Do you want to see updates to the justice/thieving system?

Gray_howling_parrot

Title - if so, what would you add/remove/etc?

Tandor

No, it's fine as it is. Specifically, I wouldn't want the introduction of PvP penalties for PvE crimes - as has sometimes been suggested and firmly rejected by ZOS.

I'd also hate to see anything that increased the issue of a criminal reputation being attached to all characters on an account through last year's switch to account-wide achievements. Players in any RPG, including multiplayer ones, often differentiate between those characters that are good and those that are neutral or evil. I had to abandon my original accounts precisely because they included lawful good characters that I could not accept being associated in a role-playing game with achievements relating to other characters' actions for the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood.

Gray_howling_parrot

Tandor wrote: »

No, it's fine as it is. Specifically, I wouldn't want the introduction of PvP penalties for PvE crimes - as has sometimes been suggested and firmly rejected by ZOS.

I'd also hate to see anything that increased the issue of a criminal reputation being attached to all characters on an account through last year's switch to account-wide achievements. Players in any RPG, including multiplayer ones, often differentiate between those characters that are good and those that are neutral or evil. I had to abandon my original accounts precisely because they included lawful good characters that I could not accept being associated in a role-playing game with achievements relating to other characters' actions for the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood.

I don't see there ever being even a point in making criminal reputation and stuff account-wide... don't think anyone would suggest that either. Things i'd be interested in, since it hasn't really been updated at all since the game came out, would be:

1. Removing the ceiling for fenced goods in a day - think it's silly that there's a cap. If you want to make your living in game from this - go for it. Especially on PC's market, diversifying gold income is a plus in my book.
2. Adding some sort of true bounty system where players can engage in a risk-reward system where if a player accumulates a large enough bounty, a bounty quest arises for players within the zone where they can search for and hunt that player. If they kill the bounty, they get some sort of reward and if they get killed, the bounty is lifted or heavily decreased. Player with the bounty on their head cannot leave the zone until the bounty is gone, decreased past a certain point, or no one (player-wise is hunting them)
3. Ability to kill guards and a GTA-like system where more and more guards/soldiers could come in and search buildings within the city for you.

Tandor

Jaustink wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

No, it's fine as it is. Specifically, I wouldn't want the introduction of PvP penalties for PvE crimes - as has sometimes been suggested and firmly rejected by ZOS.

I'd also hate to see anything that increased the issue of a criminal reputation being attached to all characters on an account through last year's switch to account-wide achievements. Players in any RPG, including multiplayer ones, often differentiate between those characters that are good and those that are neutral or evil. I had to abandon my original accounts precisely because they included lawful good characters that I could not accept being associated in a role-playing game with achievements relating to other characters' actions for the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood.

I don't see there ever being even a point in making criminal reputation and stuff account-wide... don't think anyone would suggest that either. Things i'd be interested in, since it hasn't really been updated at all since the game came out, would be:

1. Removing the ceiling for fenced goods in a day - think it's silly that there's a cap. If you want to make your living in game from this - go for it. Especially on PC's market, diversifying gold income is a plus in my book.
2. Adding some sort of true bounty system where players can engage in a risk-reward system where if a player accumulates a large enough bounty, a bounty quest arises for players within the zone where they can search for and hunt that player. If they kill the bounty, they get some sort of reward and if they get killed, the bounty is lifted or heavily decreased. Player with the bounty on their head cannot leave the zone until the bounty is gone, decreased past a certain point, or no one (player-wise is hunting them)
3. Ability to kill guards and a GTA-like system where more and more guards/soldiers could come in and search buildings within the city for you.

The first point is covered by the skill line. Removing the cap completely would generate too much gold in the game.

Your second point is precisely what they said will never happen. It's too open to abuse. PvP and PvE must be kept separate, or an awful lot of players will quit the game. ZOS have maintained that position.

As for the third point, there's a lot of opposition to guards being killable based on other games like WoW where entering a city littered with corpses is a major turn-off to many players. Quite a lot complain about the Blade of Woe in this respect.

I quite understand that some players (not necessarily the OP but others who would relish these suggestions) would like a game in which they can run around with organised guild runs slaughtering all the NPCs, or simply attacking other players who are running PvE activities as level 5 characters trying to earn some gold while they're elite PvPers in gold PvP gear with 3,000 CPs. ESO is not that game. It would be commercial suicide for ZOS to make it so.

phaneub17_ESO

Mythic tier of stolen goods, Unique and CURSED! Once a stolen Mythic item is acquired it cannot be removed from your inventory by normal means, these sit in your inventory for a set period of time before they eventually fade away. They grant you special buffs and debuffs that affect your criminal activity.

Such as an unbreakable lockpick that allows you to pick as many locks as you want without ever snapping, but it lowers the quality of loot the locked boxes and chests you pick with it by one level (Master goes down to Advanced).

A sparkly ring that increases your chance at pickpocketing by 30%, but increases the chance of being caught by 20%.

A velvet glove increases the quality of stolen items by 25%, but increases Guard detect and approach range by 33%.

Tandor

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

Mythic tier of stolen goods, Unique and CURSED! Once a stolen Mythic item is acquired it cannot be removed from your inventory by normal means, these sit in your inventory for a set period of time before they eventually fade away. They grant you special buffs and debuffs that affect your criminal activity.

Such as an unbreakable lockpick that allows you to pick as many locks as you want without ever snapping, but it lowers the quality of loot the locked boxes and chests you pick with it by one level (Master goes down to Advanced).

A sparkly ring that increases your chance at pickpocketing by 30%, but increases the chance of being caught by 20%.

A velvet glove increases the quality of stolen items by 25%, but increases Guard detect and approach range by 33%.

Those sorts of suggestions are fine, they don't impact in the same way that the OP was proposing. While I'm happy with the way the Justice System works at present, I'm not opposed to enhancing it as long as that remains within PvE, and I do dislike the way in which it was swept up in the AwA changes.

fleetingyouth_ESO

I would just like to see it expanded in general, with new achievements, more quest options, etc. The fact that we dont get more guild content each expansion has always blown my mind. Its probably the easiest content to add a few quests to each time and would greatly expand guild play. x

I do think that a bounty system could work if it was tied to guilds, similar to faction wars in older games. That way guilds who wanted to participate could advertise it and players who wanted to opt-in could join those guilds. Since we have 5 guild options it would allow players to be part of the gameplay they want and not others. Similar to how trading guilds work now. If you want to participate in trading you join a trade guild if you don't you don't have to do either.

Maybe players in a guild with bounties enabled could get a notification when another player hits a certain bounty number. Players in those guilds could even work together to track bounties down. The entire system could be opt-in simply by choosing to be in a guild that chooses to participate.

I realize eso will most likely never have a system like this but just throwing out ideas of how it could work and not impact all players. To most players, it would look like dualing does now in a city.

kargen27

". Removing the ceiling for fenced goods in a day - think it's silly that there's a cap. If you want to make your living in game from this - go for it. Especially on PC's market, diversifying gold income is a plus in my book."

This is like asking for unlimited writ crafts. We don't need more gold being added to the game.

LunaFlora

it's fine

karthrag_inak

Khajiit would enjoy more guild missions for all the npc pve guilds. More variety, more maps. More heist and sacrament maps would be delightful.

Supreme_Atromancer

I'd love to see the system improved and/or expanded.

Rogue-y play is self-evidently a core power fantasy in RPGs in general, and TES specifically, and anything they can do to tap into that would be a good addition imo.

I like OP's suggestions: the cap seems unnecessary.

I think the PvP aspect would be immensely fun but I trust ZOS' judgement on this- there's very vocal resistance to the idea of forced PvP, or mixing PvP and PvE. Disappointing, but understandable.

More dailies would be good. I like Heists; new maps and new incentives would be nice. One question I have is if I can do as many dungeons as I want every day, why can't I do as many heists as I want?

I'd like to see more content for all the traditional TES guilds in general. Whether that is more story/quest stuff, or just daily quests.

Finally, and probably a bit more radical, something I've mentioned before- I think some of the mechanics developed for Heists- lantern guards, hiding spots- could be implemented in dungeons. There's already a sort of minigame of trying to "skip trash": making people work for it could be a cool way to break out of formulaic gameplay.

rpa

If pvp bounty would happen (because management feels there are too many players playing the game now?), anyone opting to bounty hunting should also be pickpocketable and suspect to Blade of Woe. Pickpocketing or killing and looting a bounty hunter might reward gold proportional to bounties they have gathered and added to their taxes paid from earned gold... Throw in a small change of some motif page with no other drop as incentive...

Jaraal

kargen27 wrote: »

". Removing the ceiling for fenced goods in a day - think it's silly that there's a cap. If you want to make your living in game from this - go for it. Especially on PC's market, diversifying gold income is a plus in my book."

This is like asking for unlimited writ crafts. We don't need more gold being added to the game.

I always find this debate amusing, because there are far more productive ways to make gold than running around trying to steal treasures of which the vast majority are worth 40 gold. If you're lucky you can find some worth 100 gold, super lucky 250 gold, and maybe once every few hours find one worth 1500 gold.

A player with zero time invested in leveling up Legerdemain, Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood, CP, etc can run around harvesting stuff off the ground and make 5-10 times as much gold with zero risk. Should we limit the number of materials one can harvest to a maximum of 140 (with several days of leveling skills) because we're afraid of too much gold entering the economy?

Fencing item limits are archaic and unnecessary. If people like to spend most of their time stealing, why put up arbitrary roadblocks to their fun?

TX12001rwb17_ESO

They could add PvP elements to it, simply make it so you can collect a Bounty Hunter Daily that requires you to challenge to a dual and defeat the criminal.

Faulgor

The last time we saw proper rewards added to thieving was in Morrowind, where you can still pickpocket the Dunmer House motifs, and tangentially treasure chests drop Buoyant Armiger. I'd like to see more of that make a return.

Cirran

Tandor wrote: »

Jaustink wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

As for the third point, there's a lot of opposition to guards being killable based on other games like WoW where entering a city littered with corpses is a major turn-off to many players. Quite a lot complain about the Blade of Woe in this respect.

All of the starting main cities like Dagger Falls look like a psychopath is loose in the city. NPC's dead bodies all over the place. Some of which are placed in patterns or stacked like cord wood.

This is absolutely off-putting, and guards just ignore it all and watch the murderer do their thing.

If anything it is TOO easy to do this and there is not enough negatives in the justice system.

Ciran

AnduinTryggva

Jaustink wrote: »

Title - if so, what would you add/remove/etc?

What I miss are the jail breaking challenge what we had in skyrim. I know that it might be difficult to implement in an MMORG but why not have these jail breaking challenges for minor faults (like up to bounty level two). You accept a jail sentence from which you can try to escape.

If you succeed you can steal back your stuff including the stuff that you illegally had in your possession. If you fail someone from the thieves guild, from the assassins guild, a companion or somebody you have helped in the past comes to free you. As a counterbalance you get 5000 gold bounty or so.

RaddlemanNumber7

Add a tickable option in game play settings to "report" crimes our character witnesses, giving bounty to perps in the same way that NPC witnesses do. Some of my characters are the sort of people who would do that.

Necrelios

Turn the guards into Veteran Level target dummies that we can handle with the help of a few very well geared random passer-byes, but give them a fast spawn rate so we have to escape before more show up with the trebuchets and cavalry.

Kiralyn2000

Jaraal wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

". Removing the ceiling for fenced goods in a day - think it's silly that there's a cap. If you want to make your living in game from this - go for it. Especially on PC's market, diversifying gold income is a plus in my book."

This is like asking for unlimited writ crafts. We don't need more gold being added to the game.

I always find this debate amusing, because there are far more productive ways to make gold than running around trying to steal treasures of which the vast majority are worth 40 gold. If you're lucky you can find some worth 100 gold, super lucky 250 gold, and maybe once every few hours find one worth 1500 gold.

A player with zero time invested in leveling up Legerdemain, Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood, CP, etc can run around harvesting stuff off the ground and make 5-10 times as much gold with zero risk. Should we limit the number of materials one can harvest to a maximum of 140 (with several days of leveling skills) because we're afraid of too much gold entering the economy??

Harvested goods vendor for even worse prices than stolen goods. Full stacks of refined materials are only 800 gold, and would take a lot longer to gather than 800g worth of fenced items.

(if you're talking about guild trader prices, that's not "gold entering the economy", it's just moving back and forth between players.)

Jaraal

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

". Removing the ceiling for fenced goods in a day - think it's silly that there's a cap. If you want to make your living in game from this - go for it. Especially on PC's market, diversifying gold income is a plus in my book."

This is like asking for unlimited writ crafts. We don't need more gold being added to the game.

I always find this debate amusing, because there are far more productive ways to make gold than running around trying to steal treasures of which the vast majority are worth 40 gold. If you're lucky you can find some worth 100 gold, super lucky 250 gold, and maybe once every few hours find one worth 1500 gold.

A player with zero time invested in leveling up Legerdemain, Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood, CP, etc can run around harvesting stuff off the ground and make 5-10 times as much gold with zero risk. Should we limit the number of materials one can harvest to a maximum of 140 (with several days of leveling skills) because we're afraid of too much gold entering the economy??

Harvested goods vendor for even worse prices than stolen goods. Full stacks of refined materials are only 800 gold, and would take a lot longer to gather than 800g worth of fenced items.

(if you're talking about guild trader prices, that's not "gold entering the economy", it's just moving back and forth between players.)

Well I can tell you that there are a lot more gold sinks in the game than gold that would be generated by treasures. And I hardly think players spend their game time focused on how much gold they can earn from NPC merchants. That's like saying that getting a chromium plating from a daily writ is only worth 100 gold to a vendor.

When I steal, my main goal is to loot things that players will pay a lot of gold for. The gold from treasures is just a bonus in case I don't steal any big ticket items. But it's not reasonable for ZOS to try and cap my activity by saying that once you've stolen and sold 140 items per day you're having some sort of negative effect on the game and must be blocked. Why don't they also put a cap of selling 140 weapons and armor looted from killing monsters? Those are also vendor gold (29 to 200+ per piece) from thin air items, are they not?

Gnesnig

Jaustink wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

1. Removing the ceiling for fenced goods in a day - think it's silly that there's a cap. If you want to make your living in game from this - go for it. Especially on PC's market, diversifying gold income is a plus in my book.

So, fencing stuff levels legerdemain. If you'd not have a cap, you would remove the experience from it else you can level it to max in a day. You'd also have to replace 4 skill points in the skill line with something else.
Secondly, from a roleplaying perspective it doesn't make sense. Fencing is not the same as trading. Law is investigating, shipping routes are few and always changing, reputation of a bounty means it always has to cool down before being off loaded and it's not smart to resell in the same area. So the cap makes sense.
Thirdly, pickpockets can make a living, but they're not going to be rich, in real life and in game. You just have to limit your spending, but as a career pick-pocket you also have zero expenses. Now, if you want to fight, buy gear, do housing, do PVP as a career pick-pocket and then complain you can't - you're complaining about living too large, not that the game doesn't support career pick-pockets..

Amottica

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

Mythic tier of stolen goods, Unique and CURSED! Once a stolen Mythic item is acquired it cannot be removed from your inventory by normal means, these sit in your inventory for a set period of time before they eventually fade away. They grant you special buffs and debuffs that affect your criminal activity.

Such as an unbreakable lockpick that allows you to pick as many locks as you want without ever snapping, but it lowers the quality of loot the locked boxes and chests you pick with it by one level (Master goes down to Advanced).

A sparkly ring that increases your chance at pickpocketing by 30%, but increases the chance of being caught by 20%.

A velvet glove increases the quality of stolen items by 25%, but increases Guard detect and approach range by 33%.

These could be interesting and a much better direction than was suggested by the OP.

Jaraal

Gnesnig wrote: »

So, fencing stuff levels legerdemain. If you'd not have a cap, you would remove the experience from it else you can level it to max in a day. You'd also have to replace 4 skill points in the skill line with something else.

Fair enough. So why not remove the cap once you reach Legerdemain rank 20?

Saint-Ange

I'd like an enforced justice system because thieves and assassins have it too easy at the moment and the game feels more like a high fantasy GTA with them crouching and stilling everywhere and NPC walking on multiple iterations of their murdered bodies.
I don't want a PvP based justice system nor a bounty one but I'll quote below one of my comments on the matter:

Saint-Ange wrote: »

Even during the medieval or antiquity periods taking into your hands, as a commoner, the killing of a bandit or murderer made you one yourself so that's a no for the PvP part.

For now what works:
Guards see the thief or the NPC succeeds to give the alarm.

What does not work:
We players witness robbery or blood crime, we can't give the alarm nor go to guards and point them in the direction.

What could work:

• Invisibility is now activated toward other players in PvE like in PvP unless in the same group/raid.
• 1 Quickslot item/action: 3 actions that auto switch sequencialy. Eyeing, Alarm, Point.
  
• I witness a crime: I target the thief with Eyeing: I get the buff Witness linked to the thief ID for a duration.
• Direct interaction: I have in my line of sight both the thief and a guard then I target the guard (Alarm) then the thief (Point): the guard pursuits for a duration.
• Tracking: I know where the thief hides then I find and target a guard, use Alarm: short dialog with RNG: agree/disagree/intimidate (can backfire)/persuade. If success the guard follow me for a duration until I point at the thief or the duration ends.
• Outlaw's refuges remain out of reach.

LadyLethalla

One thing I think would be cool is if your character's bounty could reduce quicker say by doing a dolmen. Sure you may have picked a pocket or two but if you're doing a community service like dealing with Daedra, why not reduce the bounty as a 'reward'.

Yeah yeah I know, just wait it out, log off, use a counterfeit edict, yada yada Yada...

Kisakee

Jaraal wrote: »

Gnesnig wrote: »

So, fencing stuff levels legerdemain. If you'd not have a cap, you would remove the experience from it else you can level it to max in a day. You'd also have to replace 4 skill points in the skill line with something else.

Fair enough. So why not remove the cap once you reach Legerdemain rank 20?

Because everyone who is suggesting something like this has absolutely no idea what they are talking about. This took me 25 minutes, i started with an empty inventory:



And all of you having "good" ideas about bounty, wanting something that scales with it or whatever - try to balance someone like me:


And that's not even my character with the highest count. Good luck.

Credible_Joe

• Add overland set equipment to the container loot pool, as well as environmental equipment. There should be a small chance for random weapons and armor you see in the environment to be high-quality, c160 set items to liquidate or use, especially in trespass areas.
• Opt-in player justice system. I REALLY like the above suggestion by @fleetingyouth_ESO , tying justice PvP to guilds. Join a bounty hunting guild, or a criminal guild for higher-risk, higher-reward gameplay entirely isolated from general population.
• Mortal guards with HUGE bounty & heat penalties that can't be erased by a fence.
• Disguise system. If you obscure your face, your bounty should be associated with whatever face covering you're wearing. If you get caught, they find your disguises on your person and combine each identities' bounties.
• Localized bounty tracking-- it makes no sense for crimes in Auridon to be relevant in Eastmarch.
• Lastly, jail. Should be an option not to pay, and to confine the character to jail, giving them the option to break out later, get busted out by friends, or just wait out your sentence (1 week max game time. Petty crimes can be waited out in minutes or hours, it'd take a bounty of 1 mill or more to accumulate a day).

Lot of potential for depth in the justice system. Not holding my breath for any of these things with the codebase work being done, but this is my pipe dream, more or less.

I should note, that until I read fleetingyouth's suggestion, I was firmly against overland PvP in this way, citing potential for griefing like ZOS and most others' opinions. I really do think it's an elegant solution to the problem.

spartaxoxo

Saint-Ange wrote: »

I'd like an enforced justice system because thieves and assassins have it too easy at the moment and the game feels more like a high fantasy GTA with them crouching and stilling everywhere and NPC walking on multiple iterations of their murdered bodies.
I don't want a PvP based justice system nor a bounty one but I'll quote below one of my comments on the matter:

Saint-Ange wrote: »

Even during the medieval or antiquity periods taking into your hands, as a commoner, the killing of a bandit or murderer made you one yourself so that's a no for the PvP part.

For now what works:
Guards see the thief or the NPC succeeds to give the alarm.

What does not work:
We players witness robbery or blood crime, we can't give the alarm nor go to guards and point them in the direction.

What could work:

• Invisibility is now activated toward other players in PvE like in PvP unless in the same group/raid.
• 1 Quickslot item/action: 3 actions that auto switch sequencialy. Eyeing, Alarm, Point.
  
• I witness a crime: I target the thief with Eyeing: I get the buff Witness linked to the thief ID for a duration.
• Direct interaction: I have in my line of sight both the thief and a guard then I target the guard (Alarm) then the thief (Point): the guard pursuits for a duration.
• Tracking: I know where the thief hides then I find and target a guard, use Alarm: short dialog with RNG: agree/disagree/intimidate (can backfire)/persuade. If success the guard follow me for a duration until I point at the thief or the duration ends.
• Outlaw's refuges remain out of reach.

This is the only bounty system I've read I can get behind. As long as being witnessed doesn't prevent from using stealth to my advantage. Also they should do this and they make that Thieves Guild passive where there are alternative helpers to shuttle you to the outlaw's refuge last a little longer so I actually have a chance of making it to them.

Kisakee

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Saint-Ange wrote: »

I'd like an enforced justice system because thieves and assassins have it too easy at the moment and the game feels more like a high fantasy GTA with them crouching and stilling everywhere and NPC walking on multiple iterations of their murdered bodies.
I don't want a PvP based justice system nor a bounty one but I'll quote below one of my comments on the matter:

Saint-Ange wrote: »

Even during the medieval or antiquity periods taking into your hands, as a commoner, the killing of a bandit or murderer made you one yourself so that's a no for the PvP part.

For now what works:
Guards see the thief or the NPC succeeds to give the alarm.

What does not work:
We players witness robbery or blood crime, we can't give the alarm nor go to guards and point them in the direction.

What could work:

• Invisibility is now activated toward other players in PvE like in PvP unless in the same group/raid.
• 1 Quickslot item/action: 3 actions that auto switch sequencialy. Eyeing, Alarm, Point.
  
• I witness a crime: I target the thief with Eyeing: I get the buff Witness linked to the thief ID for a duration.
• Direct interaction: I have in my line of sight both the thief and a guard then I target the guard (Alarm) then the thief (Point): the guard pursuits for a duration.
• Tracking: I know where the thief hides then I find and target a guard, use Alarm: short dialog with RNG: agree/disagree/intimidate (can backfire)/persuade. If success the guard follow me for a duration until I point at the thief or the duration ends.
• Outlaw's refuges remain out of reach.

This is the only bounty system I've read I can get behind. As long as being witnessed doesn't prevent from using stealth to my advantage. Also they should do this and they make that Thieves Guild passive where there are alternative helpers to shuttle you to the outlaw's refuge last a little longer so I actually have a chance of making it to them.

A complete useless system as guards are nothing but a nuisance if you know how to handle them. In fact i don't even try to avoid them most of the time but jump in, do whatever i want and run away while multiple of them are chasing me. It's nothing but a waste of time for anyone pointing a finger to me, i wouldn't even care.

Kisakee

Also guards are nothing but a joke in this game: