You basically start the game with 28 perks at level 1, since each SPECIAL point is a perk rank. That would make 248 the theoretical level to max out a character, or 241 if you got the bobbleheads. It's speculated that characters stop getting more hit points after level 51, and it seems that 50 is the highest level requirement for a perk, so I would expect the endgame to be geared for characters in the mid to late fifties. Maybe there is a godzilla-sized deathclaw somewhere designed to challenge a level 100 player with power armor and a fat man launcher, I guess we'll see.

Hopefully DLC's will bring a lot more base perks. Now there is 70, but 140 or 210 would be better. So you could choose 1 set of the 2 or 3 possible.

Also when you choose 1 of the 3, you cant take the rest. That would really add some variety to the game.

I'm wondering if we can use some of the starting SPECIAL points to put into perks at character creation. Would actually make you feel special leaving the vault with a rank 8 perk.

You don't have to like this system, but it's not "dumbing down" by any stretch of the imagination. Everything you could do in Fallout 3 is possible with this system, and more. It balances all of the stats (charisma is no longer useless, intelligence is no longer disproportionately powerful) and it's way more nonlinear - you can pick any perk in any order so long as you meet the SPECIAL requirements, ranks notwithstanding. The "skills" themselves aren't as granular, sure, but I don't put much value in that - I think it's perfectly acceptable for an Action RPG to do it in ranks, and the new ranks will add bonuses other than damage that will make gameplay with the different weapon types even more disparate.

IMO, the old system was fundamentally flawed. Since there was a level cap, and all of the most powerful perks were at the level cap, you had to make a choice on level-up to get out of the screen. You couldn't bank your perks for later, since then everyone would just take all of the Level 20 perks at once. And that balance goes out the window once a DLC adds new perks and raises the level cap. Plus, there were points when I didn't even want to choose any of the perks available to me - but I had to just to get out of the menu. None of this is a problem with the new system, so I'm glad they overhauled it instead of trying to fix the old system.

I'm really going to miss the days when my courier, identified as a misanthrope by the character creation process, is able to convince the most brutal of Ceaser's followers to turn around and leave.

That and my perception/agility of 1 having absolutely no affect on my ability to handle a firearm.

Meanwhile fallout 4 ties accuracy in vats to your perception and it's somehow dumber than my blind as a bat courier shooting the wings off a fly.

@OP:

Yes, the new system is better for RPG, but the caveat is IF they do not force level up choices and simply allow you to view your character screen(s) so that you choose when to level up as you like. The bad thing with Skyrim is the fact that you have to spend points once you view the screen, and the bad thing with FO3 and FONV is that the level up is automatic and beyond any player control.

Well, we already know that eventually all characters will be the same since there's no level cap. It will just take awhile. However, I also suspect that most characters will reach a point by mid to upper-mid levels where the character is basically done and further levels simply dump into areas not of particular interest to the character. Of course, it's also possible to roleplay a character who eventually gains new interests in areas that were not originally of interest.

The thing is that a .556 bullet is not the same between an experienced, skilled shooter and a novice who barely knows how to hold the gun. That is why the damage differs with greater skill, not because the bullet is physically different (i.e., the outcome of using the gun and bullet differ even if the bullet and gun are exactly the same physically).

No, this is completely incorrect as far as RPGs are concerned. You can have an opinion, of course, or preference, but skills are NOT a necessity for any RPG and, in fact, most RPGs do not have any skills at all even going all the way back to the original D&D and AD&D games. Very few RPGs use some sort of skill system, so getting rid of it actually fits with how most RPGs are designed rather than using something that doesn't even make sense from a roleplay perspective.

Well, your concentration is a matter of choice on level up rather than being constrained by actual fields used to gather XP.

Except that they desperately need a Vault Girl for female characters as the constant view of a Vault Boy when playing a girl is annoying (and yes, I prefer playing adolescent girls regardless of the opening BGS gives).

See above regarding how all characters will eventually, after a very long time, wind up the same due to no level cap, as well as my observation that most characters will probably finish practical development by mid to upper-mid levels.

I'll have to wait until I play the game myself before I can decide whether or not I like this system. It looks promising but I can't know for sure until I've actually experienced it.

Yes, yes it is the same. A .556 bullet hitting someone in the gut, regardless of the shooter's skill and experience, is going leave them in a very [censored] up state. I completely agree with PCdug on the matter, and I have been saying this myself for a while now, but gun related perks should not alter the amount of damage dealt by weapons.

Weapons should have a base damage level, that can be altered by the various modifications available to them. Perks should affect the character's ability to handle said weapons (reload, accuracy, stability, recoil, etc), and they should affect the player's ability to improve said weapons which might improve damage (better barrels, ammunition types, muzzles, etc).

I feel like it's a fair action game/RPG compromise to have the perks do bonus damage though, realism be damned. Among all of the other new powers our characters can suddenly get from perks, having guns do more damage doesn't seem that farfetch'd.

It is possible that the first rank of Rifleman/Commando/Gunslinger is the only one that adds +20% damage though, and the rest are just the bonus effects like disarming and limb crippling. But since there are five ranks I'm pretty sure it's +20% and the extra effects, for a total of double damage after all five ranks.

I cannot believe that anyone would defend a "To hit percentile system" in a first person game.

I mean really?

No I don't want your answer or input on that, it doesn't seem to be something that should have been given the lest amount of thought sorry just sorry no.

Don't even try to defend that there should ever have been a % chance to hit in a first person game.

Motsie has the right of it in my opinion. Weapons have base stats that can be improve with mods. Perks allow you to build those mods and handle the weapon better. Do I think Bethesda is in agreement and designed Fallout 4 that way? Not a chance. It is far easier to tack on a Damage = base x (perk level x assigned multiple) system. I'll still have fun with it, but I have the feeling that improved gunplay or not, it is still not going to completely scratch the itch I have. I really hope I am wrong. Really really hope.

Getting to the root topic of this thread, I am actually quite excited about the new Perk system. I tried to play Fallout 3 and New Vegas recently and they just didn't satisfy. I've read and heard too much about the new game to be able to suspend my discontent for the old guard games.

Well, this is a discussion board. A place where people express their individual viewpoints and agree to disagree. Rejecting other people's opinions and then trying to force your own upon them usually does not end well.

It has the same general effect as sklll level-based hit probability, and so the RPG isn't really compromised at all.

Fine,

Making the choice to improve your "To Hit chance" is not a choice its mandatory.

If you want to actually do any damage at all the Only sound decision is to max out your Skill in a weapon selection ASAP.

If you miss you do no damage at all, every levelup should be commited to maxing out that stat not a % point spent anywhere else.

Then on top of that no it gets worse listen Skill in Fo3/FNV didn't just effect "To Hit Chance" it also effected the value of any applied damage directly.

So in fact it doesn't just effect your chance to do any damage at all in how often your going to hit nope, it also applies another modifier to the quality of that damage.

Very bad design decision a left over from Oblivion Engine.

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I'm all for if the player can shoot he should also be able to hit. Really how many people out there enjoy landing headshots seeing the blood register but nope your character missed? If a player can land that shot he should be rewarded this is a First Person game no matter its roots and don't lie, if you were playing a character in Fo3 you did use a gun and likely you dumped most of your points into Small Guns until it was maxed.

There is this mechanic called VATS if you have to RPG it.

Also not sad to see that most items in the game no longer need to be constantly repaired in fact only very high end stuff like Power Armor needs to be maintained. That was another thing I'm glad didn't make the cut in Skyrim and really looking forward to its absence in Fo4.

So much stuff in Fo3 was just used to maintain gear and it really didn't make the game more enjoyable actually it made it less enjoyable.

You can cry foul and say oh its dumbing it down but get real quite a few people don't enjoy tedious tasks.

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I understand that many who are reading this have a very high probability that in fact they likely used a modification to correct these issues.

In fact given units of those games sold vs how many downloaded an Overhaul its about 50% or 1 in 2 of you reading this used a mod to correct those problems so think about that before saying I'm wrong.

All those factors can be a little hard to represent in an RPG FPS.

After all as an RPG, perks represent special abilities from skills.

Perks allow you do things in game that you can't do in real life.

For example having a perk that helps with autofire recoil makes sense for someone trained with automatic weapons.

Or having perk that lets one pick a lock.

Just like having a skilled shooter being able to do more damage than an untrained shooter.

Of course getting the right balance is always difficult.

With all the amazing mods for Fallout 3 and FONV, I'm expecting there to be some seriously blow your mind mods for Fallout 4.

Some cross-site trolling has been removed. Folks, there's fights aplenty to be found here - let's not go trying to invent bogeymen to pick on (and it's also a violation of our forum rules.)

Anyway, a couple of points I'd like to mention:

The original Fallout games worked like they did because that was the game Interplay wanted to make. We had 3D back in '97. It was fairly new, sure - not everyone had 3D accelerators, but there were 3D games out at the time. More to the point - there were plenty of real-time RPG games out by then (Interplay even developed and published a number of real-time games concurrent with Fallout 1.) The point being that if Interplay had wanted to use a different rules system or make the game real-time, it was well within their capabilities. Sometimes you guys make me feel old...

As to the "dumbing down" of Fallout 4 - I would instead argue that if anything was "dumb" or not properly thought-out it was the ruleset implemented in Fallout 3. They took the old rules, made some arbitrary changes (such as capping skill advancement at 100, for example) and then expected everything to function the same when the gameplay and scope of the game was totally different. This led to some foundational flaws that could be found through pretty much every aspect of the game:

For starters, Attributes were poorly balanced (not only against each other, but also in terms of properly describing your character's abilities and in-game use.) Many Attributes had very little direct functionality or impact on gameplay. Whereas in the original system, there was a give-and-take effect where sacrificing points in INT would mean less overall skill points, this was made up for through the advancement of other Attributes. A high-STR, high-END character could get by just fine with just a few skill points in a relevant combat skill. And conversely, a high-INT build needed those extra skill points to make up for the lack of immediate combat functionality they'd have received by focusing in another Attribute.

Skills were also improperly balanced against each other and in terms of gameplay usefulness. This was partially an artifact from the original system (which itself wasn't terribly elegant in it's skill distribution,) but little effort was put into an intuitive and even distribution of skill paths.

Likewise, the ruleset and character advancement didn't take into account the scope of the game it was being placed into, nor the end-game effects of the leveling system itself. The level cap was put into place predominantly because by then you'd most likely just run out of skills to spend points in (especially if you weren't thinking ahead and actually picked some of the skill-centric perks like Gun Nut - that you basically had to "meta-game" to avoid maxing out a character is itself a symptom of an improperly-implemented ruleset.)

And even with the level cap in place, chances were that by the time you reached that point (what, maybe half-way through the content if you were taking your time and not rushing through quests) that your character resembled everyone's else's character. It didn't really matter what your Attributes were by the time you hit level 30 - but you likely had most skills maxed out, and the ones that weren't up to 100 were ones you didn't use anyway.

So maybe as a knee-jerk reaction looking at the surface effects of the new changes in Fallout 4's system, one could think it was "dumbed down." But rather the opposite is true. From what we've seen thus far, I'm looking at these rules revisions as possibly the most thought Bethesda has yet put into it's advancement system (and I'm including Elder Scrolls in that block statement.) The proof, of course, will be in the pudding once the game comes out, but bear with me here:

From the descriptions we've seen and the videos released, Attributes will actually have some value once again. Evidence points that a character with 1 in STR and 10 in AGI will play distinctly differently than a character with the reverse Attribute choices. To me, it's a hallmark of a good system when, if you were to take out all skills and perks and other errata, that with just the primary Attributes the game would still function and each character would play in a unique way with their own strengths and weaknesses. And apart from the impact these stats will have on the game on their own merits, you still have to consider that each attribute's perks are capped at that attribute's level. On it's own that'll make choosing your attributes an important choice, and that's just doubling-down on the impacts attributes will have to begin with, on their own, and the systemic impact each attribute value will have on the game mechanics.

Skills, perks, etc - that's just semantics, really. Functionally, they're not terribly different. A perk with 5 ranks is no different (from the standpoint of surface mechanics) than many other RPGs that simply have values of 1-5 for all their attributes and skills to begin with (the old World of Darkness games, for instance.) We're not really losing skills, so much as we're re-designing the wheel, here.

And (I think this is very important,) the scope of game has been considered in creating the advancement system finally. There's - what, over 300 levels before you start to max out everything on your character? Conventional wisdom is that you're going to start bumping into the system's soft cap well before that becomes an issue, anyway. (For illustration, you could technically max out every skill in Fallout 2 to 200 if you really wanted - but it just meant months of grinding around random encounters in the world map. To actually play the game and succeed, you needed to specialize your character and think about what was of the most benefit at the time.)

In short - this system has potential to be the most elegant and thought-out system Bethesda has yet put out. It offers many avenues of advancement in a manner that doesn't require arbitrary level caps to attempt to stay relevant to the game, encourages unique character builds and experimentation without unduly punishing players for making "wrong" choices (there shouldn't be such a thing in a properly-planned ruleset,) and will maintain individual and unique characters through to the end-game and beyond most likely. If you think that's "dumbed down," then I really think you're just not looking beyond the most basic of the surface details - it's actually a fairly deep system from what we've seen (and we still haven't had a chance to really "peak under the hood" yet, either.)

That is a fantastic reply to the criticism and a great summary of why it is a step in a great direction. I'm quite the fan of the new system after taking some of what you've mentioned into consideration, but it took me a while once I heard that news that skills were no more.

Fo3 and FNV are both from the Obsidian engine, which if I'm right did in fact use a to hit chance system. No I'm not talking about VATs, you really can fire a gun and miss in previous Fallouts.

There are of course many other issues in Fo3 and FNV such as weapon condition effecting not only the damage but your chance to hit either by actual % or by spread, I don't see how it really matters.

Here are the things that effect your capacity to land a hit

1) Skill

2) Weapon Condition

3) Spread

4) Distance

5) LOS (which in fact there are many cases where you think its clear line of fire but in fact its not due to the way some meshes are built)

6) The fact that bullets magically gravitate to the center of mass if they are in fact supposed to register a hit

6a) if there is a mesh that intervenes at this point the shot will fail see 5.

6b) This also creates odd scenarios with distance shots in which if you want to hit the head you have to aim just above the head's hitbox.

There is the fact that I have a ton of hours playing those games, making mods in those games, and being a member of several other modding groups for those games...So I have some amount of insight as to the actual mechanics under the hood here. Though if say Chucksteel, Roy, Gribble, and those guys want to correct me sure I'll take their insight over my own but I'm sure what I've said is close enough to the issue with the prior games.

What I'd like to see in Fo4 is improvement on this, I don't think that spending points into better accuracy is fun and really it all comes down to how much damage is applied and how fast.

Surely you meant the Gamebryo Engine, or you meant the Oblivion Engine which is not its name but its the same engine. Hit chance in normal combat hasn't been a thing since Morrowind. In Fallout hit chance was ONLY in V.A.T.S., not in normal combat where you point and shoot. If you miss a shot or swing, it was due to your aim, an obstacle. or other things such as spread. Please, link to an article or wiki page that says that normal combat has hit chances, cause I'm certain there isn't one.

My apologies I kept reading stuff from people that seem stuck on Role Playing Games and a big part of what those RPG guys like to bring up is mechanics being thrown out.

To hit Chance is a common go to when bashing on Skyrim and sooner or later it will be so for Fo4.

I would have used a reply button or framed up my comments for a specific but agh the forum buttons don't seem to be working for me Nate

I was trying to work backwards and track what or who you were referring to, sorry if my edits are confusing (you'll probably need to go back and read my two previous posts), but thankfully hit chance is not longer a thing, gone since after Morrowind. Fallout 3 and NV did have some rpg aspects thrown into this such as auto-aim, though, which I don't like... either you hit the target or not, auto aim is closer to dumbing down combat and I hope it's gone now.

Well Nate if it is only in Vats that we have a hit chance your still faced with much of what I wrote out above.

Also shots fired did track to the center of mass...So if your target is behind a counter you have to aim higher than you might think or your going to hit the counter and not the guy behind it.

Uh you know what I'll just go read what you wrote and finish this dungeon up in Skyrim then come back and make a reply haha.

EDIT

I've been under the impression that there wasn't much difference between Gamebyro engine and Obsidian Engine.

I think that's more of a collision issue, where an object such as a pillar or counter top or fridge has a larger collision than the object's actual size. So I could playing Fallout 3/NV/Oblivion/Skyrim and be aiming with a gun or bow past an object such as corner in a hallway with a very clear line of sight to my target but the wall still blocks my shot, which is frustrating. My hope is that this issue has been tackled in upcoming games.

I'm not familiar with the Obsidian Engine but from googling it, it's very different from the Gamebryo Engine that Oblivion, Fallout 3, and New Vegas were made in. You might be confusing the fact that Obsidian Entertainment developed New Vegas, but the engine with their name was not used for it.

Ya clearly I'm tired meant Oblivion sorry.

Well if you remove auto-targeting which both FWE and PN did, it removed the whole center of mass tracking issue.

Collision is exactly what happened with a lot of the meshes in the environment that players had to figure out when it came to shooting. I'm also hoping this is improved upon.

Tired or not

Its a character development thread,

So my line of thinking was that in the prior games I never actually felt that putting points into skill for a weapon was an option due to there being so many factors at play. Having small guns capped out felt quite mandatory in Fo3/FNV.

This new system I think will be better, we will know for certain that outside of Vats we are not dealing with hit chance, and also I have a feeling that everything will be much more clear as to what it does and what we should expect rather than having to guess at it or aquire knowledge of the game engine to play well.

You could handle accuracy with/without perks/skills in a manner similar to the original Deus Ex

Your crosshair becomes less spread and more accurate with skill. If you're bad with a gun, you can hit within an area around your crosshair (and the game actually shows the bullet firing at a bad trajectory). At high level, you're totally on point, and will hit where you point the gun. You could also, with iron sights, show the gun swaying under the control of a low-skilled PC.

That would show you upfront that you might miss, and you wouldn't just arbitrarily be told "You missed" you'll actually see that your aim was bad (and the bullet landed 2 feet from the target) because you lack the skill to do it properly. Obviously, with melee, this isn't to be used - there it makes sense the higher the skill the more damage you do.

Further, you could still pull off a shot and hit something with a miss, it might just be a different shot than the one you wanted. Also, an idea would be to factor in luck. Say I am targeting an enemy and my crosshair is spread over an area containing most of their upper torso, shoulders and just a little bit of their neck/head. Now, I dare not try a headshot as there would be more empty space for me to miss than this shot.

On low luck (<5) the chance of my bullet firing into the empty space increases. Note that while I say "chance" this would still be shown, it's just what direction the bullet will VISUALLY mis-fire in (will still hit whatever's behind the target).
On 5 Luck, it will have equal chance to misfire in any direction (and equal to hit where I'm pointing).
On high (>5) luck, it will most likely fire in the direction of the head. This is still not guaranteed, and increasing my skill/perks will still be ideal, as I will be able to more confidently aim at the head and hit.