Yeah, but you also really need to think about what to try and level up. If you had a good bow, had skill in archery, a good poison, and got a sneak critical you could one shot the best dragons like they were nothing, and if you didn't get a critical you'd have to wait a another 10 dreadful seconds while you finish it off and it's attacks bounce off you. The main issue is that there's so many ways to mash number together weather it's for offense or defense and the stacking on potions, enchantments, and other things could easily grant you over a 1000 damage on a single basic hit or deflect a 1000 damage from an enemy hit. Let alone your weapon grade and skill in the weapon or armor, and potions you have on that further increase your damage by amplifying it or something. In FO your stuck with the drugs that they gave you and put in the game, (which while helpful are not numerous or beneficial too much) the weapons don't get enchantments, and even the best armor would be shredded by a death claw. It always seems that in the ES you could always become an absolute beast, where as in FO you could always die to something stupid even at the best levels for numerous reasons, like weapon or armor degradation (which I talked about in my old post) or just the sheer stupidity of the quietness, speed, and power of a yao guai, death claw, or cazador. But this always keeps it fun and interesting for me.

The point of the early game is to get by without perks.

I share the opinion that super quick leveling ruins the experience. Unless you prefer running around as the wasteland god of destruction. Having to survive without having all the cool perks is much more of a challenge and it's great to have that next level to look forward to and get that much coveted perk you've worked so hard for. When they throw perks and levels at you like there's no tomorrow, it really kills the experience of battling through and feeling the reward that it is to gain a level. Sad to see they decided FO4 should be for power gamers

Exactly, my favorite part of all of the elder scrolls and fallout is the beginning, almost only because you kind of feel like a nobody trying to get somewhere great, but if they have you get to level 25 in no time, then it won't feel as special and I won't get to enjoy that part of the game for nearly as long. I actually do believe the journey is better than the destination on this idea.

well u always star with perks, no meter what low level u are, the whole leveling fast or slow will depend on how good the game is balance around it, plus like someone point out, it will depend a lot on how u play too, no meter how many perk u max out, depending on your stile some will be irrelevant.

So set your intelligence to 1, and don't take any perks until level 20. There you go, the struggle will be real.

That's about the size of it. IMO most of the fun of playing the game comes from the journey along the way, and not the actual destination. If I spend all my time leveling up during the game and wind up a god before I get there it removes most of the fun of getting there. I prefer to have weaknesses in game until I just get to the point of reaching the end, not long before I get there.

Make no mistake, there's something to be said for the destination, but I prefer to take my time getting there and just savor the journey.

So how does "it's nice to get a few perks relatively quickly at the start, to establish the beginning of your build" turn into "wind up a god"/"running around as a wasteland god of destruction"?

We're talking about lv5-10, not 50-100+.

Remember, in FO3, you'd be starting out at lv1 with higher average SPECIAL, and all skills in the teens + three skills tagged & higher. And then getting lv2 when you step out of the Vault. For a perk and a few more skill points. From what I understand, in FO4, you'll just have your starting SPECIAL at lv1. (Or did the show people picking other stuff in that intro video? I didn't watch it, to avoid spoilers.)

(on a related note, my tabletop gaming group has been trying the new 5th edition D&D. One interesting thing they did was to make the first couple levels take MUCH less xp this time around. Rather than lv2 and 3 coming at, say, 1000xp and 2-3000xp, they're 300 and 900. And with the base classes, lv2 gives you a few more of the central skills of the class, and 3rd level has you pick an "archtype", defining the sub-class that you'll become. Like Rogue has archetypes for Thief, Assassin, and Arcane Trickster - thief+minor magic. It gives people a nice start on defining their character, as well as a good starting suite of abilities. Unlike some of the previous editions, where you puttered through lv1 & 2, with "attack" and "wear armor". Or, if you were a wizard, "cast 1-2 spells every 24 hours." Oooh. Aaah. And then, after lv3, the XP/level progression becomes much slower, up to the lv20 cap.)

As far as we know the only thing you choose in character generation is SPECIAL.

Their is a lot of perks in the game, lot of ranks, you want to level up faster in Fallout 4 then Fallout 3.

Sorry for your loss looks like you will just have to deal with it and only spend 200 hours on the game...

Pfft only 200 hours Talk about not getting you money's worth.

I swear do people even hear themselves :/

I swear the people here complaining drives me nuts, they spend hundreds of hours grinding out characters with the best skills the best items and figure ways to stack buffs ontop of other buffs then complain because the game has become too easy.

No BGS game has ever had super quick leveling. Every single game can be played the normal way for 20-30 hours without even scratching the potential of your character.

Unless you engineer him. But if you do, is that really BGS's fault? Chances are you are looking up character builds and item locations or playing a second+ time.

If you want a challenge dont pick any perks. Simple as that. The rest of us would like to be able to experience the entire game in under 400 hours.

My thing is, the leveling rate actually isn't that associated with the progression of early-game to mid-game to godly endgame. In Skyrim you reached the endgame at about level 46, in Fallout 3 it happened at level 20, in Morrowind it happened as soon as you got good equipment and your attacks started hitting more often than missing. My guess for Fallout 4 is that the endgame appears around level 50, but who knows how many actual hours of game time that equates to.

It isn't just because there are more perks. I think mose so, because you will need them.

As I was saying earlier, skills are rolled into perks.
Where before you dropped 21 skill points and then picked a perk, now you just get a perk.

Rate of leveling is flexible- does the way the game is put together require quick leveling, or is it over powered? I think the former, given the character build system we see.

Fo3's level cap was 20 - originally - so the slow leveling was warranted. With skills gone, we're spending time developing our character through perks and we need a lot of them in order to do that, hence the faster leveling. Couple that with no level cap and you catch Bethesda's drift.

I'm fairly confident that very few people (less than 5%) will ever achieve the infamous "master of all trades" character - even with the faster leveling. We're looking at at least 270+ levels.

same. I always laughed at the perks that gove XP bonuses. What a waste of a perk. Hopefully this perk system isnt like skyrims, in that you are forced to pick some crappy pointless perks to get to the good ones.

Mark my words ... they are going to screw this up. I just see what are they doing ,while majority of you are blind while in hype . My words are full of hate and disappoint , becaouse i cant look at how they [censored] my favorite game/franchise

I agree, that's the highest I ever got with a character in Skyrim is level 40 something (120+ hour playthrough), and I still got my rear end handed to me in the Dragonbotn dlc. So I'm not really concerned about leveling in FO4, difficulty wise.

Fallout 3 and Skyrim only got "easy" for me after I had already played the game a time or two. Well to be honest, I've probably restarted 3 too many times to count. I know where the good loot is, where most enemies hide, how strong they are, etc etc etc. The first time through both games I struggled. Now that might be because I am not a avid gamer and only play a couple games, but I appreciate the difficulty of the game.

I get just as much enjoyment out of the initial struggle on a first time play as I do out of subsequent plays with a guide or my notes to find the good stuff. Leveling speed doesn't worry me in this game.

INT offers control of amount of XP gained.

In FO4, we already know that not only is there no level cap, but the perks are set with some fairly high level requirements for max rank, at least compared to earlier BGS games.

It's likely that early levels may be fairly quick like FO3 but that later levels will take far longer to go up.

It is true, like some say here, that with the skills rolled into the perks, you need to level up faster in order to actually use your skills. That's really disappointing, because what that means is that nothing has really changed from the FO3 skill system where only 25/50/75/100 mattered. Perk level 1, 2, 3, 4 is exactly the same. What they should have done here, which some people did with mods in FO3, was to make the skills level dynamically so every point mattered. That is so much better and we could've kept the old skills system.

To the liberally used argument "if you don't want to be overpowered, don't spend your perk points", I say, why should I have to nerf myself in order to not break the game? That's just bad game design. Terrible in fact. Not saying that's how FO4 is gonna play out, I trust BSG have put some thought into this, but I just see that argument again and again. The same goes for "just set your Intelligence to 1". No, I don't want to play a character with I=1, that's ridiculous. Again, I shouldn't have to nerf myself.

The no level cap and 275 perks to choose from should ensure that you never max out, which at least is a good thing.

You won't in terms of unique perks but you're probably going to have to take less than exciting ranks of a perk to get to the exciting ranks. There's no escape muwahahahaha

Odd comment, all I'm seeing is how they have improved the game/franchise.

More emotional content, more complex and nuanced levelling and character development.

We've come a long way from the days of pixellated isometric games, good as they were back in their day.

True.

There's nothing to stop you (with 10 Charisma) ignoring all the perks on levels 1-9 and only levelling the level 10 perk 'Intimidation'

but that perk has three levels (and level gates) so I bet level 3 is the best one...

I never got a character pass the mid 60s in Syrim(Most characters I only got to mid 40s) and I didn't feel like a god when I was done playing with them. Also perks are tied to what level you are so you might not be able to get a rank 3(or 4) perk without being level 50.

classic rose tinted, emotional belief that the old Fallout games was some flawless masterpieces, they were good games but not flawless, its clear beth couldnt just keep blindly reusing the same system, that one was built for a turn based rpg

this isnt a turn based rpg.

I don't think the speed of leveling up matters as long as it's balanced. And we won't have good knowledge of how well it's balanced until we play the game. Even then people will disagree about the balance.

I would imagine that without a level cap one would have to level more quickly to accomplish the same things as one would in a game with a level cap and slower leveling.