Why not? People tend to be more protective of high-value objects they have on their person.




That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard. Without a chance of success on difficult items, it takes the challenge out of the game. How about every battle becomes a 100%/0% chance of success? If you walk into a fight you can win, enemies die automatically. If you walk into a fight you'll lose, you die automatically.

Not everyone's a save-scummer.

The problem lies more in people not understanding percentages, or dice rolls.

90% is not a guaranteed anything, you could try a thousand times... and although unlikely (highly).... you could still fail each time.

As long as there is a chance to fail, you can and will.

Its not an exact 'fail 1 out of 10 tries'... that is not how percentages (dice rolls) work.

So when your character dies once you scrap it and start all over? It's the same thing. My character dies but all I have to do is reload a saved game.

I've been caught with a 90% chance and I've gotten away with sub 50% chances. So what? I don't know how the calculation is done by the game but I think it's safe to assume that it's weighing experience, item cost, modifiers, etc.

In the example of failing 4 times at 90%, the chances are 1 in 10000. That is an extremely unlikely event. Therefore, I suspect they have some sort of anti-save-scumming mechanism in place. A prerolled dice, if you will, that persists across saves, until you completely restart the game.

Doing something else first might "use up" that unlucky roll. An act invented far ahead of it's time. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RandomNumberGod

Haven't done much pickpocketing yet, my thief is more the burglar type. If there is a mechanic in to prevent the save/load exploit, it's there for good reasons. It's supposed to be a role playing game where your actions are felt. And as explained, randomness can be seeded as well, regardless of your so called "chance". If there was no save/load exploit to worry about, it could have been fully dice driven.

Just a curious thought that's occured to me at times... Is that the chance of success you're seeing, or the chance of failure? Because if it's the latter, it's pretty accurate.

Wtflag, you might be right about clever programming, but it would need a very large sample to prove it. My guess is that it is just the good old laws of probability. You suggest that the chances of a bet at fixed, 90%, odds not coming up 4 times in a row is very small. Quite right, but nobody is making that bet.

There are four independent events, just like four spins of the roulette wheel, the odds on each event are identical. The people that casino operators and book-makers love are people who think that independent events are linked, you may have met them, "Its been red five times in a row the odds must be for black next time". In the casino business such people are known by various names, "svcker" is one of the more polite ones.

... wait. You are disputing the maths?

No, probablity only defines trends. They are not fool-proof oracles of destiny.

Your base chance of success or failure are the exact same for every time you pickpocket. If you flipped a coin 10,000 times, and each of those came up heads... it could still be heads next time. Repetition does nothing to decrease odds.

So, you could fail at 99% the same as you could at 1%.

That is math.

zyghart- In reference to your sig, there are in fact many ubiquitous and common inventions whose purpose is wholly difference from what was intended, but that makes them no less suitable for that reason.

No doubt, sig is more of a jab at superiority.

The keyboard on my computer mostly functions as something I can throw at the wall.

Pickpocketing in this game is definitely glitched. I tried to make some enchanted armor to improve my pickpocket success, and it actually decreased my chances. I went from a 23% chance to a 4% chance. There's something wrong with the potions/gear that improve your pickpocketing success, it never works. I finally decided just to get my pickpocketing up to 100 instead.

Ahh... it very well could be the same scenario going on with smithing/sneak.

There seems to be a cap, if you exceed it you rollback to zero.

Actually, I have smithing up to 100 as well and when I use blacksmith's potions/enchantments it doesn't cause any problems. 0.o

Really?

I'm at 81, with all perks in smithing, but the second I put on equipment to improve smithed items...

They become weaker, and even worse... I don't recoup the losses even after taking off the equipment.

Talked to a few people that had the same problem, count yourself lucky.

Nice to be the lucky one for once

I have been able to improve my Legendary Dragonscale armor a couple times already with potions/gear.

You can usually steal many items with different percentage so it's not possible, they could have something like the cooldon in New Vegas casinos where you could not bet again for some time after losing, just let an flag failedpickpocket survive reload.

That is correct.

The odds of getting a 4th fail after you already had 3 failures is still 10%.

But the odds of a 4 failures in a row is (0.1 x 0.1 x 0.1 x 0.1) = 0.1%. That is also maths.

/shrug

Probability trends and odds are fodder for much debate, but suffice to say we are both right.

In computer programs, they use PRNG. Chances are they persist the seed number across reloads.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-random_number_generator

But, the percentage symbolizes the chance of them feeling your hand in their pocket, and if an item is bigger, then you will have less success at pickpocketing it, and vice versa (if those are the factors that determine difficulty of pickpocketing an item). It would be a terrible system if you could just know if you were going to steal something or not.

Of course it makes sense. (Not only that but you just made my day by mentioning it... I did not know there were percentage based skills in Skyrim; I wonder if that doesn't mean that some or all of the the other skills couldn't be converted to % based with scripts, or perhaps the script extender if it arrives).

The sense of the %'s is one of probability odds. 2 in 10 means that in 10 tries 2 successful ones are likely (and they can be the first attempt too); 9 in 10 means that in 10 tries, 1 failed attempt is likely ~and that also could be the 1 attempt (and also the 2nd; and even every attempt out of 10 ~but it's very unlikely).

** I wish more games were more defensive about reloading to circumvent gameplay mechanics; especially ones that offer public achievements.

I don't know, for me on 90% items I can empty peoples pockets and not get caught for like, 15 items in a row.

I don't know about that. About the only time I ever reload is if I run into a glitch that I can't work around but I wouldn't want the game preventing me from fixing a bug. None of the consequences in this game are terrible anyway, so what's the point? (Other than dying, but you sort of have to reload after that kind of failure, unless you're playing DID.)

For some reason people seem to think that everybody is just reloading every time they break a lockpick or get caught pickpocketing. The first time I got caught pickpocketing I went to prison. I escaped and tried to get my stuff back but broke my lockpick. I snuck out of the prison and got myself caught again for picking someone else's pocket. Went back to prison with a new lockpick and got my stuff out of the chest. Net result of not reloading: a ton of xp in sneak, lockpicking, and picking pockets (I literally stole the guards blind while they were sleeping). That's not consequences, that's gameplay. If I'd reloaded, I would have got the stuff I wanted but missed out on a couple hours of solid thieving. I pay my bounties or bribe the guards. Gold is easy to come by if you're a thief, so what's the big deal? It's not like you can't make it back.

Same goes for picking locks. Unlike a lot of boasters, I can't pick Master locks on the first try. It's not unusual for it to take 15 or 20 lockpicks. I easily broke 30+ on one of them. (Though I have done it on the first try once. That's called luck.) I'll keep trying until I'm down to about 10 picks then I'll stop, in case I need them for other locks. I'll take my loot back to town and sell it and then go back with more lockpicks. It's really not that big a deal. Who's reloading for this kind of 'consequence'? Sometimes I think the only people who complain about reloading are the people who can't stop themselves. It seems pretty silly, since a lot of the interest in the game comes from the failures.

Niether would I; but I would not mind if a game pregenerated a list of random results every time it was run (perhaps for each skill~to avoid exploit?), and then incremented through them when the a random skill result is called for... and the lists either stay in RAM or the seeds get saved with the game, so that reloading would result in the same value for the next attempt.
** Or a better method of doing the same thing.