Non Thief Arguement: Thieving drains on gameplay, and is an in general annoyance. Remove it.
Thief Arguement: Thief is a very serious part of the game, this game will be dead to me if I can't take other people's hard earned items.
YEP!
That pretty much sums it up.
With the bank interest this session, not to mention PK teams, grid camping, etc. I have to disagree on the "hard earned items" part.
Due to lack of time I missed out on the previous 2 or 3 pages and am not going to respond on all of the replies I missed (but did read).
Some suggestions to
fix improve some of the aspects related to stealing (and other actions resulting in loss of protection):
1. Unprotected stays after death. Default time is 1 hour for players with a neutral rep, 1.5 hours for people with a lower rep and 30 minutes for those with a higher rep.
2. When an unprotected player enters a town:
a. Guards make a comment when an unprotected player enters town. Something like "player name, tread carefully", or "player name, we're keeping an eye on you". Everyone around now knows that person is unprotected. They can shoot him or leave him alone. That's there choice. People not around still won't know.
b. Guards shoot unprotected players on sight when they enter the town. If this is implemented, some solution should be thought up for players who have a hotel room in that town. Something like always spawning inside it and not just outside it.
3. During the time that you're unprotected with a faction, that faction becomes hostile in encounters.
4. Guards loot. No matter who shoots who. Everyone else looting before the guards loot, will be shot on sight. Guars also loot radios. Guard's loot could be added to a trader's inventory, could be sold by some guard merchant, auctioned, ... Giving it back to the rightful owner sounds impossible to me. How can that be determined. The last owner might not be the rightful owner.
5. The current stealing countdown stays. A 2nd is added which is related to the victim. The moment the inventory windows closes after the steal attempt, the thief can't use steal on that victim for 5 minutes. Other thieves can still steal from that victim.
6. Stealing should get its own animation.