It was made for people who afk.

Mana kill was an unfortunate side effect. Probably would have been nicer if there was another stat used for this.

Yeah, like just a timer that starts on death. Every 30 seconds it ticks with xp loss. Never was sure why mana was used as the qualifier.

That's silly then. The admins don't care one bit about AFKing. I've been issued a couple times about it, even, and nothing has come of it - just a 'please don't afk' and a disconnect if I'm spamming people with hunger/sleep messages. It's just a leftover from old IRE... heck, doesn't Achaea let you set your timeout counter to something like 3000 minutes now? AFKing hurts no one and should remain unpunishable. Especially when so many hurtful things aren't against the rules (thieving, griefing, most forms of harassment, etc.).

Don't those items have decay times? As in, you can only keep them indefinitely by putting them in your shop stockroom? Either way, I agree that you shouldn't get to keep the items.

I also agree that theft adds very little to the game. There is that sense of danger to your stuff, just like worrying about being ambushed in certain areas or getting stranded on an aetherbubble, but the loss of expensive or rare items is always tragic.

I think the original problem with AFK'ing was that some things are locked to you until you've logged so many hours in game. So if you logged those hours and were never AFK, theoretically, you'd be a more established and knowledgable player ready for whatever that unlocked. That's just my guess, though.

I wonder if demigods lose essence when they run out of mana. Ascendants are at least limited in their loss if you do lose essence by soul drain.

Anyway the who system is also made to reveal possible afkers, I suppose the Achaea team really hated afkers?

Some do decay, some do not. Further, there are people who put them in a stockroom on the decay-ticks.

You can argue the keeping or not thing all you want! However, while it is the way it is, it is a theft of an item that has had quite a bit paid for it if you went out of your way to getting it (not so much if it's your current tradeskill item).

Probably. As far as I understand, experience and essence are the same things, you just never get to actually "see" your experience until you're a demigod. I doubt the admins went through the trouble of assigning separate experience, essence and divine essence values for each mob.

Essence works differently though, I mean the first demigods were on the bottom of the rankings because they had no 'experience'

I was poking around and there's a Achaean thread on stealing from a different angle.

Theft is theft is theft and you shouldn't do it, but that's my opinion.

The same could be said of shop theft. Personally, I think stealing from a person is worse than stealing from a shop. If shop theft is going to be turned off for flimsy reasons of mercy and compassion, then this should go away for the much more substantial damage caused by emptying a person's inventory.

Was never a demigod, but for ascendants you just instantly got zipped up to domoths and start reforming. Mana never drains.

Responding only to whats been posted about stealing defense, safe zones, and timing out... You have

Pooka dominate selfishness off. There goes your 'stealing defense.'

Forced commands= no timeout. There goes the 'but you should have timed out' defense.

The nexus of power on prime should always be a 'safe zone'.

Anyway I am sure the person appreciates your concern Xenth but this will probably be issued if not already, so probably no more talk of 'this person'TM.

In other parts of it, I think the whole situation is horrible. The fallout from this is potentially ridiculous as it just opens the world up to summon people off their nexus when they might be afk (or are not afk) into barriered, greatpent, mono'd rooms, use active dominate (which is alot faster than pooka) and just strip them until they have absolutely nothing. But then, I don't see why people would really want to play that game. So the admins either put a foot down about stealing and just call it a no no or stop doing updates to shop code to prevent stealing when personal theft is only a single dominate 'generosity' away, not to mention the noobs who don't have this skill.

Also, going afk at the nexus is something that everyone does so the whole 'holier than thou' attitude on that doesn't hold up either.

You can't summon someone from a nexus.

Prime nexuses have no such protection. The nexuses on other Planes have that protection (can't be forced off on or off it).

The 'shield' object AFAIK protects people from being summoned out of prime org territory.

Ah yeah, that too. I guess you could enter the city stealthily and summon them to a different, unguarded part of it. Shielding prevents summon too, so if you shield before AFKing at your nexus you'll be gravy.

A threat is the potential for a particular threat-source to successfully exercise a particular vulnerability. A vulnerability is a weakness that can be accidentally triggered or intentionally exploited. A threat-source does not present a risk when there is no vulnerability that can be exercised.

So theft, what is it good for? For honest people, absolutely nothing. For crooks it is an opportunity to increase their personal wealth or to try something clever. For the victim the consequences can be quite severe, countless hours of effort can be literally stolen. In the worst case scenario they'll just quit and leave which doesn't do anybody any good. There are always going to be threats (dishonest players, accidents, bugs) but I think there should be an effort to reduce unnecessary vulnerabilities and that means afflictions like vestiphobia, theft in all forms. The benefit (danger and excitement) just doesn't outweight the cost.

In response to AllergicToSabres you are not on a level playing field IG or IRL. In the real world there are limits to what you can/should do. (physics and law) For example it is going to take a long time to brute force a long password and someone probably will notice. (either the admins or the player upon login) Just because you are robbed without taking all necessary precaution doesn't make it your fault. You evaluate the risk, and maybe because the likelihood is so small you decide it's not worth doing anything about it. It's been pointed out but not all of us have the credits to learn selfishness. Some of us don't bother hiding our valuables because we don't know any better. It's also hard to write triggers for something you can't/don't anticipate.

We might not agree but it's still good to discuss these things.

Here's a good link about Risk Management. It's written for IT systems but a lot of the principles can be applied to more important things like Lusternia

While I cannot condone theft of any kind, in game or out of it, I don't have any sympathy for people who are victims of theft when they have every opportunity to protect their assets. Would you feel sympathy for the guy who had his phone stolen from his car, after leaving it unlocked, windows down, sitting in the middle of a city for three hours while he watched a movie? I sure as hell wouldn't.

There are a multitude of precautions that one can take and only so many ways that someone can exploit your defenses. Making a trigger to rewear your pack upon taking it off and to put gold back in your pack upon taking it out is hardly time-consuming and nullifies 99% of the kind of theft that would affect a player who can't afford selfishness. Once you get selfishness, make a trigger to apply it after generosity, and I can't see any way for a thief to get around it (unless there's a co-ordinated dominate attack (i.e. three players: dominate Rahil generosity, dominate Rahil get gold from pack, dominate Rahil give gold to me) before your selfishness trigger can fire). It might be annoying to constantly activate/deactivate triggers but it's a small price to pay to ensure the safety of your items. Besides, gold's the only thing you need to protect in this game.

If you've gone for the trans tradeskill -> item route before Virt Discipline I don't know what to say.

Rael mentioned about not hiding valuables because of not knowing any better. This would be easily remedied by adding an anti-theft component to the various novice tasks: things like keeping gold in a pack and those simple triggers. I'm surprised there's so much ignorance about theft here: from Achaea I remember the first thing you did was make those triggers.

The thing about these defenses is they'll hold up if you happen to go AFK for a bit, but if you AFK all day at the Nexus someone is going to find a way to make your life hell. Is it really that hard to disconnect your client when you'll be away for a few hours?

AFK is a problem because people expect to be able to interact in an interactive game. The whole benefits-for-being-online thing hasn't been a part of the game for roughly ten years...

Profit, too!