Fallout 3 is great. I was a little dubious that you'd be able to pull it off, but the game works... VATS was a good compromise to move the system forward. Still, there are some problem areas that need to be addressed if Bethesda intends to make a Fallout 4 (and I'd strongly recommend it! ) I haven't hit the end yet, which apparently leaves a bit to be desired, but I'll address what I have...



I'll addresss changes that would improve gameplay, and not surprisingly a lot of them point to getting back into the spirit of of Fallout 1/2 just a bit more. Bethesda has my full permission to take and use, or adapt any of these ideas for use going forward.


The primary problems of the game can be broken down into SPECIAL, the skill system, startup Traits, maximum level, Action Points, and just a general lack of weapon/armor variety. These are all interrelated to some degree and I'll explain what's wrong with them, and how I'd go about fixing them.



S.P.E.C.I.A.L isn't
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While you adapted the lettering, and the concept, the fact is that the SPECIAL stats don't have a strong enough impact on the game and are completely overshadowed by Skills by the time you hit level 5. So what is good in concept ultimately becomes watery flavor. Stats need to mean more! The best, cleanest, and easiest way to do this within your current system is this:

--> Change the skill system to a max learned rank of 50, and have the other 50 points derive from the relative stat at 5 skill points per SPECIAL point. This means that a character that torpedo's a stat to 1 will have a maximum skill rank of 55 (which is an acceptible, if not great level), while a character with 10 points caps out at 100 and STARTS at 50 making them a natural at those skills.

--> Bigger carrying bonus per point of Strength (so that people that torpedo it will feel the hurt, while those who go high feel that it's worthwhile even before Strong Back)

--> Perception should be increasing chances of a crit... knowing where to hit, and anticipating how your opponent is going to present an opening, etc.

--> Endurance should reduce chances of a crit against you as well as increase your HP.

--> Charisma doesn't need to change a great deal as long as the skill system is in place, since high Speech skills will be available to only those with high Charisma.

--> Intelligence is fine, though the number of skill points per level should be 2 + INT (or maybe 4 + INT/2) given the lower number of skill points required to max.

--> Agility should be increasing accuracy, perhaps running speed, and reducing chances to be hit. It probably should NOT modify action points because that makes it too good.

--> Luck is basically fine as-is... add 1 effective (stat-based) Skill point per unit of luck, still increase crit chance.




The Skill System
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The basics were already covered under SPECIAL... there are too many points floating around and too easy to completely dwarf the impact of Stats, which makes them meaningless. Reducing the maximum learned level of skills and reducing the rate of aquiring skill points will make skills more interesting and each point mean more. As a side effect, gear that gives stat bonuses and Perks that provide bonuses are inherantly better.

By making SPECIAL impact skills to a greater degree, Intelligence isn't quite the must-have that it is now, which encourages greater character variety and enhances replayability, which makes the game a better deal for players, will increase game longevity, and keep players from wanting to sell their used game since they can play through a dozen times with different tactics and get very different results.



Background Traits
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These were removed from Fallout 3, and apparently just incorporated into Perks. I suppose this is partly because you wanted to show everyone growing up as background instead of picking things. However, Background Traits greatly increased replayability and need to be reinstituted. Some of the crappier Perks should be reconstituted as Background Traits, and others added.

Examples:
--> Lead Belly: Food healing is increased by 50%, radiation from food is decreased 75%, but Stimpacks are only 40% effective.
--> Cannibal: Eating a corpse increases your HP by 20% of maximum, but you suffer a karma penalty and have a 10% chance of an interruption of dialog as people become unsettled with the way you look at them (overcome with a speech check.)
--> Nerd: +10 Science, +5 Repair, -2 Charisma
--> Injured: -10% movement speed, +15 Speech bonus (sympathy points)
--> Sweet Talker: +20 Barter and Speech with members of the opposite six. -10 Barter and Speech with members of your six
--> Hot!: You must keep your radiation levels between 600 and 1000 or else you suffer from radiation penalties. Anyone who hits you in melee combat takes 10 damage.
--> Quick Draw: Switching weapons in combat only costs


Maximum Level
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As should be apparent by this point, people resent being told that they're as powerful as they're ever going to get. This is a single player game... it doesn't hurt anyone to give people more to look forward to. The Achievers need advancement to feel fullfilled, so capping people is a bad idea. What you could do though is dramatically reduce levelling perks as well as start jacking up the XP required to do it. This would also make Swift Learner a better Perk.

--> At level 20, the Int and Perk bonus to skill for levelling goes away. (ie. 3 per level flat) Reduced HP gain per level (flat)
--> At level 25, the base skill per level decreases to 2. Further reduced HP gain per level.
--> At level 30, the base skill per level decreases to 1. 2 HP per level.



Action Points
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Overall, it's well done. However, there are a few flaws... Agility probably shouldn't increase this (or else it becomes too useful) and it'd probably be a good idea if Skill with the weapon decreased the base # of action points required somewhat, so that people skillful with small arms can squeeze off an extra round, or people with high Unarmed skill can really lay down the blows.

The biggest problem though is that bringing up the PipBoy to change weapons or activate a stimpak really needs to cost action points (in VATS mode) or time in normal mode (have everyone else move at 25% rate while you have it up, don't stop time.) Perks could modify the time cost of using the PipBoy






Gear Variety
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It'd just be nice to see different guns, armor, etc, with various stats... document range penalties/spread, action point costs for use, etc.





Summary
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The engine is close.... with a bit more tweaking, it could be great. Fallout 4 could blow us all away... I'd love to see it.

Like the back ground traits.

well thought out.

More on the in-game part.

In game effects generally how these stats are useful. I feel it should be much harder to get alot of things done. maybe even get rid of the map and have it so a player needs to remember where stuff is or they will get lost(just an idea). overall I feel there is a ton of untapped playability in Fallout. I personally hate quick traveling and it reduces the length needed to play the game as a player can simply jump around the map. At least have some penalty to using the fast travel but overall its still a solid 9/10

I like most of what you said especially the Perk thing. I honestly would like to see 4 in New York I was thinking today, what the statute of Liberty would look like and just crawling around the ruins of New york. If not NY maybe Florida...go to post-apolitical Disney World

Maybe Perception can have something to do with the draw distance of the game?

Nah that wouldn't work. No way is anyone going to be happy about sacrificing performance for a skill. personally I think perception should have been used for traps. Either a red silhouette or a switch into vats mode and a dive to safety.

Here are my suggestions:

1. Adopt the travelling and exploring system of FO1 and 2. Knowing about a location you should be able to instant travel to it using your map or a vehicle you may be able to obtain. This would result in less boring travelling through the wasteland which is one of the weakest parts of FO3 compared to 1 & 2.

2. Main story and side-quests that start from either main story locations or side-quest followup locations should guide you through the whole game, not having to explore on your own. Just wandering in the wasteland hoping to find something interesting is both boring and stupid. It is supposed to be fallout, not "wasteland wanderer"...

3. Smaller and more contained dungeons. Or if they are big they should be VERY easy to find your way around them. They game is targeted not only to an fps audience but an rpg as well. And rpg fans, especially old-school are lazy and dont want to bother with finding stuff all around. Their main concern is character development, role playing, character and environment interaction, storry depth.

4. Alternative endings! Everyone would like to see the impact of their actions in the game world! This would improve greatly both replayability and fun factor of the game.

5. No fps-ike dungeons at all such as Deathclaw sunctuary or some of the vaults... Or very few of them. When you go to a location it should be part of a quest or at least a location with something important you learn as a result of a quest!

6. I couldn't agree more about the impact of stats. Strength should affect Big-guns, perception crit and hit chance, all of the stats should give unique dialogue options, if high enough, with unique outcomes. Speech should give dialogue options as well as successs chances. It happens in the game but not in the extense it should.

7. Less skill points per level, or inreased skill cap, or both. Perks every 3-4 levels and not every other level.

8. Reputation and factions you can join. And both of them should affect the way others behave towards you (opposing factions perhaps?). For example joining a mercenary faction you should be shot on sight by another and vice versa.

9. Main story is pretty straight forward. Having more freedom in the way you go through it would be great.

10 Being able to mutate to a ghoul from extensive radiation poisoning or a super mutant consuming the FEV virus and still be able to continue an alternative path of the game would bring the game to a whole new level!

11. Followers should affect the gameplay and the way others react towards you. Jericho for example could make you friendky towards some of the raiders and having Fawkes in your party you should be shot on sight by the Brotherhood of steel (thats what they do when they see super mutants!). And they should have some depth, talking to you at times, agreeing or disagreeing with your actions. For example i was expecting Fawkes to talk to me or attack me when i made a deal with the slavers, him having been a prisoner for his whole life.

12. Some real settlements? The only 2 places that felt like settlements were megaton and rivet city, and even those were small having 20-30 ppl in them and less than 10 of some interest... Moreover how about gambling, prosttutes, mafia and mafia-like ppl like gizmo in FO1 and jobs! Why not be able to get a job protecting the caravans (i know, the travelling system really screws that, one more reason to change it), working in the show-biz (high charisma and or speech skill), or alternatively get along with the raiders intercepting and raiding caravans and small settlements?

13. No childish stuff such as little lamplight caverns... I can't underline enough how out of place it felt going there and the impact it had on me... A city of children in a postapocalyptiv wasteland where advlts can barely survive? Whats next? a postapocalyptic disneyland with mutant-mickey-deathclaw-mouse and super mutant kids playing around. (That could be kind of cool though, little lamplight wasn't at all...)

No love for Capt. Walker leading the children to Tomorrow-morrow Land?

-Make the game turn-based and isometric
-Restore the focus on dialogue-driven story and character interaction

woo and no turn base for fallout 4 that would be EPIC FAIL

oh and keep kid towns thats my favorite place to go

No. As much as I'd like to see another Fallout 1/2 type game, the genre is dead for a reason. Don't let nostalgia make you think that somehow demand will be resurrected for that type of game again. Making an isometric turn-based RPG would be an epic financial failure for any developer in today's market.
Now, the 4th fallout could be an Aurora engine (KOTOR) game and it might still be successful if the story is good enough. If anyone remembers the combat system from Parasite EVE (real-time movement with pause-time for menu/attack selections and back to real-time for attack animations), I think that might also work for the Fallout franchise. Alternatively they could go with the Infinity engine but that isometric semi-turn based environment is showing its age and I don't think it translates so well into Fallout's one Player Character system as well as it did with the standard D20 5 PC party.

Yes! Now THAT is something that could actually happen and it'd be a refreshing change. Only problem is that you'd have to convince people that they can actually read dialogue instead of needing absolutely everything recorded in 500GB of sound files. Otherwise you run into the same kind of generic dialogue that Morrowind and Oblivion suffer from because the devs just cant store enough recorded sound (or afford to record decent actors) to really flesh out dialogue with every Tom, dike, and Harry that you could ever want to interact with.

Why should I care about wether or not it would be financially successful? I like turn-based games, and it has nothing to do with nostalgia.

Besides, somehow I don't think Diablo 3 will be an epic financial failure.

Those of us who live in the real world realize that is what determines whether or not you will ever get that game. If you care about getting the game then you should care about whether its profitable.

I liked them too but it doesn't change the fact that the Fallout style genre hasn't seen a new game in almost a decade. There was a drift toward paused-time or real-time games with turn-based mechanics like KOTOR and Neverwinter Knights. I don't think we'll ever see another "you move then I move" isometric style RPG as Black Isle was the last studio I know of that made them and they split to the four winds during Interplay's financial troubles.

Diablo 3 is not turn-based, its an entirely different subgenre. TBH I don't think 3 will do as well as its predecessors (sales will probably outdo the 2nd because of a much larger market but I'm predicting a lower market penetration and less stellar reviews).

I'm going to support the kinds of games I enjoy playing, not games I dislike but are "profitable," which usually means 3D action-y conole crap, ala Halo, Gears of War, Oblivion, et cetera. I'm not interested in playing Fallout 4: The First-Person Shooter.

And, tactical turn-based games like Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics are apparently popular enough to be profitable.

AAA titles? Maybe not. Indie games? Certainly. Ever heard of Age of Decadence?

Yeah, AoD looks like it'll be excellent. Same for Cyclopean, also by Iron Tower studios.