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Other => FOnline:2238 Forum => Archives => Suggestions => Topic started by: chaosgoblyn on February 10, 2011, 08:34:23 pm
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New player here. I figure I'd start out by saying the idea behind this game is awesome. I had to come here with my first major complaint though. People are trying to steal from me and I attack them only to get mowed down by the guards? That's dumb as hell.
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New player here. I figure I'd start out by saying the idea behind this game is awesome. I had to come here with my first major complaint though. People are trying to steal from me and I attack them only to get mowed down by the guards? That's dumb as hell.
If they successfully steal something they're protected, so stay alert in towns
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Stealing is a crime basically the guards didn't see them steal.
If on your chat it appears in red "SOMEONE IS STEALING FROM YOU" Or tried to steal or whatever. Then you can attack them.
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If a thief successfully steals something from you, he/she is still protected by guards, because your character or guards didn't notice this. You can attack the thief if he/she fails at stealing.
You can notice an failed steal attempt by these things:
- A guard says something similar to this: "chaosgoblyn, seems like Opera is interested in your stuff". I guess in this case the thief got your item(s), but he/she becomes unprotected.
- A message appears in your "infobox": "Someone tried to steal from you".
If you won't see these and thief got your item(s). It is just bad luck for you. But think positive, the thief became happy. :)
Thief becomes protected again after he/she dies (or stays alive for 24h?).
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In my opinion a victim of thievery should be allowed to shoot a thief even if the guards didn't notice it.
If a thief successfully steals something from you, he/she is still protected by guards, because your character or guards didn't notice this.
And that's what makes people mad about it.
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In my opinion a victim of thievery should be allowed to shoot a thief even if the guards didn't notice it.
And that's what makes people mad about it.
Well, you can shoot a thief even if guards didn't notice it, but your character needs to notice this. IMO it is working just fine now. Problem is most likely that stealing animation is same as using any other skill or that you are never safe from thieves. Like trading with NPCs is almost impossible in guarded towns like NCR, because the thief can just spam you with science skill and randomly with steal skill. Stealing should be impossible while the target is trading or stealing animation should be different.
Animation could be changed after getting 3D models for characters. However, this would make it very very difficult for thieves to steal anything since everyone can see that you are stealing from someone. One possible way to balance this could be that the animation depends on player's perception and which way he/she is looking at.
For example:
X uses steal on Y. Y sees the steal animation.
Z is far away/looking other direction/has low PE. Z won't see the steal animation. Z won't see any animation or the normal "use" animation.
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Honestly from my experience.
I have played some time as a thief and it was hard.
I played some time against thiefs and I think it is not big problem. Few simple rules:
1. Never let anyone stand next to You.
2. If someone is giving You FA just move a step just after animation.
3. Take Your trading window a little bit up to see Your character.
4. If someone is spamming You with steal just move a little away. Wait for someone else who want to trade and then just wait until thief is "fed".
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Well, you can shoot a thief even if guards didn't notice it, but your character needs to notice this. IMO it is working just fine now. Problem is most likely that stealing animation is same as using any other skill or that you are never safe from thieves. Like trading with NPCs is almost impossible in guarded towns like NCR, because the thief can just spam you with science skill and randomly with steal skill. Stealing should be impossible while the target is trading or stealing animation should be different.
What's even more troubblesome is that thieves are nothing but powerbuilt alts. They are similar to bombers and taxis, unbearably weak to play as solo and able to perform only one task.
The animation isn't problem, because even if it was differend you could still harass people by just standing next to them. There has to be a sure way to catch a thief and repel him. People are right now using loopholes to fight back thieves due to the frustration caused by them being protected. I used to suicide burst/plasmanade thieves while living in san fran and those can be regarded as 3rd party methods to get rid of players in safe towns. And now I'm intentionally holding items in my inv, allowing them being stolen from me and then shoot thieves when they are caught, but they always return and then they're protected and are free to continue.
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I think that consequences of loosing protection should be just harsher. I mean loss of protection would last at least 24 hours or result in carma loss abou 1000 for stealer alt become unprotected for really long time without easy way of becoming protected next minute. Stealer and burster teams spam is just depopulating protected cities.
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jailed for your crime, forced to work your way out to freedom in specialised maps for each unguarded town.
work may include:
1. basic movement of boxes - watch out low str and small frame :D
2. crafting equipment - should be tedious like having to gather or request the required resources (need to refine it if involving from separate npcs all over the map or in high quantities additionally minus the exp gained but keeping your timeout.
3. Gathering resources - either in large quantities minus the timeout or in a moderate amount with the gathering timeout.
you may be randomly thrown in to do 1 or 3 but for 2 you may just need to convince your way through.
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jailed for your crime, forced to work your way out to freedom in specialised maps for each unguarded town.
work may include:
1. basic movement of boxes - watch out low str and small frame :D
2. crafting equipment - should be tedious like having to gather or request the required resources (need to refine it if involving from separate npcs all over the map or in high quantities additionally minus the exp gained but keeping your timeout.
3. Gathering resources - either in large quantities minus the timeout or in a moderate amount with the gathering timeout.
you may be randomly thrown in to do 1 or 3 but for 2 you may just need to convince your way through.
I LOVE THIS IDEA ENTIRELY, I THINK IT DESERVES A THREAD.
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I LOVE THIS IDEA ENTIRELY, I THINK IT DESERVES A THREAD.
Maybe, but it is not fully thought through. Firstly how or under what conditions would jailing occur, will there be trial (appeal/petitioning) and how would the jailing process be implemented. It would be very easy to nab a new player who decided to test out steal to fail (and get nothing/very little) only to find out he's stuck doing chores for the town and starts saying WTF IS THIS S**T!! F*** THIS GAME!!! etc.
I feel what i suggested is only part of something a little bigger but feel free to make additions to it. But yes it is too easy with enough skill to just come back after dying and continue to harass other players for their stuff (probably not for any real gain but for the lulz).
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the trial thing could make the speech skill useful.... forcing a truely, silvertongued thief.
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in my opinion, guarded towns only protect theifs, better move to an unguarded town
i shoud try Den, you can make a life there as a slaver, and later be recruited by one of the gangs
or try Redding, i heard that there are some players that try to guard it better than NCR brainless guards
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jailed for your crime, forced to work your way out to freedom in specialised maps for each unguarded town.
work may include:
1. basic movement of boxes - watch out low str and small frame :D
2. crafting equipment - should be tedious like having to gather or request the required resources (need to refine it if involving from separate npcs all over the map or in high quantities additionally minus the exp gained but keeping your timeout.
3. Gathering resources - either in large quantities minus the timeout or in a moderate amount with the gathering timeout.
you may be randomly thrown in to do 1 or 3 but for 2 you may just need to convince your way through.
How does this repay to the victim what the thief has done?
the trial thing could make the speech skill useful.... forcing a truely, silvertongued thief.
And more minmaxing.
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How does this repay to the victim what the thief has done?
Yeah it would seem a lot of people would jump on this bandwagon of getting their stuff back. I'd be pretty annoyed at losing stuff to thieves too but you just have to let it go. Both you and I may shrug it off while any new player will be pissed with essentially losing time spent of gathering/crafting/farming etc. The compromise here however is that the thief if caught can't just go get killed and terrorise yourself or others within a matter of minutes. (that is of course this jailing/grunt work idea works)
It may encourage more alts or remaking characters but its up to them to bother leveling a thief all over again if they get sick of being jailed.
And more minmaxing.
Well i haven't stated any requirements on it but why bother to pump stats into speech if the activity will be just as tedious as the others but in a different form (well i hope it can be this way).
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Yeah it would seem a lot of people would jump on this bandwagon of getting their stuff back. I'd be pretty annoyed at losing stuff to thieves too but you just have to let it go. Both you and I may shrug it off while any new player will be pissed with essentially losing time spent of gathering/crafting/farming etc. The compromise here however is that the thief if caught can't just go get killed and terrorise yourself or others within a matter of minutes. (that is of course this jailing/grunt work idea works)
What's wrong here that nobody gets the stolen item. What's the feature good for then? Thief is pissed off and so it the victim.
In addition what's it good for anyone that the thief has to perform some boring tasks somewhere? If it's supposed to be some sort of hard labour then it should produce something for someone. It'd be completely okay if the thief had to do box hauling until he has repaid the stolen goods, the caps go to the victim's bank account.
Then again why wouldn't any safe city just shoot the thief and give the stolen item back to the victim? A rednick tagging was the best feature regarding this matter, it existed 2 wipes ago. You did something bad in town, you got redtagged and everyone knew it was safe to shoot you. The tagging lasted for several hours even after death.
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What's wrong here that nobody gets the stolen item. What's the feature good for then?
You did something bad in town, you got redtagged and everyone knew it was safe to shoot you
Well you are welcome to add something to this idea that will take care of this problem but the thing is, that is all it is, an idea. Also the main driver for this idea was the fact that thieves can just come back and do as they please. Also i wasn't around 2 wipes ago and i like that redflagging, it's like they have a list of offenders and it actually works to a degree. So why did they get rid of it?
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Well you are welcome to add something to this idea that will take care of this problem but the thing is, that is all it is, an idea. Also the main driver for this idea was the fact that thieves can just come back and do as they please.
No idea why redtagging was removed.
A way to force thief to repay the stolen items: if something was stolen from you, you can go to the local lawkeeper and say the thieve's name and items that were lost. The thief gets permanent rep loss. Only way to bring the rep back is to return the items to the lawkeeper, or equal ammount of caps, in addition a fine equal to for example 1000 caps is required. When the victim arrives the town, one of the guards tells him the sheriff wants to talk to him. He goes to the sheriff and gets a chance to take the items or caps and forgive the thief, resulting in the thief getting back his rep.
This would be pretty much un-abusable, except with alts but it takes a while to level a thief alt.
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What's wrong here that nobody gets the stolen item. What's the feature good for then? Thief is pissed off and so it the victim.
thief doesn't get pissed because he didn't lose anything, thieves are always (except some very rare occasions) naked, only thing they lost was the stolen stuff... which wasn't his anyways so no loss there
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thief doesn't get pissed because he didn't lose anything, thieves are always (except some very rare occasions) naked, only thing they lost was the stolen stuff... which wasn't his anyways so no loss there
I feel you are speaking out of context here, within the current system what you say is correct but what avv was commenting on was the idea i had put forth. Basically to jail a caught thief away and forced to complete tasks before being released which will take up time rather than have them get killed and be protected again to return and terrorise the masses once more.
No idea why redtagging was removed.
A way to force thief to repay the stolen items: if something was stolen from you, you can go to the local lawkeeper and say the thieve's name and items that were lost. The thief gets permanent rep loss. Only way to bring the rep back is to return the items to the lawkeeper, or equal ammount of caps, in addition a fine equal to for example 1000 caps is required. When the victim arrives the town, one of the guards tells him the sheriff wants to talk to him. He goes to the sheriff and gets a chance to take the items or caps and forgive the thief, resulting in the thief getting back his rep.
This would be pretty much un-abusable, except with alts but it takes a while to level a thief alt.
You could essentially still lose items supposing you had lots of miscellaneous items as a noob amongst other useful items but failed to notice it was gone after the thief made off with the stuff. What sort of check will allow the thief to incur a rep loss because it could be a really good thief and is still protected after making off with some guns, ammo etc. I could just let them steal off me and name them to the sheriff and not go collect the repayment to let them keep the rep loss.
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You could essentially still lose items supposing you had lots of miscellaneous items as a noob amongst other useful items but failed to notice it was gone after the thief made off with the stuff.
This demands the victim have a little awerness what's going on around him and his inventory.
What sort of check will allow the thief to incur a rep loss because it could be a really good thief and is still protected after making off with some guns, ammo etc.
What you mean what sort of check? The thief simply loses the rep, no checks needed. If you put checks everywhere it will just encourage alts and minmaxing.
I could just let them steal off me and name them to the sheriff and not go collect the repayment to let them keep the rep loss.
You could do that. Nothing wrong with that.
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What you mean what sort of check? The thief simply loses the rep, no checks needed. If you put checks everywhere it will just encourage alts and minmaxing.
So we can basically ignore successful stealing altogether and you are proposing a victim only reporting system? If not what will prevent abuse of it where i create an alt and just name the person and a phantom item being stolen from me whilst i was in said town. Or produce several alts to have stuff be stolen from this particular character just to keep them in a perma rep loss with the town.
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So we can basically ignore successful stealing altogether and you are proposing a victim only reporting system? If not what will prevent abuse of it where i create an alt and just name the person and a phantom item being stolen from me whilst i was in said town.
In my eyes succesful stealing occurs when the player doesn't know who stole from him, not when the characters didn't. It's up to players to watch their enviroment and monitor their inventory, not the characters. We players are the ones playing the game after all.
Obviously you wouldn't be able to make up stories to the sheriff.
Or produce several alts to have stuff be stolen from this particular character just to keep them in a perma rep loss with the town.
Which way you mean? Create theif alts or thief-trap alts?
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In my eyes succesful stealing occurs when the player doesn't know who stole from him, not when the characters didn't. It's up to players to watch their enviroment and monitor their inventory, not the characters. We players are the ones playing the game after all.
Obviously you wouldn't be able to make up stories to the sheriff.
Sounds fair, just exploring the limitations of the idea you have. One question is supposing the thief is successful (e.g. stealing something while you try to trade and you know what is stolen, maybe you just had a handle of stuff not a lot) would said thief be unprotected or protected till you reported the crime to the sheriff.
Which way you mean? Create theif alts or thief-trap alts?
Sorry rereading what i wrote was confusing me as well, meant to describe thief-traps, alts for them to steal from just to give them perma rep drop.
Also another though occurred what will prevent a thief from selling stuff on to regain rep to a positive value or would said thief incur the rep drop and no positive rep gain till returning stolen goods, paying fines/compensation? Or will the thief also incur poor relations with the merchants?
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One question is supposing the thief is successful (e.g. stealing something while you try to trade and you know what is stolen, maybe you just had a handle of stuff not a lot) would said thief be unprotected or protected till you reported the crime to the sheriff.
It's a tricky part. IMO he shouldn't be, since the player knows who stole from him and should have the right to deal wasteland justice. But then again it would be hard for thieves to practice their art. Further features would be required to be implemented to allow thieves steal without being seen. Since at the moment you can pretty much always tell who stole from you.
Then again we could think of it this way: the cities most likely don't want random wastelanders taking justice in their own hands and would rather have crimes reported to the authorities.
alts for them to steal from just to give them perma rep drop.
You wouldn't necessarily need alts since you can report the thief multiple times. I see nothing wrong with this, punishment must follow from crimes. Criminals shouldn't be tolareted inside cities where most people just want to mind their own bussiness.
Also another though occurred what will prevent a thief from selling stuff on to regain rep to a positive value or would said thief incur the rep drop and no positive rep gain till returning stolen goods, paying fines/compensation? Or will the thief also incur poor relations with the merchants?
Selling stuff for rep is awful feature. I just sold some random crap in ncr and got 1k rep right away. The ways to receive +rep should be looked into more thoroughly.
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It just seems dumb. In the Old West if someone was rifling through a cowboys packs whether he took anything or not you would still expect him to get shot down and noone really care. I feel like the law in the post-apocalypse would be closer to that than our modern era where even if someone tried to steal from you for some reason you can't just demolish them. Even so, I feel like if someone had their hands on my person without my consent I'd be within my rights to knock them out or something.
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I say we disable player versus player stealing until someone has a brainwave on how to make it an intelligent and interesting feature. Right now it's just a nuisance that irritates more players than it entertains.
Edit: I should elaborate. Stealing could easily have a role in the faction system - I can't imagine an NPC faction in the game that wouldn't have use for a someone able to obtain equipment or information without drawing attention. Its potential applications are sufficient without the alt-fest that is PvP stealing. I sympathise with thieves, but I really can't see how a PvP stealing system could exist that wasn't made easier by having a thief alt to support your main or anything similar.
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Stealing is fine the way it is, it's nerved enough.
The whole problem is in the fact that people assume guarded towns means you're protected against people who want to do bad things.
The whole player vs. character discussion is crap. You have to see things from your character's point of view, not you as player.
To "fix" some of the problems, some changes should be made:
- when losing protection, for whatever reason, the unprotected status should stick for 1-3 real-time hours. Perhaps the time could depend on reputation. For instance: antipathy (-300 to -900) or worse means the max penalty of 3 hours, neutral means 2 hours, accepted (300 to 900) or better means 1 hour. This should be calculated after the reputation drop from the action that caused you to lose the protected status.
- unprotected people caused trouble for the npc faction. They should be shot on sight by the guards when they enter a town
- unprotected status should be expanded to encounters as well. As unprotected people caused trouble with that specific faction, they should be shot on sight in encounters with that faction as well
- only guards loot, no matter who shot who. Looters should be shot on sight, lose protection and get the same reputation penalty as thieves. People who lost stuff to PK in guarded towns like NCR should be able to buy it back from the sheriff at a fee of 25% of the value (guards have to make a living too). For thieving victims this would be nice too, but I think it will be very hard to implement. After all the items already changed owner
- getting rep back by selling stuff to traders should be limited to getting it up to -300 max. That's enough to be safe in encounters again, assuming you're not unprotected. The safe to shoot people status for idolized people should either disappear altogether or it should be limited to encounters only.
Currently when staying logged on, you keep your current reputation. There's no increase or decrease. When logged off your rep increases or decreases depending on it being below -200 or above +200. So basically bad rep encourages people to log off, good rep encourages people to stay on. Bad rep should encourage you to correct it, which means staying logged on and do some tasks or quests to improve it.
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The whole player vs. character discussion is crap. You have to see things from your character's point of view, not you as player.
Then why is the player's point of view implemented in sneak? Player can't see sneaker if the char can't see him. But player can tell who stole from him even though the character can't.
Can't the principle of sneak be used on steal aswell? Players are able to spot and catch thieves the same way they can search for sneakers. But thief can also try to perform actions that help him not to get caught.
If players can't use their own awerness to affect ingame situations like stealing, it will just cause annoyance among players and lead to suicide-killing of thieves and third party methods that look even sillier than thieving.
when losing protection, for whatever reason, the unprotected status should stick for 1-3 real-time hours. Perhaps the time could depend on reputation. For instance: antipathy (-300 to -900) or worse means the max penalty of 3 hours, neutral means 2 hours, accepted (300 to 900) or better means 1 hour. This should be calculated after the reputation drop from the action that caused you to lose the protected status.
This is pretty necessary at least now since death means nothing to thieves and they just spam their presence in towns. The names of unprotected could be listed somewhere in town to help fending off wrongdoers.
- unprotected people caused trouble for the npc faction. They should be shot on sight by the guards when they enter a town
They don't have to be shot on sight by the guards, they'd be just unprotected. It could be up to players to defend their home.
- only guards loot, no matter who shot who. Looters should be shot on sight, lose protection and get the same reputation penalty as thieves. People who lost stuff to PK in guarded towns like NCR should be able to buy it back from the sheriff at a fee of 25% of the value (guards have to make a living too). For thieving victims this would be nice too, but I think it will be very hard to implement. After all the items already changed owner
Perhaps the server could "remember" what were stolen from who. When the thief was shot and looted, the victim needs to walk to the sheriff and name the lost items to get them back. It could work like lost and found.
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Then why is the player's point of view implemented in sneak? Player can't see sneaker if the char can't see him. But player can tell who stole from him even though the character can't.
Can't the principle of sneak be used on steal aswell? Players are able to spot and catch thieves the same way they can search for sneakers. But thief can also try to perform actions that help him not to get caught.
If players can't use their own awerness to affect ingame situations like stealing, it will just cause annoyance among players and lead to suicide-killing of thieves and third party methods that look even sillier than thieving.
I'm not sure I'm quite following you here.
Perhaps sneak needs to be changed? I never played a sneak alt, so I can't really comment on it.
It's pretty much impossible for a thief to perform an action that helps him not to be caught. He can stand behind his victim, but as long as you're talking from the player's point of view it can be noticed. Theft should be prevented by the potential victim instead of letting it happen to avenge it afterwards.
The only thing that affects the chance of thieves to be caught right now are their perks, the direction their victim is looking at and their victim's PE.
Awareness perk should give a higher chance to catch a thief.
This is pretty necessary at least now since death means nothing to thieves and they just spam their presence in towns. The names of unprotected could be listed somewhere in town to help fending off wrongdoers.
People who come into town after someone lost protection shouldn't know about it. Perhaps with the exception of the unprotected person not being killed yet after he got unprotected.
They don't have to be shot on sight by the guards, they'd be just unprotected. It could be up to players to defend their home.
By shooting unprotected players when they enter town, guards protect their homes. It would make sense, similar to shooting players in encounters when their rep is below -300 with that faction or shooting players in towns when their rep is below -1500.
It also gets rid of the entire problem of people being harassed by the same unprotected thief over and over.
Perhaps the server could "remember" what were stolen from who. When the thief was shot and looted, the victim needs to walk to the sheriff and name the lost items to get them back. It could work like lost and found.
If a thief manage to get a nice bunch of stuff from various victims before getting shot, "remembering" those could seriously clog the database.
If such a feature would be implemented, it should be limited to something like 24 real-time hours or less.
The victim shouldn't be able to choose or list anything. He pays a fee to get everything back or he doesn't get anything back at all. All he needs to do is ask the sheriff if his items got pounded and how much it will cost to get them back.
Also the victim might be able to pay the sheriff not only in caps, but also in:
- certain 0% deterioration none repaired tier 2 or 3 weapons,
- ammo
- HQ ore/minerals/GMP/HQ alloys/advanced gunpowder
- superstims
The value would be calculated as the normal nominal value, for instance 310 caps for a superstim or 9 caps per shotgun shell. The weapons and ammo should be limited to what NCR guards, army, rangers and caravans use.
Items paid to or pounded but unclaimed at the sheriff should NOT be put into traders. Perhaps the pounded and paid stuff could result in some small changes in the weapons and armors of NCR guards, rangers, army and caravans over time. For instance NCR Rangers giving Remnants a harder time or simply more NCR related encounters.
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It's pretty much impossible for a thief to perform an action that helps him not to be caught.
That's because how things are now. The point is to invent new ones.
He can stand behind his victim, but as long as you're talking from the player's point of view it can be noticed.
You can blame our rather all-seeing FOV for that. I'd say if the fov didn't see behind us, stealing could be more more interesting aswell as rest of the gameplay.
Having differend FOV and thieves being able to change their names temporarily (not existing names) would solve alot.
Theft should be prevented by the potential victim instead of letting it happen to avenge it afterwards.
To prevent letting it happen and avenging it afterwards steal needs to work like sneak. If it happened, the victim shouldn't be able to tell who it was.
The only thing that affects the chance of thieves to be caught right now are their perks, the direction their victim is looking at and their victim's PE.
Awareness perk should give a higher chance to catch a thief.
If it is the perks, it just encourages minmaxing and alts. Every player should have the right to catch thieves or pretect themselves against their attempt by default, but only if they pay attention.
By shooting unprotected players when they enter town, guards protect their homes. It would make sense, similar to shooting players in encounters when their rep is below -300 with that faction or shooting players in towns when their rep is below -1500.
It also gets rid of the entire problem of people being harassed by the same unprotected thief over and over.
But players can't take care of the thieves too if they know it's safe to shoot. In addition while being unprotected, the thief could still try to attempt to do his job if nobody recognized him as the unprotected thief.
The victim shouldn't be able to choose or list anything. He pays a fee to get everything back or he doesn't get anything back at all. All he needs to do is ask the sheriff if his items got pounded and how much it will cost to get them back.
Also the victim might be able to pay the sheriff not only in caps, but also in:
- certain 0% deterioration none repaired tier 2 or 3 weapons,
- ammo
- HQ ore/minerals/GMP/HQ alloys/advanced gunpowder
- superstims
But what's the point of all this? What for the victim has to do all this work to get the stolen stuff back? So that patrols get variety in equipment, somehow it's totally unrelated to thievery and getting items back.
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You can blame our rather all-seeing FOV for that. I'd say if the fov didn't see behind us, stealing could be more more interesting aswell as rest of the gameplay.
This would seriously hurt anyone who's not playing in a group as it would encourage traps. Have a small group occupy certain places on a map. At the moment you can see them if your PE is high enough and you're close enough. In the new situation you would only see those in your line of sight.
Having differend FOV and thieves being able to change their names temporarily (not existing names) would solve alot.
Not sure how FOV is right now, but it should be like in Commandos; a triangle originating from the character.
Changing names temporarily could be nice, but it needs some limitations like unable to use existing names, real name revealed when failed stealing and canceled when leaving the town or the map.
To prevent letting it happen and avenging it afterwards steal needs to work like sneak. If it happened, the victim shouldn't be able to tell who it was.
Sneaks breaks within 3 hexes. Even if you don't see behind you, you should be able so sense/notice someone is there. In FOnline that means you move away.
If it is the perks, it just encourages minmaxing and alts. Every player should have the right to catch thieves or pretect themselves against their attempt by default, but only if they pay attention.
You already have the right to catch a thief, but only when they fail. The best prevention is still to walk away.
But players can't take care of the thieves too if they know it's safe to shoot. In addition while being unprotected, the thief could still try to attempt to do his job if nobody recognized him as the unprotected thief.
The thief was caught with his pants down. Guards should shoot him on sight. The thief knows he's unprotected and therefore should wisely move to another town.
But what's the point of all this? What for the victim has to do all this work to get the stolen stuff back? So that patrols get variety in equipment, somehow it's totally unrelated to thievery and getting items back.
The victim lost his stuff, probably due to not being careful enough or not paying attention. The guards looted it from the thief.
If there is a chance for the victims to get their stuff back, they should take the initiative by going to the sheriff.
The sheriff will demand a fee before returning the items.
I'm just saying that that fee could be paid in certain items, depending on the npc faction's needs. In this case I took NCR as an example.
If a lot of people need to pay fees to get their stuff back, it might have some small consequences in the FOnline universe. Nothing that changes the storyline or anything like that, but just something that could alter encounters a bit.