Engaging lockpicking

[zztong]

I would stop lockpicking if the timer reset full or even more than it already does.  When you break 15 lockpicks in a row, having to restart with more time would make it not worth the effort.  Even if some stuff was broken if you break the lock, I would still do that every time just to avoid potentially spending 5 minutes picking a lock.

Would your calculus be the same if it took 5 minutes and you didn't break any lockpicks. That is, you press the button, wait, it unlocks? How about if higher skill levels in lockpicking would shorten the time?

I mean, I'd be cool with that. I'd get up and stretch my legs, maybe get a drink. It's kind of the same when I use AutoHotKey to make my toon beat through a gun safe with a stone axe.

 

[Cernwn]

@Cernwn: I read your post just now and have not communicated with you or interfered with you or your posts at all (at least in recent history). What have I supposed to been doing exactly?

EDIT: Ah, I get it. One of your posts has been held back. That happens to a lot of forum posters right now because of a new buggy plugin we are testing, even posts of moderators themselves get held back sometimes. You are the first one who thinks that I would misuse my moderator privileges for childish retaliation to a thumbs down

Thanks for the explanation Meganoth. My apologies for assuming. 

 

[Riamus]

Would your calculus be the same if it took 5 minutes and you didn't break any lockpicks. That is, you press the button, wait, it unlocks? How about if higher skill levels in lockpicking would shorten the time?

I mean, I'd be cool with that. I'd get up and stretch my legs, maybe get a drink. It's kind of the same when I use AutoHotKey to make my toon beat through a gun safe with a stone axe.

If it took 5 minutes, I wouldn't pick any locks for any reason even if the pick never broke.  If lockpicking regularly takes more than about 20-30s, I wouldn't ever do it.  I can break it open faster than that by later game when I start to really see decent locked chests (tier 4/5 loot rooms).  Other locked stuff often doesn't have very good loot anyhow, so I could skip it without really caring.  The tier 4/5 locked chests might be okay to take up to a minute or so before I'd stop lockpicking them.  And even then, I'd probably get tired of it before long and stop lockpicking entirely.  Anything else needs to be much faster. 

As far as shorter times with higher perks, I'm fine with that.  I'd skip the lockpicking stuff until I was perked higher unless the unperked time was under about 30s or so, though.

On the relatively rare occasion when I have a reason to get up and do something while waiting, it's not a big deal.  But this is an action game for me.  I don't want to sit around for a long time just trying to loot something.  Except for tier 4/5 loot room locked chests, the loot in locked stuff isn't usually all that great, so I'm better off just skipping the locked container and going on to loot other things.  In the end, I'd have more and better loot than if I stop and spend a minute or two (or 5) on each locked container.  If locked containers always had really good loot, it might be different.

I do spend time building and mining even though those aren't really any action, but those are still me doing stuff and not just sitting there waiting for a lockpick animation to complete so it's still at least something to do.

That's just my own feelings about wasting a lot of time waiting around while the game very slowly opens/loots a container for you.  I know some people like minigame lockpicking and don't mind the wait so long as they aren't breaking picks but that's not enjoyable for me.  I'd rather be guaranteed to break 20 picks to open a lock in 5s than to break no picks and have it take 1 minute or more.  At least as long as crafting lockpicks didn't get made to take forever or use a ton of resources.