Pickpocketing does not feel rewarding for the risk.

Byucknah

So, I want to preface this as someone who has played ESO on and off over the years during lulls of other games. I really do like ESO, I honestly think its one of the best MMO's out there and the only reason I don't play it more is a 15 year commitment to another MMO and not really being able to maintain two at once. Anyway, to the point...

Pickpocketing is easily one of my least favorite activities in ESO because of the pure RNG behind it. Many times I end up with just strings of failure after failure, like just before coming to post here I failed 6 pickpocket attempts in a row with an 80% success rate! Its not even like that is anything rare, it happens quite frequently and it just sucks when that happens because the bounty starts to out weigh the benefits as it quickly begins to climb higher and higher. Doesn't help when guards practically teleport/dash from a mile away to me at times even though I was nowhere near them. Not to mention that, compared to the Dark Brotherhood murder repeatable quests, the Thieves Guild daily pickpocketing quest takes FOREVER to get through with constant failures and bounties.

Yeah, with the Dark Brotherhood you can still mess up and get a massive bounty really quickly but it feels like you have more control over it so when you mess up its more on you and less on RNG. Whenever I slip up when murdering someone for contracts its usually because I was impatient or I gambled, and lost, on someone being far enough away to not see it. It always feels like the Dark Brotherhood murder's are on me if I get a bounty where as pickpocketing just feels like I am rolling the dice.

I get that they don't want it to be too easy because you can get blue quality and such treasures from pick pocketing compared to stealing from containers or murdering but outside of doing the daily stuff I don't really feel pickpocketing anyone is worth it compared to murder or stealing from objects. Its honestly far easier to just use the Blade of Woe and loot a body instead of rolling the dice and hoping things work out for me and if I am looking to just go on a stealing spree I usually end up favoring looting objects vs pickpocketing because the risk of pickpocketing does not feel proportional to the reward.

I really feel like there should be ways, either item sets, perks, traits, food, or even a combination of those things, to make Pickpocketing more appealing to do over just stealing from objects or murdering people. Its honestly strange to think that its less risky and easier to flat out MURDER someone than to pick their pocket as you would think that killing someone in broad daylight would be about the highest risk thing you could do.

Idk, my two cents, but I think a thieving set and/or better perks would be nice. As a thief I should want to pick NPC's pockets and yet its on the bottom of my list as a thief because its just far too risky and far to easy to end up losing money over gaining. Heck, even if the Light Finger's and/or Veil of Shadows gave you something like "X% chance on failure to not be seen" or "If you fail a pickpocket with a success rate over X% you remain unseen" on top of their current effects would go a long ways to helping so that a failure does not mean instantly getting caught. Pickpocketing just has a way of very quickly, and consistently, spiraling out of control.

Just my two cents on Pickpocketing in ESO. Perhaps I am missing something here but it just does not seem like its a rewarding activity to do outside of quests. Like I said, the Thieves guild quest that sends you to pick pocket 30 things successfully is by far one of the longest and most frustrating experiences that usually is less rewarding than the effort put into it. Compared to the repeatable Dark Brotherhood quest to go kill people, some times multiple people, it feels like I have very little/no control and it usually ends up costing more than it feels like it rewards. The time does not feel well rewarded to me.

Edit: Oh, and another thing, why is pickpocketing sleeping/lying targets seemingly impossible? You would think that pickpocketing a beggar who is lying down, implied they are sleeping, would be easy and yet the game some how does not know how to handle it. Every time I try to pickpocket someone who is lying down my character just moves in close and then never actually steals anything. No matter what angle I come in from it just won't pick pocket them. Very frustrating that the logically easiest targets can't even really be pickpocketed in addition to having really wonky/strange fields of detection.

Dusk_Coven

The possibility of a 100% success rate isn't good enough? 95% against guards is possible and running away from them is trivial.
Even if you get a fat bounty you can Sleep-to-Win! Just log out for the day and when you next log in tomorrow to play again, your bounty would have ticked down already.
Yes it's time consuming to position your toon, sneak up, blah blah blah but overall the Justice System is laughable.
What I think people who like Pickpocketing actually like *is* the risk (of which there is very little already if you choose your marks carefully). The "thrill" of possibly being caught and having to scramble. That RNG "excitement" of getting a decoration, motif page, furnishing plan, or gold treasure.

Indigogo

The caught rate seems so busted at times.

If you have to do it, kill a few dozen dragons and you'll be swimming in edicts to wipe the bounty away.

Byucknah

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

The possibility of a 100% success rate isn't good enough?

While I am not maxed out on light fingers just yet, currently 2/4 (as I said, at the top of my original post, I don't play ESO religiously and to add to that as of coming back I rolled the new necromancer class so I am still in the process of leveling) the highest I have seen as 95% AND I was told that was the cap for pickpocketing, just like in every other Elder Scrolls game where outside of modding the hard cap was 95% and you could never get a 100% success rate. From my understanding there would always be a 5% failure chance, which fair is not that big but how many NPC's actually have that high success chance? I don't know about you but I rarely find the 95% NPC's as it is not to mention you would be surprised how often I fail a pickpocketing attempt with them.

If that is not the case with ESO, if you can reach a 100% success rate in ESO unlike every other Elder Scrolls game, then that is good to know and will be helpful to have.

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

95% against guards is possible and running away from them is trivial.

I never said that running from guards wasn't trivial, though I have never seen a guard with a high success chance to pickpocket from either.

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

Even if you get a fat bounty you can Sleep-to-Win! Just log out for the day and when you next log in tomorrow to play again, your bounty would have ticked down already.

Is that good game design? "If you get a large bounty just stop playing for the rest of the day!"

I feel like a game system is pretty flawed when it promotes the idea to play less...

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

Yes it's time consuming to position your toon, sneak up, blah blah blah but overall the Justice System is laughable.

Meh. I feel like the justice system as a whole is fine for an MMO. Could it be better, more intricate? Heck yeah. Shoot, I would love to see the "go to jail" option and a way to sneak your way out haha. They could do a lot more with it honestly. With that said, that is kind of beside the point of this post.

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

What I think people who like Pickpocketing actually like--

Hold up, stopping on that thought for a moment. So you don't even like it or are indifferent on it yourself and are defending the system? You are not saying "What I think as someone who likes pickpocketing" but rather "What I think others who like it think" so then why defend it's current state? Is it just to be a contrarian?

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

What I think people who like Pickpocketing actually like *is* the risk. The "thrill" of possibly being caught and having to scramble.

Which I kind of talked about when comparing murdering someone compared to stealing from someone. The risk is always there BUT you have more control over it. Depending on how well you play your cards, waiting for the right moment or taking a risk, it feels like a risky action but it always feels like you are in control and if you fail/get caught its on you.

The reason I brought up the Dark Brotherhood and murdering with the Blade of Woe is because that situation IS thrilling and risky and can easily spiral out of control when you panic. On the other hand with pickpocketing you are never truly in control. No matter how perfectly you time it, no matter what your surroundings are, its always coming down to a dice roll for arguably the exact same payoff as flat out murdering them instead. So now you have two comparable systems where one gives the player more control over their outcome and is roughly equally rewarding compared to a system that no matter how good you as a player play it is purely in RNG's hand what the outcome will be.

In fact, another good example is stealing from lock boxes near merchants. With that you can directly influence your success or failure rate by watching what the patrols are like via a stakeout. That's another example of stealing where you are more in control compared to pickpocketing.

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

That RNG "excitement" of getting a decoration, motif page, furnishing plan, or gold treasure.

All of which can be found in crates, barrels, chests, Blade of Woe corpses, ect. That same level of reward can be acquired from other sources that are not RNG focused and more based off of how well you play. In fact, I would say the vast majority of my Crafting Patterns, Decorations, Motifs, Plans, and treasures come from stealing from objects over NPC's.

Indigogo wrote: »

The caught rate seems so busted at times.

If you have to do it, kill a few dozen dragons and you'll be swimming in edicts to wipe the bounty away.

Oh cool, Elsweyr drop edicts? I didn't know that. I have not played since Elsweyr came out so that's good to know. Thank you for the info, that will help out quite a bit.

Indigogo

Yep it's not a guaranteed drop but often enough! If you have sth elsweyr, join the zerg during prime time and it makes the farming easier.

ArielSira

You're at 2/4 light fingers, can't expect it to be perfect already.

https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Light_Fingers

Aznarb

This thread remember me a funny thing who happen to me when I was stealing thing in Gold Coast.
I got saw by a guard women, and the dialogue was so weird, I was running away and she was "Plz, stop, I beg you, come back.. Not again.."
With the actor voice so sad like she was so tired of this BS xD

I stop and payed, the trick worked on me...
I was sad for her and at the same time was laughing about this voice line ^^'

Actor are to strong for me, now I'm an honest citizen :<


Edit : typos

Dusk_Coven

re: 100% chance. Yes it's possible. Different targets lower your chance by different amounts though. Keep playing and experimenting.

re: Sleep-to-Win
Yes, it's stupid design. But apparently players also don't want the system toughened up either. I have suggested this before for the same reason that it doesn't make sense and contributes to the Justice system being laughable.

re: Defending the current state of Pickpocketing
It's already too easy but some people deliberately go for harder targets just to get certain drops. So for those who don't like it they can sort of skip it -- going back to the 100% chance on certain targets. For those who do like it, there's a reason. If that reason is thrill, then the current system provides that too, to a certain degree.
For people who want to just level up Thieves Guild, pickpocketing isn't even strictly necessary.

re: Blade of Woe
This is actually LESS risky. Same circumstance (sneak up on target) but with the Blade, success is guaranteed if the target is allowed to be bladed. So I would argue there's LESS thrill. Pickpocketing you can see the percentage and if it's less than 100% you know you might get discovered.
But Pickpocketing is still theoretically more rewarding because you can pick the target up to 3 times (in specific circumstances, more times). If you kill the target you get just the one loot drop (so what some people do is steal twice then Blade for the last loot item, bypassing the chance of being caught at pickpocketing that last item completely). And if you have good skill and choose the correct target type, you can still get 100% on even the second pickpocket attempt.

re: decorations and motifs "all of which can be found in..."
No. Some are specifically from pickpocketing (e.g., Vvardenfell dunmer House motif pages). I'm not sure if Blade of Woe can get those to drop as well because it's "stolen loot" but pickpocketing would give you 3 chances versus the 1 loot drop from Blade of Woe.

Everstorm

100% is indeed possible. The difficulty rating depends on the "class" of the target. Beggars and dockworkers are easiest (daggerfall docks is a nice spot) and nobles etc are the hardest I think. Nobles will give better loot, risk vs reward. You may want to stick to stealing from containers and stuff and sell/lounder to get your Legerdemain up. With max skill the percentages on a beggar are usually 100/100/95.

Nevertheless I agree with your statement that it's easier to get away with murder than with pickpocketing. Being immediately fully proficient with the blade of woe is kindda odd. NPCs only reacting to the actual murder but not to dead bodies lying on the ground also makes it way too easy.

Robo_Hobo

Pickpocketing can become trivial if you build for it. And you can definitely get to 100% success rate, in-fact, for low-tier NPCs as a Khajiit player with all passives, you still have 100% success rate even without waiting for the patience bonus, and even after pickpocketing them once before (the chance degrades each time you pickpocket them up to 3 times before resetting in a bit)

If you wear all the stealth bonus armor sets in the game as a Khajiit you can max out the stealth radius bonus to the point that NPCs can no longer see you unless they're walking and walk directly into you for a second in front of you. (Standing NPCs can't, ever, even if you're sneak into them in front of their face, with that setup)

If you're a vampire then it becomes even easier since you can sneak faster (with more sneak benefits coming in Greymoor) and if you're a nightblade you get a speed bonus while not detected and have cloak, which can help you escape if you ever get caught. The guards do have anti-stealth abilities but you can even negate those if you learn how to.

You don't have to be a Vampire Khajiit Nightblade to be good at pickpocketing, but each of those things brings benefits that make it easier. Pickpocketing and stealing in ESO is something that takes practice, but you can master with some effort.

VoidCommander

It is good that it has a high rate of failure. I remember when pickpocketing was first introduced to the game. The average prices for things like motifs and highly desirable weapons almost quadrupled in a matter of weeks due to the massive influx of in game gold that was coming seemingly out of nowhere. If it was too easy, then anyone who wasn't a thief would be very hard pressed to afford anything.

Mindcr0w

The millions in my bank from getting Black Market Mogul on multiple characters disagree vehemently with the premise of this thread.

ArchangelIsraphel

One thing you may want to consider doing, rather than doing the pick-pocketing dailies, is to focus soley on Covetous Countess dailies from the thieves guild if you are looking to make pick pocketing easier on yourself. Over time, these quests become pure profit, and I'll explain why. It all boils down to the rewards.

You probably already know this, but you can open and close the quest board in the den to keep getting a different quest. Quests for the Covetous Countess always start with "Esteemed thieves, I need your help..."

This quest will involve you needing to pick pocket- at first. You will need to find, and launder, the correct items that the various versions of the quests call for, then deliver them to the Countess before returning to the den for your reward. They are usually:

Drinkware, Utensils, and Dishes
Cosmetics, Linens, and Wardrobe Accessories
Ritual Objects and Oddities
Writings and Maps

I advise that you only launder white items, so that you are still able to profit from the quests gold reward at the end. However, if you still want to do pick-pocketing quests, you can receive stacks of 10 white, already laundered items in the "Large Laundered Shipment" box that comes as a part of your reward. Instead of selling these off to an NPC, you can profit by saving them to fulfill the Covetous Countess's requirements. This means you can do the quest at no real cost to you, because you no longer have to put out money to launder the goods yourself.

At first, you will need to build up these resources, but eventually, you can keep doing the Covetous Countess repeatedly, and the quest will not only provide profit for you, but continue to fulfill its own requirements by continuing to provide you with stacks of items in the Large Laundered Shipment crates that you do not have to launder yourself.

A fully leveled character receives 332 gold from the quest, which only requires 3 white items worth 40 gold a piece, so you are trading in something of 120 gold value for 212 extra gold, at no out of pocket cost to you. But the real boon here comes in the form of Counterfeit Pardon Edicts, which you will receive each time you do the quest. The edicts will get rid of 500 gold worth of your bounty, and if you have set aside enough resources to repeatedly do the Covetous Countess, you can stack up quite a supply of these to make shaking off a bounty very easy when pickpocketing higher value marks.

This also makes the process of leveling up the Thieves guild on alts easier, as your main can provide laundered goods for them to spam this quest for points by passing them through the bank.

This was some of the best advice I was given by other thieves early on, as it meant I no longer had to worry about the inconvenience of a bounty.

Everest_Lionheart

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

One thing you may want to consider doing, rather than doing the pick-pocketing dailies, is to focus soley on Covetous Countess dailies from the thieves guild if you are looking to make pick pocketing easier on yourself. Over time, these quests become pure profit, and I'll explain why. It all boils down to the rewards.

You probably already know this, but you can open and close the quest board in the den to keep getting a different quest. Quests for the Covetous Countess always start with "Esteemed thieves, I need your help..."

This quest will involve you needing to pick pocket- at first. You will need to find, and launder, the correct items that the various versions of the quests call for, then deliver them to the Countess before returning to the den for your reward. They are usually:

Drinkware, Utensils, and Dishes
Cosmetics, Linens, and Wardrobe Accessories
Ritual Objects and Oddities
Writings and Maps

I advise that you only launder white items, so that you are still able to profit from the quests gold reward at the end. However, if you still want to do pick-pocketing quests, you can receive stacks of 10 white, already laundered items in the "Large Laundered Shipment" box that comes as a part of your reward. Instead of selling these off to an NPC, you can profit by saving them to fulfill the Covetous Countess's requirements. This means you can do the quest at no real cost to you, because you no longer have to put out money to launder the goods yourself.

At first, you will need to build up these resources, but eventually, you can keep doing the Covetous Countess repeatedly, and the quest will not only provide profit for you, but continue to fulfill its own requirements by continuing to provide you with stacks of items in the Large Laundered Shipment crates that you do not have to launder yourself.

A fully leveled character receives 332 gold from the quest, which only requires 3 white items worth 40 gold a piece, so you are trading in something of 120 gold value for 212 extra gold, at no out of pocket cost to you. But the real boon here comes in the form of Counterfeit Pardon Edicts, which you will receive each time you do the quest. The edicts will get rid of 500 gold worth of your bounty, and if you have set aside enough resources to repeatedly do the Covetous Countess, you can stack up quite a supply of these to make shaking off a bounty very easy when pickpocketing higher value marks.

This also makes the process of leveling up the Thieves guild on alts easier, as your main can provide laundered goods for them to spam this quest for points by passing them through the bank.

This was some of the best advice I was given by other thieves early on, as it meant I no longer had to worry about the inconvenience of a bounty.

What the what? Brah you just made my day. I have been tiring of some of these crazy thieves quests, one took me several days to finish because I kept getting sidetracked too, my own dumb fault though with 17/25 quests open so had to clear that backlog!

Gonna start setting this up tonight and advance my TG finally.

Amisce

Always carry edicts!

Edicts are items found in The Elder Scrolls Online: Thieves Guild and The Elder Scrolls Online: Dark Brotherhood. They are used to remove Bounty and Heat. The edicts appear in three types: Counterfeit Pardon Edict, Leniency Edict and Grand Amnesty Edict.

Acquisition

Remains-Silent can give Counterfeit Pardon Edict and Leniency Edict every day.
Three Counterfeit Pardon Edicts are given at 14 level in Level Up Advisor.
Leniency Edict is a reward for completion of Signed in Blood.
Grand Amnesty Edict is a reward for completion of Prison Break.
Leniency Edict or Counterfeit Pardon Edict can be found in Thieves Trove.
Counterfeit Pardon Edict is given as a reward for Thieves Guild daily quests:
Plucking Fingers
Crime Spree
The Covetous Countess
Under Our Thumb
Idle Hands

See also: the Monk's Disguise from Remains-Silent

This simple cowled robe allows the wearer to temporarily conceal Bounty status from Guards and blend in with passersby. The disguise disappears if witnessed committing a crime, if the disguise is unequipped, if the wearer dies, or after 5 minutes.

Dusk_Coven

Amisce wrote: »

Always carry edicts!

Until you are good. Then they are just dead weight. Never Launder them. It's wasted money because eventually you'll just accumulate them and never use them.
But in the early stages -- use them like water.

Some people even actually like the "thrill" of sneaking around with a Bounty.

Jaraal

Some good advice here, OP.


If you have six max level Legerdemain/Thieves Guild/Dark Brotherhood characters (and some skill which comes with practice), you can make 120k a day just selling green, blue, and purple treasures to a fence. And that doesn't even take into consideration what you can earn from laundered motifs, furnishings, and furnishing plans you can sell to players.


Just get out there and do it until you are a pro. We all started out failing and struggling, so stick with it.

Lysette

Indigogo wrote: »

The caught rate seems so busted at times.

If you have to do it, kill a few dozen dragons and you'll be swimming in edicts to wipe the bounty away.

There are plenty of thief troves as well out in the world - I am swimming in edicts to wipe any bounty - but I have as well no fun picking pockets, the risk/reward relation isn't in favor of thieves.

Lysette

Jaraal wrote: »

Some good advice here, OP.


If you have six max level Legerdemain/Thieves Guild/Dark Brotherhood characters (and some skill which comes with practice), you can make 120k a day just selling green, blue, and purple treasures to a fence. And that doesn't even take into consideration what you can earn from laundered motifs, furnishings, and furnishing plans you can sell to players.


Just get out there and do it until you are a pro. We all started out failing and struggling, so stick with it.

Ok, then i will continue giving it a try.