Devs - TC1 Feedback about faction thieves [LONG]

[Traveller]

UPDATE5: Point 2 updated to take into account the difference between 80 points on prodo and on siege.
UPDATE4: Title of point 1 and 2 updated on input from Tina.
UPDATE3: Point 2 updated to reflect new viewpoint from Tina.
UPDATE2: Point 1 updated to reflect Tina's opinion.
UPDATE1: Point 2 updated with kelmo's opinion.

This post describes some (potential) problems about faction thieves that have been presented in the (slightly heated) discussion in this thread http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?t=108096

From this discussion I tested some stuff on TC1 and confirmed their presence. Three different problems have been outlined by several parties. I will try to give an idea of every position to the best of my abilities. Post here if you want to correct something, I will keep this post updated.

1) It is possible to steal sigils with a technique very similar to the vamp form abuse.

People with 10 stealing can steal sigils without drawbacks. On prodo shards you can reach 80 stealing with 10 real skill, +30 from jewels +10 from bandana/mark +20 from leggings, + 10 from ferret form. On siege that is about 40/50 skill (blessed legging plus two disposable jewels). Wear items, steal sigils, remove items keep the sigil. I confirmed this on TC1. This allows full fledged fighters to steal sigils without effects on their templates/outfits. By doing this the role of thieves in faction is lessened because there is no ACTUAL need for a thief, a warrior overloaded with item can do the same job as effectively. After some discussion, almost every participant in that thread, except one, agreed that this technique to steal sigils without sacrificing anything should be stopped, although there was disagreement on some of the proposed solutions. A minimal solution would probably be something like vamp form: you remove the items, you lose the sigil.

2) Even without the item-switching trick, 80 skill points may be considered too low a requirement.

This point was more controversial. Basically, on one side you find people who say that if you remove 80 points from a fighting template, you still are largely effective in combat and still get full benefits from stealing sigils, while a typical non-faction combat thief should sacrifice at least 200 points (stealing and snooping) from its fighting skill. On the other side you find people who say that a REAL faction thief has already a crammed template without adding an additional requirements for snooping.

Proposed solutions: After some discussion the most interesting solution was to require some other non-combat skill that a faction thief is assumed to have, like remove trap or lockpicking or detect. EDIT: While I am writing this, however, I think that another possible idea would be to introduce the snooping requirement to steal sigils, but at the same time removing the requirements for remove trap, most notably the lockpicking requirements which holds up uselessly 50 skill. Some of those against the snooping requirement also observes that thieves with snooping get the ability to snoop packs from snooping, which an ability that some faction thieves might want to forsake in exchange of combat (or other faction thief) skills. A complex problem. I suppose that a proper step in the right direction would be to raise the requirement for 100% chance to steal sigils at 100 stealing. Also, any solution should take into account that 80 skill points are probably a heavier requirement on siege than on prodo shards.

An additional interesting point has also been made in this thread, that by making it easier to have faction thieves in the game it is easier to get kill points by killing the many thieves in game; if there were only few thieves in factions it might happen too often that killing a thief wouldn't grant you kill points because you killed him just a little before.


3) Thieves in statloss should not be able to steal sigils, while current item system allows them to do that.

Those who present the problem say that a faction thief in statloss can be fully effective just by equipping one item to go over 80 stealing skill points, while everybody else in statloss is strongly penalized. On the other hand, the other side says that everybody in statloss can still be useful in combat, while a thief that cannot steal sigils anymore is completely useless. The only way that I can see to conciliate both positions is to introduce a chance-based mechanism to steal the sigils instead of using a on/off threshold, so that a thief in stat wouldn't be able to be as effective as a a fully functional thief, but still having a chance to steal the sigil.


Please guys, if you think I misrepresented your position, or skipped something you think relevant, let me know, and I will try to edit this post to reflect it.

 

[sablestorm]

Kudos for taking the time to summarize all this.

 

[The_Dude_]

I posted in the other thread and ill say it again. If your in stat no +skill jewels should work at all.

You cannot raise skills while in statloss. So why should you be able to put on another item that raises your skill lvl?

As for the thieves are useless in stat. Please you can still steal aids pots etc. You just cant steal the sigil which is the way it should be. Also the requirement needs to be 80 REAL STEALING even if not in stat. No +skill items should let you steal the sigil.

I mean my dexer in statloss is real uber against ppl not in statloss.....Or my mages uber mindblasts destroying everything.

 

[Splup]

I gotta agree with you. I was also thinking about a char with 50 stealing, and then using dress macros for bandana and legs.

So basically I could just drop my 50 chivarly from my mage for 50 stealing. Or then I would get some jewerly also.

 

[UltimatePower]

+ 10 from ferret form.

You can't steal while in animal form.

You need 20 real skill and can get the rest from items.

 

[Nexus]

You can't steal while in animal form.

You need 20 real skill and can get the rest from items.

Ferret Form is the exception to that rule...it's the Only Animal form you can steal in...that would be kinds stupid to have a form give you + Stealing skill and not be able to use it.....

 

[Traveller]

You can't steal while in animal form.

I confirm that you can steal in ferret form. I was one of those that, when testing the 10 years tokens, found out that you couldn't steal in a form that just give you 10 stealing. Oddly enough, it was fixed soon after.

 

[Traveller]

As for the thieves are useless in stat. Please you can still steal aids pots etc.

The rest of your post is an opinion already reported above, so I will not comment on it. However do you realize that to ANY prodo thief this sentence of yours sounds very much like sarcasm? Stealing that kind of stuff can be useful on siege, on any other shard is as useful as forensic evaluation.

 

[Willow30]

All good points Traveller.

On a side note, has anyone tested stealing sigils and how the points work?

I was curious if a thief takes the sigil off the town monolith and hands it off to someone else to run to the base, but the same thief to place it back in town after corruption, does that thief get the points?

 

[kelmo]

I am not fond of the idea of making snooping mandatory for faction thieves. I do not steal from back packs and I do not lift crates... Want to make it 100 stealing? fine. There are as many diferent types of faction thieves as there are faction mages. *nods*

 

[Traveller]

I am not fond of the idea of making snooping mandatory for faction thieves. I do not steal from back packs and I do not lift crates... Want to make it 100 stealing? fine. There are as many diferent types of faction thieves as there are faction mages. *nods*

However, every faction mage devotes at least 200 common skill points, isn't it?

 

[Poo]

this is factions people.
we can do better then this.

this is my suggestion.
make thieves 'declair' themselves like faction tinkers and smiths and tailors need to do.

to be able to declair yourself under the present system you need like 90 or 92 REAL skill.

so why not just add 'faction thief' to the list of merchants that you can declair the the problem is solved.

under the current system if you stone off the skill youve declaired yourself in you loose your 'status'

so this would solve the problem.
it would force the thief to have real skill of at least 90.
and it is allready a system that is at work in factions and has been there since the start.

easy fix.
just add it to the existing system.

but what i DO think they should add to faction stealing system is that ONLY factions thieves who are declaired a faction thief should be allowed to steal a sigil off a stone.

course once they have it then they can hand it off to anyone.

actually...... now that i think about it.
if we are gonna give kill points and silver to thieves for moving sigs, well hell, then they should be the only ones able to move the sigs.
hahahahha

 

[kelmo]

However, every faction mage devotes at least 200 common skill points, isn't it?

I spend my 700+ points to be the best faction thief I can be. I also choose to fight. Some reveal, some remove traps, peace, discord whatever.

I do not count on jewelry or items to be a thief... Siege thing. I do not want to waste points on a skill that will not help me. Would you?

You know? If you see a faction thief with points and it ticks you off... Kill the thief and take his damned points. *nods*

 

[Traveller]

I do not want to waste points on a skill that will not help me. Would you?

Of course not. That is why I think that the "threshold" mechanism to steal the sigils is obsolete. Having a skill merely as a requirement only means that people will feel exactly like this. If instead the additional skill points gave you an increased chance to steal the sigil you wouldn't be feeling like it. Besides the same argument you used applies to the lockpicking requirement for remove trap.

You know? If you see a faction thief with points and it ticks you off... Kill the thief and take his damned points. *nods*

That's exactly my point. A faction thief, even when combat oriented, should be weaker than a completely combat-oriented char. That's why he gets kill points from sigils, because he is expected to not be able to collect many points in traditional ways. Currently the difference on siege may be as little as 670 skill points combat oriented on the faction thief against 720 (on prodo it is the obscenity of 710 vs 720). Not saying that applies to you, but I am pretty sure someone will do that. Being a professional thief my concept of "weaker" is about 200 skill points less than a full combat char. I suppose we just have to agree to disagree on this issue.

 

[Traveller]

Sorry kelmo, I must have been losing sleep. I realized just now that you message was probably meant to add some additional point to the OP. Edited point 2 of OP. Let me know if I misrepresented your point.

 

[Willow30]

this is factions people.
we can do better then this.

this is my suggestion.
make thieves 'declair' themselves like faction tinkers and smiths and tailors need to do.

to be able to declair yourself under the present system you need like 90 or 92 REAL skill.

so why not just add 'faction thief' to the list of merchants that you can declair the the problem is solved.

under the current system if you stone off the skill youve declaired yourself in you loose your 'status'

so this would solve the problem.
it would force the thief to have real skill of at least 90.
and it is allready a system that is at work in factions and has been there since the start.

easy fix.
just add it to the existing system.

but what i DO think they should add to faction stealing system is that ONLY factions thieves who are declaired a faction thief should be allowed to steal a sigil off a stone.

course once they have it then they can hand it off to anyone.

actually...... now that i think about it.
if we are gonna give kill points and silver to thieves for moving sigs, well hell, then they should be the only ones able to move the sigs.
hahahahha

I like the idea of "declaring" yourself a faction thief. Why not add this and the requirement of 100 stealing to steal sigils. I do agree with Kelmo on the snooping. My template is already packed with detect, remove trap, ect.

 

[Wenchkin]

I too like the idea of having to declare yourself a thief, or just make items not count when considering the chance to steal a sigil. Better still, just remove stealing from the list of skills that can be boosted with items.

As for snooping, I think it should be required to have one other skill used by a factioner, *ideally*. So detect or remove trap would count instead of snooping.

Wenchy

 

[kelmo]

I got a little busy at work today and could not follow up until now... While working, it kind of dawned on me, we may be missing part of the picture here.

Yeah, the warriors will have new toys to fight with, and the thieves will be able to play with some of the new toys as well.

By tying points to stealing sigils, it is certain that sigils will be moving around. That is a good thing *nods*

 

[Tina Small]

Traveller, I said my piece last week and I'm still not entirely sure you understand what I was trying to say. I'd like to remind you that the stealing requirement has been what it is for many years, most of which occurred during a period when you could only put one character per account into factions. Being able to wear more than one hat and pinch hit with the stealing of sigils during that time frame was looked at as a GOOD THING, not something to be scoffed at and treated as if it was an exploit. It was always a good thing to be able to keep the thieves around with something else to do during a guarding session.

Lord knows how many times I was just about the only one left in the base during a 10-12 hour guarding session to watch the sigils with my little thief while everyone else in the guild (we're talking 10-12 people) went off to raid a spawn to relieve their boredom. If my thief hadn't had her other skills like tracking, detecting, and remove trap, I know I wouldn't have stayed around after the sigils were in the base because I would have had nothing to do but annoy and distract my guildmates and get underfoot.

To see folks come along and now tell me that I was doing something that smacked of an exploit by having a thief with "just" 80 real stealing during that time because I wanted to cram in some other useful skills so I could stay online and have something to contribute to my guild's efforts really bothers me. It completely discounts my whole purpose in making the character, i.e., to make a character that could steal sigils and was also useful and as good as possible in several skills that very few ever bother to take to the GM level but that are very helpful in factions: tracking, detecting, and removing traps.

Now before you start telling me that I want to keep the stealing requirement low to be able to steal in skill loss, let me tell you something else: I've never wanted to be able to steal in skill loss. I've never tried to steal sigils in skill loss. I have always looked at the skill loss period as a good time to go take a break, perhaps after five minutes of scoping out the enemy while a ghost. Even if I did pile on jewelry and items to be able to steal, my thief would be a sitting duck because her other skills had dropped too low to be able to hide and stealth reliably.

If I do decide to help out with my thief during this event, I know the last thing I am going to care about is trying to get kill points and rank in order to purchase one of the faction artifacts. I will jump in and participate because I want to play with my friends and have a good time and a challenge. The faction arties mean nothing to me, even for my other faction characters because they already have all they need in terms of armor and weapons. I wish the artifacts weren't even in the picture, but that's out of my control.

So where does this leave me? I honestly don't know. About all I can do is point out something that many who seem to be primarily concerned about getting kill points seem to be overlooking, probably because few have really done much to test this yet: The publish notes state that you will get bonus kill points for killing enemy faction characters in warzones.

Please please don't forget this, as I think these bonuses should definitely level the playing field when comparing kill points for PvPers versus those for thieves. Please don't forget too that the thieves who steal the sigils from the towns when they become available have to manage to be logged on when those sigils are finally placed back in the towns in order to get the kill points and silver. That could take quite a while, if all the factions are active and the sigils bounce back and forth a lot.

I guess I'm trying to say that I think way too much emphasis is being placed on the kill point/silver reward for stealing the sigils, to the point that I think you just might be trying to balance something that may not need balancing once this event gets going AND if people jump into it wholeheartedly.

If the developers feel that there must be a "real skill" requirement for stealing sigils, don't go overboard with it. That would be unfair given that warriors do not have such limitations placed on them in order to be able to earn kill points. And don't forget that you can always kill a thief who's managed to rack up a pile of points to help strip them of points and earn your own. Perhaps it's a bit harder than whining about kill points earned for stealing and corrupting and placing sigils back in town, but it should certainly be a lot more exciting and challenging, right?

And haven't folks in this forum just about had enough of clawing and scratching at each other and bringing each other down into the muck and mire out of jealousy and greed? UO's a game. It's not a perfect game, but it can be a very fun and addictive game. But it sure isn't fun when you start wondering and worrying if someone else is just maybe going to get more than you unless you destroy any apparent advantage they have over you.

Can't we just give some of this damn bickering a rest for a while and just play the game and have fun with it and each other? Let's try cheering each other on for once instead of trying to push people away.

 

[Kat]

I like the idea of "declaring" yourself a faction thief. Why not add this and the requirement of 100 stealing to steal sigils. I do agree with Kelmo on the snooping. My template is already packed with detect, remove trap, ect.

Ditto! I don't run snooping, as I have no reason to. I don't steal from players, nor do I do the crate bit. I'm a faction thief, plain and simple.

I also believe the 80 stealing requirement is obosolete and should be raised to 100. I could also support the +stealing being removed from a few items. There is no way someone should have the ability to get more than 30 pts in a skill with the use of items. Even that number is pretty lame.

 

[OldAsTheHills]

LAST UPDATE: Point 2 updated with kelmo's opinion.

This post describes some (potential) problems about faction thieves that have been presented in the (slightly heated) discussion in this thread http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?t=108096

From this discussion I tested some stuff on TC1 and confirmed their presence. Three different problems have been outlined by several parties. I will try to give an idea of every position to the best of my abilities. Post here if you want to correct something, I will keep this post updated.

1) It is possible to steal sigils with an abuse similar to vamp form.

People with 10 stealing can steal sigils. On prodo shards you can reach 80 stealing with 10 real skill, +30 from jewels +10 from bandana/mark +20 from leggings, + 10 from ferret form. On siege that is about 40/50 skill (blessed legging plus two disposable jewels). Wear items, steal sigils, remove items keep the sigil. I confirmed this on TC1. This allows full fledged fighters to steal sigils without effects on their templates/outfits. By doing this the role of thieves in faction is lessened because there is no ACTUAL need for a thief, a warrior overloaded with item can do the same job as effectively. After some discussion, almost every participant in that thread agreed that this abuse should be stopped, although there was disagreement on some of the proposed solutions. A minimal solution would probably be something like vamp form: you remove the items, you lose the sigil.

2) Even without abuse, 80 skill points may be considered too low a requirement.

This point was more controversial. Basically, on one side you find people who say that if you remove 80 points from a fighting template, you still are largely effective in combat and still get full benefits from stealing sigils, while a typical non-faction combat thief should sacrifice at least 200 points (stealing and snooping) from its fighting skill. On the other side you find people who say that a REAL faction thief has already a crammed template without adding an additional requirements for snooping.

Proposed solutions: After some discussion the most interesting solution was to require some other non-combat skill that a faction thief is assumed to have, like remove trap or lockpicking or detect. EDIT: While I am writing this, however, I think that another possible idea would be to introduce the snooping requirement to steal sigils, but at the same time removing the requirements for remove trap, most notably the lockpicking requirements which holds up uselessly 50 skill. Some of those against the snooping requirement also observes that thieves with snooping get the ability to snoop packs from snooping, which an ability that some faction thieves might want to forsake in exchange of combat (or other faction thief) skills. A complex problem. I suppose that a proper step in the right direction would be to raise the requirement for 100% chance to steal sigils at 100 stealing.

3) Thieves in statloss should not be able to steal sigils, while current item system allows them to do that.

Those who present the problem say that a faction thief in statloss can be fully effective just by equipping one item to go over 80 stealing skill points, while everybody else in statloss is strongly penalized. On the other hand, the other side says that everybody in statloss can still be useful in combat, while a thief that cannot steal sigils anymore is completely useless. The only way that I can see to conciliate both positions is to introduce a chance-based mechanism to steal the sigils instead of using a on/off threshold, so that a thief in stat wouldn't be able to be as effective as a a fully functional thief, but still having a chance to steal the sigil.


Please guys, if you think I misrepresented your position, or skipped something you think relevant, let me know, and I will try to edit this post to reflect it.

Some activities should be skill points only! Not jewelry, not artifacts, not spells. I suggests that only 90.0+ skill points in stealing should allow players
to steal the Sigils. This should give the Thieves a place in the game.

*stares*
Yahaxithonix

 

[Traveller]

Ditto! I don't run snooping, as I have no reason to. I don't steal from players, nor do I do the crate bit. I'm a faction thief, plain and simple.

You do realize that the "crate" bit actually requires more skill points than required by "faction thieves"? ANY "doom thief" could join faction and steal sigils immediately. The opposite is not necessarily true. I think that's a serious imbalance.

 

[Traveller]

we may be missing part of the picture here.

Yeah, the warriors will have new toys to fight with, and the thieves will be able to play with some of the new toys as well.

By tying points to stealing sigils, it is certain that sigils will be moving around. That is a good thing *nods*

Mmmhh... while I do agree that is a good thing that sigils will be moving around, I am not sure what is the point you are trying to make. Would you elaborate?

 

[Traveller]

Traveller, I said my piece last week and I'm still not entirely sure you understand what I was trying to say.

Possibly I didn't (actually I am pretty much sure I didn't). However that goes both ways. I think we have serious communication issues. For instance:

If my thief hadn't had her other skills like tracking, detecting, and remove trap, I know I wouldn't have stayed around after the sigils were in the base because I would have had nothing to do but annoy and distract my guildmates and get underfoot.

I never said in this thread that a complete faction thief should be penalized. In the other thread I suggested to introduce a snooping requirement, but if you read the OP you notice that I altered my original suggestion after your input, balancing the snooping requirement by removing the lockpick requirement of remove trap. That has no effect on your faction thief, isn't it? Lockpick is as useless as snooping for a faction thief.

To see folks come along and now tell me that I was doing something that smacked of an exploit by having a thief with "just" 80 real stealing during that time because I wanted to cram in some other useful skills so I could stay online and have something to contribute to my guild's efforts really bothers me.

I never said that, and I doubt that many if not all of those who proposed many solution were targeting your faction thief. Although some solutions proposed affect your thief they were targeting DIFFERENT problems (such as the 720 -10 warriors or statloss stealing), and I doubt many, if any, of them has some issue with your full fledged thief. That is exactly why I started this thread. To identify the ISSUES, and see whether the proposed solutions affect something that is NOT the issue. I cannot map your faction thief on any of the problems described above, and most if not all the solutions proposed shouldn't have much if any effect on it. Am I wrong on saying this? And if I am, could you point me where?

Now before you start telling me that I want to keep the stealing requirement low to be able to steal in skill loss,

??? I never said that. That was JC's point. I actually think that a thief should be able ot steal in stat, although at a reduced efficiency. But the point of JC is not unreasonable, although debatable, so I presented it in the post. I am at least TRYING to be impartial in that post...

If the developers feel that there must be a "real skill" requirement for stealing sigils, don't go overboard with it. That would be unfair given that warriors do not have such limitations placed on them in order to be able to earn kill points.

You will note that in no point of the OP it is said that one of the PROBLEMS is the absence of real skill requirements. That is only ONE proposed solution among others.

However, as I already said, my position on this point is that the skill requirement should be on skills that a complete faction thief already has to have in its template. And I don't even think that the skill point requirement should be "real", I just think that if you remove the skill points you should lose the sigil you are carrying, Altering your template online by renouncing to other advantages given by an equip slot is fine for me. What is wrong is when you can steal sigil WITHOUT the real skill AND _without_ the need to readjust your template. And that is exactly the issue outlined in the post up here. NOT the necessity of real skill. That necessity is just a proposed solution, not necessarily optimal. For the record i don't think it is optimal. However it deserves mention, to maintain fairness.

Now to answer to one of your points:

I'd like to remind you that the stealing requirement has been what it is for many years, most of which occurred during a period when you could only put one character per account into factions.

Actually, if you remember, factions were designed pre-AoS, which means pre-skillitems. Since then they have been neglected. Now the devs are trying to reshape them (at least that's the impression they give. Not sure how long it will go on... ), which means the old bets are off. They are changing some key points in the design so I think it is in the player's interest to outline the potential effects of the changed design. Which is the aim of the OP. Then it's devs responsibility to understand whether they want those effects in the game, and, if they don't, take corrective actions. Whining is not the point of this thread, nor is it wanted, as far as I am concerned.

To conclude this treatise: can you tell me if you think I should alter the OP to reflect better your position? And if yes, how? (a tl;dr version, please )

 

[Kat]

Ditto! I don't run snooping, as I have no reason to. I don't steal from players, nor do I do the crate bit. I'm a faction thief, plain and simple.

You do realize that the "crate" bit actually requires more skill points than required by "faction thieves"? ANY "doom thief" could join faction and steal sigils immediately. The opposite is not necessarily true. I think that's a serious imbalance.

I have no qualms with a "Doom thief" joining factions and stealing sigils immediately. He should, as he has more skill points.

Would you mind explaining how the opposite of that would be an imbalance? I'm not sure I follow you on that. If you are saying that there is an imbalance because my thief, which does not have snooping, cannot go to Doom and steal artifacts, I'd have to disagree. I didn't build her for that and don't see that as an imbalance, but more of a choice in playstyle. Its like having a tamer with the vet skill vs a tamer with out it. A lone, vetless tamer with a dead pet he can't rez is about as useless as a faction thief who finds himself standing in front of a pair of inquisitors in Doom.

To me, the imbalance lies with those who can throw on several +skill items, steal a sigil and fight his way out of a faction base. Most faction thieves can't do that.

 

[Traveller]

I have no qualms with a "Doom thief" joining factions and stealing sigils immediately. He should, as he has more skill points.

That's exactly my point. Can you explain me why taking over control of a city should require less skill points than those needed to pick up useless stuff from the floor? Honestly, I think that's crazy... Again, I don't want to penalize real faction thieves by pointing this out. I don't mind whether the "additional" skill points were skills already trained by faction thieves, like remove trap or such. But I don't think that subtracting only 80 skill points from a combat template puts it at a serious disadvantage in combat.

You say:

To me, the imbalance lies with those who can throw on several +skill items, steal a sigil and fight his way out of a faction base.

I do agree with you here, but I suppose that the difference in our opinion is whether you think that only 80 skill points less from a combat template qualify as a "thief that can fight his way out of a faction base" or not. I think they do, you think they don't. Of course they count more on siege, but even on siege,do they make THAT much difference?

Most faction thieves can't do that.

As I already said to Tina, faction design is changing, the old ways may prove obsolete. Which means that your sentence might turn into a "Most faction thieves COULDN't do that.". Maybe.

 

[Tina Small]

Traveller, honestly I don't care if someone uses jewelry on a non-Siege shard to be able to steal the sigils. I DO NOT CARE. I've seen non-thief characters steal sigils I wanted to take or that I was guarding and it made absolutely no difference in the amount of fun I had playing UO and being in factions on that particular day. Did it make me mad? Nope. Did it frustrate me? Nope. Did it provide an unexpected challenge? Definitely yes.

I really think that people are too hung up on the kill points being awarded to thieves for this event. I think it's going to be harder than you understand for them to get them and hang onto them. Plus everyone else should also be earning kill points at a faster rate because of the kill point bonus system. Unfortunately, no one has spelled out the details for us on what the faster rate is, so people are pretty much ignoring that little tidbit of information. All they seem to see is that one set of characters are going to get some extra kill points and rank and it irks them to no end.

So, go ahead and make a big deal out of this. The way I look at it, on the non-Siege shards, jewelry and item mods are used throughout the game and that's just the way it is. If you want to start making things complicated and saying that sigils should become "unstolen" once the thief that stole them removes his or her jewelry, then you need to start saying that kills come undone too once someone takes off jewelry that helped them make a kill or unequips a weapon that had a skill modifier on it.

Either cut out skill-modifying jewelry completely from the game ALL AT ONCE or live with it being in the game. I'm sick and tired of seeing this nit-picking witch-hunt to "fix" all the things people think are being affected by skill-modifying jewelry. Give us a date somewhere down the road when it all goes away and then let us each in our own way adjust our characters to live with the change. Then we can play in peace without having so-called experts in everything in the game coming along every couple of days, jumping into stuff they know little about or haven't bothered with in years, and telling everyone else how they ought to play and use the items provided in the game.

And if you're someone who actually works for EA and works on UO and you're doing this "incognito" to get input, then have the guts to do it in an official capacity so people know who you are. I've never seen your name on the factions forum before and as far as I can tell, because Stratics doesn't give a lot of history on posts, you only jumped back into factions recently and were spending most of your time playing EVE until mid-summer this year.

I understand that you think this is important, Traveller. But I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill. And JC....pffft. I well remember your almost identical posts on the issue last spring when you and your group wanted to take over factions. Your disdain for thieves was very evident from the beginning of that whole charade. If you'd just recruited a few trackers and detectors, you'd have coasted through all of it and would have had plenty of PvP action. But no, it was far easier to come on here and pancake about the thieves.

And a special note to Kat and Kelmo and anyone else that's posted on the issue that plays on Siege: I understand you guys have totally different issues on Siege. I won't even try to address them because I don't play there and any thoughts I have on the issue would probably be so far off-base and insulting to you that it wouldn't even be funny.

 

[Traveller]

Traveller, honestly I don't care if someone uses jewelry on a non-Siege shard to be able to steal the sigils. I DO NOT CARE.

Your privilege. You are the only one in two threads, but I'll modify the OP to point that out.

And if you're someone who actually works for EA and works on UO and you're doing this "incognito" to get input, then have the guts to do it in an official capacity so people know who you are.

OMG, Draconi, they found out!! What should I do????
Please be serious. If EA people want to gather information they have done that already without the need of "stealth" approaches. I just think that if they want to rehaul factions they must be made aware of potential problems. They are not gods, you know.

I've never seen your name on the factions forum before and as far as I can tell, because Stratics doesn't give a lot of history on posts, you only jumped back into factions recently and were spending most of your time playing EVE until mid-summer this year.

It's two years I have not been playing on official shards, yes. Actually I tentatively reopened my account after two years hiatus from OSI, financing YOUR game, just due to the faction changes you disparage so much. Whether I will stay for more than a month or two is still something to be seen. EVE has longstanding good tracking record as far as I am concerned and I am pretty sure I won't leave it soon. Can't say the same for UO, but we'll see.

I understand that you think this is important, Traveller. But I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill.

Possibly. I would be delighted to find that it is true. However, having seen tons of abuses in UO, and not only, I think that a previously unexploited game mechanic becomes heavily exploited as soon as it turns profitable...

 

[Tina Small]

If you really want accuracy in your summary, you need to distinguish between who plays in factions on Siege and who doesn't. I'm pretty sure that several of the people who have posted play on Siege.

 

[Traveller]

If you really want accuracy in your summary, you need to distinguish between who plays in factions on Siege and who doesn't. I'm pretty sure that several of the people who have posted play on Siege.

That is a good point... I already tried to distinguish between some effects on siege, but I'll try to restructure it to further outline the differences of siege as soon as I get some time.

 

[Tina Small]

Traveller, here's something else to consider. When you kill an enemy faction character (let's call him Character A) and get kill points from doing so, you have to kill a certain number of other enemy faction characters before you will get kill points if you once again kill Character A.

With that being the case, do you think it just might be a good idea to make it easier, rather than harder, to have a faction thief so that there are more of them getting the kill points for stealing sigils?

If your enemy only has one "real sigil thief" getting kill points, you won't be getting many kill points from killing off that one thief. However, if your enemy has more characters able to steal sigils and earn kill points for doing so, your chances of getting kill points from killing the thieves just grew because there are more of them.

 

[Kat]

That's exactly my point. Can you explain me why taking over control of a city should require less skill points than those needed to pick up useless stuff from the floor? Honestly, I think that's crazy... Again, I don't want to penalize real faction thieves by pointing this out. I don't mind whether the "additional" skill points were skills already trained by faction thieves, like remove trap or such. But I don't think that subtracting only 80 skill points from a combat template puts it at a serious disadvantage in combat.

You seem to be under the impression that my faction thief requires ONLY 80 points to be effective. That isn't the case. I utilize my entire template and only shurikens are used to defend myself.

I do agree with you here, but I suppose that the difference in our opinion is whether you think that only 80 skill points less from a combat template qualify as a "thief that can fight his way out of a faction base" or not. I think they do, you think they don't. Of course they count more on siege, but even on siege,do they make THAT much difference?

Again, as a faction thief, my template requires more than 80 points... it even requires more points than the 120 I have in stealing. My character is not set up to fight, its set up to steal sigils, find traps and survive.

As I already said to Tina, faction design is changing, the old ways may prove obsolete. Which means that your sentence might turn into a "Most faction thieves COULDN't do that.". Maybe.

I'm not interested in new ways. I prefer you leave my faction thief the **** alone. I'm not interested in change, I am interested in having fun. Siege Factions is the only fun left in this game for me, when they screw that up, I'm out of here. And judging from the recent faction item additions, that time is quickly approaching, so if thats your goal, you just keep up the good work. rolleyes:

Furthermore, I am not interested in debating with you. I will support raising the minimum skill to steal sigils to whatever it is the dev team deems necessary. I'll support plus stealing items being removed or changed, but I will not be putting snooping on a faction thief. Ever.

 

[Traveller]

You seem to be under the impression that my faction thief requires ONLY 80 points to be effective.

No.

I am not interested in debating with you.

I can believe it, since you don't bother to read. Well, my point is up there for people to read, no need to repeat it.

 

[Traveller]

If your enemy only has one "real sigil thief" getting kill points, you won't be getting many kill points from killing off that one thief. However, if your enemy has more characters able to steal sigils and earn kill points for doing so, your chances of getting kill points from killing the thieves just grew because there are more of them.

Sounds a good point, I'll add it to the post.

 

[Kat]

You seem to be under the impression that my faction thief requires ONLY 80 points to be effective.

No.

I am not interested in debating with you.

I can believe it, since you don't bother to read. Well, my point is up there for people to read, no need to repeat it.

Apparently you don't bother to read, either... That or you're just clueless about thieves. Try again?

Would you mind explaining how the opposite of that would be an imbalance? I'm not sure I follow you on that. If you are saying that there is an imbalance because my thief, which does not have snooping, cannot go to Doom and steal artifacts, I'd have to disagree. I didn't build her for that and don't see that as an imbalance, but more of a choice in playstyle. Its like having a tamer with the vet skill vs a tamer with out it. A lone, vetless tamer with a dead pet he can't rez is about as useless as a faction thief who finds himself standing in front of a pair of inquisitors in Doom.

 

[GL_Seller]

This is dumb. You should have to have the required real skill to steal the sigil.

Also no + skill crap should work in stat. Ive never understood that. You shouldnt be able to wear taming stuff to buff skill archery/dexer stuff to fight or stealing items to steal sigil.

If you kill a thief you should not have to worry about them stealing the sigil for 20 mintues...

If you kill a tamer you should not have to worry about there dragons for 20 minutes.

Statloss is a penalty which is being abused due to +skill jewelry.

I'm fine with you just needing stealing to steal sigils thats ok with me but you should have to have 80 real skill at all time to steal the sigil...

 

[Tina Small]

Traveller, would you please change your summary and stop saying that it is an abuse of game mechanics to use skill-based items to be able to steal sigils or that it's an abuse of game mechanics or an exploit to put items on to be able to steal or to actually do ANYTHING while in skill loss?

Until a developer comes along and actually says that any of this is an abuse of game mechanics, you are just labelling it as such and frankly it's getting darned annoying seeing someone try to pull off that trick in a thread that's supposedly trying to impartially summarize player opinions.

The developers aren't clueless about factions and these issues have been raised before and discussed elsewhere. They've delayed this publish long past it's initial roll-out date (I believe the original plan was to see it in late June) and I'm pretty confident that if they thought the 80 stealing requirement was a problem, they would have changed it as part of this publish. The fact that they didn't makes me think that they would like to see a broad range of character types out there trying to steal the sigils. I know from my experience in factions, I've always had just as much fun trying to kill Rusty the archer who just stole a sigil as trying to kill Talos the ninja who just stole a sigil. To me, they are both thieves that took a sigil and need to be killed to get it back.

The fact that Rusty and Talos aren't cookie cutter copies of each other means my side has to play smarter. They need to be prepared for just about anything. They have to know the enemy and keep track of who might be able to steal sigils. And to me that all adds up to more fun.

What doesn't sound like fun is shoving things into little molds and pre-determined templates so eventually we're all playing little cookie cutter characters. Blah blah blah. If I wanted that, I'd be playing some other game.

 

[Traveller]

Until a developer comes along and actually says that any of this is an abuse of game mechanics,

Tina, do you realize that the devs have done more than speak about that? They have ACTED on the vamp form abuse, automatically treating that as an abuse (also note that there is a world of difference between "abuse" and "exploit"). Are you seriously saying that the thing with sigils is different? Anyway I will change the post so the word "abuse" is related only to "vamp form".

ADDED:

The fact that they didn't makes me think that they would like to see a broad range of character types out there trying to steal the sigils.

Also this sentence of yours assume that if you dedicate more than 100 points to stealing you cannot have template variations. I suggest you sometime visit the thief forum, and browse a little bit about the different templates that players can manage even by sacrificing 200/220 skill points to stealing instead of the mere 80 (actually 10 with the current design) you advocate.

 

[Traveller]

Well, I suppose there is no more need to keep this pst updated. I hope that the devs might have taken a look at it, in case they plan to observe how factions evolve.

Well I suppose that the first thing to do is to fix the MANY bugs that are surfacing... You got a lot of work, Draconi.

 

[Tina Small]

If the developers do decide to look at these issues, I hope they also look at other thief templates as well.

If the developers decide to impose "real stealing" and other skill requirements for stealing sigils, maybe they will also impose "real stealing" and other skill requirements for stealing things like Doom artifacts, just to keep things "balanced."

Because, of course, the thief who piles on stealthing and ninjitsu skill jewelry and items to sneak into Doom and then switches it out to pile on stealing skill items to steal a Ruined Painting or an Inquisitor's Resolution definitely deserves to have those things go poof or have them go poof from his customer as soon as he takes off the stealing jewelry he used. And woe to him if he tries to do it without sufficient snooping skill. You're just not a "real thief" and shouldn't be eligible to try to get the "good stuff" in UO if you don't also have snooping, lock picking, or remove trap skill or belong to the thieves' guild.

While the developers look at faction thieves, I also hope they look at the templates of all other faction characters, e.g., the mages and the dexxers. Since none of them have minimum skill requirements, I'd have to say they're waaaaay overdue for some restrictions and general prodding and pushing in the direction of fixed templates.

Plus I'm jealous of all the kill points they manage to get.

/end sarcasm

 

[Traveller]

Because, of course, the thief who piles on stealthing and ninjitsu skill jewelry and items to sneak into Doom and then switches it out to pile on stealing skill items to steal a Ruined Painting or an Inquisitor's Resolution definitely deserves to have those things go poof or have them go poof from his customer as soon as he takes off the stealing jewelry he used.

Odd you had to mention that. Yesterday I tried to remove my necro jewels when being in vamp form. Vamp form went poof....

 

[CatLord]

One question...

Faction character with stealing 100 gets sigils...
Gets the rank too...
SoulStones the stealing... goes back to his old template.

Now he can use the top items.


How accurate is the above information?

 

[Tina Small]

One question...

Faction character with stealing 100 gets sigils...
Gets the rank too...
SoulStones the stealing... goes back to his old template.

Now he can use the top items.


How accurate is the above information?

Probably about as accurate as this scenario:

Fred the swordsman decides today he loves his axes. So he soulstones his 120 resisting spells and puts on GM lumberjacking. He has a fantastic time today slaughtering enemy SL and Minax. He's just rolling in kill points and by the end of the day he's reached the top rank in the faction. Woot! Time for a silver spending spree.

Next day, Fred decides to give his recently chastened enemies a bit of a surprise. Gotta keep them on their toes, you know. So time to soulstone the lumberjacking and put back on the 120 resisting spells.

But Fred's not really so hot with his other weapons. He really does his best work with axes and once in while he gets the urge to smash up some armor.

So, along about day three, Fred decides to swap out the 120 swords for 120 macing. Now we're talking! Kill points are coming in right and left.

Day four arrives and Fred decides he really needs to keep those enemies on their toes and so off comes the macing and on goes the fencing.
.
.
.

Want me to continue? Day five could arrive and Fred might decide he wants to be an archer. Maybe on day six he puts on stealing and soulstones a different skill.

Does Fred's constant shifting of his template negate all the kill points and rank he earned using other skills and weapons?

How about this scenario:

Slim the faction thief also likes to steal from his guildmates when they're not paying attention. Today his guildmate, Hapless Hal, buys some shiney new faction items. While Hapless is busy talking away in Vent about his new shineys, Slim sees his chance to pursue his true calling! Hapless is so excited and awestruck by the new shineys that he's forgotten to insure one of them! Quicker than the blink of an eye, Slim snags it from his guildmate's pack and slinks away, unnoticed.

Later, Slim's hanging out with his UO wife, Miranda, and she insists he take off his jewelry and that ugly bandana. (She's always nagging him that he must not like her because he never wears that wedding ring she gave him and tonight she needs some reassurance.) Does Slim lose that shiney new but useless-to-Slim faction item he snagged from Hapless Hal?

 

[Traveller]

Tina, sorry to say the same thing, but since you seem bent on insisting on pushing on the same thing, I insist on the same reply.

I tried to remove my necro jewels when being in vamp form. Vamp form went poof....

 

[Tina Small]

And next I suppose you'll tell me that once your vamp form went *poof* so did your ability to loot the corpses of anything you killed while in vamp form or to claim quest rewards for tasks completed while in vamp form.

 

[Traveller]

And next I suppose you'll tell me that once your vamp form went *poof* so did your ability to loot the corpses of anything you killed while in vamp form or to claim quest rewards for tasks completed while in vamp form.

Never said that. However you will notice that in all your examples "completed" is the operative word...

 

[Coyt]

require real skill to be checked, and 80,1 should be enough to prevent thiefs from stealing in loss ?