Are you guys serious ?
How can the game have a basic economy going if you can't even shop at an npc without being killed or robbed ?
Close the door of the shop to give yourself more time ? Really ? And what happens once the game starts getting a real player population ?
If anything, the store guards should protect the customers as well as the shop itself.
This is just nuts.
And anyway,
I'm not saying don't let people steal, I'm saying empower people to act against stealing by allowing them to engage robber for longer periods of time, and by denying robbers the right to leave an area just like with a combat timer.
A timeout for thieves is useless IMO.
If the thief succeeds you can't shoot him as he's still protected.
If he fails you can shoot him.
Try shooting someone in a guarded town or simply walk around armed there.
You'll get shot for having a weapon in your active slot.
You can get stolen from and killed everywhere in this game.
Store guards can't prevent this.
I've said it before, I would love to see a unique animation for stealing, even though this will take a lot of work.
On top of that I would love to see a 2nd stealing time-out which prevents a thief from stealing from the same target again for the next 5 real time minutes.
This should prevent harassing. As far as I'm concerned, both the thief and the victim can see this timer.
There's always ways around problems but it doesn't yet mean that something is fine. Just the fact that you can't do anything to a person you know is a thief and going to steal from you should ring a bell. Surely you can just run away or suicide-burst him until he quits but that just shows how broken thievery is. A thief who owns a hotel room is basically free to terrorize the town as he pleases.
What you say also applies for shop shooters, simply replace the word thief.
As for hotel rooms, I agree with you.
It should be made that you can't rent a room or prolong the rent when your reputation is below -300 with the town's faction.
If you have a room when your reputation goes below -300 you should be able to keep it till the rent expires.