Yes it is. Sorry.

I like a jack of all trades but not a master of all trades.

Either go balanced Jack, or go the more specialized Ace.

This is an RPG, for playing certain roles with benefits and weaknesses.

That's fine. In the high-emotion, low-stakes game of Forum Discussions, mistakes will be made.

I generally agree that if you put it in, unless it's a the focus of the game, bwing a master of alll trades should be something that requires a highly specialized build or heavy player effort to get. Not practically guaranteed by default. But I don't think its presence cheapens specialization.

There is a certain degree of mastery involved for a limited character to be able to do some of the things an unlimited character can do, even if the unlimited character can do it in their sleep. A gunslinger destroying a militart base has more mastery over the skills they do have than the generalized one who defaults to using their mastery of explosives on the generator.

I want to say yes to make the game easier but I'm going to say no on this one. I feel that would ruin the challenge of the game. In Fallout 3, you were able to get all SPECIAL skills to 10 without cheating, and that's mainly because of a perk you got if you had Broken Steel. That made the game easier which was fine with me at the time but looking back at it, I want a challenge. I would prefer that game challenges you to focus on a particular set of skills rather than everything, which feels like a total cliche.

One character whom can obtain all the things; it ruins not only replayability, but the feeling of uniqueness over your character. If any and all characters has the potential to be equally good at everything, the reward-feeling is removed for doing great at a skill/perk check not many would have. One of the most satisfying things with a character in an RPG is to specialize. If you do not sacrifice anything, and can easily achieve everything... it defeats the purpose of character development.

If one character could become master of all - all players would be equally bland, with only time as the factor waiting for the hot iron to fill the mold.

In the end every character would, with enough time played, be identical.

Voted no obviously

I see a pattern of people deciding with their personal feelings.

"It removes challenge, it feels bland, it ruins replayability, it's not believable, it feels wrong if I don't do, etc"

-> Not everyone plays games for challenge, some do to relax, some do for escapism, some find fun in steamrolling all opposition, some want to explore and not bother much with combat

-> It feels just fine for plenty of others

-> You can play several different characters regardless

-> Sure it is, some people are just plain better than others, they're exceptional sure but so is the PC, that's why they're the PC. Or, they can be a balanced average person if you want, since being a MoaT is optional.

-> That's your self-control problem

None of those are good arguments for design decisions. Changes that fit specific personal feelings are what mods are for.

Kinda how I feel although I would like the option to be great at one thing and pretty good at several others. As long as we have alternate paths to compete things specialization will work ok. What I don't want is having to become incompetent at something to become above average in another. Also no level caps. If I want to play one character 100s of hours , I should keep improving

Not every game is designed for that audience. Fallout is not Riven; and not supposed to play like Riven (or TES.. or Halo.. or Gears of War... or Quake).

No reason why you shouldn't be able...having more options is never bad...I get bored when I have nothing left to work for in regards to my character build..but personal preference aside bethesda is all about player freedom they give you the tools you decide how you play...so from a business standpoint, why would they take options away?

Indeed - even more so in a world where a lot of things (from simple mutated critters (mole-rats!) to deathclaws, supermutants, raiders, people in power armor and even androids (not to mention robots and turrets)) try to kill you and you come out on top (that takes skill - a lot of skill, more than what a normal human being would have!)

Removing options is bad, too, I agree on that (I love playing Jack of all traits type of characters because they can approach each task ahead of them differently (depending on my mood as a player), if I want wanton slaughter in a Power Armor, I can do that and if I want to sneak around and take people out from the shadows (or not at all!) I can do that, too!)

greetings LAX

ps: I am not above using cheats (I hope this game has them - I hate games that don't, because sometimes I just want to be a [censored] one man army blowing my enemies to hell right from the start (even if that is not realistic)) to get there!

As long as a playthrough with most of the available quests completed gets you nowhere near having all the perks I'm OK with it. If someone wants to grind respawning enemies (assuming there are some respawning enemies) for hundreds of hours trying to get all the perks they should be able to do so if they really want to. Even having most of the available perks would probably make your character nearly immortal, getting 100% of the perks is really a completionist/OCD thing, but if that's what some people want to do this option should be open to them, it should just require a huge amount of grinding.

SPECIAL is a little different. It seems like there will be a way to increase your special during the game, though not sure how it will work out exactly. Almost certainly this game will be getting multiple DLC, which will increase the available experience by a lot. If in the base game it's possible, but extremely difficult to get all special to 10, with added XP from all the DLCs it might become easy, which would not be good. So it should be completely impossible to get all your special to 10, or to get anywhere near that point. With perks it's not an issue because likely the DLCs will add their own perks.

No need to ask me if I need more straw. It's your straw man, not mine.

I observed that the middleman between our starting character and our preferred character can be undesirable. I did not offer my observation as a premise for asserting that the master-of-all-trades should therefore be available from the get-go. The middle man is both desirable and undesirable depending on the circumstances.

Just as long as you don't end up maxed out after doing the main game and one of the DLC which is where F3 was.

It should be scaled so that you can be an explorer, do all the major quests, and all the DLC, and still not be close to being maxed out.

Now I would like to be able to chose to spend a perk when I level up and be able to save them otherwise.

I'd also be fine with no level cap as long as each level took additional exps to get to.

Plus I know the modders are going to create additional quests and locations so MOAT players will be taken care of.

And I figure they will appreciate the challenge.

But if I'm playing a specialist, I out to be able to play the specialist as a specialist the whole game.

It is more of a challenge that way and helps replay value.

Pretty much the same. On the one hand my character's tend to live day to day, going where the game takes them, not following a blueprint to end-game power. On the other, I don't like to feel boxed in, especially if certain skills turn out to be undertuned or unsupported (like the club skill you can choose at character creation in Icewind Dale).

The funny thing is, you have a valid point. There are plenty of RPGs that let you decide what level your character starts at, especially if it can be assumed the character has a good amount of experience before the story starts. It's a valid design decision that gives us even more control over our characters; but it's also a pretty different kind of design decision, and it wouldn't be appropriate if some of the best parts of the game were about developing our character, as opposed to just making them exactly how we want them (or worse, how we only think we want them) at the start.

Similarly, there's the idea of letting us respec our character and how hard that should be, or if it should be possible at all. I wouldn't be surprised if Bethesda implemented a way for us to respec our character, it would fit their design philosophy, but I'm not sure how they would handle it. Maybe we'd get the ability after completing some quest, or maybe after reaching a certain point we're allowed to just "reset" our character and rebuild our stats at the cost of going back to level 1 and having to develop our character all over again. In the end, Skyrim did both of those things and enabled us to master everything, and I love Skyrim's character development system.

I voted no, I feel this way because special shouldn't be able to max. having a 10 in everything would make a very unrealistic character. No one on earth is a 10 across the board.

Strength of a Mr. universe
Perception of a SF sniper
Endurance of Rasputin
Charisma of a pop star
Intelligence of a Mensa member
Agility of a Chinese acrobat
Lucky as a leprechaun

no one is all of these
one person cant be all these things I don't care how much you train

I think for regular game play having a specialized character in one or two things is fine, but now and then it's fun being destroyer of the wasteland.

I think they will be fairly generous with ways to increase your Special Stats.

If you want any particular perks, you will need to check the Perk Chart so you know which Special Stats to invest in.

But if you are running a sniper Sole Survivor you have to figure you will get all the Perception and Agility perks eventually.

There is always console commands for the PC gamers.

And I'm sure there will be a respec mod, so everyone will be covered.

And Fallout 4 is not like Witcher 3 where you have all of the abilities and you some times don't know if a build will be strong or weak or just not your cup of tea.

The only time I really wanted to respec in F3 and FONV was when I got a perk that wasn't working for my current Lone Wanderer/Courier.

Bloody Mess was just too bloody.

While i don't want to max out my pc on the mq, with xp given for grinding, the possibility for implants and the like means to me, that we will most likely be able to. I just want it to be possible for more of a meta style play through, where you're really trying for it/it costs a lot of caps, and not because your player naturally progresses to a demigod.

The only perk I ever regretted getting was bloody mess for the very same reasons you mentioned.

At least I was able to fix it with console commands.

I didn't say anything about a specific audience, I'm arguing for the opposite, that everything should be left open and optional so that everyone is catered to (or most people at least). Also, Bethesda Fallout *is* like TES.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a system that, as a side-effect of Bethesda making games that can be played for 100s of hours, allows for extended playing experiences and ultimately "maxing" your character. But I also don't think it really ought to be something that you just end up with as a result of playing the game until completion.

If you want to max every stat in the game, then that's a long-term goal, I should think. Something you'd need to plan out a little bit and put some effort in. Some people are going to be playing the game with finishing the Main Quest as their ultimate goal in the game - for others that's going to be a stepping stone towards their ultimate goal of improving their character to it's penultimate level. And I think ideally, it ought to be possible to properly balance a game with both goals in mind.

The issue I had with Fallout 3 was that "maxed" status came about far too early during gameplay. I wasn't even trying to do so, and I had 100 in every skill. Putting a level cap for that reason is only treating the symptom, not the root cause. (ie, it's not actually solving a foundational problem with the balance of the ruleset.) Ideally, you don't even need a level cap - players who want to specialize through playing the game ought to be able to, and those want more advancement ought to be willing to put in the extra time and effort to do so. I don't foresee that being a terribly controversial view.

I mean, even the Arkham games, you were going to have some unlocked abilities by the time you finished the game - if you wanted everything maxed, you'd need to continue playing after the finish to collect everything and run a full 100%.

To me, I think something we're still struggling with is the difference in scope between a tabletop RPG and a videogame. In D&D, you have a level cap of 20 - but that represents the entire breadth and scope of your character's life. At Level 1 you are a fresh-faced adventurer with no real experience to speak of. At Level 20, you and your party have been playing for years. Your characters have aged considerably, you are walking legends ready to settle down into retirement. You are no longer the ones solving quests, you're the guys who hand them out to the next generation of adventurers. We're talking potentially decades of game time for a single extended campaign, and multiple Main Quests.

In a videogame the scope is much, much smaller. Modern AAA games take years to build, and the vast majority of that is simply creating content. Even then the scope of the entire game represents what would be the equivalent of a handful of levels in a tabletop game. The growth rate of character advancement is ludicrously accelerated in a videogame.

A thought occurred to me, with the combination of lower SPECIAL, no skills in the traditional sense, and hopefully no Almost Perfect perk, I assume only people who plan out how to get a near (or actual) maxed out characters are going to be able to do so. Basically, I don't think the average general play-through will create a Master-of-All-Trades (at best a Jack-of-Many-Trades), but if you play like a Try-hard (like I probably will), you could probably become one.

I didn't vote because the options were a little too absolute for my tastes. I'm generally on the 'get everything you want for your character' side of the fence, though I don't imagine very many people actually want everything maxed. In past games I never bothered with many skills or perks (like barter, explosives, big guns, unarmed or survival), but I always maxed out and insist on the ability to max out the essentials (small guns and energy weapons, repair, science, lockpicking, speech).

Basically, I need to be able to defeat enemies, penetrate barriers and build and play with all the gadgets (including Fallout 4's version or equivalent of the excellent Robco Certified mod).

How much I need to be able to master depends on how flexible the game is in providing alternative solutions to problems. If it takes lockpicking to get into the chest, then I need lockpicking. But, if the chest can be opened by multiple means ... picking the lock, shoot the lock open with guns, using science to dissolve the lock with acid, using speech to talk somebody else into opening it, using repair to disassemble the entire chest, etc ... then my needs are less stringent.

The ability to accomplish my goals is what I have to be able to master.

^^^^

Give players options, not remove them.