Hey all,


Just wanted to talk about hacking. It has been one of my least favorite things about his franchise an has remained unchanged since fallout 3. I find the hacking process exceedingly tedious.


The way I "hack" is open the terminal and use up all but my last guess - I simply ignore the letter matching bit and guess until I have 1 left, then exit and repeat the process till I get lucky. I don't bother with looking for brackets etc...


I thought why can't they make it easier somehow? Or just a more fluid process...


Suggestion 1: once you've picked a word with a likeness it would highlight the like letter in the other words.


Suggestion 2: once you've found a word with a likeness it would erase all or just one dud.

the duds are there for a reason. Those are your failsafes. They can remove a wrong word, or restore your tries.

not to be rude but it sounds like utter laziness is ur issue.. look at the whole screen and try to see likenesses in the words before you just guess at one. I usually have multiple likenesses 1st guess, after that its easy to see what words will work and what ones wont just by simply spelling the word you just chose over the one ur about to. hacking has always been super easy in this game imo..

I usually hack the "legit" way. Sometimes I get frustrated and do it your way. Other times I'll just randomly guess until I'm down to one try, then go through and remove all duds and (hopefully) reset my tries, then continue randomly guessing.


Even though I usually do it as intended, I don't find it fun. At all. I was really hoping they'd change it a little this time around so that it was still challenging, but also actually fun.

Novice hacks are harder than master lol

It's not the most fun thing ever, no though I do get a sense of amusemant hunting for duds, for some reason. Can't explain it.

ICly, I rationalize a pain in the ass hack as "...Well...whoever set up this encryption earned his pay. Good on him."

Think hacking svcks? Try picking locks when you can't see the the lock...

The reality is that hacking is remarkably easy, and since you now get a reset after ten seconds, it's not even actually failable.

Honestly? I felt hacking and lockpicking were more fun in Fallout 4 then previous games, not to mention easier. I've yet to actually fail a hacking sequence and I haven't really ever run out of bobby pins before getting the final locksmith perk.

I am actually annoyed at how they managed to dumb down hacking. You cannot be locked out now...for some silly reason. If you fail then you have to wait a whopping TEN SECONDS before you can try again... As if it wasnt already easy before, now you cannot actually fail, you can keep trying forever

I don't think its about laziness...this is the 3rd game now with a nearly identical way to do it..yes it can be very easy if you take time to spell out your first guess over the other possibilities, but like the OP I think its very tedious..and for me it has ran its course for this franchise, and it is more of an issue with boredom for me..

I think ways to improve IMO..instead of that last perk in hacking being a waste (not getting locked out of a terminal), they should maybe cut the possible options in half, to make it go quicker, so you can continue on your journey..

Yeah, lockpicking is easy... when you can see the tumbler turn. When I try to lockpick, what I see is a blurry screen with no sign of a lock. Your only clue is the sound of the tumbler turning, and if you break the pick you don't really know what the position of the "sweet spot" was. I really wish every lock could be hacked on a terminal...

10 second lockout? Didn't know that


I thought lockout was supposed to be 10 minutes...


You can call it lazy but I find the hacking mini game to be tedious. I actually rather enjoy lock pick on the other hand while quite a few people hate that.

I feel that in FO 4 is easier to hack/pick, I usually succeed with both whereas in FO 3 I rarely did first time - or second - or third.

I thought that was only after a certain magazine?..could be wrong I suppose...the playthrough I'm currently on Ive avoided probably 90% of locked terminals

lol idk man, takes me no time at all to spell the words.. if anything it should be harder, idk how they could possibly make it any easier. from master hacks down it takes me under a minute and I'm in..

Hoonestly, what I do is go through every single line, to locate duds first, I know you can look at the brackets to find 'em, but honestly, my eyes hurt looking for them. Then I pick a random work and start matching with other words. Usually takes 3-4 minutes, 2 if I'm lucky.

#%(()(()(%#'"?))Laziness@[[][[]{**(%%]]is<>@[]][;%%#''.[]your%[￥￥[;.,@||]]problem!??@[][[*(]]

1 guess left

Damn it, this is so hard...

i love hacking but I hate lockpicking. It is the most upsetting noise to me when I break a pick that I literally cringe. If you do enough hacking though it becomes very easy. You have to be good at spelling too if you want to be faster. One to his own though.

This is the only bad thing about hacking in this game. You don't even feel the risk like in FO3 and NV.

hmm..clever..I guess we can say you are not lazy by taking the time to write that...eventhough it is a lazy post to basically call the OP lazy, without adding anything useful to the thread..

Again its not about laziness...its a tedious, boring system that is in need of a serious facelift...

3rd game now with the exact same hacking mini-game..talk about laziness

It does appear that lock-picking was made much easier in this game. Even easier than Skyrim.

Hacking ... well it isn't hard, I just dread wasting the minute or two it takes to find duds and hack. Comparatively lock-picking is always done in 15 seconds or less. Only once in 160+ hours has the computer needed to reset. It's just, time consuming.

I would have loved for them to have done something to simplify it some. Maybe just have the game highlight 'possible' words as you get clues from trying other words. For example if I selected 'CHERRY' and got three letters correct, I know that 'MELLON' can't be the word, but 'CHOIRS' could be. Darken MELLON and highlight CHOIRS. That may speed things up a little. I mean just something, anything. It's just a too slow a process.

How is lockpicking easier, I don't notice any difference?

The thing is that hacking in RL is far from exciting, and there's not much way to liven it up ingame. Of course, they could fix things so that a fourth wrong guess detonates a mini-nuke inside the terminal...

Seriously. I could open a Master lock in Skryim at level one, but it would require several lockpicks (unless I got real lucky). The lockpicks generally broke after the first or second miss. In this game it has never taken more than two bobbypins to open any lock. I can get four and sometimes five 'tries' with one bobbypin before it breaks.

Want to make it challenging? When you start to pick the lock, turn your back to your monitor...