Summary
Obliviondoesn’t have perks like its successor,Skyrim. Instead, you level individual skills and unlock abilities at each mastery level: for example, a journeyman archer can focus their vision while aiming, and an expert marksman even has a chance to paralyse targets. It’s a simple enough system, but Virtuos' remaster has made some changes to how lockpicking works, and it’s not going down well with fans.
“Security milestones in the remaster are functionally useless,“u/ABSOLUTE_RADIATOR posted to over 2,000 upvotes. “Pretty surprised I don’t see this brought up more often. In [the] original Oblivion, each milestone in the security skill made it so that one more pin in the lock stays up on failure. So if I’m picking a hard lock with 52 security, every time I break a pick, at least the first two pins will stay up.
So that’s what it is! I thought something seemed wrong, but it’s been a literal decade, so I couldn’t tell what was off — u/Al3jandr0
“The remaster has flipped this on its head, and the milestones dictate how many pins fall instead of how many stay up. In the same example, the remaster sees your journeyman security and says ‘only three pins fall when you break a pick.’ So if I’ve got three pins set and fail the last one,they still all fall.”
Not everyone is convinced this is a purposeful change, however. “I think it’s bugged,” u/Delicious-Golf-8487 suggested. “I’ve had the perks work some of the time, while others, I’ll lose all my pins.”
u/verminkween added, “Also confident on it being a bug, because even at expert security, all the pins still fall. I’ve never had even a single pin stay up when a pick breaks.”
Definitelyreport that as a bugsince it’s breaking expected behaviour from the original — u/fancychxn
Glitched or not, as many point out, the way security works right now only makes it a valuable skill once you reach expert or master. But by that point,you probably won’t need the help.
“They Know Lockpicking Is Easy And Didn’t Bother With Making The Passives Useful”
While many argue that security was useless in the original, too, and thatthe minigame is easy enough to figure out and master(especially if you just spam auto unlock withthe unbreakable Skeleton Key), u/TheUnderfrykte argued that they’re missing the point: “It’s not about whether or not it’s hard, it’s about there being next to no functionality to the perks and no reward to the system when there’s supposed to be. They simply mixed it up and got it the wrong way around, I’m pretty sure, don’t think they meant to change it like this.”
One player put forward a pretty good suggestion for how security could be made more valuable. “It’d be kind of nice to have alternative perks like Skyrim has,” u/Silas-on-Reddit put forward. “At level 50, you can lockpick without getting noticed, or level 75: get more gold in locked chests, etc. Things that genuinely reward the player for investing time in security.”
u/kybotica even gave the idea an in-universe explanation, suggesting that higher level security allows you to find “hidden compartments” within chests that yield better loot. Maybe instead of five gold and some tongs, you can find a few rare gems tucked away behind the back panel.
While sweeping changes like this are unlikely to happen, hopefully modders will pick up the slack and give the skill a much-needed overhaul. For now, fans would just be happy to see security ‘fixed’, or at least working as it used to in the original game.
