<< If my latest adjustments seem too bad

After some fine tuning for the latest adjustments, i added leth back into my runs and was able to lock in about 10 minutes time.

Last draft was crossing and arthe, which added up to around 6 minutes to lock. Now it's crossing, arthe and leth.

For me the run time now seems to be within the target time frame but might not be the case for people who can find more items within a smaller area, maybe just crossing or arthe.

I need to play around with it more and try and try more items. I'm at a place where many shops are capped. Some shops have just one item that's a big of an unusually high item level for that shop. In prime, I can nab it. In test with the more narrowly focused exp window now, those items pretty much guarantee a lot of exp but getting caught. The item below is trivial. That puts me in a position where these shops are now not usable (until the point at which the higher item doesn't automatically become a warrant). I do however like the idea of the narrower window for the items teaching better exp, but it gets difficult when item availability is lacking.

Removing the triviality may help with some of this, though I hope how pitiful the teaching is is reflected well enough in messaging so we can determine when its just not worth it.

Jalika

i just did the normal stealing run i always do and , ened up with same exp and everything, with no new anything? Is this just goin on for the prime people or am i doin something wrong?

>I'll think about it and see how it feels when I get home from work.

Since it's Test, I figured it doesn't hurt anything to put this in. Aside from the two minutes of time it took to do... The Triviality rank in Test is now whenever our core EXP utility stops giving experience. It should still message. Let me know how this feels.

Javac
That one guy

If you have questions or comments in regard to this post please email me at DR-JAVAC@play.net.

I already decreased the repeat steal penalty a tiny bit at low levels to a lot at high levels. I can see about reducing it a bit more at high levels. It's not simple to balance X items per shop.

One thing I removed early on was the EXP penalty to repeat steals. Now every steal of an item teaches the same. I may actually give a small bonus to repeat steals, but not as large as the penalty.

Another thing I forgot to mention is that you previously wouldn't learn Stealth if you were invisible, and you should now.

Javac
That one guy

If you have questions or comments in regard to this post please email me at DR-JAVAC@play.net.

<< It's not simple to balance X items per shop.

Ok, that's what i was afraid of. For it to work the way i imagined it would have to be a pretty static increase in items stolen per shop and probably at reduced exp per item.

The exp boost is already a big help and i saved my current run (filtered out travel) if it's any help. All shop and item recommendations are welcome:

http://matoom.github.io/store/2016-03-16-01.html

<< I've reduced the repeat steal penalty a little more. The repeat steals also has a small (relative to the penalty) EXP bonus.

The "small" and "little" feel like double to everything in practice. Maybe we could try it with the reduced steal penalty but remove the exp bonus? I think it would be better if it was more items but less exp per item.

I now doubled my items stolen and exp gained per shop. Which added a little bit more time spent in each shop and less on travel but overall a pretty quick lock (between 7-8 minutes).

Taking 3-4 items with 4/34ish exp in each shop. It was 1-2 and 2/34ish exp before.

Now if you remove the stupid hour timer I'll call it a solid bandaid. Well done so far.

Monster Elec

You hear the distant echo of a savage Horde snarling in barbaric disapproval of your deeds.

I'll get in a several runs this weekend (dropping the shop timer would seriously help, if its possible!). Most of my other characters are pretty newbish at thievery unfortunately so I won't have any good input on the mid-range.

Jalika

The problem with making the repeat steal timer shorter is that it reduces the penalty if you're under half an hour, so setting it to 5-10 minutes would essentially reduce the penalty by a huge amount, and not lead to realistic repeat stealing during your runs.

If you're in test, I can manually remove the repeat timer from you when I'm around. I will endeavor to be around tonight and tomorrow. Sunday will be a bit more difficult, but I'll make an effort.

Javac
That one guy

If you have questions or comments in regard to this post please email me at DR-JAVAC@play.net.

>Played with this some in test and was generally pleased.


Agree with all of this post. I played a bunch last weekend. Basically holding my breath until release. Hoping that the ability to train all thievery in one city isn't too quick, though I haven't done a lot of low level testing. In my runs from crossing to shard they were running about 13 minutes.

Jalika

Thank you again for taking a look at this! I am really excited about this being released. Anyone have a link explaining how to connect to the test realm? I would like to get in and help with the testing.

I finally got back into test and played with the new thievery.

Item Ranges
Definitely feels like there are items to steal in shops that I had previously outgrown or basically outgrown. This was a plus. I still worry about shops with mono-pricing (see Doll store in shard, for example) or price bands with big jumps between them (see Sierek’s: there are three runes priced at 1800, while the next set of runes jumps to 4500. Granted, in this particular store there are items in between, so it’s not a concern, but there are definitely other stores where band-pricing and the resultant price gaps make it difficult to find items).

Time to Lock
I didn’t time myself since I was going manually from store to store, testing items to find good ones to steal. That said, I was able to lock without much trouble by visiting 7 total shops, which feels a touch low to me. Granted, I was stealing in each shop up to the point of getting caught, but even shaving 1 - 2 grabs off each shop means that I’d be locking in 8-9 shops, and that’s before considering that I wasn’t spending a whole lot of time really optimizing which item to steal and how many times to try. I was grabbing lots of stuff that only trained “acceptably” and/or wasn’t that difficult. As such, this seems fine to me or even a tad quick, though I can never tell how much of my feelings on this are reliable vs. the result of the trauma of training thievery under the current system.

Chance of Getting Caught
Didn’t feel like there was much of one, particularly for non-difficult-to-steal items. I also didn’t feel like the exp reward for the hard to steal items was sufficient for the risk, particularly given how generous items that supposedly train “acceptably” or even “somewhat poorly” were in terms of exp granted.

Shops Visited and details:
(Note that for the below I was under a nearly-worn-off-to-mild stealing timer penalty which I wasn’t going to hang around test long enough to let wear off entirely.)

Alchemist
Stole 3 pyramids (even odds, trained acceptably) in the alchemist, caught on the third
Backroom
Stole 8 yelith roots (eyes closed, trained acceptably), warned off on the 9th. Went from 4/34 to 11/34

General Store
Stole 1 Light Crossbow (more likely than not, trained acceptably) and was caught. Didn’t gain a mindstate.

Fiona
Stole 6 Eleven Telos (Not Difficult; trained acceptably), caught on the 6th. Went from 11/34 to 18/34.

Stitchery
Stole 8 adjectiveless gowns (Not difficult; trained acceptably), caught on the 8th. 18/34 - 27/34.

Sierek’s Reagents:
Instead of stealing Elbaite Runestones (Not difficult) I tried out Xibaryl Runes (maybe troublesome). Despite being “extremely difficult” and training “very well,” I was able to steal 5 without being caught. On my 6th attempt I both missed the grab and was caught trying. Went from 27/34 - 33/34.

In Sum
Overall really like the direction and feel of the changes. The new messaging and additional detail is much appreciated, though I do wonder about the accuracy of some of the difficulty and training messaging. I also worry that risk-taking is not sufficiently incentivized in the new system, given the relaxation in terms of the number of items per shop it makes sense to steal. Far be it from me to defend thievery in its current incarnation, but the balance it tries to strike between your incentive to steal the single highest item in your range, and the risk that doing so entails, does make it optimal to sometimes get caught. Under the new system, I worry that if you’re trying to steal items on which there’s any kind of chance of getting caught, you’re doing it wrong. Of course, all this is based on not all that extensive of testing. Will try to carve out some time to do some more this weekend. Thanks to Javac (and any others in the background) for all the work put into this already!

These are now live in Plat and Prime. Sorry for the delay, RL has hit me hard the past couple of months.

Let me know if you see any issues.

Javac
That one guy

If you have questions or comments in regard to this post please email me at DR-JAVAC@play.net.

>Since it's been a while, could you detail the exact tweaks?

Change include:
- General increase in the target difficulty of an item
- General decrease in the chance to get caught
- Decreased the repeat steal penalty, mostly on the upper ends
- Switched the method of determining how much EXP is granted (this should be a general boost)
- Added feedback about how well you learned (same order as APPRAISE <critter>) so non-guilded Thieves have an idea where they are relative to the item
- Repeat steals in a shop no longer penalize EXP, and actually bonus it slightly
- Being invisible while stealing now teaches Stealth

I think that's everything, but may have missed something.

Javac
That one guy

If you have questions or comments in regard to this post please email me at DR-JAVAC@play.net.

>I don't think it's working correctly. Impossible grabs seem to reward 0 exp.

I'm going to need more info. Character name preferably so I can watch you steal stuff. If you can, assist on the character right now.

Javac
That one guy

If you have questions or comments in regard to this post please email me at DR-JAVAC@play.net.

He did actually. I got caught.

Anyway, Javac said everything looked right, and I was getting exp. Mostly just a pool-size thing. The hard theft was definitely giving more exp reward than the easier ones.

I've been playing with this a bit more and I'm pretty happy so far.

I can train stealing on fairly 'remedial' items because I can do a bunch of grabs in shops now. I don't need to find 2 items per shop for 40+ shops since the drop off/risk exponential doesn't hit me.

Feels a lot easier and more pleasant to train. I was able to lock in Zoluren doing about 60-70% of my 'normal' run, which would not have even locked me.

>- General increase in the target difficulty of an item

Is difficulty still solely based on the item's weight and APPRAISE value?

And... I'm assuming this makes all the Stealing lists on Elanthipedia useless. <WANH>

GENT

>Is difficulty still solely based on the item's weight and APPRAISE value?

Yes.

>And... I'm assuming this makes all the Stealing lists on Elanthipedia useless. <WANH>

Yeah... but everyone has a new tool to identify the difficulty of an item relative to skill.

Javac
That one guy

If you have questions or comments in regard to this post please email me at DR-JAVAC@play.net.