Still issues with stealing.

[matthewfarmery]

I don't pin my windows, just right clicking to open all the windows at once and drop items in my inventory, using the windows RC from Ace's links. so I can confirm that stealing has some issues with the windows open, (but not pinned)

Huh.
I did not know you could do that.
I've raised a bug for it https://bugs.openmw.org/issues/2521
And submitted a PR that should fix it. https://github.com/OpenMW/openmw/pull/564

Thanks for your help.

just posted in that bug report to say I can confirm it, I probably should have created a bug report myself, I didn't realise I had found a new bug in the process.

[Mistahtokyo]

Pretty sure that's intended behavior. As in, vanilla Morrowind behaves like this

I don't believe it is. In vanilla, a popular starting exploit is to grab the platter in the census office, then quickly open your inventory and drop it before the guard gets you so he doesn't take it (then after he scolds you, pick it back up when it's no longer marked as owned). If you could just grab it while the inventory is open to avoid the crime altogether, that wouldn't be necessary.

Ah, sorry. I misinterpreted the original issue, thought he meant that what you described what the problem.

[ghales]

pick it back up when it's no longer marked as owned

I don't think that's how that works. The item is still marked as owned. It is only recognized as theft the first time you pick it up. After that, you can "steal" it, put it down and "steal" it again as much as you want.

I believe vanilla Morrowind does this because the game has many items that are marked as owned by somebody, but that you can legitimately loot. For example, in Druscashti there is a vampire smith named Kjel. He owns a number of items that you aren't supposed to steal, if you are a vampire. If you're not, you can kill Kjel and loot his lair with no problems. Mostly, Morrowind's theft/looting system lets you do this, but of course, it is buggy. If you get arrested, Kjel's items will be confiscated from you since they are marked as stolen. Worse, the stack corruption bug means your repair hammers will probably all be marked as Kjel's and be confiscated too. Logically, the guards should not take these items from you. They should pat you on the back for ridding the world of those evil creatures and tell you to keep up the good work.

Note that OpenMW currently reproduces the stack corruption bug. I am not sure why. If people don't like multiple stacks of similar items, maybe stolen items could be marked with a little red hand, as in Oblivion?

In any case, fixing theft/looting is a hard problem. I think it should be based on three things:

1. Can an NPC see you have the item? Morrowind only triggers when you first pick it up, when you try to sell it to its owner, or when you are arrested. Obviously, NPCs can see you if you put it down, as well as when you pick it up, every time, not just once. They should also notice if you have the item equipped. And, trying to sell it means you have to take it out of your pack to show it to the merchant, so that means any nearby NPCs should also see it.

2. Does the NPC know it's stolen? Low value, common items should only be identifiable by their owner. As in, "Hey, that's the missing loaf of bread I baked this morning!", or "That's my armour you're wearing! I can tell by the nick on the shoulder." Higher value items (200 to 20,000?), might be known locally. For example, if a certain Limeware platter goes missing, everyone in Seyda Neen would know it was stolen, if they saw you with it. Of course, no one anywhere else would recognise it. Really expensive or unique items would be recognized everywhere.

3. Would an NPC care that you have a stolen item? This would depend on your faction and reputation, the NPC's faction, and the faction of the owner. As noted above, no one should consider a vampire's property as stolen, except another vampire. Bandits and necromancers should also be legal targets. It gets more complicated from there. Telvanni might not care about anything taken from a non-Telvanni. Redorans might object to theft from any honest citizen, but Hlaalu might tend to look the other way if you are a fellow Hlaalu.

I think this system would make a good mod, but it should not be built in as a feature, because it has the potential to break the game or other mods. OpenMW should fix the stack corruption bug, but otherwise stick to Morrowind's goofy behaviour.

[wareya]

It's definitely mod territory, but I would enjoy something where "memory of theft" disappears over time according to the value of the item. It would be like the value reflects how visibly unique the item is to the NPCs. Naturally, highly unique items might never be forgotten by their owner, but might be forgotten by "the system" (guards).


On-topic: I noticed that the inventory kind of theft got patched; did the patch also cover the case where you could move objects while paused -- without putting them in your inventory -- and that would flag the item as having already being stolen, without getting you in trouble? For example, go to a shop, pause, pick an item up with the cursor and then put it back down again. Now you can unpause and not get detected for theft, and then pick up the item because it's already been "stolen".

In MW, you're detected for theft when you unpause when you do this. I think this is the behavior OpenMW should adopt, since it's vanilla, and since simply not marking the object for theft would allow people to do oblivion/skyrim-style "drag the object offscreen before stealing it".