Is anyone else finding the hacking to be a bit of a PITA?  Level 1 hacking was easy and fun.  Level 2 could get a but frustrating, but level 3 and I am ready to give up.  Kind of sorry I have put points into hacking since it is such a pain in the ass.

I've honestly had no problems hacking at all at any point in the game... I actually kind of enjoy it. At the end of the game I was sitting at around 20 stop worms and 40 nuke viruses. Hacking stealth is pretty vital in making it as painless as possible, and fortify is also pretty useful, especially on lower level nodes. Getting +3 defenses on just your main node gives you like 10 extra seconds on a level 1 and 2 terminal. Also sometimes the enemy node is really close by and when you hack the enemy node you automatically win (and get every bonus) so sometimes it's a lot faster to just go for the enemy instead of everything else.

If you max the stealth hacking tree (45% reduction in detection) only level 4 and 5 will give you any risk of failing and even those can be overcome with the nukes you get from the lower level stuff. 
 
But I do agree there is a TON of hacking.  I must of spent 1/4 of every level hacking.  The rest was spent trying to stealth, killing everything once I failed at stealth, and traversal.

I am planning on going all out with the hacking stuff. Just spend points on everything hacking.

Hacking is too easy.  I think i had about 40 nuke virus's available near the end of the game because that's how much i had to use them.  Stealth hacking augment definitely makes hacking higher level nodes a non issue.

By the end I was just skipping all the rooms because I was too lazy to hack. Sad part is I had accumulated 12 nuke Viruses and had 10 AUD's

Not to be inflammatory, but are you playing on console? It looks a lot harder without a mouse.

I'm actually kind of enjoying it ... it's certainly more interesting than most hacking/lockpick minigames and, to be fair, there is a way around it almost every time if you look for passwords etc.

lol why even bother to fortify? 
 
just be capturin ALL DAY LONG!

@Infininja said:

Not to be inflammatory, but are you playing on console? It looks a lot harder without a mouse.

not when you accidentally use your stop or nuke virus just trying to normally click a point while that clock is ticking down lol.

Wait until you get to level 5 :D
But it's not that hard, you just have to be fast. Try to start capturing as many nodes at the same time as you can. Also nukes and worms are your friends.

It annoys me when I sneak past a guard, hack the door to the room, then hack the computer inside that room only to get spam or emails I already read.

There are way too many computers to hack, I cant make myself just ignore them ='[

Even just activating the stealth hacking upgrade will make it so much easier. You just have to be quick and always be on the lookout for worms and nukes when it's possible to grab them. I actually really like the whole hacking part of the game, and think it's much more than "decent", as described on the podcast.

I think the hacking is pretty nice and I hack everything I can. I can see how it wouldn't be so good without a mouse though.

Hacking is actually a real strategy+skill investment system in this game and personally I love it.  In the beginning when all I had was the hacking  "levels" it was hard to hack anything over level 2.  Now I have max hacking stealth and am one level shy of max hacking fortification and I have captured level 3 hacks without the computer even detecting me at all.  Level 5 and 4 can still be challenging but they are now very doable.  Especially when you use strategy and plan your route, don't be fooled into going for the goal or datastores right off.  Half the time there is a low risk path leading to nodes that can slow the pc detection down, make the nodes you need to capture lower level, or lots of other things that can help you.  Getting those first and early always makes the difference on a tough hack.
 
EDIT: hacking is easier with a mouse but I still play on a gamepad with PC and once you get used to it the gamepad works fine for hacking.  You just have to be fast once you are detected and plan route attack before you make the first move.

 
You can hack... more than one node.... at a time?  

 
*rages*

Although i find the game to have way way way way way too many hacking scenarios i am actually good at it, it's easy and fun (just put points into hacking and it will be a breeze) and this is coming from someone who couldn't beat the first level of Alpha Protocol cause i couldn't finish the hacking part.

Or goto IGN and look at the Deus Ex Wiki and just use the codes/passwords.

Fortifying will kill you and make things difficult. If you look at the base node it's always at least a 70% detection, so you're better off just capturing other nodes. If you have the Hack Stealth augment, it greatly decreases detection rates, as long as you don't fortify.

It's cyberpunk. Comes with the territory. 

I'm gonna be honest here, I love the hacking system. I've been finding myself compulsively hacking everything I can :)

i almost always hack now that i have hack and hack stealth fully upgraded, even if i have the code / password.  before i was upgraded i usually did it unless i had the code / password.  i can't pass up whatever might be in the hidden datastores or behind the locked door or in somebody's e-mail.  of course when all that's there is the nigerian e-mail scam it's kind of disappointed, but it does get me experience points so at least there's that :)
 
my strategy is to slowly hack one node at a time until it starts trying to trace me, then i simultaneously capture as many nodes at once as i can and fortify starting from the furthest captured node from my entry point and work backward.  i usually save before attempting a hack just in case i set off an alarm and never use stop or nuke on my first attempt.
 
i don't understand why it shows a number of attempts left that never goes down though -- i hacked a level 3 something or other before i'd upgraded hack stealth and got it on my 5th try...

@misterhaan: If you keep quicksaving and quickloading the number of attempts will not go down... If you disconnect before the trace completes it does consume one of your attempts. If you run out of attempts you will be locked out for 30 seconds. It's possible those attempts regenerate every 30 seconds without a visible timer.

@misterhaan: If you keep quicksaving and quickloading the number of attempts will not go down... If you disconnect before the trace completes it does consume one of your attempts. If you run out of attempts you will be locked out for 30 seconds. It's possible those attempts regenerate every 30 seconds without a visible timer.

@ChaosDent said:

@misterhaan: If you keep quicksaving and quickloading the number of attempts will not go down... If you disconnect before the trace completes it does consume one of your attempts. If you run out of attempts you will be locked out for 30 seconds. It's possible those attempts regenerate every 30 seconds without a visible timer.

there's a quicksave / quickload?  i've been going to the menu and manually saving every time i wanted to save, then getting myself killed to load latest save.  i've never disconnected from hacking -- i either get through or the trace gets me, at which point i'm locked out for 30 seconds regardless of how many attempts it said i should have had.

@GetEveryone said:

You can hack... more than one node.... at a time? *rages*

Don't beat yourself up; took me a fair while to cotton on to that fact too :-) That said, the hacking in this game really has grown on me a lot. You have to give a bit of thought to it - especially if you cannot resists the lure of additional datastores! But the game doesn't punish you if you don't want to bother with the hacking too much - if you have the creds, you can just nab some of those terminal override grenade things.

I wish I could take back the Praxis I spent on Fortify before I really understood the hacking. Napalm is right- just go straight to capture, using Nuke on any high % directories that are far away from the goal if you're worried about getting caught.

I wasn't sure if you were upset by the statement in the title. That god you used a series of characters to form a frowny face.