Thieves Guild Suggestion - Making it all about stealth and thievery in new zone and competitive

demacabre · April 2014

Thieves Guild Suggestion

My suggestion is to make thievery and the guild a meaningful and dynamic addition to the Elder Scrolls Online world. Rather than just giving quests to steal something from the regular world map and dungeons, I submit making a new zone: Sprawling Residential zones for major cities.

The Residential zones will be a separate map and instance only available at night. This is where most of the npcs live and work and may have some landmarks. For the most part, there is no enemy monsters or hostile npcs here as these are relatively safe areas.

What is here is watchful guards and locked houses.

The players may scour the city utilizing lock picking, disguises, and grappling items to break into houses, stores, and buildings. While in this area, players will receive a new loot bag filled with all the tools they have acquired and to store their stolen loot. This bag, tools, and loot are only accessible in these special residential area. All the stolen loot is cashed in before exiting the zone that increases the Thieves' Guild Level.

The basic goal is to not get caught by guards and to competitively steal while other players are on the map. Some places may be burglarized already and empty. Some players may call the guards attention to another player to get them out of the game.

So the guards... if they catch you and reduce your health to zero, it ends the instance as the player "goes to jail". The guard's attack and armor stat are scaled to a point where combat shouldn't happen.

Going to jail means that any loot you have is confiscated and you are locked out of the Residential Zone for a set amount of time based on what stolen items you have on you. You immediately return to the normal game with a lock out timer before you can re enter.

The gameplay should be about stealth and subterfuge based on the current systems. If a player kills a guard or resident, three things might happen:
1. Their stealth score is lessened as the Guards are now actively looking for a murderer and residents are now more alarmed.
2. Should they get captured, they are locked out of the Residential areas for much longer.
3. Should they not get captured and end their time in the zone voluntarily by turning in their loot to the Thieves Guild, they get less return as the Guild disapproves of killing.

In short, this is not about combat and the system should make it a last resort.

What do you think?

Memnock · April 2014

All the above , would introduce a new element to the game, the idea is interesting , but i am not sure how it would be implemented , as it requires a separate instance of a city a writing a type of behavior for the guards and for the citizens.
All in all , a nice concept , but for it to be implemented we would have to wait for a while

ArgonianAssassin · April 2014

I like this idea, the thief's guild should definitely be about sneaking, stealth, and theft, being detected by guards or caught stealing should have consequences, I like the idea you propose of having a residential area full of npc houses and stores to rob, with no mobs but patrolling guards. I was sorely disappointed with Skyrim's thief's guild, it was all about dungeon crawling and monster slaying rather than stealth and robbery. I'm not a knight, I'm not a hero, I'm not a wizard, I'm a thief and I should be acting like one. I don't care how long it takes to get this implemented, the thief's guild is worthy of such a patch. My greatest fear is that it, again, will be all about monster slaying and dungeon crawling, not thievery. PS: I think it's weird I can just walk into people's houses, people need to keep their doors locked, and I like the idea you suggest of having to use disguises and lock picks to get around, and into places.

demacabre · April 2014

Thanks for the feedback.

I definitely think it should be something more than "Go to X Location, kill these mobs, and click this item to place it in your inventory, and return to wait for your next quest." It really makes it no different than regular quests and not thief like.

I'd love there to be other things happening in the proposed Residential area that thieves can crash. Dinner Parties in lavish manners and castle to infiltrate and sneak out of the reception area to the vaults.

Don the disguise of a Mage's Guild researcher to descend into an active ruins to find an old relic. Even when you by pass all the guards and trick the research team, the unexplored parts of the ruins have traps and riddles.

Plant incriminating evidence on a local official that is threatening the guild.

I mean there is potential and it would take time. I am willing to wait to get something more than a typical kill and fetch quest line. I think by having this off the world map and rooted in newer residential instances gives it a new feel that's like pvp for stealth/stealing.

ArgonianAssassin · April 2014

You really should work for some game company, I love this idea, picturing your first proposed idea in my head, of the lavish mansion during the party reminds me of a mission in dishonored, and that's what I want to see, when I do the dark brotherhood quests and the thief's guild quests, I want to feel like I'm playing a different game where the entire goal is stealth, subterfuge, sabotage and theft, that's what I want to see, before Zeni starts making these quest lines, they should play around in Thief, and Dishonored to see how it should be done. Oh I so hope Zeni takes a look at this thread and considers some of these things, but I just know I'm setting myself up for disappointment, if anything the thief's guild will most likely focus on dungeon crawling and monster slaying and maybe sabotaging the enemy factions. I'm also most curious to see how they handle adding in these guilds, seeing as how the fighters guild and mages guild is a over arching stoyrline from level 10, to around 45, will they just shoehorn these new guilds at that point or will it be exclusive 50++ content? I feel like the Thief's guild would be better as 10-50 content like the other guilds because as a thief, not worrying about fighting enemies, the quests would always be constant, regardless of level, all you have to do is avoid guards, sneak around, loot the object, get out, and getting out is a big part of being an assassin/thief, obviously, if the quests just end as you taking a portal or something ,that'd be incredibly anti-climatic, one of the most exciting parts of thievery and assassination is finding your escape route.

Sorry for the wall of text, just had to get that all out of the way, and I really hope Zeni doesn't drop the ball on this one, they could do great things with these guild's or they could ruin the game for people like me who only want to be thieves' and assassins.

demacabre · April 2014

ArgonianAssassin, you humble me! I am glad you like it and I hope this reaches the ears of the people at Zenimax that could consider this idea.

I'd see it as feeling like another game within Elder Scrolls Online like the Cyrodiil PVP campaign. I'd suggest it to happen mainly at night for tone, atmosphere, and breaking it up. Although, I can see the argument of having it constantly.

Much like the PVP campaign/server choices, I'd like to see that people have the option of choosing specific residential/thievery zones. This would be cross faction, so it doesn't limit you to your faction cities. The guild will smuggle its agents in no matter what. (Bear in mind, this is not the actual world map of these cities. That's off limits. This is just the 'residential districts'. In theory, if you get caught by the guards in an enemy faction city, your 'lock out' time could be longer since the war is raging and you are part of the enemy faction. Thief players of the same faction as the guards have the normal lock out timers for getting caught. )

One could be the Daggerfall Residential District, another zone could be a rich private island community of Summerset Isles, and another could easily be the Residential disrict of Riften.

Furthermore, off sites like the above described ruin excavation site, could be a specific zone. This would be a massive ruin site akin to an unearthed Dwemer city teeming with researchers, guards, and deep ruins.

The developers could create new zones as time goes on and even have players access to these zones locked in with their standings in the guild. The more you rise in the Guild, the more they open up other outposts to you.

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You know... the Dark Brotherhood could share the same map as thieves. The same penalties on killing apply, same system requiring stealth, but the difference is the Dark Brotherhood players' goal is to assassinate one or two target and escape for substantial rewards. While thieves need to steal "X amount of things" to make it worth their while, Assassins may only have 2 or 3 targets but will need to really pick their time, place, and escape.

What's fun about thieves and assassins sharing the same map but with different goals is that the players can choose to make an informal alliance for mutual benefit or they can choose to sabotage each other by alerting the guards.

Considering how sabotaging other players is very possible, it makes you apprehensive when running into other thieves and assassins. Also, it create Coteries of players that trust each other in these Residential Zones. Truly it is a game of shadows.

It's a tangent and may prove to be really wonky, but interesting thought.
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Back to the topic on hand, the main goal with this idea is to make the Thief archetype shine and excel in the Elder Scrolls game at being thieves. Considering thieves to be mmo rogue cut-outs with a unique questline is limiting the fun of the Guild. Forget be crowned Emperor or Empress in PVP, the soldiers can have that. I want to rise the ranks and rule the underworld.

No need to apologize fo the wall of text! Thanks so much and please feel free to contribute.

kirnmalidus · April 2014

I'd rather the Thieve's Guild content be integrated with the existing game world, and not something they "bolt-on" as you describe.

ArgonianAssassin · April 2014

Agreed with the above, the instanced residential zones, while being cool, and having an area specifically to go to for assassination and robbery would be cool, it would feel odd to have them be seperated from the rest of the game world in perpetual night, it should feel more fluid, more natural, like all those houses out in the world that can't be interacted with, turn those into 'residential' zones, instead of being non-interactable, they'd be locked, and instead of being small and vacant, you could have guards patrolling the area, and residents living inside the house that you'd have to avoid and sneak by, not letting them know you've invaded their home, you can already be attacked while lock picking, maybe if you're tyring to pick a doors lock in a city, a guard could catch you and lock you up, or you'd have the option to bribe them, intimidate them, or persuade them, on a cooldown of course, so you don't just get caught, bribe them, get caught, intimidate them etc over and over again, and after thinking about it, I don't know how I feel about making specific zones just for robbery and murder rather than just making the entire world open to theft and murder, people should lock their doors at night(with master locks of course, can't have every wannabe thief walking around picking simple locks and taking all the good stuff inside) NPC's need to be more lively for something like this to work, they need to have routines, wake up, go to work, get off work, go to the tavern, go home, repeat, but that doesn't work in an mmo, vendors need to be accessible 100% of the time, wouldn't have that problem with the proposed residential zone idea, where that introduces an instanced version of the city where vendors can't be interacted with as vendors and serve only as a challenge and something to avoid, it may also help, or ruin immersion. (Why is it outside the instance the towns folk are always at their posts, but inside the instance they have actual lives?) So why not add both, have instanced cities for main guild quests, and just general theft and murder (Have the ability to talk to a guild member at any time to accept a contract and go to one of the proposed residential zones) while also having locked houses and random (Attackable) people out in the world for assassinating and home invading.

demacabre · April 2014

I can totally get where you are coming from with these points.

I think the main reason it should be a separate zone is it would be easier to implement. As it stands right now, most houses and structures are either accessible all the time or interactive on specific quests. For those few structures that are completely off limits now, it numbers too few that it becomes a rote go fetch quest that people are accessing like a conga line.

Secondly for the sake of scope of the main world and quest line, the city design is limited to a sparse amount of homes and structures for fluidity of travel, questing, shopping, and crafting. Having blocks of residential homes isn't possible or practical for general ESO PVE purposes.

The structures that are available in the game now are too sparse and would only allow, "Go to X Location, kill these mobs, and click this item to place it in your inventory, and return to wait for your next quest." It would be no different than picking up a quest from an NPC outside of the Guild.

A new zone (similar to Cyrodiil now) opens up a layout that is more appropriate for a specific purpose. In the Cyrodiil example, it designed with PVP and light questing in mind. I don't think many people feel a pvp zone is bolted on feature - it's just different experience than pve.

Also a separate zone allows there to be consequences for getting caught/jail time. Being locked out for a set time from specifically stealing is better than player death.

The suggestion of accessible only at night was mainly out of tone and atmosphere, but it could be 24/7 deal.

I just like the idea of something taking place in the world that can be competitive like pvp, focused on stealth, and a break from normal quest dynamic.

ArgonianAssassin · April 2014

Wouldn't it be odd though to have this entire part of the city we can't see in the world without going to these residential zones?

demacabre · April 2014

Definitely. But isn't it odd only 20 to 30 npcs live and have homes in a thriving city? Or how a world wide war is happening in only one region with active players. It's all suspension of disbelief.

The punchline is Thieves Guild will more than likely be a questline similar to the Mages' and Warriors' Guild and this is all just a thought exercise. We'll all still play it and enjoy it.

ArgonianAssassin · April 2014

I don't think so, we're fighting for the throne, the throne is in cyrodiil, not in skyrim, or summerset, and not valenwood or blackmarsh, and tes games have never had tons of people living in their 'thriving' cities. 20-30 sounds about right, but an entire portion of a city that doesn't exist except for this instance? that's bizzare. The entire city itself should be the residential zone,