This.

Could just make locks break after a few failed attempts and also remove the autopick function. That way you could keep the skeleton key in without making it overpowered.

No stupid minigames, please! It was far too easy, and far too hard for others. It completely ruined the point of a skill based activity. Dice rolls aren't perfect, but much better.
A way to improve it would be to make it possible to influence the dice rolls. For example by asking how much power you want to apply and how careful you want to be before picking a lock. Applying more power could make success rate higher and make picking faster, but make the chance of breaking the pick higher. Being more careful could make picking take more time, but with a higher chance of success.

Why does skeleton key ruin the game? I like my skeleton key and I use it all the time. Just because you can click the auto pick button doesn't mean you have to. IMO, they have to remove that button and not the skeleton key.

1: No massively-overpowered Skeleton Key.

2a: Actual consideration of Character (not Player) skill- as in, skill not high enough, you can't even attempt the lock.

2b: No [censored] minigame.

3: Alternates: magic, bashing the door down, opening the locked box with a warhammer (at risk of damaging/destroying contents...if Nethack could do this for the last 20+ years, surely some of the brighter Bethesda folks could figure out how by now.), forcing locks with bladed weapons at risk of weapon damage (see Nethack comment) and so on.

Like the way they did in Oblivion, only with one more stage (Extremely Hard) and without the Skeleton Key.

That's why security is gone, don't need it when we can just use the minigame which is much better than the way it was in past games. People think that adding in aspects of the game that require player skill makes the game worse or less of an RPG. The only reason everything was dice rolls in the past is because that was the limitations of the technology, now that we have far better tech, a mix of player skill and character skill is far better than all character skill.

Personally, I liked the minigame(even though I svcked at it...), and it should be kept around, but maybe with increased difficulty, that gets easier with higher security? I also think lock-bashing is a great idea. It gets annoying, when you are a warrior with incredibly strength and a war hammer, but you cant get through an old wooden door... Maybe with that, the higher your strength, the higher chance of breaking the lock?

Since when has TES been a true RPG?

:)

Oblivion was basically all player-skill based.

I'd prefer an updated version of OB's, where you had the potential to pick the hardest locks but had even better chance if skill was high. rather than FO's of an easy lock pick mini game in which the types of lock you can pick depends on your lock pick level.

What these fine gentlemen said.

in what way was the skeleton key over powered. all it did was never break. it did not make it any easier to pick the tumblers. and it wasn't available until you got to a certain level which in theory your security skill should have been high enough to where your automatic pick function (what ever it was called, it was the X button on 360) worked most of the time with breakable picks any ways.

I rather hated F3's lockpicking

also @ above Security isn't gone, it got merged with sneak.

I did love oblivion's mini-game, although I was pretty damn good at it, then I neglected it once I got the skeleton key...

Just make the mini-game harder, have skill make it easier, add traps, give us the ability to lock doors and put the whole lot in real time.

Will be people stop saying Security is gone or merged with Sneak? That has never been stated anywhere.

There's two stealth skills we don't know about yet and I'd be shocked if they weren't security and light armor.

it's almost certainly going to be gone and it has no need to exist anymore when we have a lockpicking minigame imo.

The lock pick mini-game itself was fine in Oblivion. One of those things that relied more on personal skill than some number in the journal. Both the Skeleton Key and alteration magic trivialized this mini-game if the player made the choice to use them. Since these alternatives are purely optional, and some players never get the hang of the mini-game, there was nothing wrong with them being in the game.

My one huge gripe with the whole system. Taking the time to pick a Very Hard lock and only finding generic clutter items.

Pretty much this.

...unless they have a Fallout-like system where certain locks can't even be attempted without high enough skill.

why does it need to go. why not just put the redicul on the locked object, press a button and its done for us. skills did not exist because the tech lacked the ability to seem realistic. skill =ed the compentency of your character and made one different to the other. this isn't the case yet thank god, security not gone just blended into sneak (meaning lock picking affected by sneak level.)

I don't think every skill should be hacked because it can be replaced with a minigame. Imo tes should not be a collection of minigames.

I will be really annoyed if they merged it with sneak... that would be like merging heavy armor and 1-handed weapons. Makes no sense.

Well the skeleton key was made for those that couldn't open locks because they weren't very good at picking locks, the alteration spell to unlock doors has been around forever and is for mages. Basically think of it as the Skeleton key was for Warrior, unlock spells are for the Mage and lock picking is for the Thief. Now if they get rid of the Skeleton Key for say a lock bash, that would be good. A warrior can bash the lock and a passing guard will be able to see it so you have limited time to look around or something. Alteration magic allows for you to be able to open a door without evidence of it happening. Lockpicking allows for opening doors and hopefully in skyrim the minigame is still there but it is in real time so you have limited time to unlock the door before someone comes by and catches you. Alteration should only be able to unlock the higher types of locks with the higher levels of alteration, which will be harder to reach in Skyrim from what we know of the leveling system.



Hurray for being melodramatic. Two skills have had minigames added to them. Lockpicking's minigame was an extremely good fit. I thought the new speechcraft system was better than in the past also but it could still use some work. I know how two skills is every one of them... It amazes me when the people that claim that they were just dumbing down the game with Oblivion and Skyrim are the ones that want lockpicking to go back to what it was in Morrowind, where it takes no effort on the part of the player. Adding elements of player skill isn't dumbing down the game, it's making it smarter.

I'd be really annoyed because it would then seem like Sneak and Security have basically the same sort of options as in Oblivion. After all, if there's a combined skill, then there'll probably just be perk trees for stealth kills, for reducing armour penalties when sneaking, and for lockpicking/disarming traps. That would be pretty disappointing. I would have liked to have seen more content put into Sneak and Security and keep them separate skills. Perk trees for Sneak could include: stealth kills, reducing armour penalties when sneaking, pickpocketing, ability to use magic and remain undetected, and so on. It would also have been nice to see Security expand into a more general "Thief's Tools" skill, where it's not just lockpicking and disarming traps, but perhaps also cutting glass to enter houses/castles through windows, and stuff like that.

As for lockpicking, I always just used auto-lockpick because I found the mini-game too easy. Sure, I might break a few lockpicks on the harder locks, but it was never a big problem. I'm not opposed to a minigame, but unless it's fixed, I'm inclined to agree with those saying that it should just be removed and make lockpicking a dice roll based on player skill.

The trick is to design the minigame so that it gets easier as your character's skill increases, but that it's not the sort of game where even locks which are very hard relative to your character's skill are easy to pick when you, the person playing the game, have had enough practice. I'm not a fan of giving some locks a skill requirement to even attempt.

Some suggestions (these are based on keeping the same style of minigame as in Oblivion, where you need to lock in the tumblers one by one, and higher skill = more tumblers stay in place when you break a lockpick, and tumblers move more slowly, and higher rated locks = more tumblers).

1. Don't freeze time. But don't make it real-time. As it were, "dilate" time, at a rate which depends on your character's skill. That is, for character's with a high security skill, the lockpicking minigame basically happens when the rest of the world stands still. For character's with a low security skill, the rest of the world happens at normal speed while you are trying to pick the lock. The idea here is that with a highly skilled character, you can wait until you are out of sight, and then try the minigame as long as you like. But with a low skilled character, even you enter the minigame when you are out of sight, you've got a good chance of being spotted while you are trying to pick the lock. So if it's a harder lock, then you can have a go when you have a low skill, but you need to work fast (you might rush the minigame a little more, breaking more picks).

2. The speed at which tumblers move needs to be more highly randomised and unpredictable. Not just faster and slower. But as you increase in skill, the tumblers fall at more regular rates.

So those are ideas to make the game more difficult. But probably the biggest problem with the lockpicking minigame in Oblivion was that there was simply no cost to stuffing up. So if you were a low skilled character, you could try a hard lock, and if you didn't manage to open it, oh well, get some more lockpicks and try again. This meant that there was very little discouragement for trying locks that were very hard, relative to your character's skill. So some ideas for how this could be fixed:

3. Make breaking a lockpick noisy. If you break a lockpick, then, depending on how close an NPC is, they might come to investigate because they've heard something odd.

4. Perhaps breaking a lockpick in some way also damages the lock's mechanism, which then makes the lock harder to pick. There are number of ways this could play out - apart from just some tumblers falling. (i) Increase the rating of the lock, so that, building on idea 2 above, the tumblers fall at a more unpredictable and random rate; (ii) A tumbler can get "stuck" in the wrong place, so that you can't push it up into the right position, as you normally would. To fix it requires being at a sufficiently high security skill. (iii) I'm sure there are other possibilities.

I thought the lockpicking minigames were preferable to the old find a lockpicking tool and use it till it breaks methodology.
Fallout 3's had less the sense of accomplishment, but it was at least a quicker affair than Oblivion's. Anything but a Simon knockoff or a quick time event a la Xbox Mass Effect's "hacking" minigame though is usually fine with me as far as such things go. My opinion's not very well-formed as regards the Skeleton Key, which already seems underpowered if going by the name and overpowered if going by how much it plays havoc with the Security skill.

Less related, but when I heard about Radiant AI in Oblivion, and the Lock spell had not yet been confirmed out, I thought the results would be pretty funny if one went about locking NPC's out of where they needed to go, and that they would only be able to progress if they had the requisite skill themselves to bypass the lock. When I got the actual game, testing with the Imperial Prison, a teleportation spell of my own making, and a lock console command proved disappointing, as my hapless victims would usually just ignore the cell doors and open them at will, slowly walking to freedom. At the very least, do you think NPCs will actually obey the locks consistently this time around?

In what way was a lockpick that was impossible to fail with overpowered? Really?

Step 1: have Skeleton Key

Step 2: spam-click "Auto Attempt" until lock opens (1 of the only 2 possible outcomes, the other being player gives up since it can't break!)