[House robberies] - ADJUSTMENTS NEEDED!

[Antonio_Colombo]

Hello,

First and foremost, I take my hat off for developers who introduced us with this cool feature!

Secondly, I believe some slight adjustments would be more than beneficial to the system than it might looks, and these are the following:

1) Furniture volume - It makes no sense that scratched furniture each item has same volume, which is 4x times normal furniture that is obtainable in furniture store.

This makes no sense that small headphones or watch, can weight this much, and it also greatly impacts solo criminals, they have to do many many runs to get all the furniture out of the house.

2) Scratched furniture costs - the first day it was introduced, i did one house robbery and get out with one or two furniture items, which were sold at pawn shop for a good money (3-4k in total for two items), yet now it seems that furniture costs way less, and there is way more furniture. Now for one piece you get roughly 30-500$, which again would make sense if the furniture did not cost you 20 volume spaces. Either furniture volume needs to be reduced to appropriate size ( small items - 1vol, medium - 5vol, big ones - 10 vol). OR furniture prices can go up to the level they were in first day.

3) Drilling the safe - For solo it is impossible to successfully drill into the safe because each drill time it gets only fraction of process in "opening the safe", and after any attempt to drill it,

sound meter gets full ( even if you had 0 noise prior starting to drill) - i get it drill is probably loud, but In my opinion it would work better if drilling would do 99% noise bar, without waking the tenant NPC, and then you have to wait till it gets to 0 so you can resume drilling.

4) Drill weight - It would be more appropriate to use some other tools to get into the SAFE, because drill itself is unrealistically heavy - have you seen any handheld drill that weights same as 25 full water bottles? I think no. So for house heist, items such as statoscope (that thing that doctors use to listen to your lungs, hearth etc.) could be better used, animation can be the same minigame, but idea is that robber listens to mechanism of safe and tries to pick lock it by turning the lock mechanism until he hears click' and it gets opened. Less noise and more realistic.

5) Ability to kill NPC - ability to kill or at least forcefully silence owner once he starts to call to police - it would make sense that robber can be agressive and he might want to not leave any witneses, so there could be a mini-game when house owner wakes up and starts to call, robber tries to get the phone out of his hands and smother him back to sleep.

Edited February 13, 2023 by Antonio_Colombo

[Payn]

I agree with all of these points especially being able to silence or supress the NPC from calling you out. I know its your choice whether you be loud but having no option to combat the NPC isnt great. IT would be nice if you were able to stop him calling cops or just kill him in general.

[HobGoblin]

10 hours ago, Antonio_Colombo said:

3) Drilling the safe - For solo it is impossible to successfully drill into the safe because each drill time it gets only fraction of process in "opening the safe", and after any attempt to drill it,

sound meter gets full ( even if you had 0 noise prior starting to drill) - i get it drill is probably loud, but In my opinion it would work better if drilling would do 99% noise bar, without waking the tenant NPC, and then you have to wait till it gets to 0 so you can resume drilling.

This just isn't true. The sound bar does not to go 100% just because of the drill. Seems like a skill issue.

Edited February 13, 2023 by HobGoblin

[Nicholas Valentine]

I think it would be a cool idea if you had a slight chance before the NPC calls police to hold him at gunpoint. 

Just like bank teller NPCS, they don't call the police if you have them at gunpoint.

+1

[Ash]

4 minutes ago, Nicholas Valentine said:

I think it would be a cool idea if you had a slight chance before the NPC calls police to hold him at gunpoint. 

Just like bank teller NPCS, they don't call the police if you have them at gunpoint.

For sake of discussion, what's to stop people maxing noise and always putting him under gunpoint, making it 0 skill and effort and guaranteed win?

[zooke1]

It's very easy to drill safes solo, just takes more time, each of the drilling processes can bring the bar to about 70%, never had it at more than that, you just wait for 30 seconds before drilling again so the bar is at 0%.

[AtlasOLimbo]

Having to kill the house owner could be an interesting mechanic, an added murder charge if caught, if non-suppressed having neighbors call instead. But it seems like a delicate thing to prevent a guaranteed win like what Ash said.

[Antonio_Colombo]

47 minutes ago, HobGoblin said:

This just isn't true. The sound bar does not to go 100% just because of the drill. Seems like a skill issue.

Please elaborate? I did it twice only, but each time I successfully managed to do minigame steps, it said smthing like "drill process 10%" and right after that sound meter went to 100% even I had 0% before starting to drill, and it happened in both instances. Is there anything else I'm unavare about process? (get inside, have a drill, play minigame successfully, get 10% progress ??????? + NPC calls pd) 

[Antonio_Colombo]

OK judging from the input, it seems my attempts to drill safe bugged ( or I had skill issues), noneatleast if it in fact works that sound level doesn't go max after one drill attempt, I take my words back, but the point that drill is excessive in weight and unrealistic to use in such situation still stands. 

Edited February 13, 2023 by Antonio_Colombo

[Antonio_Colombo]

35 minutes ago, Ash said:

For sake of discussion, what's to stop people maxing noise and always putting him under gunpoint, making it 0 skill and effort and guaranteed win?

High risk-high reward. Hause has indicator outside, and if someone is holding poor lad at gunpoint, someone can easily approach house and disrupt aim of gun, thus NPC makes the call, so it's still a valid technique. Yes it might be easier in some cases to rob a house that way, but on the other side it is high risk that not everyone will be OK to take judging by the richness of penal code and severities such situations can bring. What comes to my mind, however, is idea that after 50% of loot or furniture or stashes gets opened by minigame, it enables another minigame-say 60 rounds of it and the result would be cut phone line, making NPC in able to reach police. He then has, let's say, 10 minutes to reconnect wires and then his call goes to pd. Any thoughts about such approach? 

[HobGoblin]

I don't see an issue with the current way the NPC works. With the NPC calling the police if it reaches the max, this makes the house robbery a skill rather than just aiming a gun to have an easy job.

[Requiem]

-1 to all suggestions. I have done several house robberies and I like it the way it is for crim side right now. The whole thing is skill based and works out nicely. The payout is good too for the risk. For the furniture weights, yes its slightly unrealistic, but its balanced because as a solo it DOES make it difficult to carry all that furniture, but it is balanced for solo vs team robberies. More people = more noise and more risk, but you can carry more and get the job done faster. I see no need for any of these changes. 

[Antonio_Colombo]

1 hour ago, Bill Breacher said:

-1 to all suggestions. I have done several house robberies and I like it the way it is for crim side right now. The whole thing is skill based and works out nicely. The payout is good too for the risk. For the furniture weights, yes its slightly unrealistic, but its balanced because as a solo it DOES make it difficult to carry all that furniture, but it is balanced for solo vs team robberies. More people = more noise and more risk, but you can carry more and get the job done faster. I see no need for any of these changes. 

I am not sure from what parallel universe you got this, but... Well gotta respect every opinion. 

On the matter: all revolving around "skill" is tapping space at right time, there is no need for that much of a "skill" to tap at right place especially when the minigame is as slow paced as it is. But story is not about this aspect, rather the adjustments. Currently it is doable in solo, yes, but risk factor is way beyond theoretical reward. Of course,  group of 10 will clean house way quicker but the reward is also lower, after divided amongst robers, so my point that it is a high risk vs low reward stands. It gets especially risky if by solo you need to do many run ins to get all of the furniture out without being catched, and in case you are lucky, you end up with low reward anyway, which does not make any sense at all. In my mind, robbing a house should be high risk high reward, but actual reward is comparable to fishing on pier, where risk part is significantly lower. I hope you see where I am going with this, and I do not mean any hate or harm towards whoever you as individual are. Peace! 

[Requiem]

10 minutes ago, Antonio_Colombo said:

I am not sure from what parallel universe you got this, but... Well gotta respect every opinion. 

On the matter: all revolving around "skill" is tapping space at right time, there is no need for that much of a "skill" to tap at right place especially when the minigame is as slow paced as it is. But story is not about this aspect, rather the adjustments. Currently it is doable in solo, yes, but risk factor is way beyond theoretical reward. Of course,  group of 10 will clean house way quicker but the reward is also lower, after divided amongst robers, so my point that it is a high risk vs low reward stands. It gets especially risky if by solo you need to do many run ins to get all of the furniture out without being catched, and in case you are lucky, you end up with low reward anyway, which does not make any sense at all. In my mind, robbing a house should be high risk high reward, but actual reward is comparable to fishing on pier, where risk part is significantly lower. I hope you see where I am going with this, and I do not mean any hate or harm towards whoever you as individual are. Peace! 

You must be doing different house robberies than me and everyone else if you think reward is low man. I can spend 5k for the low tier robbery and I come out with 10-15k, double or triple my invest in about 30 minutes time. Seems pretty worth to me. I dont think fishing will make you 10k in 30 minutes. And this is for the LOW tier house as a solo crim.

Edited February 14, 2023 by Bill Breacher

[Antonio_Colombo]

1 hour ago, Bill Breacher said:

You must be doing different house robberies than me and everyone else if you think reward is low man. I can spend 5k for the low tier robbery and I come out with 10-15k, double or triple my invest in about 30 minutes time. Seems pretty worth to me. I dont think fishing will make you 10k in 30 minutes. And this is for the LOW tier house as a solo crim.

Hmm... Maybe some amounts are adjusted already by now since my last robberies, in such case I apologise to You. Last time I did low house succesfully, I ended up with around 4-5k profit in around 15 minutes time, but that was on first day. Later with failed attempt, I calculated that with the furniture lying there and other stuffs that I managed to hide before getting arrested, my income would round around 7-10k mark. Maybe it also depends on luck like how much each house generates items for grabs. 

[AnakinB]

-1 doesn't make sense to be able to kill the home owner, people would just run in kill him and move on, which would make zero sense as realistically someone would eventually call in "hey my relative isn't responding can you go check up on him?" leading the cops to find him murdered and would bring unnecessary heat plus it wouldn't make sense for people to just wind up dead night after night after night after night, just be quiet +1 for weight tho

[Bala]

I'd like to see some better gender representation from the people who get robbed.

Who wouldn't watch to ransack dear ol' Doris' life savings? @Paulius

[ShawnsBeard]

At the moment, the only suggestion here that I would +1 is reducing the furniture volume to 5.

On another note though, I think the safes need to be adjusted.  It takes about 10 minutes just to open a single safe, and it is just not worth the time in doing so.  I think one run through of the drill should unlock 25% of the safe, not 10%.  Also, IMO the safes in higher income houses should have higher tier rewards - but they all seem to have the same loot table.  So far it seems that the medium/high income houses are not worth the investment in time, risk and money for the reward given.

[Antonio_Colombo]

18 hours ago, AnakinB said:

-1 doesn't make sense to be able to kill the home owner, people would just run in kill him and move on, which would make zero sense as realistically someone would eventually call in "hey my relative isn't responding can you go check up on him?" leading the cops to find him murdered and would bring unnecessary heat plus it wouldn't make sense for people to just wind up dead night after night after night after night, just be quiet +1 for weight tho

Thank you for expressing your opinion! However, what is so bad about ability to "play dirty" now and then? It could be same way as with store NPC clerks, where you have to keep gun aimed at him, and the moment you loose aim, he calls pd or presses panic button. Either way, cops would finally do something they should be in a first place, and not waste resources by chasing speeding guy with 10+units

Edited February 15, 2023 by Antonio_Colombo

[AnakinB]

3 hours ago, Antonio_Colombo said:

Thank you for expressing your opinion! However, what is so bad about ability to "play dirty" now and then? It could be same way as with store NPC clerks, where you have to keep gun aimed at him, and the moment you loose aim, he calls pd or presses panic button. Either way, cops would finally do something they should be in a first place, and not waste resources by chasing speeding guy with 10+units

Because think of it like this, me and you both know you wont "play dirty every now and then" I know just as much as you that if either of us were given an opportunity where we could just aim a gun at someone and all our problems go away we're doing it 10/10 times, it just doesn't make sense for this situation man, I am one of the most criminal sided people on this server, it just doesn't make sense. don't gotta get so offended brobro  

[Antonio_Colombo]

1 hour ago, AnakinB said:

Because think of it like this, me and you both know you wont "play dirty every now and then" I know just as much as you that if either of us were given an opportunity where we could just aim a gun at someone and all our problems go away we're doing it 10/10 times, it just doesn't make sense for this situation man, I am one of the most criminal sided people on this server, it just doesn't make sense. don't gotta get so offended brobro  

Yes one can say that, but if you do it solo,it is not viable option to hold NPC as hostage, because you could not get any furniture or stuff like that, it would only work in 2+ scenario, and that is not always the case. Hence the "high risk-high reward'' because doing it by more than one player involves higher risk, not only possibility that aiming parting looses aim of gun on NPC, but because if police finds out about ongoing robbery, two people go to jail instead of one. Math plays out in favour of my previous argument. Other option would be that ability to "cuff" or "tie hands with rope" that is unlocked after half of the furniture/loot boxes are breached and NPC has slight chance to get out of restrain every X minutes, meaning that it is again risk to tie the NPC (minigame with 30+ iterations?), but the benefit is that you can freely loot house, hence risk/reward factors remain balanced, while offering more variety to player.

As of now, I personally view this home robbery system as:

1) really fun for RP but not actual gains

2) high risk / long time to complete - mediocre gain

And because of that I created this post initially. I believe that I am not the only one who has this opinion, but as always, this is democracy and majority should decide the fate of any adjustments / changes.

Peace.

 

Edited February 15, 2023 by Antonio_Colombo