For stealing, do you mean like pickpocket or stealing from an owned chest in a player house?

For a chest, traps are the first thing that comes to mind.  Nasty traps, not just the "drink a health potion afterwards because you lost 5% of HP from a minor explosion" kind.

No idea on sabotage.  Something like break into a player house and break (but not steal) all their stuff?

In a way that sounds fun, but I can imagine how griefers would exploit it.

Originally posted by ActionMMORPG

For stealing, do you mean like pickpocket or stealing from an owned chest in a player house?

For a chest, traps are the first thing that comes to mind.  Nasty traps, not just the "drink a health potion afterwards because you lost 5% of HP from a minor explosion" kind.

 

No idea on sabotage.  Something like break into a player house and break (but not steal) all their stuff?

In a way that sounds fun, but I can imagine how griefers would exploit it.

Let the player have his bank in the guildhouse. That house should be a castle or a dungeon with plenty of traps and hired in guards. Have the bank either in each players personal room or in the guild treasury together with the guildbank.

Meaning that you either need a very daring cat thief or a group that uses violence to bash in.

Allowing someone to pick pockets really only would work in a perma death game like Salem and where stealing have death penaltty, otherwise is the reward to great for the risk.

And it just ain´t fun that you can loose stuff without being able to stop in no matter what you do. 

They way to steal from players should be hard and fun. Having monster players live in dungeons where they have put inventive traps and hired in NPCs to help guarding it (like those 2 diceing orcs all P&P dungeons seems to have), knights pallys, clerics and similar guilds have a castle and large guilds their own guarded city would mean you instead of adding stealing as a small way to annoy people add it like a huge part of the game that really fits the fantasy lore.

t4c had that you could look into the others players bag, and steal from it, all was skill based, so if you choose it you would be weaker in combat, and most of time people would choose it for fun or because he wanted to steal all pots of his target so he can't heal himself, but people just choose the kill him he will drop something random rinse and repeat. for it do work it would need a game like UO or MO with when dead you lose all your things, but here is the deal in case of a thief being caught and killed he would lose all his equips, be in jail for some time and have to pay a fine, you can also make it so if the robbed person choose to give him to the law or make it so the thief have to pay him for not doing it and have a debuff on the thiefe till he pay the fine or so. several things here would work and the harsher the penalty would be better, if not everyone would just use a mule char to store things and log him off.

for sabotage only see it in games with siege wars. like you know you will be attacked by someone so you invade they castle and sabotage all they siege weapons, be in to burn it before war or just ake it so it would break after some use would make teh weapon useless till fixed.  or even you could burn all the armory what would make the guards with worse equipment for the siege, or make then with lower numbewr of guards with a possible assassinates a day before the siege. poison the water supply would make everyone in that defense castle lose hp over time till tehy fix the poison, cut off suply lines so the attacker side would get a debuff on his attacking power.

well most of things would only work if sieges would be like in shadowbane you would take a RL week in siege, back then people really would time they online time so they would always have someone on to attack or defend in a siege and to prevent this kind of things.

for stealing is even more difficult to work.

One way to implement a system of thievery is to create a system where what can be stolen is worth a lot more to the thief then the person he is stealing from and on the flip side if the thief is caught the thief loses something more valuable to his mark then it is to the theif.

Really what we're talking about here is creation of a system of incentives that both parties participate in because they see the value of participation outweighs the risk.  Step back and consider the system of incentives that your ideas create.

The danger comes when both sides see more risk in participation then value.

For example

The solution in several games is to create rewards that come from the game and not from the person you're interacting with.  This decreases risk for the victim (not to mention how it effects the economy), ensuring that participation isn't staggered by problems associated with mutual risk being too great.  The problem this creates is a disincentive for the victim to protect himself since the losses he suffers aren’t his.  The victor can also be left to feel that his victory did little to deny his victim anything of real value (these days the victim loses almost nothing but a few minutes of his time) and the realization that no matter how much a person wins, that he's doing little to slow down his opponents...

This is exactly how and why Eve has been so successful.  The insurance system ensures (in most cases) that the victor wins more than the loser loses.  The spoils earned by the victor come from the loser, who has, after insurance, last a small but real fraction of what the victor took.

Again, this entire exercise is about measuring incentives and disincentives from both sides.

There is more then one way to accomplish the solution I gave in the opening paragraph, but in order to solve the problem you'd really have to se more of the system your trying to implement this into.

There is no specific system I wish to adapt this type of gameplay into. I would just like to see how others would handle this type of player interaction all the while preserving balance on both sides. What systems and rules would you build to facilitate this?

Originally posted by ZBergz

There is no specific system I wish to adapt this type of gameplay into. I would just like to see how others would handle this type of player interaction all the while preserving balance on both sides. What systems and rules would you build to facilitate this?

I couldn't design the system without understanding several factors.

Is there PvP in this game?

What kind of economy does the world operate on?

How important are items in the game world?

How difficult are items to obtain?

Do monsters drop money and/ or items?

(Answering these question would probably just lead to more questions).

These are just a few examples of suestions you need to understand when finding a solution to your question.  It may seem as though I'm just being difficult, but if I asked you to design the best 4-wheeled vehicle you could, you would ask me what it's going to be used for.  If I said that I had no specific use in mind, maybe now you see the problem?

I can't achieve balence when I don't know where the fulcrum point is.  This is why I asnswered your question in a more vague sense.

Originally posted by Talinguard

Originally posted by ZBergz

There is no specific system I wish to adapt this type of gameplay into. I would just like to see how others would handle this type of player interaction all the while preserving balance on both sides. What systems and rules would you build to facilitate this?

I couldn't design the system without understanding several factors.

Is there PvP in this game?

What kind of economy does the world operate on?

How important are items in the game world?

How difficult are items to obtain?

Do monsters drop money and/ or items?

(Answering these question would probably just lead to more questions).

 

These are just a few examples of suestions you need to understand when finding a solution to your question.  It may seem as though I'm just being difficult, but if I asked you to design the best 4-wheeled vehicle you could, you would ask me what it's going to be used for.  If I said that I had no specific use in mind, maybe now you see the problem?

I can't achieve balence when I don't know where the fulcrum point is.  This is why I asnswered your question in a more vague sense.

You are missing the point. I am simply asking how could player pick pocketing and sabotage be successfully implemented in a game and how would you choose to do it. There is no singular solution that I am seeking (more than one way to skin a cat). The mechanics which allow you to successfully implement this is entirely up to your own discretion. I am still refining my thoughts but I will post my own implementation idea soon.

Originally posted by ZBergz

Originally posted by Talinguard

Originally posted by ZBergz

There is no specific system I wish to adapt this type of gameplay into. I would just like to see how others would handle this type of player interaction all the while preserving balance on both sides. What systems and rules would you build to facilitate this?

I couldn't design the system without understanding several factors.

Is there PvP in this game?

What kind of economy does the world operate on?

How important are items in the game world?

How difficult are items to obtain?

Do monsters drop money and/ or items?

(Answering these question would probably just lead to more questions).

 

These are just a few examples of suestions you need to understand when finding a solution to your question.  It may seem as though I'm just being difficult, but if I asked you to design the best 4-wheeled vehicle you could, you would ask me what it's going to be used for.  If I said that I had no specific use in mind, maybe now you see the problem?

I can't achieve balence when I don't know where the fulcrum point is.  This is why I asnswered your question in a more vague sense.

 

You are missing the point. I am simply asking how could player pick pocketing and sabotage be successfully implemented in a game and how would you choose to do it. There is no singular solution that I am seeking (more than one way to skin a cat). The mechanics which allow you to successfully implement this is entirely up to your own discretion. I am still refining my thoughts but I will post my own implementation idea soon.

 

I am not asking for a four wheeled vehicle. I am asking "How would you reach the top of this hill?" You could walk, cartwheel, ride a bike, build a car, teleport, etc...

I'm really not missing the point.  I understand what your asking.  What I'm saying is it would depend on a lot of factors, whatever they are.  If you want me to give you some ideas, fine, but the usfulness of this excercize is severly limited because most people will define solutions that end up raising more questions then they solve because they don't understand that the things they ask for have consequenses on the system at large many of which arn't intended or desired.

Thus I outlined what I thought you would need to accomplish in order for the idea to be successful, but to really answer your question requires that you either provide some context or I create the context for you as I answer the question.

On the other hand if this is just a "brainstorming" session, that's cool to.  I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Cheers

PS...

How steep is the hill?

What's it made out of rock sand...

How high is...

Ok, ok..... J/K.....

Stealing

The best thing I can think of to give anyone a chance is to make the entire affair situational, or far more realistic. By situational, I mean one player woud have to be at a disadvantage in the first place; in the dark, drunk, looking at his map, something where he can't physically see another dude animate his way into his pocket. By realistic, I mean that beggars can't be choosers. You reach in and grab something random, snatch something without a good look at it, cut purses and pockets open and the jingly falls. Both set an interesting standard because it puts more power in the victims hands to not be one, as well as making the thief work for it. The problems always been it's too damned easy, and thusly successful, and thusly ANNOYING>!!!!

Ahem, if stealing from a secure container or private building, I would again have it be a mix of the two types. Situational; door unlocked, help yourself. Realistic; can pick a lock via minigame or something, but there has to be an applied chance of getting caught, like wandering NPCs, as well as a limit of what can be stolen (fill a sack at the most, and also to prevent total wipeout).

With any good theft system there should be one to investigate and avenge, so being fast/efficient/slick is more important than being greedy and hanging around too damned long. Smarter thieves, not richer ones.

Sabotage

I can't count how many games I've played where players jokingly said that you should be able to sneak into people's homes and poison their food or drink... and honestly, wouldn't that be amazing? In the pickpocketing sense you could be able to plant something on them and sick an NPC or player on them, or maybe something much more simple, like dropping a cursed item that gives them hidden debuffs until they notice it... or sicks wild animals on them. Something along those lines.

As for sabotaging traps - it would be interesting if setting up traps in the first place played out like the game The Incredible Machine. You have parts, you build something by swapping them around ala Mousetrap. Then if you knew your way around that, it should be simple enough to get other player's traps to trigger on them instead. Oooo, that LOVE game kinda did stuff like this. I should really have checked it out.