Pickpocketing

[bronzepoem]

 

Seems you didn't play Fallout 2.

While I know you didn't read my post after that one. 

 

I mentioned the exploitative power of pickpocketing in IE but that was it's problem. Use it in a stupidly powerful way (Like planting explosives on everyone in Fallout) 

 

 

 

It seems you really don't like the pickpocketing design in Fallout.But I still want to say, it was really brilliant design, which just need to be balanced.

We can change the planting explosives into something like a special "mini bomb", which is very hard to build or get.So the pickpocketing skill won't be used too powerfully, and we still can enjoy the amazing role playing of The Specialist. 

 

It's a role playing game, not a RTS. We shouldn't roughly delete a role playing feature,to achieve balance or fewer bugs.That's put the cart before the horse.

[Shdy314]

It seems you really don't like the pickpocketing design in Fallout.But I still want to say, it was really brilliant design, which just need to be balanced.

We can change the planting explosives into something like a special "mini bomb", which is very hard to build or get.So the pickpocketing skill won't be used too powerfully, and we still can enjoy the amazing role playing of The Specialist. 

 

It's a role playing game, not a RTS. We shouldn't roughly delete a role playing feature,to achieve balance or fewer bugs.That's put the cart before the horse.

It wasn't brilliant DESIGN it was a good CONCEPT. If you admit it was poorly balanced then it was not designed well. The design is the rules/mechanic/implementation not the intent. What amazing roleplay? I guess if you really wanted to roleplay a kleptomaniac then it was great?

 

Actually you absolutely should delete ANY feature to achieve balance and eliminate bugs. That's your job as a designer. No sacred cows. Doesn't matter if you think your "feature" is a "role play" feature and thus mandatory.

 

Listen you speak English pretty well but not so well I am going to have a semantic argument with you. I don't like semantic arguments in general. I get you are trying to say that you liked the pickpocketing skill because you had fun with it in games that you liked and so you want to find a way to make it work. That's great and I am not against it on principle but PoE isn't the game to do that. Maybe with a sequel and more budget and time or definitely if we got a Thief game from Obsidian.

Edited March 19, 2015 by Shdy314

[Amentep]

I'm not sure it was a good concept.  Which is (IMO) one of the problem with most games' approach to pick pocketing.  The item really should be relatively small and in a pocket.  You shouldn't be able to pickpocket a cloak, a sword, a shoe, etc.  nor should you be able to plant items the size of, say, dynamite into a pocket.

 

Problem is you'd have to actually have a way to design what is actually in the pockets and where the pockets are (IMO) for it to work right, and I don't see it worth it, really (unless you're creating a pickpocketing simulation game)

Edited March 19, 2015 by Amentep

[Sock]

Pickpocketing in DA:O, BG, IWD, whatever... it was all the same.

 

It was another way to get loot. Like lockpicking is used to open chests (though everyone agrees that bashing should be an option too), pickpocking it used to open pockets.

 

It serves the exact same function as open locks, but it doesn't do anything else. There could be a few quests where you might want to pickpocket something from someone. Sure, that's interesting. But the same result can be achieved by putting the item needed behind a lock. 

 

Pickpocketing doesn't add anything unique to the gameplay. It doesn't introduce a new dynamic, nor does it present new challenges to overcome. This isn't a triple A funded game, it doesn't have the budget to put in every single thing immediately.

 

But it does seem pretty modable with core rules, so who knows what the future holds for it. Remember how big the modding community is around these types of games. It's from Obsidian, and it's linked to IE games, both of which have significant modder followings. 

[Kjaamor]

Pickpocketing was terribly implemented in the IE games (and the early Fallouts, for that matter), and consisted of being a reload spam for RNG, didn't offer a remotely useful skill point + time/gold ratio anyway, and was only useful for picking up a handful of items that almost everyone who acquired them only got because they were using a guide.

 

I'm not directly opposed to pickpocketing's inclusion in PoE. I am opposed to its inclusion as it was presented in the IE games, just as I am against anything that promotes reload spam for the sake of pure RNG.

 

It was a blight on Wasteland 2, let it not be a blight on this game too.

[bronzepoem]

 

 

Actually you absolutely should delete ANY feature to achieve balance and eliminate bugs. That's your job as a designer. No sacred cows. Doesn't matter if you think your "feature" is a "role play" feature and thus mandatory.

 

 

Do you really think so?Then Obsidian need to make a game called Chess Titans or MineSweeper, not Pillars of Eternity.

Baldur's Gate 2 was totally unbalanced,but it was most successful.

 

 

 

Also in my last topic I metioned that it won't cost big budget to design a good pickpocketing mechanic to give players the choice of thief roleplay.

Edited March 19, 2015 by bronzepoem

[Michael_Galt]

Yeah, I'm pretty unhappy with this.  These threads covered it as well:

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64224-mechanic-revision-pickpocketing/

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66037-merchants/

 

To claim it wasn't something that could be important in the IE games is just silly, because it wasn't something you did.  If you had high enough skill, dexterity, and were smart enough to use your potions of master thievery well, you could equip your team well very early on, which had immense game-play benefits.  I needed to sometimes justify to myself why my paladin would be willing to allow the rogue in the group to do so, and I always had a way to rationalize it, "I'm in a foreign land, facing a significant evil that I don't have the resources to resist properly, so I need to do this to ultimately do what is for the best."  Maybe a paladin wouldn't really do that, but maybe he would. 

 

To me, it just doesn't make sense why it isn't implemented.  There have always been thieves.  If there are stores or people with wealth, why would there not be the opportunity to steal it?  Pickpockets are in every major and most not so major cities in the world.  Make a world there there are magical items and of course there would be people that would specialize and practice stealing it.  It makes me very sad that I won't be able to make a thief character that can largely ignore the "critical path" and just concentrate on amassing a fortune through cunning and guile, and not actually fighting anyone.  Not everyone wants to work really hard, or risk constant death, or study endlessly to be successful in life. It removes a role-playing option, from a game that calls itself "a role-playing game that is a spiritual successor to the IE games".  It fails to provide something that was in all of the IE games, and it also fails to provide a role-playing option common to almost every single quality role-playing game ever: Arcanum, IE games, Fallouts, Bethesda.   The CRPG I have played that didn't feature that was KOTOR, as far as I am aware.  It truly baffles me.

 

[CaptainMace]

Yeah, I'm pretty unhappy with this.  These threads covered it as well:

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64224-mechanic-revision-pickpocketing/

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66037-merchants/

 

To claim it wasn't something that could be important in the IE games is just silly, because it wasn't something you did.  If you had high enough skill, dexterity, and were smart enough to use your potions of master thievery well, you could equip your team well very early on, which had immense game-play benefits.  I needed to sometimes justify to myself why my paladin would be willing to allow the rogue in the group to do so, and I always had a way to rationalize it, "I'm in a foreign land, facing a significant evil that I don't have the resources to resist properly, so I need to do this to ultimately do what is for the best."  Maybe a paladin wouldn't really do that, but maybe he would.

 

Was there anything interesting to steal beside Algernon's and Baldurian's cape in BG1 ? I remember it was possible to steal scimitars from Drizzt as well but the process was a reload-fest and you'd need someone to put them at use as well.

In my memory, pickpocketing was the feature which was there for the sake of the adaptation of D&D. It never weighted in the decision to pick a rogue or a bard with me, I took the former because they're just quasi-necessary and the latter when I didn't want to have to identify everything.

 

I never said myself "that'd be cool to be able to pick some pockets" because, well, there was close to nothing interesting to steal and the risk wasn't worth it 99% of the time (or it'll end up with a reload and retry).

 

Point being, I won't miss the ability to pick pockets anytime.

Edited March 20, 2015 by CaptainMace

[Lephys]

Yeah, unfortunately, in most of the games, it was just kind of an afterthought. You might as well have had a skill called Treasure Hunting, and you could just randomly mine gold out of rocks you came upon, or dig up bits of loot here and there with a shovel. "I'm going to try and dig up THIS spot of ground! Oh, sweet! 7 silver pieces and a rusty sword!"

 

Sure, here and there you could actually interact with a quest with it in a meaningful way, but that wasn't as a direct result of it being a "run around and click 'use Pickpocket,' then click on random targets at will" skill.

 

As others have said, in a different game with more to specifically support it, a "pick and choose when and where you'd like to pickpocket" skill could be really awesome. But when it's just slapped into an isometric RPG as "roll to get free things... you got free things!", with the occasional "Place an important item onto this person's pants" and/or "take an important item from this person's pants" thrown in, it's hardly an integral part of the gaming experience. The Borderlands slot machines give you 90% of that, and the other 10% can be obtained without having the ability to rampantly pickpocket strangers.

[Suhiir]

Problem is you'd have to actually have a way to design what is actually in the pockets and where the pockets are (IMO) for it to work right, and I don't see it worth it, really (unless you're creating a pickpocketing simulation game)

Actually it's pretty easy to implement pocket picking.

Just create a few random loot tables based on victim class/wealth/whatever and when sucessful you get a piece of random pocket loot.  A few coins, a ball of lint, a lucky rabbits foot, whatever.  If desired you can place rare/exotic items in the loot tables (not a good idea if you ask me, but that's my opinion) and the fact that they're generated at ramdom means X NPC doesn't always have Y item so you don't get "Must rob X NPC everytime you play the game because it's the only way to get Y item."

[Azmodiuz]

Double post.

More like quadruple post... you know you can edit right ?

 

Edit: forgot the "M" in "more" lol

 

 

I would consider the rogue experience to be a core part of the IE games. 

 

me too !!

 

Also, we have this system for sneaking, that can be used to great effect ! Its like the system for it is soo close. It surely is not going to become like it is in TES games where you can be sneaking and casting magic fireballs on people and the enemies are like "who's there? did I hear something?" meanwhile the fireball is blow-up in their face.

 

in D:OS they use LoS (Line of Sight) if we did the same to some extend, made it SHOW the line of sight for actually selected rogues in SNEAK mode, that would help, as a start !

 

THEN -> we can slowly add a mechanic to interact with an NPC when they are selected.

 

Forget thieving in stores, it was broken. If you need that, you might as well just use scripted interaction.  Also, with this approach we can make loot a small thing, that you can get from people without having to kill them !! only further encouraging role-playing !

 

So - that fixes alto of the broken parts. If developers put insanely godly items on someone to pickpocket, that's neglect, NOT broken/abusive mechanic.

 

 

TL:DR

 

Add LoS for selected rogues, make sneaking individually possible, add scripted interactions for stores, add thieving option to selected actions on NPCs. Success can literally be very hard if they see you all the time, accuracy can be used vs reflex if they do not see you. 

Edited March 20, 2015 by Azmodiuz

[Sock]

 

in D:OS they use LoS (Line of Sight) if we did the same to some extend, made it SHOW the line of sight for actually selected rogues in SNEAK mode, that would help, as a start !

 

 

This is actually a pretty fantastic idea. I've always felt like rogues were missing something very "roguey". Why not let them be able to see alarm areas around NPCs so that they can better avoid detection when in scout mode? That would be perfect.

[Michael_Galt]

There were tons of useful things to steal, mostly from merchants.  Personally, I think that the Fallout New Vegas system did it best.  There were physical items displayed in the shop you could steal, and there were items you could steal from the merchants themselves.  There are tons of ways that you could implement pick-pocketing that would make it make sense and work well.  Without even consulting those old threads, and off the cuff:

 

- Let anyone "evaluate a target".  That means, they give the individual a look-over.  So, they see how large their coin purse is, if they have any rings, how expensive their clothes are.  Anyone can do this- you don't need to be a professional pick pocket to know that someone wearing Armani and a Rollex has got some money.  If you have put points into pick-pocketing, then you can get more specific information, depending on the number of points.  For instance, you could have a good approximate estimate of the value of their externally visible items (coin purse, rings, clothes, etc). 

 

- Give a "search target" option.  Anyone could hypothetically do this, but, realistically, unless you have trained in pick-pocket, you will likely fail.  This requires contact.  You "bump into", or "talk with", or "stand next to in a crowd" the target.  You then determine exactly what they have on their person (how many coins in their purse, if they have any items hidden in other areas, etc) AND how hard of a target they are (do they always keep their hands near their valuables, are they paying close attention to everyone and everything around them).  That essentially functions as 2 skill checks.  The first one is your ability to gather the information (based on your pick-pocket skills) and the other is your ability to evaluate their "defenses" against pickpocketing (based on their level, their dexterity, perception, etc).  Meaning, are they easy, normal, moderate, or high risk.  Note, there is still no stealing actually involved here.  If you don't have enough pick-pocket skill, you don't succeed in further determining what they have on them (meaning, you are left with the external evaluation).  If you don't have enough skill, you don't know if they are hard to steal from or not. If your skill really isn't sufficient, you raise their level of alertness for a short time, making it more difficult to steal from them. 

 

- Finally, give a "pick-pocket" option.  You now know what they have.  If you can only do the external search, you can only target those items that would be visible to the eye.  If you are really skilled, you maybe know exactly what type of amulet they have on underneath their shirt.  You know, or don't know, the difficulty of the target.  Based on the item size and type, that could make it easier or harder to steal from them.  If it is an amulet under their shirt, and they are a hard target, maybe that makes it extremely difficult to steal.  Maybe that same amulet with and easy target is just of normal to moderate difficulty to steal.  So, you try to steal whatever it is that you are interested in.  If your skill exceeds their cumulative defenses, you succeed (no rolls- simple skill check).  If it doesn't you fail.  On that note...

 

- Failure.  If you are only within a small margin of error in your failure, the target doesn't become alerted.  If you try this more than 1 time, and are within that margin of error, they do (maybe make the 1st time free, the 2nd time an escalation of difficulty, and the 3rd time, alerted to your activity).  So, if you fail the 1st time, you should know to stop immediately, wait until you have improved your skill, and maybe try after that.  If you don't do that, you will make it much harder to steal from them, or you will be caught.  If the margin of error was large, then you immediately alert them.

 

- Repercussions.  Commoners, small merchants.  Won't work with you any further (providing information, trade, etc).  Will be hostile (though not attack).  Wealthy traders, individuals, lower level adventurers/mercenaries.  Will call guards, cause those in the immediate vicinity to become hostile (more difficult to steal from, unwilling to talk to you, not attacking).  Nobles, moderate to high level NPCs and adventurers.  Immediately hostile, will attack or have guards attack.  If from a high enough tier, will cause entire sector of city or city to become hostile (if you try to steal from the high priest, all the churches, the mayor, the city- things like that). 

 

- Atonement.  There would be an option of paying a fine to counteract that damage to your "reputation", that would vary depending on the targets offended.  If it was commoners or small merchants, it wouldn't be that large.  If it was wealthy traders and their like, it would be much more significant.  If it was from the top-tier, it would be quite expensive- maybe even a "quest of atonement".  This would basically reset some those negative effects (meaning, they would no longer be hostile, but would still be wary against pick-pocketing, leaving it more difficult to steal from them).

 

That's 10 minutes of thinking.  There are tons of other ways to do that would also work.  It doesn't matter- it won't be in the game.  It just irritates me that it won't be.

Edited March 20, 2015 by Michael_Galt

[Azmodiuz]

There were tons of useful things to steal, mostly from merchants.  Personally, I think that the Fallout New Vegas system did it best.  There were physical items displayed in the shop you could steal, and there were items you could steal from the merchants themselves.  There are tons of ways that you could implement pick-pocketing that would make it make sense and work well.  Without even consulting those old threads, and off the cuff:

 

- Let anyone "evaluate a target".  That means, they give the individual a look-over.  So, they see how large their coin purse is, if they have any rings, how expensive their clothes are.  Anyone can do this- you don't need to be a professional pick pocket to know that someone wearing Armani and a Rollex has got some money.  If you have put points into pick-pocketing, then you can get more specific information, depending on the number of points.  For instance, you could have a good approximate estimate of the value of their externally visible items (coin purse, rings, clothes, etc). 

 

- Give a "search target" option.  Anyone could hypothetically do this, but, realistically, unless you have trained in pick-pocket, you will likely fail.  This requires contact.  You "bump into", or "talk with", or "stand next to in a crowd" the target.  You then determine exactly what they have on their person (how many coins in their purse, if they have any items hidden in other areas, etc) AND how hard of a target they are (do they always keep their hands near their valuables, are they paying close attention to everyone and everything around them).  That essentially functions as 2 skill checks.  The first one is your ability to gather the information (based on your pick-pocket skills) and the other is your ability to evaluate their "defenses" against pickpocketing (based on their level, their dexterity, perception, etc).  Meaning, are they easy, normal, moderate, or high risk.  Note, there is still no stealing actually involved here.  If you don't have enough pick-pocket skill, you don't succeed in further determining what they have on them (meaning, you are left with the external evaluation).  If you don't have enough skill, you don't know if they are hard to steal from or not. If your skill really isn't sufficient, you raise their level of alertness for a short time, making it more difficult to steal from them. 

 

- Finally, give a "pick-pocket" option.  You now know what they have.  If you can only do the external search, you can only target those items that would be visible to the eye.  If you are really skilled, you maybe know exactly what type of amulet they have on underneath their shirt.  You know, or don't know, the difficulty of the target.  Based on the item size and type, that could make it easier or harder to steal from them.  If it is an amulet under their shirt, and they are a hard target, maybe that makes it extremely difficult to steal.  Maybe that same amulet with and easy target is just of normal to moderate difficulty to steal.  So, you try to steal whatever it is that you are interested in.  If your skill exceeds their cumulative defenses, you succeed (no rolls- simple skill check).  If it doesn't you fail.  On that note...

 

- Failure.  If you are only within a small margin of error in your failure, the target doesn't become alerted.  If you try this more than 1 time, and are within that margin of error, they do (maybe make the 1st time free, the 2nd time an escalation of difficulty, and the 3rd time, alerted to your activity).  So, if you fail the 1st time, you should know to stop immediately, wait until you have improved your skill, and maybe try after that.  If you don't do that, you will make it much harder to steal from them, or you will be caught.  If the margin of error was large, then you immediately alert them.

 

- Repercussions.  Commoners, small merchants.  Won't work with you any further (providing information, trade, etc).  Will be hostile (though not attack).  Wealthy traders, individuals, lower level adventurers/mercenaries.  Will call guards, cause those in the immediate vicinity to become hostile (more difficult to steal from, unwilling to talk to you, not attacking).  Nobles, moderate to high level NPCs and adventurers.  Immediately hostile, will attack or have guards attack.  If from a high enough tier, will cause entire sector of city or city to become hostile (if you try to steal from the high priest, all the churches, the mayor, the city- things like that). 

 

- Atonement.  There would be an option of paying a fine to counteract that damage to your "reputation", that would vary depending on the targets offended.  If it was commoners or small merchants, it wouldn't be that large.  If it was wealthy traders and their like, it would be much more significant.  If it was from the top-tier, it would be quite expensive- maybe even a "quest of atonement".  This would basically reset some those negative effects (meaning, they would no longer be hostile, but would still be wary against pick-pocketing, leaving it more difficult to steal from them).

 

That's 10 minutes of thinking.  There are tons of other ways to do that would also work.  It doesn't matter- it won't be in the game.  It just irritates me that it won't be.

Your options are better then what I proposed, and I believe could serve multiple purposes. For example, you could get hints about a character by evaluating him/her, like a bit more info if you are very perceptive, maybe some skill checks here and there. 

 

If I could say this, I would make the LoS thing, not exactly like DoS did it, but barely visible, and for anything thats a radius, I would make is kind of shimmer, make it actually affect the gamma or something in those area's , but not too much, just enough that the player still has to be careful and keeps his/her eyes widened while playing. 

 

If you have the time nad effort to steal and loot, and build up skills and a character for it, why shouldn't you be rewarded with a great economy? It could very easily double the play time of the entire game, to only come out abit richer?! many of us would pick pocket just for the fun of it at earlier levels. Another thing about thieving thats so great, is it helps the rpelay value !

[Amentep]

 

Problem is you'd have to actually have a way to design what is actually in the pockets and where the pockets are (IMO) for it to work right, and I don't see it worth it, really (unless you're creating a pickpocketing simulation game)

Actually it's pretty easy to implement pocket picking.

Just create a few random loot tables based on victim class/wealth/whatever and when sucessful you get a piece of random pocket loot.  A few coins, a ball of lint, a lucky rabbits foot, whatever.  If desired you can place rare/exotic items in the loot tables (not a good idea if you ask me, but that's my opinion) and the fact that they're generated at ramdom means X NPC doesn't always have Y item so you don't get "Must rob X NPC everytime you play the game because it's the only way to get Y item."

 

 

It won't be "Must rob X NPC every time to get Y Item" it'll become "You must pickpocket every NPC everytime to increase the odds of getting Y item until you get Y item (unless you can pickpocket 2".

 

But that really wasn't my contention on the difficulty of pickpocketing - my contention is to successfully simulate pickpocketing (IMO) you'd need to consider facing, victim-NPC awareness, other NPC awareness (particularly Johnny Law), which pocket was to be picked, what size/weight the item was before ever being able to calculate success.

[Stun]

In BG2 the Trademeet Genies send you on a quest to get the head of a Raksasha named Ihtafeer. Before the Throne of Bhaal patch, you could sneak up to Ihtafeer and pickpocket her head then return it to the Genies, thus solving the quest non-violently. I thought that was a pretty cool ego trip.

 

Seriously, you know you've arrived as The Thief when you can pickpocket someone's head right off their shoulders without them noticing.

Edited March 20, 2015 by Stun

[Lephys]

I'd so love to see a "legit" pickpocketing mechanic in a cRPG. Not necessarily one that perfectly simulated real-life pick-pocketing, but one that at least wasn't just a random-loot generator, or that didn't allow you the binary results of either failing and having everyone in the world hate you forever OR succeeding at taking a woman's baby from her very hands without her noticing.

 

I also think it'd be cool to have Rogues do lots more Roguey things than just taking stuff. Like sleight-of-hand (which could be used for MUCH more than just taking things undetected), disguising, conning folk, etc. The Rogue class could essentially come with a "Rogue" Knowledge skill. Would be splendid... *fingersteeple*