rather than make pickpocketing a chance (and thusly save/reload) affair... why not make a skill based minigame of it?

so when you sneak up behind someone... a small dial appears the size of the sneak crosshair..

the dial moves back and forth like a metronome, and say 10% of the area is red... if the dial is in the red area and you pickpocket.. then it will be succesful.

but if you go to pickpocket when the dial is not, then they instantly notice (so you dont even go into their pocket)

the higher your security skill, the wider the red area will be or slower the dial moves.

it would make pickpocketing useful imo and would be a credible way of making money for theifs.

No thank you, minigames are evil, my character's ability to pickpocket should be based on HIS (or HER) skill, not MY personal skill at some lame minigame that will get old after a few hours of gameplay.

This^ some minigame are good (like archery competitions, or fishing in some games) but minigames that TES has identified themselves with are lame. i feel the same way about that as i do lockpicking... make it based on character skill...

Then again, I suppose I'm something of a D&D traditionalist (because i played alot of Baldurs Gate back in the day).

I'm not really against introducing more skill-based stuff - I quite like the idea, so long as it is tiered in a way that would favour better trained characters.

Not really sure how well a minigame would work well here, although pickpocketing should certainly become less of a reload festival.

Instead of failure resulting into alarming whom you tried to steal from, nothing should happen. They should become more suspicious of their surroundings though.
If your sneak/pickpocket roll fails horribly however (critical failure), the victim should instantly notice you and call for the guards.

It would be even better if it was possible to distract people to make the chance of pickpocketing swing in your favour. (paying beggars to bump into them, using rocks etc.)
The chance of pickpocketing should also increase when the victim is talking to someone, having a meal etc.

no mini games for me. Hated them in Oblivon, hated them in Fallout 3 hated it in New Vegas. I am playing an RPG or action/RPG. I don't care for the mini games because techiniquly a level 1 person can pick a level 100 lock then, so no thank you. Also it's boring in Fallout how its 25, 50, 75 or 100. Nothing inbetween so I either rush build by putting in points in them per level or ignore them completely and will just be using magic spells then in Skyrim.

Maybe instead of a mini-game, you can fail to pickpocket, but not always get caught when you fail. Sometimes maybe you just fail to get the item, but remain undetected. Maybe even sometimes you are detected, but the NPC doesn't know for sure you were pickpocketing them, so they just see you but don't report you for a crime. Now you have 4 possible outcomes:

1. Success
2. Failure without detection
3. Failure with detection
4. Failure with detection and recognition of crime

If you fail without detection, there should be a "cooldown" before you can try again. Obviously if you are detected, you can't try again until you regain undetected status.

If through all this, you end up failed and detected with recognition, and you STILL feel cheated by the game enough to need to not live with your actions and reload... then a minigame might be the only answer for your tastes. However, a minigame does have the disadvantages of a level 1 Security PC being played by a master mini-game player able to pickpocket successfully at a whim... and really, what is stopping you from save stating when you fail the minigame any more than doing so in the old system?

[Get flamethrower]
No.
Death to minigames. Let them combust like medieval witches.
[sarcastic laugh]

Seriously, minigames are obsolete. They are an acute reminder that somewhere along the line programmers failed at seameless gameplay.

So instead of failing to pickpocket and reloading...you fail a minigame and reload?

The answer for reloading is not making it so that with practice you never fail. Especially in a single player game. Who cares if people reload after failing? If you see it as cheating then don't do it, other people will do it, both are correct. In a single player game you can make it as challenging or as cheesefest as you like, it won't affect anyone else, so WHO CARES?

I mean a real time minigame... ie you see the dial as your victim is walking around... not a seperate screen type minigame ala lockpicking in oblivion.

so you have to follow your victim all the while the dial is moving.

I think it would be pretty cool.. I could finally roleplay a common street thief.

alas, it seems the world is not quite ready for good pickpocketing in TES.

Maybe...

• Pickpocking + Lockpicking +Quietly grabbing objects could be merged into Burglary
  
  
• Sneak could be its own skill (faster, quieter steps + stealth attacks).

This could encourage more people to choose lockpicking instead of alteration, and by not merging lockpicking and sneak together, you could make a stealthy ranger who does not necessarily rob houses.

Nothing any different from anyone using the "console" on the PC for non sticking issues. So if you are using the console too not get unstuck because of a bug, then you are bascially cheating as well.

Basically when you die, you load from a saved game as well, isn't this cheating as well? Since this is getting off topic maybe we should make a new thread on this. Thing is, should it be in Skyrim General or somewhere other forum?

there's only one minigame i'd really want to see in skyrim....a good old fashioned tavern brawl, a npc insults someone (or you do it yourself) they break into a fight and it soon escalates into a bar brawl where everyone in the tavern starts fighting each other (except kids and old women or maids, they hide or get out of the tavern)
the fighting only depletes stamina, once depleted the character will pass out.

objective: be the last one standing
reward: minor fame gain among the villagers

I'm really against opaque skill checks, so I'm all for this.

I love minigames BUT in my opinion is that the character skill and the player skill should be combined in the following way... the higher your character skills are the easier the minigame. However, the key is to make the difficulty of the mini game be drastically different based on the character skills and the difficulty of the ie. a hard lock.

This method creates the balance that i as a player have to hone in my skill while improving my character skills. It creates a better level of immersion by giving me the player at least some level of control.

The problem has been the difficulty as i described was not in oblivion...thus i was able to easily open a hard chest from the begining of the game with 4 picks versus taking me 30 picks.

I think this sounds like a good idea I wouldn't mind seeing implemented. It makes sense to me too. Anyone can pick a pocket or pick a lock, provided enough time and nerve. The more you do it however, the easier it is to do. It sounds like your idea for this minigame reflects this well.

I'd be much happier in general also, if these minigames were done in real time. It'd definitely add some more challenge to the experience.

I heard that pickpocketing in Oblivion already used security.

Hmmm . . . have you considered how this would be implemented?

You follow someone around in real time . . . and how does the minigame start? There would have to be come kind of activator, right? All mini-games in Oblivion start with an activator switch. So what would be the activator? A window that pops up asks me if I want to pickpocket this person? A keyboard button? Or is it truly automatic, so I'm sneaking, and when I get close enough to an NPC, the minigame starts (that would be kind of annoying).

And then what? What is the minigame? Do I try to pick his pocket? Maybe he catches me. Calls for the guards. This sounds a lot like what's already in Oblivion. :shrug: What would be different?

The problem with minigames is that after about an hour they end up being the same. Talk to someone, get a speechcraft minigame. I am sooo sick of the speechcraft minigame and same 16 or 18 answers. Apparently, every fourth or fifth person in Cyodiil loves tough guys and likes me, too.

~ Dani ~

Too many games use mini games like that. Off the top of my head I can think of Fables 2 and 3 as well as Cheating at Poker in Red Dead redemption.

I'm all for mini games, so long as they're implemented properly so they do not become too easy or too boring after playing them more than 10 times.

Or you could just use sneaking to level it up instead of picking locks on houses? What about locked chests in caves? Does anyone who wants to raid a goblin cave suddenly have to take part in the skill of burglary to get some of the loot? I know how to pick some simple locks. I have broken into a few cars and even a cash register. But none of those times was I committing a crime. One of the cars was mine, the other was my friend's. Both occasions were because the keys had been locked inside of it. The cash register was at my work. It was the end of the day and the till was closed, but we needed back into it. We couldn't open it electronically and the key was gone so I picked it. Don't merge us with nimble fingers and patience to use a lockpick with common thieves.


Well implementing it is easy enough. They actually explain how in their post. You sneak up to an NPC and you activate him. Instead of their inventory opening like in Oblivion it stays real time and a little icon like a metronome appears next to the sneak symbol. You time stop the symbol in the right spot while sticking close (while staying hidden) to the NPC and you pick his pocket.

That being said, I agree it is a bad idea. This is the sort of thing that should just be a check handled in the background. It get's boring after the tenth time you use it and it is actually simple enough to do that you could be lifting things of royal guards and other people who would see it easily by simply pressing a button twice. I would much rather they keep it how it was with enhancements someone mentioned like being able to fail without being caught, being able to fail and get caught, but have them not know exactly what happened so they just become more aware. and then the regular success and failure with a reported crime.

This is the part that's troubling me. How do you do this without a container window opening? Otherwise, if I understand you, all you have is a timed container search?

One of the frustrating things about pickpocketing in Oblivion was how you could take everything from someone and they would never know. (I always thought the audio file: "Oh, you're good . . ." ought to play after I deprived someone of all their personal belongings in a few seconds). They're carrying a 40 pound warhammer and I take it from them and they don't even notice. Like, suddenly it's a little easier to walk down the street, but I'm not going to think about it . . . or suddenly I find a a negatively enchanted hood into my inventory. "Oh, where did this come from? I wonder what it does . . . AGGHHHHH!"

It sounds silly because it was silly.

So I'm really not against this idea; I've just never seen a minigame that I really liked - although lockpicking came the closest (and I still hated it).

~ Dani ~

maybe pickpocketable items appear on the character instead of inside some inventory box, so instead of doing a game you just click on the item *makes a skill check based on sneak or security, whether your sneaking, etc* and you take the object, that way you can't pocket someone's hammer but you can steal the key to their house or their coin purse.

^this is perfect. I think the weight of the item should be a variable in whether or not you pull it off too.

Oh, I get it: so you'll can see what they're carrying and where it is on them? And the items you could take would glow or something? Each item would have to be taken one at a time, the more you take, the more likely you would get caught . . . heaver items being more likely to get you noticed . . . .

Honestly, that would be a great improvement, if Bethesda could do that.

~ Dani ~