You will never have guarantee's in live. Learning from every angle is not such a bad thing in my opinion (It only depends what you make out of that what you learned).

The main purpose of my initial post was that the pesimism here had reached a level that already declared FO4 as failed game from the story perspective. Which isn't reasonable and based only on prejudgements. Sure you have no guarantee but even you have to admit that there is a chance.

I still remember my long "short" story for the FO4 nightmares thread (I assume Styles or Tagaziel made it) and as it seems it comes true .

As much as I disagree with Sawyer on some other matters, this is one of those things where I agree with him. A skill, if provided for and investeable by the player, needs to provide gameplay feedback throught out its range (be it 1-10, 1-25, 1-100, 1-1000 or anything) and the game itself. And if the skill is a one-off (like, you only pick locks with it, you don't shoot and repair and anolyze with it too), it needs to pay off it's worth (equality is not a concern, just cost and effect). It is also not about roleplay, it is simply worthwhile gameplay. If you don't invest in it or invest enough in it, you should be losing out, and on the other hand, if you do invest in it it should provide you with tangible feedback, eg. something you can not get without it.

If it doesn't make sense to you, I would guess you are not looking it correctly. It is a 100 skillpoint - or a full skill what ever the scale - sacrifice (instead of an investment) to go for stealth with no - or very little - payoff that others wouldn't have, other than being stealthy.

No it is not bad; it's admirable; but it doesn't always help the consumer IMO.

I don't think there is a chance ~for the aforementioned reasons~. Nobody thinks it'll fail, but there are surely some that are annoyed that it won't. Imagine your favorite chef comes to town every year and offers to make a buffet dish picked by the most votes, and every year it's succotash... because there are not enough votes in the town to win choosing anything else.
I don't disagree... but I prefer the pay-off to be in situational efficacy. In the S.A.D. [FO2] there was the best brain, and you only got it for having the skill to get it... if you didn't, it wasn't the end of the world, but if you did, they you were one of the few. I understand the concepts that lead one to make a pea-shooter viable in the end game, but I don't seem to like it much when I see it. IMO if the PC specializes in HtH, and then has to face Liberty Prime... that's life... maybe that PC shouldn't survive a direct fight, where one that had [and could use] a rocket launcher would have a better chance. In a decent RPG, there could be other ways to win ~preferably none guaranteed; or at least well disguised as risky.

But no... I'm not a fan of forced utility for fairness sake, where the player spends it all on pistols and finds themselves completely out gunned in latter half; but at no disadvantage.
*That doesn't mean being a positively great shot with the pistol is useless... just that it shouldn't hurt something like Liberty Prime; but with that kind of skill, perhaps they could shoot something else and damage the robot indirectly... or just run from it.

Merged with above.

It might well be situational, more or less, but the main thing is that you should get feedback from the investment throughout the whole of it, lest the game cheat you with transaction implications that do not deliver adequately; especially if the game is hands-on (like now) rather than abstractive (like it should be). This means that you should have feedback from low to mid to high level interactions, if you choose to invest in a skill. It simply doesn't do - with this environment; rather than PnP - that you need a 125 points (which might be the value of 10 levelups) of what ever skill and the only worthwhile use is a semi random occurence that might give you a unique prize - it's not good or incentivizing gameplay. If you neglect the skill, you should miss out - most definitely - and if you choose to invest in it, you might need to sacrifice some other skills with its related benefits. Cause and effect; definitely, but not "buy one or two instances with a high cost".

Bethesda, not everything has to come down to combat. There are ways to solve quests without dungeons and battles, how about you try some pacifistic, diplomatic, deceptive, manipulative and alternative approaches? Skyrim isn't the way to go, at least not with Fallout.

Oh and explore ways to deter people from save scumming. If a lock pick attempt fails and you jam a lock and you reload a save there should be a 5 minute time-out before you can pick that lock again. Just like Gambling in FNV had a timeout if you decided to reload.

what if you were able to use brute force like kick open a door or tackle it down?

Generalizing is fun isn't it.

Or knife it down, stab the door open.

In Fallout 3 most of the quests revolved around going into dungeons and engaging enemies in combat, as did general exploration. And in Skyrim I found myself being forced into a dungeon 90% of the time by the quests and exploration was pointless as all it led to was more and more dungeons. So I'm not generalizing. Skyrim is literally a dungeon crawler. You wanna find enchantments? Go down dungeons. You wanna level up your skills? Go down dungeons. You wanna find loot? Go down dungeons. You wanna do quests? Go down dungeons. You overhear a conversation between NPC's? Well that's gonna send you to a dungeon. You wanna explore? Then you're gonna find dungeons. Most quests Bethesda designs comes down to combat or puts you in the risk of combat. It ain't generalizing.

I'll definitely sign this one. Been suggesting similiar stuff for ages.

the easy solution for lockpicks and hacks for those who don't want to "waste" the points would be having a auto lockpick item and auto hack item so that they could still get the goods but just have to maintain a stock of small one time use tools

Yeah the hive mind. Did you actually play FO3?

conversely there should be a way to neanderthal it up and turn everything into combat if just for the laughs

Well no duh if NPCs are hostile to begin with they will remain hostile, but alerted. And no duh if there are no NPCs, then nobody is there to be aggressive. I kinda thought that was a given.

Also, blowing up metal can still cause damage to objects within a container. It could be determined by explosive skill, which is probably best way to do it so that a level 1 character isn't a master safe cracker when he gets his hands on C4.

shhhhhhhhh

You could in FO2 IIRC (but not every place).

How many instances is enough? I don't disagree with with your points, and it wouldn't be good for replays if one of the skills was only good for two interesting events in the game; but I'm still in favor of layered rewards... Where the top most rewards (via skills) only comes to the top most skilled... but it should be good, or clever, or funny ~but worth it.

Hmmm...
Consider a PC that ignored everything but rifles; Can't intimidate, can't bluff and manipulate ~but can put a bullet through a piece of PVC conduit the long way. So he comes to a secured crow's nest where another PC would con or brawn their way past it, but he can't pull it off... so he waits and watches, and sees a spinning anemometer on the roof and shoots at it with pellets for ? an hour ~and then shoots the curious guards that step out to check the wind.

In a way this reminded me of the rad scorpion quest in FO1.

I think a Diablo style Save & Quit would work just fine instead; there there really must be autosaves ~but they could come at some sort of cost.

Perhaps include it in hardcoe mode. Would ruin the fun for some.

Speaking of hardcoe mode, they should add a Dead is Dead option. Upon death your save is no longer accessible but perhaps you can review your stats (including how long you lived, what killed you, etc.).

hardcoe + permadeath, you sir play for keeps

I know right?

A good amount of quests in Fallout 3 had alternatives - assuming you had a sufficient speech skill/chance. Granted, New Vegas did a much better job handling speech + more alternatives using other high skills for persuasion. But again, saying Fallout 3 forces you into combat is ludicrous.

Like this: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-12-17-witcher-2s-insane-difficulty-revealed

I would generally agree with this. There's a lot of approaches to skill systems in videogame RPGs, and of course more than one way to skin a cat. But in general I do prefer a system where if you have a skill that it's equally balanced with all the other skills (ie, 2 points more in Lockpicking or Stealth ought to be just as useful an investment as 2 points in Guns or Explosives,) and that's giving you some degree of feedback in terms of where your character "scales" in relation to those skills.

In other words, it's possible in many games for me to think that I'm creating a character that is a super-scientist, but if I'm not investing the points into those skills at the same rate the designers decided a "scientist" should be, then there's an obvious disconnect (and therefore room for improvement.)

The big problem is in term of time scale, really. In a tabletop game the time it takes for me to get my character to the same level of development as a character in, say, Fallout 2, can take years, and many many game sessions. In a videogame that time is compressed into roughly 40 hours or so. The other issue that while in a tabletop game you have functionally unlimited time to exercise your character's unique abilities, in a videogame it's much more finite in scope.

So in a tabletop game it's not big deal if my thief can't open a lock. That's what the rest of the party is for and a good GM has already designed alternate path. The GM can incorporate that failure into the game and it becomes a part of my character's experience. In a videogame there's a real chance that it's just going to be a missed opportunity. And it becomes even more dire the more rare the use of that skill gets.

Which I feel was a problem in Fallout 1 and 2. That Science check in Fallout 2, for instance, I feel was a mistake. You rarely get to make any use of Science, making every possible instance incredibly important. And the really big disconnect was that while all other skills went from 1 all the way to 300 and had clear and transparent bonuses for raising them above the standard 100, it was never clear when it was safe to "stop" in the Science path, for instance. First time I hit that skill check I thought Science 100 would cover me.

When it didn't, I realized that the game didn't feel I'd created the same character I thought I had. And that wasn't as big of a problem to me as the fact that the only feedback I'd had up to that point that I wasn't making an expert scientist with my character was when I failed one of the very few Science checks in the whole game.

So... For Fallout 4 a big wish of mine is balanced skills. Whatever they are (and I'm not big on including more skills just for the heck of it in a videogame RPG) I'd like to see them properly balanced out, with the non-combat skills being just as useful as the combat ones, with clear feedback in terms of failure and success, and my relative progression in those skills as compared to the challenges I'm facing at that stage of the game. More granularity in those terms is usually better, I find, in a videogame setting.

Oh, I was almost expecting this. Have you noticed that noone is labeling you and the likeminded people as easily amused morons who start ejaculating uncontrollably for the mere idea of a Bethesda logo on the corner of a box cover, what ever such group might be called? Hmm? Don't you dare to agree with anyone, show me, a lowly pleb, some example of wellbehaving and being a successful forumite.

Anyways, yes I did play Fallout 3 for all its worth and a bit over it too when I had it. I was keen on finding the good stuff that wasn't there.

I do also hope you have a sense of humor and an ability to read between the lines.

As much as satisfies the gameplay needs, is enough - some more, some less significant. I can't provide a solid number. It should be enough to provide a semi-constant (relatively) low caliber use between the more significant occurences (that might not ever be found by a careless player).

Considering... s/he should miss out on stuff he's not adept with and excell on suff he is. The description paints a picture of a simple fellow who has trained for shooting all his life, but not much else. He should also have a chance where appropriate (but not everywhere, the same with differently oriented characters).

The PC could be a genius, and have gotten better than the chimp ~never having a chance at the top brain ~and still being way above exceptional... and then there is the outright savant ~whose side effects are perhaps not seen as worth it, yet he does the seemingly impossible. ~Someone perhaps like Algernon.

* I'm not against feedback and utility with the skills and abilities; but the whole 'does more damage with the gun' thing is not good IMO.

i would like to see more Super Mutant Behemoths in Fallout 4 and have at least 1 that could respawn occasionally and randomly in the open wasteland so that once they are gone you could still hunt one down later

So a playing skill, want to see or a adapting problem. Sad