Apartments and safety

[Salt Merchant]

NOTE: not all quit-safe rooms with lockable doors are for rented apartments.

I'm pretty sure this thread is about apartments and safety.

True, but it would seem a bit odd to only be able to bar apartment doors.

[Synthesis]

Get rid of burglars altogether.

Merge their skillset with pickpockets, change the class name to "Scumbag" and be done with it.

Make lockpicking branch from steal (makes about as much sense as some of the other branch schemes out there), so that experienced scumbags learn how to burglarize.

This will have the added benefit of making the pickpocket class marginally more useful, because they're currently practically restricted to inventory griefing.

P.S.  Allowing doors to be barred so that they can only be burglarized when the owner is currently logged in will make playing a burglar untenable for off-peakers.  Either that, or there will be one burglar/nomad during off-peak times who will travel the world to burglarize the 2 apartments in each city that actually belong to people who are logged in.

[Archbaron]

What if you could bolt or bar the door from the inside to make it impenetrable. This way, if you log out in your apartment, it can't be picked (since there's a bolt/bar across the inaccessible end).

These bolts would be automatically opened when the rent expires.

This would encourage people to quit out in their homes, make people more vulnerable to being tailed perhaps, but certainly it would make burglarizing the home much more risky, as essentially you'd have to do it when the tenant is AWAKE and IN GAME, or at least NOT AT HOME.

Now you have a situation where the burglar may have to have help, one person to go into the apartment, and the other to keep an eye on the guy who owns it. You'd have to figure out who that is, of course, and set up some kind of warning system.

Right now you have solo-buglar x robbing places when there's 11 people online, and largely avoiding any kind of threat of interaction from PCs or staff. Lets change that.

-KIA

I love this idea, I think it has potential. Robbing while the player is online would be much riskier and provide more role-playing.

[Salt Merchant]

Let an actual key bypass the bar?  It would be as though the roommate weren't there at the time.

If a key can be used to get past a barred door, why couldn't a lockpick be used?

[Marauder Moe]

It's not going to make sense.  It would be a playability fix to compensate for the fact that the person who would virtually occupy the apartment can't open it up for their roommate.

[a strange shadow]

How does this fix the problem with supernatural raiders?

How would it affect mundane burglars who make an OOCly responsible living off the PC apartments available?

[Marauder Moe]

I'm not going to comment about supernatural raiders because... you're not supposed to talk about magick specifics on the GDB!

As for burglars, responsible or otherwise, they'll just have to work smarter.  Either risk having a tenant walk in on their pilfering (at which point they need an escape plan), or identify a tenant specifically and strike at times you know they won't be coming home (or a time you've ensured they won't be coming home), just like burglars IRL.

[brytta.leofa]

Maybe we need more observant apartment minders?

They all scan, and are 'observant' in direct proportion to the expense level of the building.  In some cases they have maxed scan, but in no case are they gimpy scanners.  I don't see how we can make them more observant.

Ah, okay.  My main experience IG was with one in a less-prosperous neighborhood.

[Good Gortok]

None of them will stop a PC with reasonable stealth skills. You're almost guaranteed to be good enough to sneak past without failure long before you're good enough to pick the locks.

[Qzzrbl]

I again think that burglary should be expanded upon entirely..... Locks and picks are entirely too common. Barring and bolting should be the mainstay, considering the technology of Zalanthas. Hell, I'm kinda surprised that the cheapest apartments have anything more than a guard to begin with.

Instead of starting with pick, burglars should get a skill that deals mostly with getting past simple devices like bars and bolts, and then branch pick. Give them a much slower speed of progression too.

[Jingo]

I'd be in favor of giving burglars more places to steal from. More than just PC apartments.

[a strange shadow]

I'd be in favor of giving burglars more places to steal from. More than just PC apartments.

This, more than anything else. Burglars, if surviving off their class strengths, are forced to rely almost entirely on PCs.

[Qzzrbl]

But they'd still rip off PC apartments, because they know that's where more money's gonna be.

If they have too little to gain from robbing other-than-pc-apartment places, they'll never be robbed, and if they have -alot- to gain from robbing these places, then they'll just get rich and fat off of essentially free shit every reboot.

[a strange shadow]

The same is not true for rangers, pickpockets, etc, etc?

I do agree there should be more risk inherent. I've suggested somewhere at some point that thieves have a chance to be crim-flagged when trying to pick a door lock, if they are not successfully hidden when they're doing so.

[Ghost]

Actually, I don't think Burglar guild is as cookie cutter as you assume it is now.  Yes, it used to be so, but pick lock skill got nerfed, now it costs to fail at a door.  I had a character who got the pick skill, and he lost about 1.5k coin without opening a single door (true, I was not aware of the change on pick skill so maybe it could be less if I heard of the change) Still, advancing in skill is costy for burglars at the moment.

Also, the number of "trainable" doors have decreased.  (The numbers I give you now will date more than a RL year, I am not sure if anything changed since) About 4 years ago, you could find NPC apartments, which were basically empty but the doors were locked and you could practice your skill.  Plus, testing your skill would cost virtually nothing.  Now almost all of those apartments are gone (doors are not locked anymore I think) and testing your skills can cost quite a lot.  So the PC burglars are severely limited I believe, when you compare it to a few years past.

That being said, I noticed last year that it was much simpler to steal anything through supernatural means.  Much more effective, with much less chance to get caught, with little restriction on skill requirement (basically, acquiring the necessary skills seems simpler than training the pick skill) and to be honest, not as costy as mundane means (at least that is what I observed).  If there is a burglary problem, there is a very good chance your mundane burglars are not responsible of it.  And I think, burglar guild is restricted enough, it will be crippling to nerf them anymore.

If you hire an NPC guard, your apartment is burglar proof.  While barring the door of your apartment sounds reasonable, when you log off, your character is still going through everyday errands virtually, so s/he is still leaving the apartment and the door should not remain barred until you log back in.  The addition of extra locks is the most reasonable idea that I have seen, but IG locks are very expensive.  Back in the day when Nenyuk had PC agents, I remember purchasing 5 locks for 20k.  So a lock is about 4k worth (and it was not the perfect lock, I am telling you).

While you want to keep your stuff safe for playability reasons, burglars also need to survive and their playability is as important as yours.  Moreover, if there is a burglar problem, I think it is most likely due to supernatural means.  There is very little you can do against it.

[Clearsighted]

The funny thing is that the RL time of night when most burglars operate is when most of the RL players are asleep in their beds, yet at the same time, the IC time of night, (late at night, before dawn etc) that they usually operate, is when the PCs should be in their apartments.

[Sephiroto]

I am working on a solution to this problem that does not involve making tons of new key objects.

I have an idea that doesn't involve new key items, but would require new lines of code.  How about we use an ambiguous sdesc and main desc for keys and then assign a random, 5 digit number to both the door and key (all unseen to the players) when a new person rents an apartment.  This would be kind of like a passkey kind of thing.  Techincally this would ICly mean that locks are changed after a tennant moves out.  We could assume that Nenyuk has hundreds in stock and that they are rotated through service in three phases: use, maintenance, and storage.  If the player has their key stolen it will still work until someone else rents the room and the locks are changed or until the landlord issues a new lock and key (for a nice fee) to the present tennant.

[My 2 sids]

I don't know if this is the case or not, but...

It would seem to me a good group to keep an eye on the robbery situation should be the Guild.  Obvously, petty thieft happens from time to time... but, (and maybe this is an Imm thing) if we're having wave after wave for huge PC robberies... maybe the Guild needs to step in and control the situation.   I would think they'd function much like the GMH where if an independent makes enough disturbance... they have to address the problem.

[Dar]

I don't know if this is the case or not, but...

It would seem to me a good group to keep an eye on the robbery situation should be the Guild.  Obvously, petty thieft happens from time to time... but, (and maybe this is an Imm thing) if we're having wave after wave for huge PC robberies... maybe the Guild needs to step in and control the situation.   I would think they'd function much like the GMH where if an independent makes enough disturbance... they have to address the problem.

Heh. Find out IC

[tortall]

I don't know if this is the case or not, but...

It would seem to me a good group to keep an eye on the robbery situation should be the Guild.  Obvously, petty thieft happens from time to time... but, (and maybe this is an Imm thing) if we're having wave after wave for huge PC robberies... maybe the Guild needs to step in and control the situation.   I would think they'd function much like the GMH where if an independent makes enough disturbance... they have to address the problem.

Um... Tuluk? Not EVERYONE lives in Nak.

[Lizzie]

Red Storm has apartments and I'm -guessing- that the SandLord would have a few things to say about the Guild coming in and "controlling" any kind of "situation."

Also...I've had several apartments in the past few years that I've been playing, and I only know of two that were actually broken into with things stolen. Maybe y'all are just picking really crap-lock apartments, in buildings where every noob burglar uses for practice, so it's more likely that you'd be *someone's* success story?

Some buildings I've rented in have the locks picked every damned day. But...there are several buildings, and even in those buildings that get broken into constantly, some of those doors are -never- unlocked. They're also rarely available for rent, but you can get lucky once in awhile

[Jingo]

I think if you have the tinker subclass you should have the option of adding another lock to a door.

[Riev]

Maybe y'all are just picking really crap-lock apartments, in buildings where every noob burglar uses for practice, so it's more likely that you'd be *someone's* success story?

*cough* Or maybe there are a couple of players acting unreasonably, stealing from the same apartments, day after day after day, without any sort of repercussions for their actions.

I'M TOTALLY JUST SAYING....

[Doppelganger]

It does not take prophet like me to predict that if peasants got locked apartments, they would demand locked chests and chastity belts too.

Instead of playing along with XXI century consumers staff should have killed all sources of common PC income. Work for water and, maybe, some food.
Nothing to store, nothing to steal. It's a win-win and should cease all complaints.

Let's see if economical model for Arm 2.0 will be any good to support whatever theme they have in mind, because harsh desert world has proven itself unplayable.

In the meanwhile, guild burglar should be given a new name, if people take the name of the class literally.

[a strange shadow]

In the meanwhile, guild burglar should be given a new name, if people take the name of the class literally.

That's not really fair. Classes exist for a reason; warriors fight, rangers range, pickpockets steal, and assassins... well, okay...

While Armageddon's beauty lies in the flexible array of character concepts and stories, it doesn't change the fact that the class you choose decides what your character is good at, and players shouldn't be made to feel inferior because they play to those strengths.