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Split Discussion: Improving Imperian - Theft

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  • edited May 2015
    This is going to be... interesting.  The root problem as I see it is that Imperian is built around reducing actual risk to almost nothing, while keeping perceived risk (omg, Kryss is coming) intact.  That's why Imperian is awesome.  Theft, however, allows a player to truly "damage" (possibly quite badly) another player, and as I'd mentioned, even in games that have pretty punitive XP loss, thieves just don't seem to care much about dying.  They'd have even less reason to care here.  And the people who would feel the heat most are the people who tend to have a lot of liquid funds because they're not sitting on a pile of credits.  They have more liquid funds in the first place, and less options to safeguard them.  And we all have PK on each other... a lot of the time.  And we fight in big groups which allow lots of extremely powerful skill coordination.  This is a great way to encourage people who don't feel pretty confident that they can lock down their stuff to turtle up and avoid conflict.  We just had a guy drop 800K today with the gold in hands thing (again, not theft per se), so most players really are totally unprepared for a determined and capable thief (and like I said, with the way we tend to fight, I'm not so sure anyone really is).  And, while I think I can lock Jules down, I'd much rather be working on actual combat.

    Finally, as I alluded to in one of my posts above, since I was a bad and brought this up, yes, anyone who was even half-way inclined to theft certainly remembers it's a thing now.  I really did bring it up in hopes of closing an open door that I felt would almost inevitably bring harm to the game eventually.  Better try to lock down your stuff, just in case people decide to be jerks. 
  • IniarIniar Australia
    edited May 2015
    You're not wrong.

    This was the second artifact purchase I made...

    Artifact #     Description                                Cost   
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------
      53           a money pouch                           100 Credits
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------

    Back then I had money to actually lose, so I protected it. If you make it mechanically impossible to steal (it's not straight up easy as is), you lose
     (a) conflict
     (b) revenue

    So while the intention is good, there are many ways to avoid the perceived problem.
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • edited May 2015
    If I am annoyed (or justifiably paranoid) enough I can buy that easy.  But the guy saving up for it can't.  And instead of saving up for something fun that he can use to fight with, he has to save for this thing first (and probably avoid any and all conflict until he does if he's smart).  Basically, please don't sell me a dongle to avoid an unfun, harshly punitive, and pretty much one-sided mechanic (that has been pretty much non-existent as long as I've been playing and people sure don't seem to miss it).  Sell me a fun game and I will continue to buy credits in ridiculous amounts from time to time.   
  • IniarIniar Australia
    Sure, and you know, keeping gold in bank is pretty safe.
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • It is really, really hard to be stolen from. The effort required to get through clarity, bracing, re-wearing...and this is saying nothing of artifacts like pouches and packs (which you don't need to have by any means). Sure it's not impossible in all cases, but it does generally require the target to be AFK.

  • edited May 2015
    Yeah, if I'm reading it right, the banks here are actually pretty good.  I mean, in that the fees seem low enough that they're not a discouragement from using them.  There have been problems with people not wanting to use banks when the fees felt like "hey, the bank is kinda keeping a lot of my gold".  Anyway, I'm not totally sure why people mostly don't seem to be using them (because they do seem okay).  

    I hope Kryss is right there, and I know she knows her stuff pretty well, but man, some people in the other games are almost wizards with this stuff, especially if they're not limited to the use of a few skills like they are in those games.  That said, if I really am basically worried about nothing, I'll take it.  
  • The number one cause of lost gold is death and the money pouch will not protect you from that.  That aside, the money pouch burns 1,000,000+ gold to protect gold from theft. For most people this is a fantastically inefficient means of protecting your wealth. The average player will be much better off just using the banks and paying the 0.02 fee. You have to cross the 50 million gold mark before the money pouch even begins to seem like a good option. 

    "On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."

  • IniarIniar Australia
    Bank is gold. (Get it?) Also not sure how I burnt through all my gold :/ must be those darned auctions.
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • Also note while the thieves may not really fear death, I gotta imagine the stigma of being a known rampant thief is gonna get you blackballed from places.  Especially if you have some people advocating for the victims of said theft, there's a certain amount of social pressure that can be exerted to combat it as well, not just pk power.
  • edited May 2015
    Yeah, I do get the feeling our current player base isn't keen on theft (which is why I was surprised anyone defended it remaining in the rulebook).  But still, I am... just absolutely floored (and very happy) that you seem to be saying that a lot of people here really do feel THAT strongly about theft.  I mean, yes, in other games where theft is a thing, theft victims might hire someone to try to hunt down the thief (which the thief probably doesn't care about anyway), and that player will probably be enemied to an organization if he steals from its members, but it's still considered a very "legitimate" thing to do in game - as in, people consider theft a valid "profession" and thieves feel empowered to steal as much and as often as they possibly can.  Thieves aren't truly blackballed or pressured by the player base at all.  In fact, just the opposite.  Anyway, that is great to hear.  
  • I once was a victim of theft, but I chalked it up to lesson learned, even if I was ticked off about it at the time. Daydreaming in a favourite spot, and she came upon me. Forced me to take gold from bag, then started attacking me. It startled me out of my day dreams, but as someone who doesn't know how to fight, I just stood there staring like an idiot. Death be a lesson learned. My second death to her was because I was mad and insulted her, that one was rightly deserved. 

    Lesson learned, run to city when I need a smoke break!
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