I know that in Fallout 3 a perk a level was excessive, even before the level cap was extended to 30. Having a perk a level with the ability to go beyond level 50 seems a bit insane. Fallout: New Vegas had a good balance with a perk every other level, but with the cap so high, it seems every third might be more prudent. I may be wrong and as new info is released the decision may make more sense, but as it stands now I can't help but be mystified by the design decision. What are your thoughts?

I think that maybe the perks in Skyrim won't have as large an effect as they did in FO3? At least I hope not.

Why wouldn't you want more customization for your character in the form of perks?

I read somewhere that the perk cap is 25, but you can level normally beyond that.

Not sure, but it makes sense to me.

If they balance it right, where should be the problem?

I don't mind the decision, but I think it could get a bit overwhelming. It feels like they should just implement some kind of talent tree at this point.

The OP is not complaining about the perks themselves, but the sheer number that will be able to affect one character. This could lead to excessively powerful players.

Perks will probably have perquisites in the form of skills. This could even be expanded into accomplishments such as quests completed, murders committed, locations discovered and guilds joined, as well as perks themselves. So every character won't be eligible for every perk, as a good, god fearing warrior may not be able to choose perks applying to stealthy, ranged, and/or magically oriented players because the skills required would not be high enough.

The problem isn't the customization that perks bring, it's how balanced Bethesda can make the perks. Fallout 3 had horrible balancing when it came to perks, so if they don't balance them out well, it could lead to extremely overpowered characters like in Fallout 3.

Using Fallout terminology it would be fine so long as the perks were more akin to traits and limited your character as well as benefitting them. That would be customization that would not make your character overpowered and detract from gameplay.

so? this is a single player game stuff like that doesn't matter.

Many players do not enjoy playing excessively overpowered players, including me.

It does, because if the entire system is flubbed, then picking just about anything will eventually make the game so easy a baby monkey could play it. That isn't fun, especially when it happens naturally and gradually without any control from the player.

It happened in Fallout 3. Even with the difficulty on max it was stupidly easy.

I think that a nice system would be on where there are many "weaker" perks available early on and you get one perk a level but each of these are really to help you define your character. Later on more "powerful/interesting" perks would become available but it takes more levels for each perk.

Maybe 1 level for a perk for the first ten levels. then two levels per perk for 11-20 and 3 levels per perk for 21-30. Then you could continue that trend or cap it at three levels a perk. I am not sure which would be better.

I guess you could try to make an educated guess at which perk might make you overpowered.

I've only played through Fallout 3 once, but personally I don't think any of the perks made me feel overpowered, maybe I chose the wrong/right perks.

I like the idea of perks, even if it is somewhat outside of the standard Elderscrolls tradition, it will make for more varied characters and more reasons to play through a number of times

That's pretty much my take on it too - maybe I'm just sick of the hundreds of speculative threads and people saying this shouldn't be allowed and this should be and it should be like this and not like that and that is colouring my judgement! If I want to be uber (I don't, but just putting forward a POV) as it's a single player game it shouldn't matter to anyone else whether I unbalance my game with my character or not, as long as there are options for other people to take a more serious route it shouldn't be of concern.

Having said that, I imagine the perks will be minor compared to the Fallout ones.

In the earlier FO games before FO3 it was every 3rd level.

But it really depends on the power of the perks. How useful and how much they do.

Also depends on how many total perks their are. (lets say there are 100 for example and you can regulary get to lvl 50, this will lead to many characters with many overlapping perks making more characters feel the same.)

Then it also depends on the average level life of a character. Will most people get to lvl 50 or stop around level 30 or 25?

So many variables.

if they expect level 50...theres probably a ton of perks to chose from, like 75+

Seriously, by the time you were level 20, nothing in the Wasteland could stop you. Nothing could even come close to hurting you haha.

And yeah, playing ridiculously overpowered characters is no fun in an RPG, especially when you are trying to RP a character. Like people said, Fallout was ridiculously easy, even at the hardest difficulty level.

Curiously, I never had that problem with Oblivion though. You crank that difficulty slider up, and you are gonna die.

Do you mean 50 levels, 50 perks? Does skyrim have 50 skills?

Overlords give me a hard time even at level 30.

Gaining a total of 50 perks sounds excessive, but I'm sure they will balance it somehow, I trust them to make a good game.

I actually don't think TES should have any kind of level cap. I think that as long as you can improve the skills, then they should keep improving and you should be able to keep gaining levels. Stopping the ability increases and skill level increases at a score of 100 is limiting to you as a player. If Bethesda takes this idea into consideration (not likely at all...), then maybe they could erase the level/skill level cap in chunks with DLC.

Example: For a new game, have the ability/skill level cap set at the default 100. 1st DLC releases and the level cap for skills raises by 10, thus allowing you to gain more levels. And so on and so on.

Most people may think that this is a horrible idea, but I think it'd be cool IMO.

=)

bliviongate:

I've been playing Fallout since the first one was new on the shelf, so I'm definitely aware. Also I agree that they will have to have an ENORMOUS amount of perks to choose from to make it interesting and benefit character specialization, because once you run out of stealth perks you will HAVE TO take combat/magic perks and that for me is an enormous negative.


I did. I made this thread on my cell phone while pretending to work, so the title got fudged. I've requested the name be changed.

The skill screenshot show ~8 perk per skill (at least one have 9). There's 18 skills, so around 144 perks at the lowest level. The perks were meant to replace and improve upon Oblivion's perks that you receive when you reached the Apprentice, Journeyman, etc level...

Note that we know some perks are weapons specific and their might be spell effect specifics perks as well. There is 85 spells effects in the game.

I like the perk every level. In New Vegas it kind of makes some levels seem more important than others. You level up to an odd number and it doesn't even matter.
Every other level in Skyrim would be even worse because there would be nothing to increase after an odd level up.

but you would still get to pick between a boost of stanima, Magicka, or Health.



For my stealth characters , i'm picking fatigu- Stanima(thank god they changed the name) every time.

Imagine my thief sprinting like crazy lol.