I've been playing around with it and so far, it seems like a huge waste of money. It's expensive to keep your deck healthy and upgraded, and you never get any significant amount of cash/sellables. So why are we doing it, exactly?

EDIT: I did not try the new hacking with the last patch, maybe it's better.
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I guess it's only usefull in higher difficulty levels, to actually hack preparing the way to then make it more fleshy easy.

In medium difficulty it's useless, it's far less expensive to crawl as usual without even touching a hack pad.

Worst, the new hack adds combats, which are not very interesting. The usual meaty combats were already numerous, and once we quit the hacking interface, those combats seem too much numerous, as the hacking combats made us bored with combats...

So, I even no longer touch a hack pad, I see them as a sad try. At now I would want a mod which deactivate them...

Is this new feature better than nothing?? The answer is fat no.
Sorry to be rude, I try so hard and still nothing worth mentioning.
It's not only wasting time but consuming lots of money for useless hack tools (abilities).
All it looks like tedious mini-games in a mission, also a game won't yield anything useful.

Since I go everywhere anyway the most use I get out of it is more hacking gear, opening doors and turning off security systems.
I don't find combat interesting either though, even in the later stages of the game most of the skills are useless. Barrier and the two high damage skills take care of everything.
I still do it, but it's mostly cumbersome.

Honestly, all I really use now is Barrier, Decompile (increasing DoT) and Melt (standard corruption attack with very large damage range). Everything else is just a waste of time. Oh, a skill to improve dodge? Meh, I'm already at the dodge cap PLUS I have Barrier. Something to restore Masking Points? I never lose MP in combat anyway. And so on and so forth.

I disagree. Decoy is very powerful - if not most powerful - ability to have, and works well on ANY level of experience/difficulty settings.

I lost track of this thread and for some reason, I made it a question and left it unanswered. So I hearby bestow the answer kudos on the last person to post.

Hacking becomes more useful (necessary) later on, when the missions are more dangerous. For instance, if you have to escort a technician to modify more than one console, the technician cannot be improved (protection with armour, shield, etc., neither weapons) and so, without a lot of ability to restore health, the escorted person will die in a fight. If you have a hacker, it is trivial to find a node which will allow you to help this mission succeed. One can lower the alert level (to avoid guards) and locate the target/s (the console/s the guest needs to update) on your map.

If you have a ship full of Giga worms, for example, and no idea where to find the consoles it is very likely the mission will fail because your technician will die from all the combat.

Also, this last game I spent about four times longer playing hacker quests. I spent most of the cash awards on my deck, which allowed me to (occasionally) take out a difficult hack, like a core crash, for >1000 credits.

There are also very specific times when you need a hacker or else you will fail the mission. (Try hacking without a hacker —— the game hangs.)

HTH