The idea that time spent isn't a factor isn't accurate. If you are in a location where there may be zombies coming, then you should be facing a direction that lets you see them and you can cancel your lockpicking if necessary to avoid being hit. If you're doing a minigame, even if they don't take the full screen for it like in most games that have it, time will still not stop and your focus will be very much on that minigame, making it far more likely you'll get hit. If someone doesn't focus too much on it and the minigame doesn't take the full screen, then you might be able to avoid being hit, but even if the minigame takes only 20% of the screen, that's 20% more than the lockpicking takes now. Easy enough for a zombie to not be seen. So they aren't the same thing.
Also, if you put points into it, lockpicking can be done in a pretty short amount of time for many locks (some take longer, of course). The chances that you'll do the minigame faster is pretty low unless you get lucky and pick the right location immediately. And you also have to consider what "level" of lockpicking you'd see if they added it to this game. Would we see the beginner level that is very easy to pick quickly? Or the master level that will break a lockpick if you're 2mm off from the correct location? My guess is somewhere in the middle, where you have to be very close to the exact location to open it, but still have a small amount of room compared to the master level. Most people (yes, some are great at this) will take longer on such a minigame than they'll take for most automatic lockpicking that we have now. It would only be faster for most people if they are breaking a lot of lockpicks. And even though that can happen like I mentioned previously, it isn't super common. More often than not, I'll have a lock opened with only 1-2 lockpicks. Most of the rest of the time, it will take no more than 3-4. With perks, you can get the time down really far, so that doesn't take much time for the more common locks in the game. For the containers that take much longer to open, then you have more chance of being faster with a minigame. Even so, I would hate having a minigame and I'd definitely have it modded out immediately.
I doubt there are any actual stats with a decent number of players that show the percentage of people who like lockpicking minigames versus those who hate them, so all we can do is guess. I think that more people don't like the minigames than those who do. If so, then leave the minigames for mods. If they want to add them as an optional method that can be disabled in the game options, then that would also be fine. But to me, that's wasted dev time that could be used to get the game finished. I'd rather not have them spend time on something that I think most people wouldn't like or use.
, so i will be figuring out to remove it. But not before setting it on fire, then driving over it, stabbing it 37 times with a poisoned knife then dipping it into a pool of piranha's. That's how much i dislike the mini game - for me
