When picking a lock, and the pick breaks, the progress bar for the lockpicking skill increases. Surely this shouldn't be the case? You're getting rewarded for failure.

Practice makes perfect.

You are being rewarded for failure but that failure is still practice. And with practice you should get better which is why the skill goes up.

Besides if the skill didn't go up it would be very hard to raise lock picking skill without paying for training.

Correction, you're getting rewarded for trying. We learn by trying.

In this case, each time you fail you essentially learn not do it it quite like that,

Ok, I see your points.

Exactly. In my opinion, they even got the ratio correct for the Skill improvements.

When you successfully pick a lock, the bar jumps quite a bit, but is also regulated by the difficulty of the lock in question (i.e. a Master level lock will make the bar jump far more than an Apprentice level lock would).

When you fail and break the lockpick, the bar still goes up, but by only a fraction of what it does for a successful pick-job. This is a great way to measure how your character learns with picking locks as you don't learn as much when you get it wrong, but you do still learn.

Personally, I love this new lock-picking system much better than the one in Morrowind or Oblivion.

When you perform tasks you learn from mistakes.

I think lockpicking needs to step out of being a mini-game is what I think.


It's what I hoped for actually.



but............ SotY, GotY, so...

would be a long game if you only got points when you did open one.

Not really, I don't break lock-picks that often and I usually tend to level it up immediately when opening a more difficult lock. Raising the points for breaking a pick are usually in smaller increments the higher your lockpicking skill is anyways.

So how would you have it work?

I'd have it work by not adding an obtrusive mini-game for hacking/lockpicking that breaks the immersion and stops the game. Every developer seems to love doing this when it comes to those moments. I find it outdated and unimaginative. No point in taking me to some random screen. A "flash game" inside of a "video game" is how I see it. There's reasons I play video games.



Games take planning, lots of blueprints and meetings of the team putting it together to make it something special. The mini-game thing is just an easy way out of it and it seems to be the standard so there's not much thought put into it.

Breaking lockpicks is all part of the EXPERIENCE of learning how to lockpick.

So creating the way locks are picked in Skyrim to be very similar to how most thieves will lock pick easy locks breaks immersion?

whats your idea then, click on lock and it opens ? other wise a very well thought out idea.

Because thieves get a pop-up screen as well as everyone around the thief paused in frozen time.

yeah, but the same is true then for using potions, etc...you're essentially stopping time. For me, I like the lockpicking in this game - it focuses on the activity of lockpicking as it should in my opinion - after all, you would actually need to focus in on the task, right?

other people dont get paused while you pick a lock. with the current method it would work as first person view or 3rd as its done on the feel of the lock rather than knocking pins up type like in oblivion.

If you guys like it, fine. Don't see why you need to defend it just because I'm wanting something different than the standard.

{edit} look at Gears of War for example. The active reloading is an example how of something can be done in real time, quick and be effective. Hacking in Bioshock 2 is even done in real time and gets the job done. Something fun and quick, and if you succeed then you get rewarded. I don't need a standalone mini-game for it. It's been done too much. I don't dislike it, but it's time to move forward and be intuitive.

You speak but you say nothing. You poop on the "minigame" but offer no alternative except talking about board meetings and blueprints. I will assist you in the thinking process.
In the latest Deus Ex there is "lockpicking" in the form of hacking computers. It is a "minigame" as well, in the sense that the camera moves to 1st-person in front of a computer monitor and you have to navigate a visual representation of the computer's security system to gain access to the computer. While you are doing this you can still see a little bit of the area around you, over the top or sides of the computer, and security forces are still active and moving along their patrol routes while you're hacking, so you have to time it right and do it fast. This is the closest thing I can imagine to what you seem to be attempting to verbalise.

I know how it works. And in Deus Ex. Thanks.

we still waiting for your idea.
gears of war is press button when bar swings into certain spot, which is fine on gears where you get bonus if you get it in right spot but its just reloading the gun, its not lock picking should also point out their are no lancers in skyrim.


on deux ex do you think people should have to try and hack a pc without it being a mini game ?

Are you telling me it can't be done?

I won't argue about this.

what you think lock picking should be like gears where you click when the line reaches a certain point on a line, like a golf game ?

I gave examples, I didn't say it "should be exactly like". Anyways, nice day to you.