Lockpicking is useless?

[natelovesyou]

I think the ONLY TRULY useful perk in Lockpicking is Treasure Hunter. It raises the chance of finding better loot, which is great. However, it's really just best for lower-leveled characters, because at a certain point said player will have found what they want, or be able to create or purchase what they want.

 

Edit: And so yes, my current character has put five perk points into Lockpicking: Novice Locks, Apprentice Locks, Adept Locks, Golden Touch, Treasure Hunter.

Edited February 24, 2012 by natelovesyou

[natelovesyou]

I think the only useful perk in the "thieving" part of the perks is Speechcraft and Sneak, the other two are useless

Oh no no, au contraire! Pickpocket is AMAZING! The final perks, Misdirection and Perfect Touch are AMAZING. Being able to steal anything off a person whether is equipped or not, or even on their hand, is straight up undeniably awesome to me.

[Ashven]

As it is, there is just too little risk/skill in thieving, so everyone can do it no matter what else they do.

 

You wound me. I take great pride in my work. But I do play by different rules for "The Game" so my experiences are probably far different.

 

I do indeed agree with you that everything needs to be real time. It would make most things a lot more interesting - it would even be interesting if the menus were real time as well. Hell, having real time menus would drastically alter playstyle for everyone, come to think of it - no more pausing combat to manually doodle your weapons around, drink a ton of potions, or equip spell of UberRainDeath at your leisure.

 

I'm also an Adept from the Thief series of games - I truly did love their entire system. In fact, Thief 4 might steal me away from Skyrim, if it's half as good as I expect (I've stay with the Elder Scrolls because it's the closest to decent thieving experience possible.) The lockpicking took me a couple minutes to get used to, and it seemed strange, but after the first couple locks I was crackin' 'em like an old pro. If there was a way to replace our crappy minigame with that, I'd never look back. Especially if it was real-time.

 

Pickpocketing poses an issue, though. Honestly, you should be able to do keep the current pickpocketing exactly as it is, except for real time. I say this, because there are times where you are planting things or taking non-gold, non-key targets like gems or papers. But REAL pickpocketing should be more like the classic Bump'n'run. It aught to be a special power (so you can map it to the shout key) and when you use it on a mark while in close enough range, it should transfer all gold and gems (maybe keys) instantly - even if you get caught. Getting caught should rely on both sneak and pickpocket skills to actually determine your success chance, since you're relying on the people around you to cloak you. And even if you get caught, that's called Pursesnatching and most perpetrators end up running for the hills.

 

Throw in some way to do disguises, and you've got career criminals springing up.

[yota71]

 

Real-time for ALL thief skills would be so amazing and would justify putting points into these trees. What I mean is:

 

a) lock-picking

b) pickpocketing

c) browsing other inventories like chests in houses

 

 

No if you find gold in everyplace (even on the dead lion, bear etc after a good Lunch :)) and the inventory of the "citizen" of Skyrim is very useless, i can find much more thing (overall gold) in the tower and in the Nord tomb (if you search very well in a tomb you can go out with at least 500-1000 septim and a lot of precious and magic object to sell)

[Dubnoman]

I think we should ask in the mod talk section if anyone would like to work on a mod that improves game play for thieves. We can start compiling some of the ideas found in this thread and present them to modders in the mod talk section.

 

So far, some good ideas:

 

- Lockpicking, pickpocketing, and checking inventory (like chests) happens in real time

- Lock picks are harder to find, but don't break as easily

 

Two I'd like to add is:

 

- After a certain amount of time, people you pickpocket from will start carrying new coin purses and valuables, if you have already stolen them from them. This will make it easier for thieves to make money (instead of tapping everyone dry).

- After a certain amount of time, strong boxes that you have stolen from will have more valuables placed back into them (again, ensuring thieves don't tap dry a source of money after just one hit).

 

I just had another good idea. Perhaps you could steal particular things from the inventories of merchants, and after stealing these things enough times (they respawn over time), the merchants will pay more gold if you sell the same kind of item to them, because you lessened or depleted their stock of said items. So if you go into a blacksmith and steal enough steel swords (which are on display), after a few to a several times of that, that merchant will pay significantly more for steel swords if you sell them to them.

 

What do you guys say? Do you guys want to start compiling some ideas for a better "thief mod" and then we can present it to the mod community? In that thread, we can talk with modders to find out which of our ideas are more feasible than others, because I'm sure some of our ideas might be hard to make possible, or can't be made possible.

 

EDIT: Should we try to compile ideas in this thread, or should I just start a thread in the mod talk section and try to pool together ideas from there? What do some of you guys say? We don't even know if anyone will want to work on such a mod, and this is just an idea I had of some of us coming up with ideas for a better thief mod, so I am quick to look for other people's input on this.

Edited February 26, 2012 by Dubnoman

[Handofbane]

I would like to see more of a return to the Fallout 3/NV mechanics on Lockpicking - more specifically, making the skill level on locks actually meaningful, by requiring the player to have enough skill value to pop the locks, not just being able to spam picks on a Master lock at 15 skill and open it. Some people may not like that idea, but it does help add to the character's skills actually meaning something, not just the player's skill alone, giving more of an actual RPG feel versus this Action-game-with-RPG-elements we have now.

 

That said, posting up a new thread in the Mod Requests forum might be a good idea to see if anyone is interested in working on it, or already has one under way.

[Kane65]

How do you pick locks? Is there a noise that clicks to tell you where the sweet spot is? I've been using the lockpicking mod because I had trouble figuring it out. I can't hear real well so I have to crank up the volume when picking locks.

[ModelV]

How do you pick locks? Is there a noise that clicks to tell you where the sweet spot is? I've been using the lockpicking mod because I had trouble figuring it out. I can't hear real well so I have to crank up the volume when picking locks.

 

There is no special noise. The closer you are to the sweet spot the farther the lock turns before stalling up. Just keeping moving it around.