The Fallout facebook page updated us today and confirmed, among other things, that there's no level cap. This thread is basically branching off of the old thread, but anyway: what do you think?

In my opinion, this seems like a fine decision. If Todd Howard speaks true about there being 275 perks after counting extra ranks, that's a *ton* of levels before our characters all become the same, and that's not accounting for raising our SPECIAL. And someone said it in the last thread much better than I was ever able to articulate: our character builds are still going to be really unique in the early, mid, and late game stages. It's only the grindy metagame where our character masters everything.

I didn′t mind the (original) level 20 cap in Fallout 3. As I only ever make one character per game I tend to wanna max out all his awesomeness and that′s just boring

275 perks, sure. But how many of them will be worth picking?

Cause quantity=/=quality.

It's probably be smart to develop the main and minor skills you want, and select the perks accordingly.

Also, how are they counting perks. If they're all 5-level ones, that's actually only 55 perks. (It's likely something in between. But I still wouldn't count, say, Gun Nut Ranks 1-5 as five different perks.)

According to my own research:

All perks have 4 ranks, except 4 'special cases' than each have a single rank. I f we add in the 7 SPECIAL icons used to increase our stats that gives us exactly 275. Also, with the level cap removed, the maximum level would be 311, or 271 if we find all 100 skill books and all 20 bobbleheads.

It's good, I suppose, although it makes me wonder what's the point in "merging" skills with perks. Now I take it you're just going to be able to unlock all perk-skills and I thought one of the reasons for merging skills with perks was to avoid all players just maxing out characters. I personally was quite a fan of Skyrim's system, you were free to level whatever skills you wanted, or all of them. The perks added a little bit of uniqueness to your character with your inability to unlock them all (at least to begin with).

Regardless, I'm not a fan of level caps, especially very low ones which are then raised with DLC meaning you can potentially lose out on thousands of experience from killing enemies etc. after hitting level cap, so this is a good thing. Still fairly worried about the perk-skill system though.

From what I can tell by looking at a variety of possible builds, the levelling speed should be similar to that of Skyrim, but without the soft cap. This means that we would level very quickly at first, and gradually it would take longer for each level with a 'sweet spot' somewhere between 50 and 80 depending on our Intelligence (even higher if we take the Comprehension perk). To reach level 271 however, as I explained above, would take you an incredible amount of time!

No it wouldn't...

PlayerRef setactorlevel 271

....

...if ya play legitimatly it does ;p

Try "player.rewardxp 9999999999"

Setting the level directly might just change your level and add nothing else; would be a fun way to learn about level scaling, though!

The point about perks having ranks is a good one, though. Not counting ranks, we've only got 70 perks really. But if the ranks add new bonuses instead of just adding the same one multiple times, we're back to hundreds again. For instance, Medic could give a 20/40/60/80/100% bonus to stims, or the ranks could improve stimpaks, then Rad-X/RadAway, then Med-X, and other chems. That's a really basic example, but you get the idea.

That's the optimistic perspective, though.

I'm ok with No Level Cap Under 2 conditions.

1. It's optional to Raise Special/Perks, If This is forced, the whole system is flawed period end of story. I don't want to force myself to be a moat just because there's a perk out there that I don't want to pick like Bloody Mess for example and I have to pick Special making my character an unrealistic 10 in all which is dumb and takes away from Roleplaying. How can someone roleplay that they are terrible with energy weapons or aiming down the sights when Perception is at 10. Hopefully it's optional to raise Special/perks to keep my character consistent instead of some forced Wasteland God that he/she isn't.

2. The HP scaling isn't ridiculous at higher levels. I don't want to fight a Legendary Deathclaw with 5000 HP's just because "Oh let's make it difficult, Give it High HP so the player has a chance to die", I disagree Health does not lead to more difficulty, only longer fights. That's the thing with difficulty in Beth games, all they do at the higher difficulty is extend the time that you fight the enemy while also unfairly killing you in 2 hits while it takes 20 to also kill them. So I'm hoping for no HP sponges this time around, and that enemies will be properly balanced to a certain extent this time around. I can dream but it could happen, I hope.

consider you can access the perk chart whenever ya want at the press of a button, just like the perk trees in Skyrim, one would assume you can choose not to use perk points when you get them.

I think no cap is fine, and am already preparing a thread so those that care can post their progress in the game along with perk choices, unique weapons, settlement builds, experience points earned on so on without giving any spoilers. I think it is going to be pretty cool to see how high some will climb. I do hope though that we are not forced to choose a perk at each level so we can "bank" a point or two for a perk we want in the earliest stages of the game to really make a difference in our PC. MOAT PCs should only happen after many many hours and most quests have been completed, in my opinion.

My hope as well.

That way if I want to roleplay a wimpy asthmatic ugly muppet who can't run more than 10 feet before collapsing in a heap I can. Choices, the game should be all about the choices.

Give me the tools to roleplay how I want and I'll be happy. Forcing me to become a god is NOT what I want. Even if it can be fun on occasion.

Where was it said that Bobbleheads actually 'does' something? Or that skill books would even do anything this time around? (permanent increase to skills/stats)

Well, I guess you could make him/her really really lucky. But that would seem strange all things considered.

Note that I said 'according to my own research'. Neither of these details have been confirmed, but after what I've managed to uncover so far, I would bet my left arm that both features are in.

True it would, and it wouldn't necessarily be my character. But if I wanted to do that I should be able to. I shouldn't be forced through game mechanics into making my character something I don't want him or her to be.

Hopefully perk allocation will be optional and not mandatory on level up.

Soft cap in Fallout 3 might be that you need far more xp to level above 50 or something.

Lots of people hated that they could not level up anymore, its also an issue if you want to gain charisma based skill to make an settlement late in the game.

No you reached cap and can not get the perk who enables traders.

books and bobbleheads are back in i think books will boost special for a short time but dont know if that would to anything or they just might be story books to read now im hoping the bobbleheads will be as they was in fallout 3 unless they will be like the stupid snow globes

From what I can tell, we can speed up the levelling process in two ways, both of which increase the rate at which we gain XP. The first would be to simply Increase our Intelligence stat. The second would be by taking up to 4 ranks in Educated (requires 5 Intelligence), which would massively increase the amount of XP we acquire. This way, for anyone who wishes to really push the boat out and hit the really high levels, this would allow them the freedom to do so. For everyone else, you could still increase your Intelligence in order to access some of the higher perks, but by ignoring the Educated perk, you will level at a more moderate rate.

Considering the alterations of the mechanics of Fallout we've seen so far, I'm not willing to bet on anything to be honest.

That's fine, and I respect your point of view. But I will still be adding these and many other details into my skills & perks thread.

For the record, there is a ton of evidence in the E3 demo confirming how many of the individual skill mechanics work, as well as loads of perks being shown in use! Also, we are shown how much HP we start with, how Carry Weight is calculated, and a whole lot more. And as for the perk chart, I've been checking and cross-referencing various details for the best part of two weeks and I'm still finding new stuff every day. It's all in there, it's just a matter of looking

EDIT: on topic, I'm actually really pleased about this being confirmed, It just stops us being artificially restricted so that we can make our own choices to do with levelling up and progressing our character.

ok, so If I make sure to grab 9 intelligence from the off and take XP perks first then I can power level

as long as I'm not restricted to killing mole rats for the first 10 hours