Scaling gold in chests/strongboxes based on difficulty

Marneman

Had a thought and curious what others here think about this one.

I love picking locks and stealing stuff, but with maxed out thief skills, I just pretty much force the locks to try and save time as I'm running around.

Currently, I'm getting ~100 gold or so out of every chest and strongbox that I open and loot, irrespective of the level of the lock. I think it would be cool if the amount of gold you got from those would scale based on the difficulty of the lock itself, with perhaps the possibility of forgoing the scaling if you force pick the lock, or if you fail the first time to pick it manually. Maybe you have to pick it manually to try and get more gold for the effort, otherwise you just get the standard range.

Dunno, just a random idea I had.

snoozy

as a khajiit thief main, i wholeheartedly support this great idea!

Azurya

who cares? it is no real money, come down.

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO

Yes, who cares, this is just a game... wait, why are we playing it? Oh, right, because we *do* care about these little fun details that have absolutely no impact on real life, other than to maybe make us a little more happy!
Or, in some cases, maybe a little less grumpy.

ahrimar

thiefing and finding chests need to be improved. it gives another dimension to game. yes, zenimax we need more thiefiing stuffs an valuable ofc not trashes.

Marneman

Azurya wrote: »

who cares? it is no real money, come down.

Come down from what, exactly? I wasn't complaining. Just offering up an idea. Good lord.

VaranisArano

The quality of the items inside does increase with chests, even more so if you invest in the CP passive. IIRC, strongboxes aren't effected by the CP passive but the quality of items does improve with difficulty of lock.

There's two reasons I see not to bother with increasing the gold reward.
1. Gold itself is extremely easily acquired from other sources, to the point that ZOS implements a number of gold sinks to prevent inflation. If they add gold to the economy, its wise to consider how they'll take it back out again.
2. The items inside strongboxes in are the main reward and are subject to justice system interactions until you get them to a fence, unlike the gold you get. Assuming ZOS wants to encourage justice system play, making the main reward the stolen items makes a lot more sense.

In the case of extra gold for manually lockpicking:
The ability to force locks is a reward for leveling up your legerdemain and investing skill points. It makes no sense for ZOS to reward players for not using Force Lock.
Perhaps it could be implemented as sort of a new, final step in that skill tree so that you must master Force Lock before you get the option to do it manually for more gold, but I suspect that's rather more complicated than ZOS will get with a base game system.

Marneman

VaranisArano wrote: »

The quality of the items inside does increase with chests, even more so if you invest in the CP passive. IIRC, strongboxes aren't effected by the CP passive but the quality of items does improve with difficulty of lock.

My idea was around the gold, not the items, but you are correct with regard to item quality.

There's two reasons I see not to bother with increasing the gold reward.
1. Gold itself is extremely easily acquired from other sources, to the point that ZOS implements a number of gold sinks to prevent inflation. If they add gold to the economy, its wise to consider how they'll take it back out again.

Sure, you can get gold from a variety of other places. You can get items from a variety of places as well (drops, crafting, guild vendors, etc.). Not sure I understand how this is a problem.

2. The items inside strongboxes in are the main reward and are subject to justice system interactions until you get them to a fence, unlike the gold you get. Assuming ZOS wants to encourage justice system play, making the main reward the stolen items makes a lot more sense.
3.

Let's face it, at end-game, do I really care about looting a purple overland robe? Likely not. It's just something else random to decon or sell for 50g. Another twist on the idea would be to perhaps have a chance at getting a gold hoard instead of the usual fare. I mean, you don't really know what is in there until you open it, so ....

In the case of extra gold for manually lockpicking:
The ability to force locks is a reward for leveling up your legerdemain and investing skill points. It makes no sense for ZOS to reward players for not using Force Lock.

My suggestion about picking manually was simply to try and avoid quick chest running by players maxed out. I mean comparatively speaking, there is skill involved in manually picking, whereas force picking might simply cost you 1+ picks in the effort, but likely save time.

Perhaps it could be implemented as sort of a new, final step in that skill tree so that you must master Force Lock before you get the option to do it manually for more gold, but I suspect that's rather more complicated than ZOS will get with a base game system.

Hmm. Not sure how one can "master" forcing locks.

FierceSam

The mount of gold/reward in a chest should scale from the difficulty of the lock (and your character’s level). So if you unlock or successfully force them you should get the same reward (otherwise why put valuable skill points into lock forcing).

Your skills in Legerdomain should not affect the loot, but should make it easier/faster to open the chests (otherwise why put valuable skill points into lock forcing).

I don’t think this is the number one thing that affects whether players do thieving, I think a much more effective inducement to larceny would be having more houses in game that you could actually break into. Seeing entire towns full of Ptomkin houses, which all look nice from the outside but are inaccessible to even the most determined thief is thoroughly demoralising.

I agree that the entire justice/thieving system needs a bit of a review and clean up. Imagine a revisited thieves guild with better access to houses and grappling hooks to enable you to break in more skillfully. It could make heists fun.

Marneman

FierceSam wrote: »

I don’t think this is the number one thing that affects whether players do thieving, I think a much more effective inducement to larceny would be having more houses in game that you could actually break into. Seeing entire towns full of Ptomkin houses, which all look nice from the outside but are inaccessible to even the most determined thief is thoroughly demoralising.

OMG yes. Seeing those chains on the door is a buzz kill lol.

I agree that the entire justice/thieving system needs a bit of a review and clean up. Imagine a revisited thieves guild with better access to houses and grappling hooks to enable you to break in more skillfully. It could make heists fun.

Never thought about the grappling hook concept ... very interesting. That would be insanely cool.

bmnoble

Too me at least the gold reward from treasure chests/normal chests and lock-boxes especially has always seemed way too low.

I got no problem with increasing the gold you get based on the difficulty of the lock, not like we run into master chests all the time, at most though I think a master chest should give you about 1K of gold, equivalent to the dragon treasure vendor trash you can get when fighting dragons.

FierceSam

Marneman wrote: »

FierceSam wrote: »

I don’t think this is the number one thing that affects whether players do thieving, I think a much more effective inducement to larceny would be having more houses in game that you could actually break into. Seeing entire towns full of Ptomkin houses, which all look nice from the outside but are inaccessible to even the most determined thief is thoroughly demoralising.

OMG yes. Seeing those chains on the door is a buzz kill lol.

I agree that the entire justice/thieving system needs a bit of a review and clean up. Imagine a revisited thieves guild with better access to houses and grappling hooks to enable you to break in more skillfully. It could make heists fun.

Never thought about the grappling hook concept ... very interesting. That would be insanely cool.

The grappling hook mechanic (if done well) promises a lot. It enables designers to think about area design in a much more agile way - so they have to think more vertically as well as horizontally. Imagine how much more interesting the Stitches (a tedious area in Elsweyr) could be if you could use a grappling hook to traverse around it rather than having to ride from one side to another simply to get up a level.

Imagine if, instead of there being simply one way around a dungeon or delve there were several. So you could choose between a longer, sneakier route and a shorter more direct one, which might feature more mobs or bosses. Or where, as in Cradle of Shadows, the group splits, with one heavy damage route and another maybe more healing, sneaky and grappling focussed.

Imagine heists (or delves, or dungeons) where the route was both linear (as now) and vertical, where the grapple points were varied on each instance so each heist could be subtly different every time you played it.

As you say, could be insanely cool.

dazee

Guards should be able to summon more guards if you dont escape in time, until an army of guards is chasing you. if we increase rewards of lawbreaking we also need to actually increase the risk cuz right now I see people surviving guards for way way too long without running.

VaranisArano

Marneman wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

The quality of the items inside does increase with chests, even more so if you invest in the CP passive. IIRC, strongboxes aren't effected by the CP passive but the quality of items does improve with difficulty of lock.

My idea was around the gold, not the items, but you are correct with regard to item quality.

There's two reasons I see not to bother with increasing the gold reward.
1. Gold itself is extremely easily acquired from other sources, to the point that ZOS implements a number of gold sinks to prevent inflation. If they add gold to the economy, its wise to consider how they'll take it back out again.

Sure, you can get gold from a variety of other places. You can get items from a variety of places as well (drops, crafting, guild vendors, etc.). Not sure I understand how this is a problem.

2. The items inside strongboxes in are the main reward and are subject to justice system interactions until you get them to a fence, unlike the gold you get. Assuming ZOS wants to encourage justice system play, making the main reward the stolen items makes a lot more sense.
3.

Let's face it, at end-game, do I really care about looting a purple overland robe? Likely not. It's just something else random to decon or sell for 50g. Another twist on the idea would be to perhaps have a chance at getting a gold hoard instead of the usual fare. I mean, you don't really know what is in there until you open it, so ....

In the case of extra gold for manually lockpicking:
The ability to force locks is a reward for leveling up your legerdemain and investing skill points. It makes no sense for ZOS to reward players for not using Force Lock.

My suggestion about picking manually was simply to try and avoid quick chest running by players maxed out. I mean comparatively speaking, there is skill involved in manually picking, whereas force picking might simply cost you 1+ picks in the effort, but likely save time.

Perhaps it could be implemented as sort of a new, final step in that skill tree so that you must master Force Lock before you get the option to do it manually for more gold, but I suspect that's rather more complicated than ZOS will get with a base game system.

Hmm. Not sure how one can "master" forcing locks.

1. Increasing gold supplies available in the game increases inflation when you take into account how many chests/strongholds are opened every day. Gold inflation is a bad thing for the game economy. To combat that inflation, ZOS must introduce gold sinks to take that extra gold back out of the economy. Have you considered what gold sinks ZOS might implement in response to your desire to increase gold rewards? Personally, I suspect higher bounties for justice system content would be an easy fix for increased strongbox gold.

2. ZOS designed the increased rewards for chest/stronghold difficulty to be the items, which yes, can be censored for...gold. Or used. Or sold to other players. Or fenced. Or laundered. Or turned in for TG quests. ZOS made the items the main rewards because they are a way of interacting with the game in more ways than just "Hey, I can spend gold."
You just want extra gold. Extra gold, freely given, doesn't really build up any other segment of the game, like selling a purple robe in a good set to another player or bringing justice system items to a fence. It just gives you extra gold for something you were already doing.

3. One "masters" force lockpicking by sinking skill points into Legerdemain.
At face value, your suggestion to benefit manual lockpicking means that players who want the extra rewards have zero incentive to invest those skill points and that low level players who have no choice but to manually lockpick would get better rewards than players who did max out legerdemain and invest those points.
See a problem there?
Hence my countersuggestion that ZOS could add another rank to the Legerdemain Locksmith passive. If you want that extra reward for manually unlocking your chests even though you could force lock them, it should take investing a fifth skill point to get that option. That makes the extra gold reward something that players have to invest time and effort to reach, as opposed to something everyone gets by default and then loses if you invest in the Locksmith passive.


Ultimately, I don't expect ZOS to change anything simply because there's a very easy, low effort on their part, answer to getting more gold via chests and strongholds: grind for more of them. There's no reason for ZOS to hand out free extra gold for doing something you were already doing when they can get you to just do more of that thing if you want more gold.