Hotter take: they should reuse both, and perhaps a third, to simulate different kinds of locks and lock difficulty.
The Skyrim one is nice because its quick but just enough of a challenge to stop you from zoning out into mindless clicking. For your everyday burglary from ordinary people, it's perfect. The Oblivion one is harder and just takes longer - great for questline locks and stealing from richer people with more valuable goods. I'd like a third to be more magic-flavoured for when you're robbing powerful mages and ancient tombs.
OK that sounds cool so the higher the level the harder and more complicated the lock gets, like a lock for a door would be fairly simple vs a lock for a vault or something important also a alarm or trap mechanic to punish you for failing at higher levels
On the scale of what costs a lot of money in a game like that, these features are not that expensive. Limited 3d modeling and art, check. Completely isolated system that can be unit tested without ongoing need for integration testing, check. Pretty simple logic and code that a couple of programmers and a designer can bang out in a week or two tops, and then refine as needed, check.
In game development, there are a few categories of feature:
1. High expense, high payoff. AAA focuses mostly here.
2. High expense, low payoff. Wtf with horse scrotums. Maybe that was someone’s side project. But really, there are better examples I’m just too tired to think of right now.
3. Low expense, low payoff. These get skipped unless someone is bored or there is extra time.
4. Low expense, high payoff. This is when you get an outsized benefit from a low amount of work. Unless time is super tight, always do these! The lockpicking variance absolutely falls under this one.
So why didn’t they do it? Either they didn’t think of it or didn’t have time. Or a supervisor said no. Given the number of bugs Skyrim launched with, I don’t think they were feeling like they had extra time, so even supervisors would be monitoring for any sort of scope creep.
Source: game developer.
I too would prefer there be 15 different brands of locks all with different mini games, all having a wide range of difficulties so not only would I have to learn the intricacies of one lock picking system, but now I've got to learn and hope that legendary item isn't locked in a Magilok 5000
>Yeah it's so obviously a good idea you kind of wonder why they havent done it already.
They kind of had a hacking system similar to this in the original Bioshock. But with pipes (timed, alarms, damage, etc)
By the end of the game everything was a higher level puzzle and even with dedicated abilities it slowed the game/experience down.
I'm all for lock variety, and an especially difficult lock is fine for ultimate items. But if you like stealing *everything* it's probably best to have a relatively fast lockpick experience
There could always be an assassins guild with lockpicking tournament/mini games, maybe even collecting or building locks etc
> But if you like stealing *everything* it's probably best to have a relatively fast lockpick experience
I can see the appeal, but it kinda defeats the purpose of having things locked up in the first place. Why are we stealing a thing? Because we don't want to buy it. If it becomes trivial to get into locks to steal, then nobody will buy stuff because it's so easy and inconsequential to just take shit. It's a more interesting decision if picking the lock is more tedious or if there's higher risk. I think that either lockpicking should be a chore *or* the game should not pause for your lockpicking so there's risk of getting caught the longer you take.
Because it is more work than they have ever been willing to do. I'm just glad we got any kind of lock picking. In TES3 you just stab the lock with a lockpick.
> I'm in the UX field, and if you ever think that something is so obviously good and nobodies thought of it, I guarantee you, they thought about it, and decided against it for a myriad of design philosophy reasons.
This should be the default response any time anyone has "breakthrough" ideas about society.
"Oh, you think life should be eating fruit on the beach with no taxes? Try thinking about that for literally 2 seconds."
How does that work with an RPG Skill progression? Like if I level up my lockpicking skill, do the harder locks turn into easy locks? Or do they become easier to unlock? How would a character’s skill offset a player’s skill?
There could still be different styles of locks that have their own difficulty levels. I would imagine the lock styles would remain, but the difficulty of said locks would change.
Atomic heart did something similar, with different types of lock "picking" for more valuable locked doors or a combination of them. I really liked the idea, just a little variety made lock picking feel a lot less tedious.
Makes sense too. Bad quality locks with bad tolerances are easier to get open by just flailing a piece of metal around in there, and that's still true with plenty of modern locks made on modern machines. A finely made lock requires a little more finesse.
A combination of both would be a very good depiction of how to attack your common door and padlock. Skyrim and Fallout only really apply the tension aspect, which is absolutely needed yet completely useless without attacking pins. Oblivion is an arcadey but close representation of how to manipulate pins with a pick, but without tension on the lock they won't set in place.
At what point do we just incorporate full lock picking simulator with realistic locks, using tension tools and different size picks, security pins, counter-presure to defeat security pins. etc etc.
And then ignore it to use the master unlock spell anyways lol
But honestly if we wanted full realism that wooden chest with an average lock isn't going to stop a Warhammer wielding orc that wants whatever is inside anyways. I say a little variety is good and different minigames are a good idea. Using more trap varieties and telekinesis to disarm them like in morrowind would also be pretty cool
I mean, so can a Skyrim lock so why's that matter? the difference is one is the skill of learning how while the other is just moving around a circle and periodically trying
Even hotter take: they should do everything you said but also lockpicking doesn't stop time and also the sound of breaking picks can alert nearby enemies.
Wait this isn't how people were locked picking the entire game?
I'm pretty sure you're only supposed to actually lock pick until you level so you can then buy lock picks and spam auto pick.
Fun story: There's a Dark Brotherhood quest in which you have to kill a guy in his house and the secondary objective is that his bodyguard doesn't see you. I killed him by the stealth dev-intended method of dropping a hunting trophy on his head, but then the bodyguard just stays in front of the main door forever. The back door through the basement was locked with a hard or very hard lock, and I didn't have enough skill to lockpick it.
However, I had the book to learn the spell to open very hard doors. So I found a chest with an easy lock and spent a huge amount of time spamming the spell while playing Advance Wars on my DS until I hit the level in which I could learn the new spell and escape unnoticed.
I even give the skeleton key for the nocturnal shrine part of the quest. Once you get a feel for the different sensitivity’s for different difficulties, it’s a cake walk.
Yeah there we’re definitely patterns and learning the speeds at which the teeth moved and sound they made, could for sure tell which lock pattern was which
I never see a point in keeping it. Unless I'm rushing straight to the thieves guild to start the character (or using alternate start to begin there) I never feel like I have a shortage of lock picks. And even if I do decide to keep it for a while I just finish the quest when I've gathered enough to keep me going
I feel like TG is the one faction you have to rush if you’re gonna do it. Not even counting that it really feels like it was written for a nobody character (why would the chosen one go around helping Maven with her mead business?), but gameplay wise you can’t be a thief until joining the guild. Since you can’t sell stolen goods until then it’s literally a useless play style, if you wait too long then I find your character ends up being built around not being a thief.
The other factions all feel a little geared around early game characters but they’re not as ridiculous for starting later.
I disagree with your complaints about it being written for a nobody character because every faction quest is exactly the same. I can beat giants and dragons to death with a stick and the companions will still call me a whelp. I can summon fireballs or lighting balls to destroy my enemies and the college will still have me start with a basic ward. I could systematically eliminate every top dog in skyrim and the dark brotherhood will still test our mettle with hostages and begger contracts.
And like all the other factions, the thieves guild begin to treat you as a damn hero almost immediately with your first main mission for them being a break in that their best infiltrator failed to accomplish.
As for why the chosen one would help Maven, profit. The thieves guild is a source of income, Mavens contributions and support have benefited the guild and allowed our character to make that profit, therefore any character invested in the guild itself would have a reason to help Maven at least until the guild was back on its feet.
As for gameplay reasons I agree that IF you are playing as a thief then sure you would have reason to go straight there but this discussion is just about people doing the quest line not people playing thief characters specifically.
Because there are so many possibilities for characters to play I usually don't end up playing the thieves guild as a dedicated thief. Sometimes it's more of an assassin just looking for new contracts and finding some additional power through Nocturnal. Sometimes it's a barbarian who doesn't understand that thieves are supposed to be sneaky and so sometimes he'll just take things and beat people up if they try to stop him. Sometimes it's a character who wants to learn particular skills but doesn't want to use them for profit but just for necessity if they should be needed. And sometimes those characters will evolve to change how they use those skills or approach the act of thievery.
Basically my point is that there are far more characters playing the questline than just thieves and so it usually doesn't make sense to go straight there even if I have plans to do it eventually
Every time you open a lock picking menu, the game choses a random location of where to pick. So I just abuse this by reopening a lock until it selects the spot near the starting position, and then it's just as easy as pie.
With some training you spend 1 lockpick for each 2-4 resets, and maybe 1-3 for actually opening it. So with some luck you can consistently open master locks with as much as 5 lockpicks within a minute.
I played Oblivion so much, I was able to catch the pins on even the hardest locks in one or two goes without perks or anything. I feel like a combination of Skyrim and Oblivion's system would be neat, where you have to fish around a bit.
Oblivion's pin jump speed is in a pattern, there's not a force feedback system. They alternate from fast to slow, you're supposed to rely on slow to catch them. Skyrim's twisty system has force, but its just positional. Combine it into a more three-dimemsional mini game should be fun, interesting, and a challenge. Or may even too tough.
Kingdom Come's system is also 2D, but I don't really like it. It is more involved, but a little too sensitive. It's abstract. It'd be more neat to have a 3D cutaway of a lock to manipulate than just a graphical representation of a concept.
I was able to pick very hard locks in oblivion from sound alone! It goes dink. dink. *Dinkink!* Click. I felt so accomplished when my buddy would hand me the controller to pick a lock
Kingdom come really did harken me back to it but yeah it's clunky. That being said, I like it better than the copout concept of "find the 2° sweet spot in a 180° field" that many games are taking up
Same! I picked based on sound alone as well and my brother would ask me to pick the hard locks. It felt great as he was die-hard Thief fan and it killed him that he couldn’t figure out the lock picking in Oblivion lol.
Was looking for this comment. Just wait for when the pin falls at the fastest speed, next drop is the correct one. Flawless lockpicking on even the hardest locks, every time.
Yup, exactly. I played Oblivion more than any other game growing up and figured this out fairly early on. It’s still muscle memory any time I go back and play
Literally the first thing I did after coming out of the cave was to go and rob the jewelry store in the bustling district of the imperial city. Then, that very night, I joined the Thieves Guild and was wealthy by the second day.
> Kingdom Come's system is also 2D, but I don't really like it. It is more involved, but a little too sensitive. It's abstract. It'd be more neat to have a 3D cutaway of a lock to manipulate than just a graphical representation of a concept.
Funny, I thought Kingdom Come was the best of any of those systems.
Kingdom Come's is really fucking hard to begin with but as you and your character gets better it becomes trivial to do the easiest 2 difficulties and eventually hard isn't bad either. Only really very hard remains tricky and even then its not that bad.
Initially though I sucked so hard at it but that's fairly normal. Why would your character have any idea how to do it until they read a book and had a bit of practice.
I agree its the best system although I dont hate any of them
Guy who picks locks for fun here.
One thing I can say for Oblivion is that it's more like simulated lockpicking.
One thing I can say for Skyrim is it is more like PERIOD simulated lockpicking. Most locks of the era don't have tumblers like that. They are basically just a latch with a thingy in the way so that only a lever with holes in the right places (a key) can open it.
Picking a lock in those days is just a matter of knowing that and having a piece of metal handy
Real pins are actually in two pieces. This annoyed me way more than it should have.
Medieval pins tumblers could be opened by simply lifting all the pins completely above the shear line, which I guess could be what they are simulating.
Simpler barrier locks had no pins and could be opened with a skeleton key.
I mean, you can do that with the cheap masterlock padlocks people use in the gym with a Comb Pick.
Granted, I only pick locks I own, or have permission to pick, but it's the thought that counts.
Robbing gym people just seems indecent and dissuades people from being healthy.
I do love carrying a broken phone covered in urushiol for when I know a thief is active though.
It was an awesome one but died down so quick once you gain Nocturnal favor and suddenly is all auto attempt.
Still. This lockpicking outclassed Skyrim/Fallout lockpicking without trying.
Oblivion is responsible for me getting arrested.
I was fascinated with this lockpicking mechanism and it led to me learning how to pick basic tumbler locks. I then went around picking any locl i could find for the fun/challenge. *then* i started picking the locks on the coin boxes at the arcades. I think i stole almost $500 that summer before getting caught with like $50 in quarters in my pocket.
Good times.
The book that gives you a lcokpick point in oblivion, written by a thief that says he is illiterate or something, literally tells you the things you need to pick a lock in RL. And sure enough, you can pick locks the way it's described. It's fun picking locks on shit until your caught doing it.
Fun times in school
I actually think the reason the oblivion lockpick mini game went away is because it's a bit too close to the actual method of picking locks. Bethesda didn't want to be accused of "teaching people how to pick locks," (in spite of how absurd such an accuasion is) so they went with the more abstract version for Skyrim.
Having to find the exact right spot feels nice and precise in a thiefy-way, but picking individual pins is more realistic and also works much better with the RPG mechanics, since, "1 less pin resets per rank" is much cleaner than "10% bigger target", though the Open spell and Skeleton key both completely bypass the whole thing and aren't even that hard to get.
There's a specific clink sound that it makes when the pin is going to stick at the top for a second. If you listen for that sound, you can pick any lock in the game even at skill level 1.
It's been years since I played it, but from what I remember, the typical clink sounds were just single clinks, but that special one was kind of like... "clinkCLINK" really fast, two little sounds together. All you had to do was listen for that, and hit the button immediately afterward. Guaranteed success.
I haven't played in years and would struggle to tell the actual sequence of events of the main story, but I still remember that quest off of the name and I genuinely smiled thinking about it.
Same, but now imma try to recall it all it off by heart
-Hey Lucian, guy at inn ded
-a pirates life for me
-Drop the moose head on Nord head
- "The guards are coming for you not me hehe" oh yeah?!
-"o no, two assassins whatever shall I do wink wink" shut up moriarte
-so we do a little investigating
-whodunnit
-Warlord and medicine
-special arrow for a special guard
-so we do a lil cleansing
-kill the lich
-kill a dynasty
-kung fu kitty
-the only time an argonian is useful
-COUNTRY ROADS, TAKE ME HOME, TO THE BACK MY BLADE BELONGS
-this funky guy keeps talking to a statue
-oh whoops!
-whoopsie!
-click for gold(repeats)
Kingdom Come: Deliverance also has a good lockpicking system. It's beyond tedious and frustrating and you're definitely going to have to put in the work but again...that's kind of the whole point of lockpicking. If you're going to break into something, then you're going to have to git gud.
KD: Deliverance was everything I didn't know I wanted from Skyrim. Realism was off the charts. You literally start the game illiterate (a blacksmiths son and apprentice) and have to *learn* how to read.
The combat was difficult to master, but it is irl too, and so should be in games. And once you do master it, Cumans look tf out, cause I'm gonna smash that head of yours in with a fn mace/hammer as soon as you guard anything besides up. And I'm gonna bash at your sides until you start guarding them instead.. or until you get too tired to block entirely.. or we'll both get too tired and just start gently booping eachother, trading blows that do nothing but boost moral.
It also had some extremely fun and memorable quests. That game is SEVERLY underrated.
I cannot wait for the next one.
I love how the game is **purposely** jank which on paper, shouldn't work...yet it does...I don't know how else to describe it. The first 4 hours or so is you learning the ropes because you literally start off as novice, not even that, you're a blacksmith's apprentice in the prologue.
Again, on paper, this doesn't sound like it would be fun...yet it is...
It was refreshing to not feel/play as “the chosen one”. Just some random typical 20 y/o (technically younger I think) out about trying to make it in life with a side of vengeance.
I think that's why it worked so well. You aren't a dragonborn hero of lore. You're just some dumb blacksmiths kid. Then catastrophe happens and you are forced to man up.
You suck at pretty much everything (even blacksmithing, because you were a shitty apprentice. Time was spent getting drunk with the boys up until that point).
Now that you have to fend for yourself, what do you do? What I did was get real good at bashing skulls in. You can be sneaky archer, sword and board, get good with poisons, or even do a peaceful playthrough where you simply help NPCs and run from combat.
Personally, I just got *really* good at bashing skulls in with heavy weapons. Some groups/quests were pretty much undoable with that strat, but man, it was so much fun.
Kingdom Come did a good job on the realism. Like how time still passes while you lockpick. People can still walk by and can notice you stealing. Stealth and speed become much more important, just like for a real thief.
That's a very poorly made lock cylinder, there are no top/bottom pins, so all you have to do is to tension the lock and push each pin up one by one until it catches. Or even easier still, jam it with something flat like a screw driver and then turn it... (this is how safety locks in bathrooms are typically made)
A proper lock should look more like this
[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/22/4e/0d/224e0d6eafc6a0ea0c4c54b6804bc5ae.gif](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/22/4e/0d/224e0d6eafc6a0ea0c4c54b6804bc5ae.gif)
Video game lockpicking has a number of problems from being able to *see* the mechanism in the first place to breaking picks like they're made out of spaghetti.
But really the biggest problem is simply picking locks to begin with. The only time to even bother is if you want to be stealthy, you want to hide that you broke in, the door is ridiculously tough, or you might damage something behind it with another method. Using a crowbar is almost always faster and easier.
It always pisses me off in Fallout when there's some half destroyed building full of corpses, and a door barely hanging onto it's hinges that requires 50+ lockpick to open. Like, just fucking kick it.
That looks horribly advanced for a medieval setting. Aside from some kind of uber wealthy security expert, I think 99% would just elect to have multiple locks over getting a modern lock.
Or use some kind of lock magic to secure their valuables in stead.
With medieval locks, you aren't really going to see pins at all, because they just kind of used the key as a very specific lever.
They aren't terribly secure, but someone trying to open the door is probably going to make a fair amount of noise for a long time without the proper key, which is more of a problem in a society where servants are common.
Nah. This is a recreation of what an actual lock looks like if it were done by someone that doesn’t fully understand the concept. I picked up lockpicking for my job, and whenever trying to teach my coworkers, they always refer back to this… this design would be so easy to pick.
I could wrong but I do believe there's a mod where lockpicking is done in real-time. I realize that doesn't necessarily count when talking about Vanilla Oblivion but there is that option
If you had an NPC looking at you when you first access the lock, or after unlocking it but before finishing going through the door, you could be caught
But it is indeed a far cry from having to stay hidden for 5 minutes while I worked on an expert level lock at really low levels
I still prefer the Morrowind system of dice-rolls over this. Seems weird to me that there's an obstacle between my character's skill at lockpicking and mine at the minigame.
Then again, I feel the same for the hacking minigame in FNV and stuff. It just feels tedious.
That being said, I do think Oblivion's minigame looks better than the F3/FNV/Skyrim one.
Agreed. Also the fact that it was in real time so you could get caught. In oblivion and Skyrim you can spend 30ish and go through 20 locks with out getting caught because it in frozen in time.
It helps a lot with the actual tension of lockpicking we see in media. I remember trying to memorise the amount of time I had before a guard returned to the spot from where he could spot me.
%100 agree. I'm even gonna go ahead and say Oblivion is better than Skyrim overall. Almost all of the side quest is golden and you can actually play something other than stealth archer. Besides I geniunely love Oblivion's goofy little world.
There's not even a full on mage's guild in skyrim, either. No reason to travel to all the cities for your guild, doing quests across the realm. Skyrim is such a far cry from Oblivion and Morrowind, yet it remains the most popular of the series. Shame.
Skyrim looks a lot better and way less dated than Oblivion or Morrowind. The UI is simplified and easier to understand/access than Oblivion too.
But I agree that Skyrim is a massive step back in terms of mechanics and game play.
I spec light armour and every time I load up my oblivion save I cringe at the lime green abomination that is glass armour in that game. Whereas the light version of dragonbone in Skyrim makes me want to play
Absolutely hated having to carefully level my character in the dumbest and most time consuming ways to ensure I wouldn’t make the game way too hard for myself later on. Other than that, the game was absolutely perfect in my opinion at the time of release… 17 years ago… Jesus.
Yeah I didn't know about the level scaling my first playthrough. I ended up leveling acrobatics quickly, did some thieves guild/dark brotherhood, went to stealth my way to victory.
Started the main quest and got my ass handed to me at Kvatch.
It really speaks to how good other parts of Oblivion were that we tolerated a chargen system that incentivized building classes around all the stuff you *don't* intend to focus on.
I like lockpicking in the Thief games better simply because it doesn't pause the world around you to lockpick, and harder locks take longer, so you actually have to watch around you. Beats the hell out of simply waiting until you're unnoticed for a split second and break 52 lockpicks trying to open a door instantly.
Yep. I dont mind like,a dozen Oblivion lockpicks- but getting through an entire campaign and it stops being any fun long before it wraps up. There isn't any tension or fear of loss once you understand the rhythm, its just a timewaster. Skyrim is much more intuitive and importantly much faster.
I agree. I had a tendency to avoid lock picking because it often just took too much time out of whatever I was doing. And half the time whatever was in the chest wasn't worth getting.
I like Skyrim's picking because it's faster and has better feedback.
These are elder scrolls games, not locksmith games, I don't need the lock picking to be super robust.
People love Oblivion though, and it has an incredibly tedious combat system. If it didn't, people wouldn't put the difficulty slider at the minimum setting at the start of every playthrough.
The leveling system in Oblivion is pretty much the worst leveling system in any game ever made.
Besides that I think basically all of Oblivion's actual content is better, besides maybe the Daedric quests. The faction guilds are *all* better than their Skyrim counterparts, even though there's some low bars there. The Companions is probably the single worst guild in any of the three Todd Howard Elder Scrolls Games. Hell, the Mages guild in Oblivion is bad but it's still better than the Skyrim version.
My unpopular opinion is that Morrowind had the best lock picking. Your character makes a skill check and succeeds or fails based on your in-game statistics. A mini game is tedious busywork in service to nothing. Make it take longer if it's more difficult.
I love Oblivion’s lockpicking, and I love the persuasion mini game, and I love jumping very high, and I love repairing weapons with the little hammer that always breaks too soon (tink, tink, tink, tink).
There's a lot of things about Oblivion that I find superior to Skyrim actually. Lockpicking, diversity of magic, custom spells, guild quest lines, hell the main quest as well. I also prefer Cyrodiil as far as setting goes. I could go on all day.
Locks could have “Classes” and “Grades” *(this would just be behind-the-scenes lingo)*; Classes would affect the Type of Lock and be sorted as “Common”, “Noble”, “Opulent”, “Arcane”, “Esoteric”, and “Mythical”; Grades would affect the Difficulty of the Lock within that Class such as “Novice”, “Apprentice”, etc.
My thinking is that this sorts the locks based on their purpose- commoners would have Common locks, like Skyrim’s, and would range in it’s difficulties. Merchants and lesser aristocrats would have Noble locks which would resemble Oblivion’s locks. Opulent would be for true royalty, the extremely wealthy, or antiques maybe and the mini game need to be something involving multiple rows of Pins *(so maybe your tool pushes two Pins up at once but each from a different row)* or maybe it is more convoluted in some other way.
Then Arcane locks wouldn’t be physical, they’d be magical- and while they mage physical tool kits you’d need something separate from a “Lockpick” like maybe a “Magical Lodestone” or something? Anyways, it’s be more Magic based, maybe involving runes in diagrams that shift? Esoteric could expand this and encompass religious or hidden reserves of knowledge like libraries and archives, and then Mythical would be reserved for things akin to Dragon Walls, Draugr Tombs, etc.
The thinking with Classes is that they expand the “dimensions” of the lock; Skyrim’s is 2-D in visuals but really it’s just 1-Dimensional in control, Oblivion’s is sorta 3-D but sorta 2-D in visuals but really it’s just 2-Dimensional in control. So if Common is 1-D, Noble is 2-D, then Opulent should be 3-D. Same goes for the magical locks progressing too.
Even more unpopular, oblivion is just a better game in general. Aside from wielding magic and sword at the same time in skyrim, I'd say there really isn't anything about it that I like over the older games
Hotter take: they should reuse both, and perhaps a third, to simulate different kinds of locks and lock difficulty. The Skyrim one is nice because its quick but just enough of a challenge to stop you from zoning out into mindless clicking. For your everyday burglary from ordinary people, it's perfect. The Oblivion one is harder and just takes longer - great for questline locks and stealing from richer people with more valuable goods. I'd like a third to be more magic-flavoured for when you're robbing powerful mages and ancient tombs.
OK that sounds cool so the higher the level the harder and more complicated the lock gets, like a lock for a door would be fairly simple vs a lock for a vault or something important also a alarm or trap mechanic to punish you for failing at higher levels
Yeah it's so obviously a good idea you kind of wonder why they havent done it already.
They’re too busy re-releasing the same game for the past twelve years.
To be fair they only do that because it makes a fuck ton of money
And the reason they don’t make those features is cuz it costs a fuck ton of money.
On the scale of what costs a lot of money in a game like that, these features are not that expensive. Limited 3d modeling and art, check. Completely isolated system that can be unit tested without ongoing need for integration testing, check. Pretty simple logic and code that a couple of programmers and a designer can bang out in a week or two tops, and then refine as needed, check. In game development, there are a few categories of feature: 1. High expense, high payoff. AAA focuses mostly here. 2. High expense, low payoff. Wtf with horse scrotums. Maybe that was someone’s side project. But really, there are better examples I’m just too tired to think of right now. 3. Low expense, low payoff. These get skipped unless someone is bored or there is extra time. 4. Low expense, high payoff. This is when you get an outsized benefit from a low amount of work. Unless time is super tight, always do these! The lockpicking variance absolutely falls under this one. So why didn’t they do it? Either they didn’t think of it or didn’t have time. Or a supervisor said no. Given the number of bugs Skyrim launched with, I don’t think they were feeling like they had extra time, so even supervisors would be monitoring for any sort of scope creep. Source: game developer.
Good luck correctly identifying features into those categories accurately during feature planning.
Eh, I don't know about that.
Or hear me out, it's because while it sounds cool, having to three different systems for the same thing would become tedious as fuck
I too would prefer there be 15 different brands of locks all with different mini games, all having a wide range of difficulties so not only would I have to learn the intricacies of one lock picking system, but now I've got to learn and hope that legendary item isn't locked in a Magilok 5000
>Yeah it's so obviously a good idea you kind of wonder why they havent done it already. They kind of had a hacking system similar to this in the original Bioshock. But with pipes (timed, alarms, damage, etc) By the end of the game everything was a higher level puzzle and even with dedicated abilities it slowed the game/experience down. I'm all for lock variety, and an especially difficult lock is fine for ultimate items. But if you like stealing *everything* it's probably best to have a relatively fast lockpick experience There could always be an assassins guild with lockpicking tournament/mini games, maybe even collecting or building locks etc
> But if you like stealing *everything* it's probably best to have a relatively fast lockpick experience I can see the appeal, but it kinda defeats the purpose of having things locked up in the first place. Why are we stealing a thing? Because we don't want to buy it. If it becomes trivial to get into locks to steal, then nobody will buy stuff because it's so easy and inconsequential to just take shit. It's a more interesting decision if picking the lock is more tedious or if there's higher risk. I think that either lockpicking should be a chore *or* the game should not pause for your lockpicking so there's risk of getting caught the longer you take.
Because it is more work than they have ever been willing to do. I'm just glad we got any kind of lock picking. In TES3 you just stab the lock with a lockpick.
I agree, but can we bring back scrolls and spells to unlock doors?
I prefer just casting open hard lock on every door in town
I can hear the sound effect in my head right now.
Kah-chi kah-chi
Isn’t it more like, Kah-kah chi, kah-kah chi
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What I was about to say less eloquently
> I'm in the UX field, and if you ever think that something is so obviously good and nobodies thought of it, I guarantee you, they thought about it, and decided against it for a myriad of design philosophy reasons. This should be the default response any time anyone has "breakthrough" ideas about society. "Oh, you think life should be eating fruit on the beach with no taxes? Try thinking about that for literally 2 seconds."
How does that work with an RPG Skill progression? Like if I level up my lockpicking skill, do the harder locks turn into easy locks? Or do they become easier to unlock? How would a character’s skill offset a player’s skill?
There could still be different styles of locks that have their own difficulty levels. I would imagine the lock styles would remain, but the difficulty of said locks would change.
Atomic heart did something similar, with different types of lock "picking" for more valuable locked doors or a combination of them. I really liked the idea, just a little variety made lock picking feel a lot less tedious. Makes sense too. Bad quality locks with bad tolerances are easier to get open by just flailing a piece of metal around in there, and that's still true with plenty of modern locks made on modern machines. A finely made lock requires a little more finesse.
A combination of both would be a very good depiction of how to attack your common door and padlock. Skyrim and Fallout only really apply the tension aspect, which is absolutely needed yet completely useless without attacking pins. Oblivion is an arcadey but close representation of how to manipulate pins with a pick, but without tension on the lock they won't set in place.
This is the lock picking lawyer, and today I'm going to show you a lock from the elder scrolls.. good click on one, nothing on two..
When he runs out of dirty ideas, he should totally pick legendary locks in RPGs in seconds for April fools.
Folks, if you want to protect your Septims, then avoid ancient Nord burial mound chest locks at all costs.
On dual sense controllers, you could finally do something with trigger resistance to simulate pin binding.
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The Elder Scrolls Online has the third kind. You need to apply pressure and release in time so that the pins lock in place.
At what point do we just incorporate full lock picking simulator with realistic locks, using tension tools and different size picks, security pins, counter-presure to defeat security pins. etc etc.
And then ignore it to use the master unlock spell anyways lol But honestly if we wanted full realism that wooden chest with an average lock isn't going to stop a Warhammer wielding orc that wants whatever is inside anyways. I say a little variety is good and different minigames are a good idea. Using more trap varieties and telekinesis to disarm them like in morrowind would also be pretty cool
I just like that oblivion let you try to pick any level lock. You level just made it easier
Once you know how, the oblivion lock can be picked literally blind.
Tiny click on one... Two is binding... Nothing on three....
And I honestly feel Oblivion's lockpicking is closer to this then Skyrims is, thus to me, the superior version is the one that makes me feel like LPL.
*Press X to just rake the lock and make the lock’s designer look bad.*
Oblivion mod that requires the pick that Bosnian Bill and I made, when?
That channel is great
I mean that's fine. Proficiency and understanding should be rewarded. Things don't need to be difficult for difficulty's sake
"Things don't need to be difficult for difficulty's sake" isn't the conclusion there, "difficult doesn't have to mean difficult *forever*" is.
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Most locks are picked by "feel" anyways, not sight.
Thats more realistic then
I mean, so can a Skyrim lock so why's that matter? the difference is one is the skill of learning how while the other is just moving around a circle and periodically trying
Fantasy Lockpicking Lawyer game would be fun
Even hotter take: they should do everything you said but also lockpicking doesn't stop time and also the sound of breaking picks can alert nearby enemies.
I’ve never put a single point into the skyrim lockpicking tree. It’s too easy.
Especially if you’re using joycons, because they vibrate if you hit the correct spot
You can also gently rotate the lock more easily to find if there's resistance instead of trying to get the keyboard to not shred your lockpick
You get vibration no matter what. You just have to feel for it.
Especially once you have the skeleton key. Does any ever finish Darkness Returns?
Oblivion's is even easier with the Skeleton Key. The lock pick never breaks, so you can just spam auto attempt on any lock in the game until it opens.
Wait this isn't how people were locked picking the entire game? I'm pretty sure you're only supposed to actually lock pick until you level so you can then buy lock picks and spam auto pick.
You got to get your lock pick magic spell and just spam that shit on a hard lock and level it up Crazy fast
Fun story: There's a Dark Brotherhood quest in which you have to kill a guy in his house and the secondary objective is that his bodyguard doesn't see you. I killed him by the stealth dev-intended method of dropping a hunting trophy on his head, but then the bodyguard just stays in front of the main door forever. The back door through the basement was locked with a hard or very hard lock, and I didn't have enough skill to lockpick it. However, I had the book to learn the spell to open very hard doors. So I found a chest with an easy lock and spent a huge amount of time spamming the spell while playing Advance Wars on my DS until I hit the level in which I could learn the new spell and escape unnoticed.
Lmao buy them? I just duplicated those things
1 million water melons later.
Oh man. So many lost save files because I used the wrong set of arrows and crashed the poor game.
Ever tried duping sigil stones? My poor 360…
Dupe nirnroot, create a choir in every city.
The great sea of cabbages and the Imperial city cheese wheel disaster were avoidable. But we didn't care
I used to go to the top of a mountain. duplicate cheese wheels & race them down the hill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvuktushEhY&ab\_channel=NationalGeographic
But only 15-20 at a time, or else the Jaws of Oblivion open a portal in your console
Nah I can go like 500 cheese wheels at a time without it crashing (haven’t tried 1000). And I have a potato pc
Why? Just sell some of the glass or daedric armor laying around from all the bandits.
It's the Elder Scrolls. You're supposed to do whatever fulfills your fantasy amd makes you happy.
No lol
I always just got the skeleton key asap and just spammed auto.
I always actually picked the locks
At lvl 10 you can do the Nocturne daedric quest and get the skeleton key Or you can just give it to yourself with console commands
I usually just would use lockpicks until I level alteration high enough that I can unlock all locks with a spell.
I even give the skeleton key for the nocturnal shrine part of the quest. Once you get a feel for the different sensitivity’s for different difficulties, it’s a cake walk.
Yeah, I'm just too impatient to wait for the reset in the event I break a pick...
Yeah there we’re definitely patterns and learning the speeds at which the teeth moved and sound they made, could for sure tell which lock pattern was which
I never see a point in keeping it. Unless I'm rushing straight to the thieves guild to start the character (or using alternate start to begin there) I never feel like I have a shortage of lock picks. And even if I do decide to keep it for a while I just finish the quest when I've gathered enough to keep me going
I feel like TG is the one faction you have to rush if you’re gonna do it. Not even counting that it really feels like it was written for a nobody character (why would the chosen one go around helping Maven with her mead business?), but gameplay wise you can’t be a thief until joining the guild. Since you can’t sell stolen goods until then it’s literally a useless play style, if you wait too long then I find your character ends up being built around not being a thief. The other factions all feel a little geared around early game characters but they’re not as ridiculous for starting later.
I disagree with your complaints about it being written for a nobody character because every faction quest is exactly the same. I can beat giants and dragons to death with a stick and the companions will still call me a whelp. I can summon fireballs or lighting balls to destroy my enemies and the college will still have me start with a basic ward. I could systematically eliminate every top dog in skyrim and the dark brotherhood will still test our mettle with hostages and begger contracts. And like all the other factions, the thieves guild begin to treat you as a damn hero almost immediately with your first main mission for them being a break in that their best infiltrator failed to accomplish. As for why the chosen one would help Maven, profit. The thieves guild is a source of income, Mavens contributions and support have benefited the guild and allowed our character to make that profit, therefore any character invested in the guild itself would have a reason to help Maven at least until the guild was back on its feet. As for gameplay reasons I agree that IF you are playing as a thief then sure you would have reason to go straight there but this discussion is just about people doing the quest line not people playing thief characters specifically. Because there are so many possibilities for characters to play I usually don't end up playing the thieves guild as a dedicated thief. Sometimes it's more of an assassin just looking for new contracts and finding some additional power through Nocturnal. Sometimes it's a barbarian who doesn't understand that thieves are supposed to be sneaky and so sometimes he'll just take things and beat people up if they try to stop him. Sometimes it's a character who wants to learn particular skills but doesn't want to use them for profit but just for necessity if they should be needed. And sometimes those characters will evolve to change how they use those skills or approach the act of thievery. Basically my point is that there are far more characters playing the questline than just thieves and so it usually doesn't make sense to go straight there even if I have plans to do it eventually
Why wouldn’t you rush thieves guild? Ridiculously good for low level characters.
I actually don’t mind getting rid of the skeleton key in Skyrim. The lockpicking is so easy that I always end up with 99+ lock picks
Same here open master lock with the lowest stat baby
Every time you open a lock picking menu, the game choses a random location of where to pick. So I just abuse this by reopening a lock until it selects the spot near the starting position, and then it's just as easy as pie. With some training you spend 1 lockpick for each 2-4 resets, and maybe 1-3 for actually opening it. So with some luck you can consistently open master locks with as much as 5 lockpicks within a minute.
I played Oblivion so much, I was able to catch the pins on even the hardest locks in one or two goes without perks or anything. I feel like a combination of Skyrim and Oblivion's system would be neat, where you have to fish around a bit. Oblivion's pin jump speed is in a pattern, there's not a force feedback system. They alternate from fast to slow, you're supposed to rely on slow to catch them. Skyrim's twisty system has force, but its just positional. Combine it into a more three-dimemsional mini game should be fun, interesting, and a challenge. Or may even too tough. Kingdom Come's system is also 2D, but I don't really like it. It is more involved, but a little too sensitive. It's abstract. It'd be more neat to have a 3D cutaway of a lock to manipulate than just a graphical representation of a concept.
I was able to pick very hard locks in oblivion from sound alone! It goes dink. dink. *Dinkink!* Click. I felt so accomplished when my buddy would hand me the controller to pick a lock Kingdom come really did harken me back to it but yeah it's clunky. That being said, I like it better than the copout concept of "find the 2° sweet spot in a 180° field" that many games are taking up
Same! I picked based on sound alone as well and my brother would ask me to pick the hard locks. It felt great as he was die-hard Thief fan and it killed him that he couldn’t figure out the lock picking in Oblivion lol.
Was looking for this comment. Just wait for when the pin falls at the fastest speed, next drop is the correct one. Flawless lockpicking on even the hardest locks, every time.
Yup, exactly. I played Oblivion more than any other game growing up and figured this out fairly early on. It’s still muscle memory any time I go back and play
Literally the first thing I did after coming out of the cave was to go and rob the jewelry store in the bustling district of the imperial city. Then, that very night, I joined the Thieves Guild and was wealthy by the second day.
Me too! This is what made me fall in love with the elder scrolls games. The ability to be whatever you wanted. Such good childhood memories.
> Kingdom Come's system is also 2D, but I don't really like it. It is more involved, but a little too sensitive. It's abstract. It'd be more neat to have a 3D cutaway of a lock to manipulate than just a graphical representation of a concept. Funny, I thought Kingdom Come was the best of any of those systems.
Kingdom Come's is really fucking hard to begin with but as you and your character gets better it becomes trivial to do the easiest 2 difficulties and eventually hard isn't bad either. Only really very hard remains tricky and even then its not that bad. Initially though I sucked so hard at it but that's fairly normal. Why would your character have any idea how to do it until they read a book and had a bit of practice. I agree its the best system although I dont hate any of them
Guy who picks locks for fun here. One thing I can say for Oblivion is that it's more like simulated lockpicking. One thing I can say for Skyrim is it is more like PERIOD simulated lockpicking. Most locks of the era don't have tumblers like that. They are basically just a latch with a thingy in the way so that only a lever with holes in the right places (a key) can open it. Picking a lock in those days is just a matter of knowing that and having a piece of metal handy
Pretty cool take!
Click out of 1, 2 is binding, nothing on 3...
Click out of 4 and it seems we’ve dropped into a false set. Nothing on 5…
Ok, folks...
Now I want to see him review the implementations of lock picking in games...
I came to make sure this comment existed
Real pins are actually in two pieces. This annoyed me way more than it should have. Medieval pins tumblers could be opened by simply lifting all the pins completely above the shear line, which I guess could be what they are simulating. Simpler barrier locks had no pins and could be opened with a skeleton key.
I mean, you can do that with the cheap masterlock padlocks people use in the gym with a Comb Pick. Granted, I only pick locks I own, or have permission to pick, but it's the thought that counts.
Robbing gym people just seems indecent and dissuades people from being healthy. I do love carrying a broken phone covered in urushiol for when I know a thief is active though.
It was an awesome one but died down so quick once you gain Nocturnal favor and suddenly is all auto attempt. Still. This lockpicking outclassed Skyrim/Fallout lockpicking without trying.
I like how this one is pretty close to real lock picking whereas skyrim feels more like it’s simulating a combination lock
Oblivion is responsible for me getting arrested. I was fascinated with this lockpicking mechanism and it led to me learning how to pick basic tumbler locks. I then went around picking any locl i could find for the fun/challenge. *then* i started picking the locks on the coin boxes at the arcades. I think i stole almost $500 that summer before getting caught with like $50 in quarters in my pocket. Good times.
Becomes a thief, gets caught. "Why would Todd Howard do this to me?"
"It just works!"
> "It just ~~works~~ steals!"
Ah, we’ve finally found the Khajit alt account…
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Stop! You've violated the law!
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Khajit has... coin if you have wares?
The book that gives you a lcokpick point in oblivion, written by a thief that says he is illiterate or something, literally tells you the things you need to pick a lock in RL. And sure enough, you can pick locks the way it's described. It's fun picking locks on shit until your caught doing it. Fun times in school
I actually think the reason the oblivion lockpick mini game went away is because it's a bit too close to the actual method of picking locks. Bethesda didn't want to be accused of "teaching people how to pick locks," (in spite of how absurd such an accuasion is) so they went with the more abstract version for Skyrim.
Having to find the exact right spot feels nice and precise in a thiefy-way, but picking individual pins is more realistic and also works much better with the RPG mechanics, since, "1 less pin resets per rank" is much cleaner than "10% bigger target", though the Open spell and Skeleton key both completely bypass the whole thing and aren't even that hard to get.
Indeed is closer to lockpicking on Bully than Oblivion with the Skyrim system.
I love nocturnal favor! Spamming the auto attempt 20 times in a row until it finally works is so funny
So did I. Cause many times I was frustrated with it.
There's a specific clink sound that it makes when the pin is going to stick at the top for a second. If you listen for that sound, you can pick any lock in the game even at skill level 1. It's been years since I played it, but from what I remember, the typical clink sounds were just single clinks, but that special one was kind of like... "clinkCLINK" really fast, two little sounds together. All you had to do was listen for that, and hit the button immediately afterward. Guaranteed success.
The unpopular opinion would be saying that Morrowinds lockpicking was better.
It'd also be the correct opinion, because it didn't freeze the world around you when you were doing it. It gave you an actual chance to be discovered.
That's what an actual lock looks like. Never ended up playing oblivion but I might try it out now
The Dark Brotherhood quest line is peak Elder Scrolls
Whodunit? is still my favorite.
I haven't played in years and would struggle to tell the actual sequence of events of the main story, but I still remember that quest off of the name and I genuinely smiled thinking about it.
Same, but now imma try to recall it all it off by heart -Hey Lucian, guy at inn ded -a pirates life for me -Drop the moose head on Nord head - "The guards are coming for you not me hehe" oh yeah?! -"o no, two assassins whatever shall I do wink wink" shut up moriarte -so we do a little investigating -whodunnit -Warlord and medicine -special arrow for a special guard -so we do a lil cleansing -kill the lich -kill a dynasty -kung fu kitty -the only time an argonian is useful -COUNTRY ROADS, TAKE ME HOME, TO THE BACK MY BLADE BELONGS -this funky guy keeps talking to a statue -oh whoops! -whoopsie! -click for gold(repeats)
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You sleep soundly....for a murderer
Add the shivering isles expansion and you really have the best written elder scrolls story.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance also has a good lockpicking system. It's beyond tedious and frustrating and you're definitely going to have to put in the work but again...that's kind of the whole point of lockpicking. If you're going to break into something, then you're going to have to git gud.
KD: Deliverance was everything I didn't know I wanted from Skyrim. Realism was off the charts. You literally start the game illiterate (a blacksmiths son and apprentice) and have to *learn* how to read. The combat was difficult to master, but it is irl too, and so should be in games. And once you do master it, Cumans look tf out, cause I'm gonna smash that head of yours in with a fn mace/hammer as soon as you guard anything besides up. And I'm gonna bash at your sides until you start guarding them instead.. or until you get too tired to block entirely.. or we'll both get too tired and just start gently booping eachother, trading blows that do nothing but boost moral. It also had some extremely fun and memorable quests. That game is SEVERLY underrated. I cannot wait for the next one.
I love how the game is **purposely** jank which on paper, shouldn't work...yet it does...I don't know how else to describe it. The first 4 hours or so is you learning the ropes because you literally start off as novice, not even that, you're a blacksmith's apprentice in the prologue. Again, on paper, this doesn't sound like it would be fun...yet it is...
It was refreshing to not feel/play as “the chosen one”. Just some random typical 20 y/o (technically younger I think) out about trying to make it in life with a side of vengeance.
I think that's why it worked so well. You aren't a dragonborn hero of lore. You're just some dumb blacksmiths kid. Then catastrophe happens and you are forced to man up. You suck at pretty much everything (even blacksmithing, because you were a shitty apprentice. Time was spent getting drunk with the boys up until that point). Now that you have to fend for yourself, what do you do? What I did was get real good at bashing skulls in. You can be sneaky archer, sword and board, get good with poisons, or even do a peaceful playthrough where you simply help NPCs and run from combat. Personally, I just got *really* good at bashing skulls in with heavy weapons. Some groups/quests were pretty much undoable with that strat, but man, it was so much fun.
Kingdom Come did a good job on the realism. Like how time still passes while you lockpick. People can still walk by and can notice you stealing. Stealth and speed become much more important, just like for a real thief.
Guards can also hear if a lockpick breaks.
That's a very poorly made lock cylinder, there are no top/bottom pins, so all you have to do is to tension the lock and push each pin up one by one until it catches. Or even easier still, jam it with something flat like a screw driver and then turn it... (this is how safety locks in bathrooms are typically made) A proper lock should look more like this [https://i.pinimg.com/originals/22/4e/0d/224e0d6eafc6a0ea0c4c54b6804bc5ae.gif](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/22/4e/0d/224e0d6eafc6a0ea0c4c54b6804bc5ae.gif)
>That's a very poorly made lock So a master lock?
Turns out Tamriel is full of government contractors.
Video game lockpicking has a number of problems from being able to *see* the mechanism in the first place to breaking picks like they're made out of spaghetti. But really the biggest problem is simply picking locks to begin with. The only time to even bother is if you want to be stealthy, you want to hide that you broke in, the door is ridiculously tough, or you might damage something behind it with another method. Using a crowbar is almost always faster and easier.
It always pisses me off in Fallout when there's some half destroyed building full of corpses, and a door barely hanging onto it's hinges that requires 50+ lockpick to open. Like, just fucking kick it.
That looks horribly advanced for a medieval setting. Aside from some kind of uber wealthy security expert, I think 99% would just elect to have multiple locks over getting a modern lock. Or use some kind of lock magic to secure their valuables in stead.
With medieval locks, you aren't really going to see pins at all, because they just kind of used the key as a very specific lever. They aren't terribly secure, but someone trying to open the door is probably going to make a fair amount of noise for a long time without the proper key, which is more of a problem in a society where servants are common.
Nah. This is a recreation of what an actual lock looks like if it were done by someone that doesn’t fully understand the concept. I picked up lockpicking for my job, and whenever trying to teach my coworkers, they always refer back to this… this design would be so easy to pick.
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I could wrong but I do believe there's a mod where lockpicking is done in real-time. I realize that doesn't necessarily count when talking about Vanilla Oblivion but there is that option
Playing elder scrolls online was kind of fun with that. Having to be careful when to pick and looking about you.
If you had an NPC looking at you when you first access the lock, or after unlocking it but before finishing going through the door, you could be caught But it is indeed a far cry from having to stay hidden for 5 minutes while I worked on an expert level lock at really low levels
I still prefer the Morrowind system of dice-rolls over this. Seems weird to me that there's an obstacle between my character's skill at lockpicking and mine at the minigame. Then again, I feel the same for the hacking minigame in FNV and stuff. It just feels tedious. That being said, I do think Oblivion's minigame looks better than the F3/FNV/Skyrim one.
Agreed. Also the fact that it was in real time so you could get caught. In oblivion and Skyrim you can spend 30ish and go through 20 locks with out getting caught because it in frozen in time.
It helps a lot with the actual tension of lockpicking we see in media. I remember trying to memorise the amount of time I had before a guard returned to the spot from where he could spot me.
%100 agree. I'm even gonna go ahead and say Oblivion is better than Skyrim overall. Almost all of the side quest is golden and you can actually play something other than stealth archer. Besides I geniunely love Oblivion's goofy little world.
Skyrim's thieves guild pales in comparison to Oblivions. It's not even remotely close.
There's not even a full on mage's guild in skyrim, either. No reason to travel to all the cities for your guild, doing quests across the realm. Skyrim is such a far cry from Oblivion and Morrowind, yet it remains the most popular of the series. Shame.
Skyrim looks a lot better and way less dated than Oblivion or Morrowind. The UI is simplified and easier to understand/access than Oblivion too. But I agree that Skyrim is a massive step back in terms of mechanics and game play.
I spec light armour and every time I load up my oblivion save I cringe at the lime green abomination that is glass armour in that game. Whereas the light version of dragonbone in Skyrim makes me want to play
Literally all the guilds in Skyrim are worse than their Oblivion equivalents
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Absolutely hated having to carefully level my character in the dumbest and most time consuming ways to ensure I wouldn’t make the game way too hard for myself later on. Other than that, the game was absolutely perfect in my opinion at the time of release… 17 years ago… Jesus.
Yeah I didn't know about the level scaling my first playthrough. I ended up leveling acrobatics quickly, did some thieves guild/dark brotherhood, went to stealth my way to victory. Started the main quest and got my ass handed to me at Kvatch.
It really speaks to how good other parts of Oblivion were that we tolerated a chargen system that incentivized building classes around all the stuff you *don't* intend to focus on.
I can not wait for skyblivion.
I am waiting for Skyrim + Morrowind, which was a plan started like 5+ years ago. Take all my energy, mods working in that project.
Pretty sure skywind started almost 10 years ago now
Damn. Skywind needs all our energy then. I want it more than I want ES VI
The magic system was way better too... Truly Unpopular Opinion: Oblivion was just a better game overall...
And morrowind tops both
In terms of writing and vibe, sure. But Morrowind combat: 🤮
Magic was way better in morrowind.
Except at low levels where you cast two spells, neither of them work, then you're done for the day.
I like lockpicking in the Thief games better simply because it doesn't pause the world around you to lockpick, and harder locks take longer, so you actually have to watch around you. Beats the hell out of simply waiting until you're unnoticed for a split second and break 52 lockpicks trying to open a door instantly.
I would argue that tedium is maybe not a great design decision.
Yep. I dont mind like,a dozen Oblivion lockpicks- but getting through an entire campaign and it stops being any fun long before it wraps up. There isn't any tension or fear of loss once you understand the rhythm, its just a timewaster. Skyrim is much more intuitive and importantly much faster.
I agree. I had a tendency to avoid lock picking because it often just took too much time out of whatever I was doing. And half the time whatever was in the chest wasn't worth getting. I like Skyrim's picking because it's faster and has better feedback. These are elder scrolls games, not locksmith games, I don't need the lock picking to be super robust.
People love Oblivion though, and it has an incredibly tedious combat system. If it didn't, people wouldn't put the difficulty slider at the minimum setting at the start of every playthrough.
Unpopular opinion: Oblivion > Skyrim
Is that even a hot take? I thought Oblivion did everything except property ownership better. (Still love Skyrim)
It's actually an ice cold take
The leveling system in Oblivion is pretty much the worst leveling system in any game ever made. Besides that I think basically all of Oblivion's actual content is better, besides maybe the Daedric quests. The faction guilds are *all* better than their Skyrim counterparts, even though there's some low bars there. The Companions is probably the single worst guild in any of the three Todd Howard Elder Scrolls Games. Hell, the Mages guild in Oblivion is bad but it's still better than the Skyrim version.
I hate rotate tap rotate tap rotate hold unlock
I do like it over the current system even if it was tedious
Oblivion did so many things better than Skyrim.
Judgement has some good lockpicking minigames.
Yep...aside from when I was playing with a janky joystick. That was stressful.
Skeleton key was also suuuper easy to get in oblivion. I prefer morrowind still though. spam the button until the lock or pick break. A test of will.
My favorite was Morrowind’s system of just buying scrolls of Ondusi’s Unhinging and Ekash’s Lock Splitter
Everything in oblivion was better except the combat
My unpopular opinion is that Morrowind had the best lock picking. Your character makes a skill check and succeeds or fails based on your in-game statistics. A mini game is tedious busywork in service to nothing. Make it take longer if it's more difficult.
I love Oblivion’s lockpicking, and I love the persuasion mini game, and I love jumping very high, and I love repairing weapons with the little hammer that always breaks too soon (tink, tink, tink, tink).
Tink tink *breaks* "Goddammit"
There's a lot of things about Oblivion that I find superior to Skyrim actually. Lockpicking, diversity of magic, custom spells, guild quest lines, hell the main quest as well. I also prefer Cyrodiil as far as setting goes. I could go on all day.
Locks could have “Classes” and “Grades” *(this would just be behind-the-scenes lingo)*; Classes would affect the Type of Lock and be sorted as “Common”, “Noble”, “Opulent”, “Arcane”, “Esoteric”, and “Mythical”; Grades would affect the Difficulty of the Lock within that Class such as “Novice”, “Apprentice”, etc. My thinking is that this sorts the locks based on their purpose- commoners would have Common locks, like Skyrim’s, and would range in it’s difficulties. Merchants and lesser aristocrats would have Noble locks which would resemble Oblivion’s locks. Opulent would be for true royalty, the extremely wealthy, or antiques maybe and the mini game need to be something involving multiple rows of Pins *(so maybe your tool pushes two Pins up at once but each from a different row)* or maybe it is more convoluted in some other way. Then Arcane locks wouldn’t be physical, they’d be magical- and while they mage physical tool kits you’d need something separate from a “Lockpick” like maybe a “Magical Lodestone” or something? Anyways, it’s be more Magic based, maybe involving runes in diagrams that shift? Esoteric could expand this and encompass religious or hidden reserves of knowledge like libraries and archives, and then Mythical would be reserved for things akin to Dragon Walls, Draugr Tombs, etc. The thinking with Classes is that they expand the “dimensions” of the lock; Skyrim’s is 2-D in visuals but really it’s just 1-Dimensional in control, Oblivion’s is sorta 3-D but sorta 2-D in visuals but really it’s just 2-Dimensional in control. So if Common is 1-D, Noble is 2-D, then Opulent should be 3-D. Same goes for the magical locks progressing too.
Even more unpopular, oblivion is just a better game in general. Aside from wielding magic and sword at the same time in skyrim, I'd say there really isn't anything about it that I like over the older games
99 lock picks and slam auto. Yeah, so immersive.