From a thematic standpoint, I love what FF9 does. Your central protagonist is a wily thief instead of a tough swordsman, so enemies have a ton of good items to steal, and towns and dungeons alike have a lot of hidden treasure chests to find. In execution, the low drop rates really drag it down, but the vibes are so on point that I don’t mind it too much.
I genuinely agree with you; it’s my favorite mainline FF, though overall I prefer the first Tactics (the other Tactics like the one he mentioned in the video can be damned for all I care). Anyways, FF9 really didn’t need to be that hard in the thievery department. I also think about how in Tactics you can destroy your opponents items as well with the knight (maybe another class too, but it’s been a bit since I played) and if successful, it acts as a pseudo-thief mechanic, just you don’t get the item; you steal the opponent’s opportunity for success.
I also like that as a thief you can more easily run away aside from normally running away by learning a skill that allows for guaranteed running away for some coins.
That's really the reason that I appreciate the Moguri Mod's "100% steal rate". The fact that I'm going to get the item is never in question, I'm not threatened enough by the boss that I could potentially wipe to it, I just don't want to have to waste 10+ minutes making steal attempts until I get it. I just wish there was a way to turn it off for random encounters, because in a standard encounter that's just broken... but in that case I simply choose not to steal from normal enemies.
The first game I ever played with stealing mechanics was morrowind, and it made me feel like I was genuinely getting away with something I SHOULD NOT have been able to do... and I guess thats kinda the point!
telekinesis extending reach for thievery is so perfect, I wish more games had something similar, I’ve stolen so many artifacts with it, especially in Tamriel Rebuilt
The best theft system is in Elder Scrolls Online. I racked up so much heat it would take over 2 months for it to fade, and I didn't want to give up the goods so I just put it down for a few months. I didn't come back, which means it saved me from playing ESO. No other theft system has improved my IRL quality of life!
Another thing to note: stolen stuff is marked in red, and most NPCs won't buy it. You've got to go to the Thieves' Guild to pawn it off, and they demand a cut for their services.
Needless to say that Persona 5 (plus Royal and Strikers) absolutely revels in thievery vibes, and from several systems at that! From the smash-and-grab approach of pulling loot off every shelf and pedestal you pass while running or stealthing around... To preforming "hold-ups" on enemies at a disadvantage to make them give up goods, or swiping stuff with a melee attack mid-fight... To the ENTIRE aesthetic of the Phantom Thieves and their cinematic treasure heists throughout the main story.
I was slightly surprised he didn't even show a clip, but i do appreciate not taking the low hanging fruit. pretty sure P5's got enough rep on this channel 😅
to add to the smash & grab part with dungeon items, the fact that doing the smashing & grabbing is also how you find the Treasure Demons (basically the metal slimes for those unfamiliar) in Palaces. That part especially really adds to the build up of "am I gonna get something valuable"
Persona 5 might not have stealing mechanics gameplay wise, but the aesthetic is just so perfect! One of the things that make the modern (p3,4,5) persona games stand out is their absolute mastery of the style each game is given. And that each game has a unique style, visually and thematically. Especially with p3 reload now massively enhancing the visual theme of the original!
A more recent JRPG Stealing system that I've enjoyed massively is Metaphor: ReFantazio's system, where once you finally have a full party with the addition of that game's thief many of the tougher enemies such as bosses have absolutely amazing items that you don't want to miss, and thankfully the game is clear if they have something when you try to steal ("failed to steal" vs "there's nothing to steal"), and it also gets around the repetition because of 2 reasons: 1. Both the starting thief and the class itself are really fast so they should almost always go firs 2. Metaphor allows you to reset battles from the start at the push of a button, so you can reset until you get the item, with each attempt being pretty quick thanks to point no1
Sadly I found this system to be both cool and redundant at the same time. Granted, it takes a measly 5 seconds or so to reset the fight and let Heismay steal (but you do have to sit through the ambush animation every single time for some reason), yet I kinda fail to see the point of incorporating a steal % chance in the first place if the game so deliberately allows you to 'save scum' the item and even encourages you to abuse this system. The game is punishing; every turn counts. There are bonus battle rewards if you finish the fight quickly. And many of the items that can be stolen from stronger enemies are pretty valuable. Unless you have a problem with generally making use of the restart fight button, there's absolutely no reason not to restart the fight until you steal the item. At that point, in my opinion, I'd rather have stealing be guaranteed and make it 'riskier' in other aspects, such as costing two turn points, or having it cost more MP. I love the restart fight feature, but if I had the choice between restarting a fight 5-15 times to steal an item (worst case that happened to me was doing this for like 4 minutes, close to 40 attempts if I had to guess) and not having to restart the fight 5-15 times because stealing is guaranteed but costs more in one way or another, I'd much, much rather prefer the latter.
@@sockknight3927 "I use what I must! It didn't work!" "Ugh, so much for that." ""Face me! A blunder!" "Ugh, so much for that."" "I use what I must! It didn't work!" "Ugh, so much for that." ""Face me! A blunder!" "Ugh, so much for that.""
@@sockknight3927 Yeah I haven't played ReFantazio but that sounds exactly like you're saying - what's the point of a steal probability if all you need to do is reset the battles until it succeeds? It's one of the cardinal sins of video game design - wasting the player's time for no reason.
In divinity OS2, stealing from a man's pockets will have them notice it's missing after a time and start running around questioning other npcs, this includes the player
Glad to see Dokapon mentioned. My cousin traumatized me by spending a 4-spinner to lap around me 3 times and steal all my items, including the relevant quest item to get the chapter castle. I never felt this cheated in a game, it was amazing.
I'm just reminded of how one person can be given a quest that's like "deliver this medicine to this city for the sick orphans", and another player can 100% steal the medicine from you and sell it... and the person who got robbed is the one who catches all the heat for it!
yeah, fun game with "friends", but playing JUST 2 players really showed a major flaw. If my only competition is my brother, the moment i let the genie out of the bottle about the full extent of what the darkling can do, every story beat becomes "i could turn in/progress the main quest... or i could coast in a close second until i can use the darkling to take everything from you, including castles." As far as we got into the story in the few moments of peace, it really is hard to justify the contest when we are both equally petty enough to have the exact same idea about my previous darkling quote. It ended up becoming a psudeo-completionist run where we were just trying to unlock all classes and items for gallery reasons, but neither of us wanted to be the one to be the darkling who lost. XD
@@cullenlatham2366 I played a completionist run with my 2 sisters and we just had a peace pact that worked. Playing with 2 players only truly feels bad. I had the luck of playing it with 4 players for the most part.
What im sad about stealing is that you dont see the consequences, like a character being locked out of their home because you stole their key, a cheese wheel seller noticing that some are missing and attacking you even if they didn't see you directly doing that... Whether you were detected or not is always true or false and resolved the moment you press the steal button.
I like the idea. Especially them getting locked out if you steal their keys. I think being attacked whether they saw you steal it or not makes less sense because why would they assume it’s you but it would make sense if it was also tied into a relationship system. Like you got caught enough times stealing that they assume it’s you now. Or maybe if they’re looking for who stole it and see you sneaking or doing something else suspicious.
You know... Majora's Mask actually has a moment like that. You get someone's room key, you know it's not yours but you keep it anyway. Your tool tip even comments on how this feels wrong. That night, a sad Goron has to spend the night outside the hotel, sleeping until it starts raining
@@xarin42 Definitely could be in one. I can't think of any that have that mechanic but it wouldn't surprise me. Also you definitely should try some. The first Deus Ex game is one of the best games ever made and it's actually on sale for $0.97 on steam for the next 24 hours.
Sure, like how stealing or doing bad things to a person might lower their general trust in strangers. So an NPC might lower their opinion of you as a random passerby, or they might start to suspect their neighbors. you also never see the shop owner turning bankrupt, having lost their home because they couldnt make ends meet. now their kids cant go to school.
I'm really glad you mentioned Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 this episode. While the stealing system of Thracia is very potent and can result in very lopsided power in player hands, it evens out by the fact that enemies can also do the same (Capturing your undefended characters and stealing all their items, besides some very important ones), and the general lack of income the player has at their disposal without it - in Thracia 776 you play as a uprising rebellion in an incredibly oppressive Empire that starts with just a bunch of fresh recruits, some bandits, and a couple experienced soldiers as your army. You don't get weapons and gold through legitimate means - you have to take it from the oppressive regime and any other foes along the way. It really lends to the narrative.
In Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced if you Min-Max your entire run around stealing, things get pretty nutty. As your video says the game lets you steal things like abilities and weapons but these skills are intended to be late game skills, inaccessible to the party early on. However, the weapon that gives Thieves "Steal Ability" (new abilities are gained though using specific weapons) is tied to your Party's stats. FFTA uses a mechanic where your entire party/guild has levels/stats which dictates which missions you can accept and at certain thresholds you automatically gain items and gear. There is an early repeatable mission that can grind this one stat allowing you to get access to "Steal Ability" very early, like literally just out of the tutorial early. Then there is an early game mini boss who has the "Steal Weapon" ability which you can lift off of him and several other random early enemies with weapons that give rare and powerful skills including the weapon that gives "Steal Weapon." All together you can gain access to several high power late game abilities far earlier than you are really intended to.
One of the main issues of stealing in most western RPGs or open world games... the Risk/Reward isn't there at all. The risk is that you have to go on a merry chase or brutal combat if you fail, and there's tons of potential social punishments on top of that (And if you were willing to fight everyone and everything for what you're going after, you could just do that and cut out the middle man). The reward is... 25 gold coins. There is rarely anything in anyone's pocket worth the punishment you receive if you fail. Sure, you can do things like 'steal an NPC's key to break into their house and ransack the place' but even then the items you can acquire there are almost never better than things you already have, and there's rarely any reason to take huge chances when the only payoff is extra cash. It also isn't helped by the whole song and dance just... often not being necessary. Why steal a key when you can pick the lock: Lockpicking is a skill that is generally *way* more useful than pickpocketing. The vast majority of locks in Bethesda RPGs don't have keys, so you're going to be lockpicking anyway, but almost everything you could get from pickpocketing you can get from some other source faster and with less risk.
The fact that you also need to find a fence to sell your inventory full of "(stolen)" wine bottles and cheese wheels also made it even worse than it already was. In _all_ my playthroughs of Bethesda games and all the different play styles I've gone through using to keep the games interesting, I've _never_ bothered being a thief, because the risk is so high and the reward is so low.
I also don't like the percentage chance in stealing, it encourages save-scumming. I prefer Obsidian's design where you just have to reach a skill threshold and it's either you can steal an item or you can't. In Wasteland 2, you can max out your skill in lockpicking a safe and your highest chance is only 70%, if you fail you cannot lockpick that safe forever. What do you think the players are gonna do if they fail? Just leave that item forever? Of course they're gonna reload. Sometimes the design is to blame for save-scumming, not the players.
@@One.Zero.One101 I know this is very gamey and not realistic at all, but I do think for small-time thievery like nabbing a few coins you should be able to reach 100% chance to steal. Like, imagine a pickpocketing system where you select the items you want to steal and it fills a bar on the side, with modifiers like if the target is distracted with something or sleeping, or penalties if you're being observed by someone or wearing gear that gives you a negative modifier. The theft is guaranteed until you hit a threshold, and after that threshold is when you risk getting caught. (I'd retain said theft meter so you can't try to steal from them again until conditions change.) Now, rather than just rolling the dice, the player has ways they know about to increase the odds. Maybe they can create a distraction, maybe they can wait until the target is engaged with someone else or catching them sleeping. It gives the player small rewards for being observant of NPCs and knowing when they've got the best chance of scooping a few coins unnoticed.
Seems to be a general trope for the mystery dungeon style of game? I know for sure that Chocobo's Dungeon 2 had it, and I've heard of others as well that I just can't remember off the top of my head.
@@xarin42Yes, Mystery Dungeon itself is a large series, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is just one of several games in it, and not all of them are Pokemon themed either. I want to say that either Dragon Quest or Shiren was the first Mystery Dungeon game.
I hate when there's unique items hidden behind low-percentage steal attempts in JRPGs, it essentially grinds the battle to a halt until you manage to steal the item because you don't want to risk defeating the enemy and never getting it. On a positive note, it's time to rep my beloved Dead Cells again. All enemies have a small chance (usually below 1%) to drop a blueprint when killed, and you have to survive to the end of the stage to secure the blueprint and unlock the equipment. But to counter this extremely low drop rate, you can unlock an item called the Hunter's Grenade which guarantees that the hit enemy drops a blueprint on death. The downside is that it also powers up the enemy to an Elite, thus making it tougher to defeat, and the grenade takes up 1 of your 2 ability slots. Without it, you would need to do dozens upon dozens of runs to get the last couple of blueprints you're missing, which sucks if the enemy only appears in the last stage. This is a mechanic way more games should have. Give me a way to guarantee stealing items from the enemy, but make it a harder fight in return.
The funny thing is that guaranteed steals leading to harder battles would be easy to justify in classic JRPGs. Let’s say the thief is so skilled that when they steal, they steal something, and it is of high value every time. Of course, trying to steal randomly would anger a person. The enemy in question now at least hits harder or has trickier AI because they were just stolen from.
@@iantaakalla8180 They could easily give you 2 options for Thief characters: a more stealthy pickpocket that is luck-based, but has no other downsides; and a shove and grab robbery that guarantees you get the item, but it angers the enemy and makes them substantially harder. It needs to be a pretty big step up in difficulty, otherwise there's no reason to go for a pickpocket instead.
@@Professor_Utonium_ It's impressive you can somehow write when you can't even read. How is asking for a much harder fight in return for a guaranteed item "spoonfeeding"? Do you enjoy having to reset and redo the entire fight 20+ times because it didn't drop the item you wanted? Do you enjoy stalling and doing nothing for 10+ minutes because your thief never steals the correct item? Do you enjoy having to do that EVERY single fight because you never know if the enemy has a unique item? It's the RPG equivalent of watching paint dry, there's 0 challenge and 0 fun, you're just waiting for it to happen. Get off your high horse, you're not a 'cool hardcore gamer' just because you watch paint dry.
@leetri Dude, you're already playing an RPG, one of the grindiest and most repetitive genres out there. They honestly just might not be the genre for you, and I'm not saying that to be cheeky. A lot of RPG fans enjoy fighting the same enemies and combing through the same location for hours to try and get everything. If an RPG handed me everything with little to no effort, I would become bored with it very quickly, but I get that's my own personal outlook.
When FFX came out it was the first game that actually made me care about stealing due to a certain boss encounter being almost impossible without you realizing that the answer was to steal. The thief Rikku easily becomes the most important character in your party when doing low level runs due to how much flexibility she has in both stealing and mixing items.
Dragon Quest is notorious for how bad its thieving system is. Until either 9 or 11, all the Thief class did was increase drop rates and change the flavor text if the enemy did drop something. In most JRPGs, this wouldn't be too much of an issue. But in Dragon Quest, over 90% of enemies only have basic healing herbs as drops, even endgame enemies. Nothing more disappointing that killing a group of enemies in the final dungeon and they drop a 30hp heal item. There's a few that drop early equipment too. Lots of enemies like to drop Copper Swords. But then there are the 0.1% that drop stat seeds. Not only are they the rare drop, so a minuscule chance on top of a minuscule chance, but the mobs that do drop seeds tend to be either rare or have no way to tell at a glance that they drop them. Except for Agility Seeds. All members of the Metal Slime family have Agility Seeds on their drop table. Being the enemies with the highest Agility stat in the game, it makes sense.
Disgaea's worth a mention, having stealing options that incorporate two of the most OP options you mentioned: Yoinking weapons right out of your enemies' hands to dramatically reduce their stats, and even stealing raw stats from them straight. It plays fast and loose with realism in general, so the player never really has to ponder "how do you Steal someone's Agility, exactly?" The two thefts I didn't see mentioned were vampirism and mana drain. I understand that they're not very deep, but they appear as part of the thief toolkit in a lot of titles: Steal Health and Steal MP. I also think thievery is interesting at the Civ level, where Kingdom Destroyer had a prosperity system and you could send thieves into one of the kingdom's cities to deny the kingdom prosperity points. Since those points defined how many actions the kingdom got to take on its turn you could dramatically reduce its ability to build up its defenses or, more importantly, to recover after you've attacked. I feel like a decent number of city-builders have this kind of thing, though I understand if people consider the raw scale to turn this from "thievery" into "pillage, loot, and plunder" - If Sly can get by on the vibes, I understand if some will find the utter absence of vibes enough reason to disqualify a mechanic.
I loved the different names for stealing the stats in Disgaea! Stealing someone's attack stat is a lot less entertaining than stealing their heart or whatever other funny titles they had listed.
Yeah, Disgaea thieves do what Riki from Xenoblade does bur years before he did it. But I guess Xenoblade is more well-known at this point... actually I don't know that- have they sold more Xenoblade than Disgaea games?
Fits especially well in multiplayer being that you can have multiple roles for different players. Someone who breaks in, someone moving bags, someone watching guards, etc.
To be honest, "heisting" is so criminally underdeveloped in all of the Payday games and they don't really sell the idea that you're not just doing video game objectives because "that's the game!" Payday The Heist has incredible setpieces and some interesting variation but the players almost never have agency in it. Diamond Heist and Counterfeit *kinda* manage it, but the stealth there is just as linear and predefined as loud sections and your only choice is when you fail. Payday 2 gets closest. The asset system was cool but with no limits there was never a reason not to just buy them out. The Preplanning system was shaping up to be something really cool, letting larger levels exist as combinations of more modular sub-parts that were more directly in control of the players but once Goldfarb, Ulf, and others left the team those influences completely fell apart and the game reverted to linear setpieces. SOME of the Post-Ending DLC did a little better with it but it never accomplished what the preplanning system's baby steps reached. And Payday 3 literally makes no effort to immerse the players in its mechanics. They're still good games (not 3 lmao) but they're more heist-flavored horde shooters rather than games with actual heisting mechanics and elements. Though Payday 2 gets painfully close.
Hitman getting its own section is well deserved, but immersive sims like Dishonored and especially Thief felt severely underdiscussed in this video. It's even in the latter's name for crying out loud!
@@MordalonThe entire premise of the games (especially Thief) is getting in and out without being seen or heard. It’s different from the open world stuff as often you’re working through discreet levels and bypassing security and such rather than just sticking a bucket on someone’s head and cleaning the place out.
@@Guboo I thought one of the big elements of Immersive Sims was the diverse ways you can tackle various challenges? I feel like those kinds of alternate solutions to stealth is something Immersive Sims do a lot.
@@Mordalon Yeah. though back in the Thief days it was more about sneaking around and then yoinking the goods without getting spotted than the crazy stuff you see in more modern games like Hitman.
Bravely Default 2. I love the Thief Job class in that game! You have the classic thefts of items and materials that enemies have, but you can also steal their HP, their MP, and considering that it's Bravely Default, you can steal their TURNS too! You can use up some of your turns to essentially stunlock the enemies while everyone else beats them up. There's even skills that steal stats, and enemy buffs too! One of the bosses has an ability that raises his shield, and counters your attacks with reflected damage. If you steal from him, now *you* have the reflecting damage, and he has nothing. It's awesome!
Something I don't think got mentioned in the open world segment, but Skyrim and I'm sure some other games have a 'fence' system, where stolen goods are marked as such and can't be sold to ordinary shopkeepers; So you have to find a fence who'll buy them too.
My first Legend of Zelda game (Twilight Princess) there's this little shop run by a bird that has barrels that you dunk items into to fill them. After dunking your item you're supposed to leave the correct amount of rupees in a box. First time I played I Could Not figure out how to pay cause Talking to the bird didn't help. So I walked out of the shop...That bird attacked me constantly! 😂
Thievery is paramount in any protagonist's arsenal. Most of that loot you find while exploring belongs to *someone*, living or dead. Interesting how in Persona 5 you only learn to Pickpocket halfway through the game. It's more like Sly Cooper, embracing the aesthetics of theivery. Toranosuke Yoshida teaching you how to Extort downed enemies is much more profitable, with the only drawback being the risk that they lose their temper and strike you with increased attack power if you push them too far. That tactic works in SMT 4 and 5 as well, netting me tons of Macca.
The first place I became familiar with the stealing and law enforcement mechanics in Bethesda's style was Morrowind. I preferred playing the game in third person mode because I like to see my avatar and have a wider field of view than first person games offer, but apparently when I went to talk to a shopkeeper across the counter I had an invisible cursor on one of the decorative items on the table, so pressing the one-purpose interact button was set to "STEAL THE ITEM LAYING OUT IN THE OPEN" instead of "TALK TO THE MAN ACROSS THE COUNTER" and so the innkeeper and all the other patrons beat me to death for having the gall to try and rest there. This VASTLY soured my opinion of Elder Scrolls games actually, as if the guards in Daggerfall arresting me for "vagrancy" because I was trying to interact with the main plot wasn't bad enough. The first place I became familiar with standard JRPG stealing mechanics was as a developer. I'd never seen a "Steal Item" effect in an RPG, but using the engine made by a SNES Final Fantasy fan I found one of the core implemented mechanics was Steal Item, which would give an item to the player mid-battle, and there were options to have the enemy carry unlimited supplies or only one. I noticed it had no interaction at all with the enemy's upon-defeat treasure drops, so I started trying to apply versimilitude by making the "stealable" items often things that were portable and removable like weapons and potions, then making the "drop" items things you can't REASONABLY take off of someone during the time frame of a combat turn, while they're resisting; body armor, body parts (meat/hide of various critters, bones from skeletal undead, etc.) I've seen the feature also used for things like taking photographs or mimicking monster skills, or trapping monsters to use as pets later. When you get a little creative with the effects of "stealable" "items", the mechanic has a lot going for it. Even if it's still weird that, say, the knight with a sword doesn't have a 100% chance to drop both his armor and his sword upon defeat.
Thracia 776's stealing system also works with the game really well since you don't get any money for free. if you want money you have to sell usable weapons so you're gonna have to nab spare weapons for the rest of your party from the enemies if you don't want them to all break and be left without any weapons
Was on my way to say just this! On top of that, the "bulk stealing mechanic" - Capture - is something the enemy is just as capable of doing against the player. If your unit has a Constitution stat lower than that of the opponent, they can be abducted after being defeated, with all of the units' items. Additionally, a unit that lacks means of retaliating themselves don't even need to be drained of their HP. This makes the positioning of your Priest units even more important, especially when Staves are the most important tools as the players disposal. It also makes the Thief classline even more important, since units that are carrying another through the Capture mechanic are incapable of being captured themselves; only a Thief can reclaim items stolen via Capture. Even when the Capture system can be used against you, the player is just as capable of manipulating the system in their favor. By leaving your low-Constitution units without weapons, you can bait the enemy to Capturing them. And since carrying another unit lowers one's stats, this can give the player the ability of not just goading the enemy into certain positions, but making them even more susceptible to being defeated by Leif's ragtag band. Thracia truly is a gift... And while I'm talking about FE's stealing mechanics, I'd like to delve into a niche similar to what some of the open-world games talked about: using the Steal mechanic to give enemies items for your benefit. Thracia and Three Houses both allow the Steal mechanic to trade items into the enemy's inventory, which can be used to alter their means of attacking or impact their stats. The Houses in particular has a unique interaction; while the game does not allow the transfer of weapons when stealing, they can trade over shields. The item weight given through this exchange can significantly alter a unit's Attack Speed, giving a slower unit the ability to survive an attack because they are no longer getting struck twice, or even allowing them to double when they once couldn't. Like I said, this is a very niche function: you're likely only using this on the game's most challenging difficulty, and even then most players are able to sidestep the Speed issues through other means (combat arts, using units with more reliable Speed stats, etc) but I always love seeing people, especially those playing challenge runs like 0% Growths, making use of it.
Octopath Traveler, my beloved. I like how thieves in that game are equated to the trader class, only traders pay characters for what thieves can just take... if their level and stats are high enough, and if they fail they have to pay fines in order to try again. Theft during battle is also interesting in that success is based on whether you can spin the games breaking-mechanic into your favor as enemies resistance to theft is heavily based on whether they're broken or not... but truth be told your theft of stuff outside battle is often so rewarding you don't really need to steal in fights, it's mostly a waste of time. Also the thieves in that game also have stat-debuffs and a super-attack that does damage based on speed rather than strength, which is always welcome in order to make each character a viable damage-dealer... even if it also means I'd rather save the thief-characters actions to do damage rather than steal during the important break-phase, so I'm not aure if that's good design or counter-intuitive design.
I do love how a few tweaks to the JRPG formula makes stealing during combat more engaging and far less tedious in Octopath Traveller. Being able to improve your odds (or even guarantee success) by damaging enemies and spending BP means stealing is about strategic timing - as opposed to most JRPGs where you just spam "Steal" until you get what you want or give up.
Dicey Dungeon's Thief character has some fun stealing mechanics. Love it when you can defeat an enemy and take part of its kit with you and cobble together an insane engine to crush the final boss.
Slightly different from these is stealing in the mainline Pokemon games! More of a form of strategy disruption than item acquisition, but at base you have the moves Thief or Covet taking the opponent's held item for your own and Trick or Switcheroo swapping held items, but there's also Bug Bite immediately eating a held berry, Incinerate destroying a held berry, Knock-off getting rid of a held item, and Embargo or Corrosive Gas preventing use of the held items!
Ah, Dokapon Kingdom... My bf and I played the story mode, and we had an implicit agreement to stay civil to each other the entire time. We were on the final chapter, and the npcs were basically left behind in the dust, while we were in the last area. I really wanted to see what was in the secret loot spaces, so I convinced my bf to let me spend an ungodly amount of time trying to see what was there before we tried to beat the final boss. We were actually fighting the boss when one of the npcs became a Darkling and forced us all to leave, killed us, then threw away our stuff as a slap in the face. Needless to say, neither of us were very happy (even if it was just desserts for wasting time).
Streets of Rogue is a top-down action/puzzle rogue-lite, you're dropped down in a city-like level, and need to complete missions to progress to the next one, until the end where you can usurp the Mayor. How you do this is up to your playstyle, and your knowledge about the mechanics, also stealing. Chests and safes usually offer some good stuff, but some missions require you to acquire an item, off a person, or inside of a container. How you solve these scenarios are the name of the game, and while you can do most things with any character, some are easier, of course. You can brute force it with weapons, explosives and substance exploitation, naturally, but there are other ways too. With the Doctor or Cop you can non-lethally subdue guards if you can manage their handicaps, Hacker can manipulate the biilding and kill or distract everyone inside. Assassin and Vampire can sneak behind and kill for a simple plan, Bartender and Comedian can charm the guards and simply walk through the building, no sneaking required. Shopkeeper can just buy the rights to that item for money, Thief can pickpocket important items, and has the easiest access to thieving tools. The thing is that any character can sneak, it's just a simple act of avoiding detection, and you can acquire items that, due to your limited inventory, you'll want to use quickly. Even if you're a bloodthirsty Soldier or Cannibal, if you get a window-cutter, why not use it? You'll need to acquire many items, whether you take them by force, without force, or through social means. If there's no other options, you can always just threaten them for the item anyway, preferably with cohorts. You will pull off many heists, the only thing that changes is the means, with or without murder, with or without detection, and with many variables and difficulties and opportunities. Once you know the game well, you can try optimize for EXP or its challenge settings. You'll get more EXP for not using weapons, non-lethal means, not getting spotted or without destroying anything, you can also get a lot for mass destruction and murder, so you need to play to an extreme. You can buff the stats, equipment or amount of enemies, you can add a timer that counts down to your doom, or remove your omnipotence and require sightlines to see everything. Even 190 hours in, I'm still not tired of it, pulling off a heist hasn't gotten old at all, and I still haven't gotten that deep into it. Whether through traditional means or through the wacky, the absurd number of methods and the challenges associated with them make it so every heist is a fun time.
As far as JRPG style thieves, I have to say Disgaea is my favorite. It depends on the game with how it works, with the early games requiring a specific hand-type item that operates on the same principals as pokeballs just with stealing gear, while later games give thief classes a dedicated ability for theft while the items let non-thieves have some chance of stealing. And in Disgaea it's every bit as powerful - if not more so - than in FF Tactics or Fire Emblem. For starters, so much of a character's abilities in combat revolve around what weapon they have equipped and how skilled they are with it. An enemy with a powerful sword will have a wide array of options to deal with you, but take the sword away and all those strong skills become unusable, and with how items add stats to the characters they're equipped to, their stats take a nose dive as well to the point that if you steal things from a boss, not only does the fight immediately get more managable, but your own abilities raise in proportion as you can swap gear mid-battle. The stronger an enemy and stronger an item means they're harder to steal, but theft only really relies on the thief's Hit (accuracy/to-hit chance) stat which can be easily inflated with the right equipment. And, if that wasn't enough theft can even apply statuses, where thieves start stealing abstract concepts like the ability "Steal Health" to inflict poison, "Steal heart" to charm, etc. And then there's just all out kidnapping. Disgaea has a couple of unique systems that it adds to the tactical gameplay that play into the idea of stealing. You start a battle with no units deployed or a formation screen, but rather you deploy units from a home-tile, allowing you to recall and redeploy as the situation evolves allowing for some really fun difficulty spikes to be implemented without feeling too bs. Add onto that the lift/throw mechanic where you can have units throw each other around the map - monsters can't lift and only the bottom unit on a tile takes damage allowing for some interesting damage dodging and depending on the game it also allows for easier leveling of lower level units - for extra movement. So... what happens if you lift an enemy and throw it into your home panel? A battle royale ensues between the enemy and all your non-deployed units. If the enemy is beaten, they are forced to join your team bringing all their gear and experience, etc. along with it. But it comes with a cost because if an enemy is strong enough (usually determined by just comparing levels rather than actual stats), they could take out all your reserve units and destroy the base panel making you have to fight the rest of the battle with whatever you have currently deployed. It's one of the most robust bunch of theft systems I've seen in a tactical rpg that carries with it a bunch of risk/reward, and is thematically appropriate for games about leading armies of demons through the netherworld.
There's an interesting argument to be had about whether or not Final Fantasy VIII's draw system counts as stealing. On the one hand, you aren't actually taking anything from their "inventory", usually. However, when you take summons, you do actually "remove" them from enemy inventory. Moreover, with a few exceptions, your most likely way to acquire more magic is to face enemies and take it from them. I'd be interested to see if anyone else thinks this qualifies as a stealing mechanic.
I mean, if you know what you’re doing, a lot of your spells will come from modding cards into items and items into spells. You can pretty easily limit your drawing from enemies to new summons if you’re so inclined.
@@chloemchll3774 That's true, but I don't think that really changes whether or not it qualifies as a stealing mechanic. Thinking about it more, Griever can draw from the party iirc, which does take their number of spells down, implying the same would be true the other way (even though it isn't, mechanically).
@@astraykat6798 Oh, I agree completely it does function very similarly to a steal mechanic- I was just pointing out that it isn’t really the most likely way to acquire spells, especially if you’re looking to get several hundred copies of a spell so you can junction it on all your characters. It is way more efficient, if you want say, 300 curaga to junction to your HP, to get a whole bunch of tents (which are purchasable even in very early game shops) and using the item refine mechanic to turn them into curaga spells. More or less every good late game spell is available quite early on if you’re inclined to really abuse the card and item refine abilities, and it ultimately is a lot faster than trying to draw them in battle. But sure, it functions as a steal mechanic. I think a more interesting steal mechanic in the FF series comes from things like Barret’s Mindblow limit break in FF VII, where you can steal the enemies ability to do magic in the fight by removing all their MP. Likewise, things like absorb abilities or the drain spell function as a sort of stealing.
Lets call 8`s stealing/ stealing "aquisition". drawing is just a way of aquiring new resources to use. it is a simple system that changes time ( if you dont draw the battle ends a bir quicker) for long term benefits. You are making yourself stronger and better equipped but not weakening the enemy.
I'd like to give a shoutout to Jazztronauts here! It's a Garry's Mod gamemode where the goal is to steal as much stuff as you can from random Workshop maps and use the money you get to buy upgrades so you can steal more things and do so faster/easier. It's not stealthy in the slightest, but I think it's a fun take on a theft-focused game. There are also NPCs in the hub area who can give you quests to steal specific things in exchange for even more money and funny cutscenes following a storyline for each character. I'd highly recommend it!
There's one game that does stealing in a pretty interesting fashion, where it also functions as a sort of debuff mechanic. Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass has a certain class, and a certain character, who are able to directly steal items from enemies, and sometimes when you steal an item, it changes how the enemy works. For example, if you steal knives from Johnny Knives, he becomes Johnny No-Knives, losing access to his more powerful attacks, losing points in his attack and defence stats, and generally becoming kinda sad. As another example, stealing Mack from the Turtle Stack will split the stack into two separate turtles who are effectively stunned, making an AoE more effective against them since the stronger Turtle Stack is split into two comparatively weaker enemies. As for "reverse-pickpocketing", I'm very aware of the old "Shady Sands shuffle" and how impishly wicked it is.
@@maskedbadass6802 Indeed. Compared to the likes of Omori and Fear & Hunger (both being more well-known RPGMaker titles), Jimmy is much less well-known, but it's still pretty neat.
One game that would've been a good mention for Multiplayer thievery is Sea of Thieves. Especially because unlike a lot of the games you mentioned you aren't stealing from friends, you're stealing with friends. Because of that you feel less inhibition to steal from other pirates and it vastly changes the dynamic of the heist. It's not that people are uncaring like the bots you mentioned, because it's humans on either side. But there's even chance for negotiation and a whole ton of different possible reactions.
On the flipside the stealing in the original FFT is great and evil. I'm looking at you wizard guy with 5 of the same staff before pulling out an absurdly strong 6th staff as his last weapon.
@ What I had in mind was one fight in FFTA somewhere relatively early on where the leader of what I believe was a group of bandits or something had nice gear and really good skills...and no protection against stealing whatsoever. So you nick his weapon and then you can take your time stealing his abilities and he can't do a thing about it.
Glad you mentioned FFTA. I friggin love that game, and a lot of the best gear is ONLY available through stealing and ONLY from one or two specific missions. There's no loot table involved. If you want a Tulwar, for example, there are exactly two you can get in the game. You can get one from a specific Treasure Hunt, which are rewards for placing locations on the map in specific arrangements, and even with optimal planning, you can only get so many. The other is held by one specific blue mage during one specific mission, and if yiu don't steal it then, you won't get another chance. It's not a repeatable mission and the item isn't in the loot tables for random clan battles or purchasable from shops. The Tulwar, by the way, is the strongest saber in the game, which is the exclusive weapon type of blue mages. If you have more than one blue mage, or like me want to train your blue mage to dual wield, then you've got to plan ahead if you want to get both. And this is just one example. Lots of the best wrapons and armor can be missed forever, and even some skills. Since skills in this game are learned by training with specific weapons or wearing specific armor, if you miss the equipment, you miss the abilities. There are other weird instances of missable content as well. If you don't have a Hunter capture a Thundrake before you complete the last mission where one appears, then your Morphers will never be able to use their powers. However, just like everything, this system can be exploited. There are strategies for getting incrrdibly strong items early that involve leaning a specific stealing skill. If you grind the first repeatable mission over and over enoug times without progressing the main storyline, you can raise your clan's Negotiate skill high enough to earn the Cinqueda, one of the best daggers in the game, which teaches the ability to steal skills from enemies. This is normally something you wouldn't get until much later, but because you have it now, you can teach it to your thief characters and break the equipment curve. You can quickly steal all the other stealing abilities that you would normally need time to learn, most notably the ability to steal weapons. Then you can really go to town, stealing strong weapons that teach late-game skills from specific enemies, like the rod that teaches your Black Mages Blizzaga and the rapier that teaches Red Mages Doublecast. There are also ways to exploit the game's experience and leveling system by sandbagging so that you get to the prestige classes while still at level 2 and get better stat gains. Overall, it's a very fun game with lots of interesting and unique mechanics that can all be HEAVILY manipulated to make your party grossly overpowered.
There still hasnt been a game that has captured the unique feeling of Sly Cooper games "action stealth". I love stealth in games but almost always it kinda feels like a self imposed restriction but in Sly Cooper it truly feels like the best way to approach things
Shout out to Elite Dangerous' Odyssey expansion. Some of the on-foot missions (and something you can just *do* at any point) require you to get to a settlement, find and lift an item, then get back, all the while stealing access levels from out of sight, and dodging the guards. Do it right, and you enter legally and leave legally without anyone noticing. Do it wrong, and you're spending ten minutes sprinting away from gunfire on a desolate moon, possibly lightyears away from your ship. The payout might not compare to some other activities, but the thrill is unmatched.
I'm surprised there wasn't any examples of stealing mechanics where the cost is paid beforehand and not after. Some turn based games give characters a very weak attack with a chance to steal an item. Weighing the risks of underperforming vs the reward of what you might get is more interesting than mechanics where you just keep pickpocketing and hoping for a high dice roll.
Why is Final Fantasy Tactics the only game(like literal gameplay-wise) in which there's a Steal Heart ability, LITERALLY MAKING THE TARGET ENEMY YOUR ALLY immediately in the fight(if successful)
In hitman the right disguise change stealing to just picking something up. The same as in SW:outlaws with the right reputation, didn't expect those 2 to be in the same category
An interesting thing in JRPG stealing that I didn't hear in the video is that Final Fantasy games (and maybe others? The Pokémon move Thief does this too) you can often upgrade the Steal command to Mug, where you do a basic attack while also attempting to steal. Nice little upgrade so you're no longer forgoing a combat turn just to steal.
Completely agree with you. FF9 felt like the only game I’ve played where stealing was legitimately worth it. You can get so far ahead by stealing I just wish there was some form of skill input to reduce the rng and make it more bearable
I liked the convenience store theft system in Saints Row 1. You would go into a store and come out with a bulky package that you'd have to put in the trunk of your car to... do something with. That's about all I remember mechanically, but it was a very fun thing for younger me. Maybe because you've still got a chance to lose it, it feels more substantial?
THRACIA MENTIONED But fr capturing enemies and stealing their loot is the best part of that game. Stealing... With thieves... Sucks though. Unless you rig con levels 😅
That one stash in STALKER 2 near the Poppy Field, has a note and a couple energy drinks in it. I love the outcome from player interaction here. The guy who placed it, sits by a campfire in one of the camps, and will either complain that someone stole everything, or wonder why someone took the note but not the drinks, or be happy that the player added more stuff like a gun or similar. I love the way this corresponds to the player's actions, even if simple.
Stealing is practically a minigame in League of Legends, simply because there are objectives on the map that can be taken by either team. Feels great when you can sneak into the enemy jungle and steal a camp, but if the enemy team is wise to your shenanigans, or if you get too greedy then you're gonna get caught and have a bad time.
Great video, although I feel like it's incomplete without two essential series that are at the forefront of their own styles. The Payday series is an excellent example of multiplayer co-operative stealing, as compared to the competitive stealing examples you gave, and the Thief series is the quintessential immersive sim style stealing game. Both of these are quite distinct from the other games and styles discussed in the video, and I'd love to see an addendum video someday discussing them.
Pokemons use of thief/knockoff in multi-player is quite interesting. Those moves are near useless in the single player campaign but in competitive, items tend to make or break particular mons. The ability to remove those items is a core threat to any player and can majorly change the tides.
back when i played warframe one of my favorite things to do was the vault missions, either plowing through security with Rhino, or sneaking through with my max efficiency ivara.
FF9 is one of my favs and I am glad you talk about it, because boss fights are made "harder" by the fact that you usually want to get the rare steal from the boss and that can take a while.
The system in RDR2 is simple but incredibly satisfying. You play as a criminal so it’s almost expected you’ll take anything not bolted down, and when you find a secret robbing opportunity it feels incredibly cool.
Could've added thievery in card games, like Hearthstone. There are a bunch of cards in the came that will either copy cards in your opponent's hand/deck, or just out right steal them. The former can be pretty fun because if you're the one playing the copy cards, each match is completely different because you're playing with a different deck each time, while if it's the opposite it suddenly becomes, basically a mirror match, or even a race to play your best cards so they can't be copied. Though, it can certainly be really unfun losing to your own stuff. The version where you're literally stealing cards, just sucks when you're the target. Not only do they beat you with your best cards, but you can't even play your best cards and it can even lose you the game instantly if they steal the right win condition.
Castlevania Curse of Darkness was largely a dull, grindy, very forgettable game... but I thought its stealing mechanic was something fun, and unique(?) Each enemy had its own specific window of opportunity; if the enemy was targeted, the target would turn bright purple, signifying you could press the button and steal an item (if you were close enough for his steal-grab to make contact). Some enemies' windows came when they were making an attack, or while winding up for a special attack. Some were in response to being knocked down, or in the recoil of their attack being perfect-blocked. They were a lot of different ones and it was almost like a puzzle to figure out how to make each enemy 'robbable' (and pull it off, because again, you also had to make contact before the opportunity ended).
I feel you could make a case for Strategy Style stealing. For exemple in the Command & Conquer series engineer units can capture enemy buildings granting you acess to other factions technology tree, allowing you to mix and match unit composition and strategy. In the Red Alert games you have the Spy, that can infiltrate enemy structures and steal money, sabotage the minimap, cut off power to enemy base and steal technology granting you access to a unique unit depending on the faction you stole technology from. In C&C generals there is a hijacker unit that can steal enemy vehicles.
The earlier Assassin's Creed games' method of stealing is pretty straightforward. You just walk near a civillian and pickpocket them for florens. The amount stolen was ok, but the advantage of the mechanic is how quick the process was. So you can gain a decent amount at a pretty steady rate. The consequences of stealing was raising your notoriety, which meant that guards would attack you on sight. A funny detail is that civillians would get mad at you and start to throw hands. It was very funny to watch. All around, not a bad execution of thievery through mechanics.
My favorite game Dark Cloud 2 lets you find a Bandit Coin which is pretty rare... then you can synthesize that coin onto any of your weapons. Then each hit of the weapon has a chance to steal sorta like the JRPG method but in action combat. There's also a handful of weapons that steal by default... including a laser gun. :') It's pretty weird.
I remember there being a game where the horses can see you breaking the law, and they will (somehow) report you. I think it was an Elder Scrolls game, but I could be wrong. Of the DQs, I'm most familiar with IX, and yeah, I didn't really bother with stealing unless it was for a sidequest. Yeah, outside of that... I think Wind Waker may have been the first to let you steal enemy weapons by first making them drop it, then rushing over and grabbing it, a mechanic which Breath of the Wild also made use of. (The mechanics of doing so were slightly different, however, as in WW, the act of blocking was enough, but in BotW, you had to parry with a shield that has a higher number than the weapon's attack.) WW also had the Grappling Hook, which let you steal things from enemies pretty much guaranteed instead of just hoping they'll drop. Or you can just steal from them and book rather than engaging with them in combat. (I remember doing that with the Moblins near the Outset Island Fairy Fountain from a ledge they couldn't reach, as well as the Bokoblins on rafts near the Submarines, where I could just jump into the water and they couldn't follow or even attack.) Twilight Princess had a shop near the Forest Temple in which you could grab Red Potion or Lantern Oil. Unlike most of the shops in the game, where the transaction guarantees you lose Rupees at the same time as gaining the item, this shop stops just short of using an honor system due to the shopkeeper, Trill, being a small bird. You can pay the posted amount, overpay (or just give Trill money for nothing) to be called generous, pay too little to have your payment be called "on the skimpy side" but incur no other penalty... or get away without paying to be called a thief by the bird. Like in Link's Awakening, returning to the shop area after stealing gets you attacked, but unlike there, it's repeated chip damage until you die, leave the area, or pay properly. You might not expect Animal Crossing to have stealing, but in a way, it does. Or, more accurately, embezzlement. (Or something similar.) You can be given something to deliver to some other villager, typically furniture or clothing. You can unwrap it and keep it, or even sell it, and nobody will notice -- don't look at me that way; I watched a video to learn this -- and it seems they only sort of care if you deliver it unwrapped. Though even rewrapping it in something only you use seems to be good enough to keep the recipient from realizing you did that.
It was Skyrim, _all_ of the animals in that game have the "witness" flag enabled, so if a random horse or chicken sees you grab an iron dagger lying on the ground you've suddenly got a bounty on your head. Ridiculous.
In a way, Pokemon capturing functions like a form of Steal mechanic. It feels the most like this with Pokemon Colosseum, where you actually steal corrupted Shadow Pokemon certain trainers use.
Disgaea is the first game series that I really got into the stealing mechanic of. Get a thief to a high enough speed? A rare enemy's weapon is now mine. A boss's equipment is now mine. Granted the chances barely reach double digits if you've been levelling reasonably, (post game strats aside) and thieves were made of tissue paper (though they got a little better as the series continued), but the bonus was so worth it. Certain equipment or weapons would have a character set for like, the next few chapters of the game.
My favorite iterations on stealing are the Thieves from Dragon Quest 3 and Marino from Megaman X Command Mission, since DQ3 Thieves are not only really good at fighting, they also "steal" by just rerolling item drops, nothing you have to do to enable it besides kill all the enemies, and Marino because her Limit Break is a slot machine that you can easily time with one of the outcomes being a steal attempt with a 100% success rate
One game that's really great for selling procedural heist scenarios is Heat Signature. Some missions may be doable by just killing everyone, but all but the easiest missions strongly encourage you to be as stealthy as possible, and to skip parts of the level with your gadgets. You can see the whole ship at all times and can pause time at will, allowing you to make perfect decisions and look like a badass, and you get lots of neat gadgets like remote keycard stealers, hacking beams, and several different types of teleporter.
In Disgaea, one can steal not just gear and stats. No, one can steal concepts such as Innocence or even enemy anatomy (which in the case of the Horse Weiner, can be equipped by party members).
I like it when stealing has a special use as a mechanic in battle. Like with Rubicante in FFIV, if Edge steals from him as his cape is open, he closes it and prevents him from unleashing a big attack that does series damage.
An interesting take on stealing was FFVIII where you need to steal spells from enemies and those spells can either be used in battle or stored to increase your characters' stats. Also, you casually mentioned Kirby stealing its eemies' powers but it might have been interesting to expand on that subject. Otehr than that, excellent video, as usual.
Since you talked party board games, I was expecting 100% Orange Juice to come up. Stealing is one of the game's central mechanics - passing by another player will allow you to attack them, where the aggressor and defender roll a D6 to determine the power and accuracy of the attack, and the mitigation *or* evasion of the defense. Characters also have modifiers to Health, Attack, Defense, and Evasion, too, as well as some character-specific combat passives (which may or may not be useful). And if the defender survives, the attacker better watch out because they get a turn to swing back. If one player gets KOd in battle, the other player steals half of their Stars and chalks up one KO for their counter, putting them further towards winning the entire game, and putting the victim behind while they sit and roll the dice each turn to get back up. Some cards also exist that let you steal or shuffle other players' cards, Stars (currency), or shuffle them around. Marie Poppo is the gremlin queen of this, with her unique card letting her warp to an opponent, yoinking stars ten times their level. Oh, what's that, someone was about to win by hitting their goalpost with enough Stars at max level? **Yoink!** They're hers now, and she's running away with them. She gets as much love, hate, and memes as you expect, especially with her dialogue consisting entirely of the word "poppo" or random screams.
The JRPG Another Eden likes to run collabs, called "Symphonies", with other franchises, mostly other JRPGs with the recent exception of "King of Fighters". When they started the Chrono Cross Symphony, they gave Kid a busted support skill, called "Z-Steal". It buffs your frontline, debuffs all enemies, and has a high chance to steal items. She both breaks the economy and is one of the best free units in the game.
A Final Fantasy VI romhack called Brave New World does an interesting thing with that game's stealing where it makes it such that: 1. Only human enemies have things to steal and 2. If you successfully steal, you immediately take another turn I find that it really incentiivzed me to use Steal more when I usually don't in that series, because I had certain knowledge of when I'd be able to steal something and the satisfying feeling of getting to chain another turn right off of it, potentially amounting to several thefts in a row depending on the enemy formation
@goncaloferreira6429 Mug is fun, for sure, but since it usually costs something like MP or a relic slot, it still ultimately brings the question of whether or not the items you usually steal are worth the cost. Also, this hack still has Mug, it just only works when there's something to steal. Hard to say which is better. I think the hack's system is more satisfying but it ultimately leads to you stealing less than you'd be able to in a more general system.
In terms of game mechanics, it was discovered long ago (before video games, actually, with table top RPGs) that the “loot” mechanic keeps a game fresh and interesting. It’s like turning over a card in a card game. What’s it gonna be? As video games developed, and then became open world, the loot mechanic kept the world interesting by making it interactive. Thievery is just a variation of the loot mechanic. Instead of gaining loot by exploring or fighting, the gamer gets it by stealing, often with a chance of getting caught. This makes it especially exciting for certain personalities. For me, though, I’ve never seen the appeal of stealing in an RPG. Or rather, I see the appeal, but it doesn’t appeal to me. There are always many different ways to get loot in these games that don’t require stealing from peasants or city dwellers. I feel the same way about harming NPC’s. These worlds are usually full of monsters trying to kill the player, so why harm the tiny handful of people trying to be helpful or just living their lives?
@ Reminds me of the beginning of Skyrim, where Ralof’s sister Gerdur offers to help you, giving you the pickpocket dialog (including her jewelry and everything.) I always left it alone and just took a bit of bread and cheese or whatever. But in your example, I guess that’s not really stealing, is it?
@@sonofwotan one could imagine it would be because NPCs were afraid of the armed strangers in their house, specially Cecil, but that is never stated anywhere at all and the cheerful gifting still happens after he turns paladin so I really doubt it. Still, I don't touch anything at Rya's village
In divinity I always got my way with stealing, you just put my npcs to speak with people in a certain direction to make a void in their Vision cones, then use my best thief to steal what I want and use fast travel with her alone aoutside wherever we are to not get caught, very easy way for getting power easy and early, and considering that in that game leveling up is more inconvenient after a certain level because enemies scale their damage and hp way more than you and most enemies will be at least the same level as you.
I was also thinking about the life steal ability. It’s usually related to vampires, or at least shown with it as a reference. I mostly think about it because it’s a stat in Brotato where it can be a good way to keep up your health.
Despite being a JRPG, I believe Octopath Traveller has something closer to the open-world style, where NPCs have lists of drops with different steal rates. And unless I'm misremembering, I think more stealing from one person makes them grow more likely to catch you? Heck Octopath had a lot of cool interactions with a lot of NPCs, it was neat in that way. Too bad I dropped it by the time I had a full party because I found battles just took too loooooooong.
Octopath Traveller actually has two forms of stealing: one from NPCs and another during combat. I found stealing from NPCs to be "meh", but stealing in combat is a lot better than in most JRPGs because you can improve your odds.
I was anticipating segments on when games steal from you, and the various ways it occurs; how to do it right, and when it fails resulting in severe frustration. Getting hit and losing items/collectables, perma death losing currency, mobs whose role is thief where you need to kill them and get your things back, bosses where you are locked out of abilities due to a special move, etc.
Honestly a game that requires more stealing due to a low amount of gold or items would be nice to see at the start. Make a protagonist need to be clever to survive. Fire emblem one of the first units being a thief to show the group aren't the heroes we expect yet and maybe make a mission to rob a castle to show it off as an example.
That's actually part of Thracia 776! The main party are rebels, and Capture exists to help quickly gather a lot of supplies, since you won't be given any directly.
FE Thracia 776, actually works somewhat like that. Both weapons and gold are scarce for the rebellion, making capturing and promptly looting your enemies *highly* incentivized. Plus thieves steal gold on normal attacks, and are the main way to trade gold around your army.
It's honestly criminal to not mention Roguelike style stealing. Most Roguelikes have a shop, and most shops have a way to take from them and unique consequences for doing so. Spelunky famously has shotgun-wielding shopkeepers who are well connected and won't let it go unpunished. Enter the Gungeon has it as a very pivotal mechanic that's never really told to the player, as you need certain items, most commonly stealth items, to do so. EtG is a game where your item economy is crucial and turns overwhelming odds into a cakewalk, so getting an extra item for free is well worth the hassle and the fee you'll pay in the curse mechanic, for which you're awarded a small amount of curse each time you steal.
I haven't played many games with stealing mechanics, but for persona 5 royal, the "stealing" mechanic is basically just a reward for defeating the enemies before they're actually defeated. You've shown they won't last long agaunst you, so your reward is the option to exchange your experience from the fight for items or gold that might be more useful for a higher level character
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From a thematic standpoint, I love what FF9 does. Your central protagonist is a wily thief instead of a tough swordsman, so enemies have a ton of good items to steal, and towns and dungeons alike have a lot of hidden treasure chests to find.
In execution, the low drop rates really drag it down, but the vibes are so on point that I don’t mind it too much.
I genuinely agree with you; it’s my favorite mainline FF, though overall I prefer the first Tactics (the other Tactics like the one he mentioned in the video can be damned for all I care). Anyways, FF9 really didn’t need to be that hard in the thievery department. I also think about how in Tactics you can destroy your opponents items as well with the knight (maybe another class too, but it’s been a bit since I played) and if successful, it acts as a pseudo-thief mechanic, just you don’t get the item; you steal the opponent’s opportunity for success.
I also like that as a thief you can more easily run away aside from normally running away by learning a skill that allows for guaranteed running away for some coins.
That's really the reason that I appreciate the Moguri Mod's "100% steal rate". The fact that I'm going to get the item is never in question, I'm not threatened enough by the boss that I could potentially wipe to it, I just don't want to have to waste 10+ minutes making steal attempts until I get it.
I just wish there was a way to turn it off for random encounters, because in a standard encounter that's just broken... but in that case I simply choose not to steal from normal enemies.
I came to say this about the FF9 music. Amazing choice
I like how it gave a light reason to go through every single house in every town.
The first game I ever played with stealing mechanics was morrowind, and it made me feel like I was genuinely getting away with something I SHOULD NOT have been able to do... and I guess thats kinda the point!
Besides, stealing from big dumb hoomans is always fun.
It's fun to steal from big dumb hoomans. (If you're seeing this again, youtube deleted it the first time)
An entire generation stealing Limeware Platters
telekinesis extending reach for thievery is so perfect, I wish more games had something similar, I’ve stolen so many artifacts with it, especially in Tamriel Rebuilt
Steal from those big dumb dumb hoomans!
The best theft system is in Elder Scrolls Online. I racked up so much heat it would take over 2 months for it to fade, and I didn't want to give up the goods so I just put it down for a few months. I didn't come back, which means it saved me from playing ESO. No other theft system has improved my IRL quality of life!
Another thing to note: stolen stuff is marked in red, and most NPCs won't buy it. You've got to go to the Thieves' Guild to pawn it off, and they demand a cut for their services.
"I'm gonna lie low in the real world," is such a cyberpunk thing to say...
Real
Ah the life of crime I had throughout middle school on Minecraft. It was a truly unique experience.
Needless to say that Persona 5 (plus Royal and Strikers) absolutely revels in thievery vibes, and from several systems at that!
From the smash-and-grab approach of pulling loot off every shelf and pedestal you pass while running or stealthing around...
To preforming "hold-ups" on enemies at a disadvantage to make them give up goods, or swiping stuff with a melee attack mid-fight...
To the ENTIRE aesthetic of the Phantom Thieves and their cinematic treasure heists throughout the main story.
I can still vividly hear Ann's "Horud AAP !!" and I haven't played the game in months lol
I was slightly surprised he didn't even show a clip, but i do appreciate not taking the low hanging fruit. pretty sure P5's got enough rep on this channel 😅
to add to the smash & grab part with dungeon items, the fact that doing the smashing & grabbing is also how you find the Treasure Demons (basically the metal slimes for those unfamiliar) in Palaces. That part especially really adds to the build up of "am I gonna get something valuable"
Persona 5 might not have stealing mechanics gameplay wise, but the aesthetic is just so perfect! One of the things that make the modern (p3,4,5) persona games stand out is their absolute mastery of the style each game is given. And that each game has a unique style, visually and thematically. Especially with p3 reload now massively enhancing the visual theme of the original!
A more recent JRPG Stealing system that I've enjoyed massively is Metaphor: ReFantazio's system, where once you finally have a full party with the addition of that game's thief many of the tougher enemies such as bosses have absolutely amazing items that you don't want to miss, and thankfully the game is clear if they have something when you try to steal ("failed to steal" vs "there's nothing to steal"), and it also gets around the repetition because of 2 reasons:
1. Both the starting thief and the class itself are really fast so they should almost always go firs
2. Metaphor allows you to reset battles from the start at the push of a button, so you can reset until you get the item, with each attempt being pretty quick thanks to point no1
Sadly I found this system to be both cool and redundant at the same time. Granted, it takes a measly 5 seconds or so to reset the fight and let Heismay steal (but you do have to sit through the ambush animation every single time for some reason), yet I kinda fail to see the point of incorporating a steal % chance in the first place if the game so deliberately allows you to 'save scum' the item and even encourages you to abuse this system. The game is punishing; every turn counts. There are bonus battle rewards if you finish the fight quickly. And many of the items that can be stolen from stronger enemies are pretty valuable.
Unless you have a problem with generally making use of the restart fight button, there's absolutely no reason not to restart the fight until you steal the item.
At that point, in my opinion, I'd rather have stealing be guaranteed and make it 'riskier' in other aspects, such as costing two turn points, or having it cost more MP. I love the restart fight feature, but if I had the choice between restarting a fight 5-15 times to steal an item (worst case that happened to me was doing this for like 4 minutes, close to 40 attempts if I had to guess) and not having to restart the fight 5-15 times because stealing is guaranteed but costs more in one way or another, I'd much, much rather prefer the latter.
@@sockknight3927
"I use what I must! It didn't work!"
"Ugh, so much for that."
""Face me! A blunder!"
"Ugh, so much for that.""
"I use what I must! It didn't work!"
"Ugh, so much for that."
""Face me! A blunder!"
"Ugh, so much for that.""
@@sockknight3927 Yeah I haven't played ReFantazio but that sounds exactly like you're saying - what's the point of a steal probability if all you need to do is reset the battles until it succeeds? It's one of the cardinal sins of video game design - wasting the player's time for no reason.
The regicide difficulty removes the restart battle function, so failing to steal becomes meaningful
In divinity OS2, stealing from a man's pockets will have them notice it's missing after a time and start running around questioning other npcs, this includes the player
Glad to see Dokapon mentioned. My cousin traumatized me by spending a 4-spinner to lap around me 3 times and steal all my items, including the relevant quest item to get the chapter castle. I never felt this cheated in a game, it was amazing.
I'm just reminded of how one person can be given a quest that's like "deliver this medicine to this city for the sick orphans", and another player can 100% steal the medicine from you and sell it... and the person who got robbed is the one who catches all the heat for it!
yeah, fun game with "friends", but playing JUST 2 players really showed a major flaw. If my only competition is my brother, the moment i let the genie out of the bottle about the full extent of what the darkling can do, every story beat becomes "i could turn in/progress the main quest... or i could coast in a close second until i can use the darkling to take everything from you, including castles." As far as we got into the story in the few moments of peace, it really is hard to justify the contest when we are both equally petty enough to have the exact same idea about my previous darkling quote. It ended up becoming a psudeo-completionist run where we were just trying to unlock all classes and items for gallery reasons, but neither of us wanted to be the one to be the darkling who lost. XD
@@cullenlatham2366 I played a completionist run with my 2 sisters and we just had a peace pact that worked. Playing with 2 players only truly feels bad. I had the luck of playing it with 4 players for the most part.
Ah my sweet, beloved Sly Cooper. I still miss you buddy
The first 3 games were re-released on PS5 not long ago. No major improvements over the original releases AFAIK. So if you're desperate...
What im sad about stealing is that you dont see the consequences, like a character being locked out of their home because you stole their key, a cheese wheel seller noticing that some are missing and attacking you even if they didn't see you directly doing that... Whether you were detected or not is always true or false and resolved the moment you press the steal button.
I like the idea. Especially them getting locked out if you steal their keys. I think being attacked whether they saw you steal it or not makes less sense because why would they assume it’s you but it would make sense if it was also tied into a relationship system. Like you got caught enough times stealing that they assume it’s you now. Or maybe if they’re looking for who stole it and see you sneaking or doing something else suspicious.
You know... Majora's Mask actually has a moment like that. You get someone's room key, you know it's not yours but you keep it anyway. Your tool tip even comments on how this feels wrong.
That night, a sad Goron has to spend the night outside the hotel, sleeping until it starts raining
Feels like something you might find in an immersive sim? Dunno for sure though since I haven't played any.
@@xarin42 Definitely could be in one. I can't think of any that have that mechanic but it wouldn't surprise me. Also you definitely should try some. The first Deus Ex game is one of the best games ever made and it's actually on sale for $0.97 on steam for the next 24 hours.
Sure, like how stealing or doing bad things to a person might lower their general trust in strangers. So an NPC might lower their opinion of you as a random passerby, or they might start to suspect their neighbors. you also never see the shop owner turning bankrupt, having lost their home because they couldnt make ends meet. now their kids cant go to school.
I remember when I was 10 years old, I was caught shopping a copy of Bonestorm from the local Try-N-Save.
It’s the company’s fault for making you want it so much!
What are they so mad about? You tried to save!
I'm really glad you mentioned Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 this episode.
While the stealing system of Thracia is very potent and can result in very lopsided power in player hands, it evens out by the fact that enemies can also do the same (Capturing your undefended characters and stealing all their items, besides some very important ones), and the general lack of income the player has at their disposal without it - in Thracia 776 you play as a uprising rebellion in an incredibly oppressive Empire that starts with just a bunch of fresh recruits, some bandits, and a couple experienced soldiers as your army. You don't get weapons and gold through legitimate means - you have to take it from the oppressive regime and any other foes along the way. It really lends to the narrative.
In Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced if you Min-Max your entire run around stealing, things get pretty nutty. As your video says the game lets you steal things like abilities and weapons but these skills are intended to be late game skills, inaccessible to the party early on. However, the weapon that gives Thieves "Steal Ability" (new abilities are gained though using specific weapons) is tied to your Party's stats. FFTA uses a mechanic where your entire party/guild has levels/stats which dictates which missions you can accept and at certain thresholds you automatically gain items and gear. There is an early repeatable mission that can grind this one stat allowing you to get access to "Steal Ability" very early, like literally just out of the tutorial early. Then there is an early game mini boss who has the "Steal Weapon" ability which you can lift off of him and several other random early enemies with weapons that give rare and powerful skills including the weapon that gives "Steal Weapon." All together you can gain access to several high power late game abilities far earlier than you are really intended to.
Love that game and build, it's so much nonsense I have to just have March go solo on everything
One of the main issues of stealing in most western RPGs or open world games... the Risk/Reward isn't there at all. The risk is that you have to go on a merry chase or brutal combat if you fail, and there's tons of potential social punishments on top of that (And if you were willing to fight everyone and everything for what you're going after, you could just do that and cut out the middle man). The reward is... 25 gold coins. There is rarely anything in anyone's pocket worth the punishment you receive if you fail. Sure, you can do things like 'steal an NPC's key to break into their house and ransack the place' but even then the items you can acquire there are almost never better than things you already have, and there's rarely any reason to take huge chances when the only payoff is extra cash.
It also isn't helped by the whole song and dance just... often not being necessary. Why steal a key when you can pick the lock: Lockpicking is a skill that is generally *way* more useful than pickpocketing. The vast majority of locks in Bethesda RPGs don't have keys, so you're going to be lockpicking anyway, but almost everything you could get from pickpocketing you can get from some other source faster and with less risk.
The fact that you also need to find a fence to sell your inventory full of "(stolen)" wine bottles and cheese wheels also made it even worse than it already was. In _all_ my playthroughs of Bethesda games and all the different play styles I've gone through using to keep the games interesting, I've _never_ bothered being a thief, because the risk is so high and the reward is so low.
I also don't like the percentage chance in stealing, it encourages save-scumming. I prefer Obsidian's design where you just have to reach a skill threshold and it's either you can steal an item or you can't. In Wasteland 2, you can max out your skill in lockpicking a safe and your highest chance is only 70%, if you fail you cannot lockpick that safe forever. What do you think the players are gonna do if they fail? Just leave that item forever? Of course they're gonna reload. Sometimes the design is to blame for save-scumming, not the players.
@@One.Zero.One101 I know this is very gamey and not realistic at all, but I do think for small-time thievery like nabbing a few coins you should be able to reach 100% chance to steal.
Like, imagine a pickpocketing system where you select the items you want to steal and it fills a bar on the side, with modifiers like if the target is distracted with something or sleeping, or penalties if you're being observed by someone or wearing gear that gives you a negative modifier. The theft is guaranteed until you hit a threshold, and after that threshold is when you risk getting caught. (I'd retain said theft meter so you can't try to steal from them again until conditions change.)
Now, rather than just rolling the dice, the player has ways they know about to increase the odds. Maybe they can create a distraction, maybe they can wait until the target is engaged with someone else or catching them sleeping. It gives the player small rewards for being observant of NPCs and knowing when they've got the best chance of scooping a few coins unnoticed.
Didn't know Design Doc worked by the fae rule, but you can't fool me, I'm keeping my hand.
You may be keeping your hands, but they still took you.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon's Kecleon is infamous for anti-stealing-measures
Seems to be a general trope for the mystery dungeon style of game? I know for sure that Chocobo's Dungeon 2 had it, and I've heard of others as well that I just can't remember off the top of my head.
And the hardest prize of all is stealing the heart of a kecleon.
Thank you. I was hoping Kecleon was brought up.
@@xarin42Yes, Mystery Dungeon itself is a large series, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is just one of several games in it, and not all of them are Pokemon themed either. I want to say that either Dragon Quest or Shiren was the first Mystery Dungeon game.
@xarin42
Yes, they all do. Shiren the Wanderer's shopkeepers are stacked as well.
I hate when there's unique items hidden behind low-percentage steal attempts in JRPGs, it essentially grinds the battle to a halt until you manage to steal the item because you don't want to risk defeating the enemy and never getting it.
On a positive note, it's time to rep my beloved Dead Cells again. All enemies have a small chance (usually below 1%) to drop a blueprint when killed, and you have to survive to the end of the stage to secure the blueprint and unlock the equipment. But to counter this extremely low drop rate, you can unlock an item called the Hunter's Grenade which guarantees that the hit enemy drops a blueprint on death. The downside is that it also powers up the enemy to an Elite, thus making it tougher to defeat, and the grenade takes up 1 of your 2 ability slots. Without it, you would need to do dozens upon dozens of runs to get the last couple of blueprints you're missing, which sucks if the enemy only appears in the last stage.
This is a mechanic way more games should have. Give me a way to guarantee stealing items from the enemy, but make it a harder fight in return.
The funny thing is that guaranteed steals leading to harder battles would be easy to justify in classic JRPGs. Let’s say the thief is so skilled that when they steal, they steal something, and it is of high value every time. Of course, trying to steal randomly would anger a person. The enemy in question now at least hits harder or has trickier AI because they were just stolen from.
@@iantaakalla8180 They could easily give you 2 options for Thief characters: a more stealthy pickpocket that is luck-based, but has no other downsides; and a shove and grab robbery that guarantees you get the item, but it angers the enemy and makes them substantially harder.
It needs to be a pretty big step up in difficulty, otherwise there's no reason to go for a pickpocket instead.
Yeah, I also hate it when I have to work for an item and the game doesn't spoonfeed me everything for free
@@Professor_Utonium_ It's impressive you can somehow write when you can't even read. How is asking for a much harder fight in return for a guaranteed item "spoonfeeding"?
Do you enjoy having to reset and redo the entire fight 20+ times because it didn't drop the item you wanted? Do you enjoy stalling and doing nothing for 10+ minutes because your thief never steals the correct item? Do you enjoy having to do that EVERY single fight because you never know if the enemy has a unique item?
It's the RPG equivalent of watching paint dry, there's 0 challenge and 0 fun, you're just waiting for it to happen.
Get off your high horse, you're not a 'cool hardcore gamer' just because you watch paint dry.
@leetri Dude, you're already playing an RPG, one of the grindiest and most repetitive genres out there. They honestly just might not be the genre for you, and I'm not saying that to be cheeky. A lot of RPG fans enjoy fighting the same enemies and combing through the same location for hours to try and get everything. If an RPG handed me everything with little to no effort, I would become bored with it very quickly, but I get that's my own personal outlook.
When FFX came out it was the first game that actually made me care about stealing due to a certain boss encounter being almost impossible without you realizing that the answer was to steal. The thief Rikku easily becomes the most important character in your party when doing low level runs due to how much flexibility she has in both stealing and mixing items.
Using Steal to instantly KO certain robot enemies is a nice touch too!
Dragon Quest is notorious for how bad its thieving system is. Until either 9 or 11, all the Thief class did was increase drop rates and change the flavor text if the enemy did drop something. In most JRPGs, this wouldn't be too much of an issue. But in Dragon Quest, over 90% of enemies only have basic healing herbs as drops, even endgame enemies. Nothing more disappointing that killing a group of enemies in the final dungeon and they drop a 30hp heal item. There's a few that drop early equipment too. Lots of enemies like to drop Copper Swords. But then there are the 0.1% that drop stat seeds. Not only are they the rare drop, so a minuscule chance on top of a minuscule chance, but the mobs that do drop seeds tend to be either rare or have no way to tell at a glance that they drop them. Except for Agility Seeds. All members of the Metal Slime family have Agility Seeds on their drop table. Being the enemies with the highest Agility stat in the game, it makes sense.
Disgaea's worth a mention, having stealing options that incorporate two of the most OP options you mentioned: Yoinking weapons right out of your enemies' hands to dramatically reduce their stats, and even stealing raw stats from them straight. It plays fast and loose with realism in general, so the player never really has to ponder "how do you Steal someone's Agility, exactly?"
The two thefts I didn't see mentioned were vampirism and mana drain. I understand that they're not very deep, but they appear as part of the thief toolkit in a lot of titles: Steal Health and Steal MP.
I also think thievery is interesting at the Civ level, where Kingdom Destroyer had a prosperity system and you could send thieves into one of the kingdom's cities to deny the kingdom prosperity points. Since those points defined how many actions the kingdom got to take on its turn you could dramatically reduce its ability to build up its defenses or, more importantly, to recover after you've attacked. I feel like a decent number of city-builders have this kind of thing, though I understand if people consider the raw scale to turn this from "thievery" into "pillage, loot, and plunder" - If Sly can get by on the vibes, I understand if some will find the utter absence of vibes enough reason to disqualify a mechanic.
I loved the different names for stealing the stats in Disgaea! Stealing someone's attack stat is a lot less entertaining than stealing their heart or whatever other funny titles they had listed.
Yeah, Disgaea thieves do what Riki from Xenoblade does bur years before he did it. But I guess Xenoblade is more well-known at this point... actually I don't know that- have they sold more Xenoblade than Disgaea games?
Kinda surprised Payday wasn't mentioned, what with the main goal most of the time being heists and the greed for going for more loot
Fits especially well in multiplayer being that you can have multiple roles for different players. Someone who breaks in, someone moving bags, someone watching guards, etc.
and MONACO either, the best heist game i ever played.
To be honest, "heisting" is so criminally underdeveloped in all of the Payday games and they don't really sell the idea that you're not just doing video game objectives because "that's the game!"
Payday The Heist has incredible setpieces and some interesting variation but the players almost never have agency in it. Diamond Heist and Counterfeit *kinda* manage it, but the stealth there is just as linear and predefined as loud sections and your only choice is when you fail.
Payday 2 gets closest. The asset system was cool but with no limits there was never a reason not to just buy them out. The Preplanning system was shaping up to be something really cool, letting larger levels exist as combinations of more modular sub-parts that were more directly in control of the players but once Goldfarb, Ulf, and others left the team those influences completely fell apart and the game reverted to linear setpieces. SOME of the Post-Ending DLC did a little better with it but it never accomplished what the preplanning system's baby steps reached. And Payday 3 literally makes no effort to immerse the players in its mechanics.
They're still good games (not 3 lmao) but they're more heist-flavored horde shooters rather than games with actual heisting mechanics and elements. Though Payday 2 gets painfully close.
The Spy "steals" the enemies appearance. Best mechanic ever...
He could be any one of us!
@@Awesomeness-iz3dh He could even be...
I was waiting the entire video for stealing from the Kecleon Shop in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. Thats such a good and unique one
Hitman getting its own section is well deserved, but immersive sims like Dishonored and especially Thief felt severely underdiscussed in this video. It's even in the latter's name for crying out loud!
What makes those distinct from the Open World style he began with?
@@MordalonThe entire premise of the games (especially Thief) is getting in and out without being seen or heard. It’s different from the open world stuff as often you’re working through discreet levels and bypassing security and such rather than just sticking a bucket on someone’s head and cleaning the place out.
@@Guboo I thought one of the big elements of Immersive Sims was the diverse ways you can tackle various challenges? I feel like those kinds of alternate solutions to stealth is something Immersive Sims do a lot.
@@Mordalon Yeah. though back in the Thief days it was more about sneaking around and then yoinking the goods without getting spotted than the crazy stuff you see in more modern games like Hitman.
Bravely Default 2.
I love the Thief Job class in that game!
You have the classic thefts of items and materials that enemies have, but you can also steal their HP, their MP, and considering that it's Bravely Default, you can steal their TURNS too! You can use up some of your turns to essentially stunlock the enemies while everyone else beats them up.
There's even skills that steal stats, and enemy buffs too!
One of the bosses has an ability that raises his shield, and counters your attacks with reflected damage. If you steal from him, now *you* have the reflecting damage, and he has nothing.
It's awesome!
The fairy flute from FF9 is what I always think of when it comes to stealing in games... What a pain.
Games putting that style of stealing mechanic in should really make every attempt increases the success chance, even if only by a little.
Want to mention the classic Thief game series. With it's for the time impressive stealth mechanics.
Something I don't think got mentioned in the open world segment, but Skyrim and I'm sure some other games have a 'fence' system, where stolen goods are marked as such and can't be sold to ordinary shopkeepers; So you have to find a fence who'll buy them too.
Or just level speech and bypass that altogether.
@tails183 True, true!
Don't forget about Kenshi!
Kingdoms of Amanlur: Re Reckoning was my introduction to a fence system.
It really helps in not making stealing broken when you're limited in how you can offload the bounty.
My first Legend of Zelda game (Twilight Princess) there's this little shop run by a bird that has barrels that you dunk items into to fill them. After dunking your item you're supposed to leave the correct amount of rupees in a box. First time I played I Could Not figure out how to pay cause Talking to the bird didn't help. So I walked out of the shop...That bird attacked me constantly! 😂
Thievery is paramount in any protagonist's arsenal. Most of that loot you find while exploring belongs to *someone*, living or dead.
Interesting how in Persona 5 you only learn to Pickpocket halfway through the game. It's more like Sly Cooper, embracing the aesthetics of theivery. Toranosuke Yoshida teaching you how to Extort downed enemies is much more profitable, with the only drawback being the risk that they lose their temper and strike you with increased attack power if you push them too far. That tactic works in SMT 4 and 5 as well, netting me tons of Macca.
My username is based off the currency from smt games also lol. Some people who don’t know assume it’s McDonald’s though
The first place I became familiar with the stealing and law enforcement mechanics in Bethesda's style was Morrowind. I preferred playing the game in third person mode because I like to see my avatar and have a wider field of view than first person games offer, but apparently when I went to talk to a shopkeeper across the counter I had an invisible cursor on one of the decorative items on the table, so pressing the one-purpose interact button was set to "STEAL THE ITEM LAYING OUT IN THE OPEN" instead of "TALK TO THE MAN ACROSS THE COUNTER" and so the innkeeper and all the other patrons beat me to death for having the gall to try and rest there. This VASTLY soured my opinion of Elder Scrolls games actually, as if the guards in Daggerfall arresting me for "vagrancy" because I was trying to interact with the main plot wasn't bad enough.
The first place I became familiar with standard JRPG stealing mechanics was as a developer. I'd never seen a "Steal Item" effect in an RPG, but using the engine made by a SNES Final Fantasy fan I found one of the core implemented mechanics was Steal Item, which would give an item to the player mid-battle, and there were options to have the enemy carry unlimited supplies or only one. I noticed it had no interaction at all with the enemy's upon-defeat treasure drops, so I started trying to apply versimilitude by making the "stealable" items often things that were portable and removable like weapons and potions, then making the "drop" items things you can't REASONABLY take off of someone during the time frame of a combat turn, while they're resisting; body armor, body parts (meat/hide of various critters, bones from skeletal undead, etc.)
I've seen the feature also used for things like taking photographs or mimicking monster skills, or trapping monsters to use as pets later. When you get a little creative with the effects of "stealable" "items", the mechanic has a lot going for it. Even if it's still weird that, say, the knight with a sword doesn't have a 100% chance to drop both his armor and his sword upon defeat.
Thracia 776's stealing system also works with the game really well since you don't get any money for free. if you want money you have to sell usable weapons so you're gonna have to nab spare weapons for the rest of your party from the enemies if you don't want them to all break and be left without any weapons
Was on my way to say just this! On top of that, the "bulk stealing mechanic" - Capture - is something the enemy is just as capable of doing against the player. If your unit has a Constitution stat lower than that of the opponent, they can be abducted after being defeated, with all of the units' items. Additionally, a unit that lacks means of retaliating themselves don't even need to be drained of their HP. This makes the positioning of your Priest units even more important, especially when Staves are the most important tools as the players disposal. It also makes the Thief classline even more important, since units that are carrying another through the Capture mechanic are incapable of being captured themselves; only a Thief can reclaim items stolen via Capture.
Even when the Capture system can be used against you, the player is just as capable of manipulating the system in their favor. By leaving your low-Constitution units without weapons, you can bait the enemy to Capturing them. And since carrying another unit lowers one's stats, this can give the player the ability of not just goading the enemy into certain positions, but making them even more susceptible to being defeated by Leif's ragtag band. Thracia truly is a gift...
And while I'm talking about FE's stealing mechanics, I'd like to delve into a niche similar to what some of the open-world games talked about: using the Steal mechanic to give enemies items for your benefit. Thracia and Three Houses both allow the Steal mechanic to trade items into the enemy's inventory, which can be used to alter their means of attacking or impact their stats. The Houses in particular has a unique interaction; while the game does not allow the transfer of weapons when stealing, they can trade over shields. The item weight given through this exchange can significantly alter a unit's Attack Speed, giving a slower unit the ability to survive an attack because they are no longer getting struck twice, or even allowing them to double when they once couldn't. Like I said, this is a very niche function: you're likely only using this on the game's most challenging difficulty, and even then most players are able to sidestep the Speed issues through other means (combat arts, using units with more reliable Speed stats, etc) but I always love seeing people, especially those playing challenge runs like 0% Growths, making use of it.
Octopath Traveler, my beloved. I like how thieves in that game are equated to the trader class, only traders pay characters for what thieves can just take... if their level and stats are high enough, and if they fail they have to pay fines in order to try again. Theft during battle is also interesting in that success is based on whether you can spin the games breaking-mechanic into your favor as enemies resistance to theft is heavily based on whether they're broken or not... but truth be told your theft of stuff outside battle is often so rewarding you don't really need to steal in fights, it's mostly a waste of time.
Also the thieves in that game also have stat-debuffs and a super-attack that does damage based on speed rather than strength, which is always welcome in order to make each character a viable damage-dealer... even if it also means I'd rather save the thief-characters actions to do damage rather than steal during the important break-phase, so I'm not aure if that's good design or counter-intuitive design.
I do love how a few tweaks to the JRPG formula makes stealing during combat more engaging and far less tedious in Octopath Traveller. Being able to improve your odds (or even guarantee success) by damaging enemies and spending BP means stealing is about strategic timing - as opposed to most JRPGs where you just spam "Steal" until you get what you want or give up.
* war flashbacks to the mandatory 3% steal at the end of the therion speedrun *
Dicey Dungeon's Thief character has some fun stealing mechanics. Love it when you can defeat an enemy and take part of its kit with you and cobble together an insane engine to crush the final boss.
Slightly different from these is stealing in the mainline Pokemon games! More of a form of strategy disruption than item acquisition, but at base you have the moves Thief or Covet taking the opponent's held item for your own and Trick or Switcheroo swapping held items, but there's also Bug Bite immediately eating a held berry, Incinerate destroying a held berry, Knock-off getting rid of a held item, and Embargo or Corrosive Gas preventing use of the held items!
Ah, Dokapon Kingdom... My bf and I played the story mode, and we had an implicit agreement to stay civil to each other the entire time. We were on the final chapter, and the npcs were basically left behind in the dust, while we were in the last area. I really wanted to see what was in the secret loot spaces, so I convinced my bf to let me spend an ungodly amount of time trying to see what was there before we tried to beat the final boss. We were actually fighting the boss when one of the npcs became a Darkling and forced us all to leave, killed us, then threw away our stuff as a slap in the face. Needless to say, neither of us were very happy (even if it was just desserts for wasting time).
I wish I knew people to play this with still I would love to play it again it’s been years. I know they have it on switch now also.
Streets of Rogue is a top-down action/puzzle rogue-lite, you're dropped down in a city-like level, and need to complete missions to progress to the next one, until the end where you can usurp the Mayor.
How you do this is up to your playstyle, and your knowledge about the mechanics, also stealing. Chests and safes usually offer some good stuff, but some missions require you to acquire an item, off a person, or inside of a container.
How you solve these scenarios are the name of the game, and while you can do most things with any character, some are easier, of course.
You can brute force it with weapons, explosives and substance exploitation, naturally, but there are other ways too. With the Doctor or Cop you can non-lethally subdue guards if you can manage their handicaps, Hacker can manipulate the biilding and kill or distract everyone inside. Assassin and Vampire can sneak behind and kill for a simple plan, Bartender and Comedian can charm the guards and simply walk through the building, no sneaking required. Shopkeeper can just buy the rights to that item for money, Thief can pickpocket important items, and has the easiest access to thieving tools.
The thing is that any character can sneak, it's just a simple act of avoiding detection, and you can acquire items that, due to your limited inventory, you'll want to use quickly. Even if you're a bloodthirsty Soldier or Cannibal, if you get a window-cutter, why not use it? You'll need to acquire many items, whether you take them by force, without force, or through social means. If there's no other options, you can always just threaten them for the item anyway, preferably with cohorts. You will pull off many heists, the only thing that changes is the means, with or without murder, with or without detection, and with many variables and difficulties and opportunities.
Once you know the game well, you can try optimize for EXP or its challenge settings. You'll get more EXP for not using weapons, non-lethal means, not getting spotted or without destroying anything, you can also get a lot for mass destruction and murder, so you need to play to an extreme. You can buff the stats, equipment or amount of enemies, you can add a timer that counts down to your doom, or remove your omnipotence and require sightlines to see everything.
Even 190 hours in, I'm still not tired of it, pulling off a heist hasn't gotten old at all, and I still haven't gotten that deep into it. Whether through traditional means or through the wacky, the absurd number of methods and the challenges associated with them make it so every heist is a fun time.
Love SOR, you can also do a lot of fun things remotely via hacking to even set off devices or make a tv blow up lol
As far as JRPG style thieves, I have to say Disgaea is my favorite. It depends on the game with how it works, with the early games requiring a specific hand-type item that operates on the same principals as pokeballs just with stealing gear, while later games give thief classes a dedicated ability for theft while the items let non-thieves have some chance of stealing. And in Disgaea it's every bit as powerful - if not more so - than in FF Tactics or Fire Emblem. For starters, so much of a character's abilities in combat revolve around what weapon they have equipped and how skilled they are with it. An enemy with a powerful sword will have a wide array of options to deal with you, but take the sword away and all those strong skills become unusable, and with how items add stats to the characters they're equipped to, their stats take a nose dive as well to the point that if you steal things from a boss, not only does the fight immediately get more managable, but your own abilities raise in proportion as you can swap gear mid-battle. The stronger an enemy and stronger an item means they're harder to steal, but theft only really relies on the thief's Hit (accuracy/to-hit chance) stat which can be easily inflated with the right equipment. And, if that wasn't enough theft can even apply statuses, where thieves start stealing abstract concepts like the ability "Steal Health" to inflict poison, "Steal heart" to charm, etc.
And then there's just all out kidnapping. Disgaea has a couple of unique systems that it adds to the tactical gameplay that play into the idea of stealing. You start a battle with no units deployed or a formation screen, but rather you deploy units from a home-tile, allowing you to recall and redeploy as the situation evolves allowing for some really fun difficulty spikes to be implemented without feeling too bs. Add onto that the lift/throw mechanic where you can have units throw each other around the map - monsters can't lift and only the bottom unit on a tile takes damage allowing for some interesting damage dodging and depending on the game it also allows for easier leveling of lower level units - for extra movement. So... what happens if you lift an enemy and throw it into your home panel? A battle royale ensues between the enemy and all your non-deployed units. If the enemy is beaten, they are forced to join your team bringing all their gear and experience, etc. along with it. But it comes with a cost because if an enemy is strong enough (usually determined by just comparing levels rather than actual stats), they could take out all your reserve units and destroy the base panel making you have to fight the rest of the battle with whatever you have currently deployed. It's one of the most robust bunch of theft systems I've seen in a tactical rpg that carries with it a bunch of risk/reward, and is thematically appropriate for games about leading armies of demons through the netherworld.
"it cant all be dynamite murder"
no sometimes it's timebombs and grenades
And if you're especially classy, C4 an entire compound before clicking the detonator.
There's an interesting argument to be had about whether or not Final Fantasy VIII's draw system counts as stealing. On the one hand, you aren't actually taking anything from their "inventory", usually. However, when you take summons, you do actually "remove" them from enemy inventory. Moreover, with a few exceptions, your most likely way to acquire more magic is to face enemies and take it from them. I'd be interested to see if anyone else thinks this qualifies as a stealing mechanic.
I mean, if you know what you’re doing, a lot of your spells will come from modding cards into items and items into spells.
You can pretty easily limit your drawing from enemies to new summons if you’re so inclined.
@@chloemchll3774 That's true, but I don't think that really changes whether or not it qualifies as a stealing mechanic.
Thinking about it more, Griever can draw from the party iirc, which does take their number of spells down, implying the same would be true the other way (even though it isn't, mechanically).
@@astraykat6798 Oh, I agree completely it does function very similarly to a steal mechanic- I was just pointing out that it isn’t really the most likely way to acquire spells, especially if you’re looking to get several hundred copies of a spell so you can junction it on all your characters.
It is way more efficient, if you want say, 300 curaga to junction to your HP, to get a whole bunch of tents (which are purchasable even in very early game shops) and using the item refine mechanic to turn them into curaga spells. More or less every good late game spell is available quite early on if you’re inclined to really abuse the card and item refine abilities, and it ultimately is a lot faster than trying to draw them in battle.
But sure, it functions as a steal mechanic.
I think a more interesting steal mechanic in the FF series comes from things like Barret’s Mindblow limit break in FF VII, where you can steal the enemies ability to do magic in the fight by removing all their MP. Likewise, things like absorb abilities or the drain spell function as a sort of stealing.
Lets call 8`s stealing/ stealing "aquisition".
drawing is just a way of aquiring new resources to use. it is a simple system that changes time ( if you dont draw the battle ends a bir quicker) for long term benefits. You are making yourself stronger and better equipped but not weakening the enemy.
I'd like to give a shoutout to Jazztronauts here! It's a Garry's Mod gamemode where the goal is to steal as much stuff as you can from random Workshop maps and use the money you get to buy upgrades so you can steal more things and do so faster/easier. It's not stealthy in the slightest, but I think it's a fun take on a theft-focused game.
There are also NPCs in the hub area who can give you quests to steal specific things in exchange for even more money and funny cutscenes following a storyline for each character.
I'd highly recommend it!
There's one game that does stealing in a pretty interesting fashion, where it also functions as a sort of debuff mechanic. Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass has a certain class, and a certain character, who are able to directly steal items from enemies, and sometimes when you steal an item, it changes how the enemy works. For example, if you steal knives from Johnny Knives, he becomes Johnny No-Knives, losing access to his more powerful attacks, losing points in his attack and defence stats, and generally becoming kinda sad. As another example, stealing Mack from the Turtle Stack will split the stack into two separate turtles who are effectively stunned, making an AoE more effective against them since the stronger Turtle Stack is split into two comparatively weaker enemies.
As for "reverse-pickpocketing", I'm very aware of the old "Shady Sands shuffle" and how impishly wicked it is.
Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass deserves so much more attention, thanks for bringing it up. That game got so much right yet still feels so obscure.
@@maskedbadass6802 Indeed. Compared to the likes of Omori and Fear & Hunger (both being more well-known RPGMaker titles), Jimmy is much less well-known, but it's still pretty neat.
One game that would've been a good mention for Multiplayer thievery is Sea of Thieves. Especially because unlike a lot of the games you mentioned you aren't stealing from friends, you're stealing with friends. Because of that you feel less inhibition to steal from other pirates and it vastly changes the dynamic of the heist. It's not that people are uncaring like the bots you mentioned, because it's humans on either side. But there's even chance for negotiation and a whole ton of different possible reactions.
FFTA's Steal: Ability is hilarious when you can just nick all the target's abilities and leave them incapable of doing anything but regular attacks.
On the flipside the stealing in the original FFT is great and evil. I'm looking at you wizard guy with 5 of the same staff before pulling out an absurdly strong 6th staff as his last weapon.
@ What I had in mind was one fight in FFTA somewhere relatively early on where the leader of what I believe was a group of bandits or something had nice gear and really good skills...and no protection against stealing whatsoever. So you nick his weapon and then you can take your time stealing his abilities and he can't do a thing about it.
Glad you mentioned FFTA. I friggin love that game, and a lot of the best gear is ONLY available through stealing and ONLY from one or two specific missions. There's no loot table involved. If you want a Tulwar, for example, there are exactly two you can get in the game. You can get one from a specific Treasure Hunt, which are rewards for placing locations on the map in specific arrangements, and even with optimal planning, you can only get so many. The other is held by one specific blue mage during one specific mission, and if yiu don't steal it then, you won't get another chance. It's not a repeatable mission and the item isn't in the loot tables for random clan battles or purchasable from shops.
The Tulwar, by the way, is the strongest saber in the game, which is the exclusive weapon type of blue mages. If you have more than one blue mage, or like me want to train your blue mage to dual wield, then you've got to plan ahead if you want to get both. And this is just one example. Lots of the best wrapons and armor can be missed forever, and even some skills. Since skills in this game are learned by training with specific weapons or wearing specific armor, if you miss the equipment, you miss the abilities.
There are other weird instances of missable content as well. If you don't have a Hunter capture a Thundrake before you complete the last mission where one appears, then your Morphers will never be able to use their powers.
However, just like everything, this system can be exploited. There are strategies for getting incrrdibly strong items early that involve leaning a specific stealing skill. If you grind the first repeatable mission over and over enoug times without progressing the main storyline, you can raise your clan's Negotiate skill high enough to earn the Cinqueda, one of the best daggers in the game, which teaches the ability to steal skills from enemies. This is normally something you wouldn't get until much later, but because you have it now, you can teach it to your thief characters and break the equipment curve. You can quickly steal all the other stealing abilities that you would normally need time to learn, most notably the ability to steal weapons. Then you can really go to town, stealing strong weapons that teach late-game skills from specific enemies, like the rod that teaches your Black Mages Blizzaga and the rapier that teaches Red Mages Doublecast.
There are also ways to exploit the game's experience and leveling system by sandbagging so that you get to the prestige classes while still at level 2 and get better stat gains. Overall, it's a very fun game with lots of interesting and unique mechanics that can all be HEAVILY manipulated to make your party grossly overpowered.
There still hasnt been a game that has captured the unique feeling of Sly Cooper games "action stealth". I love stealth in games but almost always it kinda feels like a self imposed restriction but in Sly Cooper it truly feels like the best way to approach things
I'm surprised there was no mention of the Thief series.
Shout out to Elite Dangerous' Odyssey expansion. Some of the on-foot missions (and something you can just *do* at any point) require you to get to a settlement, find and lift an item, then get back, all the while stealing access levels from out of sight, and dodging the guards. Do it right, and you enter legally and leave legally without anyone noticing. Do it wrong, and you're spending ten minutes sprinting away from gunfire on a desolate moon, possibly lightyears away from your ship. The payout might not compare to some other activities, but the thrill is unmatched.
I'm surprised there wasn't any examples of stealing mechanics where the cost is paid beforehand and not after.
Some turn based games give characters a very weak attack with a chance to steal an item. Weighing the risks of underperforming vs the reward of what you might get is more interesting than mechanics where you just keep pickpocketing and hoping for a high dice roll.
Why is Final Fantasy Tactics the only game(like literal gameplay-wise) in which there's a Steal Heart ability,
LITERALLY MAKING THE TARGET ENEMY YOUR ALLY immediately in the fight(if successful)
In hitman the right disguise change stealing to just picking something up. The same as in SW:outlaws with the right reputation, didn't expect those 2 to be in the same category
One example I like is the final boss of Risk of Rain 2, stealing all the items gained in your run in his last phase
You never know how fast shurikens are until they're flying right at you. This is coming from a Loader main and former Engi main.
An interesting thing in JRPG stealing that I didn't hear in the video is that Final Fantasy games (and maybe others? The Pokémon move Thief does this too) you can often upgrade the Steal command to Mug, where you do a basic attack while also attempting to steal. Nice little upgrade so you're no longer forgoing a combat turn just to steal.
Completely agree with you. FF9 felt like the only game I’ve played where stealing was legitimately worth it. You can get so far ahead by stealing I just wish there was some form of skill input to reduce the rng and make it more bearable
Octopath traveler turned me into a Kleptomaniac 😂lol
I liked the convenience store theft system in Saints Row 1. You would go into a store and come out with a bulky package that you'd have to put in the trunk of your car to... do something with. That's about all I remember mechanically, but it was a very fun thing for younger me. Maybe because you've still got a chance to lose it, it feels more substantial?
THRACIA MENTIONED
But fr capturing enemies and stealing their loot is the best part of that game. Stealing... With thieves... Sucks though. Unless you rig con levels 😅
In Skyrim, if it's a small item like a bottle of wine, you can just drop it and you won't be arrested
That one stash in STALKER 2 near the Poppy Field, has a note and a couple energy drinks in it. I love the outcome from player interaction here.
The guy who placed it, sits by a campfire in one of the camps, and will either complain that someone stole everything, or wonder why someone took the note but not the drinks, or be happy that the player added more stuff like a gun or similar. I love the way this corresponds to the player's actions, even if simple.
Sly Cooper is my favorite series in the world! So happy to see it represented!
Stealing is practically a minigame in League of Legends, simply because there are objectives on the map that can be taken by either team. Feels great when you can sneak into the enemy jungle and steal a camp, but if the enemy team is wise to your shenanigans, or if you get too greedy then you're gonna get caught and have a bad time.
Great video, although I feel like it's incomplete without two essential series that are at the forefront of their own styles. The Payday series is an excellent example of multiplayer co-operative stealing, as compared to the competitive stealing examples you gave, and the Thief series is the quintessential immersive sim style stealing game. Both of these are quite distinct from the other games and styles discussed in the video, and I'd love to see an addendum video someday discussing them.
Pokemons use of thief/knockoff in multi-player is quite interesting. Those moves are near useless in the single player campaign but in competitive, items tend to make or break particular mons. The ability to remove those items is a core threat to any player and can majorly change the tides.
Warframe has a bunch of ways to disarm, steal items, and an entire mission type about looting vaults.
back when i played warframe one of my favorite things to do was the vault missions, either plowing through security with Rhino, or sneaking through with my max efficiency ivara.
FF9 is one of my favs and I am glad you talk about it, because boss fights are made "harder" by the fact that you usually want to get the rare steal from the boss and that can take a while.
It's been well over a decade since I heard it but was the outro music the same that plays in Dimitri's club in Sly 2?
Yep!
The system in RDR2 is simple but incredibly satisfying. You play as a criminal so it’s almost expected you’ll take anything not bolted down, and when you find a secret robbing opportunity it feels incredibly cool.
Could've added thievery in card games, like Hearthstone. There are a bunch of cards in the came that will either copy cards in your opponent's hand/deck, or just out right steal them. The former can be pretty fun because if you're the one playing the copy cards, each match is completely different because you're playing with a different deck each time, while if it's the opposite it suddenly becomes, basically a mirror match, or even a race to play your best cards so they can't be copied. Though, it can certainly be really unfun losing to your own stuff. The version where you're literally stealing cards, just sucks when you're the target. Not only do they beat you with your best cards, but you can't even play your best cards and it can even lose you the game instantly if they steal the right win condition.
Castlevania Curse of Darkness was largely a dull, grindy, very forgettable game... but I thought its stealing mechanic was something fun, and unique(?)
Each enemy had its own specific window of opportunity; if the enemy was targeted, the target would turn bright purple, signifying you could press the button and steal an item (if you were close enough for his steal-grab to make contact).
Some enemies' windows came when they were making an attack, or while winding up for a special attack. Some were in response to being knocked down, or in the recoil of their attack being perfect-blocked.
They were a lot of different ones and it was almost like a puzzle to figure out how to make each enemy 'robbable' (and pull it off, because again, you also had to make contact before the opportunity ended).
I feel you could make a case for Strategy Style stealing. For exemple in the Command & Conquer series engineer units can capture enemy buildings granting you acess to other factions technology tree, allowing you to mix and match unit composition and strategy. In the Red Alert games you have the Spy, that can infiltrate enemy structures and steal money, sabotage the minimap, cut off power to enemy base and steal technology granting you access to a unique unit depending on the faction you stole technology from. In C&C generals there is a hijacker unit that can steal enemy vehicles.
Really great video. I’ve somehow never heard of Dokapon Kingdom but now I really want to play it.
The earlier Assassin's Creed games' method of stealing is pretty straightforward. You just walk near a civillian and pickpocket them for florens. The amount stolen was ok, but the advantage of the mechanic is how quick the process was. So you can gain a decent amount at a pretty steady rate. The consequences of stealing was raising your notoriety, which meant that guards would attack you on sight. A funny detail is that civillians would get mad at you and start to throw hands. It was very funny to watch. All around, not a bad execution of thievery through mechanics.
My favorite game Dark Cloud 2 lets you find a Bandit Coin which is pretty rare... then you can synthesize that coin onto any of your weapons. Then each hit of the weapon has a chance to steal sorta like the JRPG method but in action combat. There's also a handful of weapons that steal by default... including a laser gun. :') It's pretty weird.
I remember there being a game where the horses can see you breaking the law, and they will (somehow) report you. I think it was an Elder Scrolls game, but I could be wrong.
Of the DQs, I'm most familiar with IX, and yeah, I didn't really bother with stealing unless it was for a sidequest.
Yeah, outside of that... I think Wind Waker may have been the first to let you steal enemy weapons by first making them drop it, then rushing over and grabbing it, a mechanic which Breath of the Wild also made use of. (The mechanics of doing so were slightly different, however, as in WW, the act of blocking was enough, but in BotW, you had to parry with a shield that has a higher number than the weapon's attack.)
WW also had the Grappling Hook, which let you steal things from enemies pretty much guaranteed instead of just hoping they'll drop. Or you can just steal from them and book rather than engaging with them in combat. (I remember doing that with the Moblins near the Outset Island Fairy Fountain from a ledge they couldn't reach, as well as the Bokoblins on rafts near the Submarines, where I could just jump into the water and they couldn't follow or even attack.)
Twilight Princess had a shop near the Forest Temple in which you could grab Red Potion or Lantern Oil. Unlike most of the shops in the game, where the transaction guarantees you lose Rupees at the same time as gaining the item, this shop stops just short of using an honor system due to the shopkeeper, Trill, being a small bird. You can pay the posted amount, overpay (or just give Trill money for nothing) to be called generous, pay too little to have your payment be called "on the skimpy side" but incur no other penalty... or get away without paying to be called a thief by the bird. Like in Link's Awakening, returning to the shop area after stealing gets you attacked, but unlike there, it's repeated chip damage until you die, leave the area, or pay properly.
You might not expect Animal Crossing to have stealing, but in a way, it does. Or, more accurately, embezzlement. (Or something similar.) You can be given something to deliver to some other villager, typically furniture or clothing. You can unwrap it and keep it, or even sell it, and nobody will notice -- don't look at me that way; I watched a video to learn this -- and it seems they only sort of care if you deliver it unwrapped. Though even rewrapping it in something only you use seems to be good enough to keep the recipient from realizing you did that.
It was Skyrim, _all_ of the animals in that game have the "witness" flag enabled, so if a random horse or chicken sees you grab an iron dagger lying on the ground you've suddenly got a bounty on your head. Ridiculous.
Rewardness for stealth is so thrilling (in games)
In a way, Pokemon capturing functions like a form of Steal mechanic. It feels the most like this with Pokemon Colosseum, where you actually steal corrupted Shadow Pokemon certain trainers use.
Disgaea is the first game series that I really got into the stealing mechanic of. Get a thief to a high enough speed? A rare enemy's weapon is now mine. A boss's equipment is now mine. Granted the chances barely reach double digits if you've been levelling reasonably, (post game strats aside) and thieves were made of tissue paper (though they got a little better as the series continued), but the bonus was so worth it.
Certain equipment or weapons would have a character set for like, the next few chapters of the game.
That, and the best equipment can only be obtained by stealing from superbosses.
My favorite iterations on stealing are the Thieves from Dragon Quest 3 and Marino from Megaman X Command Mission, since DQ3 Thieves are not only really good at fighting, they also "steal" by just rerolling item drops, nothing you have to do to enable it besides kill all the enemies, and Marino because her Limit Break is a slot machine that you can easily time with one of the outcomes being a steal attempt with a 100% success rate
Spelunky's high risk, high reward system is definitely one that feels unique
One game that's really great for selling procedural heist scenarios is Heat Signature. Some missions may be doable by just killing everyone, but all but the easiest missions strongly encourage you to be as stealthy as possible, and to skip parts of the level with your gadgets. You can see the whole ship at all times and can pause time at will, allowing you to make perfect decisions and look like a badass, and you get lots of neat gadgets like remote keycard stealers, hacking beams, and several different types of teleporter.
I never steal in video games, I'm a good little boy.
The Pokemon Mystery dungeon kecleon shop stealing mechanic is my favorite
In Disgaea, one can steal not just gear and stats. No, one can steal concepts such as Innocence or even enemy anatomy (which in the case of the Horse Weiner, can be equipped by party members).
I like it when stealing has a special use as a mechanic in battle. Like with Rubicante in FFIV, if Edge steals from him as his cape is open, he closes it and prevents him from unleashing a big attack that does series damage.
An interesting take on stealing was FFVIII where you need to steal spells from enemies and those spells can either be used in battle or stored to increase your characters' stats.
Also, you casually mentioned Kirby stealing its eemies' powers but it might have been interesting to expand on that subject.
Otehr than that, excellent video, as usual.
If your friendship can't survive Dokapon Kingdom, you weren't friends to begin with.
Not mentioning Payday in a video about stealing is a crime in itself
Since you talked party board games, I was expecting 100% Orange Juice to come up.
Stealing is one of the game's central mechanics - passing by another player will allow you to attack them, where the aggressor and defender roll a D6 to determine the power and accuracy of the attack, and the mitigation *or* evasion of the defense. Characters also have modifiers to Health, Attack, Defense, and Evasion, too, as well as some character-specific combat passives (which may or may not be useful). And if the defender survives, the attacker better watch out because they get a turn to swing back. If one player gets KOd in battle, the other player steals half of their Stars and chalks up one KO for their counter, putting them further towards winning the entire game, and putting the victim behind while they sit and roll the dice each turn to get back up.
Some cards also exist that let you steal or shuffle other players' cards, Stars (currency), or shuffle them around. Marie Poppo is the gremlin queen of this, with her unique card letting her warp to an opponent, yoinking stars ten times their level. Oh, what's that, someone was about to win by hitting their goalpost with enough Stars at max level? **Yoink!** They're hers now, and she's running away with them. She gets as much love, hate, and memes as you expect, especially with her dialogue consisting entirely of the word "poppo" or random screams.
The JRPG Another Eden likes to run collabs, called "Symphonies", with other franchises, mostly other JRPGs with the recent exception of "King of Fighters".
When they started the Chrono Cross Symphony, they gave Kid a busted support skill, called "Z-Steal".
It buffs your frontline, debuffs all enemies, and has a high chance to steal items. She both breaks the economy and is one of the best free units in the game.
Three days after upload and only now does RUclips decide I deserve to see the newest episode of design docs. Thanks algorithm
We kept it warm for ya
A Final Fantasy VI romhack called Brave New World does an interesting thing with that game's stealing where it makes it such that:
1. Only human enemies have things to steal and
2. If you successfully steal, you immediately take another turn
I find that it really incentiivzed me to use Steal more when I usually don't in that series, because I had certain knowledge of when I'd be able to steal something and the satisfying feeling of getting to chain another turn right off of it, potentially amounting to several thefts in a row depending on the enemy formation
would you say it is a better system than mugging ( stealing ad attacking at the same time) ?
@goncaloferreira6429 Mug is fun, for sure, but since it usually costs something like MP or a relic slot, it still ultimately brings the question of whether or not the items you usually steal are worth the cost. Also, this hack still has Mug, it just only works when there's something to steal. Hard to say which is better. I think the hack's system is more satisfying but it ultimately leads to you stealing less than you'd be able to in a more general system.
In terms of game mechanics, it was discovered long ago (before video games, actually, with table top RPGs) that the “loot” mechanic keeps a game fresh and interesting. It’s like turning over a card in a card game. What’s it gonna be? As video games developed, and then became open world, the loot mechanic kept the world interesting by making it interactive.
Thievery is just a variation of the loot mechanic. Instead of gaining loot by exploring or fighting, the gamer gets it by stealing, often with a chance of getting caught. This makes it especially exciting for certain personalities.
For me, though, I’ve never seen the appeal of stealing in an RPG. Or rather, I see the appeal, but it doesn’t appeal to me. There are always many different ways to get loot in these games that don’t require stealing from peasants or city dwellers. I feel the same way about harming NPC’s. These worlds are usually full of monsters trying to kill the player, so why harm the tiny handful of people trying to be helpful or just living their lives?
I did that on my FF IV run. Tried not to loot civilian homes but they sometimes literally say "take my stuff! It's a gift!"
@ Reminds me of the beginning of Skyrim, where Ralof’s sister Gerdur offers to help you, giving you the pickpocket dialog (including her jewelry and everything.) I always left it alone and just took a bit of bread and cheese or whatever. But in your example, I guess that’s not really stealing, is it?
@@sonofwotan one could imagine it would be because NPCs were afraid of the armed strangers in their house, specially Cecil, but that is never stated anywhere at all and the cheerful gifting still happens after he turns paladin so I really doubt it. Still, I don't touch anything at Rya's village
In divinity I always got my way with stealing, you just put my npcs to speak with people in a certain direction to make a void in their Vision cones, then use my best thief to steal what I want and use fast travel with her alone aoutside wherever we are to not get caught, very easy way for getting power easy and early, and considering that in that game leveling up is more inconvenient after a certain level because enemies scale their damage and hp way more than you and most enemies will be at least the same level as you.
I was also thinking about the life steal ability. It’s usually related to vampires, or at least shown with it as a reference. I mostly think about it because it’s a stat in Brotato where it can be a good way to keep up your health.
Despite being a JRPG, I believe Octopath Traveller has something closer to the open-world style, where NPCs have lists of drops with different steal rates. And unless I'm misremembering, I think more stealing from one person makes them grow more likely to catch you?
Heck Octopath had a lot of cool interactions with a lot of NPCs, it was neat in that way. Too bad I dropped it by the time I had a full party because I found battles just took too loooooooong.
Octopath has them with an item inventory- Tressa can Buy them for varying cash, or Therion can Steal them for varying success rate
Octopath Traveller actually has two forms of stealing: one from NPCs and another during combat. I found stealing from NPCs to be "meh", but stealing in combat is a lot better than in most JRPGs because you can improve your odds.
RTS: capture enemy units and gain their abilities not normally available to your faction units.
Homeworld and Submarine Titans made it pretty fun.
I was anticipating segments on when games steal from you, and the various ways it occurs; how to do it right, and when it fails resulting in severe frustration. Getting hit and losing items/collectables, perma death losing currency, mobs whose role is thief where you need to kill them and get your things back, bosses where you are locked out of abilities due to a special move, etc.
Honestly a game that requires more stealing due to a low amount of gold or items would be nice to see at the start. Make a protagonist need to be clever to survive.
Fire emblem one of the first units being a thief to show the group aren't the heroes we expect yet and maybe make a mission to rob a castle to show it off as an example.
That's actually part of Thracia 776! The main party are rebels, and Capture exists to help quickly gather a lot of supplies, since you won't be given any directly.
FE Thracia 776, actually works somewhat like that. Both weapons and gold are scarce for the rebellion, making capturing and promptly looting your enemies *highly* incentivized. Plus thieves steal gold on normal attacks, and are the main way to trade gold around your army.
It's honestly criminal to not mention Roguelike style stealing. Most Roguelikes have a shop, and most shops have a way to take from them and unique consequences for doing so. Spelunky famously has shotgun-wielding shopkeepers who are well connected and won't let it go unpunished. Enter the Gungeon has it as a very pivotal mechanic that's never really told to the player, as you need certain items, most commonly stealth items, to do so. EtG is a game where your item economy is crucial and turns overwhelming odds into a cakewalk, so getting an extra item for free is well worth the hassle and the fee you'll pay in the curse mechanic, for which you're awarded a small amount of curse each time you steal.
I haven't played many games with stealing mechanics, but for persona 5 royal, the "stealing" mechanic is basically just a reward for defeating the enemies before they're actually defeated. You've shown they won't last long agaunst you, so your reward is the option to exchange your experience from the fight for items or gold that might be more useful for a higher level character
You could steal items from wild Pokémon if you didn’t want to bother catching them, I remember doing this with heartscales on luvdiscs in Gen III