I would say that that was no accident, and that it would be underestimating them [bordering on insult to them] to presume that it was not designed that way intentionally. Those games were tested every which way you can ~and then tweaked or corrected for what they found. To not balance the game is to risk pushover opponents.

Where did I indicate that it was an accident/unintentional?

Well...

I certainly took this to mean 'not intended'; yet it would have to have been intended, because they would certainly ~intentionally test and account for min/max abilities when balancing the game.

*But come to think of it... Wasn't it the case in Oblivion that you could wind up with an underpowered technically high level character that the leveled bandits would mop the floor with? Perhaps I am mistaken about them.

I don't see why not, as long as it's suitably difficult. Like Skyrim's legendary levels. Never felt compelled to do those, seemed like too much work. If a certain amount of SPECIAL points are easily acquirable but the rest would require ridiculous levels of grinding and/or tedium I'm fine with it. If it's too easy I'd feel compelled to do it all though.

I honestly can't fathom how you got that out of what I said. It takes a special kind of mental gymnastics to go from "not designed to require x" to "this all happened on accident."

To rephrase what I said before:

Bethesda's previous titles (and New Vegas) were not designed in such a way that you would have to hit the level cap in order to get through the game. You could hit the level cap if you desired, but it was by no means required to complete the game. You could complete the game without maxing all your skills and hitting the level cap. While it was possible to beat the game without hitting the level cap and maxing your skills, the game still allowed you to do that if you wanted.

Fallout 3, New Vegas, and Skyrim were all designed to allow you to hit the level cap and max your skills (albeit the first two requiring DLC). However, just because they were designed in a way that allowed you to do that, it doesn't mean you had to do it in order to beat the game. You could still have viable builds without ever touching some skills. The games were not designed in such a way as to require you to max out everything, but they didn't prohibit that either. The games were designed in such a way as to allow people to beat them without maxing every skill and hitting the level cap. Though the games were designed in such a way that you could beat them without maxing every skill and hitting the level cap, they were also designed in such a way that you could still max every skill and hit the level cap. This wasn't on accident. It was on purpose. It was intentional. It happened that way because the game designers designed the game that way. And they did it on purpose.

Sorry if that seems painfully redundant, but I don't want there to be any ambiguity in what I'm saying. My redundancy and repetition, much like Fallout 3, New Vegas, and Skyrim's ability to let you beat the game with or without maxing out all skills and hitting the level cap, was intentional.

I voted no. To have character attributes improve once as a result of some in-game consequence is fine. But that shouldn't allow the PC to become a master of all trades. SPECIAL determines the limits set on the player-character. Game designers work with attributes, skills etc., while balancing the game. I'd like to be able to play as a charismatic persona who uses tact over brawn or as an eccentric fist-fighter. If you can increase all SPECIAL attributes to 10, then the game design would suffer and each new character would end up playing the same.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvdf5n-zI14

No.

Personally, I'm a fan of the full phrase - Jack Of All Trades, Master Of None. While yes, I do get a few skills maxed out in Beth games, I tend more towards using a bit of many of them. And I've certainly never maxed all.

(My first Skyrim character.... only got their first skill to 100, when they were around level 46. And only a few others were in the 80-90's range. I think my first Fallout 3 character had maybe four 100's. Been awhile, can't remember exactly. )

I recall that people found a way to get all 100's in basic, level-20-cap FO3.... but it took an amazing amount of jumping through hoops - specific SPECIAL and perks taken, finding all the bobbleheads and books, but only using them after a certain point. Etc, etc, etc. And I'm okay with that - if you want to build your entire playthrough around such a goal (as terribly contrived and boring as it sounds), go for it.

....but also getting all the perks? And maxed SPECIAL? Meh, that seems like going too far. Seems like you'd need an infinite level cap for that. And these games seem better with a cap limiting stuff (FO3 was certainly better at a lv20 cap than with the extra 10 that Broken Steel gave you. Let alone the silly new perks. And the fact that the extra levels let you take more than one of the "capstone" lv20 perks that were clearly meant to be a "you can just have one" reward for hitting the cap.)

Note that I don't put maxing out your character skills/stats/perks in the same category as "100% completion"/finding all sidequests/finding all locations. Totally different thing for me. And something that I'm fine with. (well, sure, a game might have two mututally-exclusive factions to join. So you can't do literally all the sidequests. That's fine, too. )

This reminds me. I always had to headcanon that my companion does the Speech checks for my character, and that my character had to rely on her companions to make up for some lacking skills.

If you can actualy spend 400 hours on a single playthgough then eh ok fine.

Reading the op no I dont think we should be able to max out all of our skills let each character have only a certain limit so we would have to think about what perk we want for that character. And a demo of what perks we have access to at that time would be nice like a little video that plays the selected perk. Though saving right before you level up and testing the perk works just as good.

It could be even better if we can start with all of the SPECIAL and perks we want. What's the point of spending hour upon hour playing a role we don't want to play just so that we earn the privilege of playing the role we do want to play?

You want to play a character exactly this smart and exactly that agile and exactly this charismatic and exactly that strong. You want to play a character who can do x, y, and z. Yet you cannot play that character, not until you first play hour upon hour with a character who isn't what you want him to be, who lacks the abilities you want him to have. Worse, by the time your character finally becomes the character you originally conceived, the game may be nearly over.

Need more straw for that strawman you're building there?

Nobody who says they like a Master of all Trades is saying to cut out the middleman. Hell, the majority are saying, "Yes, but make it hard to do." I'm fairly certain that we ALL agree that giving the player everything in the game from the get-go is undesireable.

The real question, I guess, is why it should be removed even if it's incredibly difficult to pull off? How does it harm RP or is overpowered if you work incredibly hard to reach that point, and it's something that the game itself isn't assuming to happen?

This

The worry is that, if it's done wrong, it will impact on the gameplay of people who would like to avoid it.

(Like, say, when a DLC adds not just a cool new chapter of story, but also ups the level cap/destroys balance/adds stupid perks/etc.)

Voted yes. Any other answer is pretty much wrong according to the poll statements and the overall winning game design strategy Bethesda utilizes.

No, simply no. Even Marvel superheroes aren't a 10 on their every stat, the whole point of SPECIAL system is making you decide what kind of character you'll have, not someone who stuck all five Infinity Stones in their Pipboy bracelet.

The obvious fix is, of course, to not increase the level cap ever. Seems like they deleted the old topic, but I actually calculated out that in FO3, with the addition of Broken Steel, it was almost impossible to NOT be a Master of all Skills, precisely because of the amount of skillbooks, bobbleheads, and certain perk choices you could take.

I mean the absolute minimum skillpoints you needed to get per level for it to work was something like 6 skillpoints at a level up, and the minimum number you could actually get was 11.

And that is undesireable by any measure.

Now, if gamesas is using a levelling system similar to Skyrim's, level cap increases don't matter. I've done a rough calculation, and you need something along the lines of 200+ levels to get all ranks for all perks. That, plus an apparant diminishing return on leveling (at one point, I noticed that it took me more skill increases to reach the next level) means that it's an epic attempt on its own. And lets not forget the "pea shooter" scenario if you decide to level your magic skills too late.

If the levelling system for Fallout 4 is similar to that, in terms of effort involved, then I don't think that's a bad thing. And, except for those who have non-mechanic based qualms over it, most others probably won't mind it too much.

Actually the majority are saying no with 53% of the vote at this time.

Seriously no one can be the best at every thing and I know I'm saying this about a game dealing with rampaging robots and radscorpions.

James Bond couldn't win a strength contest with Jaws.

If you are an Olympic sprinter then you are likely not going to be winning any medals for weight lifting.

Even Michael Jordan never made it in to the Major Leagues.

I mean being the best gunslinger in the Boston Wasteland with all the gunslinger type perks and a 10 in Agility, Perception, and Luck is a major accomplishment.

But doesn't it kind of cheapen it to max the rest of your stats and get all the other perks?

Still if someone want to spend 300 or 400 hours to have a Sole Survivor that has maxed every stat and earned every perk then they should be able to.

I'm not throwing stones because I'm going to be spending even more time trying out different Lone Survivors and checking out the differences between the male and female protagonists.

It just needs to stay a major accomplishment that you have to work for and not something you get for liking to explore and completing the game and the DLC.

This...

...looks horrible, even leveling up for me is outdated and horrible. We should be specializing in particular areas that we desire to "roleplay" or play as. Not leveling and being able to do and have everything, because, what will be the special thing about specializing in something if at the end we can do everything because of levels and that amount of freedom?.

NO

I voted no, but the game will most likely let you. As long as it takes a decidedly dedicated effort to get anywhere near maxing everything, I won't care all that much. I'll never go for it so it shouldn't really affect the way I play. It's only a problem when the inevitable conclusion of playing the game is maxing your characters out. Essentially, when all is said and done, all quests completed, all locations discovered, including DLCs, your character should not be maxed out. In Bethesda games there is a degree of perpetuity that has already been hinted at with settlement building, will likely be continued to some extent with some radiant questing, and will simply exist because of respawns. If a person should so desire to play like an MMO and use these features ad infinitum and continue leveling and eventually max everything out, then that wouldn't be so bad. It's just that by the time they reach that conclusion, they should be as much of a soulless husk as the game would become after all the content is expired.

Why though? Many RPG systems use leveling and still have distinct specialization. Leveling is the cornerstone of progression in most RPGs and ideally should feel special and fill players with a certain giddiness about their accomplishment. So like I said, if leveling naturally with the content in the game leads to being maxed out, it is indeed a problem. But if it results in becoming a badass with your specific specializations and yet maintains balance, that's a successful system. Leveling is not the enemy, it just has to be done correctly.

I voted, 'yes, but...'

I've played F3 and FNV so much it's a wonder the disks haven't worn out. Most of my runs never reached the Master of All we're talking about here, but some did. Not because I wanted a superhero - I just didn't want to stop playing. I'm talking multiple max level characters with 100 in every skill. The Skills were just from playing so much and collecting books, bobble heads and implants (cause I can't say, 'no').

Thing is, even with all those 100s on my Pip Boy screen, it didn't really change how I played. I had Skill points I had to spend so I dumped them in the Skills I hadn't touched since character creation. And I didn't start using them. Sure, I had 100 in hand to hand, but I didn't use it. I had 100 in Barter but by that time I had so much money I'd stopped looting long before. My character was still a sneaky gunner with a penchant for high explosives (as, boringly, it usually is).

So, yeah - if the game accommodates power gamers who want to max everything I don't care. If I play a certain character so much he becomes a demigod it won't change how I play him. In practical terms, I think most of us will start a new character before things get to that point.

And I said...


Context is pretty clear that I meant the *majority who likes this idea*.

I totally agree that it makes no sense that the Witcher 3 Geralt had to start at level 1 (one of the very few complaints that I have for Witcher 3).

They should have started him at least level 10 so he could have a decent amount of abilities at the start and adjusted the game balance from there.

Mass Effect did it better in ME3 where you started with an experienced Sheppard if you loaded an ME2 save.

And the Sole Survivor has been a vet and certainly could have used the GI Bill to get a degree.

He or she is 35 years old so shouldn't start the game with no previous skills or experiences.

The Sole Survivor might not be top physical condition after flying a desk in civilian life but should start with some useful skill Perks.

It looks like he or she does start with the Power Armor Training Perk.

I'm thinking in Fallout, a new character always got three tag skills so it makes sense that a new Sole Survivor should be able to select three skill perks to start the game with.

Plus they might still have traits and selecting your starting perks would be the perfect time to select any traits (which is just a perk with pluses and minuses that you can only chose at character creation).

I'm also thinking that the Special stats are going to have a big impact on game play and really define your character.

Especially if there are no level requirements on the perks.

If you have a nine Perception then you can start the game with the Sniper Perk (or at least pick it up at level 2).

If you have a nine Luck you can start the game with Grim Reaper's Sprint.

And that makes perfect sense for a vet.

Here is what they figured out on the F4 Perk Chart.

http://tamrielvault.com/group/fallout-character-building/forum/topics/perks-chart-news