Sensible Alterations to Hiding/Rogues and Logout

[Lans]

I propose that...

1.) Logging out in a unfamiliar DWELLING (player house, or unowned property) take 20-50 minutes to fully log out; this is not their home, this is not a sanctuary for said character; if one wants the fast log out or any reasonably normal speed, become a friend or co-owner. ((Prevents Meta-gaming Escape via hide+logout; which never was an acceptable RP option to start with.))

2.) If one logs out in a unfamiliar dwelling, it should auto-reveal them during that longer period of log out timer -- this is reasonable because the character RPly is giving up as much as the player is in terms of 'Not trying by the rules'. Be janky? Pay the price.

3.) While in a Owned Property and not friended nor co-owner'd, a person will be Auto-revealed IF they LOG OUT [Edited, my mistake]. No there shouldn't be a counter-feat against this. A person 'knows' their own house down to the creaks and sounds it makes and eventually they even understand those down to the exact reason. Consider it the "Home Advantage". If a rogue wants to pilfer a place while someone is inside it, they should be "Ready to Fight" for whatever they are after -- or they should learn to be a smart rogue that learns the victims' schedules/patterns just like RL thieves and goes in when "They are not there".

4.) Add a 30-50% picking increase difficulty to a owned property while the player is inside of it, or logged inside of it -- this simulates on both fronts it is "Guarded" and essentially actively protected and hence 'harder' to break into. Robbing players with no RP with them nor any effort to really interact shouldn't be on the table for anything but Event-NPCs; this gives more incentive again for Rogues to actually learn schedules and time their strikes on homes.

[Losstarot]

1) 100% agree with this one.

But I don't fully agree with the rest.

What I'd like to suggest for item 3 is: instead of an insta reveal, make it so houses give owners +skill in Perception while inside.

[StinkyPete]

An easier fix would be to just make [detect and [reveal work 100% of the time inside of a house of which you are friend, co-owner, or owner like Detect Hidden does on OSI. Also on OSI, if you log out of a house you are not friended to, you get moved to outside of the house which also makes sense.

[Meowakin]

The problem with getting teleported out is that gives a meta-tool to escape if the door gets locked behind you. No bueno

[StinkyPete]

The problem with getting teleported out is that gives a meta-tool to escape if the door gets locked behind you. No bueno

That is true. I did not consider that.

Also #4 is an awesome idea. A house with a good lock and the owner logged out (or in) inside should be impossible to pick, but if you see the owner mucking about town....

[Losstarot]

The problem with getting teleported out is that gives a meta-tool to escape if the door gets locked behind you. No bueno

That is true. I did not consider that.

Also #4 is an awesome idea. A house with a good lock and the owner logged out (or in) inside should be impossible to pick, but if you see the owner mucking about town....

The problem is that if I'm hiding inside my house, waiting to catch the thief, he'd magically know I'm there just by attempting to lockpick at my door.

[The Broken Sword]

I disagree with the spirit behind this thread. I get that there are some frustrations due to the activity of an unknown number of rogues/thieves; but attempting to apply punitive measures across the board seems a bit rash. I can appreciate the feeling of not being able to track down someone that has been stalking you, or may very well have made it into your home. But, emergencies happen -- sometimes a player can't make it back to sanctuary or to a friended area. Especially if you don't own a residence or find yourself a member of a faction. There are already mechanical means of detecting and revealing stealth players.

At best, I think the ability to manipulate objects while stealthed is the biggest issue. One shouldn't be able to open a door, walk inside, and close it behind them without at least some sort of additional checks involved. There's plenty of ways to address the issue of stealth/lockpicking without creating a game that punishes an entire playerbase for what might amount to one or two questionable players.

[Voss]

Disagree with 1-3.

I do like where you're going with 4, though I would tweak it in some ways by reducing the difficulty increase to picking a house door when the owner logs out and then add:

Introduce Lockpicking-specific injuries.

Introduce lockpicking-specific injuries that can occur from either failing to pick a House door or a locked container inside a player owned house. A door trap being set off could also apply these injuries, even if the lockpicker isn't KO'd by the trap. Have those injuries be something that can only occur due to lockpicking player owned house doors or containers in player owned houses. Such injuries could be cutting a finger, breaking a nail, etc... something that lowers your effective lockpicking skill by 10 points per injury for the duration of the injury (a day or so), thus putting a sort of "soft cap" on the number of attempts.

This would have the effect of requiring breaking into houses be something only doable by possibly going 120 on Lockpicking, and even then there are limits to how much you'll be able to steal before you've sustained a few injuries and have to leave with what you got.

This sort of thing puts the breaks on the rampant house-robbing without completely screwing the rest of the server population who uses hiding for purposes other than breaking into people's houses to steal their shit. It also encourages thieves to form groups that have to collaborate to target a house so they basically have to have a decent sized team of highly proficient thieves to take turns picking doors - a lone person wouldn't get very far. It encourages group play and provides some counter to rampant thieving since they'd probably all sustain injuries and would slow their thieving in any case.

[The Technician]

An easier fix would be to just make [detect and [reveal work 100% of the time inside of a house of which you are friend, co-owner, or owner like Detect Hidden does on OSI. Also on OSI, if you log out of a house you are not friended to, you get moved to outside of the house which also makes sense.

I disagree with this. It would just be meta spammed. Hiders have a disadvantage as it is. People invest points into skills to hide and perceive and those should be used rightly so. If you don't want someone hiding in your house keep it well lit.

[AConcealedFigure]

A majority of the defensive options to be used against lockpickers simply ARE NOT being applied. I don't want to hear any complaints unti people start:

A) Changing their locks
B) Arming with traps

You're arguing to add additional work to the staff without even doing any due diligence to protect your things. I would go as far as to say that "Thieves logging out in houses they don't own" is an imagined problem and not something actually happening.