Fallout 4 hacking is so fun it has made lock picking very boring. In the next TES I think they need to add a mini-game on top of lock picking. Maybe some old school cryptography box where you have to find the right combo or something. I have no idea what an ancient version of hacking would look like, but I know I want something that competes with it.

And before someone brings up something obscurely similar in Skyrim, I put down 2k in hours on that game and it has nothing that is good enough to compete with the fun of hacking in Fallout 4.

A good portion of people would disagree. I used to think it was tedious, but I'm better after years with the system.


Dont know if anything similar can be applied. I have entertained the idea of a Intelligence based ability to translate different languages, but strikes me as being too niche for it to work.

I'm of the opposite mind, actually... I find hacking in Fallout to be tedious and boring and would do anything for an auto-solve button. It's not WORSE than lockpicking, which needs a tuneup its self, but the minigame isn't what i would call 'fun'.

The only hacking mini game i've seen that i thought was fun at all was Mass Effect 2's.

I'm not fond of player-skill minigames at all, but I tend to be old-school about roleplaying. I wish they'd put a character-skill-based "auto-try" button on all minigames.

I'm surprised nobody made such a mod for Skyrim. Hmm, I need to give it a try.

There's a pretty popular mod for Skyrim that did just that, thoigh I recall it being buggy.

I actually find both FO3's and ME2's hacking games reasonably fun (hate the FO3/Skyrim lockpicking and the "match the wires" ME2 game--though still better than ME1 Frogger), but I agree--I'd prefer my character's abilities to be based on, well, my character's abilities, not mine.

Oh god no, I happy the only thing they took was lockpicking.

This.

Is the hacking still the same as in FO3? That was easy (so long as you used pen and paper and went about it systematically) but tedious and timeconsuming.

edit: and I see failing now just locks you out briefly so no real penalty for failure

I'm personally fond of Deus Ex: Human Revolution's hacking system, mostly because it requires strategy more than anything but if it goes [censored]-up you can still compensate with some quick thinking and doing. Meanwhile ME2's hacking minigames (both of them) are pure tedium with zero difficulty and no skill or planning required.

Not going to get into the mini-game itself, but it boggles my mind that they flat out got rid of the consequences of failure. It makes the end line of the Hacking perk and Nicks companion perk outright useless. Why should you care about reducing lock out time or getting rid of it all together. Its inconsequential, and doesn't do anything at the end of the day.


I think this was a last minute adjustment to the game like Companion deaths. They actually have voice clips that play if they're killed. You dont include those types of abilities unless there was a intent of actual failure.

Did it really need strategy? I always felt that just being quick with capturing nodes/fortifying them was enough to beat even the most difficult locks.

I wouldn't mind having aspects of lockpicking from the Thief series in TES or Fallout. Having it be real time would give the player a bit of tension and creating noise that attracts attention when you mess up is a good way of punishing the player.

I always felt that lockpicking was too easy in Bethesda's games.

For those of us who aren't good at minigames it certainly wasn't too easy!

I'd be happy for it to take time and have a chance of attracting attention so long as success or failure depended on character skill rather than my cack-handedness.

I thought Morrowind's lockpicking was fantastic. There were two things I loved about it: 1) it took place in real time and 2) it depended on character skill.

Real time lockpicking meant that there was always a chance my character could be spotted by a guard or law-abiding passers-by and arrested, if she wasn't alert. Lockpicking that stops time, as we have had from Oblivion onward, feels like cheating to me. Initiate your lockpicking at the precise instant you are unobserved and there is no possibility of ever being caught again, even if you spend the next week picking that lock. That is a truly terrible system as far as I am concerned.

I hate mini-games in RPGs anyway, as a rule. They are almost always about the player, about my personal twitch skills and eye-hand-co-ordination, rather than being about my character, which is what a roleplaying game should be about.

I'll say one thing for Oblivion's lock picking though: it at least had a nice "Auto-Attempt" button. That was a nice touch of character-skill roleplaying mechanic in an otherwise abysmal lockpicking system. It is a shame they got rid of that button.

I liked Oblivion's lockpicking more than Skyrim's, tbh.

I'm not against mini-games, and I think there's some stuff that could be added to create a nice mix of both player and character skill, like a skill cutoff to attempt a minigame, the skill impacting how difficult the minigame is, or even the button that exists in Oblivion, but I don't think they've found a nice balance thus far. I think mini-games in particular could be fun for puzzles in the form of some sort of interface, but there should always be prominent character skill factors.

I'm definitely pro-variety in terms of puzzles/traps in the games. I think that variety should be expanded on, as long as the puzzles put in place don't solely focus on player or character skill entirely. I also really think everything should work in real time, as Wyrd mentioned. Picking a lock should be a risky venture, as should certain puzzles that might be necessary to open certain doorways in a certain time limit or something.

Time itself can act as a wonderful layer for puzzle difficulty.

I think having a real time lockpicking system where your skill determined how long it would take to open the lock would also be great too. That way you still have the tension and difficulty of having to avoid being spotted while not needing a minigame.

Same here. Mini games are all well and good, but I prefer them to be out of the way like gambling or fishing kind of stuff. When I have to freeze up my screen every thirty seconds in a dungeon to pick a new novice level lock, it gets tedious quickly. They ain't hard, and nobody ever actually fails them, so really the only reason they're there is to pose an alternative to the classic "character skill"-based actions of older games.

In my opinion, hacking is the worst offender. Not only are there like ten terminals in every building, but the game takes forever and immediately svcks me out of whatever I was doing before. Sure, it's easy. But inkess you get lucky, it will always take time.

Agreed on all accounts.

As for the main topic, I actually hate Fallout's hacking, in both 3 and 4. In 3 it was just plain tedious. In 4, it's slightly less tedious, but completely inconsequential. I hope they get rid of all the minigame nonsense that's been plaguing rpg's recently, even though I'm pretty sure that won't happen.

I don't like mini-games based on player skill. I'd rather have something like Morrowind's lockpicking where the *character* uses the pick on the lock and the chararacter's skill determines whether or not it opens. For hacking, I'd like to see the *character* go up to the terminal and some sort of hacking skill determine whether or not it unlocks. Making the minigames more real-time difficult and time-consuming would just make them even more of a hassle to me and even less about my character's skills. Why should my highly-skilled character be penalized by any shortcomings on my part?

The absolute last thing I'd want is even *more* of these inane minigames on top of what we already have to endure.

Can't believe I'm saying this, but as buggy as Alpha Protocol was their lockpicking was pretty decent. It was real time and you had to be in stealth not to get caught so you used both skills in tandem. It was also a nice balance between player skill and character skill. They were also, more often than not, tied to an alarm that would alert the building if you failed.


Something like this for TES6 wouldn't be bad. And for magic users straight up copy/paste dispell from Kingdoms of Amalur. If you fail to break an enchantment on a cursed chest or door you get hit with something nasty or you have to fight something nasty or both.

i've never heard of anyone like the hacking minigame. I wish there was a way to auto attempt it. I like the lockpicking minigame, if just because its so easy i don't think about it anymore.

Anyone go back and try oblivion's minigame? Its jarring how bad i've gotten at it last time i played when i used to get it on the first attempt everytime.

I've never been able to figure out Oblivion's lockpicking mini-game on console, so thank goodness for auto-attempt. I didn't have an issue with the PC using the mouse, but trying to quickly get to all four columns before all the thingees fall down using a controller stick was apparantly far beyond my dexterity.

I was definitely good at it at one point. It seemed the easiest way was waiting for it to be "loose" then keeping it in place. Now i just use scrolls til get the skeleton key

That would just be so boring. I like Fallout's system where if you're not proficient enough yet in it, you can't even try to pick a higher level lock.


I think lockpicks need to be less plentiful too.