[crossfire] shops and stealing

[Mark Wedel]

Miguel Ghobangieno wrote:
> I like the idea (note it shouldn't be that a lvl 115
> player can usually steal an artifact item (or
> something of similar value) from a shop, that should
> still be ultra hard).

  But this is also where the max steal value comes in.  Unless there are shops 
which let the players steal 100,000 pp items, this never really becomes an issue.

  While theoretically possible to make the formula something settable in a 
config file, I think it'd be more likely that certain parameters are set that 
way (base chance, difficulty increase, etc).

  Note also of course that your steal chance is based on your exp in the 
stealing skill.  I'd imagine getting really high levels would be relatively 
difficult/time consuming.

  As far as punishments:
Being banned from stores (for some time) is an interesting idea.  Certainly, the 
shop maps could be set up to not allowed players that are banned from going into 
the store.  And a force could be used to denote that the person is banned 
(ideally, they should just be banned in that region - navar isn't really going 
to know what happened in scorn).  In fact, this force could be used to record 
number of times caught, with each time they have been caught decreasing the odds 
- a known thief is going to be watched pretty carefully after all.  So even if 
the player isn't banned from the store, may still have a very hard time stealing.

  It could be interesting to tie this to the idea of reputation that has been 
bandied about before also.  A known thief probably won't get as good prices 
selling stuff and pay more for buying stuff.  This could be an incentive for 
that player to go out to another town where he isn't known.

  Perhaps tracking successes (or amount successfully stolen) could be 
interesting - a character could then become (in)famous as the legendary thief or 
something also.  If we actually had a thieves guild, such status could be a 
requirement to get access to certain parts of it.

  Punishment in coins could be done.  But then I suppose the players would 
decide on that tradeoff - if they don't want to loose money, they'd just drop 
what money they have in their apartment and then steal, risking the jail time.