Hopes for Thieves Guild Skill Line + Justice System

Roneth · April 2014

Zenimax revealed they plan on releasing the Thieves Guild and Justice System in a content patch shortly after launch. With that said, I wanted to discuss my hopes of what this content may bring to ESO…

Thieves Guild Skill Line
With the Thieves Guild, you can expect a new Skill Line with abilities such as:

Blinding Powder – Blind foes in target area.
Knife Throw – Throws knife at enemy target.
Pickpocket – Allows player to pickpocket NPC’s.
Unarmed Strike – Incapacitates target for duration.
Smoke Bomb – Creates smoke cloud around player.
Cloak and Dagger – Stab your foe and vanish in stealth.

Feather Fall (passive) – Reduces damage from falling.
Bribery (passive) – Bribe city guards to ignore crimes.
Lockpicking (passive) – Slightly increases the lockpick timer.
Haggling (passive) – Buying and selling prices are 10% better.
Smuggling (passive) – Allows player to sell stolen goods to NPC’s.
Shadow Walk (passive) – Walking and running does not affect detection.

Cheat Death (ultimate) – A fatal attack will now reduce health to no less than 10%.

Finding the Thieves Guild
Unlike finding the Fighters/Mages Guild, the Thieves Guild will never be shown on a map (this guild must feel elusive). In order to find this guild, players must follow Shadowmarks. These symbols will be carved on various buildings scattered throughout Tamriel cities. Finding this guild will be a cross between a scavenger hunt and a riddle. The entrance could be a trapdoor in the back of a tavern or a hidden entrance under a bridge and the player must solve the riddle in order to enter the guild.

Fame & Infamy Mechanic
I hope the developers add “Fame and Infamy” mechanic to the game. Basically, fame is a measure of how well known your heroism is amongst the general population of Tamriel. Conversely, infamy represents your notoriety for doing evil deeds. Depending how you play your character will change NPC disposition. Being able to make your character a hero or villain and having NPC's react accordingly adds so much immersion to the game.

Justice System - Illegal Activities
With the addition of the Justice System, having many illegal activities would be welcome:

Trespassing
Pickpocket
Theft
Assault
Murder
Drug Possession (e.g. Skooma)

Prisons – Public Dungeons
The developers should make prisons essentially public dungeons (each city would have a unique layout). Players will sit in their cell for a period of time. The time should be somewhere between uncomfortable and frustrating… a deterrent and depends on the severity of the crime (1 -10 minutes). But you don’t have to sit and wait. Players will find a couple of lockpicks in their cell to attempt a jailbreak.

What do you hope to see with the addition of the Thieves Guild and Justice System?

necronomniconb14_ESO · April 2014

Roneth wrote: »

Prisons – Public Dungeons
The developers should make prisons essentially public dungeons (each city would have a unique layout). Players will sit in their cell for a period of time. The time should be somewhere between uncomfortable and frustrating… a deterrent and depends on the severity of the crime (1 -10 minutes). But you don’t have to sit and wait. Players will find a couple of lockpicks in their cell to attempt a jailbreak.

What do you hope to see with the addition of the Thieves Guild and Justice System?

This isn't Second Life. some people enjoy being thieves & butchers, and unlike the single player games we are not able to wait/rest and speed up the process of sleeping off the 'sentence'. the only time I would condone this would be if it were ONLY a punishment for griefing other players in EXCESS, and Never used for what is done to NPC's unless they were used as an instrument to grief another player(s).

Otherwise, expecting people to be okay with twiddling their thumbs or fapping for the next ten minutes every single time they do something fun is only going to make people pissier and encourage more hack/exploit seeking behavior to get around for those that don't stop playing altogether.

I for one would find a way to make the collision fails work out in my favor (since I would need something to keep me busy in your auschwitz, not to mention it would be the first time I would actually not mind falling through the floor or a doorway) so that I could keep reloading and lagging tying up resources whether internet or ram until I could load up and stroll through the cell door or the wall before they load and not have to sit there fapping for the next ten minutes because someone cried about their sweetroll.

You can imagine I would not like letting that kind of effort go to waste, correct? I would then (as a bad, bad little argonian) seek out other areas where the effort could be put to use and produce some fun to counter the unfun your little idea of punishment would provide. Now bear in mind I am not the only person who would either find a workaround for it (which if possible would be sold or put to use elsewhere) or who simply stop playing due to your unfun idea there.

Moral of the story is: the justice system is a revolving door system designed to encourage more bad behavior to keep the funds and fear going around. only you can put a stop to this, by finding ways to reform and change behavior and to make people WANT to change. tormenting them while giving them time to refine their criminal skills is not the answer. also, only you can prevent forest fires.

-Scruffy McGruffy

kierthos · April 2014

Has there been any sort of notification of when the Thieves Guild and/or Dark Brotherhood will be added?

Cogo · April 2014

Wow!

Exellent post! I hope Zenimax takes a look at this.
I really liked the justice system! Sure, you can be a thief, but you are responsible for your actions!

Roneth · April 2014

Cogo wrote: »

Wow!

Exellent post! I hope Zenimax takes a look at this.

Thanks... hope Zenimax is listening!

Spriggen · April 2014

Yeah suggestion but some of those passive are pretty OP for those stealth players in PvP so I won't back you up on those.

taylorwilenskiub17_ESO · April 2014

Spriggen wrote: »

Yeah suggestion but some of those passive are pretty OP for those stealth players in PvP so I won't back you up on those.

As a stealthy Nightblade, I tend to agree with you lol. NBs would become so OP.

ArgonianAssassin · April 2014

I like the idea of the skill cloak and dagger, sounds cool and would earn a permanent slot on my bar, I feel like pick pocketing would be a passive, and shouldn't take up an active skill slot, the ultimate sounds cool, and I like oyur idea of making prisons public dungeons, but fighting your way out of a prison killing guards and such on the way out should make you fugitive, there should be other ways of working off your sentence (Like Markarth from Skyrim, digging ore to pass the time.)

Roneth · April 2014

ArgonianAssassin wrote: »

I like the idea of the skill cloak and dagger, sounds cool and would earn a permanent slot on my bar, I feel like pick pocketing would be a passive, and shouldn't take up an active skill slot, the ultimate sounds cool, and I like oyur idea of making prisons public dungeons, but fighting your way out of a prison killing guards and such on the way out should make you fugitive, there should be other ways of working off your sentence (Like Markarth from Skyrim, digging ore to pass the time.)

Prison public dungeons would be a cool addition to the game.

The_Sadist · April 2014

The thieves guild should be subtle but not elusive, I think the dark brotherhood / morag tong should be the elusive guilds (granted I think you should have the option to join one or the other but not both due to how they work lore wise).

But that aside interesting suggestion.

nhisso · May 2014

It's actually making it hard for me to play, knowing this is going to happen at some point. Just now (before getting on forum), I saved random people from bandits in an AD land, and it got me thinking: How far do I want to level up before thieves and DB guilds and a justice system are implemented? Are we getting something for being good, if there is a justice system? Will the things we've done be retroactive, but perhaps with a one-time option to clear your slate (so as to not upset people who have stolen oh-so much already, I mean, haven't we all, technically?)? Because frankly, Im doing good deeds and bad deeds already, but leveling up so it's for nothing and the new guilds and justice system will force me to make new characters.

Furthermore, while I don't mind my bow using nightblade being leveled, as thieves isn't a big deal for me on that char., it bugs me with my khajiit NB and I've stopped playing him at level 10. But I want to play him. I was having a blast and he was my main before it hit me that the Thieve's guild is right up his ally. Certainly didn't want to be high level and do all these low level quests and what not on a level 50. So I switched my main to the bow using bosmer NB and a close second-to-main, BReton Templar. Last but not least, I really like the idea of my giant, DK Nord being in the DB because he is not at all assassinish, which is perfect for a DB member

, and so I stopped playing him, too, at level 17. Wish we could at least get an estimate or a "we'd like to have these new guilds and system in by 'x' month's end". Am I the only one with video game OCD of this type lol?

neocomab16_ESO · May 2014

this isnt a sandbox. its a themepark and themeparks are designed for "holding the players hand" all the time. there will never be punishment in that form. sadly.

RangerChad · May 2014

Cloak and Dagger and Cheat Death sound closer to Dark Brotherhood than Thieves Guild skills.

Sleepydan · May 2014

I play on the ebonheart pact.

It would be cool if the female dunmer assassin you encounter to be your entry with the morag tong.

It would be cool if the guy you meet in davons watch and again in another town be the one to invite the toad to the thieves guild.

It would be cool if each guild has their own quest line that doesn't necessarily follow the natural progression of leveling, but the order of their interactions with the stories of the world. You get the quests from the guild not from distance from quest giver.

Leveling from the tutorial, when you would reach a new quest place for them, sometimes you would get another quest in a row to go sneak around and either kill or rob powerful, annoying, mad-at-you people you encountered the first time. Maybe kill super high level creatures you had to avoid earlier.

Anybody have any idea what they really will be doing yet?

Drazhar14 · May 2014

Some of those skills are copy and paste from Guild Wars like Cloak and Dagger, but I'd love to see them be Thieves Guild skills (or even Dark Brotherhood, which will probably have poison based skills as well). I also like the idea of getting locked up for 5 or 10 minutes real time when you get arrested for a crime. Will make those bad players think about what they did!

Kyubi_3002b16_ESO · May 2014

As long as I can murder other player of my own faction for taking a chest or a node I was hoping to loot while im fighting... I don't mind a small bounty.

Cloak and dagger doesn't match thief well distraction and skill emphasing on sneaking around and stealing would be better.

Maybe having nightingale cloak do a comeback as a ultimate would be interesting... aka 15 second stealth breaking only when you hit and stealthing again right after