Insight for DEVS!

[kill drizitz]

the only char i played during t2a was a thief named elvis. i stole constantly at brit gate. the only things i remember in era specifically are related to thiefing. i completely stoped playing a thief once they introduced the rule that you wouldnt be able to steal with something equiped. i deleted my thief here so i dont care.

and about the gm thief on OSI... the method was not hard, the skill to raise was. i never said that stealing from a packhorse was hard. but if you actually think it was easy to gm it with the packy and tubs DURING the t2a era, your simply wrong. the method is easy, the skill was extremely slow to gain. honestly DURING t2a, i bet there were only a handfull of thiefs on your shard that were GM. which is why u probably dont remember thiefs being able to steal, or seeing a city full of them.

also you said u played many years as a thief, and dont remember thiefs with wep skills killing people in the era.. makes me think your not in the right era. BTW stop being a little puss about my posts. i dont care if u think im rude, im just telling you what "I" remember. which is the same thing you did to start this thread...saying what "YOU" remember... (maybe i should call you a fibber?)

[Slade]

I think the gentlemen from Europa is a little fibber. If thiefs could succesfulyl steal and never be guard whacked, they would have been a serious problem for OSI, not a nuisance - what they were meant to be. The link post by Derrick (second one) claiming people CAN'T seperate themselves from their characters it isn't fair to let them watch something be stolen from their bag and no retribution. I was a thief, and no matter 1 stealing skill or 100, if i stole, i had a 15 second window for a guard whack, it's why I would steal and BOOK IT. It made stealing a real skillful art, not a go to brit bank on slow times and clean somebody out, and if they attacked them, they are a 7X gm and they kill them. Never seen that happen till I came here... also from the first link post by Derrick

"What actions will summon guards in town?
Any action that flags a character as a Criminal. The guards must be called within 15 seconds after the crime is committed. Note that NPCs can call guards so sometimes it may seem that no one witnessed your crime but there is probably an NPC nearby. "

WRONG WRONG WRONG

I had thief macers on several different OSI servers. I used them to thieve and then kill the angered victims hundreds of times.

I sold my accounts on ebay for $2500 when I quit OSI and one of the huge selling points was that I had a shitload of house deeds and thief loot spread over 9 different servers. The guy that wound up buying my account was one of these cross-server transfer people who made money by transferring your chessy gold for his napa valley gold or whatever.

I had millions worth of house deeds on those servers, which made my account quite valuable to him.

My template on each server was:

Stealing
Snooping
Anatomy
Healing
Mace
Tactics
Detect Hidden

Detecting hidden was the greatest skill in the game on OSI because EVERYONE had hiding and had no idea what to do when they couldn't use it to save their asses. This wasnt the day of optimization. EVERYONE had hiding. Especially the newbies I'd steal from. And they'd attack me and get a royal beatdown due to macing stamina drain.

Don't come here spouting off your nonsense about stealing having a guaranteed guard-whack timer. It didnt. If it did, I wouldn't have made even a tiny fraction of the fortune I did.

[Mens Rea]

The war fork did ignore armor!! I remember this too!! That was why the spork was so damn awesome!! This is correct.

Stealing did used to be a non-attacking aggressive act. But, the rules of perma grey still applied. So, if you stole, and were "caught" and they attacked you, then they would appear blue to you and if you killed them you would get a count (if you damaged them.) And, if you stole, then hid for 120 seconds, then reappeared, and they attacked you, then it would be normal perma grey rules.

[ClowN]

Actually the NPC recognizing vendor buy is the opposite for how it worked during t2a. They should only respond to it when you are directly next to them or on top of them. It handles it differently on here by responding within 2 tiles intead of the 1 that its suppose to be doing.

i can say with 99% confidence this was not the case. i remember some vendors on OSI you wouldnt even have to be in the building with them to get their menu to pop up (one in particular was the blacksmith in britain just below the graveyard). if you were standing outside within i assume a set number of tiles (dont know how many exactly) you could get the menu. if there were multiple vendor NPCS in range it would give you the menu of the one who you are standing the closest to.

im pretty confident that is the way it worked back then.

[Flash Hardstar]

Yes, the war-forks did penetrate armor - just need to find the proof now.

[alatar]

Actually the NPC recognizing vendor buy is the opposite for how it worked during t2a. They should only respond to it when you are directly next to them or on top of them. It handles it differently on here by responding within 2 tiles intead of the 1 that its suppose to be doing.

i can say with 99% confidence this was not the case. i remember some vendors on OSI you wouldnt even have to be in the building with them to get their menu to pop up (one in particular was the blacksmith in britain just below the graveyard). if you were standing outside within i assume a set number of tiles (dont know how many exactly) you could get the menu. if there were multiple vendor NPCS in range it would give you the menu of the one who you are standing the closest to.

im pretty confident that is the way it worked back then.

this is correct. npc vendors are not line of sight based, only distance

[Red]

The war fork did ignore armor!! I remember this too!! That was why the spork was so damn awesome!! This is correct.

Stealing did used to be a non-attacking aggressive act. But, the rules of perma grey still applied. So, if you stole, and were "caught" and they attacked you, then they would appear blue to you and if you killed them you would get a count (if you damaged them.) And, if you stole, then hid for 120 seconds, then reappeared, and they attacked you, then it would be normal perma grey rules.

Absolutely correct. This is the way it happened. My thieves in T2A never even had a weapon skill. I'd simply run away and hide.

Yes, the war-forks did penetrate armor - just need to find the proof now.

Patch note for 11/15/97: There are now four damage types: direct (ignores armor), physical, fire, and energy.

http://forum.uosecondage.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2810

OSI was always so vague with thier patch notes, which was great because it made us, the players, go and test it out to try and figure out what was going on to get that advantage.

[Ronk]

So wait..if stealing was a passive aggressive act...why don't I ever recall people recalling/running away and killing themselves to give the thief a count? I know this sort of thing happened all of the time when attacking blues.

Interesting.

[Kaivan]

Stealing was passive aggressive in so much that it forced you to become the aggressor. An aggressor could give murder counts if they were not at full life and were under the effect of some harmful status effect. The person who caused the damage or harmful effect, if it was caused during the period that they were still the aggressor, would be eligible for a murder count, provided the victim did not recall away.

Also, stealing had 4 distinct outcomes as cited by the changes to stealing in the February 1999 patch notes. The 4 outcomes were as follows:

• True success: you get the item and are not noticed.
• Partial success: you get the item, but are noticed.
• Partial failure: you do not get the item, but are not noticed.
• Total failure: you do not get the item, and your attempt is noticed.

The first result, a true success, allowed you to get away with the theft without the possibility of being guard whacked. Every other result that you were noticed for carried guard whack possibility with it (provided the theft took place in town).

Edit: I should also note that checks to see if you were noticed for a theft were done for every character as well as every NPC (these checks were done passively and would yield the "You notices so and so attempting to steal so and so from so and so"). While it was possible to not be immediately guard whacked due to any NPCs failing to see you, if a player saw you and then later called guards on you while attempting to make the escape, you would be guard whacked. On a true success, a thief would not be noticed by anyone, player or NPC, and would not be able to be guard whacked.

[Faust]

My memory for this is different... I had a gm thief during this time and got guard whacked plenty of times on a true success.

True success: you get the item and are not noticed.
Partial success: you get the item, but are noticed.
Partial failure: you do not get the item, but are not noticed.
Total failure: you do not get the item, and your attempt is noticed.

- True Success: you get the item and you stay blue.
- Partial Success: you get the item, but you turn grey.
- Partial Failure: you do not get the item, but you stay blue.
- Total Failure: you don't get the item, and you turn grey.

With all cases you still were a possible candidate for a guard whack and always turned perma flagged after trying to steal from an innocent player, npc, or animal.

NPC's would only call guards if they noticed and had line of sight of the crime. However, guards being called didn't require line of sight for them to show up to deal with the crime.

[Red]

So wait..if stealing was a passive aggressive act...why don't I ever recall people recalling/running away and killing themselves to give the thief a count? I know this sort of thing happened all of the time when attacking blues.

Interesting.

You steal from a blue victim. It gives you an aggressor flag without doing any damage to the victim. When the victim fights back, he highlights blue to the thief, meaning if the thief were to "defend himself" he would get a count.

An aggressor flag doesn't mean you're gonna get a count. An aggressor flag is the exact same as attacking someone from afar, and then tabbing. You'll get the count if you do damage to him and then he dies. All the aggressor flag should do is make the victim blue to the thief when the victim attacks. And yes, you can get a thief guard killed in this manner(perhaps this is why you remember being guard whacked Faust? I dunno). It took skill(knowledge) to be a thief, and it was never associated with being a dexer.

[Flash Hardstar]

Absolutely, so if the thief hit me after I attacked him, I should be able to call guards. There were never thiefs that cleaned people out and murdered them without any reprocussion. As the wonderufl link Derrick had in this post "any action that is criminal will have the guards called on you". And once again the argument with the other link he had posted - There isnt justice for somebody who doesnt dissasociate themselves from the toon. If they see on their computer screen something stolen from them, ex. being removed from there bag, they could call guards. The only upper for the thief was that nobody recieved the "you notice blah blah stealing from you!" which made for an easier escape.

[Kaivan]

Absolutely, so if the thief hit me after I attacked him, I should be able to call guards. There were never thiefs that cleaned people out and murdered them without any reprocussion. As the wonderufl link Derrick had in this post "any action that is criminal will have the guards called on you". And once again the argument with the other link he had posted - There isnt justice for somebody who doesnt dissasociate themselves from the toon. If they see on their computer screen something stolen from them, ex. being removed from there bag, they could call guards. The only upper for the thief was that nobody recieved the "you notice blah blah stealing from you!" which made for an easier escape.

Not quite true. Any criminal action which took place in town was only a "guard whackable offense" for the first 10-15 seconds after the offense took place. Afterwards, any subsequent criminal actions that were not actively attempted (actively attacking the person again, or casting a spell on them before the initial aggressor timer had worn off would fall under the category of active attempts) would not be viewed as an action that would cause you to be eligible to get guard whacked. This meant that if a player auto-defended against you, they were not viewed as having committed a criminal action, and thus would not be eligible to be guard whacked. However, if dealt damage to you with that auto-defend, they would be eligible to receive a murder count, provided you attacked them before the aggressor flag expired (be it a thief who recently stole from you or a mage who attacked you and then tabbed out).

The way that a thief would kill other players would be to steal from them with the intent of being seen (usually just outside of guard zone to avoid the chance to be guard whacked). They would wait out the grey timer and would come back to the player they had stolen from with only the perma-grey status on their character. If the victim attacked the perma-grey thief, the victim was now the aggressor, and the thief could kill them without any repercussions (they could also steal from them, as the other player was now on their aggressor list and effectively "grey" to the thief).

[Flash Hardstar]

Yes, but effectivly, any thief stealing in town has a 10-15 second timer to be guard whacked? yes?

[Kaivan]

If and only if they are noticed by someone (NPC or player). Otherwise a thief will not be eligible to be guard whacked at all.