Stolen items and how to handle them

Gameplay
#1

We had interesting discussion today - how we will handle stolen items. I would like to hear some feedback from you.

How it usually works
Stolen items are flagged as stolen and you cant sell them in normal shops.
When you are arrested these items are confiscated.

I dont like that. It doesnt make any sense. How could shopkeeper recognize “stolen” item? How could guards know which item is stolen and which not?

But when you want to design it more naturally, many problems arise.

When somebody catches you in his home with his item, its obvious that you are thief. He misses the item, you have it, you are where you shouldnt be.But what if you are on the street day later? There might be hundreds of the same items like you stole in the city and nobody can proove that you didnt bought it.

Lets say, that you stole one shoes and the owner tells it to guards. Chance that this information will spread throughout the city and anybody will ever recognize the shoes on your foot is zero. But what if you stole ten shoes and the guards would catch you with a bag full of them after half of the town complained that their shoes were stolen? You would have to give some proof, that they are yours (like convince them that you are shoemaker etc). But how could you replicate this in a game mechanism?

Very hard. But its possible.

If we do this naturally, the system would be very unpredictable. You steal something, you can sell it to basically anyone, because no one is able to recognize the item immediatelly, but after some time, it can hapen that you will be arrested, because somebody recognized his property and merchant has told the guards that you sold it to him.

Would you prefer such unpredictable, but realistic approach over more clear, but unrealistic simplified system?

39 Likes
#2

I would prefer the realistic system, then if you want to be sure that you will not get caught when selling stolen goods you could include a fence or a black market somewhere for no risk trades. But still along the chain of people knowing that you stole those shoes or traded it to them some might have forgotten so it is possible that you will never be caught.

Besides I think it is fun to deal with consequences especially if you can do it in a creative way.

4 Likes
#3

Yeah, personally I would prefer the more realistic approach given the whole selling point of the game. It will fit in well with the whole theme I think. Including a way to actually sell stolen goods would be a good idea - like a fence or something like that.

2 Likes
#4

It should be realistic but also hard, a fun thing I had in mind would be the abillity to sell the object back to the owner if it’s a statue or something he doesn’t want to loose. There should be like a merchants guild (They were in the medieval time I think) in the main towns and when you steal from one of the merchants he will tell the others and there is a percentage that if you sell the object to a merchant in the town you stole the object from, that he will recognize it and call the guards.

1 Like
#5

I think unique and valuable item should marked as stolen, because your social condition is a proof enough that you can’t afford them.
If you bough them, then you just give the name of the seller to be inocented, and give the name of your lord for a looted one on a batterfield.
Normally every valuable looted object must be aprooved by your lord to be yours.
To sell them, may be a black marked feature can be implemented.
Concerning normal object, lord property like uniform and shoes should also be marked as valuable.
You can own one or two uniforms as a faction member
Other faction uniform pieces must be marked as stollen by the faction member it’s belong. So if you display one in front of them, they should be suspicious.
May be the victim must report non negligable crimes to the authorities, and from the ofiice the news must be gradually spread to the region. For the shoes exemple, if 15 pairs of stollen shoes are marked as crime, shoes of the same type sellers must be suspected. If you show to the authorities that you are able to craft the same type, you are inocented.

Please forgive my english and the “imperiative” style, but it is the best style for me to explains my ideas.
Of course, it is not a must and i trust the team to find the good ideas.

8 Likes
#6

Realistic, hands down. It sounds awsome. In that case, nobody can steal everything and just sell it and get quickly ridiculous amount of gold or whatever (line in TES series). I love this type of possible conquesences. It’s a bit hardcore, but brilliant idea how to kindly force player to actually think about a way he play.

1 Like
#7

Hey @Hellboy,

I knew if someone stole my shoes. They have several holes in it which are undeniable unique. So I guess it depends on how unique you can make the items. You can make any item unique by adding a stamped sign, a sewn sign which leaves visible holes when seams are removed or a unique coloring.

If you’re selling a lot of items to the same shop keeper, he might get curious about how you get your stuff and might ask for an informant, which makes it interesting: he knows that you’re stealing and he might hire you as a thief to steal something special for him or he’ll tell the guards to have a look into your pockets and house and all items (no matter if stolen or not) get confiscated until someone else can prove, that you didn’t steal certain items. Quest items might also get confiscated so you need to return to the person who gave you the quest item and you can prove with a letter or the personal presence of that person that this item belongs to you.

What I would also find interesting (which was not mentioned yet): What if I steal something and put it into someone else’s pockets. Will the other person be taken away by the guards if I tip them? And if so, can an NPC do the same with the player? You said you want to have the player act like an NPC so anything you can do an NPC should be able to do so, too.

There are so many ways to deal with stealing and it’s not always about making money.

20 Likes
#8

Building on the things other said: I like the realistic approach.

You can add a black market contact to the game that our hero may learn of by completing thief related quests. This gives people who enjoy playing that style something gained that a conventional hero wouldn’t have access to. Sales to the black market merchant would always be safe but maybe his buying price would be a little lower than a standard merchant.

So far as recognizing the stolen items go, I completely agree. I think you want a percentage chance of the item being recognized that goes up as the value of the item goes up. So selling off something cheap like a stolen apple would have a low chance of getting caught at a conventional vendor. However, selling something like a prized piece of art from the duke’s castle might have a much higher percentage chance. If you trigger the percentage chance the merchant alerts the guards and you have to face the consequences.

Just to prevent the old reload trick (I fail the percentage, I roload) you can have the percentage of being caught be checked when the item is actually stolen, not when it is sold. Therefore, the item will be flagged behind the scenes as safe or not at the moment of theft leaving the player to sell it to the next merchant with no knowledge of if he’ll get away with it or not. Doing it this way prevent a player from reloading perpetually in front of the merchant until he hits it safe.

6 Likes
#9

You could also get side quests from the black market to steal precious things from lords to help you advance as a thief/rogue character.

#10

Realism if it can be done. It will always add more variables and interesting things to the gameplay.

I don’t even necessarily like the idea of a warning coming up saying, for example, “You will probably be caught if you take this.” Leave it to the player to decide. If he’s in someone else’s residence or whatever, technically anything he takes is stealing whether it’s marked okay to pick up or not.

I like the thought of some items being more unique than others, to the point it’d be more likely someone notices it missing or, if it’s known enough, it could be recognized - but then again, perhaps you steal something from one town and go to another to sell it. Then it might not be known.

Understandably, putting a system like this in place would take more time and effort, but the payoff and immersion would be worth it to me. At the core everything has some sort of code behind it that makes it what it is, from design to stats to variable AI, so I’m optimistic that a system like this could be random enough (when needed) and specific enough (also when needed) to work.

1 Like
#11

Thanks for awesome ideas. They are very similar to what we thought. Our lead programmer hates me, because its gonna be hard to implement and tweak this, but it could be fun to play if people get it and it works. The idea, that merchants may want to steal something from me if they realize i am a thief is great. There could be awesome negotiation between player and the merchant after that :slight_smile:

9 Likes
#12

Never know how it’ll work until you try, right? I look forward to hopefully seeing it in the final version and your lead programmer will receive well-deserved praise if it happens the way it sounds like you want it to.

#13

I like a mathematical approach with the following variables (already mentioned by some):
v = item value, u = item uniqueness, w = item demand, d = distance from theft location, t = time passed since theft, p = likely place of usage or sale. Each variable scaled 1-5.

The “get caught”-factor would then be: ( v + u ) / ( w + d + t + p)

Of course you can only be caught if items have been spotted. But this poses an interesting question at the same time; what if you are spotted with a prized item that has been reported stolen?

7 Likes
#14

The “realistic way”, as described by Hellboy is actually much easier to implement. As player can’t prove the merchant has or hasn’t the information about the original owner, the game can simply roll. The chance is higher the longer the time since the item has been lost (information spread) until some point (peak) where the chance is going to be lower again to simulate information fade out. My problem here is it’s frustrating for player to not know at all what could happen. For example: I have some swords. Some of them have been stolen, others found in a dead body killed by me (actually stolen, right?), some others have been found in a dead body killed by my NPC wingman (still stolen right?), some created by me etc. The player has no clue at the shop what sword is what if there is no clear message on it. He could be caught and therefore angry very easily. Realistic? Yes! But is that something you want to play with? I don’t think so. Obvious solution for a player would be “save->try->fail->load->try again” until the owner is not recognized by merchant. What a game play! I would prefer less realistic and more usable solution. Some clear rules for player that could be understood, learnt and useful. Therefore fun to play with. One solution would be to monitor the last legal owner of the item. Player can see that in the UI. For example “John, City of Prague”. That owner holds on the item until is legally sold by the owner himself or for some fixed time if lost and then fades away (is changed to the current owner to simulate lost knowledge). The time is long for expensive or well known items (e.g. John’s Golden sword of Truth) and short for common objects (e.g. John’s apple). Player knows clearly there is a risk some specific people from Prague (John himself, guards, merchants, John’s family etc.) could recognize the item has been stolen. Player can wait long enough (could be ages for very well known items), try to sell it far away from Prague, on the black market or try to “clean” such an item using some other mechanics. It doesn’t matter where was the item found. In a dead body, stash, pocket of an NPC bandit … whatever. It always works the same, is simple to understand for player and simple to implement for us programmers.

3 Likes
#15

Interesting and fun indeed … I was on the brink of writing “bravo” …
But while this holds true for “John’s Golden Sword of Truth”, these are the middle ages during a time of war and turmoil. I doubt that there are a lot of items that can be classified “one of a kind”. I still like your idea to apply to those “one of a kind” items though.

#16

This also got me thinking a bit and I initially got a similar idea to what @FLASHFIRE wrote up there, but to put it to some more detail…

My idea is something of a “value tier system” for the obtainable items in the game (the ones that can be taken into the inventory). Firstly, I understand this might be pretty complex to develop… I’m not a programmer, so I can hardly make an objective guess about this. In basics, it would apply a value (a value tier) to every such item, which would then determine NPC reactions to its loss, bind its ownership with a certain character (or a group into which several characters can be put) and it would (in higher-tier cases) put an effect on a small area where it gets placed in the world.

  • There would be one basic tier (with no ownership) assigned automatically to every item and all the others would be assignable manually through developing tools, as well as which character/group the ownership is assigned to.
  • When you put the item into the world and assign it a higher value tier and an owner, it would also put an area effect to its place of origin (fixed to the item in the game editor, but fixed to that particular place in-game - a couple of square meters of space, may get limited to a single room), so that when the given NPC(s) get in the vicinity (where they can see it), they would notice if it’s missing and start performing appropriate action(s). This will happen only once, unless the item returns to its place of origin before it gets “forgotten”.
  • Keeping a stolen item away from its place of origin for a varying amount of time (tier-dependent) would switch the value tier to the basic one. If the item is stashed somewhere, the ownership would turn to “none”, if in PC’s inventory, it turns to the player. If it gets sold/given to an NPC later, a tier and an ownership would get reinstated based for the new NPC owner.
  • Any item with a value tier and owner still active is taken as stolen if found/bought by another NPC (or worn in front of the owner), which would result in the logical further issues for the PC.

TIER 1: neutral (no owner, or player character ownership options only)

  • doesn’t belong to anyone in particular, any character can do what he wants with it (a piece of rock, a fallen tree branch,… )
    TIER 2: low value item (NPC ownership neccessary from now on)
  • the most generic things that are just lying somewehere, like an apple on a table in a house… non-essetial, easy to misplace/forget about… but already owned
  • NPC would react only if several visible items vanished in a short time, or if the PC gets caught while stealing them (reaction like with TIER 3)
  • NPCs with friendly standing may just let it go, even if you’re caught
  • a very short value tier expiration period if taken
    TIER 3: higher value item
  • generic things like a vase and such, stuff that a person would actually miss, but still disposable
  • also the items that NPCs have on them (from there on)
  • when noticed as missing, the NPC would start looking for them for a short while near their place of origin
  • if stolen from an NPC directly, the NPC would search the nearby space where it just resided (the area effect being where the NPC itself is)
  • if PC is nearby, NPC may inquire him about the item and even ask to search the PC’s inventory (which might be avoided by a succesful speech check), if not friendly
    TIER 4: valuable item
  • generic items of higher price/importance… a golden ring, a sword on the wall…
  • same as TIER 3, but this time the NPC goes directly to the PC to investigate, if he’s found nearby the place of origin while the search is on, or if he has been spotted near the place of origin shortly before the disappearance (a hidden timer countdown?)
    TIER 5: personal item
  • very special personal possessions that the characters use extensively/know very well/ have a lot of attachment to
  • same as TIER 4, but the value tier and ownership of these would never change for the player unless they are given to him permanently in-game by the respective NPCs, so you better keep these carefully hidden if you steal them…
  • stuff like a special personal weapon, an important document or a letter,…

Also, the information about the ownership, value tier, etc. should be rather minimal in-game (there probably should by some, but the less the better, I guess…).

14 Likes
#17

While I detest the word “tier” … bravo!

#18

If there is some reputation points in the game this can impact the thief mecanism.
Positive reputation can lesser the change to be caught. But if you go to the black market with a high positive reputation, this can alterate the negotiation because you have something to loose.
Can be intersting for bard/knight (good reputation but not confortable with the underground ) (nevertheless a good bard can be confortable on both side of the society) versus thief (bad reputation but confortable with the underground - no reputation to loose so better bargain)

2 Likes
#19

Value+uniqueness+location are already in plan. To replace general location (meaning city or some place) with distance seems interesting, dont know how hard to implement it will be. Coold down is already in the design as well. Good ideas!

3 Likes
#20

There is reputation and it will have effect on the equation. You guys are fantasctic :slight_smile: I would hire you as designers if we didnt had enough already :slight_smile:

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