Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Pickpocketing only once?

Is it intentional to only be able to pickpocket a target once? I found pickpocketing a great way to bypass the early game economy hardships by just stealing from the merchants. I built a 2h Elf warrior with Thievery as the civil skill and was able to steal Sundering Cleaver from the undead Merchant easily. I couldn't ever pickpocket him again without him going hostile.

Seems likely. The shopkeeper is probably feeling pretty paranoid now.

Yea paranoia makes sense. I was hoping maybe on level-up when Shopkeepers update their stock that i'd be able to pilfer their pockets again.

As a solution to RNG save-scumming, theft in Divinity has no random failure chance.
Instead, you get one shot, and you can only steal items worth a certain total value.

If you steal again, or grab more than you should, the target is alerted to your actions, and responds appropriately.

Just as a general philosophy, a non-adversarial game should never be balanced with anti-save-scumming in mind. If you have to change core gameplay elements to prevent save-scumming, just don't do it. Let those people save-scum, and don't change the game for others. After all, it doesn't even affect you.

Divinity is designed as an adversarial game though, the intent is for you to play with another person, and save-scumming in that scenario would be obnoxious.

It's really more of a solution so you 'don't have to' do it, rather than so that you 'do not'.
NPC's carry static loot, you can help yourself to a static amount of it.
No fail and reload every 6 seconds for half an hour, till you get exactly the thing you want.

How does pickpocketing relate to pvp combat? People trying to pickpocket grenades from eachother or what?

Not so much pvp combat, as online play in general.

Just imagine how obnoxious is re-rolling(save-scumming) the RNG on a theft attempt for half an hour, then multiply that by the number of people in the party.

And why would that bother you anyway? You dont have to play with these people, so why would you care if they re-roll or not?

I haven't tried it but I feel like you ought to be able to steal more if you update your steal skill.

Also I think stealing would be better if it was based somewhat on the persons view of you (I can't remember the exact terms right now) but there seems to both be a general suspicion level (bottom of the mini map) as well as individuals rating (I only can see this in the store view). If you are well liked you should be able to steal more because people aren't so worried about you being in the area but if you are not well liked then people will be more paranoid while you are around. If you are caught or strongly suspected of thievery then of course these numbers should go down.

The other thing I really wish was changed about this mechanic; there should be a timer after stealing. People can't stay extra paranoid forever. Eventually they ought to return to normal life.

What do you mean online play in general?
If you are playing divinity online with people in another form than arena you are persumably playing co op with friends?

What is the online scenario you imagine for DO2 where the pickpocketing system would be an issue? (and what specifically would the issue be?)

And if you don't see a problem with re-rolling a failed RNG on a theft attempt, you don't deserve to have those friends.

If you are the host of those games the other people can't reload the game. You do understand how multi player games work in divinity right?

If you are a reload cheeser you will need to play with players who share your view on playing the game, if not, then you need to either play with people who share that view or you need to be the host so it's up to you if you want to reload.

So as I said, what is the situation you imagine that would be problematic for online play?
Someone being a dick and ruining your one pickpocket oportunity? Sure, that can happen. Just like someone can be a dick and cast a meteor swarm in the middle of an NPC hub.

Don't play RPG cooperative games with dicks. Larian studios will never be able to give you a game where people can't fuck with you. At least not without ruining everything that is great about Divinity Original Sin.

On a related note you can pickpocket Dallis the Hammer at the beginning of the game. Unfortunately she didn't have anything at all.

Gotta love this community.

I don't mind saying it...

Re-rolling and cheating should be dissuaded and stopped whenever possible.

You "Beat the game", but if you are constantly "cheating" to have it your way, your only achievement is that you have cheated. That mind set is not something to strive for.

You might as well load your character and declare yourself a winner. Tell your friends that you are so good you don't even need to play the game to win.

If the game is too difficult for you, you should perhaps play something else (Ludo comes to mind) or try to improve.

One problem with your scenario. This is a video game. There is no such thing as "winning" especially in a single player bubble. You can beat a game but that is about all. What do you win when you beat a game? Answer: Nothing. This is not a casino. If this were a competitive game then certainly you need to balance the game so that its "sporting" but this is not such a game.

If someone has fun save scumming then all you did was make their experience worse. Let them do what they want.

But what about people that hates scumming but feel almost forced to do it? I'm one of those people and I really appreciate this less rng for turn based strategy games design philosophy Larian went with.

For example, the rock paper scissors speech checks in the first game, If I don't pass the one in the first town then I can't go in the room and loot bunch of valuables without initiating combat with guards, and obviously gold is nice so I felt forced to save scum just for that gold, although the save and load made it super tedious even for a single player.

People who likes save scumming aren't the only ones out there and the designs obviously can't satisfy everyone. Besides I doubt that many people actually likes save scumming, most of them are probably like me, hates it but feel forced to do it, like crafting the right item with the right stat in the first game with limited resources heh, there are no other ways besides save scum.

I dunno, I'm very much from the "don't like doing it? Don't do it then" school: my feeling is that putting in artificial restrictions is the sort of hand-holding that so many RPGers seem to dislike. I speak as the sort of person who always manages to roll a one so I do occasionally do it, but for me the cost of doing so generally outweighs my habitual run of bad luck so I'll refrain unless I'm in a really bad mood. I'd likely be in a worse mood if there was an artificial barrier in place though.

Back in 1985 they were somewhat tougher on the snowflakes.

Remember this game anyone?

https://archive.org/details/a8b_Hacker_1985_Activision