Fallout: Lockpicking and Science

[Soviet Heavy]

Both of these skills tick me off in any Fallout Game I play. What is the point of leveling up your science and lockpicking if they are blocked off by skill checks? You have five (very easy, easy, average, hard, very hard) ranks of Locks and Computers, so it makes the level up process rather redundant. What's the point of having a 43 in Lockpicking if you can't try an average or higher lock until you reach 50, and then the next rank?

One of the things I would love to see implemented into Fallout 4 would be something akin to Skyrim's lockpicking. You can pick any lock at any level, but you won't do as well until your skills are leveled up. It makes the leveling up less redundant.

Also, make it so failing your Computer hack doesn't completely lock you out of the system. (Two chances with the perk). This has broken more quests for me than I can count, and Computer hacking is my number one reason for save scumming in Fallout.

So that's my rant. What sort of general bugfixes would you like to see in Fallout 4? Do you have any alternate solutions to my above gripes?

 

[adamsaccount]

What pissed me off is that i only worked out how the computer hacking worked on about the last terminal of the game.

Gotta agree, that skill lockout thing is bullshit.

I would also like to see skills increase as you use them rather than putting some points into different things when you level up. At the early levels you dont really knows whats going to be useful. The skyrim system was BETTER, but id rather you got the perks automatically.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

What pissed me off is that i only worked out how the computer hacking worked on about the last terminal of the game.

Gotta agree, that skill lockout thing is bullshit.

I would also like to see skills increase as you use them rather than putting some points into different things when you level up. At the early levels you dont really knows whats going to be useful. The skyrim system was BETTER, but id rather you got the perks automatically.

There is a mod for Skyrim that does give you the automatic perks for lockpicking. As for the skills, it's weird, because every other skill you level up apart from these two DOES improve as you level them up. You are more damaging with guns as you level them up, medicine improves your stimpack and Doctor bag use, Survival helps your food consumption. They all have skill checks for certain perks, but they all give you the passive bonuses as well.

 

[Shpongled]

Using Skyrims system of being able to unlock any lock at any level wouldn't really work in Fallout because there wouldn't really be any incentive to put many points into it if you can already unlock things anyway. Personally i don't particularly like the skill check system of fallout either but there's got to be ways of sorting it out other than just copying Skyrim. Skyrim was a really bad RPG (good adventure game though), i don't want fallout going down the same road.

 

[ComradeJim270]

Both of these skills tick me off in any Fallout Game I play. What is the point of leveling up your science and lockpicking if they are blocked off by skill checks? You have five (very easy, easy, average, hard, very hard) ranks of Locks and Computers, so it makes the level up process rather redundant. What's the point of having a 43 in Lockpicking if you can't try an average or higher lock until you reach 50, and then the next rank?

One of the things I would love to see implemented into Fallout 4 would be something akin to Skyrim's lockpicking. You can pick any lock at any level, but you won't do as well until your skills are leveled up. It makes the leveling up less redundant.

Also, make it so failing your Computer hack doesn't completely lock you out of the system. (Two chances with the perk). This has broken more quests for me than I can count, and Computer hacking is my number one reason for save scumming in Fallout.

So that's my rant. What sort of general bugfixes would you like to see in Fallout 4? Do you have any alternate solutions to my above gripes?

Ok, after taking some deep breaths at the blasphemy of referring to Fallout 3 as "Fallout", a heinous crime for which public corporal punishment should be mandated...

How the hell did you fail a science check in Fallout 3? I don't think I've ever done that (even while playing the game while drunk and sleep-deprived). I don't think I've ever heard of someone doing that. You do know exiting the terminal resets the count, right, and that selecting a pair of brackets can also do this among other helpful things, right? As for my solution to all Fallout-related problems: have someone, anyone who isn't Bethesda do it. I don't care who it is, it could be a troop of baboons, just not Bethesda.

 

[Little Gray]

What pissed me off is that i only worked out how the computer hacking worked on about the last terminal of the game.

You mean you only figured out how to do something at the end of the game that they tell you how to do within the first half an hour?

 

[adamsaccount]

What pissed me off is that i only worked out how the computer hacking worked on about the last terminal of the game.

You mean you only figured out how to do something at the end of the game that they tell you how to do within the first half an hour?

Pretty much, I only realised that the x/8 thing corresponds to how many letter youve got right before i got into the radiation chamber. I dont remember seeing a tutorial for it at the beginning. Then again im not the most observant or intelligent person around.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Both of these skills tick me off in any Fallout Game I play. What is the point of leveling up your science and lockpicking if they are blocked off by skill checks? You have five (very easy, easy, average, hard, very hard) ranks of Locks and Computers, so it makes the level up process rather redundant. What's the point of having a 43 in Lockpicking if you can't try an average or higher lock until you reach 50, and then the next rank?

One of the things I would love to see implemented into Fallout 4 would be something akin to Skyrim's lockpicking. You can pick any lock at any level, but you won't do as well until your skills are leveled up. It makes the leveling up less redundant.

Also, make it so failing your Computer hack doesn't completely lock you out of the system. (Two chances with the perk). This has broken more quests for me than I can count, and Computer hacking is my number one reason for save scumming in Fallout.

So that's my rant. What sort of general bugfixes would you like to see in Fallout 4? Do you have any alternate solutions to my above gripes?

Ok, after taking some deep breaths at the blasphemy of referring to Fallout 3 as "Fallout", a heinous crime for which public corporal punishment should be mandated...

How the hell did you fail a science check in Fallout 3? I don't think I've ever done that (even while playing the game while drunk and sleep-deprived). I don't think I've ever heard of someone doing that. You do know exiting the terminal resets the count, right, and that selecting a pair of brackets can also do this among other helpful things, right? As for my solution to all Fallout-related problems: have someone, anyone who isn't Bethesda do it. I don't care who it is, it could be a troop of baboons, just not Bethesda.

I said any Fallout Game I've played. Who said anything about playing Fallout 3?

 

[ComradeJim270]

I said any Fallout Game I've played. Who said anything about playing Fallout 3?

You did, you just didn't explicitly say it. You described the mechanics of these things in Fallout 3 and Fallout: NV. Science checks don't work that way in any of the earlier games, and lockpicking doesn't usually break locks unless you repeatedly try to pick a lock that is clearly way above your skill level (though I've save-scummed on some of those too, I'll admit). Neither is nearly as critical in those games either. You can beat the crap out of those games with shitty lockpick and science skills.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

I said any Fallout Game I've played. Who said anything about playing Fallout 3?

You did, you just didn't explicitly say it. You described the mechanics of these things in Fallout 3 and Fallout: NV. Science checks don't work that way in any of the earlier games, and lockpicking doesn't usually break locks unless you repeatedly try to pick a lock that is clearly way above your skill level (though I've save-scummed on some of those too, I'll admit). Neither is nearly as critical in those games either. You can beat the crap out of those games with shitty lockpick and science skills.

I just think that if I leveled up my Science and Lockpicking, there should be some passive modifiers to the difficulty of a lock type, rather than locking me out of even being able to try.

 

[MajorTomServo]

I've never been locked out of a terminal in Fallout... You can just quit after three failed attempts and start over.

But yeah, I agree, they should have implemented a lockpick system like Skyrim's or made "Open Level 1 Locks, Open Level 2 Locks, etc." a perk.

 

[ComradeJim270]

I just think that if I leveled up my Science and Lockpicking, there should be some passive modifiers to the difficulty of a lock type, rather than locking me out of even being able to try.

That would be better, and is closer to how it was done in Fallout and Fallout 2, which usually gave you a chance (though your skill could be too low to actually have a chance of success, which is the case with many things in many RPGs), and wouldn't "lock you out" after an arbitrary number of attempts.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

I've never been locked out of a terminal in Fallout... You can just quit after three failed attempts and start over.

But yeah, I agree, they should have implemented a lockpick system like Skyrim's or made "Open Level 1 Locks, Open Level 2 Locks, etc." a perk.

The Dragon Age: Origins approach?

 

[MajorTomServo]

I've never been locked out of a terminal in Fallout... You can just quit after three failed attempts and start over.

But yeah, I agree, they should have implemented a lockpick system like Skyrim's or made "Open Level 1 Locks, Open Level 2 Locks, etc." a perk.

The Dragon Age: Origins approach?

Never played, I'll have to take your word for it. Does it work there?

 

[Soviet Heavy]

I've never been locked out of a terminal in Fallout... You can just quit after three failed attempts and start over.

But yeah, I agree, they should have implemented a lockpick system like Skyrim's or made "Open Level 1 Locks, Open Level 2 Locks, etc." a perk.

The Dragon Age: Origins approach?

Never played, I'll have to take your word for it. Does it work there?

Rogues in Origins have access to the lockpick feat tree. These feat trees are somewhat separate from the actual skills. You cannot pick a level 4 lock without the level 4 lockpicking feat. Simple as that.

Sadly, Dragon Age 2 took the Fallout route.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Uh I always saved before trying a hack, half of my saves start with my character staring at a computer monitor XD

I LOVE maxing Speech, Science and Lockpick over everything else. I can't stand not being able to open a door or hack a terminal and convincing people to completely change their minds in a second is so satisfying.

 

[Xdeser2]

Skill lockout is bullshit?

Wouldn't that defeat the point of having a "skill" for it if you could just do it anyway, regardless of your proficiency?

It woulden't work for high level loot, Because you could just come out of the Vault/Doctors Shack and get some of the best unique weapons in the game at level 2. Also, they're are a lot of quests you can effectively skip stages of if you have a high level of Lockpick or Science, rewarding people who have speced into it.

Admittedly, taking it out of Skyrim worked out well, and It would probably be fine if done in Fallout 4, but Im not going to rush forward to Mod it out of FO3 or NV, would break alot of how the game is structured

 

[Aabglov]

Oh my god, I know exactly what I'd like to have fixed in the next fallout. Scorpions. For some strange reason entering into combat with Scorpions has like a 40% to crash my game. No idea why, but I blame Scorpions.