This Mud

[Toxis]

The group was in trouble. A kind and noble person removes his held low and recalls the group with a red and white staff only to get pthieved right away, a JJD, which everyone knows can be a pain to forge.

I had to rent, log on Malek and kill the faggot. I wasted 30 mins trying to deal with a pthief. The leader asks me if I'm coming back. Why would I want to? I can't stand to be on this mud with pthieves, and I've left several times before because of pthieves, and I refuse to play with pthieves on. It drives people away, it's made some of my best friends quit sloth and I'm telling you now it's gonna make me quit sloth, THE Addict, the person that's been her about 15 freaking YEARS!

Time for a change, people. Remove the pthieves.

Brad

[Medios]

Who is said "faggot"?

Who was running this group?

Mike

[Rynquald]

I think pthieving can/could play a role within the mud. but atm it's simply irritating, pthieves are always newb chars played by (presumably) regular players stealing under the cloak of anonymity provided by switching chars.

If it wasn't removed outright, I'd personally like to see restrictions on the transfer of stolen goods/coins between pthief and non-pthief chars, and the ability to rent right after a successful steal.

Along with raising the level requirements for stealing (adding a second higher lev steal skill capable of stealing from pcs and restricting the current low level skill to mobs would do it imo), the stakes could be raised significantly for a pthief, to the point where it's a total decision to play a real pthief char, and not simply to play an annoying newb thief on the side.

On a side note, I still voted no


Edit: Never underestimate the entertainment value in hunting a pthief, if they can't rent.

[Malison]

It's pretty clear from responses of immorts like Krom, who was on and commenting during this incident, that pthieving isn't going to be removed, but there's definitely issues that need change.

1 Why is steal a level 1 thief skill? Seriously, you're not going to be successful stealing from any mobs at that level, but for a pthief, who cares if you fail 10 times before grabbing someone's stuff and running. And sure, most of the major pthieves are level 15-40, but when you see Sorabji get passworded only to log in a level 1 thief and grab someone's neck clasp, it's pretty easy to see change is needed.

2 Also why can you not kill known pthieves until they fail a steal? Malek takes 30 minutes to track a thief down to retrieve a friend's gear, and as soon as the thief corpses he's back on in town lurking around looking for new targets, immune to every character less than Avatar 14 (acid shower).

[Jag]

Imm's please get rid of the Pthieves. Thieving would be nice thing to hit mobs with. It ruins the game for me when this stuff happens.

[Hades]

Personally, I never stole from someone I didn't like.
Sorabji is awesome but I am awesomer!
Real simple equation... do NOT have any items in your
inventory AT any time that might get 'lifted'. The group was better
off corpsing since plooting would then been illegal.
Did I mention I was awesomer?
Oh yeah, nice job of the life. The Brotherhood slowly comes out
of the long, winter hiatus. Time to dust off the cobwebs

[Weasel]

I have always been strongly against pthieves and always will. I have seen a number of established players leave over the years purely because of pthieving, and on top of that there's been many Valkish-level newbies who spend a month or two getting into sloth only to have it ruined by some self-centred **** in the space of a couple of seconds, for no other reason than they find joy in being assholes. We lose those type of players permanently - at least some of the more established players return eventually. It does NOTHING positive for the game, N_O_T_H_I_N_G, and the only ones who seem to enjoy it are the pthieves themselves and a couple of immortals who seem to think it's a good idea to drive players away.. one has to wonder why that is..

I dont change into regen gear in groups anymore, nor do raise people in groups anymore unless we are recalled so I can go to scribes/inn to change into raise eq, because these ******* assholes will swipe your eq while you're trying to change in the open to help someone, as has obviously happened in the case that started this thread. Well shit, if certain immorts think it's such a good idea to drive new players away and slow down existing play like this for the sake of '**** knows what reason', then perhaps they should balance things out by doubling or tripling the standing regen rates to make up for the fact we can't get changed into regen eq, and get rid of that frigging 100mil+ exp loss on death while you're at it..

..and do I think this rant is going to achieve a damn thing? Hell no, because pthieves seem to have some special appeal to a few immorts that defies explanation.. and in fact flies in the face of trying to improve sloth and increase the playerbase. The only thing that will happen now is Hades will respond with some taunting and that'll be it. What's new? Been there, done that.

[resouh]

I agree, there needs to be some definate changes made to the system. I play another mud (won't mention name) and they are no steal, the only way you can get stuff stolen is to get killed and looted in a cpk area. I enjoy that aspect of the mud very much. Here, a low level thief can steal items that take so long to forge or cycle and that makes no sense. One response is that 'you should be more careful where you switch gear at', but what about not overpowering a class? Should level 40 avatars really have to worry about anything a level 8 char does? (no offense to any level 8 chars that may have read this post)

Resouh

[Thraxas]

I'm not going to vote, votes here are too easy to rig.

But to add another voice to the ignored majority I also dislike pthieves, I won't play when they're on and rent as soon as its clear they're around.

As a suggestion, another mud I played had a 2 tier system for pkills, you were either a pkill player and could pkill any other pkill player and loot them (+/- 8 levels) or you were non pkill and couldn't get pkilled ... something similar for pting could work just a thought.

Rynquald said: "I think pthieving can/could play a role within the mud." I don't agree I don't see any place for it, how do I substantiate my position? I don't, I don't need to and no arguement I make here will convince anyone anyway, I'm just a single voice among the majority here who will not be listened to by imms again.

Hades has repeated the perpetual cry of the pt: "... do NOT have any items in your inventory AT any time that might get 'lifted'."
Why not? you stick regen gear in game and expect us not to use it? You put undead control eq in game and expect us to recall to town and a safe room to change exit safe room to cast the summon, then return to an area without our pets? ... oh yes the AV7 spell call followers is great, once you get there ... undead control eq is only to be used by avatars?

If there was a designated and known safe room in every area where you could run to change and get back to your run I might have some small sympathy with this position otherwise its a patently nonsensical arguement.

The arguement that it can be fun chasing down pts to get your eq back can be fun also holds no water, I don't enjoy it, I won't chase pthieves and try my hardest to have no interaction with them in any respect in game and want to be able to rent or go afk whenever I want without having to worry that I've just had a high value piece of eq stolen that I'll never get back if I rent.

Feel free to flame I'm used to it.

[Avatar]

I agree with the people here, I don't like pthieving and I've never enjoyed any aspect of it. I certainly don't like having my stuff stolen, and I never found any fun in chasing down pthieves.

We've had this discussion many times. I don't understand the reasoning of the imms in being so stubborn about not changing or fixing the pthief rules. I'm tired of arguing the point, so I normally rent if I see known pthieves lurking. Sloth is fun at times, but there's better things to do if the game session is going to be all about someone getting pthieved and others running around trying to firestorm some punk.

[Autolycos]

[quote="Avatar":3khwixff] I don't understand the reasoning of the imms in being so stubborn about not changing or fixing the pthief rules. [/quote:3khwixff]

Over the last 11 years this argument has been ran around the flagpole. There is only one conceivable legitimate reason they don't want to remove pthieving. A few of the imms must have pthieves and think its fun to run havoc to repay us for critisism. I, like others have retired many times for reasons like this. Although I do find it fun to hunt them down, its even more fun to trace route on ip's. Since each ip is collected on logon to the mud, it makes them an accessory. They have all the info, they just don't care because it doesn't happen to them, if it did to one of thier chars things would change.. But then why steal from yourself.


*Observing a crime without acting, is being an accomplice.

[*Krom*]

I personally find it to be a blackmark on our otherwise really good mud. It ruins the friendly, fun, comradery and laid back atmosphere of sloth. If the admin took a vote now, it would be ruled out, but its not a democracy and there are at least a couple of key people that believe it adds another element to the game that we are better off leaving in.

As someone pointed out, sloth equipment is setup with tradeoffs and in order to make a wide range of viable equipment, the game lends itself towards changing eq. You should not have to be paranoid that you cannot change your eq cause some pthief followed you into an area and is hidden and stealing your things. A while back one of my chars had some of his regen gear stolen in the jungle, something which he never recovered from (the items were originally popped in a large group), so I know it happens and I know the pain involved.

I personally have a very short leash about it, and will broadly use the "bane" or nuissance to the mud rules, if the thief a) distrupts grouping or b) antaganizes, boasts, or taunts in actions designed to drive people away. Thus the password lock on sorabji.

To me the mechanics need to be worked on also if it is to remain part of the game -- for instance, you should not be able to steal on vk (actually you may not be able to, ill have to check), or even get on a boat to vk if you have recently attempted a psteal. A level 8 char should be severely limited in being able to steal from someone much higher than them. I will bring it up again with the admin, maybe we can at least address some of the mechanics.

Krom
PS players with immortal characters are prohibited from pstealing with any of the their characters.

[Weasel]

Appreciate your support as an immort Krom.

Maybe a boycott would convince them? Unfortunately the response from at least one of those immorts is likely to be, "if you don't like it, there's plenty of other muds out there to play", and chances are they'd rather shut down the mud than back down on an 'element' that nobody but themselves want (besides the pthieves).

Kinda like God going around slicing everyones' achillies tendons and then saying, "I thought you all would enjoy the challenge of trying to walk", despite the victims screaming their lungs out in protest.

[Hades]

Will use weekend to argue point for pthieving..expect report Sunday.
ps-I R no ranter

[Marchessa_red_witch]

During Chaos, on the main continents.

Otherwise no.