I can take bursting/PKing to a degree in that requires enough playtime to have access to the weapons and the skills to use them and bursters will almost always get killed. But thieving can be done at level 1 with no skill and no penalty. I fail to see the point of the steal feature as you really can't steal much from guards and NPCs and it is in insult to those of us who take the time to earn our weapons/gear via crafting or trading. It was one thing to have steal in a game where it could only be used on NPCs who required the .01 seconds it took for them to load up inventory file but for players who spend time to acquire weapons/gear it is a slap in the face to lose them not to merely a bad encounter but to someone who plays a game simply to harass others.
You have your skills mixed up. Bursting can be done successfully at level 1. Try stealing at level 1. I'll guarantee you that your failure ratio will be close to if not 100%.
In my experience a none powerbuild thief requires at least 220% in steal skill. A powerbuild might require a little less. Most thieves level to 300% anyway.
A lot of grievers aren't thieves and not all thieves are grieving. Actually stealing isn't grieving, it's stealing.
As said by someone else in this thread, stealing from players isn't really that lucrative.
Suicide bursting and stealing are part of the game. It's the wasteland and as we all know, the wasteland is harsh.
Suggestions to partly solve the issues at hand have been made before.
One of the problems to deal with is that people are protected again after death.
In other threads about these issues people, me included, have made suggestions to solve this.
My suggestion was that people would be shot on sight by guards when entering the town unprotected. The time they stay unprotected would depend on reputation (less than neutral, neutral, better than neutral).
A suggestion for after the wipe would be that players get punished by their faction if they steal from or kill fellow faction members, steal in their faction's places or kill protected people in their faction's places.
Perhaps faction members should be able to see who are unprotected in their faction's town or see the reputation people have with their faction.