien and Khazad-dum could be dangerous... Even Gondolin and Minas Anor could kill you if you wouldn't be careful

It would change stealing to good %) It would nerf if, but it would be just better.

Also we could leave old way to stealing and just add new stealing key. Lets "old" way to steal (global cooldown to all shops) would work with "Z" (shift+Z) key and "new" way to steal - with local one-shop cooldown - would work at "z" (small glyph) key. So if you got time to play - you could steal in different places and if you afk - you use "old" way to steal

Another idea which could be helpful in IDDC and not only Karma.

When you try steal an item and failed you get penalty to karma. For example:

you failed to steal potion of speed: -100 karma
you failed to steal ring of speed +8: -10000 karma

When you have negative karma - you can't steal. Initially you have +10000 karma. So if you play IDDC, you could steal only limited amount of time before you have to go to the next lvl.

There is two ways to make karma positive:
1) you need to kill monsters and earn experience. Each point of experience = certain amount of karma (could be based at character lvl).
2) you could wait for looong time till it restores by itself (it has to be turned off in IDDC).

Also maybe leave only option #1? Donno.

Quite realistic system I think... Please suggest your ideas, brainstorm is welcome!