that's your personal view point what about the people that hate level caps and want to be able to become great at everything...bethesda is trying to give everyone their desired play style...I personally lose all interest in a game if there is nothing more to level towards...I'm not saying your view is wrong or invalid..but bethesda is clearly going for total player freedom...which means you can still limit yourself...if there was a level cap there is literally no more self progression tho

You ask me, "just limit yourself" is about as empty and useful a statement as "just wait for a mod." I would think we could all agree that a game is better when half the players aren't arbitrarily and artificially putting self-limits on their play and the other half isn't waiting around for someone to make a mod to "fix" things. (Obviously, I think,) the best-case scenario for really any RPG is where those who enjoy making meaningful choices about how to advance their characters will be able to do so while still allowing an avenue for further progression beyond that point.

To my preferences, I'd like to still have some areas I would want to progress my character in by the time I complete the primary content (most of the exploration, most of the side-quests, and finishing the main quest.) But then, my gameplay goal is to "beat" the game. Yeah, I'd like to have some room for growth and mistakes in there - if I start out focusing on melee weapons and then decide that maybe for my character energy weapons makes more sense then ideally there'd be room for growth to make mistakes, change my mind, etc. If by the end of the game I've pretty much mastered a couple of areas and raised some other things to decent levels (like in previous games, maybe I don't use lots of Explosives weapons but maybe it's nice to have enough skill points in there to disarm some traps, etc,) then I'd say that's pretty good.

But again - that's my primary goal is to complete the game. If one of your goals is to max out your character in every possible way then I think Bethesda games are actually ideally suited to that. You're going to be able to play after completing the vast majority of the content and those types of players are more likely to keep going with the same character for much, much longer than I am anyway. So now there's no level cap and you can play after beating the main quest then you've unlimited progression potential anyway.

I can't remember the word for it, but there's a concept that players are naturally going to be trying to pick the most advantageous options at every step of progression. I'm naturally going to assume that I'll need every possible advantage in order to succeed at the game and overcome the challenges presented to me. Self-limiting myself in some arbitrary way goes against the natural instincts I have as a player. I shouldn't have to do that in order to further enjoy my playing of the game any more than other players ought to feel unduly limited by not ever having enough room for growth. Since there's no intrinsic need for these objectives to be mutually exclusive, I think it's quite silly that these are even at odds with each other. It's just a matter of properly balancing things to accomodate both equally.

And sure, maybe I'll finish up all the content and want to continue playing with that character. There's all the crafting and settlement-building and such to explore, after. If I want to continue playing after reaching my primary gameplay goal of "beating" the game, then I ought to expect that my character will continue to advance. And if that's the case then I can hardly complain if I begin to move closer and closer towards maxing out my character. Likewise, if your goal is to max out your character then expecting to have to put in some extra effort to achieve that goal is not unwarranted, I would think.

In short, there's just no reason that we can't all have our cake and eat it too, in this case. I'm very much hoping that Bethesda will have balanced things closer towards this objective this time out. As I see it, they have all the tools to accomplish this.

Yeah, I suppose some people play that way. Personally, I don't naturally "min-max" - it's not like I pick stuff randomly or don't try to pick things that seem like they'll be useful, but.... I guess I don't aim for Maximum Efficiency. And I don't automatically see that certain things will synergize and amplify each other. So I'll pick stuff that sounds useful, or might be handy. And maybe then I see online that what I did was inefficient, or less than perfect. Eh, whatever. I had fun.

(So, for ex - in Skyrim I didn't pound out Smithing to 100 ASAP, and it didn't even occur to me to loop it with enchanting & alchemy. So I never ended up feeling "OP". Meanwhile, other people were complaining about how super-overpowered they ended up "just playing normally"... when what they described as normal play wasn't remotely how I do.)

I also don't assume that I'll have to do everything 110% ideal in order to succeed at a game... which, of course, leads to problems when I play games that do absolutely require min-maxing & perfect builds to get through them.

(This is probably why I almost always play games on Normal difficulty, and feel like they're challenging enough. )

In Fallout 3 and Vegas I always liked reaching the cap before finishing the game. My character became complete in what I set out to create them as-strengths and weaknesses. My favorite part of the game isn't so much leveling as planning out a backstory of a character and then basing strengths and weaknesses off that. The game becomes complete in one respect for me when skills and perks are distributed in the correct places for that character-no more and no less. Now I won't be able to keep playing without becoming a generic god.

But that (once again) depends on the scale of leveling. If you plan on playing with one character for hundreds of hours after completing all the quests, then sure that's true.

But if you're talking about "I'll be a generic god by the time I'd normally have finished the game?" Well, no one knows yet. My point is that hopefully it won't be true, because (as I've said) there's no intrinsic reason that it can't be scaled so that becoming a "god" would require extra effort beyond what the average player would put in just to complete the game.
I wasn't really speaking to min/maxing so much as...

Okay, in Fallout 3 a lot of those perks are straight skill increases. So my first play through I figured those would come in handy. So I grabbed ranks in Gun Nut and others early on to advance those skills quickly. I also grabbed all the ranks I could to increase my XP gain, not realizing that I was going to slam into that level cap only so much faster (before I was even halfway through the MQ.)

In hindsight, those perks only hastened an end to a progression I already felt was too short compared to the scope and content of the game. And before I even hit the cap I'd run out of skills to put those points into. They were all maxed. This wasn't from trying to create a super-powrful character or min/max. At every stage those just seemed like good ideas. Of course I wanted more points in Small Guns and Speech - those were my primary skills. Of course I wanted to gain levels faster - picking perks is fun. It was a LACK of forethought and power-leveling that over-powered my character.

In later playthroughs I specifically avoided those perks and progression felt much more natural. I still hit that cap ridiculously early but at least every character didn't end up with the same stats at that half-way mark. (Because part of that games problem was also due to a leveling system balanced for 30 hours of play being crammed into a game meant to be played for much, much longer than that.)

So ironically, I've had to min/max and plan ahead more so that I DON'T over-power my character. It just seems backward to me that I ought to put MORE thought into leveling to achieve something that in other RPGs would give me the opposite effect.

Thus why I'm cautiously optimistic about Fallout 4.

I'm guessing the level curve will go vertical at either level 50 or level 100... and come to think of it, a run where I pick a perk randomly at every level sounds like utter, delightful chaos.

I wonder if anyone's tried to graph the leveling curve for Skyrim or the older Fallout games. Would be interesting to get a visual representation of what the progression curve is like.

Yeah, I picked those (at least the skill+ ones; I never pick XP bonuses except in uber-grinding games like Diablo) on my first character, too.

But I think there's a viewpoint issue here - what "overpowered" and "min-max" mean to different people. At least for me, I don't see getting 100 in my primary skills as OP, but rather the appropriate goal. And the true min-max/powergamer types would dismiss (I certainly remember threads talking that way back in the early days of FO3) those +5 Skill perks as terrible/a waste of a perk. That picking those makes your character underpowered, since you blew one of your limited perk spots on a useless perk.

(And that's what I was talking about when I said that I don't naturally powergame - I take perks like +5 skill or other ones that "oh, that sounds useful" rather than the ones that actually end up being super-OP-combo ones. As opposed to the min-maxers who grind out the math and figure out that such-and-such perk set is 15.3% more damage or defense than another one - the calculated "correct" build that gets tossed around in games like Diablo 2 or WoW, that if you're not using it, the "pro" players kick you from their groups for being a "bad". Or - in single player games like Skyrim/etc - the ones who complain that the game is broken/too easy/trash because "if you , then everything dies in one hit to your 10000 damage sword. And of course everyone does , that's the only way to play games. If you don't do Absolute Best at all times, why play at all?" That's what I mean when I say min-maxing and powergaming. : So you saying "I have to min-max to not overpower my character" sounds a bit off to me. But yeah, I understand what you're trying to say. )

Yeah that was the thing - I hadn't realized that putting extra points into my favorite skills would just mean I'd run out of places to put those points in down the line. Getting to 100 in my main skills was fine - the earlier the better, even.

I even had quite a few that fit my character and playstyle. (Speech, Science, Energy Weapons, Small Guns, etc - even Lockpicking, Stealth, and Medicine fit my character.)

Yeah, the problem was I hadn't thought that in trying to advance those primary and secondary skills I was really just investing in tertiary skills down the line.

My issue isn't even so much that I got 100 skills I never used as a side effect of just playing as came naturally to me. But I'd rather if I could have just had more and useful avenues to pursue areas more appropriate to my character.

Interplay approached that issue by allowing you to raise skills past 100. Bethesda did out with that, made a game enormous in scope, and then set a level cap that meant you'd stop progressing well before you'd played most of the game.

I really hope they've put more thought into these things thus time out (and from what I've seen I can't help but be encouraged.)

Yeah, I was fine with the 20 cap, but it definitely did happen too fast. If they'd tweaked the curve so that the first few levels were just as fast (you want to get a start on your character build/concept in a reasonable time), but the overall trip to 20 was, oh, 2-3 times longer? That wouldn't have been bad.

I feel like the pace of the leveling was fine (like I said - I think it's fun to gain levels and pick perks,) just that it didn't get you very far in the game. I'm kind of a rules nerd, this is the sort of stuff that wakes me up in the middle night. You ask me, rates of XP and the scaling of the leveling (both in terms of XP needed per level as well as how many levels it ought to take you to complete the game) are so foundational to a roleplaying system that it really should be one of the first things you set in stone. So many other mechanics are emergent from that basis, or altered by it.

Anyway, this is why the new perk system gives me hope.

Just to softball some numbers out there without bothering to do much math or research (off-hand I can't recall how many of the perks are likely to be multi-tiered and most of that's unconfirmed anyway,) we can still make some (very vague, admittedly) educated guesses. Like I said, the rate of leveling felt pretty good to me in Fallout 3 and New Vegas. I didn't feel like I was going through levels too fast, and by the time it started slowing noticeably I was beginning to get a pretty fleshed-out character anyway. So just to throw a round number out there and assuming you'll be gaining levels at about the same rate, let's take a look at what level 50 might look like:

So at a guess, when I hit level 50 in Fallout 4 I think it's likely fairly safe to say I'm looking at end-game content or at least getting pretty close to it. I can easily imagine that there's more content to get through in Fallout 4, but if I'm remembering correctly, in New Vegas and with all the DLC I never quite made it to that level (but I did skip some stuff and could have played longer with the existing content.) So in Fallout 4 I can take a stab that by the time I level to 50 if I haven't completed the Main Quest yet it's likely on the horizon and potentially I might even be going through after the Main Quest and awaiting DLC. In short - if I haven't completed the game by then I'm likely to be pretty close. So what's that character going to look like?

Again, I'm not doing much math or research here, but I think we can get within the general ballpark at least just with sheer logic. There's 70 Perks, obviously - so even if I'm not counting the multi-tiered perks I'll obviously not have run out of Perks to grab. And I'll likely have needed to have invested some of those levels just in raising my SPECIAL Attributes. There's bobbleheads, sure - but I doubt that'll give me more than a point in each Attribute, which means one way or another I'm going to need to invest some levels in raising Attributes at some point, just to gain access to the higher-ranked Perks.

Heck, even if I hit level 70 at end-game I still don't have max in all the Perks yet. At that point I'm pretty... well-rounded, but I'm actually okay with having some degree of generalization by that point, personally. My character is the star of the show, after all - I'm looking for meaningful choices and individuality more than anything. And if I've used my last 20 or so levels of that 70 removing weaknesses then we can't really discount those other 50 levels where I just played all those hours as more of a specialist.

And let's not discount the impact that Attribute level requirements will make. If each stat begins at 1 and we have 21 points to spread, then we start with 28 total points allocated in our stats (enough to get every Attribute to level 4 - already I have to make some major decisions just out of the gate.) Heck, I now need 42 levels just to max out my SPECIAL enough that I can even think about maxing out all my Perks. Even if I collect every Attribute bobblehead it's likely safe to assume that it's only going to be an increase of one point - meaning even with all of those that's still 35 level just to max SPECIAL - which by itself is enough to get me to at least mid-game I would think (though that would be an odd build to not have any skill perks by then...)

So that's something to chew on, and why I'm hopeful for this. Sure, I can "max" everything about my character if there's no level cap - but we're talking well over 100 levels to achieve that goal. No matter how much content there is in the game, I don't see there being enough to get you to that point before you've pretty definitively "beat" the game. It means it'll be possible, but we're likely talking about a lot of game time played after completing the main quest, running around doing random encounters and playing with the sandbox elements.

(fyi Kiralyn most of that's not an argument against you, but rather the "no level cap = every character is Batman" contingent. Your post just got me thinking about things. Once I started thinking about the effort it would realistically take to "overpower" a character with this system it started looking pretty clearly like that's not likely to be much of an issue this time out.)

You mean, actually roleplay?

What about those who can't stand self gimping? What about those who wish for the character progression to provide some semblance of planning and systemic intrigue? What about those who wish the systems to be at least a bit thought provoking? What about anyone to whom forced self gimping is a bad idea?

Self limiting is an artificial excuse for tolerating a bad system. It's playing against ones self rather than the game -- which is fine for people to do when they wish, but also inexcusable as a requirement for an "enjoyable" experience by default.

So do I. That's the point where it is good time to wrap that runthrough up and plan for the next one and see how things work with a different character.

"Out-of-game self challenges" - like naked run, no level ups, no reloads, etc - are a bit different from the game actually providing and internally supporting the roleplay through it's systems and narratives (whether to use this or that armor for what ever the systemic benefit, whether to do this or that in a certain quest for what ever the response might be as per the PC you've got in mind, and so on). You can "simply choose not to" anything, but that's just self gimping and/or play pretend.

That's a problem they create for themselves. If they want a challenging, thought-provoking role, then they can craft one for themselves. What's the problem?

No, no.

That's a problem the game creates for them if it is designed such that it requires outside interventions and houserules to be "enjoyable". Personally, when I play a game, I play it for the game it is supposed to be. Not to playpretend and do makebelieve in a virtual world.

So much this. Exactly why i consider overhaul mods to be required for every BGS game

...And after reminding myself of that, why was i planning to get this game before the modding tools are released anyway?

It's not "playpretend." In Skyrim, if your high-level warrior has 100 health, then you have a real challenge, not a play-pretend or a make-believe one. If your character does not wear armor that is virtually impenetrable, then your character is vulnerable; you don't just imagine it.

An overpowered role is one you make for yourself through your own so-called playpretend. "I have no reason not to take this perk," you playpretend, "because I am make-believing that my character would get that perk." Believing that your character should have or use a thing, whether it be a skill level or a perk or a specific weapon, is to act on an imaginary restriction that you impose on the character.

All players restrict their roles. It is not outside intervention. It's part of the game.

The game is not about building a role to beat the obstacles, but about beating the obstacles with the role. If you don't enjoy sneaking around, then don't take on a role that necessitates sneaking around. If you don't enjoy being virtually unstoppable, then don't take on a role that necessitates being virtually unstoppable.

As per your points

1) Some people dont like level caps, same as you dont like self gimping. Not good nor bad, just preferences.

2) From a game design perspective its much easier to have the majority of people happy without the level cap. I dont want to play more then one character, why should I be restricted and forced to play more then one character if I want to try out all the perks?

3) Much like photography, if an image is too dark you can always get the colour information from it and brighten it, but if its too bright you cannot do anything to it. If there is a level cap, there is NO option for me to have a MOAT. If there isnt a level cap there is still an option for people to roleplay and start new characters

4) The whole game is pretend, thats why its a game. Why should how I play affect how you want to play? You arent the fallout police, I can do what I want in my playthrough and you can do what you want. Bethesda has made it so.

I think it's still silly to assume the two approaches are mutually exclusive in the first place. There's no intrinsic reason a game can't easily accommodate both.

That there's even a made-up debate about this points to (what I feel are) obvious flaws in the fundamental design of Fallout 3. Because if the leveling worked properly this wouldn't even be a topic of discussion.

But like has been pointed out, this shouldn't be an issue for Fallout 4.

One thing that many people haven't even considered is the sheer amount of XP that would be required to max everything out. And this is something that would increase significantly every time we level up, just as it has done in previous games. The big difference here is that, with so many perks, ranks, and stat increases, for any of us to become a true jack-of-all-trades, we would need to acquired several million XP. My own estimate, taking into account all possible bobblehead and skill book increases, would put this figure at just over 3,500,000.

Some players want to complete everything in the game with one character and become MOAT. They are covered.

Some want to role play a specific character who specialises skills and chooses which quests to do. They will also be covered, at least for a good long while.

But if you want to specialise you character, AND do everything in the game, AND can't resist picking perks that don't fit, then, well, someone has to lose out.

This is not Skyrim we're talking about. But it is self gimping to deliberately build an inadequate character. And that's bad if it is forced by design -- if otherwise the game is too easy. And it is almost equally bad if an overpowered - or, master of all trades - character comes from consistent playing and character building.

Yes, but if the design is sound, that means the game produces and responds to those limitations (ie. you choose to build the type of PC you wish at the cost of other types, be it master in one or two areas and inept in others, or jack of all trades but master of none -- you choose your route and the game handles the rest; not so that you choose your initial route and then neglect the systems because you know it is going to [censored] things up if you touch it).

That's a self contradiction. If you don't build your role to beat the obstacles, the role does not beat them. +/- zero.

You build the role to overcome the obstacles that lie ahead for your chosen path and live with not being able to and/or having a hard time tackling the rest.

1. Ok.

2. Are majority of people happy without a level cap? Why should you be restricted and forced? Why should I?

3. I don't think a "moat" should be available to be built - at least not before the post ending freeroam - for the simple reason that it kills replayvalue and the intrigue of advancing a character (in a meaningful way).

4. Then (if it is all a pretend) it is not so much a game anymore, but a virtual/simulated playground to mess around in.

I'm not a police of anything, and neither are you. But I am calling for meaningful design choices that provide and require more meaningful gameplay decisions - even if and precisely because it restricts the choices the player makes and puts him in the situation where he needs to make those meaningful choices. Every perk one takes makes all the more difference and is of all the more value to the player and the gameplay when the choosing of it has to be made through valuing it (and its short and long term effects) against other potential choices. When everything is open, that does not happen and everything is cheaper and less impactful.

In previous games, that has meant that you cap out your specialization in few levels -- after which the rest of the game goes through neglecting character progression (that's not a very good design - even if laid back and open).

Someone always needs to lose, and everybody'd rather it's not them.

I usually dont get into these discussions because no one will have their mind changed, however that being said, Im bored and its a long weekend and I want to procrastinate on my renovations. Now to the juicy bits

I would say the majority of gamers are happy with the no level cap. I dont have any real proof but the responses on their twitter, the forums, and facebook were quite positive, I would say at least a 5-1 in favour of it, as were most of the media outlets. I will be the first to admit that this isnt indicitive of anything but its all we have to go on.

Now for the MOAT; now I know this isnt Skyrim, but it is made by the same developers and they will have similarities. I am a person who ignores the main quest for the most part but I certainly wasnt MOAT until I finished that, and I was around level 50 when i finished the main quest. Anyone could see that my character was a warrior style with some archery in there. Unless I really went out of my way I couldnt become a MOAT. Id assume it will be the same. We will finish most of the game, side quests included, without even coming close to a MOAT.

Never said I was the police of anything. I just dont see why you want to limit some peoples playstyle. And it will have affect gameplay decisions. Maybe not at 300 hours in but lets be fair, if you are that far in you have beat everything in the way you wanted to in the start.

In short I guess I am just curious. Why should I not be able to play the game the way I want to (spend 300 hours trying to get a MOAT character) because you have the option to play after the main quest and level up with every perk.

Will we actually be able to max out the perk chart? All perks are tied to SPECIAL and there's not enough points to be 10 in each Stat at the beginning of the game. I wouldn't be surprised if we have implants/bobbleheads and Intense training to help up our SPECIAL stats some, but will there really be enough to max out all 7 stats to 10?

If not then there's no way to become a jack of all trades since you won't be able to get all the perks in a single playthough.

I am perfectly happy with no level cap. I'll still be picking perks that fit my character anyway. I highly doubt that I'll ever reach the higher levels due to roleplaying. I don't do "builds" so there might be a character or two that takes an interest in different weapon types.

It was confirmed that we'd be able to raise our SPECIAL past the initial distribution, presumably all the way to the max. The safe bet is that we'd just spend a perk point to bump up our SPECIAL, like what the Intense Training perk did in the older games.