Pickpocketing

[Koschey]

So, yesterday I finished my first playthrough with my third character (Melee/Dodge/Subterfuge/Mechanics,Biology,Tailor) and sofar found the game to be really enjoyable (honestly can't wait for the full version). The few minor gripes I had have mostly been mentioned in other threads (like here), with one exception:

Pickpocketing right now is completely useless.

Even though my character has taken all feats relating to stealth and pickpocketing and sports decent agility ( 6 ) and fairly high dexterity ( 8 ), I was unable to picka single person's pockets.
In most cases, even with the halved duration/higher movement speed from the feats, maxed skills for level 7 and a hefty stealth bonus from items, in most cases NPCs switch to alert when I'm not even halfway done with initiating the steal attempt. From my sporadic tries (granted, I didn't try everyone, especially not nameless NPCs) most characters had nothing to steal anyway. But after I got the vault key card to Gorsky and couldn't convince him to fork it over, I tried stealing it. I could catch a glimpse of it in his inventory, indicating stealing the card is indeed intended as an alternative to persuading him, but no matter what direction I sneak up on him from, I can't get it back because he gets alert the moment the pickpocket interface opens up. Especially annoying since at character creation I literally had to choose between persuasion and pickpocketing as my final skill.

So tl;dr: Pickpocketing badly needs some finetuning. As it is, it's not worth the skill points, especially not over stuff like persuasion.

My suggestion would probably be to solve it like in Fallout, where being in stealth mode was not required to pickpocket someone. If one considers realworld pickpockets, not all of them succeed by not being seen, but instead appearing inconspicious.
Or, if that would be too much effort this far into the engine design, provide alternatives in dialogue utilizing the skill for things like key cards, quest-related objects or similar your character knows the mark carries on their person. As in
"[Pickpocket] Distract Gorsky with some questions about the training consoles while trying to filch the vault key card."


Other than that, I now started with a fourth character, whom I explicitly built to be able to get into the burrower caves, so, comments on those are pending

[neonesis]

Haven't tried it, but overall I think the mechanics concerning stealth+pickpocketing/combat are very hard because of the constant-real time. As I've stated already, I find it tedious to press F, then choose ability, then target a monster/person, all this while I can be/am being detected, and the creature moves. Also, after you choose the ability, you effectively cannot move, so to track a creature beyond your vision, you have to dismiss the ability, move, and do everything again.

Possible solution?
Fallout-style combat mode perhaps? This would allow you to switch to turn based time whenever you want it, instead of allowing it only when attacking directly. It is there already, forgot about it.

Automatic combat mode when enemy is seen while stealthing, how about that?
Or just stop the time when picking ability and looking for target.

[Koschey]

The need to choose abilities from the F-menu in real-time can be circumvented be pulling often-used abilities like stealth into a quickslot. I actually am so used to the Fallout configuration, that I always pull skills like stealth, pickpocketing or lockpicking to their corresponding hotkeys from Fallout 1/2 in any game where it's possible. Just feels the most natural to me

But that makes this imbalance with pickpocketing even more annoying. Essentially even with improved movement speed in stealth, halved pickpocketing time (both from feats) and effective stealth/pickpocket values around 85/60 or so, the awareness of other characters still raises so quickly that every attempt at pickpocketing is getting noticed before I get the chance to take anything. Even though I can choose the abilities almost instantly due to hotkeys.

[Styg]

Yeah, pickpocketing is kinda broken at the moment. I like the suggestion that it should not require being in the stealth mode, so that's something that I'm going to experiment in the near future.

Keep up the good feedback, guys.

[Hety]

If stealth wont be required for pick pocketing it will be save/load abuse, just like any other game(including F1/2). I, actually, managed to pp some stuff with cheated char (10+ all stats, more than 100 stealth), but those were the guys in really dark places.

[JeffTheShark]

how did you make a cheated char?

[pringdew]

i made a cheated character too...its fairly easy with artmoney....