Dev Log #9: Importing Characters and More Crafting

[screeg]

The main reason for this change is to turn both lockpicks and haxxors into resources. There might be something like a "skeleton key" further down the road.

I think it's clear why you want to change lock picks, but not to put too fine a point on it:  you're wrong.

When you have a disposable resource like a healing potion, you know in advance how much healing you'll want so you can make a decision about which level of potion to use.  When you pick a lock you don't know how difficult it will be.  Also, there's just no reason to add one more fiddly item to keep track of, in addition to all the crafting components.  The player's investment in the pick locks skill, in addition to the different qualities of lock picks, is enough variables already for one activity.

Laien spells it out even more plainly.  I hope you'll rethink this.

[Dickie]

What if pick lock was just an action like attacking or whatever and it automatically used the weakest lockpick that would work, or if none of your lockpicks would work, it would say "not enough skill" or whatever. I don't want to try to pick each lock 3 times.

[Hans_Sanitizer]

The main reason for this change is to turn both lockpicks and haxxors into resources. There might be something like a "skeleton key" further down the road.

I think it's clear why you want to change lock picks, but not to put too fine a point on it:  you're wrong.

When you have a disposable resource like a healing potion, you know in advance how much healing you'll want so you can make a decision about which level of potion to use.  When you pick a lock you don't know how difficult it will be.  Also, there's just no reason to add one more fiddly item to keep track of, in addition to all the crafting components.  The player's investment in the pick locks skill, in addition to the different qualities of lock picks, is enough variables already for one activity.

Laien spells it out even more plainly.  I hope you'll rethink this.

Disposable lockpicks, especially with the current system of different levels of effectiveness, is a pointless and tedious change.  I don't want to manage a stack of differently abled lockpicks in my inventory and have to choose one whenever I want to pick a lock.  Don't add inventory management routines that only serve as a chore.  What real world analogy is there to a mechanical lockpick disappearing every time you use it?  Having haxxors use batteries is fine.

I agree with some of this, I noticed styg said he's trying to discourage save scumming, but a lot of people will just use each tier of lockpick until the object opens then reload a save before the attempt and use the appropriate lockpick. It doesn't discourage save scumming, it just makes the entire process more tedious. I would almost argue that it would encourage people to make saves before making lockpick attempts.

Consider the example of haxxors vs lockpicks:
Haxxors, use one battery unit (or whatever power neccesary) then it fails. Whatever.

Lockpick lowest fails, lockpick medium tier fails, lockpick highest tier fails. I am now 3 lockpicks out, and at this point I would revert to a save before the attempt.

[Tomwa]

Disposable lockpicks, especially with the current system of different levels of effectiveness, is a pointless and tedious change.  I don't want to manage a stack of differently abled lockpicks in my inventory and have to choose one whenever I want to pick a lock.  Don't add inventory management routines that only serve as a chore.  What real world analogy is there to a mechanical lockpick disappearing every time you use it?  Having haxxors use batteries is fine.

I really dislike the concept of consumable lockpicks as well, the micromanagement created by its implementation is simply too much.

[joejoefine]

I think I'm okay with lock picks being a resource, although I would request that there be some explanation that makes sense in the Underrail world as to why they're used up after a successful pick (Deus Ex lockpicks maybe).

But the main problem is just that it can make things cumbersome based on how the quickbar works currently, because it would take up quite a few slots (6 for all levels of picks and haxxors!) if you want to speed the process, which takes away from the space that could be used for all the other skills you may want on the quickbar. Besides that if you don't have the feat that allows you to pick locks and steal faster it would become very very tedious due to the slowness of it all.

I feel the best solution is when you try to open a container or a door it shows you the level of difficulty (i.e. locked: Level 5 Electronic). That removes the guesswork of figuring out what level of lock you need to buy. While this could also be used to reduce the need of trying three different lock picks, there is also the problem of quickbar clutter. To reduce that, I would suggest that you have two general skills "pick lock" and "hack" that could be used successfully only if you have the required resource, which it would then take automatically from your inventory.

Also I think the inventory is going to get quite large with the amount of items that are being added. It would be nice if we could divide it into different packs; i.e. crafting materials, lock picks and haxxors, weapons and armor, etc.