Feedback from a Burgler

areeb14_ESO

I did the whole thing on the first day. Pick pocketting. Attacking npcs to get drops. Rifling through stuff for green+. After a day I found that the safest thing, with the highest payoff, was just running around and looting stuff. Even the locked boxes were easy. Caught unlocking was 8-12g. It's when you actually loot the thing that the costs go up. So you unlock, wait to be hidden and bam. 1-3 greens or even a blue.

Killing npcs has risks. Pickpocketing has risks. Burglering houses? Not so much. I mean I walk around in the open rifling through boxes, bags and trunks in plain view with no notice given. Find something nice, crouch and wait for the eye to close. Quick E -> R button presses and bam, it's in my pouch in less than a second.

The sneak mechanic needs a few tweaks. If you're in the view of an npc, you can't couch and suddenly vanish. IE: Can't hide while in npc view.
If seen inside of a LOCKED house, I would surely keep my eyes on him and tell him to get the hell out. Not quietly watch him rifle through my stuff.
I think there should be an extra stage. You've got Green, I'm an upstanding citizen, then Red, CRIMINAL!! They should have a yellow stage, or watchful. Like unlocking a lockbox and getting caught should put you in yellow, the npc would not look away from you and repeatedly tell you to get away from it. If you don't the warning would go up until it reached the stage where they yell for guards.

The guards... yea. They respond to things they see. I tested it, robbed a guy in plain view of the npc but behind the guard and he didn't do anything. There should be an AoE when an npc calls for the guards. Any guard in listening range will rush to the npc and target the player who triggered the shout. If the npc is inside of a house, have locations like the door and windows were the shout will ping outside and if a guard is near that location will rush inside.

A side note, unarmed npcs that get attacked shouldn't fight back. They should run away screaming for help.

This would make being a robber more fun and challenging.

(PS: Has anyone found anything rare green+ inside of a Keg? I haven't.)

Samadhi

Pickpocketing Hard NPCs consistently gives me more green and blue items than white items, and nothing they provide sells for less than 30 gold, so it is relatively balanced with containers which frequently provide junk.
My first purple pickpocket reward was worth 750 gold, but have not yet found one in a container.

Killing the same NPCs is less rewarding, but killing NPCs should not provide a large base reward anyway. Rewards for assassination should be the purview of the Dark Brotherhood/Morag Tong content when it is added.

Can agree that guards are not responsive enough once the player comprehends their line of sight and range.

My biggest issue with the Justice System is that hours of pickpocketing NPCs and stealing from containers provides no experience gain. This needs to be fixed; it should be fully viable to level up playing as a Thief rather than being railroaded into other content with thievery tacked on as an afterthought and minor skill line.
If I grind dolmens to level up my Fighter's Guild, my character levels up in the process; if I search out Lorebooks to level up my Mage's Guild, my character levels in the process; If I spend hours leveling up my Legerdemain tree by stealing from NPCs, I sacrifice leveling my character and generate a large bounty that inhibits my participation in other content.
Why is the Thief archetype given higher risk and lower reward than the Warrior or Mage archetypes?

The system is really good, but it needs to be more integrated with the rest of the game. Every other Elder Scrolls game allowed me to level up my character by being a shifty thief; in ESO the option to be a thief is there but does not provide progress through the game. The Legerdermain skill line is great and levels at a good pace, but it does not provide the sense of character growth that would be provided by being able to level up through outlaw activities in the appropriate level zones -- this would have the added benefit of reducing the number of end-game characters farming level 10 NPCs because such characters could actually level up their Champion Points by playing in their appropriate zones.

@ZOS_GinaBruno or @ZOS_JessicaFolsom will we ever see meaningful experience (not Legerdemain points, actual experience/vet experience/champion experience) from playing under the Thief archetype?
Currently it seems that only the picking of locks and killing of NPCs provides any experience at all; what about adding experience to successful pickpockets, successful steals and the sale/laundry of items to the Fence (which has a daily cap to keep exp gains within a reasonable limit).

processedmeatman

oops, wrong thread