177 réponses à ce sujet

[kevL]

now this thread is going sideways .. I have a question :

Where is the Cooldown time for Sleight of hand? I searched skills.2da and feat.2da but didn't find anything relevant. hard-coded, ugh?


manageri's getting to me; the default 6 seconds makes me wanna stand there ridiculously. I won't, however, reload the game because it breaks my immersion and I'd rather roll with the punches (always). I'm thinking that 45s is enough to let me walk away, slightly shaken but not stirred

[nicethugbert]

It's easier to just play BG2 and stop making new modules.

Oh, but wait, BG2 does not have surprise ranged rogue ambushes from behind a nest of traps should you get caught pickpocketing, nvm then.

Modifié par nicethugbert, 11 janvier 2011 - 04:46 .

[kevL]

or



Bear Traps!!



( what's a game without Bear Traps .. and Logbows? )

[Kaldor Silverwand]

Eguintir Eligard wrote...
Is it really that hard to just copy BG2 and make them hostile on a fail? Wow look at that I just blinded you with science (and ended this silliness)

Sure, first you fail to pickpocket someone and then you murder the guy when they go hostile.

Besides you couldn't let any "plot" people go hostile or things may derail badly.

Regards

[manageri]

Shaughn78 wrote...

That exampled is definatley one sided, to fix it track the success and add bonus gold and exp that increases with each successful pickpocket. Have the bonuses starts over again with a failure. I would suggest that multiple failures in a row should have something as well.

Not sure what you mean but if you're saying the first fail shouldn't really cost you anything (or not much) and you only really get punished after failing a few times, then that system would work because it's no longer unlimited tries as the risk is not worth it after a few fails. It's still boring as hell standing there hitting the PP button so I wouldn't go that way, like I said I wouldn't use the standard system AT ALL, but there are ways like that to make the system not as completely hopeless as it is in the OC.

If you mean you should have tiny irrelevant penalties then you're really just back to unlimited tries.

nicethugbert wrote...

Because it's not a paradox.  It's just a problem you can't solve.

As evidenced by that brilliant solution you posted...oh wait, you didnt.

Not allowing any retries for pickpocketing is about as immersive as reloading. They are both OOC.

Immersion is just the reality argument repackaged. Certain things are worth breaking the immersion, this is one of them. How many people really wanna stand next to an NPC a few minutes hitting one button when they could instead do it once (or even less than once per NPC)?

I mean imagine if the appraise skill was like sleight of hand. You have to right click EVERY ITEM IN THE GAME to find out their real price before you buy or sell them, and if you succeed you add/substract some gold from the price. If you fail you have to click it again after 6 seconds. More "realistic"? Absolutely. The worst suggestion in the history of the game? Damn right.

You guys are getting side tracked by non-sense such as reloads. Reloads
are a part of the game. You can't do anything about. Forget about it.
It's not the point of the game and being able to do so does not spoil
the game for the player. You gain nothing by letting it bother you.

I thought you just said reloads break the immersion?

The game in question is pick pocketing. What is pick pocketing? It
is undetected theft. You may be able to pick pocket someone if you
have not been caught pick pocketing in the past. But if you are known
to pick pocket then doing so again should require skill and circumstance
to avoid having your presence or motive detected.

So, for a retry pickpocketing after failed attempt would require bluff
to regain others confidence, intimidate to enforce compliance, or
stealth to avoid having your presence detected.

So you don't in fact want unlimited tries, you want unlimited tries until caught and then a chance to buy extra tries with another skill?

Kaldor Silverwand wrote...

If I really cared about this,
I'd consider having a small XP loss when pickpocketing fails, and after
three failed attempts on the same person anything they have in inventory
becomes non-droppable. You could use a variable on the NPC to indicate
if they have some plot item that must remain droppable.

The
problem with this is making PP worth it in the first place. If I know
you're gonna tax me 50 xp and I might get a few lousy gold pieces, Am I gonna bother with it at all? If you removed the xp penalty then your three tries system is already a vast improvement to the standard one, but what's really the point of doing three rolls when you could do one for the whole bunch of loot and not have to stand there for no reason?

Eguintir Eligard wrote...

Is it really that hard to just
copy BG2 and make them hostile on a fail? Wow look at that I just
blinded you with science (and ended this silliness)

That forces reload, or makes the skill not worth taking if you refuse to reload.

[kevL]

wow. You really believe passionately in your system for Sleight of Hand .. where can I DL it??


that aside, anyone know where the Cooldown timer is, Or is it hard-coded?

[Eguintir Eligard]

Im going to say what has already been said "I don't give a rat butt about reloading". Reloading is not the concern of the author, and if you want to talk about that you might as well not make the game because they can and will reload any time they dont get an optimal result in any event in the game.



Plot characters shouldnt have anything pickpocketable. Now what's the big objection?

[manageri]

Eguintir Eligard wrote...

Im going to say what has already been said "I don't give a rat butt about reloading". Reloading is not the concern of the author, and if you want to talk about that you might as well not make the game because they can and will reload any time they dont get an optimal result in any event in the game.

Plot characters shouldnt have anything pickpocketable. Now what's the big objection?

You can have a meteor hit the planet and destroy all life as soon as the player fails the roll for all I care, just realize that will mean your module has a horrible PP system that gives the player no reason to pick that skill in the first place IF they don't want to reload all the time.

[kevL]

ah, I think I (finally) hear what you're saying, manageri.

If the penalty is too harsh, player dies, reload - offiously that's a nobrainer.

But if the penalty is too light, just retry over and over again. While I agree that the system that comes with the game is, well, feeble, I hope it doesn't have to be thrown out altogether. In fact, to get abstract, if that's not a contradiction right there, the Beauty of Design is right there.


balance : who's going to reload and who isn't ( or, who's going to stand there going clicky-clicky before they throw their mouse against the wall )

ps. now, about that Cooldown time ..

Modifié par kevL, 11 janvier 2011 - 02:55 .

[dunniteowl]

Well aside from the gentle sniping and sarcasm, the real point of this thread is to provide ideas, not arguments. I understand some back and forth to get to a resolution in the Hegelian sense is required, but we can do it without the mockery, I firmly believe.



That said, I believe I offered what constitutes a sound and useable framework for getting something going. I would agree with manageri the Dev Stock PP system is hopelessly flawed. Which is why I suggested using PRR 3.0 by vendalus off the Vault. It's quite robust and anyone with moderate to better scripting skill could adapt it where required to do just about anything you think is appropriate as a response to pickpocketing or stealing from merchants or thieving out of chests.

Taking ideas from older games can only take you so far. Somewhere in that mix, it still has to be incorporated into NWN2 scripting and you might as well use a good base to start from. I believe that the PRR 3.0 script is that.



dunniteowl

[manageri]

kevL wrote...

If the penalty is too harsh, player dies, reload - offiously that's a nobrainer.

Exactly, and the reason that just saying "I don't care about reloads" doesn't fix the issue is that then the player will simply never pick the skill. The meteor is obviously an extreme example to make a point, but can anyone specify what a functional risk would be that both:

- Means you can't spam it all day long and
- Still makes the skill worth using and investing in

Other than limited tries with no penalties (or very small penalties that are clearly lesser than the rewards), how do you make both happen? If anyone has a better solution that meets those goals, let me know. If you don't care about those goals then of course feel free to use the meteor option or the standard system.

[Arkalezth]

Agreed (again) with manageri, on both my concern for people's reloads, and the solution. Making a single check as with other skills is an easy and effective solution. I've never played a module where I could spam Diplomacy or Lore until I passed the check (bugs aside), why should I be able to spam Sleight of Hand?

And if it's finally spamable (and I'm not saying that's the best option), at least make it the less tedious possible.

NPCs going hostile isn't a good solution IMHO. Maybe realistic, but bad in game.

I don't know how the system dno's suggesting works, so I can't give an opinion about it for now.

And kevL: I'd give you an answer if I knew about that timer, but it's not the case. I guess Lugaid knows, if he has changed it.

[Eguintir Eligard]

There's a standard system? What?

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

In technical terms, all I'm doing is modifying the default on-inventory-disturbed script for creatures, which only fires when a pickpocket attempt is detected. The skill-use cooldown timer is somewhere else, but it's probably hard-coded like all the other cool-down timers.

The idea is just to change this one script, and maybe add a bit to the on-spawn script to add a bit of pickpocketable loot. This way, rogues can consistently use their sleight of hand skill, and not just in a few pre-scripted situations. A more complex system might be more balanced, but it would necessarily limit the situations in which the skill could be used.

BTW, I've also kludged up a system for bartering with merchants and eliciting information from certain NPCs that involves repeated use of the conversation skills, so skill spamming won't be out of place, no more than spamming attacks in combat. Like combat, spamming has to be balances by having a modest risk involved, so the player is constantly thinking about switching to a different, more profitable tactic. Interesting choices make a game, and the designer just needs to provide those choices. If the player doesn't what to think about what they're doing, but just kill and loot everything they can kill and loot, there's not much I can do for them.

With the default system, pickpocketing isn't much of an option, because you never know when attacking an NPC is going to break the module by mucking up the faction reputations. A one-and-done system is a little bit better, but it takes away choices as you play, removing possible targets for sleight-of-hand. With a long-term (30+ second) penalty, the player can always decide to do something else and come back to pickpocketing later. Again, the designer's job is to give the players something to do, choices to make, not to prevent them from obsessively spamming actions.

[Eguintir Eligard]

make it a nude mod and theres no where to hide loot that can be stolen. And your audience will be +50k

[The Fred]

nicethugbert wrote...
Had BGII. Bored me to tears.

Sacrilege!
But actually I think in this instance, the BG series didn't do things as well as they could have. Their method was good, but not perfect.

Eguintir Eligard wrote...
Is it really that hard to just copy BG2 and make them hostile on a fail? Wow look at that I just blinded you with science (and ended this silliness)

AFAIK, this is the default system already in the game anyway. The whole point is that it's kinda lame. Just like the other options, you can just re-load (though I think there's very little you can really do about this). Hostile NPCs screw up load of things, and they're inelegant. If you think about it realistically, if someone tries to steal something off people in real life, they'd either get a "Hey, what do you think you're doing?" or a "Stop, thief!" and a chase (OK well something along those lines - at least, it's believable). You could argue that the second one is like the target turning hostile, but they don't hang around the same area forever in real life - rather, you'll never see them again. If there was a system where you could flee and the hostiles would become neutral again or leave, this would work, but otherwise, I don't think it's that good.

kamalpoe wrote...
The guard has a "Swat team" they call in to deal with adventurers. Otherwise evil adventurers would be running willy nilly through the city.

Since we've already touched on the topic of BG, does anyone remember the Flaming Fist Enforcers? Those guys were pure evil.

[kamalpoe]

The Fred wrote...

Eguintir Eligard wrote...
Is it really that hard to just copy BG2 and make them hostile on a fail? Wow look at that I just blinded you with science (and ended this silliness)

AFAIK, this is the default system already in the game anyway. The whole point is that it's kinda lame.

It's worse than that, because you can not even attempt to pickpocket from anyone in a faction friendly to yours, and in official campaigns essentially everyone is that is not actively hostile is friendly to you. As a result pickpocket is a combat skill. <_<

[DJ Doc]

So the Merchants are enemies just like IRL

[nicethugbert]

Manageri, could you remind me of your brilliant solution?

All I remember you saying is Infinite Retries and Reloads = Bad, Fail = No More Tries For You = Good. You haven't even bothered to suggest diminishing returns or diminishing anything.

Modifié par nicethugbert, 12 janvier 2011 - 01:45 .

[kevL]

Lugaid of the Red Stripes wrote...

The skill-use cooldown timer is somewhere else, but it's probably hard-coded like all the other cool-down timers.

the timers for feats like Knockdown, Summon Familiar, Frenzy are in feat.2da - heads up

( tks for the effort, Ark )

back OT : I'm starting to like the idea of a progressive worsening of reputation ( though it's beyond the range of Lugaid's original intent of this thread ) with the player being kept informed of how long before, say, the Defenders go rank on 'im. Then, as a safety measure ( while somehow preserving the sanctity of Plot NPCs ), have someone the PC can talk to ( do a quest for ) to regain neutral or friendly status ( say, a Priest or Guild master ) - or instead of a quest, do the sum payment in GP ( bribe w/ inclusive Cha-skill ).

A more complicated system would track variables separately from town to town, as the thief has to 'move on' - rogues like this kinda stuff


here's the PRR 3 Dno's suggested, book'd for future ref.

Tks D, the Even-handed

[Eguintir Eligard]

Hands in my pocket hands in my pocket hands in my pocket.



Make them agro and if you fight them they should explode when you kill them like BG2. I can help with some vfx to spawn on the on death.

[manageri]

nicethugbert wrote...

Manageri, could you remind me of your brilliant solution?

I just explained what I would and would not do and gave reasons as to why. How about you address my points instead of pretending I didn't make any? Maybe start with the challenge I presented in my last post.

All I remember you saying is Infinite Retries and Reloads = Bad, Fail =
No More Tries For You = Good. You haven't even bothered to suggest
diminishing returns or diminishing anything.

So because I didn't suggest your solution (except that I kinda did as you're about to find out) I haven't posted any solution?

Here's the problem with what you just said; Diminishing returns IS limited tries. If my first try to PP someone can get me 20 gold, and the second try after failing the first can only give me 10 gold, then I have wasted my ONE AND ONLY TRY to gain that 20 gold. My single try system simply cuts the needless crap and slams those returns right down to zero after try number one.

If you instead mean that the NPC still has the full 20 gold and I just need to PP him more times now to gain it all, then you're still at unlimited tries, it just takes longer, which is in essence no different than the standard system where failing one roll means you just have to take at least 6 seconds longer, you're simply stretching that extra time.

[Haplose]

I really like the solutions for stealing from Gothic series (Arcania excluded) / Risen. People get annoyed when someone comes barging into their home. They follow you and demand you to leave in annoyed voices. After a while they turn hostile if you don't listen. As they are following you, they also clearly see when you steal anything or go through thjeir chests/wardrobes. Of course this makes them hostile as well. And, if present in said town, they are aided in the fight by town guards/militia.

The simple solution to avoid all this trouble is to remain hidden and steal unnoticed.



Of course this extends beyong simple pick-pocketing, but was a very nice and realistic solution I'd say.



Sleight of Hand spam is horrible. It's a rather poorly prepared skill. If anything, I much prefer in-conversation use of the skill. Maybe with some other alternative checks to lower the DC inluded (like Bluff/Perform to disorient or stealth to approach unnoticed, while your companions keep the target busy with a conversation). I's much more immersive if you get a description what is happening - on a case-by-case basis and with consideration of the surroundings.

[dunniteowl]

Conversation based Pick Pocketing clearly has some pros and cons.  I'll say this, though, text based adventuring has a long way to go before anyone should claim it as dead.  Sure, it's video driven and the eye candy is great (except when it crashes your imagined view of certain creatures or spell effects, but hey, it's progress, right?) but there's a veritable treasure trove of information that can still be delivered by textual conversations.

Pick Pocketing sounds like it could be one of them.  Instead of an actual Dialog between you and an NPC, you simply open up an "Old School" dialog box for making choices.

You right click on a character, say, and are offered:
1) Converse With
2) Trade With
3) Steal From

Depending on your choices, you get more options to choose from.
Converse With:
1) Ask About People
2) Get Directions
3) Get News
(bear in mind, these are "idea" placeholders, they could simply indicate conversation options of obvious make as in most "normal" conversations a la NWN/2.)

Trade With:
1) Barter Items for Items  Brings up both character inventory screens (as long as it isn't an actual Companion)
2) Dicker for Items by Price (Brings up a Sell or Buy option and then allows you to choose which you'll do)
3) Skill Use for Advantage (Allows you to Bluff, Intimidate, Diplomacy, Lore, Appraise as appropriate to gain advantage -- you hope!)

Steal From:
1) Use Sleight of Hand while appearing to trade/dicker
2) Strongarm Intimidation for a "Substantial Discount"
3) Pick Pocket From their Person

Something like this could be quite robust, however, it would also qualify as a completely scripted system on the order of TonyK's AI, Kaedrin's PrC, Drammel's Tome of Battle or BartjeD's Turn Based Combat System -- so a lot of work.

The aforementioned PRR is something on that order already, so, as I suggested earlier, it's a good base from which to start I think.  A lot of work has already gone into it and it is quite powerful on its own as it stands now. So maybe a bit of "standing on the shoulders of giants" investment of time could yield some new and interesting ability to something like that.

I look at Pick Pocketing and Sleight of Hand as two separate (though uniquely intertwined) Skills.  Good Sleight of Hand should provide a Synergy bonus to Pick Pocketing.  Good Pick Pocketing Skill shouldn't necessarily swing to a Synergy to SoH, however, as there is a sort of One Way Street Effect between them.  Sleight of Hand adds to Pick Pocketing, playing cards (Gambling in General, like palming off the game's dice for a pair of Loaded Dice and then switching them back before folks get wise, or palming a card, or doing little parlor magic tricks of disappearing balls, hidden coins, etc.)  and all that makes you a better Pick Pocket.  

Conversely, being good at getting into someone's pocket, purse, bag or satchel unnoticed does not necessarily allow you to be better at palming cards, dice or coins right in front of someone.  So I see a synergy bonus as pretty one sided in this affair (though, to be fair, it shouldn't be completely one sided, just a proportionately varied ratio of SoH to PP versus PP to SoH.)

I see failing a Pick Pocket as that being pretty much it for that character.  It shouldn't stop you from attempting it with as many other NPCs, Companions (yes, if you're a thief, why should being a Party member stop you, you're a thief) or even Plot Related characters (including villains) as are there.  If you fail a Pick Pocket attempt, the abstracted portion of that failure is that the person you just attempted to filch from is somehow either aware of your attempts now, or has taken measures on their person that thwarts any further attempts.  Period.

A Pick Pocket doesn't get a second chance on the same person and shouldn't.  Even in busy market squares, a thief moves constantly and a failed PP is a failure on that person, moving on now...  Maybe they get another chance later on in another section of the market (which would make a cool down timer sort of appropriate, but I would liken it more to a trigger area, where as long as you're in that trigger geography, no persons you've failed at can be tried again -- you'd have to move out and that would have nearly the same effect as moving around in the market square as a sort of "cooldown" timer.)

There should be no diminishing returns in the sense that your reward for success is less with more attempts, that's just silly, really.  The money or jewelry is still where it is, it didn't magically shrink or grow while you screwed up your last attempt.  That said, a failed attempt ought to set a counter variable on that NPC that increases the DC against all future attempts by the same person.  Each subsequent failure should increase this counter until either the risk of failure is just too high to ignore (ie: the character shouts, "THIEF!  STOP THIEF!) and you cannot legitimately risk making another attempt, ever.\\

In that sense, it's a diminishing returns on the actual Use of the Skill, not on the reward for success.  And that, to me, seems realistically probable as a method to Pick Pocket in game.

These are all just thoughts of mine.  I like to look at how a system *could* work and base it on inferences on how I think such actions *really* work.  This leads me to look at thinking of ways to create limits on actions that make sense in a "big picture" sort of framework.

Honestly, if the Faction System were a good deal more robust and flexible, you could allow this sort of behavior and also increase someone's reputation in a single area of a town, or city, say, and still allow them to attempt to ply their "trade" in other parts of town.  There should also be "cooldown" timers on folks' memory of who you are and what you do.   Maybe the person you got caught by will remember you for months, possibly even years.  Others who got a good look at your during the incident might remember you for a couple of weeks.  The guard that came running to see what the fuss was all about won't even recognize you the next week.

Of course, without a system to track time properly in game (a major failure of vision in my opinion) this is all pretty much academic *(as far as fading reputation/recognition over time goes) as workable concepts go for Pick Pocketing (and a plethora of other things that would seriously benefit campaign and PW based playing.)

None of the ideas expressed is intended to be definitive or comprehensive.  I only hope that, by reading this, other ideas from those who know scripting and events will arise and be considered.  There's a lot of ways to do the same things in this game, even from a Scripting perspective.  If this weren't true, then the devs would still be the only ones to make changes to the game via script.  As this is patently not so, I submit that some of these ideas are most likely doable in script as long as non-traditional methods of looking at the issue are used.

best regards,
dunniteowl
(You know, I do have a soft place for thieves as characters in game, but I cover that with some armor to avoid that dagger between the fifth and sixth ribs where I cannot easily reach behind me.)

[rjshae]

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but another thing you could do is have an area storekeeper reputation for the player. Perhaps there is no immediate impact from a pickpocket other than the person is offended, but as word starts to get out (several days later after it is too late for the player to revert), the good-aligned shopkeepers maintain their standard of refusing to service a pickpocket, or else extort an exorbitant bribe to stay silent and sell stuff to the PC.

Modifié par rjshae, 12 janvier 2011 - 08:19 .