Mods for nerfing the OP stealing?

Discuss modding questions and implementation details.
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emmathepony
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Mods for nerfing the OP stealing?

Post by emmathepony »

In DF, stealing is very easy especially at night when you can just go to a city and try all the shop doors, steal thousands of items worth of gold then put them in your wagon. You can easily make tens of thousands of gold before even reaching level 5.

Can we get mods to nerf this completely? Such as lowering the price of books from 400+ gold to around 50 or so? And a mod that has patrolling guards at night and sometimes in a shop?

DFIronman
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Re: Mods for nerfing the OP stealing?

Post by DFIronman »

I'm going to try to address this for the next release of Ironman. Ironman will be split into two .dfmods (both in the same zip archive): Ironman.dfmod and Ironman Gameplay Systems.dfmod. The original Ironman will only pertain to perma-death and how the save/load system works. Ironman Gameplay Systems will give the player the option to modify several things. Here's what I have planned for the next release:
  • Disable Pausing (The game will keep running no matter which menu you're in - you can die in the inventory menu)
  • Disable Quitting When Enemies are Nearby
  • Modified Shop Burglary - Currently, planning to call the guards if you fail some kind of pickpocket+stealth+luck check when attempting to steal any single item from a shop. I also hope to make it so that if you fail a stealth+luck check while moving around in a shop, the guards will come to nail you for Breaking & Entering. I'll probably make it so the stealth+luck check will always succeed once you get something like a combined total of 60 (crouching), 80 (walking), and 100 (running) for your stealth+luck check (100% of your stealth, with 25% of your luck). The logic behind this is that you made a loud noise while stealing/walking and alerted a guard who was passing by.
  • Modified Loan System - Details are too rough on this right now. I'm toying with either just sending a ton of powerful foes after you on a very regular basis if you default on a loan, nerfing the amount of gold you can borrow from any one bank, or temporarily disabling the system until the next release.
  • Modified Critical Strike - Critical strike no longer provides a bonus to hit, but a bonus to damage that scales with your critical strike skill. Humanoid enemies will benefit from this as well.
  • Make enemies chase you out of dungeons (if this is possible and easy enough to code for the next release)
All of the above changes are optional and can be disabled individually in the Ironman Gameplay Systems menu.

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Hazelnut
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Re: Mods for nerfing the OP stealing?

Post by Hazelnut »

Much of that is already part of the base game, picking locks and stealing all (should have) chances to get chased by city watch depending on your skills and the dice rolls. Might be worth checking these systems are working as classic before re-hashing them. We are still in Alpha.. :)
See my mod code for examples of how to change various aspects of DFU: https://github.com/ajrb/dfunity-mods

DFIronman
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Re: Mods for nerfing the OP stealing?

Post by DFIronman »

I meant stealing from shops after hours would spawn guards, along with a standing chance to call guards just for being inside the shop (after hours). That's not something in DFUnity, right?

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Hazelnut
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Re: Mods for nerfing the OP stealing?

Post by Hazelnut »

Not at the moment, no.. I just checked. I remember intending to add this but the guard stuff was still being worked on at the time and it completely slipped my mind to do this. However, I'm not sure if this matches classic behaviour or not, that may have been an assumption of mine. Anyone know? Seems to me there should be a similar check to stealing when shopkeeper is there, just with a higher chance of success. Ransacking a shop is hard to do quietly I would imagine, especially if you take the entire store and plonk it into your cart outside!
See my mod code for examples of how to change various aspects of DFU: https://github.com/ajrb/dfunity-mods

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Jay_H
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Re: Mods for nerfing the OP stealing?

Post by Jay_H »

It's certainly possible: waiting until after shop hours and then raiding the shelves. It all says "remove" and "equip" instead of "steal." If you don't load your game while inside, you can even sell the stolen goods back to the shopkeeper :lol:

DFIronman
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Re: Mods for nerfing the OP stealing?

Post by DFIronman »

Yeah, I never even bothered to check if you changed this because I figured it was kind of "core" to classic gameplay. The way it works in classic is just as Jay_H described - pretty game-breaking.

In light of that, did you still want to work on making a change to night-time burglary, Hazelnut? I'm good either way, but I think it should change - whether it happens in a mod or shipped with DFU, doesn't matter to me.

BansheeXYZ
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Re: Mods for nerfing the OP stealing?

Post by BansheeXYZ »

Thievery is practically impossible to implement without breaking game balance. Some games either don't allow vendor theft or limit you to 1 item per vendor, and the item gets marked. You could also make them saleable only at the thieves guild, and fetch much lower values than found items. That is the direction you'd want to go with a mod.

I personally dislike the concept of "stealing" in rpgs. Why would you carefully construct obstacles to progression and then straight up give people the ability to circumvent them? So people can delude themselves into thinking they "roleplayed a sneaky thief" by savescumming dice rolls? Spells have no level requirements in Daggerfall, so you can learn teleport at level freaking lvl 1 and clean out entire shops without any thief skills at all.

It's better to simply give rogue characters a "lockpicking" skill and scatter locked chests throughout the world. In Betrayal at Krondor, there were like 10 lock strengths and 10 keys. You could either buy lockpicks and raise your lockpicking or find/buy the keys. Great system.
I'm going to try to address this for the next release of Ironman.
Make sure you address guard kiting, too. Guards in Daggerfall can be killed over and over for loot with spells and bows. You don't even lose rep unless they strike you. Guards should not only have no loot, they should be much stronger and faster than you.

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emmathepony
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Re: Mods for nerfing the OP stealing?

Post by emmathepony »

Yeah I'm talking about after-hours when nobody's around, it makes stealing stupidly easy.

Although Banshee makes a good point about marking items and only selling them back to the thieves guild, but having said that how would other vendors know if they are stolen or not?

DFIronman
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Re: Mods for nerfing the OP stealing?

Post by DFIronman »

Thanks for the input, Banshee. I disagree about them being much stronger and faster than you, but I'll look into lowering rep and such as soon as a guard would be close enough to identify you. These changes will probably have to happen in stages as I don't have a lot of time.

I'm thinking maybe towns would end up hiring elite adventurers to take you out once you make yourself enough of a menace in a region. They would act as more powerful guards. I'm also probably going to add an option to prevent you from mounting a horse when enemies are nearby so it's not so easy to get away.

I never really liked the Thieves' guild fence, but it makes sense to me that you couldn't attempt to sell stolen gear in the same town/region without alerting the guards. I'll add it to my list of things to look at. Thanks!

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