Game: Skyrim

[Animeniax]

Yeah.. in the big picture it's largely useless. It's like pickpocketting... unless I run into a boss that happens to have an awesome dagger - in which case it would be superb to simply steal it off him then sneak-kill him with it.

I was having trouble running out of lockpicks until I started buying them from the thieve's guild. I was trying to work out if the audio does anything to point you in the right direction when you turn the move the pick (without rotating the lock), but I couldn't find any patterns. Now Oblivion's lock-picking system was one that made sense. A lot of people didn't like it, but the idea was good. It was hard and gruelling, but the human player (us) can learn to accel at it by nailing down the timing/audio cues.

This one's based on chance more so than skill.

I think it's set so that the more difficult level locks require a set number of tries (depending on your skill level at lock-picking) before you can be successful. I've jiggled the lock in several directions, then come back to the same location I had previously tried and the lock will turn on the 2nd try. I'll investigate to see if I can find an exact number of tries for the different difficulty levels, though it will probably be inexact.