This PR adds an innate thieving glove ability to the Thief and removes thieving gloves as a purchase option from the Traitor store.
I would like to preform a vote to get maintainer consensus on what should be done with the thieving gloves for the Traitor side.
I personally think that Traitors rely on the thieving gloves way too much considering their other myriad of options, and that it should be more expensive or removed entirely.
The decision on the PR
Merge
Merge with the gloves kept
Close
0voters
If merged with the gloves kept, AROUND what price do you think they should be (±)?
As a huge fan of stealth gameplay I fully disagree with removing thieving gloves from the uplink. Gunning people down is not fun for me, and gloves allow for plenty funny interactions (stealing everyones headsets and alike)
Id argue they instead could have their speed lowered, full on removal is too drastic.
I also really dislike this being shown as âGo shoot peopleâ
There is already many cases of antags being too oppressive, as seen by many PRs by both admins and players trying to balance it out a bit.
Making murder the only option is simply boring, even more so than stealing. It will naturally lead to more medbay bombings, more RR, more mald about beint straight up murdered, and with the fact maintainers for some reason still think RRing is the way to go as death needs to have consequences, taking away the one option to not remove the CMO or Captain from the round is just a terrible idea.
Make the gloves slower, maybe even more expensive, but outright removal of the one tool syndicates have to allow for stealth is not it.
This just promotes an unhealthy gameplay loop where you have to RR someone to do any sort of objective, and it simply not fun for the victim. Iâd 10x rather get stolen from that shot and abandoned in maints.
Yes I know consequences of death is a fully seperate thing, however it doesnt change this PR will lead to a very unhealthy development in that regard. I will always be against death having high severe consequences (insert the âYes, youâre all wrongâ meme) as being allowed to play the game should just be for everyone, and not be taken away cause someone needed the hypospray.
ok i do really hate thieving gloves so removing them from traitors is a step forward for me, but itl be alot of work to keep them in general without reworking them or designing the rest of the game around them. NLR might be required in LRP at some point, thieves gloves will still suffer from the issues they have, its just less people will deal with it since its limited to thieves ect. Alternative options in servers ive seen:
Paradise: Price increase to 7tc, much more loud/combat focused server with a much more powerful sec and slightly more powerful antags to where they actually balance eachother out
Goonstation: Has a really fun equal to thieving gloves in a cartoony grabby toy thats harder and more gimmicky to use, is easier to figure out but is generally more fun AND versatile.
TG: Removes them as a whole
Its worth to note though, that all these servers have NLR making steal objectives achievable without round removing people as a consequence.
As a fan of stealth gameplay thieving gloves are absolute BS copouts, but any changes or removals need to be done very delicately. Antags are very oppressive and thieving gloves are certainly a culprit, being near untraceable at times but its the only item thats stopping that oppression from being more murderboning (Instead its just silent and extremely boring suffering)
As an avid hater of thief gloves, this feels like a step in the right direction. Though I would rather first try changing thief gloves instead of outright removing them.
My main issue with them is that, unless you know they exist, playing against them is boring. Every interaction I have a thought in my head âwhat if thief glovesâ and I stare at my UI to see if something just goes missing. Its a badly designed mechanic that encourages metagaming and bad habits. At the same time loosing something as your PDA is very annoying and I know people who just cryo when that happens.
I do want Agent Stealth to still work, but thieving gloves in their current form just suck.
Also, Increasing the price of thieving gloves doesnât really solve anything as now the agent has less TC to spend on other methods to achieve their objectives.
Yes, 1000% yes. NLR might singlehandedly be one of the most freeing things for antags that takes 0 PRs to balance.
Otherwise, I agree with Scar. Stealth options need to exist for people who prefer that. There are numerous balance levers you could consider rather than outright removal.
For the thiefâs inate stealing ability, there needs to be some way for Sec to know someone can do that so they can keep an eye on them/limit them. Previously Sec could confiscate gloves and limit the thiefâs ability to go out and do crime again. Now? They serve their time and can be stealing shit right away. Hell they could steal my disabler the second I uncuff them, basically removing my ability to catch them again if they have flash protection.
To add an example of this, on a fork where this change already exists, we had a thief that had already greentexted so they decided to a bit of trolling. They were a moth, so they stole and ate as many shoes as possible. Yes we caught them, but since there isnât duplicate crime stacking, they would eventually get out again. There was nothing Sec could do. This man stole maybe upwards of 30 or 40 pairs of shoes. While thatâs incredibly funny, having no way to combat it seems like painting yourself into a corner.
EDIT: Left a pretty detailed write up on the PR itself breaking down the scenario of something being stolen. I think it easily highlights the issues with thieving that this PR just does not address. TLDR is that this changes nothing for catching thieves, but gives them the ability to just keep thieving after being caught.
To clarify further, such passive playstyles and items that let you have essentially zero impact and essentially act as a multitool for all of your objectives that enable those playstyles probably shouldnât exist. A successful traitor should ideally be using combinations of items in the uplink, outside the uplink, being opportunistic and using social engineering. An items like the thieving gloves should not exist, but stealth playstyles still can but they should rely on the masterminds, paper trails and larger scales rather than âI will simply use my le auto-onion cutter to complete my le cut onions objectiveâ. As mentioned before, stealth items will probably require NLR still however, i do think that there should be some more gimmicky stealth items in the uplink but playstyles should not be hinging on singular items (the goonstation thieving item is a great stealth item thatâs only bought sometimes and doesnât trivialise the game for reference)
I get what you mean, I do think the thieving gloves are OP. But I do find it odd to make a comment such as this. The items should have clear strengths and weaknesses. My stealth item being good at stealth is fine. Just like my auto-murder item is good at my murder objective.
I think NLR going to LRP is a good idea that helps fix stealth antags. I also think that there should be a popup after X amount of time that just informs you that you were robbed, so that youâre notified in the event you didnât notice.
I understand wanting to have good stealth options for traitor but i think thief gloves just go way too far to a point where they basically require people to be hyper vigilant about it. Even in the best case scenario, you have zero opportunity to respond to any theft attempt before the item is actually taken. If youâre critted out or unconscious, you are basically free pickings as the theft is literally impossible to stop in any way.
In the same way that attempting to kill someone should give them a chance to counterplay and defend themselves, stealing things should have the same options. Forcing people to constantly walk around with the inventory open and scanning their slots whenever they are standing around is just not particularly healthy for the game.
In the future, Iâd be more open to stealth items that enable actual stealth gameplay: things that let you sneak in and out and get close to people. I donât think that just lifting items off of people whenever they sit down is the most engaging way to structure thief items, especially for antagonists like syndies which are meant to be a bit more high-impact.
Iâm unsure how Sec is supposed and expected to behave around antags they have in custody whoose stealing ability cant be removed, feels like this will be a problem
Close until we can actually have a good discussion about Thieves and Traitors steal objs in ernest.
Iâm going to be real, Thieves are just Traitor-. Being pacifist doesnât make them interesting if they can baton and disable everyone. Instead of solving any stealing issues with Traitor now we need to have the discussion x2 with Traitor and Thief.
Weâre dangerously getting close to the mindshield firing pin issues by making things a passive.
Itâs largely a player issue if people arenât suspicious in the suspicion based game. If a CE is getting the boots stolen right off of their person with no one noticing, thatâs an issue on the player.
We should also look at the strip times and even the notifications. At best, the Thieving Gloves should work stealthily for pockets/id slot only.
Not to bikeshed in review but stealing bigger stuff SHOULD be harder to pull off.
Pockets, IDs, maybe even headsets are fine, but bags, belts, shoes, gloves, and neck/head pieces should definitely give a notif to the victim (and maybe suits and outer clothing being completely impossible to do stealthily)
At the time it was a good change but I also now realize it hides the doafter bar in general and doesnât notify the player getting thefted if another slot is being picked.
Sometimes its good to change stuff not for the âperfect game balanceâ but for mechanics to feel a bit fresh-er, so maybe make it temporary change? It will, indeed, massively change gameplay for traitors, if we remove it from uplink, but some perspective change could be nice.
Iâm thinking of re-adding the thieving gloves back in around 2 weeks-1 month from now, though Iâd like to see how this turns out on stable. If they are added back, itâll probably be tuned to gameplay thatâs still prominent, in my opinion:
High price, similar to what is proposed here.
Only works on ID slots and pockets.
Probably a 30 second to 1 minute delayed âyour pockets feel lighter!â reminder after you have an item stolen from you.
This allows stealth gameplay while still being reasonably hard, and allows things like ID pickpocketing.