I haven't played NV yet so I don't know it worked there, but the basic idea is a good one IMO. I'd like to see some immersion factors in Skyrim myself, and I think it could be done better if Bethesda added them in right from the beginning. I've added them to my Fallout 3 game and would have more than just sleeping in Oblivion as well if I could find an eating mod I was satisfied with. Unfortunately, that's always eluded me.



I disagree, Oblivion was a horrid mess when it came to leveling and character development. Thankfully those were the first areas that the modding community worked on, or I would probably have given up on the game very early on. I like the Fallout system on the other hand, at least for the most part. Leveling happened too quickly and it was too easy to max out your skills, but other than that I was happy with the way it worked. It wouldn't even bother me if Skyrim moved to an XP system like Fallout.

Have you tried
COBL Real Hunger
COBL Real Thirst
COBL Real Sleep Extended

Yes to all three, though Real Sleep Extended isn't dependent on COBL. That's the one I'm using in my game currently. Real Hunger is the eating mod that I liked the most but I found that it was just too slow. I'd click on the Dinner Plate, wait for the inventory screen to open up to select my food, then wait again while the mod processed my selection and let me know whether it was enough or not. If it wasn't, then I'd have to repeat the process all over again. It came close to what I wanted, but all that waiting around kind of killed it for me. Real Thirst was fine, but since I wasn't using an eating mod, I didn't see the point in having to drink either. In Fallout 3, I'm using XFO's Essential Necessities with Primary Sleep, which work fine in that game.

Immersion option- good.
Hard Difficulty option- good.
Both mashed together as hardcoe mode- crap.
Imo there's no reason someone should be forced to play hardcoe to get the additional Immersion aspects of the game such as consumption meters.

I think maybe the name was simply not that accurate.

The combat difficulty could be adjusted by the difficulty slider to Very Easy, Easy, Normal, Hard or Very Hard, etc.

The separate and entirely optional "hardcoe" mode which is perhaps more of a survival mode, improves the survival-related RP experience with features such as
ammo has weight
stimpaks heal slowly over time
crippled limbs cannot be healed with stimpaks or sleeping
sleep deprivation, hunger, thirst cause reduced stats and eventual death

Some of these survival features impact combat obviously, but you can always play on "hardcoe" mode and "Very Easy" difficulty setting, for example

Well like I said, I haven't played New Vegas yet, I'm holding out until the GOTY comes out, so I don't know how it works there. But you do have a point. Immersion should be something separate from difficulty setting. Not everyone wants to bother with eating and drinking etc., it does require a certain amount of micro-management that doesn't appeal to everyone. But they also may not want to be forced to play an easier game either.

Well then, I don't see the problem. That would be exactly the way I'd like to see it work.

My main gripe with NV hardcoe mode was making unique & irreplaceable NPC companions able to die. They were useful, but too stupid to keep themselves alive in a fight.

Yeah that is a pretty big feature. I can see why that would be problematic for some. If companions can't die, however, then the PC essentially becomes invincible because you can just hide and wait for your companion to eventually kill whatever it is that you're fighting.

While I liked traveling with companions for their often funny dialogue and to complete their companion quests, in general the NV companions seemed to be either overpowered (in the case of Boone, who would kill everything before I had a chance to actually engage the enemy in combat), or yes, they were stupid and would quickly get themselves killed (I'm looking at you, ED-E).

As a result I would only travel with them to complete the companion quests, otherwise, I would make them wait at their original encounter locations.

You had to maintain hardcoe mode set to highest difficulty to get the trophy on PS3. Not that I bothered after game started to freeze almost every 15min on the dot :facepalm:
Glad it was a rental

Boone was a badass. My favorite companion character easily. Effective, & a well developed personality.
ED-E was useless except as a early warning system & floating gear bag.
They balanced out well as a team though.

Unless it broke a major quest if they died, I see no reason why they shouldn't. They weren't immortal in Fallout 3 either. I thought it was rather lame when I heard that they were essential frankly, it would make the game too easy. Just run off, wait for them to recover and let them take care of the baddies for you. Not that it would matter to me anyway as I don't like having companions in the first place. They just get in the way and make it impossible to have any sort of tactic other than to rush in with guns blazing. I prefer using a bit more finesse than that. In Fallout 3, I never even had Dogmeat with me, he always stayed in Megaton keeping Wadsworth company. And Fawkes always spent his time brushing up on his history at the museum.

Well, considering you had to sleep to level up in Morrowind and Oblivion, chances are: yes you will have to sleep to level up. I think they do that because otherwise why would the player ever sleep? Not to heal... you can just wait an hour to heal.

That wasn't necessarily the case in Oblivion, there was an ini setting where you could have leveling be automatic.



Well that fact New Vegas tried something different might mean that we might see something similar in Skyrim. At least as an option.

I didn't remember that. I liked hardcoe mode (after modding), because it occasionally put me into a situation where I was desperate to find a town or water or whatever. That really fit the survival theme, and added a new dimension to the idea of "getting back to civilization". The ammo weight/stimpack stuff rocked too, IMO.

In terms of NPCs, though, considering the typically brain-dead AI, it's a design flaw if they don't make companions extra-tough as a stupidity buffer. I like the idea of non-essential NPCs, but not if they're a chore that requires frequent reloads through no fault of your own.

Speaking of which, I'm replaying Oblivion and just did the mages guild quest at the Brina Cross Inn. I went down the road towards Kvatch for the quest on foot. Came back, and found mass slaughter in the fenced area: dead wild boars, NPCs (including traveling merchants), pack animals, etc, and my unicorn strolling around without a care in the world. Oops. I'd really like to see that fixed or at least mitigated in Skyrim.

Well you can't really blame the game for all of that, obviously you were playing with some mods. There certainly wouldn't have been any dead traveling merchants in the default game as they don't exist. You can't really expect the game to be able to anticipate everything that a mod might toss at it.

I hope it's not forced or locked or anything.
I disliked how in FO3 and NV I could not wait to allocate my skills/perk points but had to force them out at level up.
And I dislike how in Oblivion it was teh same thing except I had to sleep first so that the progression for leveling is locked until I've slept.
If I want to wait 5 levels before I put out my points then let me do that but don't force me to put out things when I don't want to.

I think people in a general sense get confused with Skyrims 'perks' being called perks, there more like 'Skill Trees'. Well, they literally 'are' skill trees its just we're calling them perks. Point is even if you could save points it wouldn't instantly (more so with them expecting lvl 50 as the general avg lvl) be able to take all the 'high end perks'. You have to work your way through the tree, though it kinda looks like the 'trees' are split up into certain parts representing different things that skill, overall, represents.

For instance Destruction has Fire, Lightning, and Cold Perks, and each perk-node in said tree may have multiple ranks to it. They've even said each rank of a Perk-node (or chain of perks...think this part also confuses people) may not just be the 'same thing each rank'. Try to explain that a bit better, you know how in Fallout 3/NV there would be certain perks you could take multiple times, like +1 to an ability score, you could take it 10 times. So instead of that having 10 nodes in a chain, its a single node and you'd just be able to put 10 points into that node directly.

Anyways my point is its going to be less like FO3/NV and more like, hate to use this example as there wildly different games but... kinda like Diablo 2? Except most perks will only have 1-2 ranks, instead of 20. And each Perk-Tree is tied to one of the 18 skills. So maybe that's not the best example but think of Oblivion right, every 25 ranks in a skill gave you, or let you do something new with whatever it was. Like Hand to hand let gave you new attacks you could perform. If you look at this http://cdnstatic.gamesas.com/akqacms/files/tes/screenshots/SkillsMenu_wLegal.jpg you can see most of them (even destruction but its a bit funky) it looks like most stick to 1 perk node right away and then about 4 'levels' going up. I could easily see them sectioning each tier off by 25 lvls in any given perk like they did in Oblivion.

Now Keep in mind hes only lvl 9 in that picture and has 50 something in Destruction already now I'm sure thats an early SS and doesn't represent the skill lvl to player lvl ratio thing but its still a good example of what I mean. He's basically gotten 8-9 points to spend on perks at that point, and in destruction alone could spend 8 of them. Everything else he can get to, or almost get to, the 2nd tier perks in any given skill. With roughly 230 perks spread out amongst 18 skills I can't exactly see it being that hard to find something to spend a point on if you can't save points.

And also, I love that ALL skills add to your level and its not the static '10 points = lvl' like in Oblivion. Each rank in a skill basically gives a set amount of XP towards your level. So when you get higher up, gaining a level in a higher skill will ultimately mean faster leveling then grinding out some lower end skills. If there all capped at 100 though that should mean there's some kind of theoretical max-lvl you could potentially reach. I know 50 isn't it, and im pretty sure perks don't just 'stop at 50'. They said they've balance monster around the idea that 'most players' will get roughly to 50 on a normal play through. He's also said in an interview I believe that if you did more you could theroetically get to 75 or higher so...yeah.

Normally I wouldn't do that but due to how Perks are handles there's no way your going to max out all 230+ of them with only 60-80 lvls. So even if you maxed out all skills your character will be focused in certain ways others wont be, making each character truly unique. As for the whole 'rest to level up' I always kind of liked it. Stopped the whole level-up-mid-combat thing or right after. At the same time I also like lvling up when I get it. To me that would be a good option to add in, or have it in a Survival/hardcoe mode. I really did like the HC mode of NV, since it wasn't really a difficulty thing other then your companions dying if they went unconscious. If they didn't have that part I'd be a lot happier to be honest. I get why its there but bleh.

Aaand end wall of text.

Semantics really, they'll function exactly like perks do. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... I'm pretty sure Todd even calls them Perks, though I haven't seen any actual quotes by him.

Yeah that I get, perks the same as a talent, a skill, whatever just depends on the game. I mean Perk's tend to be associated with Fallout and when people think of Fallout they think of picking from what amounts of a 'list of perks I can take' at each level or every other level. And thus tied directly into the players level and all that. Some may have a skill level requirement to but there still handed out, and represented differently then how they are in Skyrim - by a lot. I mean look at the posts here, half the folks don't seem to realize its in tree-format per skill and that it'll be tied to player level somehow.

Also, going over that screenshot again im 99.9% sure there going with the whole 'by 25 lvls in a skill' per thing. All the evidence is there looking at Destruction Tree, Conjuration (to the left of it) and Restoration (to the right). Theres tiny purple stars, glowing white ones, and then big glowing yellow ones. Looks like Purple means you can't buy it, White means you can but haven't, and Gold means you have a rank in it. Conjuration the first perk is white, all the rest are purple and he has 26 in the skill. So he basically hasn't put any points into the Conjuration perk tree. Restoration has lvl 24, first perk is a gold star so hes spent points there but the rest are all tiny-purple stars so he needs 1 more skill level to advance further in that.

Looking at Destruction for the rest you see he has 50+ in it so he can go up 2 nodes in any given chain, the left one he can only move up 1 since he hasn't bought that one yet, leaving the 2nd one a purple. The middle path is fully spent to what he can, and the right has 1 node spent, leaving the 2nd a white star.

So yeah pretty confident its tied to skill level and that they're going by 1, 25, 50, 75 and 100 (or 90).

I agree with most of this, and you have some insightful anolysis of the details on the UI screen.

However, whether we are talking about a graphical representation of a perk tree with branching nodes and prerequisites based on the level of each skill or a FO-style list of perks requiring minimum skill levels or other perks as pre-requisites, ultimately the underlying mechanic is the same.

I don't recall hearing that anywhere, the only things I recall hearing about leveling is that since classes are removed, all skills contribute to leveling up, but the higher a skill's level, the more it contributes, so you'll level faster if you specialize, and that instead of the attributes we're familiar with, upon leveling up you get to directly increase your health, magicka and stamina, and can choose a perk, but of course, I could have missed something.

Though honestly, I don't care too much either way about whether or not sleeping to level up is still in, it was a reletively pointless but ultimately quite harmless mechanic, on the one hand, it didn't add a lot to the game, but on the other, it didn't really bother me either, it was kind of nice that it gave you a way to choose when to level up, but there are other ways to do that as well, like just having a "level up" button in the menu that you can press if you're ready to gain a level in order to bring up the level up screen.



Indeed, changing the way the menu for perks is presented doesn't really change much, the main functional difference between Fallout 3's perks and Skyrim's are that Skyrim's perks are sort of like sub-skills, allowing you to further specialize in a skill, such as having a perk under one handed skill that gives you bonuses when fighting with a mace, whereas Fallout perks are general bonuses or abilities that may or may not be related to a specific skill, some perks may allow you to carry more, others might let you do more damage to a specific type of enemy, some perks may just increase a specific skill by a certain amount, so while the mechanics of choosing perks are similar, the differences lie in what they do, but it doesn't really matter. Fallout and the Elder Scrolls are different games, and just because something works well in one series doesn't mean the other needs it, but the inverse is also true, there's nothing wrong with including features from Fallout in Skyrim, provided said features could also work well in Skyrim, whether a feature should be in Skyrim or not should be determined by how well it would actually fit the game, not by what other games have it.

Not really all that different than many of the perks found in Fallout. For instance, Demolition Expert is only available if your Explosives skill is 60 or above. Granted that Fallout has alot of general perks that don't have any requirement other than player level, that doesn't make that system or the one being developed for Skyrim drastically different. It's just that Skyrim's perks will be more closely tied in with skills overall than Fallout's were, and the required values for those skills will be different.

Yeah to an extent it is, its a shift really in 2 ways. The fallout list can be a bit confusing, more so when you want to plan ahead you can't with out a guide showing everything. And Skyrim everything has skill level and previous perk requirements. So its less generalized I guess but your right its overall the same mechanic. Them 2 changes though will make it feel and balance wise work dramatically different which I'm happy about.

It's what I've been wanting in a TES game for years now, pretty much since Morrowind. I always wished there was some kind of talent/perk system in place to let me customize my characters more fully. Always kinda reminded me of the original Diablo, sure you picked a class but, ultimately by the end game every char knew every spell and could do the exact same stuff. Morrowind, and Oblivion to a mildly lesser extent felt the same way. Only real area they had with that was with spells, martial based stuff kinda got left out in both games in comparison.

I'm just overly excited over it and feel the need to keep talking about it, hope it works out :biggrin:

Yes, I'm liking the sounds of this new system as well. Oblivion was a horrid mess when it came to leveling. Fortunately there were mods for the PC version that allowed me to avoid that whole +5 nonsense. I simply couldn't believe that many people were turning their little used skills into Majors simply to avoid leveling too fast. That's just totally counter intuitive. With the perk method, you'll simply play the game the way you feel like it, and if at some point you unlock a new perk you decide whether or not it suits your character, or whether it will come in handy at that point in time. It will make developing your character a much more organic process, rather than some esoteric spreadsheet exercise. And in the end, you're going to end up with a much more unique character than was ever possible in Oblivion.