Gameplay: Hacking should be a typing game!

[Vamp Hunter]

I was thinking: Hacking in PS2 is too simple. You just activate the terminal and sit there.
I think there should be some more depth to it and I had an idea, it should be a typing minigame. It would flash a word and you would have to type it as fast as possible.
There would be no failure other then backing out of it, yet it would reward people who were fast typer's. I could see the fastest typer's in an outfit becoming prized as the greatest hackers and there skill would actually be really useful.

I think the more non-combat niche skills the game rewards the better.

[Flaropri]

I think Blacklight has a good angle on it, where it is still simple but has more to it and doesn't require you to give up as much chance to respond to an enemy as you would with full typing.

Just... no Alpha Protocol style hacking, or even Fallout 3/NV style.

[SealedSun]

Oh yes, I think that would be awesome.

That way, you can actually "get good at hacking" (i.e. can eventually multitask to pay attention to your surroundings)

[Boomhowser]

eww having to type stuff in the future to hack.. So 20th century!!

thought we might have created something by then to make it easier... like pointing an elctronic gizmo at a console and letting it do all the work for us..

[GLaDOS]

I think maybe this, or something like this, could work for hacking vehicles or enemy door/forcefield things, but not for when you just want to hack a point in the BF Conquest style base takeover. That should be pretty simple.

[Xyntech]

Blacklights hacking looks like a pretty good solution to me (about to try the game out for the first time in a sec here). I can see why they wanted to move away from Planetside 1's bland hacking, but being able to look around and immediately shoot someone is pretty lame in PS2's current system.

Having something like Blacklight where it's both engaging as well as dangerous seems like an ideal solution. Even if it's not a clone of Blacklights hacking, that seems like the better direction to go in.

[Baneblade]

I actually liked Fallout 3/NV hacking. Hacking should be engaging and not just a point and shoot.

[Flaropri]

Originally Posted by Baneblade

I actually liked Fallout 3/NV hacking.

I liked it as well, but I don't think it lends itself well to PS2's pacing. (Actually, I liked the mechanics of Alpha Protocol's hacking as well from a game-play perspective... just not that it could give me a headache from all the changing letters/numbers if I let my eyes try to read them.)

[Tatwi]

Should be a combination of a linux console, a MUD, and a virtual sound system setup (lots of plugs, wires, and dials to turn). That would confuse the hell out of all but the most dedicated hackers.

[Baneblade]

Originally Posted by Flaropri

I liked it as well, but I don't think it lends itself well to PS2's pacing. (Actually, I liked the mechanics of Alpha Protocol's hacking as well from a game-play perspective... just not that it could give me a headache from all the changing letters/numbers if I let my eyes try to read them.)

I don't think the entire game should be the same pace. Sometimes it should just take time to do something.

[Ratstomper]

I like the idea of hacking requiring some player skill outside of certing, but I think a simple typing game is a little too simple and uninventive for it.

[Kezz]

Personally, I find staring at my REK progress bar (and hoping and praying no one comes along and slots me) quite engaging enough...

In some ways, there's no room for human input at the time of the hack in the sort of hacking that gets done in PS; it's like the swipe card faker you see in films, sidestepping the failure lockout and brute-forcing the combination, only it's using Nanites and Effectors and happening at Petaflop calculation rates, or using some sort of Quantum device that if you could even understand you wouldn't be on the front line hacking bases.

But that doesn't stop it being a good idea to have some level of minigame involved that could speed up the time; fail and it just takes the default. "There's always room for human intuition!"

[Athanasios]

Originally Posted by Ratstomper

I like the idea of hacking requiring some player skill outside of certing.

This.-

[OutlawDr]

I always found the problem with hacking and picklocking mini-games in other titles is that the main game around you freezes (or you are off limits to attack). Also the speed at which you finish the mini-game never has a dramatic impact on the main game. This makes the mini-game very repetitive and boring...because by itself it is boring and repetitive. There is little incentive to get better.

However if the speed at which you finish the hack resulted in major gains in the main game, then it becomes much more rewarding. Imagine hacking knowing that enemy troops are running to your location. Or you start hacking while enemy troops guarding it are momentarily preoccupied. Like this, there is a huge incentive in getting better at the hacking mini-game, and makes it very rewarding.

so yea +1 to hacking mini-game. Doesn't necessarily have to be a typing game though.

EDIT: I would leave in the option to hack as normal, for people that hate mini-games (and there are a lot). But hacking through the mini-game allows players to do it faster.

[Froglicker]

+1 to hacking being a minigame! I agree that Blacklight's hacking system looks great, but I'm surprised no one mentioned Mass Effect 2's hacking system. It was a simple matching game but you were still literally sifting through code and working around firewalls (although immensely simplified). I think something similar would also work great, with tweaking, of course.

What I imagine is hacking brings up a slow moving progress bar, while some sort of minigame (whether it be a typing game, Blacklight style, ME2 style, or any other simple yet clever idea) boosts the progress bar for every match/success. Failures/mismatches would of course penalize the progress bar. All this occurs with the game world perfectly visible in the background so hackers can still pause the hacks to defend themselves (paused hacks reverse progress until someone resumes hacking)