If you want to make enemies, try to change something.
Stealing is a mess, for PVP stealing - if its too good then you essentially stop people being able from trading for extended periods or talking to important NPCs. It, like lockpicking, is a destructive skill, in that it destroys features by allowing players to grief directly onto other players.I'd prefer too harsh rep drops over guarded cities becoming rife with thieves.The natural place for these skills is against NPCs, which would require quests/PvE stuff, but these things take time.
people can hold their important items in hand. People can move when they see someone is stealing from them. They already have many ways to defend from thieves, and this reputation drop is just shit :<
Anyway, nowadays that system sucks and not only I think that
where do you expect to be stripsearched by a thief then, in them wastelands, eh? The thieves in the wasteland are known as PKs who literally strip you inside out.
The natural place for these skills is against NPCs, which would require quests/PvE stuff, but these things take time.
Well then, let's just all make PE10 chars and nobody is never able to steal anything. Thieves must indeed be caught by players themselves. Even steal 15 dude should be allowed to steal if he knows how to do it and his victim is dumb. Besides, it's not rpg, but mmo. In rpg you fight against npc who see and know everything so that you need percentages to fight against them properly. Against players you must use you own mind.
You have to realize that methods to fool npcs cannot be used to fool players. When you compete against players, you don't compete against their characters but the players' skills to manipulate their characters' abilities.
To sell an item you first have to have it in your inventory - then you have to wait until noone is anywhere near you to sell it. If anyone comes anywhere near you you then have to cancel and run away. Impractical.To do a quest, you are reading text, you must go through several pages of text in sequence to solve this quest. You must interrupt each time someone comes anywhere near you, run away and then start all over again. Impractical.Feature destroyer. Stealing is low risk, high reward and in guarded cities there is nothing the victim can do but keep moving, which is increadibly inconvienient. The point of guarded cities is not to allow players to strip all items off players.