Also for the forced breaking, maybe add corruption. This way a player who stays and keeps rolling the “di” has some sort of punishment vs a player using picks?
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I love the basic concept here, but I dislike the idea of random dice rolls to determine success, especially in a game where neither player skill or character attributes are likely to affect the result. Few things in RPGs are more frustrating than repeatedly trying, and failing, to pick a lock and breaking your lockpicks in the process. The crowning moment is that after 11 tries you end up with a broken iron sword and two onions for loot.
I’d rather have a random chance of triggering an encounter with a watchman or guard dog or just the person living in the house eating a hamburger every time you pick a lock. In any case, you’d manage to pick the lock and (if you beat the guarding NPC) get loot, possibly from the NPC as well as from inside the house. Provided that lockpicks are one-use items that are consumed upon use, you could implement a cost (especially with higher-tier lockpicks) to lockpicking so it becomes an investment rather than a gamble.
But that’s just my personal preference regarding RPGs and lockpicking.
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I’ve got to agree with Kapoteeni as a personal taste matter when it comes to rng for these sorts of things.
I don’t know whether this could be in any way useful - but I played a game some years ago (Return to Krondor) that had one of the best lock-picking systems I’ve encountered in a game, because it felt like it combined player skill, character skill and tool quality in a fair way.
When you entered a lock-picking situation it opened up a small circular dial with a central needle swinging back and forth - one arc at the bottom of the circle was marked in green, and a pair of arcs at either side of the top were marked in red. ‘All’ the player had to do was stop the needle in the green and avoid the red (green unlocks, red breaks pick, rest of circle just a fail) - but if the mouse moved during the process, the needle wouldn’t respond right, so you had to hold it steady and time the click. Character skill affected the speed of the needle (slower movement with higher skill), and tool quality affected the size of the green and red arcs. So you needed a steady hand and good timing, but it got easier as the character’s skill or tool quality improved.
Another option with this style of approach (that they didn’t use), is you could actually have two different qualities for tools - one a crafted quality (how well made it is) affecting the green arc, and the second a material strength quality affecting the size of the red arcs. That way you could have a crudely made pick from strong materials have little chance of success, but also little chance of breaking, while a master-crafted pick made from delicate materials might have a good chance of getting through the lock, but if you fail it’ll be more likely to break than not. (Or, of course, you could have a master-crafted star metal pick that would probably have a high chance of success (wide green arc) and low chance of breaking (narrow red arcs).
I don’t know if it’s useful, or even something the engine would work with, but maybe there’s something in there 
Very cool work. RNG as a mechanic is rarely satisfying, though if there are meaningful ways to manipulate the odds to be in your favor (no Hunger Games!) it can be interesting.
Anything that gives more gameplay that doesn’t rely on other players is always great, I believe this game could have absolutely shone as a dedicated single-player experience in another time and place. (I know that isn’t the game Funcom set out to develop of course).
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I took another person’s “spawn a boss on repeat failures” idea and tweaked it somewhat. I may still spawn a boss in certain conditions, but for now what I’ve done is this.
In areas with multiple houses, each failure of any house puts a marker on the player and each attempt at breaking in checks to see how many markers the player has.
After a certain number of failures, you spawn a “wave” of angry townspeople or villagers from area.
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Well, you’ve kind of explained why it has to be that way in your own statement. There is no real way to give players “skills or attributes” in this way (based on what mods I currently have knowledge of) so I have to make it RNG based.
But there is such a thing as being more prepared. The higher the quality of lockpick, the greater chance there is of success. In the case of low quality targets, the chance of success with a high quality lockpick is 100%. So you really won’t ever break 11 picks and then get a junk iron sword.
I appreciate the feedback though. I’ll definitely keep it in mind as continue to build this out.
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That’s pretty cool, but WAY outside of my ability level and skill set at this time.
It reminds me somewhat of lockpicking in the mmo ESO that I played. Something like that would be ideal, but is just not feasible at this time. Maybe one day I’ll get enough dev kit skills to actually “change the game” but right now all I can do is “do interesting things” with stuff that has already been made by Funcom or other/better modders.
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Thanks, I agree. It has everything it needs for a great single player game. Amazing lore. Pleasant graphics and world design. Fun combat (1000% better than Skyrim in the combat department).
So, that’s basically exactly what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to take what Funcom made (survival sandbox) and mash it together with a “skryim-like” experience, plus throw in some MMO inspired dungeons and arenas.
So, just an update. I’ve started incorporating some of the ideas I’ve gotten. The new village I made now tracks your failed break-in attempts and spawns a wave of enemies after a certain number of attempts.
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Funny, when writing my first reply to this thread, I was thinking exactly the same game as an example of a system I would like to see more often. It was engaging, it was rewarding (both from the point of investing character development into lockpicking, as well as practising playing the feature as a player).
But making something like that is likely impossible with Conan Exiles’s current modding tools, unfortunately.
Perhaps the success chance could at least benefit from investing into certain stats (Agility or Accuracy?). I don’t know if Feats can be tied to something like that, but those would be another way to raise your Lockpicking skill" if the game engine cooperates.
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As much as a more immersive investing of abilities would be good, in Conan Exiles, investing just men’s a quick yellow lotus drink. Investing in a build is not a true mechanic of CE because of this. All players can be all builds if they want. Opposite of investing. So the best way to make it close to investing is the RNG of Lockport break/failure.
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I hadn’t quite thought of it that way. Since I stick with PvE we get very little resetting of feats/stats so it hadn’t occurred to me that it’s a pretty common tactic.
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I need to look more closely at the mods that are available but afaik most of the “builds” mods offered are all RP centered, which is to say that there is no real combat cost or benefit built into them. And on a PVP server that means there is no reason to spec into anything other than the one build needed for the PVE lockpicking. Which means it’s just a formality and therefore pointless.
There needs to be benefits and costs and decisions for a “attribute build” system to be valuable.
For example, if a mod could make it so that “sneak” was a benefit that let you do extra damage for your “first hit” or something but made you take twice as much damage from all other sources.
