I am sceptical to the whole no level cap because of balance issues.

However if the perks are more about specialisation then about synergy it could actually be balanced.

HP gain per level is just +5 (ive gathered this from ingame pipboy gameplay) and you start with 85-130 hp depending on endurance.

It could work but i just hope we dont get enemies like the dragons in skyrim (that ranged from like 400 hp to 40000, i exaggerate but it just becomes immersion breaking)

There might be no hard cap, but I assume, like Skyrim there will be a soft cap, aka a point where tge exp requirment for a level becomes so high it becomes tedious to level.

There will probably be a soft cap, where it gets to the point that it'll take forever to level up. I'm guessing somewhere in the 50's to late 60's.

I do agree about no HP sponges, I hope that's a thing of the past, fingers crossed. I think this whole leveling system, will work if Perks/Special are optional to raise. If it's Optional it will be amazing, if it's not then it's going to be flawed.

Perhaps enemies' finishing moves will instant kill you or deduct your HP by percentage.

Just to clarify this, we effectively get to choose the rate at which we level. As we increase in Intelligence, the rate of gaining XP goes up, but this will most likely be a relatively small amount. Enough to notice the difference, but not so much that it makes levelling feel unbalanced. But once our Intelligence reaches 5 and we have access to the Educated perk, each rank will have a much more noticeable effect.

This way, if you want to role-play as a very focused character and take things nice and slow, just ignore the Educated perk. Even if you push your Intelligence all the way up, it shouldn't change things too much, and the effect will be less noticeable for each level you gain. But if you want to work with a wider range of skills and perks, each rank of Educated will speed things up enough that you will be hitting levels a lot faster.

There is already a thread about the level cap. Why clutter the board with another thread on the exact same topic??

balance? in a Beth game? have you ever ACTUALLY PLAYED any beth game before? the open skill system throws balance out the window IMMEDIATELY.

Fallout 3 vanilla (before dlc) was very very well balanced EXCEPT stimpak pause instant healing (should have been over 20 seconds)

no, it was not at all, skills were borked (making money was so easy already that the corresponding skill was useless for example, speech was near REQUIRED as well), many guns were useless while others were much better then others. And by level 18-20, you were invincible pretty much. you had to try to die. also, armor was borked, no reason not to wear power armor, it had no negative side effects that actully mattered.

Personally, by the time that we progress high enough to be "unbalanced" I will have felt that I had earned my godlike status. I'm having about zero heartache over this.

Being rich after doing all those quests, raids etc isnt poor balance. Its good balance.

Of course there should not be a reason to not wear power armor. So it was in f1 and f2. USA became much more powerful when they invented it etc. Is as should be.

Yes a plasma rifle is better than a low caliber hunting rifle. Is as should be. But the hunting rifle was useful even at the end. So your whole idea just shows you havent got a clue about weapons in f3.

Exactly this, especially considering how many levels there are. I think that the first person to actually achieve this without cheating should get a special award from Bethesda!

Ahh give 'em an Achievement or something. Bragging rights and all that.

In terms of balance itself, this is Bethesda. The Day we get balance is the day Todd Howard rides in on a unicorn, ain't gonna happen.

It's designed for the battlefield. Being able to play a thief in power armour is ridiculous.

I think they should have a permanent statue in the commonwealth for all to see!

I agree that it would be a little difficult balancing on a unicorn, especially with the big spiky bit at the front getting in the way of your view.

If fallout hadn't lost it's identity now, this clearly shows how cut and paste bethseda wants to make it's games, even when we know skyrims leveling systems was so imbalanced.

I will definately be adding a hard cap, and waiting for a more balanced leveling mod.

If they didn't hard code thatinto the game.....

bethseda soft caps and hard code....

Quit trying to copy everything else and just make a fallout game, but no lets appease the lowest denominator for money.

The lap of a cap Might result in Bethesda's easiest game yet, and that's saying a lot.

Thankfully we'll have mods that prevent the game fro mquickly turn the game mindbogglingly easy.

Agreed.

And I think it will be self balancing due to the how they set up the Special Stats and Perks.

One of the biggest flaws with Fallout was that the last third of the game quickly became a cake walk.

It also dropped the replay value since once you know where to go and what to do, you can become very powerful even earlier in the game.

Bethesda is putting special stats and the skill perk system front and center and trying to seriously improve the Fallout experience.

Each Sole Survivor should feel and handle very differently based on what special stats and perks you take.

Especially when it will take over 200 levels (due to books and bobbleheads) to max everything (all Perks and all Special Stats at 10).

A 100 level Sole Survivor could spend 21 perks on Extensive training giving an average of 7 in each stat and a total of 49 Special Stat points.

Say have 3 stats at 10 and have fours and fives in the remaining 4 stats.

And still have 79 perks left over.

He would be able to access 49 of the 70 perks available.

But with most perks having 4 ranks, he could max only 18 of the perks and have 7 points of perks left over.

Bobbleheads will add about 20 perks/stats to that.

Still at level 100, he could have mastered only a third of the available perks.

So it is going to take multiple replays or a lot of play after the main quest to experience every thing in Fallout 4.

Just because there is no level cap doesn't necessarily mean we will ose balance.
Aside from a soft cap, we don;t know if we will be able to continue accruing SPACIAL points.
If we can't then that would mean we can only really max out the specific type of build our SPECIAL dictates, and not a master of all trades.

We have no skills to max out independent of our SPECIAL stats, so while some lament the lack of skills, I see it potentially being a good thing.

I just want a challenge through the main quest and a couple of the DLCs.

I dont think bethesda has done this, but being a master of balance myself i figured out how to balance a no level cap.

1. HP cap (so a lvl 70 sole surv would have the same hp as a 270 one)
2. Only 50 perks have synergy with other perks. So again a lvl 70 sole surv would kill a behemoth as quickly as a 270 one (but the lvl 70 can only use one combat skill as a master, the lvl 270 has mastered them all)


This would still keep the game somewhat challenging without giving enemies more and more hp as you level thus breaking weapon damage balance etc


To bethesda:

Send me a copy i will balance the game for you. Yes i am serious. Yes i am the best.

We wouldn't be having a conversation about how it affects game balance if he put it in the other thread. That thread is just about the lack of level cap in general.

Yeah, the perks will likely be more about specialization. For example, there's no way you will have a chain of different perks that all affect weapon damage. There are probably just a few that deal with recoil, chance to hit in VATS, action points, weapon modding, criticals, etc. etc. So there is no way to break the game.

I'm all for balance but I don't get the people who are constantly clamoring for you to be equal to your enemies.

Your PC should be more powerful I'm not saying exorbanately so, but realistically there are missions your PC shouldn't be able to complete unless he or she is superior in some way special to the enemies they're gunning, punching, and slicing their way through.

Like in FO3 not even the most badass super secret black ops delta super force operator would have been able to get through vault 87 unless he had a team to back him up.

Don't really have a problem with no level cap. I prefer the flexibility and it isn't hard to lock status in for specific builds on PC. Perhaps you should figure out who the lowest common denominator truly is before spouting gibberish.