Some people may disagree when I say Fallout doesn't offer much in the way of character customization to make them feel truly unique. Yes, you have perks and you have skills and you have SPECIAL all of which you can mix and match. However, after a while, it becomes inevitable that characters, regardless of how you started, more or less become good at everything. Even if you have a low intelligence, by the time you are level 50, you will have so many skill points that you end up just dumping them into skills that you honestly dont give crap about, and never use. Plus, SPECIAL points dont make characters feel that much more unique either... they influence starting skill points, but as to the actual benefit they offer, I find them really minimal, with the exception of luck.

(for instance, strength purportedly increased your melee damage, but I found that this amount was seriously next to non-existent. Perception, contrary to popular belief DOESNT improve accuracy, it is entirely dependent on gun/energyweapon skill. Endurance, is descent i guess.. charisma is the most useless special ever. Companions dont even seem to benefit from it, mentioned in another post. Intelligence doesnt mean crap either, you are going to have more than enough skill points anyways. Agility does NOT modify movement speed, and the weapon equip speed is negligible- just take rapid reload if you even want faster reload... The action points bonus from agility should be much greater than a mere 3 IMHO.

Honestly though, I wouldn't mind SPECIAL not being such a big deal if skills were more meaningful. Seriously, don't you honestly feel like you have way too much skill points than you really need? I dont ever feel specialized with any of my characters because they have high skill points in areas they dont even use. I just wish there was some way to make it so characters dont get an obscene amount of skill points, and require them to make wise choices depending on how they play. Either that, or skills should have a larger limit, providing continuous bonuses, so people wishing to specialize in a certain area can invest more in that skill, rather than meaninglessly dumping it into another skill just cause they can...

I would really appreciate it if anyone mentioned any mods that tries address these problems.

Fallout and Fallout 2 have great character creation. Perks every three levels. Skills go to 300, not 100 but the higher you go the more Skill points you have to put in.

Still I agree that Fallout 3 and New Vegas have bad character creation systems. Our characters become gods at everyrhing early in the game. New Vegas did a bette job then Fallout 3 but with the DLCs adding an extra 5 levels it ruins things. At least they added the trait Logan's Loophole so you stay at level 30.

perhaps they can keep a bit of both. 2 perks every level, but make the skill limit 300, while keep the damage of what our weapons do at 100, but once you get up to 200 or so, bonuses are achieved in that section.

ex:
Explosive 200:10% larger splash damage, enemy mines take a longer time to detonate, gain a resistance against explosives (not DT mind you, DR)
Guns 200: VATs cost for guns is 5% less, chances of getting a critical chance with rifle-weapons (or pistol) increases by 5%, faster firing rate, etc.
Energy Weapons 200:Energy weapons degrade slower by 10%, higher percentage of drained ammo returning, chances of critical hit increased by 10%-5%

this way, people would have to invest more into the role they love and desire a higher skill, rather then just hit 100 and go 'meh'.

If they did what zerginfestor did I think they would need to make tagged skills like they were where you get 2 points when you add a point to that skill.

I agree the elleveling system is flawed mainly by the dlcs that raised the level cap for both fonv and fo3 but I hope they don't do a skyrim and a play and youbgain points by using such class.

This. A thousand times this. With an aspect like that, most people would be having a fun challenge in the gmae, and allowing you to totally diversfy your character into a specific group, ex:

well, if I chose repair as a tagged skill, if I go to 200, the weapons I equip will have more condition or barely jam! but then again, I do need medicine/survival...or Guns.

Right there, the person is confused and has a hard time on what to choose, while in Fallout New Vegas at the very beginning, it pretty much doesn't matter what you choose. Why? becuase your still gonna go nearly 100% on every skill.

plus it would make perks like Tag! even more wanted.

I like New Vegas's mechanics in a lot of ways, but the biggest mistake they made was raising the level cap without increasing the skill cap (Ala FO1/FO2). The system works well when your level's capped at 30, not so much when you hit 50.

A hybrid system would be best IMO, skill capped at 300, increasing points needed past level 100/200, but tag skills doubling your investment, but with the FO3/NV limb damage, food/sleep/drink, and crit damage mechanics.

but the point is to give a reason why the player should go beyond 100, instead of just sitting with 100, shrug and say "well my crap is nice as it is". At least giving bonuses once hitting the 200 and 300 mark would make it worth for the player to continue investing all his points into this specific skill.

How about just making it harder to reach a 100?

I'd think it'd be easier to balance out a skill and spread meaningful impacts withing reasonable intervals if the scale was smaller.

in the beginning of the game at avg. Intelligence, it's 10 skills points or so. at lvl.30, you can only invest in 3 skills. at lvl.50, its 5 skills on the dot, without the use of Educated, or Comprehension. I think they did enough hammering down on skill points as it is. Just keep the old ways it was before and add something else with it :/ It was more interesting rather then just go to "100, congrats, now do something else" I rather extend it upwards to 300 and add bonuses, and keep the amount of skill points they give us (and make it harder as we increase). This is technically the same as you propose, but with more diversity and given reasons to increase upwards.

Right, that goes without saying, though it would be more complicated in NV. Fallout 1 and 2 had a natural way of scaling combat skills by simply increasing your chance to hit. You need more in NV since you can always switch to free-hand aiming. Maybe something like:

Guns/EW
1% increased chance to hit in VATS/for every 10 pts above 100
1% decrease in spread/10 pts above 100
1% faster reload/10 pts above 100

Explosives
1% increase in splash radius/5 pts above 100

Melee/Unarmed:
1% increase in crit chance/10 pts above 100 (after multiplier)

For non-combat skills you could have better recipes become available at levels > 100 as well as more difficult skill checks.

sounds awesome, so just taking an example, for every 10 points above 100, its another percentage of something, say reload speed? so at 300, its 20% reload speed increase? if so, that would make sense, seeing as how the player who devoted all of his limited skill points into that skill alone should get something like that.

Sure, it would prolong the progression, but how much incentive can you give to go beyond the 100 mark without cutting back the effects of the skill and without the danger of overpowering the skill? You never needed to go beyond the 100 mark in the originals as you were very much competent enough at that point, usually it was just a waste of skillpoints. And now, with the new gameplay where the skills matter much less, I'd go ahead and say it'd be even more of a waste.

To each their own, of course, but what I'd do would be increasing the the cost of buying skillpoints at certain thresholds, but keep the 100 cap (and slow down the rate at which levelups come -- the skillpoint amount needn't be touched, at least not heavy handedly).
Say, advance from point 1 to 50 at a costrate of 1:1 skillpoints, from 51 to 75 at the costrate of 2:1 skillpoints, and from 76-100 at the rate of 3:1 -- which would be equal to a skillcap of 175 but within a reasonable range for spreading the effects of the skill, and for the player. In practice, taking the increasing costrate system from the original games but fitting it in the 100 cap and thus making the whole range of the skill useful rather than having the skill go on and on and only offering slight bonuses.

It's true that in the originals you never really had to go much beyond ~150% or so in your combat skill to be perfectly competent--outside of max range shots to the eyes you'd be just as deadly as someone who poured 300% into their skill. But that's a balance flaw (which can be fixed by tweaking the #'s) rather than something fundamental.

Your proposal is (almost) functionally identical to ours, but it doesn't feel as satisfying, IMO. With the 100-200-300 system you get the natural progression of 100% being "proficient" (full damage), 200% being "expert", and 300% being "master" and the bonuses after 100 being more interesting rather than just MOAR domage. With everything constrained to 100 it "feels" more like the skill is a point sink rather than a specialization, you have to max it just to do full damage with your weapon, even though rationally it's pretty much the same thing.

It seems that TES gets all of the character creation and Fallout gets all of the choices. Of the two I definitely prefer having the massive amount of choice New Vegas gives you in the story of the Courier, but some good character creation would be welcome in Fallout 4. I personally like New Vegas' character creation and I honestly don't mind becoming a god at everything.

This is the sole reason I take Logan's Loophole with every character I make. You really have to think what Perks are necessary and where to put your skill points every level. I also always put 1 strength and 1 endurance because it makes it more difficult. On hardcoe weight is realistic and low endurance means one or two hits and your dead. I play stealth characters so it never really effects me. I max out early but with careful planning it all works put

what is the point in that?...as soon as you said 'stealth build' you basically just killed your whole 'super difficulty' idea, since most rifles one shot everything in the game when in sneak mode (don't believe me? I use Annabelle as a sniping weapon and she does weaker damage then any other 'sniping' weapon and I still insta kill most targets, and two-shot LR Deathclaws.

get caught with your zipper down by a Deathclaw? consume some Turbo and become the master of speed. Assassins going to wtfpwn you? Turbo it up with Slash/Med-X/Battle Brew C-c-c-c-combo Breaker! you basically become immortal just because of that little combination. DT and health means nothing if you have 85 DR.

This thread has veered into the "Fallout 4" discussion.

I don't think the combat skills (for any projectile weapons) should govern the amount of damage, but accuracy and general usage.

And the "satisfaction" of your suggestion (imo) comes more from prolonged progression rather than rewarding functionality (which I was trying to aim at) due to the more widespread effects of the skill (the skillpoint sink argument -- what could be more of a skillpoint sink than a skill that has almost half a ton of investment space, and widely spread thin effectvalues?).

I see your point, but what I was going for was to represent a gradually increased hardships in growing towards "master level" of competency (less is more) and more immediate rewards, rather than a long steady stream in which you can hardly notice the effects.

I honestly don't think the skill point total is THAT bad...

I mean by the time you're level 30, you've probably already picked the direction you wanna go in. Sure you have 100 energy weapons so you could use that Holorifle, but you lack any energy weapons perks and you already invested Cowboy and Hand Loader into the Medicine Stick. I also don't think 25 perks is too many, because they've given you TONS to choose from. The difference between 15 perks and 25 is really that with 25 you have room to specialize in two areas, not just one. Seems fitting to me though, because having made an NCR and Legion character, I can tell you that the guns perks will completely fill all your guns slots, and there's just enough perks to get the Endurance, melee and unarmed perks for a Legionnaire.


If you don't really roleplay and just pick the best of everything though? Yeah, you could be pretty broken. Paralyzing Palm, Super Slam, Solar Energy, Hand Loader, Vigilant Recycler, Pack Rat, And Stay Back, Finesse, Better Criticals....
I like how it is though simply because I can make a character for any faction and feel like I got all the appropriate perks for them. And if I truly insist on being broken and having the best perks, well I can do that too. There's enough bad perks though that you can nerf yourself, and as for skill points? Well, you could purposely distribute them evenly instead of ever specializing, or you could just take Logan's Loophole. Plenty of options for plenty of different people.

Your assuming because I take Logan's Loophole that with the ability to not become addicted to chems that I would abuse it? In actuality the only chems I use would be stimpacks. Unless I decide to play a jet addict in which I create my own. Turbo, slasher, etc are game breakers which is why I don't use them. When fighting multiple enemies the chances for being detected increase obviously and I use Ratslayer then Trail Carbine so early on detection is minimum with the silenced Ratslayer but one I get the related Perks and start using the Trail Carbine it becomes more difficult with multiple enemies. Not hard but at times a challenge. With weight restrictions I can't just carry infinite ammo and gear so I have to plan my quests.

techinically with Pack Rat perk, 5.56 ammo becomes so light, it's almost as if you can carry 'infinite' amount of them, but still, at least your having fun.

Maybe the amount of points it costs to improve an skill would begin according to the SPECIAL that governs a skill? For example, a person who has 7 INT would have a 1:1 ratio when spending skill points to increase Repair, but once Repair hits 70, the cost to invest additional points would double, so it costs 2 skill points to turn 70 Repair into 71 Repair. If this same character achieves 8 INT later on, the point cost is reduced to 1 again until the soft cap of 80 is reached. Any skills that were Tagged would never be affected by this dynamic, allowing characters to have skewed specials without affecting some specific skills. I would like this kind of solution, as it is fairly straightforward since a player can quickly calculate where their skills would start costing more by thinking about their SPECIAL stats.

fallout 4 .....is it out yet....hahahaha....i want it.......i want ....i want

Lower the minimum of skill points gained per level to 5. Add 1 skill point per Intellect. That would work well enough. I have 3 intellect in NV and without using any skill boosting perks or books I have 3 skills at 100 by level 20... I am going to edit it to lower the number of points per level next time I play.