No risk. Thieves are in their Vault PJs, but they can steal your assault rifle.Know he's a thief? Tough shit. You can't do anything until the guards spot him, even if you know he's about to/already has robbed you.Thief Alt! The associated reputation drops mean that you create a character specifically for thievery. Then you either use it to supply your main or you just use it to irritate the fuck out of people.LOL I TROL U It irritates the hell out of players, new and old alike.
2. Upcoming engine changes will implement darkness levels, hence I believe stealing should take a huge penalty in daylight/lit locations.
From the other hand - thief has to really work his ass off to steal something valuable and not just some shitty crap.
While thieving is annoying I think it can be improved instead of removed.1. Allow unprotection to stay depending on time, rather than death of the thief. (say 30min-1hr)3. With the soon to be 3D era, we can have a costume that burglars wear (can be just a black outfit), that would be a requirement for a thief to steal (or at least steal from players). So a thief would need to put in time/caps into the outfit before he can steal your precious assault rifle. (Hence now thieves have a risk, since the outfit would drop upon death)
I think PvP stealing is highly overrated. By stealing any npcs u make more in same time. PvP stealing is just for irritating the people. I agree with kilgore that it should be possible for normal chars to shoot the thief and take his stuff back.
All of the issues above can be fixed somehow, so don't need to scrap steal.. just need to rework it a bit.
Thief Alt! - People make crafter alts, taxi alts... so what?
Know he's a thief? Tough shit. - It can be fixed easily. Some ways to fix it were already mentioned in other suggestions.
Thieves are a part of this game, as well as so-called PKs or suicide bombers. Okay, they are annoying, then what?