(Warning: wall of text below, TL;DR at the bottom)

Bethesda's Fallout games, as well as The Elder Scrolls series, are known for letting your character eventually turn into a kind of demigod through prolonged play: you unlock a greater arsenal of armor and weapons, you get to take on tougher enemies and survive more difficult fights, and you progressively gain a sense of dominance over the world, one that feels dangerous to explore and survive when you're first thrown into it. There are major advantages and flaws to this power progression, and I feel Fallout 4 has the best formula so far, though said formula also needs some core changes to avoid running into the same pitfalls in the future:

The Pros - More Options!:

• Mods: The level of customization in Fallout 4 is, imo, one of its biggest successes. I love being able to craft the perfect weapon and suit of armor (or multiple of each, for different situations), and getting to high levels in Gun Nut/Armorer/Science! felt absolutely worth it when I could finally unlock jetpacks, silencers and the like.


• Perks: The perk system in Fallout 4 is incredibly smooth and fun, and practically all of the perks have a ton of flavor, which makes each of them interesting to pick regardless of the raw power they offer. Strong Back was perfect for my hoarder tendencies, Ninja allowed me to snipe enemies I'd otherwise have to alert, and even Solar Powered, which isn't really good in terms of raw power, helped scratch that itch of wanting a perfect, rad-free health bar without having to pop a Stimpak/Radaway for just a tiny bit of damage. Skyrim had a pretty awesome perk system too, though Fallout does it better by letting you reach the perk you want directly, provided you have the right SPECIAL stats, rather than having to first go through other perks you may not like as much.


• Legendaries: Going Diablo-style on weapons and armor added a whole new layer of customization, and provided some incentive to swap out tried-and-true gear for potentially interesting new effects. I think the system could go even further, perhaps by adding a legendary mod slot to gear so that you don't have to farm as much for that Instigating sniper rifle, but legendaries are already pretty cool as is.


• Settlements: Though not combat-related, nor essential to most players, settlements offer a nice change of pace, and finally give players near-complete control over how they'd like to mod terrain (or at least portions of it). I l like how each settlement I claim grants me a measure of control over the Commonwealth, and visiting a well-customized settlement always gives a sense of achievement.

The Cons - Hamster Wheeling Into Godmode:

• Enemies lose their threat: A big issue with Bethesda games, Fallout included, is that old enemies quickly become obsolete: early on, fighting a Deathclaw was a terrifying experience, even when in full power armor and with an action plan. Many levels later, when I accidentally (and literally) bumped into another Deathclaw, I didn't bat an eye -- I knew that I could easily kill it within the next few seconds, long before it could do any lasting damage to me, and the resulting fight had no tension. Even if I had jacked up the difficulty to Survival, I would've still ended up reaching a similar point. There's some level of triumph in being able to dominate enemies that used to scare you, but winning those fights out of raw numerical power doesn't really feel that interesting. At worst, running through lesser enemies feels like a chore, and that's the point where I personally started to disconnect with the world around me -- why should I pay attention to my actions or surroundings when I can easily deal with whatever comes my way?


• The game needs to produce a constant treadmill of "new" enemies, mods, gear, etc., all of which make older stuff obsolete: A follow-up to the above is that, in order to not bore the player immediately once they level up a few times, the game needs to constantly trot out new content, content that doesn't specifically add new gameplay, but that merely ramps up the numbers to keep up with the power progression curve. The most obvious example of this is with enemies: there isn't really much of a difference between a Charred Feral Ghoul or a Rotting Feral Ghoul, or even a Charred Feral Ghoul and a bog-standard Feral Ghoul, other than their raw damage and health, but the game needs to send out reskinned and roided-up versions of the same enemy because the older versions quickly turn into pea-shooting cannon fodder. From a player perspective, this is bad because the treadmill eventually stops and all enemies wind up being far too weak, but even before that our gains in power end up making an increasingly large part of the game's monster roster less threatening, and therefore less interesting. From a designer perspective, this is also terrible, because Bethesda needs to sink extra art resources into multiple versions of the same enemy, mod, armor, etc, knowing that the largest part of that content will become obsolete once the player reaches a certain power threshold. Even some perks end up becoming less interesting, since Life Giver's +20 HP ends up providing less health than a single extra point of Endurance past level 32.


• More ends up being less: Another downside to the power creep inherent in Bethesda's player progression system is that it inevitably ends up offering far fewer choices to the player than it appears: on top of certain mods, weapons, armor sets, etc. that get ignored completely because of strictly more powerful, yet identical options, the raw power players end up with also makes many situations far less interesting. Sure, I can always roleplay a stealthy assassin-type character and force myself down to specific armor, weapons, mods, resources, SPECIAL stats, etc., but if I get rumbled, my outcomes are going to be very different if I have 100 or 400 HP: at low health, I'm going to be forced to think creatively, to come up with strategies or use resources I wouldn't otherwise go for if I knew I could just soak up a lot of incoming damage. There are so many interesting potential choices out there (Leather armor versus Combat armor, for example) that get choked out simply because new options are often strictly more powerful than their predecessors, which means that the range of "optimal" choices only ends up being a fraction of all the content offered to the player. In TES, there's also the same problem: armor sets like Dwemer or Glass armor have beautiful and badass visual design, as do many sets in Fallout 4, but end up being strictly inferior to other sets, and so get eventually cast away by the vast majority of players once they reach a certain level, which is a crying shame.

Basically, progression in Fallout (and TES) is awesome when the player grows and gets to do stuff with their character that they couldn't do before -- take on new strategies, fit better into their intended character, or simply approach the game with more options. Where the system fails, however, is when it makes the player flat-out numerically stronger, which does add some feeling of power, but at a tremendous cost in depth and tension -- eventually, no matter the difficulty the player chooses, or the restrictions they set themselves, they're going to reach a point where they become so powerful that nothing in the in-game world poses a real challenge. It disconnects the player from their environment, as their avatar becomes so far removed from any other entity within that they can only be defined by the numerical framework of a game system, rather than as a proper character who might share some of the drives, fears and vulnerabilities of the people they interact with. Here's what I think needs to be addressed to avoid these issues in future Fallout/Skyrim games:

The Suggestions - Progress Horizontally, Not Vertically:

• Remove the increase in hit points per level: I think the core problem to the power creep in Fallout 4 (also Skyrim, and previous Bethesda games) is that you get increasingly tougher as the game goes on - attacks, traps and enemies that would easily kill you, as well as most other in-game creatures, eventually become trivial, which completely kills any sense of danger the game throws at you until it cranks out reskins of its enemies to match your health. From a roleplaying perspective, it also lowers some of the diversity in builds: even if I want to play a weakling with little to no Endurance, I'm eventually going to get more resilient by virtue of my scaling hit points, so even if END does make a major difference, you can still get tough without dipping into it. Trimming down the player's progression down to perk/SPECIAL points, rather than raw health increases (also stamina/magicka increases in Skyrim), should allow for tons of progression while still preserving the threat presented by the environment (never should a Deathclaw ever feel easy to fight, for example).


• Rebalance mods, armor and weapons to each be strictly equal to each other in terms of raw power, and instead offer niche bonuses: In a game where almost every weapon, armor item or mod is cosmetically unique, it's sad to ditch so much of them in favor of pure upgrades, and I think the game should take pains to make all of them viable, no matter how far you've progressed. Fallout 4 already has some of these mechanics in place, with different armor sets specializing in different bonuses (e.g. Metal armor versus Combat armor), but shoots itself in the foot by making some sets strictly better or worse (Raider armor is inferior to all other sets, for example, and heavy Synth armor surpasses even Combat armor in every respect, for only a minor increase in weight). As for mods, I personally don't find it interesting to have three different pure damage upgrades, rather, I like it when I'm given the option to choose between a damage upgrade that would make me fire slower, or a mod that would massively increase my firing speed at the cost of some damage, or between different ranges of scopes, since those present meaningful changes to my weapon's usage and my overall strategy, and the same applies to armor mods that can increase my stealth capabilities, movement, melee damage, etc. (the minor increase in weight for each mod makes no real difference). Weapons are also a missed opportunity, with the Double-Barrel Shotgun being strictly inferior in both damage and clip size to the Combat Shotgun, when it would be a lot more interesting if sticking to the former allowed me to deal far bigger bursts of damage at the cost of large reload times. Perhaps we should still only unlock mods, weapons, armor, etc. past certain progression milestones, but in the end that should represent an increase in horizontal progression (i.e. more options), and not vertical progression (i.e. more power).


• Make enemies threatening in new ways, rather than just flat-out stronger: One of my favorite enemies in Fallout 4 is the Super Mutant Suicider. Even when I had reached a point where I was mowing down standard Super Mutants with ease, the Suicider still added tension to fights because I knew that, even with all of the weaponry and armor I had accrued, he could still one-shot me if I messed up and let him get too close. I like the different Protectron variants for the different effects they have, even if they don't make a massive difference in fights, and in general I find it a lot more interesting (and sometimes scarier) when the new enemies I find do new stuff, like throwing projectiles, emitting rad auras or entering stealth, rather than just deal more raw damage. Perhaps there should be cranked-up versions of standard enemies to serve as bosses or pack leaders, but otherwise it would be better for each new enemy to present a new challenge to the player, rather than the same challenge with bigger numbers as is so often the case. In any case, removing a lot of the player's vertical progression (though perhaps not all of it, since modding stuff and getting perks is always fun) would remove the need to constantly produce numerically tougher enemies, since they'd remain somewhat threatening at all stages of the game, or at least not completely irrelevant.

TL;DR: Bethesda is awesome at making players progress by giving them access to more cool things, as well as catering to niche playstyles players might want to commit to, but fails when it tries to make the player progress by just cranking up their numbers, which kills a lot of potentially interesting choices in Fallout 4 (also Fallout and TES games in general) and eventually makes the game less interesting, sometimes flat-out boring, by slowly removing its danger, challenge and tension. Fallout 4 has the best player progression formula so far, but Bethesda needs to seriously tone down, though perhaps not entirely remove, vertical progression (i.e. doing the same thing, with bigger numbers), and instead focus on horizontal progression (i.e. doing more, equally powerful/interesting things), in order to make players feel powerful without disconnecting them from their environment.

And that's it for the wall of text. What do you think about this? What do you think of Bethesda's player formula so far, and how would you change it, if at all? I'm also relatively new to both Fallout and TES, as I only really got started with the release of Skyrim and only played tiny amounts of Morrowind and Fallout 3 before: for the veteran players, what do you think of the changes to player progression over either series? How good was player progression in the original Fallout games, before Bethesda?

Well, impressive wall of text, but I don't mind when it is well wriiten and thought out.

It could be interesting to try, and certainly would immediately alter how people played. The pitfall though, is balance. If the content stays more or less same'ish difficulty in terms of encounters, if not balanced right, it could prove to be an exercise in frustration threshold, when progress isn't really felt. It is a balance issue though, and could work.

The way I see it however, is that the game is fundamentally wrong, because 90% of all content is solved through violence (at least that how it feels) Most perks are there to aid you in combat, directly, or indirectly, apart from a few, where only fewer still, is worthwhile taking. I would have liked to see more options, in both quests and non-violent perks (skills) Having a multitude of ways to solve your problems, would also make you consider other playstyles (that doesn't include combat all the time) make for more balanced builds when you have to consider other perks than just combat related ones. It goes without saying of course, that there would have to be more non-combat perks that was relevant. It could also mean, that if players couldn't just rely on combat perks, they would have to invest in some non-violent perks, and then it would push the godlike status further up the level scale, since people wouldn't bee-line for the combat perks alone.

Some abilities, I would have liked to be perks, instead of just being given freely. Power armour training for instance, or how about building stuff, was a perk as well? Things like that, would create a tiny bit of immersion as well, instead of I am an engineer, carpenter and electrician all-in-one from the moment I enter Sanctuary.

I could go on, but think the gist of what I mean, is there.

That is not to take anything away from your idea, which I find very sound, given the frame there is now, and I wouldn't mind playing it like that.

My current play through is 'Very Hard' so that I can maintain the challenge longer.

The first 20 levels were brutal, but I can feel it starting to become manageable

and I no longer have to run squealing from a Bloodbug...

No.

I'm not satisfied.

Example Heavy Weapons are just heavy as in they weigh a whole heck of a lot.

Example, I need a Legendary just for a weapon to finally be actually a deadly weapon....This actually goes both ways the enemies are really weak unless they have a proper legendary weapon.....How is that acceptable?

Players can and do absorb hails of gunfire with no Power Armor equipped and mediocre Endurance Scores.

The answer isn't nerfing Hit Points.

Its re-doing the damage tables and the allotted Leveled List of whats possible to equip on NPC's.

Remove Stim Pack healing limbs.

There is a whole limb broken mechanic that players really don't ever witness let alone have to deal with....Nice way to totally waste time why put it ther if its never going to get used?

Apply burning effects to OMG weapons that use flames and plasma. Who would have thought of that?

The issue with this game is that everything is balanced for the player to get the Guass Riffle really its just sad.

Too much weapon damage is gated behind perks, mods, legendary descriptor and this does have an effect also on NPC's use of those weapons.

______________________

So its like this if your die hard into RPG maybe your ok with that.

But if you actually prefer first person shooters.....Your left wanting for a more reasonably brutal balance....That isn't going to happen if people that make a mod sit down and go OMG I gotta balance this Mini-Gun against a 10mm pistol or the Legend Descriptor which should have never made it into the final product.

Gotta Balance this RPG against a Pipe Riffle!

Shot Guns in this game lose there effective range after about 15 in game feet or 5 meters.....That's total garbage....That's way too going back....real world shotguns have effective kill ranges way higher than that.

There are a ton of weapons for Close Combat.........So why is that its acceptable for a Shotgun to have effective range of 5 meters?

Shotguns are not at all like that in real world....

The weapon balance is so off that it ruins immersion...That's a real issue that should be addressed.

_______________________________

Balance could have been done with specific targets,

Make a specific ideal use for that RPG,

But as it is I don't carry the RPG anywhere cause its just heavy and every weapon class has a gated damage specialization so basically most people will never really have to carry a RPG/Fatman and even then more than not its not going to be ideal or kill well compared to the specialization.

Thing is that real world weapons are built for a purpose but with the damage gating well that purpose is lost.

________________

Thing is its still a highly fun addicting game as it is but if we're talking balance.....Doesn't feel right to me...............The weapons lose their purpose so that players can specialize and so that there is some sort of crafting progression when in reality you only modify a gun for a reason.........But in this game it just feels like I modify my gun to keep up with the damage it should have been doing in the first place.

I completely agree, the trickiest part of a change like this would be getting balance just right, and it would impose a whole new set of design constraints and goals on mechanics that have, thus far, been implemented much more loosely without causing too many problems. I also agree that there would be an absolute need for content to remain varied, and for the game to naturally introduce incentives for the player to break their self-imposed mold and try out new playstyles, or at least see how far their playstyle takes them and play around their constraints, and I think you're absolutely right that Fallout 4's player progression is almost completely combat-centric, which is a shame. It would be nice if Charisma perks fully committed to a non-violent playstyle, and instead let you do even more stuff with settlements, traders, and character interactions, while perhaps retaining a small niche for combat by making you fight through others (Intimidation/Wasteland Whisperer are both cool perks, and it would be great if you could hire mercenaries or charm people into becoming your bodyguards, and perhaps even have two companions with you at once). The dialogue wheel also feels like a massive wasted opportunity, since it has little to no impact in most situations, and could have been used far more often to deal verbally with conflict (hell, you could even have dialogue bosses a la Deus Ex, though that would probably require a deeper overall dialogue system).

I don't think it's really all that far-fetched. For one, as you mentioned, heavy weapons are, by nature, far heavier than other weapons, and even now carry disadvantages such as slowed movement speed and massive AP consumption in VATS. On top of that, missiles are far rarer and more expensive than .38 ammunition, and can damage you if you fire too close to yourself. As a stealthier kind of player, I'd probably also want to pick a Pipe Rifle over a missile launcher simply because I don't want to light up the entire block every time I want to assassinate one specific enemy, and if I have a companion who likes to get near their opponents I'd probably hold off on the missiles. There are a ton of reasons already in place to pick a pipe rifle over a missile launcher, or vice versa, it's just that both need a bit of tweaking so that they really do line up alongside each other while filling out their own niche. If anything, the bigger issue would be balancing a pipe rifle against, say, a combat rifle or an assault rifle, and generally pipe weapons end up being complete trash once you accumulate enough ammunition to reliably use any other equivalent non-pipe weapon, which isn't hard to do. The game advertises pipe weapons as being heavily moddable, despite being exactly as moddable as any other weapon, and I think it might be interesting to balance pipe weapons against higher-grade equivalents by giving them access to awesome mods that would be inaccessible to others (a mod that could give you a chance to cripple enemies' heads when pistol-whipping them, for example).

I did read, and largely agree with your post, but for me this deserved special notice.

I didn't care for the way perks are gated behind level. In previous games, If I wanted to max out long guns, or whathaveyou, I could do that, regardless of my level. Let me build my character the way I want, not the way the dev's THINK I should. (and yes, I know there is a mod for that, and yes, I am using it, and yes, I like it MUCH better.)

I can sympathize with that, and I personally disliked being locked out of Locksmith/Hacker until later levels because it meant I couldn't access some content in early areas, even though I had deliberately built enough Intelligence and Perception to unlock both perks the moment I got the points. Going further, perhaps perks should not have ranks at all, and should instead get straight to the good stuff: there are more than enough perks to keep us occupied without having to sink multiple points into the same effect, pretty much every perk can be condensed to just one set of bonuses (e.g. Strong Back would be perfect if it just let you fast travel and use AP to run while overencumbered, without getting into extra carry weight, and Lead Belly really should just give you rad immunity from eating and drinking right off the bat), and if we need more stuff we could always have multiple perks per SPECIAL point rank, or perhaps even hybrid perks for even finer specialization (for example, you could have a variation of the Intimidation perk that would let you command enemies after punching them a fair bit, which would build off of both Strength and Charisma). With the current perk system, it would mean all mods and chems would be unlocked right off the bat, but I think that could be solved by locking most, if not all of them via recipes, requiring you to collect said recipe before being able to craft the specific mod or chem you want. In any case, there are a few perks that should probably be trimmed down to just the fun parts (e.g. Iron Fist/Big Leagues providing their disarm/cripple/cleave/decapitation/etc. bonuses without the raw damage increase, which should probably be shunted back into Strength's natural increase to melee damage), and none of them need to be constrained by level.

The weapons are fine. Your shotgun is unchoked, of course it has little useful range. Go fix it, you can. I could go on for a long time and have elsewhere, but as an FPS aficionado, this game is good.

Now I never use VATS and play on Survival. I come from Stalker, the best FPS ever made so I have some background here.

I love the new infinite progression. Enemies should be more dangerous though and player's health should not increase per level. I hope they fix the latter with a patch or by adding a new "survival 2" difficulty.

Listen, I LOVE S.T.A.L.K.E.R., it's a good game but the difficulty puts off a lot of players hence why it's a really niche game series. I don't want Fallout to become just S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in mechanics. Your ideas while presented good also sound like something that would put off a LOT of players and make the game less successful. I don't want to get my ass handed to me constantly when I reach high levels, I expect to see my effort pay off not "everything you did was useless and now you're still going to have difficulty playing because of this"

This is why mods are good for re-balancing the game to be like this, because mods are completely optional. If a system like this got placed in it would be people complaining non-stop and cause the game to lose sales, it would fall into the same niche crowd that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is in.

@ Cidel

Ya I wouldn't want that....I said somewhere in there its still an addictive fun game.

Just going to have to make my own shotgun range fix modification in the editor.

Take it to a Weapons Bench and add an appropriate choke. I use a big bayonet for staggering and it seems to put a medium choke on it. You can look at the range as you fool with the interface. The Muzzle stuff is what you want.

Stalker levels you by providing better and better equipment as you progress. I am playing this time as a mechanic who was in the army. Pretty lame, but I get to explore the crafting in this playthrough. I have put 4 points into Gun Nut, Science and Armorer with 3 in Blacksmith. I have created my own 'better equipment' this way. Maxxing out, as much as I can the weapons and armor, Power Armor in my case.

You really can craft a fine set of tools to your taste from the stuff you encounter as you play. The weapon and armor possibilities are quite large and you can be creative as you experiment with it. Fun for me and many RPG types as well.

Bethesda's always designed their games on the easy side. Even as far back as Morrowind, that game might have had a steep learning curve but once you found some decent gear and got a few levels on your belt, you were ready to handle anything the base game threw at you.

That said, I think Fallout 4's got the most "horizontal" progression of any of their games yet, and the most balanced. Almost every weapon and armor you find can be modded to stay effective well into the endgame, especially with the right legendary bonuses. One of the first thing I noticed when I played my first RPGs as a kid was, "man, this weapon looks really cool, and its stats and effects were really great early in the game, but I just can't keep up and still use it in the endgame and this Ultima Weapon I worked so hard to get is kinda boring and every character ends up using it anyway". Whereas it feels like with each game Bethesda's really trying to stray further and further away from that progression model - the only thing that still 100% works in a linear progression is Power Armor, which is a shame.

One thing I especially like about the perk chart, though, is that it's mostly nonlinear. There are additional ranks locked behind your level, sure, but there's no perk that you can't get immediately on your first level. It all depends on your SPECIAL stats. And that goes a much longer way to making each character "unique" than a level cap. You're going to have a much different experience taking Solar Powered at the start of the game instead of the end of the game, or taking Gun Nut/Science! at level 40 instead of as soon as possible. You could have different experiences going through the game even with the same SPECIAL, depending on the order you picked perks in. (or what perks you've picked, as I'm sure many characters would avoid things like Cannibal on characters where it was available)

I feel the adjustable difficulty already covers the overall challenge in your game pretty well, at least when you begin. If you don't want to get constantly killed even at high levels, the better solution should be to crank down the difficulty, rather than just make the player powerful enough to survive anything, since that would at least set a consistent level of challenge. The issue with the current system in that respect is that, whether you like it or not, the game inevitably becomes easier, which is fine if you're not deliberately trying to make the game tougher on you, but isn't so good if you're, say, playing on Survival and expecting to be slaughtered by anything you might run into, or just looking for challenging enemies when you're around level 100 and in full Power Armor with heavily modded end-game weapons. I also don't think the perks you'd accrue from leveling would be useless, unless you never try to access their bonuses, so even if you'd retain similar levels of raw toughness and damage, you might be able to make combat easier via weapon specializations, or sneak bonuses, or stuff like Nerd Rage! or Medic that directly enhance your survivability.

I agree, it definitely looks like Bethesda's trying to give the player more options instead of just more raw power, and Fallout 4 is probably the first game where some weapons and armor sets with similar functions remain competitive with respect to each other for a large part of the player's progression. I also completely agree that removing the level cap to perks, or at least on their initial rank, was brilliant, and as someone who likes to min-max their characters I loved being able to access top-tier perks the moment I leveled up. I'm also pretty sad that Power Armor progression is strictly linear, especially since each frame is not only absolutely beautiful to look at, but also thematically unique. It would be nice if different power armor sets had specializations over the others, as it would make each suit worth keeping and could cater to the already huge amount of builds available to the player. Raider power armor looks like it should be a lot more mobile and oriented towards close quarters combat than other sets, for example, and that specialization could probably be achieved by restricting mods and adding new ones to each set (Rusty knuckles make sense on raider power armor, not so much on a pristine X-01 suit, for example). Going further, T-45 suits could be geared towards ballistic protection and wielding "classic" heavy weapons like the minigun or missile launcher, T-50 suits could be a bit more futuristic and go for increased energy protection and bonuses to laser/plasma weapons, T-60 could go for extreme durability and give massive rad resistance on top of survivability bonuses (e.g. Emergency Protocols, Kinetic Dynamo, Calibrated Shocks, etc.), and X-01 could do more science-y stuff like enter stealth, enhance VATS and targeting, and so on. This is probably one of those cases where less is more, and giving each suit access to a smaller range of mods (or an equally large set, just not one that's available on every other suit) would allow for even greater diversity in builds and choices.

Having suffered a lot in the endless discussions about Oblivion's and Skyrim's enemy progress, and having played Skyrim mostly in the form of a roleplay overhaul that delevels the enemies, in my opinion Beth got it really right in Fallout 4. I think it's the role of a roleplay to make you stronger in the end, and FO4 is partly still a roleplay and not just a FPS. The game sends higher level enemies from time to time and then your imagined god mode suddenly suffers for a while. Deathclaw is not Deathclaw, raider not raider. I also don't mind when you have to restrict yourself a little bit to avoid too powerful characters. I don't put many points in endurance f.e..

What I don't like is the melee system. I find it not very interesting and not very responsive. You cannot block and move fast enough. Of course with an abundance of strength and/or power armor it's easy. I play on Survival and use a loot overhaul, so all is rather scarce and I tend to use melee to spare ammo. I die quite often because I cannot deal enough damage and cannot avoid damage. I would have preferred when some melee weapons (some bladed ones f.e.) would be also affected by agility, not only strength. But I understand that FO is more about guns.

I feel enemies need better equipment more than anything, the highest level enemies still spawn unmodded weapons more often than not, I mean I've fought super mutant warlords with unmodded pipe bolt action rifles, the enemies need the same serious loot the player gets, so if you have armorer the enemies all get tougher armor as well, but not things you can't make yourself, same for guns, if you can build it so can your enemies,

Having those basic enemies now wearing heavy reinforced armor and wielding much more powerful versions of their weapons would make them feel more scaled into the late game, and a similar set of invisible mods on the non equipment enemies, like securitrons with shiny titanium armor plating wielding large caliber gattling guns, having more armor and firepower, but the same enemy. I essence ballistic weave and weapon mods for all enemies.

Also, special abilities and perk effects for the enemies, for example rage where their damage increases as they take damage, like legendary stat mutations, but on the enemies base stats, so a raider with rage would appear as "raging raider", and other various variations that are like more common legendary effects, without legendary loot though. (Raging legendary raider warlords)

Well, it is better than ever. Vanilla Skyrim got broken after level 30, this seemed quite consistent all the way to... what ever levels i ended up in
Less than 50, i'm pretty sure.

I'm loving the whole perk system too, I originally missed the skill points but am over that.

To be honest I disagree with a lot here. In my opinion Fallout 4 has lost one very key ingredient to roleplaying games and that is the idea of a character build (without the need to limit your own self), with opportunity costs to each decision. This is something I feel has crept into almost every element of FO4, from questing to exploring. In FO3 and New Vegas there were some limitations, although not as severe as I would honestly like them to be. I would like FO5/TES VI to be a game that moves away from a system of 'you can be whatever you want, whenever you want' to a system of 'build your character and learn to deal with the consequences of that characters limitations'.

Now dont get me wrong I think FO4 is a fantastic game, but it feels lacking in some areas, the main one being roleplaying through the game. I remember reading someones comment that the lack of roleplaying ability is essentially you being non-creative, which I think is absolute [censored] (I know its not what you are saying OP). I can roleplay in a number of ways through FO4, but I want the game to react to my roleplaying...

The mods: I dont personally think they are as expansive as everyone makes them out to be. Most of the mods for weapons for example are a simple 'make automatic, make range go further, etc', all essentially effecting some stat instead of introducing unique benefits. Very few guns can be modded to be truly situational, and thus unique, and more importantly very few, if any, enemies need to be approached using situational weapons. Personally I would have approached this differently, obviously I cant talk as I am no developer and have no clue how hard this is, but if I could I would like to have seen weapons to be given mods that provide a need for strategy in your playstyle.

For example, take most handguns, currently I can modify it to become a rifle and increase its range and stability, modify its receiver to make it more powerful, etc. etc. All I am doing is tweaking numbers, and usually tweaking them so they ALL go up. It would have been better (IMO at least) if the modifications nerfed stats significantly whilst raising other stats to make them more situational (I know they do this but its not noticeable enough). For example an automatic reciever that disrupts range significantly, or an armour-piercing receiver that completely negates armour for tiny damage output. In that same sense I would like enemies to present certain advantages which negate entire weapons, for example armoured enemies not suffering damage AT ALL (wherever armoured) to non-armour piercing weapons, accuracy of enemies dropping severely when you unload clips their way (suppressive functions) to make automatic weapons more useful as a tool to get closer.

In that same sense I would like to see armours be treated similarly, for example metal armours negating almost all physical damage to an area. Ofcourse with such modifications I would also like to see degredation (which I know MANY will disagree with) return, as it adds a layer of strategy. If you go out into an area with armour and the armour breaks mid-battle, you should be [censored] and suffer the consequences of that strategy.

Another thing I disagree with is the progression of these mods. Essentially as you level up a relevant perk higher all you get are mods with even higher numbers. Not saying this shouldnt occur at all, but high-tier mods should instead possibly confer onto the player more unique mods.

Perks: Again, and honestly I am not anti-FO4, I DO love the game, but I disagree here big time. To me the new perk system is a much nicer presentation of the past skills system (beats having to hit 25, 50, 75, and 100 to essentially do the same thing), but does things I personally think it should not do.

Again I would like to see perks be much more situational, IE presented in such a way that simply having them gives you no true benefits. An example of a perk that could be made more situational is Gunslinger. It would in my opinion be much better if the perk solely revolved around disarming by introducing a VATS option to do so, or by making it so that bullets hitting an enemies arm can disarm them. It is also my opinion that no non-melee perk should effect damage output.

Imagine they made it so that Gunslinger was more along the lines of a Cowboy perk, where the first rank removes suppressive fire effects on you, the second makes it so that shooting someone openly shooting at you improves its limb-damage output (no benefit shooting someone reloading, or in cover, or between shooting), the third allows disarming options in VATS, the fourth makes it so that being suppressed slows down time like jet, and the fifth makes it so that disarming blows the weapon out of the opponents hand doing extreme damage. Now the perk is much more situational, and really brings out a role-playing flavour, possibly also giving you unique dialogue choices options with respect to other lawmen/security.

The biggest fallacy of this new system is the integration of SPECIAL like another set of perks. The fact that you can spend any level of boosting your SPECIAL is poor design, and worse is the fact that some perks take on certain properties that should be reserved for SPECIAL. To me this is the system that makes character-builds non-existent past level 20/30. I was level 40 before my first main-quest mission... If you plan on completing your playthrough before those levels it is fine, but this sort of game will most likely see you hitting level 60/70, with some hitting level 200. Again you can artificially make a character build, but thats not the system being good, thats you imposing limitations on yourself (which I know some are fine with). I would like to see a system more like FO3, where SPECIAL could be raised occasionally but at the cost of powerful perks, and with an opportunity cost to that decision.

I would also like to see traits return... In fact I think traits could have truly taken advantage of the new system, if each trait adds a unique 1-rank perk at the bottom of each SPECIAL it would give you a great incentive to play a character build. E.g. a Robot Tinkerer trait could allow you to take Mr. Codsworth everywhere as a secondary companion with parts that degrade (making it difficult to keep him combat effective, and possibly expensive if they make the repair-items difficult to obtain such as Nuclear Materials). The perks would provide your Mr. Codsworth with new upgrades, e.g. the Strength Perk could provide him with an extra Chainsaw arm.

Finally, going back to perks, I would to see them maybe re-doing it for future games in a cross-section style system, e.g. Colums and Rows based on SPECIALs, with maybe five or so rows of just pure perks, and then tie each row to a specific subject to allow easier build styles, e.g. strength row would be melee row.

Legendaries: I agree here, they are an interesting addition. That being said I would like to see more variations introduced in future games. I would also like to see Legendary enemies made rarer, and truly terrifying.

Settlements: Again I agree, it is a very nice addition. I would like to see them fleshed out a little more, possibly even introduced in a way that can impact your questing by allowing you to use unique settlers for unique jobs?

Enemy Threats: Again I agree here. One of my most wanted mods for Skyrim was the Requiem mod which apparently de-levels everything for more role-playing opportunities (played on PS3). I would like to see Bethesda approach their leveling system in this way. Again referring back to the perks, I would like to see SPECIAL treated specially, and perks made more situational, which would IMO allow this style of gameplay. And I do agree that you should not earn any stat boost based on your level, rather it should be based exclusively only your SPECIAL. For example if you have 1 Endurance you should always suffer from having low health, end of story.

And certain creatures in the wastes should evoke that need to run for your life no matter what level you are, your deathclaw example is one I regularly run into, and that just should not be the case. I remember facing deathclaws late game in FO3 and they could still rip you apart if you werent careful.

Treadmilling: Dont know if I agree or disagree here. I would personally prefer to see the 'treadmilling' based on how far you go into certain areas and actions. For example if you venture into Raider territory it should start of mildly, but as you venture deeper into their territory you should start to see their main combatants who should be difficult, and named enemies should always be extremely tough. The game sort of does this in that you face higher levelled enemies the further south you go, but I think it should be applied all over...

Based on how your saying then your above point of non-increasing health would make the game excessively hard wouldnt it?

More ends up being less: Agree here fully.

Thing is, you can easily outlevel any TES or FO game and make dragons explode with your iron dagger. If people want a challenge they should just not do the exploity things.

The trouble with Beth games is that simply playing them normally ends up with the exploits being used.

Though I personally really like being able to unlock every perk on my character in a single playthrough, you make a key point: Bethesda's moved away from permanent specialized builds per character towards a system that doesn't impose that many major or long-lasting drawbacks to in-game choices, and that move has alienated a large amount of hardcoe old-school RPG players. While I think both systems are mutually exclusive in that they clash around the open-endedness of player progression, it could be a good move to add an optional old-school difficulty setting that deliberately imposed harsher build-making decisions (no option to increase SPECIAL points, for example, as you mentioned, perhaps even a level cap), and thereby forced your character to be very careful about how they'd direct their progression, as well as its power and limitations.

There are also many other things in your post I agree with. The game's mods would definitely be a lot more interesting if all of them had genuine drawbacks besides a little bit of increased weight, or at least each offered unique advantages that wouldn't be covered by other mods. I really like the idea of perks offering more situational power that catered to specific playstyles and niches, rather than permanent buffs, as it would reward the player for evolving their strategy to include those perks, instead of just ending up stronger all around (I also think the more situational perks tend to be by far the most fun, even if many of them are overshadowed by generalist perks like Gun Nut, Medic, Toughness, etc.), and I also agree that perks should not do stuff that's already directly covered by SPECIAL stats (I personally dislike Idiot Savant for that very reason, as it achieves the core purpose of Intelligence better than the stat itself). Legendary enemies definitely need to do more unique stuff, instead of just being a bit tougher and mutating after taking damage, and it really would be nice to assign settlers to complete local repeatable radiant quests, particularly since Preston and his nagging about settlements needing help have been annoying a lot of players.

I do think the game's difficulty should still increase as you journey south, though I feel that should be due to increases in kind, and not just increases in scale. I think it's fine for some enemies to be tougher versions of standard opponents, like squad leaders or minibosses, but I feel it would be more interesting if new enemy types had new tricks up their sleeve. Venturing deeper into enemy territory, or further shouth, could increase in difficulty due to increases in enemy numbers, fortifications, and the like, but if you want to present new enemy types to the player, they should expect to learn something new from them (e.g. "this enemy has a unique projectile attack" or "this enemy is super-resistant to ballistic damage"). While static health would make these situations even more difficult, I think that would be reasonable, since the player would still become more powerful through perks (you'd get more options to approach enemies than if you were at a lower level), and the power of enemies could then be balanced around your own, and more reliably so due to the character's base numbers remaining around a constant ballpark, so given proper balancing you could engineer equally difficult (or easy) situations without resorting to health growth and enemy treadmilling. I also think the only characters who should be able to storm through enemy fortresses and mow people down while tanking heavy incoming fire should be those who specifically build towards that, i.e. by heavily investing in raw durability, weapons capable of dealing with crowds of opponents, etc., and it makes little sense for lightly armored, low-endurance characters to be able to eventually survive full frontal assaults simply because their health bar's grown big enough for them to absorb most incoming damage.

Poll allows multiple conflicting answers,so that's what I did