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Games that reward pickpocketing

Shaewaroz

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Fallout did it right. You don't need to pickpocket anyone, but you can get huge benefits by stealing when the opportunity presents itself. Pickpocketing in Fallout is part of the exploration - you're curious to know what you could pickpocket from different NPCs.

What other games that are not essentially about stealing (like Thief), but where pickpocketing is rewarding and exciting? To me pickpocketing should allow the player to find unique and useful items that they would not be able to find otherwise (except by killing the NPC).

I really, really like games where you can find unique stuff though pickpocketing. I've made entire playthroughs of games like Baldur's Gate and Final Fantasy 7 around trying to pickpocket every single NPC/enemy in the game. This is probably also one of the reasons why I liked FF XII so much, since stealing from enemies is a major part of the game.

Also, how would you change gameplay mechanisms to make stealing more realistic and/or fun? In most games stealing is either done in combat or being found out immediately results in everyone trying to kill you, forcing you to reload. How could you encourage stealing as a way of exploration without forcing player to reload after failing?

Other games that did it (at least partly) right:

BG 1 & BG 2
Underrail
Morrowind
Chrono Trigger
Final Fantasy games
 
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Rahdulan

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I'm not sure if it counts as rewarding because it was still only a half-step forward in my opinion, but Gothic 2 had an interesting spin on pickpocketing by essentially doing it in dialog as you were presumably distracting your target and then stealing their stuff. Yeah, at the end of the day it was just another dialog option dictated by stats, but I liked the idea as opposed to typical "crawl behind the mark and pray they don't turn around to spot you because their pathfinding had a bad day".
 

V_K

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Quest for Glory and Heroine's Quest, obviously - they have whole thievery-based playthroughs and some of the best optional content is for thieves. It's more about breaking into people's homes than pickpocketing per se, but pickpocketing has its benefits as well.
 

Daemongar

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Other games that did it (at least partly) right:

BG 1 & BG 2
Underrail
Morrowind
Chrono Trigger
Final Fantasy games

Does "did it right" mean that you could just reload after failing? Not sure how Final Fantasy handles this, but I don't think Pickpocket is a good mechanic anymore, unless you are playing a Thief game where pocket picking is required to proceed. Stealing in games (I guess) is an part of the RPG experience, but the whole reload until you succeed part just irks me. I rarely take "stealing" type skills, as I know where it will take me: oh, I failed, the guards are mad. Reload.

Also, it's the same as the NPC that cannot be killed. The games invariably have a person that cannot be pickpocketed because they are a special NPC - and their pockets are special as well.
 

Sigourn

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Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance this is really good. There are tons of guides around that rely on you stealing extremely powerful items from enemies.

I never ever felt the need to pickpocket something from someone's pocket in Morrowind. It just isn't worth it, the mechanics in this game are too broken.
 

Lhynn

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Neverwinter is an obvious one, depending on the module.
 

Baron Dupek

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The more expensive item you steal the more XP you get.
Few things need to be noted. First - you get "sort of thievery" team member soon, but his stats sux, so it's good idea to make your main character (Boar) a thief.
Second - pickpocketing and opening locks is best source of XP and ammo in the game, period. That's why I made 2nd playthrough of this game. Might be enough to get better guns faster and most important - drugs. They are P. handy when your character get critical hit and get penality in stats, often make him unable to wear armor or use weapon, which let you avoid save scumming in combat.
Best thing you can do is to gather all team members (Boar+3guys) and then start looting all towns (locks, pockets).
I still did not managed to pick the vault key from the banker, even with 200 Pickpockets (and 100 Pickpckts is sufficient for the whole game).
 

Darth Roxor

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Gothic 2 had an interesting spin on pickpocketing by essentially doing it in dialog as you were presumably distracting your target and then stealing their stuff. Yeah, at the end of the day it was just another dialog option dictated by stats.

It might have been just a dialogue dex check, but it was certainly rewarding. Could bypass entire quests by doing that or get unique items. Not to mention it showered you with XP.
 

deuxhero

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Neverwinter Nights 2's OC had a lot of unique items you could get by pickpocketing. Unfortunately it was random as fuck for most things, used NWN2's broken pickpocket mechanics and (most importantly) was NWN2's OC
 

TigerKnee

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It's kinda weird to put Final Fantasy here - it's basically a combat option that has a chance of getting you the target's "steal" drop list which is usually separate from its usual drops and may have rare goodies.
 
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Ludo Lense

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Gothic 2 had an interesting spin on pickpocketing by essentially doing it in dialog as you were presumably distracting your target and then stealing their stuff. Yeah, at the end of the day it was just another dialog option dictated by stats.

It might have been just a dialogue dex check, but it was certainly rewarding. Could bypass entire quests by doing that or get unique items. Not to mention it showered you with XP.


Ah the good times of obsessively raising dex to get every single drop of EXP out of pick-pocketing.

Nicking Lothar's stuff before he dies was oddly satisfying.

It gets even more autistic when know you can buy the master sword from the paladin quartermaster to compensate dex spam but you have to do it the first time you open his inventory screen otherwise he equips it.

Tenouttaten game.
 

SwiftCrack

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Yeah, but as far as rewarding goes, stealing is done well in final fantasy games. There's good shit to be had in a lot of the games with stealing.

It's about as close as you could get to pickpocketing w/r/t the game mechanics.
 

Ivan

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Underrail is nice. you have to be thoughtful since u can only do it once


Gothic's was disappointing since you couldnt choose what to cop
 

AArmanFV

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I would put Ultima 1 to 3, but steal in those games is a feature that you must use to survive and only is useful to replenish your food suplies, in Ultima 3 to steal those chests in Death Gulch, but you don't actually use the steal command.
 

laclongquan

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F1, F2, and especially Fallout Tactic. You get XP for doing it, so it's a valid way to level up lowlevel pacifism players.
PST. Man oh man, all the time we get Annah to pickpocket every single passerby~
BG1, BG2. Nough said.
IWD1 and IWD2.
FF7,8,9... It's a method to get resources~
Chrono Cross. It's a method to get rare resources~
Arcanum where we can be and must be a dumpster diver~
 
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In Underrail, if you invest in pickpocketing you will not need to buy any ammo!

Fallouts were rewarding pickpocketing very nice since you could even kill enemies by planting bombs in their pockets. Fallout 3 did it even funnier; you could drop grenades or mines in NPC's pockets then watch them going BOOM!
 

Shaewaroz

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Other games that did it (at least partly) right:

BG 1 & BG 2
Underrail
Morrowind
Chrono Trigger
Final Fantasy games

Does "did it right" mean that you could just reload after failing? Not sure how Final Fantasy handles this, but I don't think Pickpocket is a good mechanic anymore, unless you are playing a Thief game where pocket picking is required to proceed. Stealing in games (I guess) is an part of the RPG experience, but the whole reload until you succeed part just irks me. I rarely take "stealing" type skills, as I know where it will take me: oh, I failed, the guards are mad. Reload.

Also, it's the same as the NPC that cannot be killed. The games invariably have a person that cannot be pickpocketed because they are a special NPC - and their pockets are special as well.

I don't think in BG or Fallout there are any NPCs that is somehow immune to pickpocketing. Some quest items aren't visible in their inventory when you pickpocket them though.

How would you improve pickpocketing so that we wouldn't need to reload after failure? Do you like the Bethesda way better?
 

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