Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Lockpicking Issues and suggestions

After playing around 60h in game and looting/steeling really everything I found/bought more than 15 lockpicks (only 6 magical unlock-scrolls) total and some vendors do have random items and sell it too (with every character/companion tradeing after reentering town you have 4 random itemcollections of each vendor and higher probability to get lockpicks)

I think i might have found the solution for the ALT key showing too much.


- ALT key should highlight items only acording to perception skill of the character. -

This would require items to be grouped into perception relevant groups.
For example these important keys would require higher perception, say 8 or 9, for example.
(the devs can then adjust different items relatively easily)

In the game it would mean ALT key highlights the usual loot for ease of use - but you dont see that very important or quest relevant key just like that - so easily.
Instead - you see it when your character perception is high enough - which is intuitively understandable and naturally acceptable to everyone. I would think. Since its in line with common sense - and general RPG kind of gameplay.

The player who invest in Perception gain a very nice reward for it this way. Those who dont - get to do a little bit of pixel hunting - help from the players themselves, but are better at some other things.

I don't quite agree with closing 2 of the 4 chests after the puzzle...

"You just solved this intricate puzzle... here's 50% of your reward since you didn't build your character the way that we want you to. Well, that sucks for you. You can always return with a character once the items in these chests have become useless to you. Want to solve another puzzle for aggrevation and half-rewards?"

You do all that effort, then punished like that? No.
That's like doing a quest, getting an option for a fine 1h sword/2h sword/staff and the game goes 'But wait, you have 0 charisma. Oh well, no reward for you!'

I still don't see why lockpicks need to be one use btw.

Sorry? Are you responding to me - my post above yours?

Nah, one of Stabbey's much easier post how we could just easily lock 2 of the 4 chests from the cave/amulet puzzle.

You don't want the chests you dig up to be locked. You don't want some of the burial mounds chests to be locked (or is one of the 4 locked okay?). I presume from your earlier question that you don't want some of the keys which exist currently for locked chests to be removed.

What would you like to see done with Lockpicking?


I don't mind if Lockpicks are multiple use, but I also don't mind if they are consumed after use.

No, since all those already have their own difficulty in finding the quest (perception/map or puzzle). No point adding another layer on top of that.
I'm fine with other chests found along the way, but, again, I barely found any of the kind.

I wouldn't object to some chestkeys being gone, or the chests of the graveyard (Not limited by perception or map) to be lockpickable instead of that not paying off key and chest 'puzzle').

Or WoW-style ( yeah I just said World of Warcraft! yay ! ), sometimes you get a lockbox for defeating your enemies. Can only be opened with Lockpick, will contain small stuff like gold, healing potion, maybe a craft item.
Or give a NPC the ability to lockpick for you for a price ( maybe keeping the gold inside, making it some kind of gamble by varying the potential gold quantity ), and put some more useful things in it. Kind of how Repair and Loremaster already work, either do it yourself or do it for gold, so that no one will have to skip on the content.

I dont really get why lockpicks need to break - at all.

Its supposed to be a kind of a resource that spends over time and that you need to invest into... but i really dont see whats the overall purpose or point of it.

It would all be better if lockpicking was just skill related and you get one set of lockpicks (maybe find a few better versions along the way) - and use them throughout the game.
Where lockpick quality would function as a bonus to your lockpicking skill.

I approve of Hiver's suggestion

There were some RPG's where skill use could fail, or even critically fail. Removing lockpicks was a way to "punish" the player in a logical way, and to sustain a form of economy, because the player would need to gain some, through buying, crafting, or whatever... But indeed you are right, in such an amazingly reactive world, if you have the skill level, you succeed. Makes things simpler. And at least it should not bug. Wait....


This is to be used cautiously, in a 1 to 5 range of ability level. Just a +1 would be a huge bonus. Already expressed myself about this. Just a reminder.
Even D&D had a 20 based system. +1 is then only a +5% increment, instead of being a +20% increment in DOS (taking a geometrical approach, although that can be discussed, because better abilities level need more character points, and we don't know the inner workings of the game)

Another way to say the whole character "development" is a misery from its very foundations, because it allows very little fine tuning as the various bonus can go. I am pretty sure even the devs are feeling the limits and heaviness of this lack of perspective.
But hey, there are no quest markers, and its possible to kill every NPC's to make money, so the game is great! Who needs a deep character development and interesting world interactions when you have talking shells and funny robots.

I don't approve Hiver's suggestion, because it is narrow minded , boring, and doesn't pay a tribute to the level of details that already went into this game.

This kind of sounds off when you just spent a few minutes typing a thread showing that the game lacked any real level of details ...

Then you are getting me wrong. The game if full of details. Empty/filled cups, various types of fishes, jar to pour honey in it, broken bottles, rat tails, crates lids... However, having a go/no go system to interact with all this, and a 1-5 system, and a 1 point/level character development, and useless abilities, is just such a waste of great detailed world.

The world is detailed, what is made of it through character/system feature is not, and it is a shame.

Godammit, release the damn editor.

It's perfectly reasonable and (abused as the word often is) immersive to have a key for every lock because people don't generally install locks on things without having keys to get them open. That's particularly true of things they'll be using often (like the door to their house). Sure, someone might occasionally lose a key, but the key is still somewhere to be found (even if it's hard to get at), and if the person actually wants access to the thing then they'll change the lock.

I don't like the idea of damaging or destroying contents if you force the thing open. In practice, forcing open a container (or even a door) would normally involve prying it open with a crowbar or breaking the lock itself, not obliterating the entire door/container a greataxe or fireball (something that is really only done in emergencies); that the game mechanics force the latter on the PC is actually a fault in the design (one common to CRPGs, admittedly).

In fact, it's perfectly reasonable that towns are usually the only place where you'd bother picking a lock - they're typically the only place where getting one open without attracting the attention of the owner and/or guards actually matters. Of course, town is often the place where the key will be in the possession of its owner, which means that picking the lock is an alternative to trying to get the key from that person by whatever method, and that's advantageous enough if you're trying to avoid notice.

And yes, it is quite weird to have lockpicks be 'used up' by picking a single lock. They're not disposable items (at least no more so than other hardware), nor are they particularly fragile. (This is also a case where lockpicking gets arbitrarily singled out for some reason: it's not like the game requires you to get a new repair hammer for every item you mend or a new magnifying glass for every item you inspect.)


So no, I don't like the idea of forcing lockpicking on every party to avoid destroying loot; like many others, it's a situational skill and its value is plot-dependent, but that's as it should be. I do agree with the above poster that the 'disposable lockpick' model is a silly one and makes the skill difficult to justify or use even in scenarios where it should be a valid or outright optimal approach.

I do not care one bit at all how "realistic" it is for chests to be locked or not or always have a key or not, or only be locked inside cities. It's certainly not "realistic" to go into a thousand year old tomb of an evil Source King and find coins which are accepted in modern Cyseal, or health potions still as fresh as the day they were brewed, or weapons and armour in perfect condition which haven't rusted to dust, but I don't see you complaining about those things, do I? The reason is because fun and gameplay balance takes priority over strict realism.

Strict adherence to reality in all things makes for unfun gameplay.

Yeah, no one likes losing items when they smash chests open, but there were also objections to an alternate idea of "lockpicking/key-opening grants EXTRA items" as well.

Lockpicking is an ABILITY. Abilities should offer advantages to using them, it's called GAMEPLAY BALANCE. If you like the status quo, where Lockpicking is completely optional and offers basically no advantages over smashing the chest open or finding the key, then you should support removing that ability and just having different qualities of lockpick items.

I basically agree with the issues raised in this thread.

If (almost) every locked chest/door has a key available, it kinda defeats the purpose of having a lockpicking skill, especially if lockpicks are a rare ressource on top of it.
Within a few days all key locations will be known and can be looked up in guides, anyway.

Damaging items inside locked chests might be one way to balance the skill, imho, but I'd also put more locked chests without keys into the game, or provide alternative routes around obstacles or to quest objectives by using lockpicking. However, optimally those should be meaningful, e.g. provide more than just simplistic "either pick the lock to the door or find the key".

Having quests that rely on certain skills might help, too (e.g. a Thieves Guild in case of lockpicking).

Thats not a "logical way" to punish the player at all.
Because there is no logic in breaking the lockpicks when you fail to pick a lock. At all.
Nor is it logical to use that to "sustain" some economy, or at least - that kind of economy is not logical at all.

It is all merely a gamey shortcut. And a trope.

- Yes, if you have the skill level you should succeed. Indeed.




Not needed. Of course it would only bring small bonuses - because otherwise it would devalue the skill. I thought that would be understood by itself, but... didnt count on fear logic - alas.


That has absolutely nothing with what i said and suggested.


Not that anyone or everyone need to approve and like my idea... but, this kind of personal declaratory statements, completely unsupported by any relevant or even seemingly closely connected arguments is completely worthless and utterly nonsensical.
I mean... since we are sharing opinions... i thought to let you know about mine.


@NeutroniumDragon:


- Instead, wouldnt it be nice if forcing some container open would result in a big, very loud noise - that would raise a critical alert and possibly foil some specific sneak dependent quest, options therein or both?



- Exactly. Or, if you cannot find the key - because your perception skill is too low, (so pressing ALT key doesnt help for that specific eh, key), or you didnt (or couldnt) search in the right place.



@Stabbey

Thats not really true. Or can be true only if one imagines some sort of crude and intentionally boring extreme simulation kind of a game or a feature.

But, its a very long subject in on itself.

"Picking the lock gives extra stuff" is the same thing as "breaking the container gives less stuff" even if it's trying really hard to pretend that it isn't. Neither one is going to be popular and both of them effectively make lockpicking a mandatory skill instead of an optional one.

I don't care about absolute realism either, but neither do I want to come across the absurdity of people unable to get into or out of their own houses because the doors are locked and the keys don't exist so that getting in can be a "challenge", especially since you don't NEED to do that kind of thing to make it relevant.

Fallout 1 and 2 (not 3) are a good example of how lockpicking can be a useful skill without being mandatory. In most scenarios or situations it provides or is part of one of several possible solutions. This is dependent on quest/story scripting allowing for various approaches, but that's fine because DOS is already trying to follow that model as much as it can (within reasonable development limits). That's how lockpicking should be - not an arbitrary "you get more stuff from chests just because" skill.

To the extent that smashing through doors instead of opening them quietly works in the game - you generally take longer to do it and have to keep an eye out for people wandering by, which is already an opportunity cost - the fact that the game doesn't really generate responses to people finding things smashed open is really the only thing that slants it against picking the lock vs breaking it. Individual objects/characters/quest scripts could (and ideally, would) take this into account, especially since (as I pointed out earlier) breaking stuff tends to be noisy and noticeable even if no one has line of sight to the event.

I'm fairly confident the strongbox suggestion I did a few post ago is a good middle-line. It enhances Lockpicking without making it a mandatory skill. I think there was a discussion about loot tables some time ago, but maybe adding one possible loot to the encounters is probably not as hard as revisiting the existing chests and doors to enable or not, one by one, the "locked" tag as well as manually setting a lock value.

Just as a reminder, I suggested that those strongboxes could be opened by lockpicking ( doh! ) but also be brought to someone in town to force open/lockpick it for you for a price. Either keeping the gold inside, making it some kind of gambling ( if there was only gold or a big sum, you "loose", if the sum was small or non-existent, you'd keep whatever else was inside almost for free ).
As for what could be inside, it could range from small stuff like potions and scrolls to more solid stuff like arrows/arrow heads, books, maybe some weapons like daggers and knife, gear like boots, belts and bracers, crafting ingredient with varying degree of rarity... Not expecting large sized items like swords, chest armors, big two handed maces :p

This way it would work just like Loremaster and Repair, abilities you'd want to grab but you can also avoid altogether. With 3 skills being "replaceable" by NPCs but also being costy in the long run should you choose to ignore them, you would want to invest some points in some of them ...

I was thinking it may be time for a recap of the various suggestions though. Something clean just for future references and to the developer's attention.
From the top of my head there was things such as
- hiding the keys from the ALT overlay,
- revisiting existing chests to either remove the key and/or add more locks overall,
- disarming traps with Lockpicking, adding strongboxes,
- reviting lockpicks so that they would either be indestructible but have a set Lockpicking value or give the player a way to get a lot of them if need be,
- damaged/less items in forced chests ( raw force or magic ),
- lucky find/more item in a lockpicked/opened by key chest
- more...

This is by no mean a complete list of what was suggested here, but it would take a little time to parse the 2 pages and honor everyone's suggestions so far in a clean way.
Maybe if I get some spare time I'll look into it tomorrow.

Your position seems to be that a person who spends no Ability points at all into Lockpicking should get the same reward as someone who does invest Ability Points.

I am totally fine with just making Lockpick a cosmetic option only useful for alternate solutions, like you want. But if that is all it is going to be, then it is not something I'll ever spend Ability points into. In the beta, the non-lockpicking solutions aren't any more difficult than the lockpicking ones.

It may let me slightly sequence-break, but it does not serve as an alternate approach to let me bypass.

If it doesn't serve a unique purpose, you could delete it and replace with just items, or roll it in with some other skills (like Repair for example) which serve another purpose.




What are you even talking about? No one's saying anything at all about doors and locked houses people can't get into?




Fallout 1 and 2 also have a wildly different skill system than D:OS.


While having Lockpick as one of many multiple solutions may be the way Lockpicking SHOULD work in D:OS, at the moment, it does not really match Fallout's variety in solutions.

Lockpicking can maybe let you take a couple sequence-breaking shortcuts in the main quest (the murder scene chest, Evelyn's house), or let you get into Esmeralda's private rooms slightly faster than it takes to get the back door key from upstairs.

Fallout would let you either lockpick Esmeralda's door, talk her into letting you search her house, let you blow up a locked door, or hack the computer-controlled rear door to let you in. Right now, you can lockpick, or go up the unguarded stairs and get the key to the house from an empty room. It's not much more effort to get the key than to lockpick.




Again no one is talking about doors. Even if they were, the keys for said doors are basically right beside them for the taking anyway.