This Mud

The group was in trouble. A kind and noble person removes his held low and recalls the group with a red and white staff only to get pthieved right away, a JJD, which everyone knows can be a pain to forge.

I had to rent, log on Malek and kill the faggot. I wasted 30 mins trying to deal with a pthief. The leader asks me if I’m coming back. Why would I want to? I can’t stand to be on this mud with pthieves, and I’ve left several times before because of pthieves, and I refuse to play with pthieves on. It drives people away, it’s made some of my best friends quit sloth and I’m telling you now it’s gonna make me quit sloth, THE Addict, the person that’s been her about 15 freaking YEARS!

Time for a change, people. Remove the pthieves.

Brad

Who is said “faggot”?

Who was running this group?

Mike

I think pthieving can/could play a role within the mud. but atm it’s simply irritating, pthieves are always newb chars played by (presumably) regular players stealing under the cloak of anonymity provided by switching chars.

If it wasn’t removed outright, I’d personally like to see restrictions on the transfer of stolen goods/coins between pthief and non-pthief chars, and the ability to rent right after a successful steal.

Along with raising the level requirements for stealing (adding a second higher lev steal skill capable of stealing from pcs and restricting the current low level skill to mobs would do it imo), the stakes could be raised significantly for a pthief, to the point where it’s a total decision to play a real pthief char, and not simply to play an annoying newb thief on the side.

On a side note, I still voted no :)

Edit: Never underestimate the entertainment value in hunting a pthief, if they can’t rent.

It’s pretty clear from responses of immorts like Krom, who was on and commenting during this incident, that pthieving isn’t going to be removed, but there’s definitely issues that need change.

1 Why is steal a level 1 thief skill? Seriously, you’re not going to be successful stealing from any mobs at that level, but for a pthief, who cares if you fail 10 times before grabbing someone’s stuff and running. And sure, most of the major pthieves are level 15-40, but when you see Sorabji get passworded only to log in a level 1 thief and grab someone’s neck clasp, it’s pretty easy to see change is needed.

2 Also why can you not kill known pthieves until they fail a steal? Malek takes 30 minutes to track a thief down to retrieve a friend’s gear, and as soon as the thief corpses he’s back on in town lurking around looking for new targets, immune to every character less than Avatar 14 (acid shower).

Imm’s please get rid of the Pthieves. Thieving would be nice thing to hit mobs with. It ruins the game for me when this stuff happens.

Personally, I never stole from someone I didn’t like.

Sorabji is awesome but I am awesomer!

Real simple equation… do NOT have any items in your

inventory AT any time that might get ’lifted’. The group was better

off corpsing since plooting would then been illegal.

Did I mention I was awesomer?

Oh yeah, nice job of the life. The Brotherhood slowly comes out

of the long, winter hiatus. Time to dust off the cobwebs :twisted:

I have always been strongly against pthieves and always will. I have seen a number of established players leave over the years purely because of pthieving, and on top of that there’s been many Valkish-level newbies who spend a month or two getting into sloth only to have it ruined by some self-centred fuckhead in the space of a couple of seconds, for no other reason than they find joy in being assholes. We lose those type of players permanently - at least some of the more established players return eventually. It does NOTHING positive for the game, N_O_T_H_I_N_G, and the only ones who seem to enjoy it are the pthieves themselves and a couple of immortals who seem to think it’s a good idea to drive players away.. one has to wonder why that is..

I dont change into regen gear in groups anymore, nor do raise people in groups anymore unless we are recalled so I can go to scribes/inn to change into raise eq, because these fucking assholes will swipe your eq while you’re trying to change in the open to help someone, as has obviously happened in the case that started this thread. Well shit, if certain immorts think it’s such a good idea to drive new players away and slow down existing play like this for the sake of ‘fuck knows what reason’, then perhaps they should balance things out by doubling or tripling the standing regen rates to make up for the fact we can’t get changed into regen eq, and get rid of that frigging 100mil+ exp loss on death while you’re at it..

..and do I think this rant is going to achieve a damn thing? Hell no, because pthieves seem to have some special appeal to a few immorts that defies explanation.. and in fact flies in the face of trying to improve sloth and increase the playerbase. The only thing that will happen now is Hades will respond with some taunting and that’ll be it. What’s new? Been there, done that.

I agree, there needs to be some definate changes made to the system. I play another mud (won’t mention name) and they are no steal, the only way you can get stuff stolen is to get killed and looted in a cpk area. I enjoy that aspect of the mud very much. Here, a low level thief can steal items that take so long to forge or cycle and that makes no sense. One response is that ‘you should be more careful where you switch gear at’, but what about not overpowering a class? Should level 40 avatars really have to worry about anything a level 8 char does? (no offense to any level 8 chars that may have read this post)

Resouh

I’m not going to vote, votes here are too easy to rig.

But to add another voice to the ignored majority I also dislike pthieves, I won’t play when they’re on and rent as soon as its clear they’re around.

As a suggestion, another mud I played had a 2 tier system for pkills, you were either a pkill player and could pkill any other pkill player and loot them (+/- 8 levels) or you were non pkill and couldn’t get pkilled … something similar for pting could work just a thought.

Rynquald said: “I think pthieving can/could play a role within the mud.” I don’t agree I don’t see any place for it, how do I substantiate my position? I don’t, I don’t need to and no arguement I make here will convince anyone anyway, I’m just a single voice among the majority here who will not be listened to by imms again.

Hades has repeated the perpetual cry of the pt: “… do NOT have any items in your inventory AT any time that might get ’lifted’.”

Why not? you stick regen gear in game and expect us not to use it? You put undead control eq in game and expect us to recall to town and a safe room to change exit safe room to cast the summon, then return to an area without our pets? … oh yes the AV7 spell call followers is great, once you get there … undead control eq is only to be used by avatars?

If there was a designated and known safe room in every area where you could run to change and get back to your run I might have some small sympathy with this position otherwise its a patently nonsensical arguement.

The arguement that it can be fun chasing down pts to get your eq back can be fun also holds no water, I don’t enjoy it, I won’t chase pthieves and try my hardest to have no interaction with them in any respect in game and want to be able to rent or go afk whenever I want without having to worry that I’ve just had a high value piece of eq stolen that I’ll never get back if I rent.

Feel free to flame I’m used to it.

I agree with the people here, I don’t like pthieving and I’ve never enjoyed any aspect of it. I certainly don’t like having my stuff stolen, and I never found any fun in chasing down pthieves.

We’ve had this discussion many times. I don’t understand the reasoning of the imms in being so stubborn about not changing or fixing the pthief rules. I’m tired of arguing the point, so I normally rent if I see known pthieves lurking. Sloth is fun at times, but there’s better things to do if the game session is going to be all about someone getting pthieved and others running around trying to firestorm some punk.

I don’t understand the reasoning of the imms in being so stubborn about not changing or fixing the pthief rules. [/quote:3khwixff]

Over the last 11 years this argument has been ran around the flagpole. There is only one conceivable legitimate reason they don’t want to remove pthieving. A few of the imms must have pthieves and think its fun to run havoc to repay us for critisism. I, like others have retired many times for reasons like this. Although I do find it fun to hunt them down, its even more fun to trace route on ip’s. Since each ip is collected on logon to the mud, it makes them an accessory. They have all the info, they just don’t care because it doesn’t happen to them, if it did to one of thier chars things would change.. But then why steal from yourself.

*Observing a crime without acting, is being an accomplice.

I personally find it to be a blackmark on our otherwise really good mud. It ruins the friendly, fun, comradery and laid back atmosphere of sloth. If the admin took a vote now, it would be ruled out, but its not a democracy and there are at least a couple of key people that believe it adds another element to the game that we are better off leaving in.

As someone pointed out, sloth equipment is setup with tradeoffs and in order to make a wide range of viable equipment, the game lends itself towards changing eq. You should not have to be paranoid that you cannot change your eq cause some pthief followed you into an area and is hidden and stealing your things. A while back one of my chars had some of his regen gear stolen in the jungle, something which he never recovered from (the items were originally popped in a large group), so I know it happens and I know the pain involved.

I personally have a very short leash about it, and will broadly use the “bane” or nuissance to the mud rules, if the thief a) distrupts grouping or b) antaganizes, boasts, or taunts in actions designed to drive people away. Thus the password lock on sorabji.

To me the mechanics need to be worked on also if it is to remain part of the game – for instance, you should not be able to steal on vk (actually you may not be able to, ill have to check), or even get on a boat to vk if you have recently attempted a psteal. A level 8 char should be severely limited in being able to steal from someone much higher than them. I will bring it up again with the admin, maybe we can at least address some of the mechanics.

Krom

PS players with immortal characters are prohibited from pstealing with any of the their characters.

Appreciate your support as an immort Krom.

Maybe a boycott would convince them? Unfortunately the response from at least one of those immorts is likely to be, “if you don’t like it, there’s plenty of other muds out there to play”, and chances are they’d rather shut down the mud than back down on an ’element’ that nobody but themselves want (besides the pthieves).

Kinda like God going around slicing everyones’ achillies tendons and then saying, “I thought you all would enjoy the challenge of trying to walk”, despite the victims screaming their lungs out in protest.

Will use weekend to argue point for pthieving..expect report Sunday.

ps-I R no ranter

:roll:

During Chaos, on the main continents.

Otherwise no.

I’ve always enjoyed the generally positive social atmosphere of this MUD. Most people are very helpful. The MUD seemst to be designed for people to work together. Group xp and teaching spells are a couple examples. I think this review sums it up:

“Frankly the atmosphere of this MUD is what hooked me in the first place. Within five minutes of having logged on, I was poked at, licked, patted and offered help.” - TMC Reviewer Ingrid Vertow

Pthieving is selfish and contrary to the amiable atmosphere on Sloth.

well said.

So don’t be a thief, and keep stuff in your robe.

I wonder who used to play Myelophilistic?

snicker

Mike

I know way too much, ill shut up now.

Guess which I voted for!!!1111oneoneone

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Poolp. I’m the ‘retard’ as most of you would call me, responsible for a lot of lost items, gold, and of course players. Hey, most of you were pretty happy when Auriana got wiped anyway, if anything I should be getting thanks. Nevermind, irrelevant. Oh and if you guys are at least a little curious, I’ve made 200 mil off pthieving so far according to my log (yes I have one :(), using a huge range of characters. Poolp and Sorabji were the most prominent ones I guess.

Seeing as how so many people have come to talk about pthieving, here’s pthieving, from a pthief’s point of view.

First of all let me state the things that have been said but are however untrue. I know most of you wouldn’t believe what I say, but what the heck, here goes. I did not make new characters to steal from people, and I have no idea why Malison claimed he got a brooch off me. I made new characters to gossip and taunt people. But well I gotta stop doing that, seeing as how Krom locked my character for doing that. There goes 50% of the fun in pthieving :( Another thing, I am not the same person as Hades.

Now here’s my opinion on pthieving. Yes, I am very, very well aware that I am a pain in the ass. I have been pthieved from myself, and it sucks. It makes you feel like you’ve wasted a whole bunch of your time. But what I feel is, that if the MUD has been made that way, why don’t you live with it? When I got slightly bored of this game, I began to pthief to play a different part of the game. A part of the game A LOT of you don’t know about. Stalking people, waiting for them to change gear, escaping pthief hunters. Real ones like Zera, not crappy ones like Yinao or Auriana who claim they are the best but all they know how to do is vision me and whine on gossip about how they can’t find me. It’s really fun. Definitely more fun than doing all that grinding for exp/eq stuff that you would be doing otherwise.

Actually, a lot of you might not know that a whole lot of my characters have been pwiped and locked, and I don’t understand why you guys are still complaining. I have been locked for casting sleep on a newbie to steal from him. I have been wiped for multiplaying (which I definitely did not do because I wasn’t stupid enough to when all the immorts were practically studying my logs at the time). I have been locked for casting charm person. I have been locked for STEALING FROM AN IMMORT’S CHARACTER. And now recently, I have been locked for apparently taunting the people on gossip.

Quite frankly, I’m furious. I’m pissed off that so many of these things are not listed in the rules, yet I get banned for them. But that is something I have accepted when I became a pthief. I know that the whole MUD is against me. I know that immorts will find every possible reason there is to pwipe/lock me. But I continue. Why? Because I’ve accepted this as a part of the MUD, and carried on.

Why can’t you?

I play a main as well, I’ve been playing a main under all your noses for so long that I practically know what you guys keep in your containers in your inventories. All your golden sacks with crazy items in them, what all your restring items are so I can grab them and who has a slow eq switch that I can abuse it.

And because I play a main, I know what it’s like to be stolen from as well. And how easy it is to avoid pthieves. But I carry on, because I know this is part of the MUD.

I know you guys hate me for giving you this lecture or whatever it is but don’t you think I make at least a little bit of sense?

Another thing is, the reason I come back only after certain periods of time is because when I’ve pthieved for too long, people tend to get too cautious. I remember pthieving for 4 months in a row and that really got people keeping their items safe. But when I come back for a 20 second visit a year later, I can grab thunderbolts, invaluable keychains and fat containers from the Treasures and Dreams Square. If you guys really kept all your items safe, quite frankly I would quit because it would be to oboring. Yes, that’s a challenge to you guys. If you can all keep your items safe for a long period of time I might actually give all this up.

Whatever it is, I’m terribly sorry for inflicting this kind of crap on the MUD but this is part of the game. I’m not going to stop. If my characters get wiped I’m going to create more and more of them. In fact I already have a few of them stored in VK right now. I will unleash them when the time is right. But you have my word. Just make it a habit to keep all your items safe and I’ll get the hell out of here.

Cheers.

Guys, grow up. That’s just Kindergarten bullshit. Every time someone gets stealed from, this stuff comes up. Deal with it and stfu. Brad, don’t be ridiculous - you whine that you quit, then you come back, and my point is… that even pthieving won’t stop you from playing the mud. That’s it. :)

Move on, let’s discuss something else.

I hate pthieves and it spoils the game for me. I will log off if I know a Pthief is playing. Quit playing altogether? No, I’m in for the long haul.

I vote daily and usually feel good about bragging that this is the best Mud around. While all this crap is happening, I can’t even recommend that players give us a try. That is just sad.

The atmosphere and community here has more to do with making this the best mud then any area or tricky mob.

This biggest thing ever pthieved on this mud is a friendly and helpful playing environment.

I read this because it said ‘biggest ptheft’ and I think I win the prize a couple times over. But if we’re not whipping out stories of who got what then I won’t bother. Suffice to say I got so much quest eq off of one guy that Wilde froze me and took the eq and gave it back with his Imm and then Nia wiped/remade/passworded my little pth. Oh well. Maybe another time.

Krok - there’s an overwhelming number of players against pthieving, and they are making that very clear here. You come along with this, “grow up, stfu, deal with it, move on” bullsh*t .. well YOU stfu - just because YOU think pthieving is ok doesn’t mean everyone else should do what you say (heck, you don’t even play a char anymore barely). Pull your head out of your ass for five minutes - if you think pthieving is a good thing then fine, you are free to say so, but don’t go abusing everyone else just because they don’t agree with you. That level of arrogance is just ugly.

Poolp - from your comments, it is clear you have a lot of fun pissing people off and driving them away from sloth - your defense is that ‘it’s a part of the game, so move on’ and basically that you don’t care that it hurts other players/sloth, you are only interested in your self gratification. Although it is in a sense true that it is just part of the game, you also need to consider a few other aspects of sloth - it is very clear that the immorts in control fully intend sloth to be a group oriented mud. Your attitude is that you are here only to serve yourself at the expense of everyone else - and the fact that it is at everyone else’s expense is where most of us have an issue - this attitude of yours appears to be the antithesis of what the immorts are supposedly wanting to encourage, ergo pthieving should be removed altogether.

One suggestion I liked that someone made is that characters have an option to set a flag of whether they want to play as a pthievable character or not, then pthieves can run around pthieving but only succeed off those who want to be victims, and hey Krok, since you think pthieving is a good idea, you can set your flag so pthieves can take your eq. Poolp you can do the same with your non-thieving alt(s). That should at least make it challenging for the pthieves, although why the hell anyone would want to be a victim of pthieving is beyond me.. better ask Krok about that one.

Dear Weasel,

why do you think that if YOU think pthieves are bad, others should do what YOU say then? :) I don’t see how it’s logical, and I don’t offend anyone personally, so there’s no need to tell me to get my head out of my ass. If you think that I am ignorant only because I’m in the minority… well… that sure does sound more like a Russian attitude. :P

My point is: starting such threads over and over is as useless as discussing rains, or snow. It’s just how the mud is.

Btw, afair best players of our mud never bitched about pthieving. Let’s try to be a little more like them! :)

I didn’t tell anyone to do what I said, other than reacting to you by taking offense at being told to grow up, deal with it, stfu and move on by you. No, being in a minority doesn’t make a person ignorant at all - I believe I said telling everyone else where to go despite the majority of players being against pthieving is arrogant, not ignorant - there’s a difference.

Again, you are totally entitled to your opinion about pthieving, and if you had a convincing argument other than telling everyone else to stfu and grow up etc, then I might even change my attitude about pthieveing (unlikely though), but stomping in and just telling everyone else they should stfu etc because you don’t agree with them is just asking for confrontation, and you got it.

I (and other here) have given reasons for our opinions of pthieving, and how I believe it has and continues to harm the mud, so perhaps you can provide some justification for your position on being pro-pthieving, rather than just abusing everyone else that doesn’t agree with you.

Understand why I considered your original post was arrogant now?

I don’t really have an opinion on this - it’s been proven time and time again that regardless of opinions, it doesn’t really matter what the majority of players think - fortunately, the mud is not a democracy, and I really do think that’s for the best.

I will say, that aside from Poolp, I’ve seen no “pro-pthieving” posts. Being anti-whining (or anti-perceived-whining, if you prefer) is not the same as being pro-pthief.

I think it’s no secret that I am pro-pthief.

Dear Weasel,

well, I just thought that we all discussed it a lot in-game and on the criers, that’s why I didn’t mention my arguments.

I’m even sorry for swearing, I’ve had a terrible night working, and when I logged to see what’s new, I thought that it was really getting old. I still think that paying that much attention to stolen items is childish.

My thoughts on the topic:

Our mud is like a greenhouse. No extreme at all, the worst that can happen to you is being looted before the crash. We have to admit that it’s a rare occasion because of the stability of the mud. Good job, imms :) So, pthieves add some spice/fun to the game, imo.
Leading is allowed. Grouping is allowed. Pthieving is allowed. Pthieving itself isn’t against the rules. (Ofc, I don’t support multiplaying etc).
If you play a lot, and have an item stolen - you can get it back.
If you don’t play much and badly regret an item stolen - this game isn’t suited for those who play rarely, and it was stated by imms afair.
A lot of people enjoy pthief-hunting.
I know it hurts when you lose a hard forge. (I don’t consider JJD a hard forge, but for some it is). But if you spend more than five minutes crying over your eq in Sloth, you should get a life. Spring just came, go ride your bike, walk around the town, read a good book and come back to play when you calm down.
I didn’t say I love pthieves or something like that. (I don’t like the question in the voting either). I just dislike whining when it can’t change anything about the game mechanics.
Weas, I’m glad that you noticed that I don’t play. :P I’ll come back as soon as I get my PC transferred to my new apt.
Alb, I love ya :)

I will acknowledge that Poolp and I are in fact, not the same person. Neither am I Fyrstenheart, Harlot,Stabber,Weasel,any of Brad’s characters,Splork,Rub and/or Jake.

Glad I could clear things up.

:roll:

I’ve never really had anything stolen from me, but i can sympathize.

It really sucks dying too. Although i don’t see that being removed.

I mean it’s pretty clear that keep items in robes is a good thing to do, but this whole problem started because someone removed an item to save a group.

If groups are less important than the ability to steal, then obviously something is wrong.

We ought to weigh how much thieving is worth to the mud or make it impossible to steal from people that are in groups.

This would have the added benefit of encouraging people to group.

What Krok, and several others, is trying to say is

this is old….no amount of bitchin will get pthievin removed….

so stfu and quit whinnin

Thanks for the response Krok, and sorry for ranting at you before hugs - yes the discussion of pthieving is old, but the subject always gets me snarly.

hmm ..‘snarly’.. is that a word? I kinda like it.

Anyway, as several people have said, it is highly unlikely anything will change because sloth ain’t a democracy and unfortunately one or two immorts would rather keep the majority of the playerbase pissed in order to appease one or two pthieves, and if we don’t like it, I’m sure they will remind us that we can go find another mud to play on. My answer to that is, of course, go f*ck yourself you mattress-thrashing gutter slut.

:twisted:

I’ve debated publishing a pthief survival guide. I never seem to get to it. One of the things that I know got fixed was jail. If you jail a pthief, they’re done, barring someone letting them out. You can only drop link while jailed, so they cannot bring on another char to thief with without becoming wipable. Given that a good number of imms will use almost any excuse to give a thief a bad day, it will effectly shut them down for a while. Webbing them in the street and waiting for the patrol to come by will do the trick. If you can charm the patrol leader, even better.

They like to hide in safe areas. The easiest/safest way to give them a bad day is with a 40 Avatar Druid. Piasa can walk into any safe area and ‘capture pthief’ to excellent effect. Spells like acid shower can do the trick… careful of where you are though. Casting at the junk dealer or similar will get you dead very quickly. Some people like to play with charming agros, which is also somewhat dangerous.

A common pthief trap is to have a large container in inventory with a couple filled water barrels in it. Assuming that it’s not a th/wa pthief, the odds of them having decent strength without eq is pretty low. When the thief tries to snag the bag, he won’t be able to lift it and automatically fails and becomes wanted, giving you a chance to pummel him. It also makes for a semi-safe place to keep items in inventory that you don’t want to get snagged. I hear that buying the personal robes in the drach shop, like the cloak of specialization, makes for a good inventory container that can’t be stolen… haven’t tried that one though.

Dealing with pthiefs can be dangerous. If you decide to actively hunt one, they may experiment with client-rape. If you don’t know what that is, you’re much more likely to fall victim to it. Be prepared for the pthief to figure out how to force you to remove all your equipment and give it to them.. or similar. Writing good scripts is important, or you might wish to turn them off altogether.

Pthieves will also try to decieve you in any number of ways. They will emote that they have stolen from you, left the room, left the game, or any number of things. These are designed to slow you down, move you into a vulnerable area or let them escape.

Pthieves make liberal use of the quit! command. Just when you think you have them, they’ll be back at the west gate and running somewhere you’re not.

Pthieves know each other. If you manage to get a pthief into a bad position, he may enlist help to escape from jail, make you think they are multi-playing, and generally be a pain.

Pthieves LOVE places like the BH auction house and scribe. These are commonly thought to be safe areas and are not, so you can be pushed out of them and be vulnerable to theft. If you do change equipment in these places, rest first, so that you can’t be pushed out.

Pthieves love to take advantage of small things. Like the fact you can’t buy a raft on BH. It makes hiding in places like Crystal Falls much safer for them since you can’t web, blind or blast them there and if you haven’t got a raft, you’ll have to figure out how to get one to persue them.

Pthieves love to misdirect you. If a thief quits! and shows up at the west gate with a JJD being held, you might spend a lot of time wondering how he’s allowed to do that. He’s not. It’s a cleverly crafted description designed to mislead you. So when you finally kill him and wonder why there’s not a JJD on him… that’s why.

Pthieves love to flaunt their existance. Even if the thief sits in the inn for 4 hours and doesn’t manage to steal anything at all, they’ll talk a big show. Let them talk. Its easy to tell when a pthief actually manages to get something, because they’ll immediately log out and then log on another character to negotiate a price for the return of the item.

A pthief will sell your item back to you in most cases. They will offer you a price, and you either pay it or you don’t. If you don’t, your item will be sold or given to someone else, or shipped to someone else who will either keep it or allow it to become unclaimed.

Insulting a pthief isn’t really practical. They already know and have been told everything you can possibly think of. Trying to taunt them simply won’t work, you’ll never suceed in provoking them because they are scum and have long since become comfortable with it. Really.

The regen room in Treasures and Dreams is not safe in anyway, use at your own risk.

Lower level characters are protected from theft for a while. Sloth protects newbies, and this is one of the things they are protected from. I don’t know what level the protection expires, but it is less than 20.

Coins are MUCH easier to steal than items. Sleeping people are much easier to steal from.

Your corpse is sacred. Any pthief stealing anything from your corpse is wipable. Multiplaying is wipable. Stealing from someone in a group is legal… I think anyway… but they can’t do anything to intentionally cluster your group, like web or recall your tank, or put the healo to sleep.

I’m sure other can add more, but that’s a decent start.

they could give you lots of junk to screw up your redress alias. you find yourself sitting with full set of eq in your inverntory and next moment you’ll be pwned.
they will hide in dark places without light source. so when you gate in you will be kicked by Demo or someone like that.
it’s hard to steal from someone (even sleeping) if there is another person in the same room who don’t sleep.

just my 2 cents.

I’ll elaborate more on the quit! function. Good tips so far by the way.

If a char is alive and types quit!, all items will be dropped on the floor and the person will end up at the recall point in that town. Please note that it will not be in a corpse. Many spells such as web, silence and sleep remain on when the char that has quit. The character however will not be asleep, but he/she will not be able to wake up if they went to sleep. Also note that a pthief with high str is likely to quit!, relog, squirm and get out of there before you can even get there. As soon as you see a pthief leave the game, run to the recall point if you still want to get him. Otherwise, pick the item up and run off.

If a char is dead, not boarded and types quit!, the char will corpse. Most of you might already know this. This is why at times, pthieves would actually be preferred to be killed rather than kept webbed at recall point. If a pthief is dead and not boarded, they could just quit!, relog and run straight to a safe area, and proceed to harrass new targets. The ideal situation in my idea would be to keep them webbed, if you have the time.

If a char is boarded, whether dead or not, he/she will be unable to use the quit! command.

Here’s another tip about killing boarded pthieves. If a boarded pthief does not have anything good on them, I would advise you to kill them and get them raised every 4 minutes or just before they corpse. This way they are in a helpless position for a longer time, and will not be able to harrass other victims with the time they have online (assuming of course he/she does something with their real life). Continually raising them would leave them stranded in the MUD helpless until they are off the board. Plus every failed steal is 30 minutes boarded which can accumulate, so you could keep them there for a pretty long time, once again only if you have the time to do that.

Here’s something pretty useful. Stealing from a player requires 2000 (I think) exp for each level the pthief has. This means if you are actually able to kill a pthief over and over and over again, your efforts are not put to waste as they will be unable to pthief until they can gather enough exp again. This may be easily fixable by using the “exchange” command, but that is only available to those at level 25 or above, so it would also help to bring them to a really low level first. If you see a pthief killing mobs and you’re wondering why, just stop wondering and rescue that mob.

Lastly,

it’s hard to steal from someone (even sleeping) if there is another person in the same room who don’t sleep.[/quote:1fklkhl0]

I didn’t know that. Thanks for the tip. I guess we’re all learning something here eh?

Killing pthieves can take away the boring grind of killing a mob 1000 times. However i still think we need a chaos continent where we can kill/loot people :D.

I agree with Krom that the mechanics of the game just don’t justify allowing ptheft. Just telling the players not to change eq in the open is completely contrary to the way the game actually works.

The theft of quest eq or difficult forges does nothing for the game except add an element of arbitrary cruelty. The only people who benefit from this are sociopaths who are unable to distinguish between positive and negative attention.

It also seems odd that there aren’t more skills available to deter and prevent pthieving.

Some suggestions on ways the players could be allowed to pro-actively secure their valuables:

’theft ward’ - cast on item, decent duration, zaps pthief and prevents successful steal. Spell must be recast after ward is triggered or duration runs out.

‘spirit guardian’ - like spirit watcher, requires mana upkeep, summons a spirit watcher that catches pthieves when they try to steal.

‘sixth sense’ - increase duration, change syntax (s e n s e conflicts with speedwalk). Perhaps allow the command ‘sixth’ to also work.

‘perception’ - remove blindness affect

’theft ward’ - clasp object, attaches to any item, costs 1 drachma, temporarily stuns thief on a successful steal attempt, is destroyed when triggered. (you have to buy another one every time its used)

‘web’ - the spider forms for druid could be allowed to use their web ability in safe rooms like they used to

Hello

It sound like pthieving will never change, but I think this is a good suggestion so I’m going to make it anyway. :)

How about making only Island, Lyme and maybe AH places for pthieving. Newbies I think stick mostly to valk and BH, and lots of big groups run on BH and SS. People who hate pthieving can have safe areas to play, and there is good EQ on island and AH for pthieves to go after.

A less good but really fun idea: Have a skill to extract information from pthieves( or anyone). Call it “Mastery of Bamboo Slivers” or somthing (evil grin). Make it so somehow you can capture a pthieve and if successful extract information about his alts and recent thefts. Then pthieves can’t hide behind alts necessarily and would make hunting them more fun maybe.

Also, I spent way to much time this morning in reverie after reading Krok’s comment about the situation being childish. Anyone remember the neighborhood kid that coudn’t fit in with the crowd, so he just hovered around and taunted the other kids playing? When they chased him to pound him he ran to his dad’s yard where he knew everyone was afraid to chase? Or how about the kid who had the brand new ball that everyone wanted to play with, but he had some silly house rule that drove everyone nuts? :) Ah the memories.

Wow, you’re a huge fag. You’re on my list.

BTW, hi again Guinex! Haven’t seen you in awhile!

Back to my other mud for me:) No use in even contemplating quiting sloth but it seems like all the pro-pthief players are dusting off their thiefs and are getting back to business. So……since I don’t want to lose any of the gold that I’ve been cycling or deal w/ any items being stolen that I will have to replace, I will deal w/ the situation in the best way I know how, take a break and play another mud and come back in a few weeks when it’s died down.

Resouh

P.S. Poolp, ur an a$$ for the most part:) but thanks for actually giving me advice etc when I was a real newb and getting me recalled etc for a raise once when I was dead on bh a long time ago. (positive reinforcement)

Anyone else too much of a pussy?

Nod, I’m quite flattered you remember. Thanks.

It’s kinda sad you’re leaving though, because if you’re only gonna come back when this thing has died down, you should know that I’ve bought about 6 characters so far with the gold I got from pthieving my last time around. Have fun at your other MUD, I guess!

Well this ended up as a lousy day. I cycled coins for a while, that was going well enough although we all know it is a little boring.

Ember was kind enough to provide a fishing quest. It was fun, I think I was kicking butt, but who knows. I had turned in 11 types and had 3 or four more in my sack with time to still to go in the first hour.

Stella steals my golden sack with fish in it and I think some spare recalls and milky potions. Oh yes and a magic carpet. Big whoop for her.

Guess she/he taught me another lesson. Don’t try a quest where you need to keep fish in inventory. Right up there with the lesson, don’t use raise eq to raise people. And all those other lessons the pthieves bring to our game. Like don’t relax and have fun, don’t trust anyone, don’t help anyone.

Thanks Ember for trying to provide some fun. It was fun until the Pthieves got involved.

I personally find it to be a blackmark on our otherwise really good mud. It ruins the friendly, fun, comradery and laid back atmosphere of sloth. [/quote:92eg5wa0]

Me too, time to throw my teddy out of the pram, I’ll see you in a few days, I may log in to say hello from time to time but I’m not playing with all the big kids out there bullying us newbies.

Don’t try a quest where you need to keep fish in inventory. Right up there with the lesson, don’t use raise eq to raise people. And all those other lessons the pthieves bring to our game. Like don’t relax and have fun, don’t trust anyone, don’t help anyone.[/quote:92eg5wa0]

Couldn’t agree more … wondering if it might be time to learn how to find a new mud… I’ve moved mud before after investing time in chars, at some point I’ll do it again no doubt.

Anyone else too much of a pussy?[/quote:xxnp17fi]

This is not the attitude thats going to increase our player base. And its exactly why pthieving is completely inappropriate on a non-pkill mud. Too much of a wuss for what? …random harassment?

Last time I heard it was part of the game. If you can’t deal with it then I guess Slothmud is not for you. The admin have reiterated this 1000000000 times. Crying, whining and the likes will change nothing. I have no idea why they let players be run off, but it does happen.

You never know, things might be changing after all.

Due to some threats followed by my fear of losing more decent pthieving characters, I’m only going to pthief one day a week. Pick a day, anyone.

Stop bashing your immorts, whiners. They’ve saved the day. Or at least one of the immorts anyway.

[quote:9kgfwb6u]Due to some threats followed by my fear of losing more decent pthieving characters, I’m only going to pthief one day a week. Pick a day, anyone.

[/quote:9kgfwb6u]

If it turns out to be true, then hurray for the imms.

I’ll pick a day for you, Wednesday. If pthieving can only happen on Wednesdays then I would certainly accept that and have nothing to whine about.

Of course I’ll only believe it when I hear from the imms. Somehow Poolp saying it just doesn’t quite mean a thing.

I’ll pick a day for you, Wednesday. If pthieving can only happen on Wednesdays then I would certainly accept that and have nothing to whine about.

Of course I’ll only believe it when I hear from the imms. Somehow Poolp saying it just doesn’t quite mean a thing.[/quote:11x4tazg]

Sorry I don’t think you quite understand the situation. The MUD/immorts’ policy on pthieving hasn’t been changed, but I have been warned not to take it too far. I also do admit I’ve been a little over the top.

So what I personally would do is pick a day (Wednesday now, I guess) to pthief. You have my word not to pthief on any other day but I can’t be helf responsible if other pthieves do. This is a personal thing.

You can believe whatever you choose to, it doesn’t bother me.

Hmm.. a week away from sloth, same old same ol’. I’ve already stripped most of my chars to nothing and sold a lot of my eq about a month ago because I was so sick of this pthieving sh*t. I have two usable (legit) characters left for playing honestly as I have done for many years here, HOWEVER, since the immorts (or at least the one or two who dictate sloth) LOVE pthiefs so much, maybe I should just reactivate the half dozen or more chars I have at ok levels with no eq, plus the pile more I have at sub 20 and join with the two(?) existing pthieves in sloth? Clearly they are more important to this mud than the other 60 or so remaining players who haven’t left yet. What’s the saying - “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”? Or is it, “if you can’t beat ’em, don’t play with ’em”? Either way amounts to the same thing in the end, so hey, if the powers that be are so determined to have it this way, then fine, perhaps I should just help you end this mud a little sooner. I’d probably be doing myself a favor anyway - I’d spend more time on my studies once this mud was dead (or turned into one of those hundreds of pathetic ‘muds’ out there that have maybe a max of 5 people on at any given time LOL).

Seriously - it’s become so pathetic that you can’t even carry a facking water container without it being stolen - so now we should recall and run to a fountain if we need a drink? And we shouldn’t regen unless we recall and go to a safe spot to change, and same deal with raises, which TOTALLY goes against encouraging grouping? Fack off. Totally ruins gameplay.

..a little later..

Just logged in, found I had no desire to be on, and rented again. That’s probably a first. Congrats pthieves, you must be proud. Maybe Tower had the right idea starting SparkMud back in 2004.

Weasel, pthieves have been part of this MUD for such a long time and I really don’t think you’re quitting because of us. You used to hunt me sometime ago and I’m sure you found it fun. I’d hate to assume it but is there something else that’s driving you away from this MUD other than pthieves? Making you lose the will to play anymore, say maybe that you’re getting a little bored of it?

My intention of pthieving was stated before and it’s definitely not to drive people away from Sloth. The last thing I want is to play in a MUD with less and less people because of some things I did. You know there are so many other ways to get a drink, like get less expensive water containers or hide the expensive ones in a robe or something, so please don’t look for excuses to blame pthieves for spoiling gameplay.

You have been in the MUD so long and you know the answers to all your questions, and you know how to deal with pthieves. So I’d appreciate it if you didn’t blame pthieves for your loss of interest.

But honestly if you feel like continuing that and quitting, I really wouldn’t mind that much. The choice is yours.

Be more like Zarf and Zera. Show some intestinal fortitude. Who cares if a drink container gets stolen? I don’t know of any that are hard to get anyway and tons are downright easy to get and load every time. If you’re smart, that’s all you’ll allow them to get anyway. I carry a drink container a bag for food and an opposum pouch with like flawed gem/red eye cps, 2 or 3 hexes usually a pink invitation a fishing pole a white potion and shit like that. I carry my keychain around with me too, but I take full responsibility for it if it gets stolen. The other shit..who cares? What I meant to say really is just knuckle down and make it a downright shitty time to be a pth. All of you whiners should band together and send poolp or gets or whomever back into rl for the next six months. You could do it with constant vigilance and relocate and firestorm/pyroclasm. Don’t let two guys run you off of a game you love, fight back.

That’s the Aaron I know.

Who cares if a drink container gets stolen? I don’t know of any that are hard to get anyway and tons are downright easy to get and load every time.[/quote:103eswvb]

Correct me if I’m wrong … Didn’t u get a “pimp” water container stolen

and u threw a fit? U were willing to pay top $$$ for it, because only u and

some1 else had it or something?

I got the shifting dragon skull taken, and yeah it was the only one in game at the time, but it also loads fairly easily on Weylyn. The guy ended up just giving it back actually when I asked him.

[quote:7tz4xwj0]Don’t let two guys run you off of a game you love, fight back.[/quote:7tz4xwj0]

You could always start a pthief pthief. I’ve thought about it a few times…I used to chase em down once upon a time, but I felt that if you weren’t smart enough to avoid getting lifted, then pay the piper…or fight back, all you need is a 1x40 thief prime, with decent stats, and about 80k xp on him…

PTHIEF THE PTHIEVES!

<~~Chaos~~>

if someone stole my 3x40 axe please sell it back to me

thanks,

Rub

Poolp writes:

I’m a little choked up myself. I’ll take Tuesday’s,Thursdays and every other

Saturday. Also, any holidays and days that have few on “may or may not”

require an appearance. Unlike, Poolp, I have no conscience so take this as is.

:twisted:

<LINK_TEXT text=“http://www.slothmud.org/index.php?name= … ht=mystery”>http://www.slothmud.org/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=2004&highlight=mystery</LINK_TEXT>

See above link.

Hades=Mystery

Cheers

Umm no… I’m not sure if Victor originally belonged to Hades in some form but when he was given to me before I made Mystery. I played him a month maybe off and on and didn’t like the char being nerfed. RE: The necro nerfing that took place some time back for those that care. So after playing Mystery awhile and really not liking druid classo I started over as Nangwaya who is my valker and Ah Puch who is my main (now).

Also, not sure if it’s a point to be made but Mystery who is also a builder char (as you know Rub) would not be allowed to pthief. I’m guessing it follows under the Imm’s not pthieving rule but I didn’t feel like losing builder status by taking any chances.

Finally, sense I may be giving Victor away to an avatar who is wanting to test-drive necro prime, please don’t jump to conclusions and attack him/her for something that may be linked to hades if he was the original owner.

I never owned Victor. I don’t know what your talking about.And yes, I am Mystery and good job on the detective work Juggleblood. Kill him on sight.

:twisted:

I know for a fact that Victor is Poolp/Fyrstenheart. He offered to trade me that char for some boots about 2 years ago. I passed.

Idiot

Rub should get a new improved personal trip40 axe at no charge. :)