I thoroughly enjoy both the lockpicking and hacking minigames and was thrilled to see them make a return. In my opinion, the structures both minigames are a good fit for the Fallout universe.

I also enjoy the fact that they give me free exp. It makes me sad when I inadvertently pick up a key or password (neither of which I can drop) and am robbed of the chance to figure it out on my own.

I think there are enough of us who DO enjoy them that there'd be quite a (justified) hue and cry if they were removed.

That said, I think they could be improved:

• Don't let the world stop. Simply slow it down. On Survival Mode, make everything happen in real time.


• Add in some combination locks. I'm not sure how to make a minigame out of them, but the variety would be nice.


• Make the penalty for failure stiffer. Instead of a 10 second lockout, make it a one hour lockout. On Survival, make it 24 hours. Have perks that allow the player to lower the penalties.


• Make bobbypins extremely rare and nearly prohibitively expensive. Right now, they're way too common and they only cost ~2c. Ridiculous.


• If the bobbypins are made more rare, whatever is locked up had better be worth it. In that case, no hacking for a hairbrush...

Bottom line, I'd be quite disappointed if they were simply removed.

Lock picking is great, hacking is boring and tedious, like hacking in real life so it is accurate and I would much rather have it be boring than timed like in GTA 5 and Bioshock

Definitely not.

But I would be much happier if hacking for example worked like in Deus Ex. I loved that mini-game and it actually follows real life hacking principles.

if by DX you mean the last one, HR, then yea, that was pretty cool. Especially how, IIRC, you could gain extra information or hacking tools if you were able to unlock certain nodes. If you mean the original, the only tthing I thought was "special" about that was how higher level hacking skill would get you more money out of atm's. But Idid like the way they allowed you to hack/lockpick aanything. But your level/skill at it determine how many tools you needed o do it, or how long you could stay in the computer before the alarms went off. System shock 2 also did a good job with the minigames where failure would cause a crate to explode, or alarms to go off. Was definitely some consequences to failure.

Yep HR. Unfortunately I am afraid the devs are too stuck up being afraid that consequences will "annoy" people to implement real consequences. But people atm reload anyway, or just skip them altogether. Personally I never got bored of the Deus Ex hacking mini-game. Couldn't get enough of it in fact. And it would be easy to tie it to skills and hacking item drops.

I kinda preferred the Mass Effect method. It had a variety of hack mini-games for different items you where trying to hack. Terminals had the drop-down list where you have to match something, doors had that memory game thing (havent played ME in a while so cant remember it properly).

The DX:HR one was fantastic as well, but even then, a single mini-game covering something that SHOULD vary could (not would) bore players.

I like lockpicking, and don't usually mind the hacking. (Hmm, I don't remember the hacking from DX:HR well, but I recall not liking it. But, then, I likely didn't have enough skills to support that playstyle, and quit at the first boss, since I didn't have a combat monster character. :/)

It would be nice if they had some variety in lockpicking (like safes being a different game, etc. Or Novice/Advanced/Expert being different games, rather than just harder versions of the same game).

re: hacking. Never seen one with incorrect words. Of course, I've also never seen (or at least noticed) any of those [ ] double bracket things for getting extra guesses. In FO3 or 4.

I would be very surprised if they had a table for each answer and each guess, and how many matches to return. If one of my junior programmers came to me with that I'd explain why not to do it that way and send them back to do it again.



I'd have a list of words, maybe organized by number of letters.



Have the code build a list of randomly selected words, and select one of those at random as the answer.



Here's one easy way you could use code to determine # of matches. (written in vb.net)

        Dim Guess As String = UCase(lbPotential.SelectedItem)
        Dim Answer As String = UCase(tbCorrectWord.Text)

        Dim oGuess = Guess.ToArray
        Dim oAnswer = Answer.ToArray

        Dim oMatch As Integer = 0
        For iIndex As Integer = 0 To Len(oAnswer) - 1
            If oGuess(iIndex) = oAnswer(iIndex) Then oMatch += 1
        Next

        tbOutput.Text = tbOutput.Text & vbNewLine & "Matched: " & oMatch

Ah, cheers - can't believe I didn't try that yet! Nice way to instantly start hacking. Thanks!

I have no tip to offer in return, aside from the W A S D keys move the 3D models around during the loading screens. I make them dance.

I am guessing you are close to the mark, but I feel that I should warn you that a c++ compiler is going to throw a real hissy fit at that code.

I am going to have to try that, sounds like it might be fun.

This is one of those things that made me actually angry when I saw it here after playing a good 100-150 hours watching the teletype crawl.

WHY didn't they make this clearer in the tutorials, Docs (Ha!) FAQ, whatever?

lol.. I wrote it in a Note on my Iphone on my bus ride home from work... Quickly tossed it into visual studio before posting to make sure it worked.. no errors, no warnings.. worked with the words I tossed in there.

There absolutely is rhyme and reason to hacking. When you select a word it tells you how many letters are correct.

If I pick door and it says 0 correct I can rule out

drag

root

fear

Because they share letter placement with door

Drag rOOt and feaR.


If my next selection is turn and it has two correct I'm looking for a word that shares two letters with turn. I can throw out burn because it shares three letters which leaves me with born as the correct choice.

You are absolutely right, but try that with a Master Level hack and it's not quite that easy.

I do the same thing with my Novice level ones, but by the time you get to doing expert and master, it gets much more complicated.

This is my one beef with hacking. Just load already!

On the xbox i just press the action button (x is it?) and it loads up instantly.

Really? I thought I tried that... Thanks!

I agree and struggle with them as well. I was just explaining how it worked. It seemed some felt it was based on random attempts.

Again. You are right. There is most definitely a discernible pattern. Okay... except for those occasional weird ones, but we already explored that earlier in this thread!

ACtually, the only random attempt is often the first one... because you have no clues, except... quite often the password will be something connected with Beth's games like "Khan" or "Vault".

I'm okay with lock picking and hacking, but want gambling back . . . it is a FO thing

100% totally this

The hacking game is actually very closer to realistic. in the 80's I (sometimes) used a hex editor to "crack" simple software locks and it was just a matter of skimming the ascii and finding TEXT words that you then enter into the prompts latter.

For game purposes I would make this real time, and make the keyword possible to find by logic. Such as seeing the name of the doctor's pet in a journal or looking around the room and trying the names of thing in the room, or some such pseudo social engineering practice like that to get the password.

I also pick locks (learn to do this a stage magician) and the lock picking is the best i have seen in any game. Still would make it real time, NO lock breaking nor pick breaking but instead

make it the longer you take to pick the lock the more chance a random encounter occurs such as RAIDERS finding you in the room.

The mini games are fun, the just need some small tweaks.

Hate 'em.


I dislike mini-games.....a lot.


Let my characters skill determine my success.