I got to agree with you there povuholo, I feel like the skill in lockpick ought to represent your potential ability: determining which locks you can attempt. Then the skill based game comes into play to make unlocking them fun. then they can still have an auto attempt which uses your skill level to determing your chance of success compared to the difficulty.

If it was a choice between oblivion's, morrowind's & fallout's and each was exactly the same, I would choose morrowind's. Fallout's was better than oblivion's but because of the clearly defined skill bounderies it felt too metagamey and too much like a boring system and leveling ultimately hollow. but with your suggested refinement, I think it would be a winner.

Anytime a minigame is implemented, it takes all meaning away from the pc's skill because it then depends solely on the player's skill. As such, I don't care much for any form of minigame. I'd even go as far as suggesting that if a speechcraft or lockpicking (or any other) minigame is included, they may as well remove that item from your character's 'skills' menu altogether. This is why, IMO, Morrowind > Fallout 3 > Oblivion as far as minigames are concerned. Morrowind's system was mechanically functional, but left much to be desired visually. Fallout's system was okay because your character was required to reach a certain level of skill (and even had a % chance of success if your skill was too low), but functioned too similarly to Oblivion's perks system. Oblivion, on the other hand, was pretty much a complete failure (IMO), because the ability to actually pick a lock had nothing to do with your pc's skill, and everything to do with how good the player's dexterity and timing were.

I voted for Morrowind's system... because of the options, it seems the most likely to work without breaking the damn skill.



That being said, a minigame wouldn't be something I was entirely unapposed to, either... were it to be crafted with enough skill and competence to challenge me. I have, in my entire time playing Oblivion, only ever broken a total of four picks. -Ever-. The ridiculous lack of a challenge aside, though... the game itself was actually rather ingenious. If they could find a way to seamlessly merge that game (albeit with an added element of challenge, and an increasing level of difficulty the lower one's skill is)... with Morrowind's locks and lockpicking method (first person, real time, lockpick in hand)... I would be in love.

Fallout 3 made it so that there were locks you just simply couldn't open. Everything was all neatly structured and bland. It never allowed for the random chance of getting it right... even though in reality... if I fiddled around long enough... even -I- could accidentally crack a lock. And -my- real-world security skill is all of 5.

Maybe less...


Anyhow... feel free to make of it what you will. I don't give a [censored] about -cool-... I love Oblivion to death, almost as much as I loved Morrowind... and I base my decisions upon the successes and failings of both.

Fallout 3 does deserve a mentioning... but in the end... I think I would prefer to remove the 'hard cap' from lockpicking in favor of a scaled-in-difficulty experience WHILE picking the lock.

Agreed, but skeleton key made it useless

Well, my vote is either Oblivion or a whole new way to lockpick.

But I see that a lot of people put Fallout 3 style. But, first off, I think that the locks in post apocalyptic America are a lot different than what you would find in a place like Skyrim. So I don't see how it'd work.

I liked the fallout 3 method, it felt more like I was picking a lock, although in many instances it was a little too easy, so I'd like to see some method of making it harder.

No frigging [censored] minigames please!!!

Even if a lockpicking mini-game were universally challenging ( a feat i am not convinced is possible ) it would still not actually solve the problem.

The problem is not that the game is too easy.

you can make the mini-game more challenging however, in the end it is still entirley dependant on player skill in order to succeed. It may be easier or harder depending on lockpick skill level but if it is always possible to beat the mini game dependant on player skill then that is the only controlling factor.

Worse, as a player skill based game, it will become progressively easier comparitively as the player plays more often and become better at it. So the difficulty decreases over time. Then, on top of this, the player is increasing their lockpick skill, making the game even easier still until they reach a point where it really doesn't make a significant difference to put points into lockpick because they can beat it regardless.

Then, subsequent replays: the player continues to improve and so the mini game actually continues to get comparatively easier. Consequently they need less points in the lockpick skill before they reach the point where any lock is child's play. Eventually they'll still reach that point where any lock is easy without any points in lockpick skill and hey presto, useless skill.

That's why the level cap is necessary. It means that you have to have the lockpick skill in order pick locks and supplies a suitable reason to continue upgrading that skill.

But there is no need to remove the mini-game to have a level cap, and a soft level cap (where you have to be within five or ten points of the lock value) preserves both the need to upgrade your skills and the possibility of getting lucky if you are willing/able to invest some time and lockpicks into the attempt.

Real-time menus mean you have to watch your back for guards and villains. A soft level cap means you can't attempt outrageous locks. A soft level cap also means that the range between making the mini-game really hard and really easy is more limited and therefore more of a steep curve (ten points below the lock should be crazy hard, even with it is the base game and ten points above it makes it really easy). And the addition of an "auto-attempt" button will allow for the traditional RPG "dice roll" mechanic can be used by anyone who wants to.

I enjoyed Fallout 3's system of lockpicking quite a bit. Oblivion's for some reason just annoyed me. I couldn't quite get into it. So I'm hoping at the very least they sort-of follow Fallout 3 over Oblivion in that regard.

I'd also like to see the return of disarming trapped chests and doors. The addition of physics based traps in the environment was a step up in Oblivion, but it'd be nice to combine the two.

Here's an idea: make it in real-time. like one window has the lock-picking mini-game. Other is your character from third person (maybe from the front or the "lock's point of view" so you can see behind you. This way it's more interesting because if you take too long you might get caught or even attacked.

Here's an idea: make it in real-time. like one window has the lock-picking mini-game. Other is your character from third person (maybe from the front or the "lock's point of view" so you can see behind you. This way it's more interesting because if you take too long you might get caught or even attacked.

I don't know about him, but I know I liked it better, because it was based on Character skill, which should be first in an RPG.

Fallout skills where only fallacious, they matered few , it was only none/low/medium/good/very good.
Because of this Morrowind is the best fitting a RPG. Your skill + a ramdom roll representing luck/inspiration/etc
Oblivion was the worst by far. Skill were TOTALLY meaningless as you could do stuff with your mouse disregarding skill on those freaking designed for weaklings, i win button minigames.
If those wiskey Delta minigames are there i dont care as long as they can be totally disabled on game settings.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that a mini-game couldn't work at all, just that relying of mini-game difficulty to create the skill tension was not enough and that a level cap of some kind is necessary.

For what it's worth, I really like the idea of a "soft" level cap as you describe and the inclusion of the real-time events sounds like a great idea.

The "soft" level caps would have the added benefit of meaning that every point counts, as the closer or further you are from that soft cap target affects the difficulty or chance of success or discovery? I think that was my only major problem with the Fallout 3 method - those harsh level bounderies were incompatible with the skill level system it had implemented: a 100 point skill system against a 4 point check. It sounds like such a small thing but it was so obivous it somewhat broke the immersion.

Why on Earth anybody would want to be able to pick a 'very hard' lock with a low lockpicking skill in an RPG with a skill system is beyond me.

The thing is, it might be difficult the first couple of tries... then you figure out how to beat the minigame. And next time you make a character, you can't really 'unlearn' the minigame. From that moment on, all characters are master lockpickers, and the skill is worthless. Sure, you can use the 'auto attempt', but it would be better to have a toggleable 'always auto attempt' that doesn't load the minigame screen at all, and doesn't pause time while making the attempt.

Morrowind's system could be done with great animations pretty easily. Just because it was badly animated back then doesn't mean that a skill-based system has to be badly animated.

We probably won't be able to escape the minigames now, so let's at least stick to Fallout 3's hybrid functionality.

This is why I am so opposed to hard level caps i.e. you cannot even attempt to pick a hard ( skill 75 ) lock when your skill is 65 or whatever. In TES the golden rule is you get better as you do it more. So you improve your security skill by picking, or attempting to pick locks. So you keep picking very easy locks until your an apprentice and can pick easy locks. What is wrong with that last sentence? You learn to pick easy locks by attempting to pick, and usually failing, easy and medium locks. No one gets to be a better chess player by finding someone as good as them and playing constantly. You get better by playing someone better than you, losing lots, then one day you might manage to beat them once. A more realistic approach is a novice has a fair chance of picking a very easy lock, a slight chance at easy and almost no chance at a medium and so on. This makes a bit of sense, but to me the only reason a journeyman has no chance to even attempt a hard lock seems to be 'the game mechanics say so.'

That's a nice idea. Perhaps the value of experience towards your skill eventually becomes 0 if the lock you are picking is x below your current level. I would be tempted to have this be a minimal gap so that, as you suggest, you only real gain any real benefit from picking locks equal to or above your current skill.

of course you would

anyway, I liked oblivion's locking picking, but the skill itself was rather useless. they should implement the "can't try it if you ain't got the skillz" mechanic, like they had is FO3

This is true. We have to remember that Fallout 3 had a totally different leveling system. You gained experience for completing quests, etc. Then you would level up and add points into your skills. In Elder Scrolls games your skills increased by your actions. Forgive me I never played Morrowind so I don't know how Skill increases worked. So in Skryim I think you should be able to try to pick any lock in the game, therefore increasing your skill to do so. The only problem I see from this is that the Player will get better at playing the mini-game and therefore will not really need to have his skill increased to be able to pick the lock. So the solution seems to be that any skill associated with picking locks be completely removed and picking locks becomes just a mini-game whether in real-time or not.

a minigame screen would appear and you'd literally jimmy the lock by twisting a pin and attempting to open the lock with the screwdriver depending on where you were putting the pin in.

I actually liked the FO3 lockpicking, felt more like real lockpicking and was fun

I like F3 system I think it works well, but more options would be best like smashing locks, using ur strength to attempt it, Down side chance you may break the contence or hurt your self.

Ps how did it wrk on pc? On xbox the vibrate changed to give you feel to the lock picking. Or dud you have to just guess by the wiggle of the pin?

Still too simplistic and far, far too forgiving. Lockpick tools being more sensitive would help, and the difficulty curve should be much, much higher.

Wasn't ment to be that hard you already had to pass a skill check to try and open it in the first place??

Argh! Whilst that would actually be a solution I feel that it would not be the solution people here are craving. And meee! Although it would solve it.

The problem with that solution though, when I think about it, is that you still end up with a character who, once you've played the game a bit, even if you restarted, is able to pick any lock and a master thief just because you as a player are so good at the game.

This would work it a game like, say Thief, where your character is predefined as a thief or someone who should be able to pick locks. But in a game where we are supposedly creating unique characters... well, that's the whole point of having a stats based system in the first place.