Hacking - punishing at low levels

DesadDesad Member Posts: 5
Not sure if others are finding the same thing - but for me, Hacking is extremely punishing at low levels (1-2). I’m finding it takes 10+ attempts to hack a terminal at my level or below, and seems to be mainly a game of chance. Main culprit seems to be the costs of Infect and Gridscan, which are both prohibitive at low levels, and the lack of Ops given by antiviruses - though there are some times you run into a room full of antiviruses and a honeypot or firewall and know you are dead (but I am assuming that part is by design).

I’m not sure how it is at higher levels - might be okay judging by the other thread about hacking? Think it needs a bit of a balancing pass at low levels though.

Comments

  • SqueakumsSqueakums Member Posts: 230 ✭✭✭
    I don't know if it is a coincidence, but hacking was really easy when I did it through the quests. You're right that the starter terminals can be a bit too tough. Try sticking to the quests until you level up a bit and see if that helps? 
  • QitorienQitorien Member Posts: 361 ✭✭✭
    I've heard everything from way too easy to way too hard. Some of that may be due to adjustments made by admin over time, but I think a lot of is RNG. Either way, I'm sure they appreciate feedback and are still tweaking it to make sure it works.
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  • AnnesaniAnnesani Member Posts: 21
    Like @Squeakums said, I would put your efforts into the hacking quests that are available. I'm not sure if it is because they are attached to a quest line, but I don't remember them being terribly difficult at that level and you gain a little more experience and marks for your trouble. 

    I personally think hacking has two tiers at the moment: Pre-Overwrite and Post-Overwrite. There are skills in between and afterwards that can help in situations (Backdoor/Tunnel for sure, Slice at times, Ping/Gridscan ALWAYS when the grids become ungodly huge), but I think Overwrite is when you can start truly tackling some of the more difficult hacks more Ops-Efficiently.

    It would be nice if certain enemies had guaranteed OpsGain on defeat, but that might make it too easy. 
  • ThessiaThessia Member Posts: 60
    When I gain hacking levels, I don't feel like I'm making any progress until I get Overwrite, then every level I gain gives me noticeable, tangible benefit. With how quickly hacking ranks up, I don't know if that should be changed persay, but the grind between around 3 and 8 (when you get overwrite) feels like a dead zone because you can't really handle at rank terminals any better. It's not as smooth as normal bashing.
  • MinionMinion Member Posts: 162 ✭✭✭
    edited January 2019
    I was able to grind through 6 levels of hacking xp pretty easily. Just having the gridscan (lvl 2 or 3?) skill made it pretty difficult to lose. There aren't really any consequences for losing a hack so while I did have to grind a bit, there are plenty of terminals and lots of other things to do in the downtime while they reset.

    A few things I do:

    - Don't kill anything unless I absolutely have to before I find the processor.
    - I will, however, take out firewalls along the way because they do not strike back and tend to die fairly quickly.
    - If I know where the processor is, I will always save enough ops to get back to it to at least guess the password. So many of my successes were from passwords I only knew half of the letters for.

  • IndecisionIndecision Member Posts: 36
    I agree, hacking at level 1 and 2 was brutal.

    L1 terminals really could use a difficulty decrease just to help acclimate more players to hacking.
  • MarunaMaruna Member Posts: 371 ✭✭✭
    Thessia said:
    persay
    >:(
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