Stealing: murder counts

[Kefka]

I snooped a thief today in town, to notice that they had a war axe and bandages on them. This forced me to remember the good days of UO, before the thieves guild, when you would steal from someone, have them attack you, then kill them freely.

However, I then remembered that with T2A/the thieves guild, thieves could not always fight back when attacked. I mentioned this to a thief in town (who most of you know), and he did not believe me, so I had to look it up.

This is how I remembered it: If a thief stole from you, period, and you attacked them, they could NOT fight back and kill you. If they did fight back and kill you, they would receive a murder count even though YOU initiated the attack. Because of the murder count, and therefore being dismissed from the thieves guild, thieves stopped using the tactic of stealing just so people would attack them and they could fight back.

This is what I found from the Thieves Guide posted on stratics from early 2000. http://web.archive.org/web/200103010807 ... tics.com/
On the left, scroll down to Professions, and choose The Thief. I would have linked to information from the 1999 t2a era, however, the webarchive, while listing the thief essay, does not have it (along with almost everything else on stratics).

This is what the information states, it can be a bit confusing, and I am still not clear about it, but here it is:

Getting Attacked
Often times aggravated victims, who lose there goods to you, will attack in an attempt to get there stuff back. Now one of two things will happen, upon being attacked the opponent will highlight grey, which means your free to attack back and kill if you got the skill too. Or they will highlight blue, if they turn up blue you cannot attack back or you will be flagged an aggressor and then be guard killed. Even out of town you want to avoid the blue attacker, for if you win the battle he can still give you a murder count and kick you out of the guild for a week. The best thing to do is run when they highlight blue, and be careful to not auto-attack and hit him, or he can report you if he dies later. Now to prevent him from dying later and giving you a count, is to simply put your valuables in the bank and commit thieving suicide, or purposely get guard killed.

So what does this "Blue, non aggressor flag" mean exactly? Here is a list of UO flags and what they stand for: http://uo.stratics.com/content/reputation/flags.shtml

Stealing Flag:

How you get one

* Stealing from an innocent, either an NPC or a player, or from a container, such as a locked NPC container.

What are the symptoms?

* You appear grey to everyone.
* Anyone can freely attack or steal from you with impunity.
* Anyone helping you by using healing skill, or casting beneficial spells on you receives a criminal flag.
* The timer for a stealing flag lasts 2 minutes. The timer resets every time you steal.
* The timer for a stealing flag lasts 2 minutes on your corpse.
* If you steal in town you will also receive a criminal flag, and for 1 to 10 seconds guards may be called on you. The guard timer is dependent upon the success type of the steal.
* Anyone attacking you, does not receive an aggressor flag.

Things you should know

Thieves can only steal from NPCs, NPC containers, pack animals, members of the thieves guild, murderers or PCs from a warring guild if they are not in the NPC thieves guild. Stealing flags are given to thieves who either totally fail, partially fail, or partially succeed in their attempt to steal from either an NPC, player or container.

People attacking you will not receive an aggressor flag, so any damage you inflict by auto defend will make you the aggressor instead.

Although someone attacking you directly while your stealing flag is active won't give them an aggressor flag, if they command a pet to attack you it will give them an aggressor flag. This may or may not be a bug.

This flag is different from the perma-grey flag, which you can read about by going to the link mentioned above. So what does this stealing flag mean? It means that unless a thief is 100% successful on stealing an item, they receive the stealing flag. anyone that attacks them remains blue and they CANNOT fight back.

Now, correct me if I am wrong, but if a thief steals in town, and is not 100% successful (even if they succeed in stealing the item, hence, you steal the item but are noticed), the guards can be called on them. Therefore, since the guards will take care of the thief in town, this stealing flag matters the most out of town.

What change should be made?

If a thief steals an item and is not 100% successful, anyone attacking the thief will still appear blue, and the thief cannot fight back and kill the person without receiving a murder count.

While this is a lengthy post, it sounds like it should be an easy fix. It's late, and I am VERY tired, so I apologize for the typos and bad grammar

[Derrick]

Very interesting.
This was changed in Pub 16, Jul 23 2002 (http://update.uo.com/design_409.html)

Changes to the consequences/conditions of being a “Thief”
Stealing will no longer be considered an aggressive act, although it will continue to be a criminal act (players will not be able to report a thief for murder if they attack the thief but lose the fight). This applies to all of Felucca.

Here's a few other things I found this morning:
http://update.uo.com/repfaq/thievery.html

Stealing from another thief is A-OK in our book, and you will not become a criminal.

We don't currently support the recall resrtriciton for thieves, since it was only implemented a couple weeks before UO:R release. However this indicates that a thief could not steal in combat prior to the recall restriction. The following item may warrant further discussion:
Mar 27 2000: http://update.uo.com/design_159.html

Thievery Changes

• You will be able to steal items from others while in combat. All requirements for stealing (such as being in the thieves guild) will still apply.
• You will not be removed from the thieves guild if you receive a murder count.
• Your cannot have any items (weapons, shields, spellbook, etc) in your hands when attempting to steal in combat.
• A thief will not be able to recall for two minutes after stealing an item.

[Kefka]

Stealing will no longer be considered an aggressive act, although it will continue to be a criminal act (players will not be able to report a thief for murder if they attack the thief but lose the fight). This applies to all of Felucca.

Ah yes, good find! This proves that before the patch, thieves were NOT allowed to kill a player that attacked them; else they would get a murder count and be dismissed from the thieves guild.

With the exception of having to be in the thieves guild to steal, the current thief rules are more similar to Pre T2A then anything else. IMHO some things have to change.

Thanks for reading my post and following up on the research!

[Derrick]

Ah yes, good find! This proves that before the patch, thieves were NOT allowed to kill a player that attacked them; else they would get a murder count and be dismissed from the thieves guild.

I looked extensively for any patchnotes prior to the quote that would indicate a Post-T2A implementation of what you described and found nothing so I think we can assume that what you stated was indeed the case. This will hopefully be implemented with the other stealing changes described in the latest post in the News section.

Thanks for reading my post and following up on the research!

You're welcome!

[Kaivan]

A few pieces of information for the discussion.

During T2A when you stole an item, if you were noticed you did indeed go grey and were unable to fight back until you turned blue (keep in mind that you also maintained the perma-grey status to the person that you stole from if you didn't succeed 100%, which was a different flag alltogeather).

As for the patch notes that were found, those were part of the patch notes from Publish 16, the last UOR publish (which introduced bulk order deeds an power scrolls, among other things). While the patch notes had only intended to change the agressor flag for thieves, the patch had some other significant unintended changes to thieves. Here is what the change actually did:

• Removed the agressor flag for stealing.
• Removed the perma-grey status from a thief.
• Introduced a bug that made it where any thief who was killed within 2 minutes of stealing an item would effectively have that item stay with them as if it were blessed (they later clamed this as a "feature").

For a detailed description of how the perma-grey and agressor status, and other stealing mechanics worked during UOR (which documents the changes from T2A stealing where applicable), take a look at Crazy Joe (AKA Slappy McHappy for those familar) of Atlantic's Stealing FAQ for Stealing, dated 8/20/2001.

And finally, the patch notes regarding stealing during combat. First off, the patch notes detailing the removal of combat theft are as follows:

• 10/29/97: You can't steal during combat anymore.

However, this stealing prevention only applied to a thief who was actually attacking, meaning that tabbing out of combat and then stealing was still possible. This was considered the "work around" to stealing during combat. This workaround also existed for many other skills that could not be performed during combat, and during the game's history, certain skills had their workarounds removed. Hiding was one such skill, and the fix was documented by these patch notes:
Hiding changes (1/19/99)

• Simply tabbing out of combat will not make it possible to hide. Instead, it will be dependent on line-of-sight to your attackers, and distance from them. The lower your Hiding skill, the farther away you need to get.

This workaround was never put into place for stealing, and as such, was the method that a pvp thief employed to utilize their stealing skill in combat.

[Derrick]

• Simply tabbing out of combat will not make it possible to hide. Instead, it will be dependent on line-of-sight to your attackers, and distance from them. The lower your Hiding skill, the farther away you need to get.

This workaround was never put into place for stealing, and as such, was the method that a pvp thief employed to utilize their stealing skill in combat.

Thanks for clarfying. So you will only be prevented from stealing while in war mode, not in the agressed/agressor state that would prevent you from logging out at an in.

[chumbucket]

Much of what Kefka cites regarding stealing and aggressor flags is from 2000 to the present, i.e., UO:R and beyond. Kavian, though, may be correct when he claims that you couldn't steal while in war mode. I seem to remember the ol' tab out and steal from my old thief on LS, but that might have been tab out to hide.

The FAQ for the reputation system released after the abandoning of the *shudder* notoriety system makes no mention of thieves getting counts for defending themselves, which certainly would be something they would want to note in a document of this nature.

http://update.uo.com/repfaq/

The FAQ is from May 8, 1998, which means any changes to it that were in T2A would be documented from that point (with no changes afterwards during T2A) until the release of UO:R on April 3, 2000.

I think Bob Hansen's Reputation FAQ might also be useful on this, but I can't find a surviving copy.

[chumbucket]

The 1998 patch notes reveal nothing that would indicate a change to the system that incorporates counts for self-defense. The 1999 patch notes contain the following, which is I believe how it currently works.:

Feb 24, 1999: "Victims of thieves can feel free to attack them, as they will not go gray for attacking a thief who has stolen from them in the last two minutes."

If there was an aggressor flag for the thief, they surely would make a note of that. And this is from the patch that implements the Thieves Guild requirement on stealing from innocent players.

The only thing in the 2000 Patch Notes is that no one may steal from other players unless a member of thieves guild.

[Derrick]

Thanks Ed. We certainly won't implement anything of this nature until we're sure it's right.

[Kaivan]

This is a snippet from the HoC chat of 2/11/99, just before the thief guild patch made it into the game. This gives a very clear explination of the effects of stealing on combat that takes place right afterwards.

Glamdring> *Naja_Haje* Hail...Sorry if this has been asked (late ) Anything on rogues being able to use lethal force to defend themselves?Seems odd that a half dead newbie could attack me outta town and i'll get kicked out of the thieves guild because i couldn't move away fast enough...
DesignerD> OK, I assume you mean a PvP thief type, not a generic "rogue" right? A thief that is in the Thieves' Guild.
DesignerD> In this scenario (outside of town) you have a Thieves Guild member attacked. The TG guy cannot report murder, nor can he murder.
DesignerD> But since he hasn't just stolen, the attacker is flagged aggressor, and therefore cannot report EITHER. So the TGmember does not take a murder count.
DesignerD> Note that if the thief had just stolen from someone, then they could attack him & NOT be flagged aggressor, thus leading to a murder count for the thief, if he killed them. In the case of fights right after stealing, the thief *HAS* to run away or else grovel & beg forgiveness and hope the fight breaks off.

The log of the chat can be found here.

[chumbucket]

This is a snippet from the HoC chat of 2/11/99, just before the thief guild patch made it into the game. This gives a very clear explination of the effects of stealing on combat that takes place right afterwards.

Glamdring> *Naja_Haje* Hail...Sorry if this has been asked (late ) Anything on rogues being able to use lethal force to defend themselves?Seems odd that a half dead newbie could attack me outta town and i'll get kicked out of the thieves guild because i couldn't move away fast enough...
DesignerD> OK, I assume you mean a PvP thief type, not a generic "rogue" right? A thief that is in the Thieves' Guild.
DesignerD> In this scenario (outside of town) you have a Thieves Guild member attacked. The TG guy cannot report murder, nor can he murder.
DesignerD> But since he hasn't just stolen, the attacker is flagged aggressor, and therefore cannot report EITHER. So the TGmember does not take a murder count.
DesignerD> Note that if the thief had just stolen from someone, then they could attack him & NOT be flagged aggressor, thus leading to a murder count for the thief, if he killed them. In the case of fights right after stealing, the thief *HAS* to run away or else grovel & beg forgiveness and hope the fight breaks off.

The log of the chat can be found here.

Looks legit. I'm a bit confused though: if someone notices you stealing from they and they attack within two minutes, they can report a murder or is that they may be able to? And if only may, what determines whether this is so?

[Kaivan]

When the thieves guild was first introduced, stealing was origonally designed as an agressive act, much like attacking a person. However, as with any agressive act that does not cause any damage or leave you under a harmful effect, the agressive act is not considered a reportable offense. If however, duing those 2 minutes that you are an agressor, any person attacks you and you do any damage to that person, you will recieve a murder count. After those two minutes, normal perma grey rules take over. If you were noticed during the theft by anyone, you will permanently appear grey to the person who you stole from until death, and are also considered a "criminal in disguise" to everyone else by having a blue name, yet still being freely attackable. If you were 100% successful in your theft, then you would be a "criminal in disguise" to everyone, including your victim.

[Kefka]

Kaivan, thanks for clarifying this! I quit UO way before UOR was released and this is how I remember it. That chat log is from EARLY 1999, and was in effect up until the patch around 01-02. Therefore, thieves should NOT be able to defend themselves after they have stolen from someone. If they do, and the attacker dies, they will get a murder count.

Once again, thank you. And Eduardo(chumbcuket), you owe me 10k

[Kaivan]

Once again, thank you. And Eduardo(chumbcuket), you owe me 10k

Oh boy, you put money on that one

In any case, I'm glad to help out.

[chumbucket]

Kaivan, thanks for clarifying this! I quit UO way before UOR was released and this is how I remember it. That chat log is from EARLY 1999, and was in effect up until the patch around 01-02. Therefore, thieves should NOT be able to defend themselves after they have stolen from someone. If they do, and the attacker dies, they will get a murder count.

Once again, thank you. And Eduardo(chumbcuket), you owe me 10k

Come get it.