Hacking - punishing at low levels

Desad

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.

Squeakums

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? 

Qitorien

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.

Annesani

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. 

Thessia

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.

Minion

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.

Indecision

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.

Minion

I am not sure I see how it could be considered brutal when there are no consequences for losing. It isn't bashing, it's a puzzle. You should be failing fairly often or it isn't an actual challenge. It becomes just another mindless grind. We don't need more of that and we certainly don't need to make it easier to automate.

If you are struggling, you need to evaluate your strategy. For instance you don't have to kill everything you come across in a grid. I like that there is a learning curve for hacking as you actually have to adapt and learn rather than have it handed to you.

From an IC perspective, you are teaching yourself how to hack into secured locations... the fact that there aren't any consequences for that actually makes no sense.  The current quests often have your quest giver talking about having to cover your tracks after a fail. We don't actually have to do that nor do we have the capability.

Maruna

Thessia said:

persay

>:(