Just A Thought on the Stealing Mechanic

[AkaRai]

So I tried it a few times, was successful maybe twice, and gave up on using it. It just felt like wasting turns before long. I know there's an accessory that increases your odds, but by then my mindset was already "why bother?" At least from the couple items I got it didn't seem to be different from what dropped regularly.

But when I logged off I saw I'd gotten an achievement for successfully stealing something and noted only 36% of players had successfully stolen an item. That just seems way too low to me, barely a third of players have had success? Now I know, the game's just out, but even so you get access to it a couple quests after the end of the demo basically. It's not even mid-game content. I mean certainly I was using the life and magic steal a lot, but it seems odd to me if one of the main characters starts off as a thief and barely any of the players are regularly using his core mechanic, but I know nothing of your reasoning or what amount of effort would be required to patch something like that, I was just surprised is all.

[Volcano Princess Enjoyer]

You do it in bosses and it functions relatively similar to many other rpgs. The only difference is you wont 1 shot the monster trying to rob like you would in FF

[archonsod]

Originally posted by AkaRai:

So I tried it a few times, was successful maybe twice, and gave up on using it. It just felt like wasting turns before long. I know there's an accessory that increases your odds, but by then my mindset was already "why bother?" At least from the couple items I got it didn't seem to be different from what dropped regularly.

It's not; it's literally the same as what it drops regularly. Only difference is if you kill it normally there's a random chance it'll drop it's regular item and a much smaller chance it'll drop it's rare. When stealing it goes off your AGI, if it's high enough you'll pretty much guarantee getting something, the higher your chance the higher the likelihood of plucking the rare rather than regular item.

But when I logged off I saw I'd gotten an achievement for successfully stealing something and noted only 36% of players had successfully stolen an item. That just seems way too low to me, barely a third of players have had success?

Barely a third have bothered is more likely. About the only things really worth stealing from are the mimics, and then only because they drop the blessed water etc you need for item purification which can otherwise be hard to come by. For the rest it's rarely worth bothering - do you really want to give up an entire action to get an extra medicinal leaf?
To be fair the bosses can sometimes give equipment, but it's rarely anything particularly good.

it seems odd to me if one of the main characters starts off as a thief and barely any of the players are regularly using his core mechanic.

How many players bother keeping him as a thief? It's not a particularly useful archetype at that point in the game beyond steal (or to be fair at any point; not many enemies weak to Dark).

[AkaRai]

Fair enough, though I did keep him a thief. I wanted to max it before switching to something else, honestly largely because I was getting pretty good katanas. I'm trying out Faker with him now, I have yet to try Merchant or Gunner yet so I'll probably switch him to one of those before long, though it seems pointless to use Merchant on anyone but your main character.

[archonsod]

Gunner is useful since the elite thief class requires levels in one of the gunner archetypes (useful tip if you haven't already noticed; if you select the blank cells for the higher tier archetypes of those you've unlocked it'll still show you the requirements to adopt that archetype; can be useful for some of the lineages since the requirements in terms of secondary archetypes aren't always intuitive).

[JCKLNTRN]

The achievement percentage is like.that, because there's really not much incentive to engage with the stealing mechanic at all, unfortunately.

[zero]

i can see steal an item be low.

its not a sure thing, and quite frankly: if they're anything like me, they hate that it does no damage, so they don't wanna use it, you can get through the game just fine without it.

i used it by mistake and got an item, so i got the chiv, but im not surprised its so low.

[Rubyeyed]

There are some nice pink items to steal every now and then. Personally I steal from every new enemy I fight.

[Tiasmoon]

As far as I'm aware you can only steal the rare drop. While agi does effect success chance, high agi isnt close to a guarantee of getting the item.

Aside from that many elites and bosses have powerful items you can steal.

Also, final Thief Arch-type (unique to the thief partymember) is one of the best in the game against bosses, due to its evasion benefits. In order to eventually be able to get it, he will need to have (basically maxed) levels in Thief, Gunner and Merchant.

[Tiasmoon]

People would use steal more often if it didnt have such a godawfully low succes chance.
I only still use it because I learned that you can just keep resetting the fight to reroll, and your highest agility character always goes first.

[Freya Crescent]

There's an accessory, yes, but the way it works is your AGI vs enemy AGI so if you put it on a character like Heismay who is specced for alot of Agility, you can easily steal most things. There's an accessory you can buy from the daily vendor in Brilehaven market (idr which day) called Rider's Anklet for +9 Agility.

Agility is huge in Metaphor because it lets you evade attacks. Even if an enemy misses only 1 character with an AoE, it consumes 2 Turn Icons even on bosses or if they get a Weak/Crit on another character, so Agility is definitely not a wasted stat by any means. Having 1 character fully specced to evade means considerably less damage for the entire party, especially if you give them a Knight's Proclamation (Don't do Holy Knight's, as it makes them Guard and removes Evasion)