My only problem with lockpicking is that maybe lockpicks are too plentiful. I think nothing of seeing a master lock and knowing I'll break about 10 picks getting it open because I know I'll get 10 lockipicks back no problem.

It also doesn't help that I spent SO much time as a wasteland wanderer that my lockpicking has gotten to the point where I could probably teach the Gray Fox a thing or two... :teehee:

I'm actually lining up with this more. I think there are skills like H2H that would have made much better perk and skill trees than lockpicking. They maybe could have combined lockpicking and sneak into "Stealth and Security," but I risk angering those theivers. It's odd, but I advocate for more skills and more perks generally, but there are a couple in Skyrim that just seem boinked to me. Pointless even.

Lockpicking is one that seems pointless. And Destruction is one that could use an overhaul.

I would have to agree, an unarmed combat tree (think martial arts, kicks/punches etc ) would be much more interesting and useful than a lock picking tree imo. A few of the better lock picking perks could have been melded together with the pick pocketing tree.

For the love of all things good, please don't encourage Bethesda to remove even MORE skills from the games.

I can understand wanting some of the other skill back, hell I wish we could have all of the skills back. I didn't find any of them useless and thought they just added more diversity to customizing your characters. Trading out Lockpicking for them isn't the answer though. I agree maybe the lockpicking perks should be made a little more useful somehow.

This. The chests in thief`s guild are like this. Though they should add some additional difficulty. I was still able to open the lock without perks.

I really like this solution, I imagine it would work really well. I would download it if you made a mod for it =]

Not that it bothers me in the end. I role play, so characters who do not perk into or bother with lockpicking I limit to picking novice locks. Characters I play who perk into lockpicking I will pick the higher locks with.

How to fiX?

player.addperk ######

Give yourself the perks for free once you have the appropriate Lockpicking skill.. Don't have to waste precious perks on a redundant skill that has several work-arounds.. Also you'll spend less time sitting there breaking your 100 stack of picks.

For the PC users anyways....

Gothic 1 had a great lockpicking system...

And lockpicks were expensive and rare... They should just look at gothic 1 (which every rpg has already done, even half life 2 has copied gothic)

Why do you want to be forced to waste more perk points?

The current system works fine and doesn't annoy anyone.

Skill can greatly reduce the number of picks you use and the time you spend on each lock. If you want to sacrifice your characters stats/power, then you can compensate for that skill.

Much ado about nothing imo, having the "IRL" skill to actually pick the locks w/o perks should be rewarded, and it is.

Lockpicking perk tree is fine.

Don't put perks into it if you don't want the perks.

This.

I was practicing lock picking at the Thieve's Guild and every time I broke a pick a guy in the room would interrupt me and say "You shouldn't be here" which would take me out of the lock-pick minigame and reset the unlock position of the chest. I had to give up picking the master chest until he left the room.

The skeleton key exists in Skyrim, but it has a much different purpose than simply breaking into everything.

Some skills should simply not level up your character level, but be part of a sub-level called "profession" or whatever.

Lockpicking, pickpocketing, enchantment, alchemy and smithing.

All of them are investments in making something or taking something -- not actually fighting.
While some of them CAN improve your fighting capabilities, some others are just dead weight.

IF smithing, alchemy and enchantment were limited to things that actually CAN BE FOUND IN THE GAME -- they would be equal to pickpocketing and lockpicking in value.

And then they could be skills that level up separate from combat skills.

Daedric weapons and armor is too easy to make when smithing can improve them beyond anything available in the game by the time you actually can smith it yourself.

Smithing is so good it's broken.
Enchanting is so good it's broken.
Alchemy is so good it's broken.
Pickpocketing is brokenly useless.
Lockpicking is brokenly useless.

...

...

Simple solutions for a simple patch:
1: Player cannot make alchemy, smithing or enchantment potions or enchantments.
2: Master requires 4 lock-procedures, expert level locks require 3 separate open-procedures, adept and apprentice requires 2 and novice 1.

Yeah, with 9 gold and a healing potion. :teehee:

P.S.

And I also agree with and suggested (Different thread.) what yadayada is recommending. Tumblers should randomize on failed attempts.

I really love this idea. That would make experts and masters almost impossible without the perks, but still allow you to get some stuff done.

An alternative someone else got close to but never said is that maybe the perks make the current level easier and unlock the next level. For example, you would start the game only able to pick novice locks, then the novice perk makes novice locks easier and allows you to pick amateur locks. Then the amateur perk makes amateur easier and allows you to pick adept locks. Adept perk makes adept easier and allows you to pick expert locks, and on and on up the chain. The Master perk would make master locks easier and maybe also offer a bonus, like automatic unlocking of chests under expert or something like that.

Both these solutions should be easy to mod when the CS comes out, which is a cool thing.

As I've mentioned in other game forums, what I feel they should do is drop the mini-game entirely and go back to having the character's skill determine success or failure at picking locks.

1) Any lock may be attempted, regardless of the character's current skill
2) Chance of success is directly proportional to the current level of said skill
3) Each tier of difficulty between the character's skill and the lock's level modifies the chance of success downward
4) Each failed attempt has a chance of jamming the lock proportional to the difference between the character's skill and the lock's level; tier modifier can be applied here as well, if desired
5) A 'Jam' result of sufficient magnitude will permanently break the lock (ex: at skill of 15 against a lock of 100, any check higher than, say, a 75 would trash the lock)
6) Perks can counter the modifier in 3), grant additional attempts, allow you to try to un-jam a lock, improve the chance to succeed at said additional attempts or un-jamming, etc.

Lockpicks would still be needed, since you can't try at all without one and failures break the pick (whether the lock jams or not), however simply spamming them at a high-difficulty lock when at a low skill and without perks will have an almost 100% probability of permanently jamming the lock. Since permanent jams would not be recoverable, even with the anti-jam perk(s), brute-forcing of difficult locks by someone inexperienced at lockpicking would generally be unwise.

There's always save-scumming, but there's no system in the world that can really do anything about that.

EDIT: I know some folks, among whom I can be counted, do not like 'mandatory' perks, however in the case of Lockpicking I am willing to make an exception since it makes no sense whatever to me that a complete tyro can crack locks meant to keep out master thieves.

You need to toss in a money sink as well.

Example, perhaps a special money sink pin that you can buy to provide a temporary one shot boost of your skill. IE, you don't have the skill, but you really want to open the lock, make a special pin avaliable at your merchant for purchase. Or make the potions more accessible.

This. Lockpicking should depend entirely on the character's skill. Fortify Lockpicking potions should be available, I'd love to see the probes back too.

To people suggesting more complex mini-game (4 subsequent locks...) - really? It would take forever to clear lock-heavy locations. Not fun.

Keep the lock picking skill!!! just don't bring perks back.

Get rid of the mini game. Only let the skill level decide.

For those who do not want to pick locks:
"Open" spell, with lock-difficulty spell types.
or, be able to bash locks, with the risk of attracting NPCs and creatures.

of course it's a bit too late for that now.

It's not too late to implement it in TES VI. I'm actually wondering why, during the complete overhaul of skill system, Bethesda didn't notice that Oblivion's lockpicking was useless. That was the first skill that should have been fixed.

Locks above your level should have the sweet spot twitch just a little out of place each time you break a pick. The higher above your skill level, the greater the twitch. You can try them, you might get lucky... after dozens of lockpicks lay broken on the ground by your feet.

Alternative ways to open the locks should be provided. Alteration should have an Unlock spell, maybe one that you have to hold on the lock for a long while, and warriors should be able to bash them... neither of which is as quickly or discretely done as a deft lockpick, of course, so lockpicking truly becomes the "best" way to do it... just not the only way.

No mini-game doesn't fix anything.

You can open 100 difficulty locks in Morrowind with only around 30 points in the skill and millions of picks, you just spam the left mouse button until it opens.
So just because you have a slight chance to open high level doors even on low level is still true for skill-only lockpicks.


Main way to make it harder would be to make the minigame even more hard (if it's not hard enough), make picks less common, or the best of them all, make it real time.

The whole point of my setup is that it makes the tough(est) locks less accessible unless you invest heavily in Lockpick and its associated perks, and as such I'm not sure I would want to add a 'buyout' option. It's not a bad idea, per se, just not really compatible with my system. As for the potions, that's what Alchemy is for, although I suppose it wouldn't hurt to propagate it to a few more vendor lists.

Hmmm, upon further consideration I thought of a way to do it without it feeling like 'gaming the system': add additional 'special' perks that can be obtained from Lockpick Trainers and/or Thieves' Guild NPCs, for a fee that scales with your Lockpick skill. The higher your skill the lower the fee, since you would already know some of what they would be teaching, and there could even be an additional discount if you had (a) certain perk(s). Even at max skill with all the 'normal' perks it would still be a hefty amount, since you're basically getting them to reveal trade secrets they're not supposed to share with anybody, let alone spill to someone (i.e., us) whose loyalty is still rather suspect (at least as they would see it).

EDIT

@Bukee:

It seems you missed a couple of lines, I specifically stated that spamming picks will not work in my system, as it insures that trying that against a lock well out of your league will almost certainly ruin it beyond repair, rendering the door/container permanently sealed shut.

Here's how it works: the lower your skill is compared to the lock the higher the chance of breaking it while trying to pick it, with an additional modifier for each numerical tier of difficulty (i.e. 0, 20, 40, 60, etc.) the lock is above your current skill level. Thus, a new character with the default 15 Lockpick will have pretty much no chance in hell of opening a Master-level lock and a probability verging on automatic of trashing the lock in the process. Pick-spamming would only make this more likely; each subsequent attempt would increase, up to a point, the chance of catastrophic failure.

The fix is simple. Get rid of the dull-boring-pointless mini-game!

Replace with:

a} just dump locks (except specials like puzzle doors maybe) - preferred solution
b} object opens or not based on skill
c} add lockpick spell

Remove the mini-game. If you want the RPG mechanic of putting perks/skill into something you need to have a RPG mechanic for how it is done. Combat is done with the RPG mechanic of damage and unless you start giving locks a health bar and they continuously hit you with traps while you try to pick it so you need to up your damage so you kill it before it kills you a mini-game will always bypass the point of the skill and perks.

It is a crap skill anyways along with pick pocket. They are way to narrow of a focus for the limited number of skills in the game. When you have 30+ skills sure open locks might work, at 18 not even close. If open locks was security and there were traps to disarm and you could place physical traps like a mages runes that you could enhance with poisons from alchemy then you are entering the realm of what a skill should encompass in a game with only 18 skills.