Thieves, don't let them get away with it

[Sheriff_Fatman]

Can someone please explain to me where the enjoyability of playing a thief type character comes from? To me, the thief skills and classes are cliched, dull, and only included for a cheap and easy bit of diversity for the vendor. How is they can keep putting in the same tired, boring skills, and people lap it up?

What thievery means for the player
As a player, having thief skills mean you get to make skill checks in blatantly obvious situations and apply other skills indiscriminately, with never a need to use your own judgement, intelligence or imagination. The net result of it all? More money and items.

Blatantly obvious skills:

• Lockpicking - every locked door and chest. Duh.
• Trap disarming - anywhere you see a red lined area (in D&D) or are otherwise warned "there is a trap ahead."
• Stealth - any time you need to get around someone or anytime you are about to enter combat with an unsuspecting foe. CLICK, you're in stealth mode.

Indiscriminate skills:

• Pick pocketing - since RPGs have yet to give you a way to assess the alertness of your mark, you just have to try pickpocketing everyone or noone.
• Trap detection - in games where the trap detection isn't automatic, you have to apply it pretty much to everything or nothing or just at random.

Trap setting is the only vaguely interesting skill for thieves, and it's a contrivance. Carrying little trpa kits around and dropping them at a moment's notice? A whole retail industry set up to support our friendly neighbourhood thieves' (who outnumber honest folk about 2:1) trap needs? BAH!

So why would you do all this? Following signposts or randomly performing checks is just dull.

Is it any different for othe skill areas? Yes. For combat skills, the player chooses types of combat to pursue, then chooses weaponry and armour within those. Okay, once the setup is done, combat is applied without thinking, but at least there is variety in the forms is takes (various flavours of ranged and HtH). Magic/technology are obviously even better, since you get to choose which lines of research to pursue AND there is some variety in its application.

The fruit of all this ability checking is equally dull. Games have to be balanced, so important doors and chests cannot be made accessible only to thieves. This de-values your skills immediately. The only areas and chests your thievry will get you into are extra, non-game-balance-effecting item acquistion areas. Even those will often have alternate, non-thief points of entry, since games builders rarely want to see their hard work restricted to a small subset of players.

So, how the hell do you thief playing lowlife scum manage to enjoy your zero brain lives?

What it means for the game
Justifying the thieves' roll requires specific support in the game world.

Doors and chests have to be locked, even though it adds nothing to the gameplay for other players. NPCs inexplicably lock various parts of their houses and don't (a) keep the key on their person or (b) keep the key anywhere else.

Traps have to be carefully sprinkled throughout the world. Small bands of low intelligence humaniods, who dwell in caves, use sticks for weapons and wear rags they find, are forced to developer (a) the ability to set traps detectable only be trained thieves (b) circumnavigate these traps all the time in their daily lives, just in case a party of adventurers arrives on a day trip. Paranoid, reclusive Wizards, whose skills you would imagine to be more along arcane lines suddenly develop either (a) trap setting skills (b) enough faith in humanity to hire a self-confessed thief to manage their Evil Lair Security Systemâ„¢.

Extra items have to be placed on people, in chests, in houses, etc., just so a thief character can feel a small sense of achievement at breakingin and pinching it. The items have to be carefully selected to be (a) worth pinching and (b) not have an effect on game balance.

The net result of all these things is that someone, somewhere in a games manufacturer's Evil Lair is spending time putting all this nonsense into the game just to justify the thieves' role, and that players are presented with the unpalatable options of (a) get yourself some lockpicking skills, even if you don't want them or (b) resign yourself to a background sense of dissatisfaction caused by locks continously thwarting your curiousity.

Well, that's the end of my rant. Anyone out there feel thief skills have real value to RPGs, rather than being filler? Is there any better approach RPGs could take to the stealth skills that players seem to love so much?

 

[Deathy]

Can someone please explain to me where the enjoyability of playing a thief type character comes from? To me, the thief skills and classes are cliched, dull, and only included for a cheap and easy bit of diversity for the vendor. How is they can keep putting in the same tired, boring skills, and people lap it up?

You've never felt the thrill of going somewhere where you are definitely not supposed to go, and getting out with nobody the wiser?
Have you ever really needed something, and the only way to get it without being beat up by thugs was to sneak in, late at night, and take it from under their noses?
The purpose of thief skills is to recreate this thrill. The other purpose, is inherent in the conventions of the genre. If it's a role playing game, why shouldn't you be able to play a thief, and play it well?

What thievery means for the player
As a player, having thief skills mean you get to make skill checks in blatantly obvious situations and apply other skills indiscriminately, with never a need to use your own judgement, intelligence or imagination. The net result of it all? More money and items.

Or, depending on the situation, being able to get some item that is needed without bloodshed or loss of life, getting in and out without killing anyone, or having anyone know you were there has its advantages. It's all a matter of implementation in the game.

Blatantly obvious skills:

• Lockpicking - every locked door and chest. Duh.
• Trap disarming - anywhere you see a red lined area (in D&D) or are otherwise warned "there is a trap ahead."
• Stealth - any time you need to get around someone or anytime you are about to enter combat with an unsuspecting foe. CLICK, you're in stealth mode.

Indiscriminate skills:

• Pick pocketing - since RPGs have yet to give you a way to assess the alertness of your mark, you just have to try pickpocketing everyone or noone.
• Trap detection - in games where the trap detection isn't automatic, you have to apply it pretty much to everything or nothing or just at random.

Trap setting is the only vaguely interesting skill for thieves, and it's a contrivance. Carrying little trpa kits around and dropping them at a moment's notice? A whole retail industry set up to support our friendly neighbourhood thieves' (who outnumber honest folk about 2:1) trap needs? BAH!

You seem to be missing backstab, and many scripted scenarios that a thief would get by something using his skills, for example, distracting the guards with a noise, and then poisoning their cups.

So why would you do all this? Following signposts or randomly performing checks is just dull.

You've been playing NWN lately, haven't you?

Is it any different for othe skill areas? Yes. For combat skills, the player chooses types of combat to pursue, then chooses weaponry and armour within those. Okay, once the setup is done, combat is applied without thinking, but at least there is variety in the forms is takes (various flavours of ranged and HtH). Magic/technology are obviously even better, since you get to choose which lines of research to pursue AND there is some variety in its application.

You seem to be ignoring diplomacy and related skills. They are quite similar to the theivery skills in that they need to be scripted in to give full advantage to them.

The fruit of all this ability checking is equally dull. Games have to be balanced, so important doors and chests cannot be made accessible only to thieves. This de-values your skills immediately. The only areas and chests your thievry will get you into are extra, non-game-balance-effecting item acquistion areas. Even those will often have alternate, non-thief points of entry, since games builders rarely want to see their hard work restricted to a small subset of players.

In allowing theives their individual ways to complete their objectives, while giving combat and diplomacy characters their own ways is a vital part of proper RPG balance. It does not involve having locked doors that theives can get into and fighters not, it involves creating a balanced environment in which all types of players can play the game.

So, how the hell do you thief playing lowlife scum manage to enjoy your zero brain lives?

With scripted scenarios, such as breaking into a rich smugglers home, copying his documents, and selling them to his rivals. Not with the mindless dungeon bashing that you seem to be alluding to when talking about the uselessness of theives.
You've been playing NWN too much.

What it means for the game
Justifying the thieves' roll requires specific support in the game world.

IE: Scripting events that make the skills use interesting and fun for the player.

Doors and chests have to be locked, even though it adds nothing to the gameplay for other players. NPCs inexplicably lock various parts of their houses and don't (a) keep the key on their person or (b) keep the key anywhere else.

You've been playing NWN too much.

Traps have to be carefully sprinkled throughout the world. Small bands of low intelligence humaniods, who dwell in caves, use sticks for weapons and wear rags they find, are forced to developer (a) the ability to set traps detectable only be trained thieves (b) circumnavigate these traps all the time in their daily lives, just in case a party of adventurers arrives on a day trip. Paranoid, reclusive Wizards, whose skills you would imagine to be more along arcane lines suddenly develop either (a) trap setting skills (b) enough faith in humanity to hire a self-confessed thief to manage their Evil Lair Security Systemâ„¢.

You've been playing NWN too much. Although Arcanum and Baldurs Gate also have similar problems.

Extra items have to be placed on people, in chests, in houses, etc., just so a thief character can feel a small sense of achievement at breakingin and pinching it. The items have to be carefully selected to be (a) worth pinching and (b) not have an effect on game balance.

You're still totally ignoring scripted events, why?

The net result of all these things is that someone, somewhere in a games manufacturer's Evil Lair is spending time putting all this nonsense into the game just to justify the thieves' role, and that players are presented with the unpalatable options of (a) get yourself some lockpicking skills, even if you don't want them or (b) resign yourself to a background sense of dissatisfaction caused by locks continously thwarting your curiousity.

You've been playing NWN too much.

Well, that's the end of my rant. Anyone out there feel thief skills have real value to RPGs, rather than being filler? Is there any better approach RPGs could take to the stealth skills that players seem to love so much?

In case you haven't read the rest of my post, scripted events are the key, theives are a non-combat class, and they can be likened to diplomats. Both of these characters rely on scripted events to make themselves useful.
Fallout, Morrowind and Arcanum all had uses for theives beyond the simple pick locks and detect traps that you seem to be encountering and fixating on.

You've been playing NWN too much.

 

[Sheriff_Fatman]

Hey, Deathy, my post was an attempt to drum up a bit of friendly debate. It's a bit off-putting when you immediately come back with such a derogatory tone.

You may have a bee in your bonnet about NWN, I don't. I'm pretty ambivalent to it, and have an open mind as to whether it will continue to thrive or have value.

Regarding some of your points:

• I haven't played NWN for quite a while. I think you're a bit blinkered if you believe its the only game with any problems or even this specific problem. Other games that have annoyed me with pointless lockpinking, etc, include:
  
  - DivDiv
  - Fallout
  - Arcanum (although it provided some nice alternatives)
  
• Diplomacy should in no way be dependent or inextricably linked with thievery. That would needlessly and senselessly limit player character options.
  
• Your comments centre mainly on stealth, which is just one aspect of thievery. Although it has potential, even stealth has been pretty dull in most games to date. The problem being that sneaking is dull. Raising your skill to the point where you don't get detected is all you need to do, then the rest is a formality.
  
• Scripting could make some of the thievery applications interesting, yeah. But
  • scripts don't write themselves, so you'd be putting more effort into specific support for thieves. In a finite development budget, this translates directly to less effort spent elsewhere.
  • only specific encounters can be scripted. You can't script general skill applications. You could try, but it wouldn't add the same kind of interest.
  • there is still the problem on lack of involvement from the player. Sure, the reacion to his pickpocket could be interesting, but he still basically just applies it at random, since he has no criteria on which to assess marks.
• Backstab I admittedly did miss. I don't think it adds an awful lot, though. I suppose it could add a bit more interest in terms of combat tactics, probably most noticable when playing with other players online

 

[Deathy]

Well, you post did outline pretty much all the problems that I saw with theivery in NWN, so I figured that thats where you got the basis for your rant from.

Now, I don't see how anyone could not be dissapointed with the campaign that NWN shipped with, and, in this regard, the modding potential is a non-issue.
I'm sure you're willing to admit, whatever your opinion of NWN, that the single player campaign that shipped with the game did not offer a lot for any class other than fighters, much less theives.

The thing is, NWN has all the problems you have discussed, and it is blatantly obvious that they are there.

Now, I haven't played Divine Divinity, but putting Fallout on the list for pointless application of theivery skills is inaccurate. There were very little in the way of things behind locked doors in Fallout, and even then, the majority of these doors had keys that you could find on bodies. Arcanum, I'll admit, had some trouble with reasonless traps, but, the rest of the theivery aspects of the game were top class. It was nice to be able to pilfer the shops of sleeping merchants while eluding the patrol patterns of the guards. In fact, this is probably the best handling I've seen of theivery in an RPG.

In no way did I suggest that diplomacy was dependant on theivery. What I said was that they were similar in that they both rely on scripting and quests to be useful and interesting.

Addressing sneaking, in Arcanum, and in some extent, Fallout, sneaking was never just soley related on your skill level. You ignore lighting penalties and guard patrols, A fun part of the game is setting yourself on stealth mode, keeping in the shadows, and eluding guards.

As for scripting, and scripts not writing themselves. Right, who's to say that the scripting time is better spent elsewhere. This is an RPG, that means that you should be able to roleplay any character you choose, and get an enjoyable time out of it. The main three ways of playing a character, diplomat, stealth, fighter (to simplify a bit) should be given equal attention and should be as viable as each other. It's all about giving the player the freedom the roleplay his/her character.

Backstab is not only useful as a mere combat tactic. It is a method of silently killing and therefore is useful in assasinations and silently taking out guards. There is a lot you can do with it.

Theivery adds a lot more variety in a game if implemented correctly.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

NWN made thieves annoying because you couldn't get away with not having them. You either had to be a thief or had to have a thief sidekick because, low and behold, they designed the game just like a party based CRPG. They just filled every area with monsters and traps which means you can't get away with not having a thief. There aren't alternative paths through areas for pure fighters with more combat and less traps. Thieves are required.

Now, as far as the cliched role of thieves in CRPGs, that's true. They're an archetype. They are the guy who sneaks around, unnoticed, picking the locks, finding the traps, and so on. That's the draw to them, they're not your average Brute Force character. They shouldn't have to do a lot of killing to get what they need to do finished. However, you have to make a way for them to do this within a game.

As far as stealth goes, in Fallout and Arcanum, there are a number of things that affected Sneak. Lighting, how close you were to walls, and so on. Arcanum one upped Fallout in that in included noise penalties for armor as well as terrain. It's not just a matter of getting your skill up, it's also a matter of correctly using that skill.

I agree that a thief shouldn't be linked to diplomacy, but if a thief is caught.. Well, he has to fall back on one of two things, diplomacy or combat. Once caught, a thief can't simply just hit the sneak button again and expect things to work out, so those are his two options. A gutter thief will most likely fight it out whereas an elite type catburgler will charm his way out.

 

[Sheriff_Fatman]

I think thievery is just a hang over from the old D&D class system.

I can see various stealth or deception skills being a huge boon to the game if done correctly, but I really think theives have been oversimplified. Why are thieves all lumped in together? Why does a mugger have skills in common with a conman or forger? All they really have in common are morals. Thievery is taking from someone, not a skill set. You could take from them through persuasion, stealth or brute force.

In terms of gameplay, stealth has it's attractions, if given enough depth, as does pickpocketing/sleight of hand. They're skills like any other. Lockpicking, on the other hand is just empty and annoying. Get rid of it, I say. I also would like to see trap-related skills done away with or massively revised (ie. made interesting and less contrived).

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I don't know, if you're going to have locked doors in a game, then you should have lockpicking. The two go together well when you think about it. If you didn't have lockpicking, then you'd run in to the problematic "Hunt for the Key/Lever" scenario that a lot of people don't like. Alternatively, you could bust the door down, but that's the noisy, brute method that tends to draw unwanted attention in games that offer it. Well, good games at least.

Now, the problem with lockpicking is how to do it well. A lot of games have it so you can keep trying to pick the lock over and over again until the lock breaks, like Fallout did. Either that or you keep breaking your picks until you have either a successful pick or you're out of picks, Morrowind did that.

Geneforge does it similar to morrowind, only it treats lock difficulty like hit points. You "soften" up the lock by burning living tools on it. The higher your mechanics skill, the less tools you need. You can also cast an UNLOCK spell to soften it up so you don't need as many tools.

I don't think it's a problem of having the ability, I think the problem is in implimenting it.

 

[Sheriff_Fatman]

I don't think there is a right way to do lockpicking as a primary skill. It should be a minor skill, possessed by few and largely irrelevant. Getting into and out of random houses should not be as frequent a concern as it is when the town is your mollusc. Breaking down doors in dungeons shouldn't be too hard and the odd key wouldn't be onerous. Imagine having to ask yourself "Where would the gaoler be?" instead of "Do I have high enough lockpicking?"

Doors in towns need to be completely rethought. There is far too much wandering in and out of peoples houses and an utterly unnecessary attitude that the town is there to be explored. Before we take the step of locking doors all over the place (INSIDE your own house?), perhaps we ought to think about cracking down on casual burglary and inventing the door knocker.

 

[Ap_Jolly]

Prov might remember me saying basically the same thing about lockpicking and other ultimately passive skills. I suggested a minigame.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I don't think there is a right way to do lockpicking as a primary skill. It should be a minor skill, possessed by few and largely irrelevant. Getting into and out of random houses should not be as frequent a concern as it is when the town is your mollusc. Breaking down doors in dungeons shouldn't be too hard and the odd key wouldn't be onerous. Imagine having to ask yourself "Where would the gaoler be?" instead of "Do I have high enough lockpicking?"

Well, that's the thing about burgling, you should have to worry about the people in the house.

I kind of like the idea of moving patrols through town, and moving people who will call out for guards if you're spotted doing this and picking locks takes time. The lower your skill, the more time it takes.. Thus the more likely you are to get caught. Given picks and enough time, most people can pick a lock.

Hell, I used to pick locks in high school to play pranks on people, and I just had a pocket knife to do it.

In other words, you should have to "case" a place. Learn the routes of the people. Then you can try to pick the lock when you know you have a window of opportunity.

 

[Vikjunk]

If thieve skills are done well they can be a lot of fun but like Saint has said you should have to scout out a place before hand to see if anyone can see or hear you, find out the guards route and find out the timing of them, try to find a way to maximize the time you need to pick the lock and get in without notice, ect. I also think it's a good idea for having your skill determine the time it takes and the likely hood of you jamming the lock or breaking a lock pick in it. Another thing that makes it interesting is some of the thieves missions like breaking into a castle, avoid the guards and servants, finding your way around to find the war room, coping the strategy plans for a battle, get out with no one the wiser, and giving the plans to the other sides agent. The missions can be varied quite a bit if the developers do it well.

 

[Section8]

Mini-game! Mini-game! There should at least be some form of interesting level of interaction with locks beyond the binary success/fail system that most RPGs use. I think that this coupled with decent scripting for thief type characters, would make for some good gaming. Especially if there are decent XP rewards for thieves that are in line with combat characters.

I still have an issue with it myself. One being the fact that money is usually available in abundant supply to just about anyone in an RPG, and an ability to get that money faster usually just makes the item/equipment progression peak very early on, not to mention that even though the primary motive for burglary is to make money, it is also to avoid paying for things.

However, Thief being one of my all time favourite games means I'd never wish to see the Thief class cast out of any RPG.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

You know, one thing that's always troubled me is that CRPGs have consistantly left out the thief ability to scale surfaces. It seems odd to me that we have several 3D CRPGs out now, most have thieves, and none of them have incorporated the ability to scale surfaces.

Now, when you think about it, it's skills like this that make the thief such an endearing class. A thief, typically, relies more on his talents more than any other class in most games. Fighter classes often rely on their bulky armor, usually magical at decent levels, and their big weapons, also can be magical. Mages also rely on their spell books to get them through difficulties. Both rely on equipment and/or magic to do what they do. The thief is really a hands-on character type.

You have an anti-magic field, the mage is useless. The fighter might be able to get by with brute force. However, the thief's abilities will all still work because they're no where near as dependent on things, other than some picks or spikes.

It's the abilities of the thief that make them special. That's my two cents on the matter.

However, as stated before, the problem with thieves is their implimentation.

 

[Anonymous]

Yeah, I wish thieves were better implemented, too. I also can't stand games that require dragging along the obligatory thief who just sits behind the party twiddling his thumbs until you come to a lock or trap. Really spellcasters suffer from the same problem. I mean, how many uses have you gotten out of a flying spell in PnP, but it almost never shows up in CRPGs other than possibly as a plot device usable in very specific circumstances, or a glorified Town Portal. All spellcasters usually wind up just being walking artillery or medics. Sometimes they often don't even get spells that can substitute for thief abilities, since that would make thieves even more useless.

I agree with the others that the main problem is CRPGs almost always come with hack and slash and Monty Haul syndrome. Thieves really can't shine in that kind of environment. I'd love to play a game where any character who basically accomplishes nothing but avoiding getting killed can't buy a small country after a farily insignificant stretch of time. It would also be nice to run into a situation where you'd more or less naturally come to the conclusion that a thief might be the best person for a particular job or that your thief character might have a unique way of solving a problem, rather than just stumbling on a few traps and locks that it's painfully obvious the designers included for no reason other than to make your thief not feel so useless. I wonder if the reason we don't see more of that, though, is because designers are being lazy and unimaginative or whether the game wouldn't sell. Who knows, maybe too few people will touch a game if it doesn't offer easy wealth and lots of it or actually requires a bit of real thought to get through. I've seen plenty of complaints about games before exactly because they possessed one or two of those qualities, if not both.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Now, I haven't played Divine Divinity, but putting Fallout on the list for pointless application of theivery skills is inaccurate. There were very little in the way of things behind locked doors in Fallout, and even then, the majority of these doors had keys that you could find on bodies. Arcanum, I'll admit, had some trouble with reasonless traps, but, the rest of the theivery aspects of the game were top class. It was nice to be able to pilfer the shops of sleeping merchants while eluding the patrol patterns of the guards. In fact, this is probably the best handling I've seen of theivery in an RPG.

I have played Divine Divinity, and it has the same deal with Fallout. Every lock in DivDiv has a key to it, and most are well placed and where you would expect them (on a desk inside someone's chamber, on the person himself, etc.)

There is an issue of silly placing of keys, like a key on a person to open a locked chest that contains a key to open another chest with another key in it to open another chest with a key and so on. But they did that as so you wouldn't clutter your inventory with unidentified keys. Nothing pisses me off more than to have 3958 keys drop from an enemy during his death. Picking them up is a hassle.

 

[Sheriff_Fatman]

Only locks protecting something relevant to quests have keys nearby in DivDiv. There are many, many locked doors and chests (particularly in dungeons) that have no keys. Bizarrely, there also seem to be a fair number of keys for which I was unable to find a lock.

I think the whole idea of a thief only has relevance in a class-based system liked D&D, where your profession presupposes your character in some way. In skills-based system, you could still be a thief, but you could determine for yourself the skills you'd take to get there. You'd also be able to choose to take stealth or deception skills and be something other than a thief.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Yeah, I wish thieves were better implemented, too. I also can't stand games that require dragging along the obligatory thief who just sits behind the party twiddling his thumbs until you come to a lock or trap. Really spellcasters suffer from the same problem. I mean, how many uses have you gotten out of a flying spell in PnP, but it almost never shows up in CRPGs other than possibly as a plot device usable in very specific circumstances, or a glorified Town Portal. All spellcasters usually wind up just being walking artillery or medics. Sometimes they often don't even get spells that can substitute for thief abilities, since that would make thieves even more useless.

Well, this is a HUGE problem because most CRPGs like this are party based. Party based often means combat based, because there's no real point in making a stealthy thief way, because he's going to have to drag the party with him. This is why most of them follow the trend of putting lots of monsters and traps all over the place and making you waltz through them.

 

[thathmew]

By far the best implementation of the possibilities of the thief I've seen was in Darklands. Many, many situations offered a way to use thief-like skills, it was not class based so you could have different party members have different skills. Lockpicking and traps were all under the lable of mechanics or somesuch, and a craftsman or a alchemist could have solid skills in them. You could do things like throw a rope over the keep wall and sneak in and confront the evil baron alone in his bedroom. It did a good job of balance the individual character (he sneaks up the wall and throws down the rope) and the party (they all climb the rope and confront the baron at once. These were generally scripted events, but they were scripted in a way as to be highly re-useable.
<shrug>
Check out Darklands if you've never played it.

-m

 

[Constipated Craprunner]

You've never felt the thrill of going somewhere where you are definitely not supposed to go, and getting out with nobody the wiser?
Have you ever really needed something, and the only way to get it without being beat up by thugs was to sneak in, late at night, and take it from under their noses?
The purpose of thief skills is to recreate this thrill. The other purpose, is inherent in the conventions of the genre. If it's a role playing game, why shouldn't you be able to play a thief, and play it well?

This is the heart of the issue- Why should you not be able to play a thief character.
Not only that, but why can you not play a sort of Thief/Fighter, one that sneaks in the shadows to backstab people?
I think that, overall, the entire apsect of crime in a game has been underplayed in everything but Morrorwind. Why can I not have my own mafia family in a game? Infact, why not create a new diplomat/thief class, the "don"?
S_F. Play a Thief in Morrorwind. There are few things more exciting than being able to rob a shop keeper clean, than run out with a huge bounty.
Few things.

 

[thathmew]

morrowind thieves

I played a thief in morrowind and it was the least satisfying experience of any of the unsatisfying characters I tried. Yeah I could rob people blind, but there was almost no consquences and very, very little danger to doing so unless I tried to sell something back to the person I robbed it from. I found there to be absolutely no "thrill" or skill in it once I realized this, just a lot of money, and like most rpg's I didn't find there to be a shortage of money with any character.
Part of the difficulties of having interesting thieving activities is properly modelling getting caught or your reputation sliding downwards, a good criminal justice system beyond just getting hanged or attacked by your target, police investigating massive robberies, etc.... Simple thievery (pickpocketting) is also one of the many activities that is also inherently made less thrilling by a save-game system. Attempt-action-fail-reload-repeat, it really eliminates the danger without the self-discipline of not re-loading or an inconvenient save system.
I actually feel the MMORPG's have the greatest (untapped) potential for thieves because there's no "undoing" your actions in them, if you attempt to pickpocket the friendly shopkeeper you're going to have to live with the results whatever they may be. Even things like ironman modes where you can only save when exitting the game help a lot with the tension and consquences, but most games aren't really balanced to be played in such modes (i.e. Wizardy 8) they're just afterthoughts.

-mat

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Re: morrowind thieves

I played a thief in morrowind and it was the least satisfying experience of any of the unsatisfying characters I tried. Yeah I could rob people blind, but there was almost no consquences and very, very little danger to doing so unless I tried to sell something back to the person I robbed it from. I found there to be absolutely no "thrill" or skill in it once I realized this, just a lot of money, and like most rpg's I didn't find there to be a shortage of money with any character.

That was one of the big problems with Morrowind, you could simply buy off the guards when you were caught doing something for next to nothing. It's a neat idea, having so many options when you're caught. However, when you're "Stinking Rich Thief", buying off the guards is a little too void of a real consequence.

Part of the difficulties of having interesting thieving activities is properly modelling getting caught or your reputation sliding downwards, a good criminal justice system beyond just getting hanged or attacked by your target, police investigating massive robberies, etc.... Simple thievery (pickpocketting) is also one of the many activities that is also inherently made less thrilling by a save-game system.

Well, I agree with you to a point, but the same could be said for every aspect of a CRPG.

 

[thathmew]

Quote:
Simple thievery (pickpocketting) is also one of the many activities that is also inherently made less thrilling by a save-game system.

Well, I agree with you to a point, but the same could be said for every aspect of a CRPG.

A lot of aspects of CRPG's frequently take more effort, so there is a tradeoff from saving/loading. With combat for example it may take some time to finish, and if you can't save in the middle of it, then there's a tradeoff, i.e. I won, but one character died, is it worth the time of re-fighting the battle with the chance of not having a character die vs. the time spent fighting? This kind of balancing (play time vs. result) is hard to get right and I'm not even sure it's the best way of handling things, but it helps a bit.

As someone mentioned previously, mini-games could be used to offset this. Make the process of attempting pickpocketting or lock-picking a bit more time consuming and take extra effort in some way and then the likelyhood of the click-fail-reload decreases.

Alternatively I do think there is a place for a savegame system that's different from the standard save-anywhere-anytime-with-no-consquences one. I definitely don't like the console system which often demands replaying far too large sections of a game, but perhaps if there were some "cost" other than replay time to saving and reloading it would make simple randomized actions like pickpocketting have more consquences, but in some ways that's a whole 'nuther discussion. <grin>
-mat

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

A lot of aspects of CRPG's frequently take more effort, so there is a tradeoff from saving/loading. With combat for example it may take some time to finish, and if you can't save in the middle of it, then there's a tradeoff, i.e. I won, but one character died, is it worth the time of re-fighting the battle with the chance of not having a character die vs. the time spent fighting? This kind of balancing (play time vs. result) is hard to get right and I'm not even sure it's the best way of handling things, but it helps a bit.

Some CRPGs, like Fallout, allow saving during combat though. As for the one character dying thing, I really prefer systems like Prelude to Darkness and Eye of the Beholder where the whole party has to die for anyone to die.

That may be a little fudgery, but it really beats the alternative. Either you reload, forget about the character, or use some means of resurrecting the character.

Wasteland had a good balance of this. Depending on the amount of damage they had below 0HP, they went in to levels of conditions. Unconcious, Severe, Critical, Coma, and Death if I recall the system correctly. If you were in Severe, you lost HP periodically and could slip in to the other types below Severe, until that character died.

As someone mentioned previously, mini-games could be used to offset this. Make the process of attempting pickpocketting or lock-picking a bit more time consuming and take extra effort in some way and then the likelyhood of the click-fail-reload decreases.

I think the time factor should be how the skills work, which I mentioned above. Anyone can pick a lock given time, but someone with a really good skill should be able to do it faster. The whole idea of success or fail per try isn't a good system, I don't think.

Alternatively I do think there is a place for a savegame system that's different from the standard save-anywhere-anytime-with-no-consquences one. I definitely don't like the console system which often demands replaying far too large sections of a game, but perhaps if there were some "cost" other than replay time to saving and reloading it would make simple randomized actions like pickpocketting have more consquences, but in some ways that's a whole 'nuther discussion. <grin>

That's a bad Mat for suggesting that. NO SOUP FOR YOU!

The main thing that makes me cringe about that idea is that it doesn't allow me to save when I want. It's the whole, "Okay, I have twenty minutes before I have to do something.. I'll play a bit of Game A." thing. I like to quit when I need/want to quit.

 

[thathmew]

The main thing that makes me cringe about that idea is that it doesn't allow me to save when I want. It's the whole, "Okay, I have twenty minutes before I have to do something.. I'll play a bit of Game A." thing. I like to quit when I need/want to quit.

I think you mis-interpret me. I also hate not being able to leave a game when I want to: like I said I _hate_ the console style, it has to be balanced someway other than with play time, because frankly my time is worth a lot. <grin> You should always be able to exit the game whenever you want and this entering and exitting should be free. But that's a far cry from being able to save-and-reload at will within the game. Designing a game for this sort of iron-man or hardcore play, though, is inherently different from standard CRPG design and I don't think anyone has really attempted it outside the MMORPG worlds and I don't think they do it well. But I did enjoy hardcore (and marginal RPG) DiabloII and the old game Ragnarok immensely and it was due to the tension gained from the possibility of actually "dying" <shrug>

I think the time factor should be how the skills work, which I mentioned above. Anyone can pick a lock given time, but someone with a really good skill should be able to do it faster. The whole idea of success or fail per try isn't a good system, I don't think.

I agree here. That shouldn't be hard to do in a game either, particularly if you let the player estimate the time it will take to pick a given loc or disarm a trap. Or have a mini-game similar to Wizardy 8's. It would definitely add to the tension as you watched the clock tick down waiting for the patrol to wander by, etc...

But how do you do something similar with pickpocketing which really is a quick success or fail per try activity?

-mat

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I think you mis-interpret me. I also hate not being able to leave a game when I want to: like I said I _hate_ the console style, it has to be balanced someway other than with play time, because frankly my time is worth a lot. <grin> You should always be able to exit the game whenever you want and this entering and exitting should be free. But that's a far cry from being able to save-and-reload at will within the game. Designing a game for this sort of iron-man or hardcore play, though, is inherently different from standard CRPG design and I don't think anyone has really attempted it outside the MMORPG worlds and I don't think they do it well. But I did enjoy hardcore (and marginal RPG) DiabloII and the old game Ragnarok immensely and it was due to the tension gained from the possibility of actually "dying" <shrug>

Dying in Diablo 2 didn't mean much other than quitting and restarting.

Of course, there are Rogue-likes where you go in to the them knowing you're going to die and death is permanent, but the question is, how long will it take?

Ultimately though, I think CRPGs should have saves and not ironman modes for one simple reason.. Software tends to crash. Windows isn't the most stable beast, and DirectX is no prize in stability either. It sucks having an ironman deal forced on you, knowing that your system may crash.

Diablo 2 multiplayer suffered from this as well. If the host crashed or locked up, or your connection dropped, you lost all your items and progress made between the time the client or server last saved.

I agree here. That shouldn't be hard to do in a game either, particularly if you let the player estimate the time it will take to pick a given loc or disarm a trap. Or have a mini-game similar to Wizardy 8's. It would definitely add to the tension as you watched the clock tick down waiting for the patrol to wander by, etc...

I can't say I really enjoyed Wizardry 8's lock picking much. I just thought all the tumbler flipping was a little annoying.

But how do you do something similar with pickpocketing which really is a quick success or fail per try activity?

Pickpocket is pretty much a success or failure situation. However, I think location should matter in it as well.

It'd be foolish to pickpocket a guy, with a low skill, in an area with lots of guards/cops hanging around, for example. Instead, you should have to case areas, know the routines of the guards, and then pickpocket in areas where guards are at a fair distance and you know where you should make your escape.

Furthermore, people you pickpocket, in general, shouldn't try to fight you themselves. They should tend to scream their heads off for the guards. It's rather silly that most people tend to take matters in their own hands in CRPGs when there's guards just around the corner. Unless you're pickpocketing Lord Bob the Great Warrior of LightHeaven, that is. He'd probably fight.