The in-game actual odds of forcing locks on chests

whitecrow

I seem to fail much more than I should as well.
Simple locks should be guaranteed.
I don't know if it's confirmation bias but I seem to have better luck if I slide the pick across the tumblers before I hit the force key.

kargen27

I used to force the locks all the time. Plenty of picks and not really concerned with XP. Then I failed on one chest and another player swept in and grabbed it before it reset for me. My mind being the tormentor it is has convinced me I missed out on the best drop ever. So now I go ahead and work them all to get them open.

FrancisCrawford

omnidoh wrote: »

A logically realistic sample rate would mean that if I fail 3 times, I should definitely succeed on the 4th, since 3 failures and 1 success would be a 25% chance to succeed out of 4 total attempts.

That's not how random chance works.

FrancisCrawford

Pyr0xyrecuprotite wrote: »

@goatlyonesub17_ESO, I'll echo @M_Volsung in advising you to wait 4-5 seconds between accessing the chest and forcing the lock. There seems to be a hidden "charge-up" phase when forcing locks, whereby your chance of success increases (up to the nominal maximum chance) by about 15% per second after you open the lockpicking interface. Clicking immediately on the R to force the lock has something like a 50% or more chance of failure regardless of how high you have levelled your lockpicking passive.

Interesting. I am certain from anecdata that I am not getting force probabilities as high as those advertised. But I can't rule out the possibility that your theory is a complete explanation of the problem.

what_the

Slyclone wrote: »

This is why I manually pick since day 1.

This^^
I have never ever force-picked a lock in all my years of ESO, never saw the need to.
It's really not hard to master opening locks, and it only takes a few seconds to manually do it, so *shrug*.

Czeri

Ooh, someone else who noticed the official percentages are suspect. Oddly, based on my own gaming experience, intermediate locks seem to have the highest failure rate. And if they do fail, it takes at least two more tries to get them open. It got to the point that when I force an intermediate lock I'm actually pleasantly surprised if it opens...

Amottica

I came to this thread expecting to see a listing off odds for forcing the locks but this is a discussion about failures and I would suggest that context is missing.

The thread @VaranisArano linked in the 4th post of this thread provides solid context as they provide the total number of attempts for each chest level and the success rate they found. 1300 attempts with a simple lock is a good size sample.

However, the second thread they linked has very different findings. While we do not know the chest difficulty they were looking at, the findings in that thread do show significantly lower success rates.

Maybe we need a third attempt that is well documented in a similar manner.

VaranisArano

I'd also really like if those of you complaining shared your data. My data, as linked above for 2000 sinple and intermediate overland chests, was quite close to the stated results. Most of my farming was done in Wrothgar.

Simple Chests theoretically have an 85% success rate (with full force lock passives).
My findings: 1,167 success/1,368 attempts
My Success Rate: 85.3%

Intermediate Chests theoretically have an 80% success rate.
My findings: 616 successes/747 attempts
My Success rate: 82.4%

@Amottica, when I've discussed this with Rittings, their lower 55-60% results were for Thieves Guild heists instances. Which makes me suspicious that ZOS may have fudged with the RNG in the heists.

Amottica

VaranisArano wrote: »

I'd also really like if those of you complaining shared your data. My data, as linked above for 2000 sinple and intermediate overland chests, was quite close to the stated results. Most of my farming was done in Wrothgar.

Simple Chests theoretically have an 85% success rate (with full force lock passives).
My findings: 1,167 success/1,368 attempts
My Success Rate: 85.3%

Intermediate Chests theoretically have an 80% success rate.
My findings: 616 successes/747 attempts
My Success rate: 82.4%

@Amottica, when I've discussed this with Rittings, their lower 55-60% results were for Thieves Guild heists instances. Which makes me suspicious that ZOS may have fudged with the RNG in the heists.

Your suggestion concerning the other findings would make sense. Not suggesting it would make sense for Zenimax to have different designs for the heists. Merely that they are very specific chests so their design could be different.

Paulytnz

Slyclone wrote: »

This is why I manually pick since day 1.

Once I have the skill line maxed I never manually pick except for endeavor quests. Dude did you know that even a successful picking with auto will use up a lockpick? I have to use up my literal 50 stacks some how. Can't sell them to vendors (worth 0 gold) and people rarely buy them on guild traders even for a measly 1k per stack!

Use em if you got em dude!

Amottica

Paulytnz wrote: »

Slyclone wrote: »

This is why I manually pick since day 1.

Once I have the skill line maxed I never manually pick except for endeavor quests. Dude did you know that even a successful picking with auto will use up a lockpick? I have to use up my literal 50 stacks some how. Can't sell them to vendors (worth 0 gold) and people rarely buy them on guild traders even for a measly 1k per stack!

Use em if you got em dude!

@Paulytnz I just successfully picked a lock and it did not consume a lockpick. I confirmed how many I had before and after and there was no change.

Adding info. If you fail it will consume a pick. If you start and the timer runs out before finishing it consumed a lockpick. If the timer starts and no attempt is made to actually pick the lock and the timer runs out it sometimes consumes a pick and sometimes does not.

spartaxoxo

omnidoh wrote: »

A logically realistic sample rate would mean that if I fail 3 times, I should definitely succeed on the 4th, since 3 failures and 1 success would be a 25% chance to succeed out of 4 total attempts.

That's not how random chance works. Every individual pull remains 1 out of 4 odds to get that item.

Amottica

omnidoh wrote: »

A logically realistic sample rate would mean that if I fail 3 times, I should definitely succeed on the 4th, since 3 failures and 1 success would be a 25% chance to succeed out of 4 total attempts.

That's not how they write their math, so yes, it's possible to "fail" 3 or more times in a row with an 85% chance, which as we all know, is just <insert expletive here>,

I agree with @spartaxoxo as it is not how random chances work since each attempt is its own attempt.

virtus753

Amottica wrote: »

Paulytnz wrote: »

Slyclone wrote: »

This is why I manually pick since day 1.

Once I have the skill line maxed I never manually pick except for endeavor quests. Dude did you know that even a successful picking with auto will use up a lockpick? I have to use up my literal 50 stacks some how. Can't sell them to vendors (worth 0 gold) and people rarely buy them on guild traders even for a measly 1k per stack!

Use em if you got em dude!

@Paulytnz I just successfully picked a lock and it did not consume a lockpick. I confirmed how many I had before and after and there was no change.

Adding info. If you fail it will consume a pick. If you start and the timer runs out before finishing it consumed a lockpick. If the timer starts and no attempt is made to actually pick the lock and the timer runs out it sometimes consumes a pick and sometimes does not.

Successfully picking "with auto" (i.e. forcing the lock) will always consume the lockpick.

goatlyonesub17_ESO

I had six failures on an intermediate lock. Odds are 1 in 15625.

Ishtarknows

With maximum lockpick chance I failed twice to open the trivial lock in Coldharbour jail. Hilarious when you consider all my low level characters without legerdemain get that first time.

virtus753

goatlyonesub17_ESO wrote: »

I had six failures on an intermediate lock. Odds are 1 in 15625.

With 20 million accounts, including 18k logged in via Steam alone right now (which doesn’t count native launcher logins or other platforms), this type of thing is going to happen a lot more frequently than one might think. If all of those 18k people forced an intermediate lock, it would be within expectations for your situation to happen to at least one of them. We don’t have figures for how many intermediate locks are forced over given time intervals, so it’s impossible for us to know how often to expect that situation to arise. But it seems realistically possible for it to happen every day, or at least multiple times per week, with that many people playing. I’m sorry you “won” that particular lottery, though. I hope things improve for you.

VaranisArano

goatlyonesub17_ESO wrote: »

I had six failures on an intermediate lock. Odds are 1 in 15625.

Last time I double checked my lock data in March 2023, I had a 90% success rate out of 41 attempts, which is admittedly a pretty small sample size. But it's in line with my large sample size from 2018 of 82% from a sample size of 747 attempts.

So unless there's a substantial decrease in RNG for force locks over a reasonable sample size, it's hard to tell if that's just a particularly outlying outlier.

ZOS_Phoenix

Greetings,

We've closed this thread given its age and given that some information may be out of date. If you wish to continue discussing this topic please create a new thread. Thank you for your understanding.