Hi everyone,

I'm curious about thievery and the possibilities for it, if not necessarily for Skyrim then just for the future of RPG's. How difficult would it be to program a sort of memory into guards or shopkeepers? Let me explain what I mean by memory by providing you with a scenario:

The shopkeeper is downstairs in this scenario

1) Thief walks into shop
2)Shopkeeper sees thief walk into shop
3)Thief walks upstairs where there is a diamond, and takes it
4)Shopkeeper sees thief walk back down the stairs and then out the door
5)Shopkeeper later heads upstairs to bed and notices the diamond is missing
6)Shopkeeper remembers the only person to walk upstairs was you, and so reports you to the authorities


I don't think I need to elaborate any further- obviously there are more specifics and possibilities we could get into but is something like this even remotely possible in today's games?

Thanks for reading.

--Aros

If Radiant Story is capable of doing this, a bad scenario is IF all other NPCs do not have the habit of walking into people's house randomly like the player does, thus making theft hard. A worst case scenario is IF all NPCs walk around randomly into people's house, and the merchant report the NPC to the NPC guard, in no times, the city would be a barren ghost town.

The shopkeeper shouldn't let the Thief go upstairs in the first place.
Or only if they are his friend.

Good point- I guess my reason for wondering if this would be possible is that it would require thieves to enter into buildings discreetly, perhaps through an upstairs door that would need to be picked, or when more than one customer was in that building.

I don't think the report would automatically condemn an NPC to jail, but to questioning. If you had the stolen item on you then obviously this would be grounds for arrest.


While I believe the AI is more than capable of doing this I think it's probably beyond the reach of Skyrim (due to time and other priorities) but it is interesting to think about.

Haha, right- another good point. In this case I suppose the thief would be forced to either enter the upstairs if possible, or to befriend the shopkeeper (or get him drunk, same thing right?)

in fo3 the shopkeeper would comment when you looked at his safe "That's locked for a reason" - I don't see why he couldn't comment "that area is off limits!" and then if you ignore him he calls the guards. Shouldn't be too hard to implement. Trying to get the ai to chase you down is asking for problems.

Well oblivion have much improvements on stealth behavior in compare with morrowind, but many of them was screwed by flawed features
like all known steal marks on items, psychic guards
For example merchants actually become suspicious if see sneaking player in their shop, they will follow player to check trying player to steal something, they become aware if player use Drag to steal something.
I use some AI improvements mods like thats really make those improvements better and reduce flaws
Put it in its Place - Enhanced Grabbing
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=19847
Reneers Guard Overhaul
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=5977
Clothing matters
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=22653
Well I believe If item cost and owner rights will be reworked now with checking of owner of equipment at character along regional bounty system
For example there is can be different items with different cost and owner rights
Owner of item recognize his items if they equipped by %PCname and player character in line of sight, owner can alert guards or try to disable %PCname or even try to kill him.
Owner will recognize his items when %PCname try cell them back to him
Ownership will clean on legal item acquirement
There is can be different levels of ownership like guild/faction with rank requirement ownership, NPC character ownership and player ownership.

Now lets think about regional items knowing cost
There is must be difference between of an apple at table has cost of 1 gold thats can be stealed without consequences as character was not detected and valuable Necklace of an jeweler merchant who found after some days thats his precious was stolen and say about this to guards and local merchants or his friends and Crown Jewels thats has owner restrictions (only for royal family) and known by everyone in this region

In first example there is no consequences for undetected character but if he was detected by owner then owner according to his disposition can make some decisions
like scold player for such act and lower disposition, or if player was an good friend with high disposition toward to %PCname he will allow to take thats apple (such behavior was confirmed for Skyrim)

In second example theoretically can be done deductive reasoning for NPC for judge in theft last character who he see around his items its will be hardly done and better way is add guard thats will multiply owner LOS area or disallow player to trespass secured areas and if item was stolen add stolen mark to it after some time (depend on cost of items since more valuable items cheeked by owner more times the low cost ones) thats will known by LOCAL merchants and guards,
so they will recognize item on sight or when player will try cell it.
After some time bounty cost for thats item will fall and all will forget about it expect first owner, or item can become player owned.
Such items can be cleaned from stole marks with crafting skills like smelting into ingots and recover gems, clearing owner and master brand with acid as an alchemical process, disenchant and enchant item different properties with Enchanting such ways will alter cost of item and for recover full gold price of an item need to find an shady fence or smuggler.

In third example highly valuable item can be known by all confident characters in thats area not only by guards and merchants and they will all recognize item on sight if some will equip it, some will even try kill character thats wear such items (like ordinators in Morrowind)
It will always has Owner and bounty cost for thats item shall not fall anymore

Such changes will make Thieves guild fences and independent fence highly valuable and will fix stolen items system from oblivion, or player will actually search for alternative shops in different areas since local shops will know about such stolen items for some time.
Thats will really improve thief roleplayng in Skyrim and will make shady NPC more unique.

last time i looked. the mod PiiP (linked above) did something very similar to that.

As much as a system like that you describe is flexible and realistic, I must say that I would be pissed off not to able to equip stuff I have nicked out of fear that someone would recognize them on me. Making such a system not annoying would require significant effort. How about scrapping the whole item recognition on sight idea, and instead using just a character recognition system. Shopkeeper informs guards if he is SURE you have stolen an item. Guards now having a description of your APPEARANCE and keep an eye out, in case you are seen. Now the description alone is not the best possible means of recognizing someone. So every time a guard sees you (and given he/she has your description) he/she has a chance of recognizing you. That chance depends on how good does the description fit your appearance.

Now all these checks may sound difficult to accomplish programmatically but in fact they are very simple: The description is just a list of what you were wearing along with the characteristics of your face (can be expressed with just a number). You can even take lighting conditions into account so that maybe not all characteristics/clothes in the description are accurate, according to how well you were seen! The guards just calculate the difference of what they see (again lighting conditions can be taken into account) and whatever description they have of you. If the number that comes up is below a threshold they stop to search you. We can do a few more calculations to decide whether the guard busts you then. Of course your stats will come in play in many parts of all these calculations. I'm sure I can think of formulas for all those things. I'm sure the guys at Bethesda can think of similar systems. Even if they don't, I'll try to mod such stuff in anyways.

I think it would be better if when you first entered the shop you could only enter the ground floor. then, when you had become known/gained the shopkeepers trust a bit you could maybe go upstairs when he wasn't really paying attention or something. Either that or they ban you completely from going upstairs.

NPC's already had ownership flags over their belongings, if they took this to the next level and set each items with importance and the NPC's notices its missing, then we can go from there with regards to the player and theives

I think that shop keepers should do other things then just following if somebody (since hopefully there will be some NPC thieves actually stealing rather then walking around talking about being thieves), what they should do is things like lean on/over counters or peek at suspicious people... after all that's more realistic then abandoning the counter, leaving half the shop open to other thieves and upsetting what might actually be an honest customer! Also if somebody goes somewhere they shouldn't in the shop, like towards the shopkeepers bedroom, the shopkeeper should verbally tell the person off and get them to leave, on refusal, calling guards.

Oh I'd also like to see guards not give fines for everything and NPCs actually pay fines and/or going to jail. After all NPCs in oblivion, if they got any bounty at all, all guards around would instantly try to kill them and not stop until said NPC is dead... that was very unrealistic and really, with totalitarianism like that, it is no wonder people want to leave the empire.

Excellent idea.