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CashmereCat
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CloseI don't really like stealing in RPG battles.
Out-of-battle pickpocketing and theft a la Bethesda is pimpin' tho.
Out-of-battle pickpocketing and theft a la Bethesda is pimpin' tho.
Here is my 1-2-3 plan for a cool and interesting steal mechanic:
1) You can steal something the enemy actually has. Hooray!
2) By stealing it you have denied access to it by the enemy so they can't gouge it into your eyes anymore. Double hooray!
3) By stealing it now you can instead gouge it into their eyes! Triple hooray!
One of my favorite video game stories is in Ultima Online. Lord British aka Richard Garriot aka one of the creators of the RPG genre in video games aka the top banana of Ultima Online was giving an announcement with another GM called Blackthorn after a server restart as part of a server stress test. A congregation of players formed and during the announcement one player named 'Rainz' suddenly cast flame wall on Lord British. Now in the Ultima series it's a challenge to kill Richard Garriot's self-insert through various workarounds (or early on, just sheer power) to the point it became an easter egg in Ultima 7 so it wasn't too surprising that somebody tried in UO. Blackthorn laughed because, as a GM, he had magical invulnerability on and said something like "Did you think something like that would hurt Lord British?", at which point Lord British keelhauled over and died. As it turns out LB forgot to turn on his own GM invulnerability which didn't persist between server restarts. In mass retribution Blackthorn summoned a group of demons and the perp got the hell out of dodge laughing at his accomplishment. To tie it all to the thread, the fire wall scroll Rainz used to kill LB was in fact stolen from another player during the announcement!
1) You can steal something the enemy actually has. Hooray!
2) By stealing it you have denied access to it by the enemy so they can't gouge it into your eyes anymore. Double hooray!
3) By stealing it now you can instead gouge it into their eyes! Triple hooray!
One of my favorite video game stories is in Ultima Online. Lord British aka Richard Garriot aka one of the creators of the RPG genre in video games aka the top banana of Ultima Online was giving an announcement with another GM called Blackthorn after a server restart as part of a server stress test. A congregation of players formed and during the announcement one player named 'Rainz' suddenly cast flame wall on Lord British. Now in the Ultima series it's a challenge to kill Richard Garriot's self-insert through various workarounds (or early on, just sheer power) to the point it became an easter egg in Ultima 7 so it wasn't too surprising that somebody tried in UO. Blackthorn laughed because, as a GM, he had magical invulnerability on and said something like "Did you think something like that would hurt Lord British?", at which point Lord British keelhauled over and died. As it turns out LB forgot to turn on his own GM invulnerability which didn't persist between server restarts. In mass retribution Blackthorn summoned a group of demons and the perp got the hell out of dodge laughing at his accomplishment. To tie it all to the thread, the fire wall scroll Rainz used to kill LB was in fact stolen from another player during the announcement!
Darkflamewolf
2178
I did something drastically different. If you have a thief in your group. After the battle is over, you get a chance of stealing an item from the ENEMY PARTY that you just defeated. Depending on the type of enemy party, the thief randomly selects from a pool of items unique to that party. And you have a 50/50 shot of stealing. That way, it isn't a selection to utilize in battle to let battles drag on longer, its more of a perk of merely having a thief in the party. So thieving takes more of a passive role than an active one. The only downside to having the thief in your group ALL THE TIME? He is probably the weakest character of the bunch overall, esp. in the endgame.
EDIT: That and having him in the group, enables you to steal from chests in people's homes that you wouldn't be able to normally during the day. Provided everyone in your party is on board with stealing. Some PCs will leave your group if you attempt this. (But you can rehire them back later, but its wasted money)
EDIT: That and having him in the group, enables you to steal from chests in people's homes that you wouldn't be able to normally during the day. Provided everyone in your party is on board with stealing. Some PCs will leave your group if you attempt this. (But you can rehire them back later, but its wasted money)
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Darkflamewolf, so it's basically bonus item drop rate instead of active stealing? That certainly solves the problem of making battles drag on, at least. Player has to properly grind to get more drops.
I've been trying to come up with a good way for stealing to work in my RMXP game. It's made more difficult than usual by the fact that you can't repeat any battles in this game. All the battles are touch encounters and never respawn after you beat them once. I don't want the player to permanently lose access to major rewards if they don't steal them before the end of the battle, which is what would happen if I used FF style stealing. But I also want stealing to be interesting, I want the player to be eagerly anticipating the mystery items they could be stealing. And I want it to be something you actively do during battles - this game doesn't even have towns, and your party can't be changed for most of the game, so town-stealing and passive-stealing don't make sense.
I thought about making all enemies have the same generic stealable stuff, but this seemed boring. Stealing wouldn't be exciting because you'd never get a big reward. Then I came up with the idea of tying which item you steal to the player instead of to the enemy. I think I can make that work.
I am currently thinking about the following plan, which is still a work in progress:
- Enemies will be split into six or seven categories: human, machine, elemental, shark, etc.
- Each of those types will have a long list of stealable items. A good mix of generic and unique items.
- The first time you steal from a human enemy, you'll get the first item on the list for humans. The second time you steal from a human enemy, you'll get the second item on the list for humans. Etc.
- The reward lists span the entire game, they're not reset after each battle.
- Each enemy can only be stolen from once.
- This means you can get the same items earlier in the game by stealing from every single enemy you fight, but if you miss stealing from a human, then the item just gets postponed to the next human you fight.
- I think bosses will give three items. I am also considering making bosses be a separate category, since about every fourth battle is a boss, but I'm not sure how well that would work.
- If you get to the end of the game and still haven't finished one of the categories, the remaining rewards will become buyable somewhere around the final dungeon. Or maybe there will be some sort of way to fight repeatable battles against each type of enemy, for a gold cost, which give no XP, like an arena or something.
- If you finish stealing all items before for one of the enemy categories before the end of the game, I have no idea what will happen the next time you steal from that type of enemy??????
Thoughts?
I've been trying to come up with a good way for stealing to work in my RMXP game. It's made more difficult than usual by the fact that you can't repeat any battles in this game. All the battles are touch encounters and never respawn after you beat them once. I don't want the player to permanently lose access to major rewards if they don't steal them before the end of the battle, which is what would happen if I used FF style stealing. But I also want stealing to be interesting, I want the player to be eagerly anticipating the mystery items they could be stealing. And I want it to be something you actively do during battles - this game doesn't even have towns, and your party can't be changed for most of the game, so town-stealing and passive-stealing don't make sense.
I thought about making all enemies have the same generic stealable stuff, but this seemed boring. Stealing wouldn't be exciting because you'd never get a big reward. Then I came up with the idea of tying which item you steal to the player instead of to the enemy. I think I can make that work.
I am currently thinking about the following plan, which is still a work in progress:
- Enemies will be split into six or seven categories: human, machine, elemental, shark, etc.
- Each of those types will have a long list of stealable items. A good mix of generic and unique items.
- The first time you steal from a human enemy, you'll get the first item on the list for humans. The second time you steal from a human enemy, you'll get the second item on the list for humans. Etc.
- The reward lists span the entire game, they're not reset after each battle.
- Each enemy can only be stolen from once.
- This means you can get the same items earlier in the game by stealing from every single enemy you fight, but if you miss stealing from a human, then the item just gets postponed to the next human you fight.
- I think bosses will give three items. I am also considering making bosses be a separate category, since about every fourth battle is a boss, but I'm not sure how well that would work.
- If you get to the end of the game and still haven't finished one of the categories, the remaining rewards will become buyable somewhere around the final dungeon. Or maybe there will be some sort of way to fight repeatable battles against each type of enemy, for a gold cost, which give no XP, like an arena or something.
- If you finish stealing all items before for one of the enemy categories before the end of the game, I have no idea what will happen the next time you steal from that type of enemy??????
Thoughts?
author=CashmereCat
I don't really like stealing in RPG battles.
Out-of-battle pickpocketing and theft a la Bethesda is pimpin' tho.
Oh, hey, that reminds me of the system in the Star Ocean series where you can pick-pocket people on the map. Granted, you either got caught or they didn't have much worth stealing, but at least it was an option. I'd actually love to see more of the first two Star Ocean's systems in more games - that is, cooking and theft and party encounter systems. I know, crafting is in a lot of other games too.
Zephyr
1241
author=LockeZ
Oh, so some kind of collectibles? That actually sounds interesting. It feeds the idea of filling some list, which will make completionists crazy.
Perhaps when you've grabbed everything else in that category, you get a medal next time. After that... Steal money, start from 1 gold, increment by 1 each time?
Clord
929
I like how in FFX you basically could steal bombs from any enemy and then throw them back. Didn't really make much sense but it was still somewhat cool mechanic.
If you want to make stealing mechanic to work well, ensure that there is actually a lot to steal. Problem with many games is that "Yeah you can steal but expect over 90% of enemies have nothing worthwhile to be stolen."
Final Fantasy series especially has this whole "It's a boss, try to use steal!" and normal enemies are basically there to "You stole potion" or something.
If you want to make stealing mechanic to work well, ensure that there is actually a lot to steal. Problem with many games is that "Yeah you can steal but expect over 90% of enemies have nothing worthwhile to be stolen."
Final Fantasy series especially has this whole "It's a boss, try to use steal!" and normal enemies are basically there to "You stole potion" or something.
Speaking of FFX, I did like that you could steal from the mechanical enemies and have them fall apart. That might be a cool mechanic, actually, have what you steal affect the enemy. So if you manage to steal their weapon their damage output is severely dampened on the physical output (but magic remains normal) and if you steal armour their defence goes down depending on what you stole.
Reminds me of one game where I gave each enemy (through variables) an amount of items that they could use in battle - so say x potions and whatnot - and if they used one or it was stolen the number would go down. Of course, seeing as normally you'd be able to stock up a lot on items - which wouldn't be fair - I instead made items limited, so you could only hold as much as your pack would allow you to. Thus, they could steal from you and boost their own amounts. (If you were full and stole from them you'd instead use the item straight away - that way making it a null item. In fact, it was a strategic way of filling your health and not wasting a potion.)
This is the same game using FE sprites for heroes/monsters and everything was animated - they'd run over to your actual character and steal/attack... lost that one in a computer issue too. I was so proud of it... :<
Reminds me of one game where I gave each enemy (through variables) an amount of items that they could use in battle - so say x potions and whatnot - and if they used one or it was stolen the number would go down. Of course, seeing as normally you'd be able to stock up a lot on items - which wouldn't be fair - I instead made items limited, so you could only hold as much as your pack would allow you to. Thus, they could steal from you and boost their own amounts. (If you were full and stole from them you'd instead use the item straight away - that way making it a null item. In fact, it was a strategic way of filling your health and not wasting a potion.)
This is the same game using FE sprites for heroes/monsters and everything was animated - they'd run over to your actual character and steal/attack... lost that one in a computer issue too. I was so proud of it... :<
Desertopa
775
Stealing an enemy's weapon while they're actually using it is kind of bizarre though. I mean, trying to take someone's sword while they're trying to kill you with it is a lot more likely to result in a shiny new stab wound rather than a new weapon. I think it might be interesting to have stealing of enemy equipment have a 100% success rate when the enemy is incapacitated (asleep, paralyzed, etc.) but a 0% success rate when they're still active.
If you incorporate several different status effects that can incapacitate an enemy, you could spice up stealing a bit, since instead of just spamming steal over and over, you'd want to find what status effect they're vulnerable to.
If you incorporate several different status effects that can incapacitate an enemy, you could spice up stealing a bit, since instead of just spamming steal over and over, you'd want to find what status effect they're vulnerable to.
Various twists on stealing I've seen, some of these I've seen in other games, some of these ideas I'm using in my game.
-Stealing a stat like HP, MP, or a buff.
-Stealing that affects an enemy's battle ability (up to outright death, like stealing from mechanical enemies in FFX)
-Stealing an item to prevent an enemy from using it themselves.
-Stealing an item and an enemy reacts to the fact and it's A.I. changes. ("You stole my apple! Now I'm mad!)
-Stealing an item and equipping/using it against that same enemy.
There are a lot of cool twists on stealing.
-Stealing a stat like HP, MP, or a buff.
-Stealing that affects an enemy's battle ability (up to outright death, like stealing from mechanical enemies in FFX)
-Stealing an item to prevent an enemy from using it themselves.
-Stealing an item and an enemy reacts to the fact and it's A.I. changes. ("You stole my apple! Now I'm mad!)
-Stealing an item and equipping/using it against that same enemy.
There are a lot of cool twists on stealing.
