Woooooooo!

Once I've shaken off the hangover I'll totally check that out in Test and see what I can break

Some quick feedback:

64 plat fine? Is this right? This is WILDLY high, unless we're going to be making a ton of money.

Instances don't seem to be really instanced. I keep running into people, which seems to be breaking things:

[Empty Room]
Obvious exits: none.

This happens in the middle of B&E, with no indication it's happened.

Not finding anything when searching:
Perception - 761.97
Stealth - 755.02
Locksmithing - 509.55
Thievery - 439.48

---

TG, TG, GL, et al.

"Disagreement with the fundamental plan at this point is akin to supporting Richard III vs the Tudors." -Raesh

burgle

Meliodaas says, "Or a lockpick in your right hand."

>

You hear a hungry squeaking sound coming from the direction of the pond!

>

*A town guard walks in, glancing about with a false look of boredom on her face.*

>

The spirit of the cheetah surges through your veins!

>

"Stop right there!" The shout reverberates through the area as the guard charges towards you. "You're under arrest!"

.

.

.

After a weighty pause, the judge speaks, "Hanryu, you have been found guilty of thievery in the Principality of Zoluren. It is with a solemn hope that you will change your ways that I pronounce a fine upon you of 62 platinum, 7 gold, and 9 silver. If you cannot pay immediately, your things will be held until you can repay the debt to society that you owe. Failure to come up with the money within twelve days shall result in a forfeiture of your possessions, and their intrinsic value removed from your debt."

Really? The game lags between me typing `burgle` and the command going though long enough for a guard to walk in and bam I have 63 plat worth of fines. I hope this is not the intended mechanic and I hope that the fines are off by two 0's because no amount of learning is worth double-digit plat fines.

~Hunter Hanryu
>Everything Rangers have is just a lame version of something cool.~Morkim

You do get more time for each extra room you unlock, so teaming up will give you a bit more time. I'll think about speeding it up a little, but it likely won't be a large speedup if I do anything.

I did say the fine was high. It can be avoided by getting in and out quickly.

AVOID should now show you the new options.

I added a message when you're close to being evicted.

Javac
That one guy

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

> - Don't do it too often. There's a message when the cooldown expires.

How long are we talking here? Because I've been waiting over an hour. Survival tert, standard subscription.

>How long are we talking here?

It should be two minutes from when you enter, in Test. It will be much longer in live instances.

Javac
That one guy

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

>Being caught because a guard wandered into the room you burgled from when we have a very tight time limit feels like it goes against this statement.

Scout the area and pick better rooms. You shouldn't be inside long enough for guards to move that many rooms ;-)

---

TG, TG, GL, et al.

"Disagreement with the fundamental plan at this point is akin to supporting Richard III vs the Tudors." -Raesh

>I don't disagree that it's a mitigable random factor, but it is a random factor.

Mitigable means you did something wrong to get caught. When I said there is no random, I was specifically addressing the complaint many people have with Snake Eyes in shoplifting.

Javac
That one guy

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

>There were instances where rooms spawned with no searchable surface. I had this happen only when in a group.

Which room? Was it always the same room, or was it various rooms on various runs?

>I got a group of 4 together and still only had 3 rooms. The time was long enough to search all three rooms.

What were their guilds? If you went in with an all Moon Mage group, you should have three rooms: kitchen, bedroom, study. The time should not have been increased. Also, if you can remember, what directions did you move to get to the rooms (this will help me identify which pattern was used to lay out the rooms, in case the reason you only got three rooms was a bad room connection).

>We tried to get the trick of lockpicking + athletics to work but never could.

It should only require three or more Survival Primes to learn both skills, and you don't need to be holding the second entry method. I'll double check that the flag isn't getting corrupted somewhere, as that's the most likely reason you wouldn't see it if you have three or more Survival Primes.

>when the lockpick holder from the non-leader position initiated an instance via burgle.

This should not give any of the group benefits, as they went in alone.

Thanks for testing. I will dig into the code again tonight to see if I can identify some of the issues you wonderful testers have brought to my attention.

Javac
That one guy

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

>We were three survival primes and a lore prime (trader added the library I'm assuming).

Interesting. If you can get a similar group around tonight, I can try to pop in and observe. I built a bunch of GM debug messaging into the system, so hopefully it’ll give me some idea of what’s going wrong. I’ll try to test with a similar group myself. (I did spot and fix one error in the code this morning, but it should have been making noise on the GM side if it were hit.)

Javac
That one guy

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

So despite the fact that Navesi obviously will not be participating in such skulduggery in game, I figured I'd test it out for fun anyway. :)

First, I want to show appreciation for the level of effort put in and for listening to player desires. It's always exciting and fun to see a new release and I am grateful for development!

Now if you will, some constructive criticism.

The Good: I loved figuring out the system and looking at all the cool bits and bobs of loot. I love that it's a new option for training Thievery (and other skills!). I like that there are benefits to going as a group.

The Constructive: I think that overall the system is too simple and not dangerous enough. As a Survival tert, I was able to consistently search all three rooms and get out without issue. By choosing my location wisely, I was never caught. It just seems too easy and quick, like I pull a lever and get a dump of exp and some loot.

My two favorite kinds of design:

1) Simple Version of task rewards a small amount of exp, Dangerous Version rewards a large amount. See Astral Travel.

2) Task can be accomplished in a simple, easy way for a small amount of exp, but over time learning more complex factors allow the player to unlock better exp/loot rewards. See Crafting.

I don't know exactly how I would implement these design ideas with B&E, but one idea for (1) might be that you can choose to burgle a moderate house vs. a mansion. The mansion has guards and maybe even booby traps, with a chance of getting caught even if you do everything right -- but it gives a boatload of exp and great loot. Perhaps you can figure out how to lower the risk by going through the mansion more slowly (this is also the case with Astral Travel). Sneaking, searching twice for traps, getting the right buffs from friends, etc. Heck, maybe even learn the guards' pacing.

Designing for (2) tends to be a lot harder, and would probably involve increasing complexity via adding all kinds of different houses to choose from, more surfaces, better odds for getting X if you do Y first, etc. Probably way more work than you want to do, but still is my absolute favorite design type, personally.


- Navesi

The First Land Herald -- Zoluren's newspaper. https://elanthipedia.play.net/The_First_Land_Herald

> First, I want to show appreciation for the level of effort put in and for listening to player desires. It's always exciting and fun to see a new release and I am grateful for development!

Thank you for testing! It’s much appreciated.

> I think that overall the system is too simple and not dangerous enough.

I tweaked the time you’re allowed to be in the room up slightly, as people were complaining they’d get caught almost immediately, and wouldn’t even attempt multiple rooms. I’ll try tweaking it down to somewhere in the middle, or maybe have a random amount of time (since you now get a warning).

The original plan involved having an NPC be present in the home, but I wanted to get this initial release out first. I may add the wandering NPC later, which would require you to remain in stealth or be caught, but who you could steal from directly for coins. That said, we have plenty of systems that are Complex. I don’t think every system in the game has to be as Complex as we can make it.

> a chance of getting caught even if you do everything right

This was something I explicitly avoided in design and implementation. There was no safe way to train Thievery by being a good player. You can train almost every skill in the game without a huge risk, as long as you the player know what you’re doing. Thievery has always had snake eyes built in, where you just randomly fail. To me, that is not a fun gameplay addition, and I wanted to avoid it in this release.

Keep in mind, the cooldown on B&E is artificially low in Test. It would normally be a minimum of twenty minutes (if there’s a premium person and a Thief in your group). I keep meaning to post what the cooldowns will be, so here’s the cooldowns and modifiers:
F2P characters always have a cooldown of 60 minutes.
Survival Tertiary characters have a cooldown of 50 minutes.
Survival Secondary characters have a cooldown of 40 minutes.
Survival Primary characters have a cooldown of 30 minutes.
Thief guild characters have a cooldown of 25 minutes.
Premium characters cooldown is five minutes shorter.

Your entire group uses the best time, and your entire group benefits from a premium character in your group. As an example, if a Premium Bard (Survival Tertiary) and a Standard Thief were to burgle together in a group, both characters would have a 20 minute cooldown.

Javac
That one guy

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

>>> I think that overall the system is too simple and not dangerous enough.

>I tweaked the time you’re allowed to be in the room up slightly,

Personally, I don't think the timer has much to do with danger. Once you get your script perfect, there's no chance of failure. So really I'd just say set the timer to be where you want it for allowing loot, and remember that being forced to be in stealth later will slow a lot of us down.

>>That said, we have plenty of systems that are Complex. I don’t think every system in the game has to be as Complex as we can make it.

You are totally right, although personally I think B&E is just ripe for being complex because it could be so interesting. If I could snap my fingers and make things happen, I'd probably make shoplifting the danger-free, easy mode of Thievery and make B&E the cool complex game.

>> a chance of getting caught even if you do everything right

>This was something I explicitly avoided in design and implementation.

I could tell! I simply disagree. I think here's what you should consider: Shoplifting requires you to take the "dangerous" action over and over and over again. So it's not really like, "on 1% of days I get caught and have to deal with the consequences," it's more like, well, all the time. With Astral Travel it literally went from failure/death on 2% of trips down to (way) less than 1%. So I can still die from it, but we're talking more like 1-2 times a year. That's the sort of danger spice I'm looking for. Maybe a bit more than that -- I've gotten too good at traveling!

In sum, shoplifting has constant snake-eyes, leading to hassle and headaches, and no reward for the risk you take. Astral Travel has minimal snake eyes, but just enough to spice things up, and rewards you with a ton of exp for taking the risky option.

Personally I think Thievery is the one skill where this risk vs. reward option should be heavily played up. Being a Thief should be about doing risky things, dancing past danger, using up that last bit of luck and wit to get out of it. Heck, you could give Thieves some new abilities where they get X "slip out of trouble" cards per day, to let them try even more dangerous things. Seems to me like the kind of gameplay a Thief player would like. Just my 2 cents.


- Navesi

The First Land Herald -- Zoluren's newspaper. https://elanthipedia.play.net/The_First_Land_Herald

>I simply disagree.
>Astral Travel comparison.

You have the option to not astral travel. We don't have a similar option for stealing. If you want the danger, stick to shop stealing and let those who want more options have their options.

---

TG, TG, GL, et al.

"Disagreement with the fundamental plan at this point is akin to supporting Richard III vs the Tudors." -Raesh

> As a Survival tert, I was able to consistently search all three rooms and get out without issue.

I forgot to mention... There’s only a very small chance you’re finding loot in all the rooms, if you’re only searching once. You can search again in the same room until you do find a prize.

> ~30 second search
>~60 second warning

I cannot imagine anything more boring and/or anxiety inducing than doing nothing for thirty seconds while your character searches for loot, while you wait for the countdown to end. Also, why would the warning need to be so much greater than the length of a search?

Javac
That one guy

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

Uhh player of Navesi?

Scripting B&E?? You do realize not everyone runs scripts nor wants too. I went in with my best thief, got nabbed the first 2 times due to my stupidity, I'm fine with that.

I know this "event" will probably turn into a giant scripting event for 99% of the folks who use it, just like many of the crafting stuff has, but not everyone will be using lich/glich/scripts to do it.

And I'm hoping good Javac keeps in mind that some of us with lil thieves want to play too, please? Not just "big" thieves, I hated going on stealing runs & struggling because some of my thieves are small in circle so they got hit (it seemed) with more "snake-eyes" that my bigger thieves.

>>Good god, we're not even live yet and you want MORE prizes?

Honestly I just found it fun to think up every library/book-related prize I could. I like themes, I guess. :)

>>You have the option to not astral travel. We don't have a similar option for stealing. If you want the danger, stick to shop stealing and let those who want more options have their options.

To clarify, I'm not saying there should be only one option for Thievery either. I think there should be a low risk, low reward way to train, but also a riskier, much more rewarding way to train. When I tried B&E out I got 25/34 Thievery exp plus 1-3 cool pieces of loot for about 40 seconds of risk-free effort. It just seems WAY too rewarding for the time spent and zero risk. Most skills take at least ~10-15 minutes to lock, often with no monetary reward. Even Astral Travel takes ~2 minutes.

>>I forgot to mention... There’s only a very small chance you’re finding loot in all the rooms, if you’re only searching once. You can search again in the same room until you do find a prize.

Thanks, didn't realize. I was reporting doing a single search in each room. I definitely was not always getting prizes.

>>Scripting B&E?? You do realize not everyone runs scripts nor wants too.

Yes, and that's great. I don't see how that fact impacts my criticism though. :)


- Navesi

The First Land Herald -- Zoluren's newspaper. https://elanthipedia.play.net/The_First_Land_Herald

>Most skills take at least ~10-15 minutes to lock,

This is why there is a cooldown. Much like how MMs get large chunks of experience for predicting, with a cooldown.

Javac
That one guy

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

Fixing the system with poor training of thievery to provide for a better, easier way to train thievery could attract the griefers to train more thievery faster and then run around and cause havoc. I suspect that if there is some risk in the process, even low, that would mitigate the risk of griefers abusing the skill.

When I read people were getting 60ish plat fines, I was taken aback. But the system sounded so intriguing that I had to try it. It turns out I win the biggest fine contest.

>After a weighty pause, the judge speaks, "Vanxa, you have been found guilty of thievery in the Principality of Zoluren. It is with a solemn hope that you will change your ways that I pronounce a fine upon you of 144 platinum. If you cannot pay immediately, your things will be held until you can repay the debt to society that you owe. Failure to come up with the money within twelve days shall result in a forfeiture of your possessions, and their intrinsic value removed from your debt."

I put up both a capped SOV and Shadows before entering by the kitchen window. I admit my Stealth isn't one of my better skills; it's less than 700, but I still hid once inside. I wasn't overly worried about trying to find loot on my first try; I wanted to get familiar with the surroundings. So I sneaked south and found the bedroom. I still find that an amusing floor plan.

I did decide to do a little searching but ran into the same problem Hanryu mentioned about not finding any searchable surfaces. If someone answered his post, I missed it. Is this a group-only system? Not finding any searchable surfaces is probably where I lost control of the situation time-wise.

Then I heard footsteps. I knew I needed to get out but wasn't sure how. I was thinking since I had just left the kitchen and no one else had been in there, the footsteps must be coming from the study. I hid again and sneaked back into the kitchen on the idea I would go back out the original entry window. There was no one in the kitchen, but regardless, the next thing I know was the jail door clanging shut. I had read that either dark of night or stealth is required, but it didn't seem to help at all. It was all over dizzyingly fast.

Afterward, I wondered if typing burgle a second time, from any room, would have taken me out of the house? There doesn't seem to be any verb help menu. Are there options with the burgle verb?

When I try a new system and it doesn't turn out well, I usually at least understand where I messed up and can improve my technique. But this experience was a little different. Can someone tell me what painfully obvious things I am overlooking? Or is this strictly PAFO?

Here are my wild guesses. If you can exit the house from any room, then you need to leave when you hear the footsteps. If you need to sneak back through the house to leave, then hearing the footsteps probably means you've waited too late. This would make searching only the entry room the safest approach. But this would not be desirable since there are specialty rooms, so the key would possibly be just to speed through - search, change room, search, change room, etc - and then leave the house immediately.

~ Vanxa

---

You see Grazhir cracking open in one sharp movement.
The World Dragon emerges, roaring soundlessly.
It moves to sear Katamba to a lifeless black.
You see the night sky, filled with stars.