Lockpicks need fixing > Leads to Class Trade Diversity

I think lockpicks at the moment are not worth the $ to buy or use.

Being early into the NF campaign... they are not worth buying at all... keys are much cheaper and guaranteed.

If I find a lockpick I would sell it... having it break on the first try is a waste... you could see it and buy alot more keys in its place... so whats the point there?

Now if lockpicks had a guaranteed 1-3 uses before breaking then it would be a gamble but not be useless... Some of us noob toons don't have high lucky titles or wisdom but even that appears to not be helping many of you uber lucky chest runners...

Do we need a key ring? Yes. That could be added to the storage options right up there with the belt pouch and 2 bags...

Do the lockpicks need to be revamped? Yes. The functional feature is alittle off.

Should the Assassin class get a sole BONUS to using lockpicks? Yes. They are the craftiest (is that a word?) class ... they should get a nice +25% against breakage on using them. Why? Assassins still need some love... and they are the closest to Rogues that we have at the moment. Makes common sense.

Why should the Asssassin class get a bonus for lockpicks? I could envision that each class gets a special bonus to something... it would really enhance the diversity of the game alittle more and add reasoning to function for each class. All of these should involve trade skills and not combat.

Examples of class diversity and ideas:

• Warrior - Bonus to holiday use items (+25% longer life of holiday item)
• Monk - Bonus to Shrine skill usages (+15% longer shrine buffs)
• Elementalist - Bonus to getting rare salvage items on salvage (+15% chance)
• Ranger - Bonus to salvaging items (+25% additional salvage)
• Mesmer - Bonus to merchant costs (+15% bonus to sells / -15% to buys)
• Necromancer - Bonus to removing runes from items (-25% vs breaking item)
• Assassin - Bonus to using lockpicks (-25% vs breakage)
• Ritualist - Bonus to dye mixing (25% chance one dye will not be used up)
• Paragon - Bonus to weapon customizations (+5% Damage on all weapons)
• Dervish - Bonus to removing insignias from items (-25% vs breaking item)

These apply to only the character involved and do not grant bonuses across the party while in a group.

Simple class skill diversity

Well lock picks aren't that feasible for people that just want to use them in normal mode with low treasure hunter/lucky ranks. They are mostly intended for hardmode since I believe there aren't any other kind of keys that work there. In general, I don't see any problem with their current setup.

Keyrings- we've all heard the masses crying out for them, though they really don't have much to do with this topic.

Professions in this game don't have those kind of advantages as Anet is about balance and doesn't like to give advantages over others. That might force people to make characters of certain professions just so they can be "ideal" for a certain task.

Lockpicks are guarunteed for one use, and a chance at multiple use. Keys aren't. The lockpick is pointless if you use it on a low-end chest... which is why you don't use it on low end chests.

Having them on a guarunteed 1-3 uses makes buying keys that cost 800k-1.5k redundant, since buying a lockpick would be cheaper. You need a better solution.

I'd definately like seeing this, or something similar added to GW, would rock me RP gamin' hehe

.... While I don't disagree with the idea of giving different primary classes particular bonuses.... persay..... the ones you have suggested are horribly imbalanced.

Furthermore, I believe actually finding a selection that WERE balanced would be exceptionally difficult and might not actually be worth the trouble.


I mean... with what you're suggesting, it would become essentially necessary to have a particular class for each particular job. Everyone would want to have a Necromancer with high Seeker of Wisdom and Treasure Hunter at the very least for superior salvage. Everyone would then transfer their items over to a Mesmer character to merch them...

The whole process would get convoluted and ridiculous.

How about a keyring thats account-based? Yes?
Since I don't feel like buying more keys or switching between characters to move my keys around because i'm in a certain area but my other character has the keys. >.> and moving it in and out of storage, you forget to do that.

They seriously need to up the %age of survival. You can guarantee everyone will spend this weekend afk so they can boost there Lucky title to help with this. 10% base chance is ridiculous for 1.5k. I've got a 23% chance of them surviving, that would be fine if the drops out of them weren't so shit. The last 3 chests i've opened, 2 were purple, 1 was a Non-elite Necromancers Tome.

Class specific bonus' should go no further than Primary Attributes. Some of those ideas are ridiculously infair to other professions.

Unless you're in Hard Mode and / or have at least a rank in each of Lucky and Treasure Hunter.... just get keys. Seriously.

I have Treasure 6 and Luck 3, and it's still a little ridiculous - unless you use them in specific areas that have potential for rare skins.

I agree though, that adding these kind of bonuses to classes would be very difficult to balance, and just result in people moving stuff around chars.

Well it would also open the door to alittle economy depth....

Purpose: Keep you playing longer. Keeping you tied deeper into cross class
character usage. Balance... it really isn't that bad... seeing all this is PvE anyway... Just fix all the percentages to 10%.... now honestly.. how much uber is one person going to be over another? Not much really... just subtle simple class additions to add some trade depth using what is already in place and not creating much work on the back end for the developers and content creators.

Being rank 2 treasure hunter i have ONLY kept 3 lockpicks. Though i feel i get better drops than with normal keys, I get rather annoyed that its almost a guaranteed break for the lockpick for me.Ends up being a very pricey chest run compared to my other runs with normal keys that cost 600g.>.<

I think the price for lockpick is ok but non-Elona items still uninscibable make lockpicks quiet not profitable.

I have long been suggesting a class 'skill' diversity. But I dont see your suggestion as 'balanced'...

I would think the diversity should encourage players to take along a certain class /or class secondary to proceed in a quest or mission. The classes would have a 'ninth' skill. always equipped, that does nothing in battle.. but rather enhances pve gameplay.

something like this:

Assassin's: lockpicking. Entrance to a gate or chest that is otherwise impassable.. this would effect the whole group. (a special chest that gives rewards for the whole group.... more realistic anyway... rather than having everyone use a key on the same chest )

Mesmer's: Lyssa's persuasion. certain Npc's would give you different story arcs with more rewarding paths if a mesmer were to 'persuade' him.

Elementalist's:elemental spells changing your enviroment: A fire spell to melt an iced entrance... or burn a plant covering a dungeon gate.. etc...

Ranger: Melandru's communion with nature: skills that allow you to communicate with animal/plant life that will lead you to game secrets...

Monk: dwayna's prayers: removes an enviromental curse from a land or people... these would be like the enviromental effects in the game now (http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Aspect_of_Exhaustion) ... but more powerful. So a monk 'must' be present to remove the effects.

Necro: grenths Curse: similar to dwaynas prayer... but it universally curses a land/enemy that would otherwise be too difficult.

Warrior: Physical prowess: The only one who can jump across a ravine to lower a bridge on the other side, A village will not let your live unless the warrior challenges and defeats their greatest fighter... etc...

Ritualist:Summon Spirit Npc's: the party comes to a tomb or graveyard and are battleing skeletons... once they find a certain grave the ritualist can summon the spirit of the fallen to progress the story and find clues to removing the curse...

Paragon: leadership: the ability to rally damage/heal dealing npcs that will make the quest/mission much easier or turn some enemies to friendlies.

Dervish: hmmm I need help on this one... I have no idea what to say...



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
But anyway, you get the picture...

"what about if that particular class is not around in the town/outpost to continue the quest?"

~you could make these skills available to the secondary perhapse.

~you could just have a henchman in that town to proceed.

You lost my support when you said Assassins should have a bonus.

i have to agree that the chances of keeping a lock pick are ridiculous...i am tier 3 of chests and still usually break on first try....and the price of the is a bit much....the only other keys with that price range are for elite missions which have a chance to actually drop some of the Rare items....chaos axe...etc... the chance of getting a rare skin to drop from a HM chest in a non elite area are zero. So either broaden the drops that a HM chest can drop or lower the prices of the picks...how about throwing some of the HoH chest items into the mix on hard mode chests..would be nice to see some one other than a pvp toon get a truely rare item.

here is my 2 cents -

Yes lockpicks are all about hardmode if you're considering value, only the highest level areas/chests in normal might be the exception.

As it's the only way to open hardmode chests, it is the universal hardmode key. Frankly I'm sure the biggest reason it came to be was because they never made things like keyrings and wouldn't it have gotten utterly ridiculous, now having this reason to span all chapters and areas and not in linear fashion, to have us manage the unruly key mess that would have followed.

Part of the goofiness with this stems from how titles work. Salvaging, and now lockpicking, get bonuses from titles on individual characters only. To build this up individual characters need to be opening up the chests, identifying the golds, or going AFK for days to get winning tickets...

This means for such an open-ended rich game with many characters you're funneling a lot of goods and play time to one character, and that character will be the most effective, even though all your 20 level characters have access. That's one reason I didn't get into the salvage insanity - at least that base was 50% so although those putting the [crazy?] amounts of time into it would get real value, I already do more than enough item jockeying.

But now another one has come along, lockpicks, and only a 10% base. Ouch. Even modest gains (a couple levels of luck and treasure hunter) double that number and you go from keeping a lockpick 1 in 10 to 1 in 5. But what does that mean? Are you ready to have a primary hard mode hunter?

So many titles and their mechanics and effects don't work for me in this game. I'm 'functionally' driven so maybe it's just me but lets look at a couple.

Skill hunter - why on earth do you have primary skill elites from other classes? There may be some rare exceptions but that's the most dramatic, most secondary elites will never mix well. We already have a title that rewards silly skill capping on a character - it's called Survivor (3). Skill hunter to me means you didn't have anything better to do.

Luck - I mean come on, afk ftw? I never considered going after such a lame excuse of a title to be 'proud' of, but now I too will have to hope I can leave my pc and internet connection on indefinately [maybe that's where the luck comes in?] so I can score better lockpick results on one character. Yay?

Treasure Hunter, Wisdom - again drives usage through one character and encourages mindless activity that ANet tries to discourage (treasure runs) and arguably an odd marketplace, sell me your golds so I can ID them. Yah.

Well I got a little off track but I wonder what GW2 will bring, these are steps I don't get. Sure they want us to grind more, but we're not paying monthly so we don't need to be utter grind crazy. A lot of this should be across account - I brought up new level 20 pves, is it really a great game mechanic to make me wonder who should be opening chests, IDing the gold, salvaging, sitting idle in town for tickets for days, using lockpicks - playing hard mode?

Class diveristy has some interesting ideas but in the end you have many people keying on loot so you have to be careful. Per the OPs post you're best move is an Assassin solo artist - that's the only one with a real bonus that has to be ployed in the adventure areas. After you bought your lockpicks with your mesmer. And salvage with the right character per the list.. I mean omg no offense but I absolutelyu hate that idea. As you'll note above, I already object to having to do this kind of thing based on individual titles, you want to make it class based [as well] - and yeah it's not balanced.

clawofcrimson I do like some of your thoughts, also it suggests some new better across-account titles - personally I think it's much more useful and worth a title if you've played/have all pve characters and took them to completion - here it might include the different paths/avenues you had to take. Skill hunter should turn into you have all skills/elites for all classes on that class, which makes a heck of a lot more sense. Heck my Ele has a LOT of 2ndary skills and elites used to great effect, but I let my other primary classes produce the bulk of their unlocks. [exception of course being chp1 release, only 4 slots - 3 characters unlocked all for their primary/secondary]

I think we'll get some differentian in GW2 but not by classes but more by race with abilities. Maybe I need to dig into that, I didn't get the PC mag, but frankly I don't have the PC for it either heh. I just hope they refine their title -> bonuses and consider more cross-character as it can end up driving some goofy gameplay choices such as funneling and what char plays an area.

Something along the lines of getting Deity Bonuses from relevant Shrines for free for the party... and slightly boosted ones?


Not claiming that I actually agree with your suggestions necessarily... but just thought I'd help you along.

*edited to correct the math and simplify it*

The true value of a lockpick is (chance = chance of lockpick NOT breaking):
1500 + 1500 * chance + 1500 * chance^2 + 1500 * chance^3 + 1500 * chance^4 + etc... the sequence goes on forever. That sequence converges to 1500 / chance.

@ default 10%
1500 / 0.9 = 1667g
@ 12% w/ lucky 1
1500 / 0.88 = 1705g

So by getting lucky 1, you save 38g per lockpick. Wiki says the cheapest way to get lucky 1 costs 44.1k. You'll need to use 1164 lockpicks to break even. If you open 7 a day, it will take you nearly half a year to break even. Then, every 44th lockpick is "free."

@ 14% w/ lucky 2
1500 / 0.86 = 1744g
Getting lucky 2 saves you 40g per lockpick over lucky 1. Lucky 2 takes another 44.1k over lucky 1. You'll need to use 1112 more lockpicks to break even. After that, every time you use a lockpick, you save 78g. So every 21.5th lockpick is "free" - after you break even.

@ 16% w/ lucky 3
1500 / 0.84 = 1786g
Getting lucky 3 saves you 42g per lockpick over lucky 2. Lucky 3 takes another 132.4k over lucky 2. You'll need to use 3188 additional lockpicks to break even. After that, every time you use a lockpick, you save 119g. Every 14th additional lockpick is "free."

Get the lucky title if you want the lucky title. Getting it to help w/ lockpicks is a horrible investment.

Great. So now a group will need to bring a completely useless class into some high end area just so that at the end they'll get a chest?

This is guaranteed way for leechers to come along, just because they are necessary. "STFU or I quit and you don't get chest."

^^ agreed

however, i'm not very happy with the non-breakage percentage on lockpicks. i've used ~50 lockpicks so far and only salvaged 3. i have lucky rank 2 and treasure hunter rank 1. i know my titles are minimal, but still...there's room for improvement.

What about the fact that in normal mode you get a 30% boost. At the highest level you have 71% chance of the pick not breaking. You could open several chests before it breaks. This will also include the elite areas where the keys already cost 1.5k. With a normal key you get one shot. With a lock pick you have a good chance of using it again. I agree about hard mode % being too low. At the highest it should at least be over 50%.

The only thing im not happy with is the purples comming out of hardmode chests. WTB hardmode chests that are actually worth opening with lockpicks, else lockpicks have a drastically reduced value than that 1700 someone mentioned, more like 200

Fully support the professions getting bonuses as long as it's only for side quests and noon relevant events/areas. Anything for the storyline should disable the profession bonuses.

Give's each profession some importance depending on what the party wants to do at that time.

I really like clawofcrimson's ideas.

well as of this comming weekend anyone who has a lucky or unlucky title to me will be worthless. this title has gone to the crapper because people will be going afk all weekend for it so they can lock pick.. so dont come monday showing your lvl 5 or 2 or we lucky and think your cool. cause you are not just a sad player who wasted money. do like these guys say and go puy the picks it is alot cheaper.lol

1.5k keys were dropped to 1.25k. It is always a good idea to use a lockpick on a 1250g key chest in normal mode.
For a 750g key chest, you need lucky 5 + treasure hunter 2 for it to be a good idea. Or lucky 3 + treasure hunter 3. Or lucky 2 + treasure hunter 4. Lucky 1 doesn't help w/ 750g keys.
For a 600g chest, you need lucky 4 + treasure hunter 4 for it to be a good idea. Or lucky 3 + treasure hunter 5. Or lucky 1 + treasure hunter 6.

I'm sure nobody bothers with the sub-600g chests anymore.
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Lockpick

Actually buddy, it's just that your treasure hunter/lucky titles suck. For me, lockpicks are worth buying for any key that's generally more than 450g at the merchant. Also, lockpicks provide the convenience of not having to constantly go into storage and switching keys, so it should be a little more pricey if your character isn't developed (think about expert vs superior salvage kits). Early in the NF campaign? Who actually buys those 50g or whatever Istan keys? Seriously. What are you thinking? Also, wisdom has nothing to do with it. Shows how much you know about lockpicks.

Unfortunately, the answer is no to all your questions. We already got more storage, and no matter how much storage/key rings/crafting storage Anet gives, people are going to be ungrateful and ask for more. Why bother? Functional feature being off? It works to save money on good characters, and for other characters you pay a little extra for convenience. Perfect. Assassins getting bonus on lockpicking has nothing to do with the fact that everyone thinks they suck in PvE. Makes common sense? All that change'll do is make sins teh-uber-chest-running class. People will still hate them.


WTF Epic fail list. So basically people are going to make a level 2 mesmer to buy/sell stuff to merchants, eles/rangers/necros/derv to salvage, rits to mix dyes, sins to run chests. That proposal makes absolutely no sense, and is completely lame >.>

No, just no. Your ideas suck. End of story.

Actually if you open canthan chests, you get a 35% boost (since the keys are 450g each), which makes you retain it over 3/4 of the time. The boost can be up to 55% (for ascalon keys), meaning you have up to a 96% chance of retaining the lockpick in normal mode.

And yes, hard mode items need to be better (or have much higher gold %) or else it's totally not worth it. For a typical level 20, they probably have about ~15% of retaining the key, and even for the more advanced chest runners, they only have ~30% of keeping it. Those are really low percentages for how many purples come out of those chests :P

Why don't we each just have the same profession with the same skills and then we can have total balance. /sarcasm

A suggestion if implemented would have to be play tested to work out the balances. Most role playing games give different professions different elements besides their primary attribute.

I agree that lockpicks at the current break rate versus cost are too expensive, considering the Thomas Crapper stuff that you get.

Yes, why not?

Why should the letter 'A' in front of my name say I'm playing an assassin. Why not let my build determine what I'm playing, rather than some pre-set name.

This aproach solves so many balance, advancement and character development problems that level/class based games look like stone age.

The reason it's not used is because majority of players are physically incapable of understanding how a game without levels works. This was proven by every RPG that tried it.

Average player wants to be a number and a letter. E20. A14. M9.

Those that claim they want better character development actually want longer grind, so that they can outgrind others and win. And levels give a nice way to determine that. E20 is more powerful than E19. And E19 pwns E18 noobs.

I'm sorry but giving diff characters a bonus is the stupidest idea i've ever heard of

Why would they go give the assassins a 25% base???!? thats nuts why even bother with my treasure hunter on anyother char.....

Besides what part of assassins should give them this lock picking base. I mean assassins are killers not theives.

HEY I know LETS Give Sins the Power to Shadow step inside of a chest and then POP right back out like FREAKIN David Copperfield!!!!!!!!!

read the bottom of my post... you could either..

~take a henchi

~use secondary (although it would really defeat the purpose)


And no class is utterly useless... It would truly stimulate more interesting pve groups.

I agree this would make trouble for missions... but side quests and exploring?? those areas are void of immersive gameplay as it is...

ok lockpicks are not a problem i think this was said earlier but in normal mode you have a 40% chance base to kkep pick..... i have to say tahts pretty good, only in HM so you get a 10% chance....

oh and about you class thing i gotta say HELL NO yes my 2 cents

OP: While the lockpicks are a bit off the whole bonuses per class that you perposed were unbalanced and horrible. As a monk I think that the whole bonus of shrine use is slightly asinine. While I do use the shrines as I'm sure many do I could care less that the bonuses last just a little longer. On top of balancing issues all the unique bonuses would cause, youd also have many people upset that one class get X bonus while another got Y bonus. Best bet would be to just not have them at all and tinker with picks some till they work better.

/not signed

there are problems with the current system that could be tweaked but none of the ways you suggested make any sense, are all extremely unbalanced and seem to be aimed at favoring a certain profession more than others, mainly the assassin. None of the suggested buffs for the other classes even comes close to the buff that the assassin gets, and the mesmer buff gets completely cancelled out all together with the +15 here and -15 there. Also assassins are not the most clever class, they are the cheapest class, most overpowered class next to rits, and they keep getting buffed for reason I will never understand. All the while mesmers keep having their skills nerfed. Mesmers are powerful and can be extremely powerful in the perfect situation, underpowed in others and that is the way they were intended to be and why they take some intelligence to play. They feed off of the imbalances of the other team in a way, unless you just want to play constant e denial because that is what they are being limited too by the people that keep nerfing them.

Anyway back to the post. There is no problem with the lock pick system. The only thing that I see as a problem is the randomization of the drops. It would be nice if the rare drops could be traded for something at a trader in order to be useful, sort of like the gemstone system of NF, where you could accumulate so many of them and trade them for what you want. Maybe instead of a gold weapon you could get a gold nugget and so many nuggets could be traded for the weapons, mods, or tomes that you want at a trader, or sold as a rare crafting material for a fair amount of plat, arould 3-5plat seems reasonable to me, or be traded or sold among players.

Here's an idea, add a generic skill line that all pve characters have access to, it could be for lockpicks, weekend events, whatever. In it there could be a skill that ups your chance of keeping your lock pick or not breaking a key by about 3-5% per level.

So if you are willing to put 12 levels into it and waste a slot on your skill bar, you'll be able to keep your keys/lockpicks 36%-60% of the time with the skill alone.

This is not D&D and assassins are not thieves, they are Assassins, they do not stealth, they slip.
Their primary skill is not 'dexterity' is 'criticals'.
You can't open a chest mashing it with a dagger until you have a critical that brakes the lock.

Classes have two differences. And only two:
- Primary attribute.
- Armor (base, insignia and runes).
No more. And I don't think they are having more anytime soon.

I only would go for the account keyring. Something like this:
- A 'keyring' menu item is added to the menu, grayed.
- Pay a Xulai representative for it, and the keyring becomes usable.
- To have it on screen, drag and drop the meny icon.
- To put or take key from it, click the icon, a panel like the materials storage panel would appear, but with ky icons instead of materials.
- There would be a limit of 250 keys of each type and lockpicks.
- The keys would be shared for the account, and the chests would check that panel and you inventory to see if you have keys.

Hm... yup, that would be a nice keyring for me.