Well..I have't found a rule, tht prohibits any player to steal stuff or somthing else from other players!
Today i was trying to trade with another player, i've dropped the stuff and another player come and take the stuff without payying anything!
well that sucks!
"She" says, that she only will give it bakck to me if i pay 1g!
it was a "lvl1" half elf female!

and that happens 2times in 5minutes..
I was really pissed of!

have the mods any control about the players?
s
so that they can force them to give it back to me or something like that?
well..
i think its better to make a rule, that prohibts stealing stuff from other players!!

wella

A rule against thiefs/stealing has been discussed in the past.
The main reasons it is allowed to continue is that some people like to 'roleplay' the bad guys, and theft generally doesn't happen if the players trading are careful (like asking others discreetly if they think a player is trustworthy)
Another problem is that it is hard to PROVE theft. Do you believe any accusation of theft out of hand? Do you believe the higher level player? If one player accuses another of theft, how do you check out that claim. For example, if I was accused of stealing an RoY by Smacky, A vol would conduct a search of my account, and OH, there is a RoY in my inventory. How are they to know that I traded for it a while back? OR how do they know that I'm not lying, and I did infact steal it from Smacky? :twisted:

As mentioned many times before.....
Trading at the Statue or Tavern invites theft....trade somewhere those low levels can't survive to get to.
Shouting to meet somewhere invites theft....use /tell to make arrangements
Theft is and always will be permitted  from the Dev side *PROVIDED* it is not abusive of the game or players

i remember a guy named Cola that shouted i stealed somethin from him but i never stole from that guy but every1 belived him  :cry:  well i sayd ill give him 2g if he shuts up and i gave him... Kazua gived me 1g back that he gotted from Cola... TNX Kazua

I know its hard to prove, so it has to happen instantly(understand??im just a german guy :-)

for my cause of thief, i have 2 other players that can prove that to the mods!

i think i'll be more carefully next time...#can i KS them as an art of punishment?  

but a rule that don't allow players to do that would be very good!!

If someone is being a jerk to you you can be a jerk back to them if that makes you feel better.

But be aware that if you overdo it or flood shout with messages about it (ie, disrupt the game) then either party of the jerkfest risks a penalty (probably a mute or kicks ATM) under one or more Game Rules, such as 1h (spamming) or 2a (harassment) or 2d (swearing) as emotions ggget more strained.

Also, have a look at 3d (troublemakers) which is intended for the Vols to take action against people who constantly screw about without breaking specific GR (such as compulsive thieves). But be aware that ir is the Vols who decide when to apply the GR, including this one, and badgering them to do it or trying to engineer a situation where they will apply it is likely to get you penalised instead.

But before worrying about the GR trade sensibly as has been suggested above.

I suspect that except for few cases, most of recurrent thieves are alts of probably more experienced characters, created for this purpose and ditched when their names become notorious. So, there are always new low level thieves whose levels do not improve but spend most of the time hanging around in the town square. In any case, two of the well-shouted-about thieves I talked to (after giving them some freebies) told me that they knew well that 'thieving is allowed' in game. If they did not find this out in the forums, we actually do quite often /shout this in game. And I wonder if this frequent reiteration has given (false) impression that 'any form' of thieving is allowed.


After spending some time reading rules and even more time reading past threads, below is what I understand. (Please correct me if I am wrong.)

Rules against thievery seem to be in two places: 3.d. 'troublemaker' and 1.e. 'alt-trickry'.  The former specifically mentions 'frequent thieves' to be the possible candidate to become noted as 'troublemakers' and liable to punishment, upto short IP Ban, if not corrected after warning by Vols; and the latter prohbits 'alt-theft' with punishment up to IP Ban.  From these, I understand that making characters 'devoted' to thieving is punishable, and even their 'mains' might get affected in nasty cases. However, I have few questions relating to the rules:

1. In case what I suspect is true, that most of frequent thieves are alts created for this purpose, could this be included in 'alt trickery' in rule 1.e? As it stands now, this rule focuses on the inter-alt transfer of stolen goods which may not take place if the theft is done for pleasure.  

2. In the past there was a suggestion to make the list of alts available to players to prevent intensive theft using alts. (HERE) I personally do not wish to see this made a cherbot feature, but, quite independent of this, will it be regarded as a breach of the Rule 2b, which prohibits transfer of Real Life information, to publicise alt information in game or in the forum? Though, careless accusation is more likely to lead to punishment under current rule 3.d.

3. The main focus seems to be placed on abusive behaviours in general than specific actions(such as theft or ks). While it does not appear wise to attempt to give precise and exhaustive list of bad behaviours, wouldn't it be helpful if there is a guideline for recommended behaviours - such as not picking up other's ammo or respecting other's camping site? I seem to remember there was a sticky on this topic somewhere, but could not find it.

Your summary is  correct and I strongly suspect your suspicions are pretty close to the mark too.

Re banning and investigation of alt trickery, there are a few difficulties here. First of all Vol/GM investigation powers are pretty limited ATM. In fact only a couple of people (of which I am not one) have the necessary abilities. Similarly with character banning, and AFAIK only MT can manage an IP ban. All this will change in B4 when I fully intend to ban everyone except Husavik for at least a month. JK. Husavik's out too.

Seriously we don't want to ban people and we won't if there is any option. OTOH we will ban if it is warranted, as pw guessers discover every month or so.

The major problem with theft is deciding when allowable theft becomes disruptive to the game. 3d is intended to address this (amongst other things) by giving the Vols (and through them the community) quite a bit of flexibility.

To answer you three points:
[list=1]

• Yes, creating a 'mule' or an alt specifically for theft would be alt trickery IMO.
• That's not going to happen. I may have slightly changed my opinion since that thread. I still think people shouldn't have alts, but given that there are legitimate reasons for having multiple chars from a single IP (not even thinking about the impossibilities caused by dynamic IPs) this is a theoretical ideal. Also it seems that the majority of players have the wro... a different opinion to me on this and want to be able to create bucketloads of alts and kit them out from their 110 main. Good thing Daimonin doesn't prohibit same-IP trading, eh? (this is a really difficult thing to prove/enforce in respect of dynamic IP players with a brain). I guess the alt situation might change when we move over to email-linked characters, but I have no idea. Personally I doubt it as lots of people have multiple emails.
  
  
• Yes, a list is what I want to avoid as it's virtually impossible to write an exhaustive list and if I start applying eiusdem generis to the GR I fear you'll all set me alight. The point is that, except when the behaviour becomes disruptive to the game in general, things like ksing and luring are not against the GR.
  
  If/when someone comes up with a decent set of enforceable Community Standards and a system to administer them, such things should be handled by the CS. Taking the old Community Government idea, perhaps CS prohibiting theft in a town would work. If someone was found guilty of this (by whatever means, be it a Judicial Council trial or the baying of a large crowd of pitchfork-wielding players) maybe their character could be jailed or fined (say for the upper current market value of the stolen items) or indeed turned into a chicken.. If you trade outside of town any thefts are your problem.
  
  The sticky was the old constitution. I unilaterally deleted it when I set up this board. It gave me great satisfaction. (It was confusing and much of it irrelevant).[/list:o]

now on one of those points mentioned by scram instead of announce who's alt is who's very rough, but maybe just have a A at the end of that char name to reprsent a alt, say a isp makes another char and they named it StBliss it'll be StBliss-A  that way it's aware its a alt but no one will ever figure out of whos -.-  now thinking about it a bot can prob be made to do this but 1) how.. it would be a tough program to make haveing to recognize isp and all and 2) would it be whats best for the game?

Huh ?  :shock:  I understand  there  is a joke here,  but I don't understand  the joke    Sorry   for having a so bad comprehension of english text !   :lol:


I have so many dresses  in my appart.

Well renaming a char in whatever way is easy enough in the sense of changing the name attribute, although it brings up a host of issues I don't know the answer to. In fact you probably wouldn't do it this way at all.

But the two big problems are still:
[list=a]

• recognising an alt in the first place. The only (reasonable) computer-detectable way is by IP and, as noted above, dynamic IPs completely screw this up and even with static IPs there is no guarantee that two characters do not represent two players. Players/Vols may of course figure out that B is an alt of A based on behaviour, speech, etc. but this is of course highly subjective and prone to error; and
• the fact that players don't want this. Or rather players want to identify everyone else's alts because they're all thieves but want their own myriad alts completely secret because it's a form of freedom of expression. :twisted: This is of course the problem with anything to do with alts.[/list:o]
  
  Regarding whether it's good for the game, I would say that having characters called Foo-A is not good for the look and feel of the game and, on balance, enforcing this level of 'certainty' (notwithstanding a) above) and safety in your dealings with other character is not good either. It's like the safe-trading nonsense. Sure, it sounds great -- never will your trade go awry again. But you're gaining that fluffiness at the expense of freedom, risk, and social interaction. I think these are important elements of a MMORPG experience and, I hate myself for saying this, important as 'life lessons' for younger (and not so young) players if you want to look at the game as more than just a useless waste of time to which we all commit hours and hours and hours when we ought to be dealing with RL.
  
  *Smacky logs out to deal with RL*

The 'A' after alt would be very difficult to enforce/create IMO, especially as some people at the same IP actually do have different chars (eg Torchwood)
Still, I am looking forward to b4 as a chance to bring a new alt through the new system - a chance that would be lost via Smacky's 'no alt' opinion. Whether or not I transfer items TO my new alt is debatable. Considering I make a living out of selling noob equipment to noobs, surely when my alt has saved a few silver, he can afford to purchase some items from my shop, even with an alt discount

And it would have the unintended consequence of narffing some attempts to roleplay.  What if I want to get together and have a play with some other players in the middle of town?  It would be a bit messy to have to macro "Ephifanny says" and then it show up in the chat box as "Ellwoodblues says: Ephiffanny says: ..."

Not to snivel too loudly but I just got had by a thief at the tav for 120g.
OK, OK .. sure it was my fault for not doing the trade down at the bottom of DT or something.
But, if we are going to allow thieves then we need some form of retribution!
It may not be against the "rules" but they should not get away without a payback.

And beware a dude name Benton... slime in my book...

- KJ