If your SPECIAL attributes were locked so that you could make minimal or no change would that be good or bad game design?

When I first played Fallout 3 I was new to the series. It was confusing being asked to choose my SPECIAL attributes because I had no idea what impact my choices would have. How could I possibly know how luck or charisma would impact my game?

I get that it allows you to have a different experience on multiple playthroughs but should you expect the player to play a 30+ hour game multiple times? What if you're 20 hours in a you regret not choosing more charisma because you would love a certain dialog option? Do you restart the game?

And if you want locked SPECIAL then can't you just restrict yourself and play the way you want?

And if your choice of SPECIAL has a meaningful impact on your game experience then wouldn't that force you to play the game multiple times to fully experience the game?

What do you think?

Well, since it's not really locked and you can increase your SPECIAL through levelup without any cap, I think the current system works really well. That being said, I don't think the system would have been "worse" if they gave us the more typical 40 SPECIAL points to distribute at chargen and then said "no more increasing your SPECIAL, ever", although in terms of player freedom it would.

Personally I like it being unlimited this time around. I'm one of those who only want to play one play though however long it might be, and for that, this time not having even soft cap on leveling was very pleasant thing to find out. In the end I can be all and everything.

20+ hour game?

Most people who play the game after the honeymoon period is over* play for hundreds of hours. I am in the 4 figures for Fallout 3 and New Vegas each. And, we make lots of characters just because the SPECIAL can make a totally different character each time around. I can make a Gimp or an Uber God if I want to.

However you can level your SPECIAL up to 10 in each category on one character in this game (yes, that one will be an Uber God when you do that). My Dad (76 years old BTW) just set all his initial SPECIALS at the same level (5 I think) and is growing them as needed as he plays.

*A number of players get a game, do the main quest, and then move onto another game to play, I call that the Honeymoon period. They get in and get out before they realize everything there is. The rest of us play the game and discover all it's secrets and flaws and goodies over time, kind of like what happens in a marriage.

You just can't fix something that so beyond saving with few SPECIAL changes. The only way to fix the current character progression system is to nuke it from the orbit and then move to live on some other planet.

Which is exactly what mods will do, propably in rather many flavours, once the official mod kit is out.

Also if Skyrim is any indication it is not unrealistic to expect the ability to re-spec being added later.

Wait theres no level cap???

You eventually get everything unlocked so you could just keep playing or SPECIAL book glitch to get 10 Charisma, and yes their is no level cap person above me

Technically I think the level cap was somewhere along 65K just because the number type used would roll over then and crash the game. Practically, there is no level cap so you can get enough levels to max out all your perks and SPECIAL stats. was somwhere around level 250 or so I think..

Edit:

"Fallout 4 does not have a level cap, although after the level 65535 the game crashes." from the fallout wikia

Actualy you werent rly locked into what you chose at start in Fallout 3 as well, there was a perk i think it was Almost perfect that raised them all to 9 so with bubleheads thats all in 10. Also i kinda prefer the sytem Fallout 4 uses where you start with lower stat points and then develop em as you see fit, and sure since game has no lvl cap that can eventualy mean all 10 but i dont rly see a problem with that kinda gives people that prefer staying on 1 toon for 100s hours something to do and still have some sort of progresion sure eventualy their chars will become demigods but hey if that what a player wants its his char anyway.(not to mention you kinda become demigod in any Bethesda game once you reach certain lvls and have the good gear)

Btw theres nothing stoping you in playing how you want though so if you want to limit your own special gains its up to you all it takes is a bit of selfcontrol, i think this sytem Fo4 uses is best so far since it gives you total control over character progresion and allows you to play however you want.

I think if they locked SPECIAL to the starting amount they would also have to give you more of them for the 7-10 level perks to see any real use.

Also you do get different experience staring with different SPECIAL choices. The people who say you need a level cap to force you to start over to experience that are wrong. You can just start a new character and explore a different leveling path at any time.

Oh... Sweet so i can be the beast after all XD

You can be but it will take a while if you wont cheat to achive it:)

This is true. Picking Solar Powered at level 1 is a completely different experience from picking it at level 50. There's level requirements on additional ranks, and SPECIAL requirements on more specialized perks, but on the whole the character system is very nonlinear.

Fallout 4 system is fine. It works for both types of players people like me who do multiple playthroughs with different characters, and those who want to play through everything with just the one character. For me who plays multiple times I will get so far with the character, probably around lvl 50, and then start a new one. Those who want to max it all out can do that also.

And by allowing us to increase attributes during a game, it gets rid of the min-maxed "but you HAVE to have INT for the extra skill points each level" that affect other games (FO3/NV, WL2 for example)

I hope they fix that by the time I get to that level (joking) but really I don't see why it doesn't stop at 300, it doesn't do anything past 250 (less if you SPECIAL book glitch)

i love the new perk system

i'm not an rpg maniac or anything, but i do play them a lot and i never liked how there were so many numbers and how fixated people get on them

real life is not so finite xD (not consiously anyways) and neither should an rpg in my opinion, there's always going to be those little factors you might not have anticipated, so i really like the concept of this perk tree system along with the fact that it allows for very different character development if you wish and allows for progression to achieve all the perks with a really high lvl

I personally like how we get fewer Special points to start but we can invest perks to increase any special we want. I have an 11 perception because I bought my perception up to 10 and then picked up the bobblehead in concord. Poof a natural Perception of 11. The current system grants a huge amount of flexibility to the player, and i really don't think it needs to be tweaked or "fixed.'

Just as an aside:

In fallout 3 it was possible to get 10 to all SPECIALS by getting the almost perfect perk THEN getting the Special bobbleheads as Paric stated. Which isn't that hard to do by any stretch of the imagination. In fallout 3 getting a 10/100 character was a breeze by that i means all specials at 10 and all skills at 100. It takes a LOT more effort to get an equivalent 10/100 character in fallout 4. The reason is due simply by removing skills and merging their effects into perks you force 95% or more of your player base to make characters that are divergent vs all characters in FO3/FO:NV being the exact same. I am being generous and assuming 5% of the player base will get all the perks which I doubt but hey.

I think personally that the new perk system has greatly increased the diversity of "end game" characters from the past games which means that there was no dumbing down of the system because the old system made all character the same in the end. So we went from 1 to a multitude of possible results seems to me that we gained more character choices and without any loss of functionality.

That's how I see it.
I mean, I personally think no level cap at all and such a loose method of chr. building is too-simplified for this type of game (making it feel more like Diablo or Borderlands or whatever) and may occasionally grumble a tad about it, because I'm human and human's like to grumble. But that's just personal taste and on my more "serious" characters I impose self-limitations. Works for me.

Some will complain they aren't good at self-limitation but that's not the game's problem.

There is an effective level cap which is less than level 300. Once you max every SPECIAL to 10 and get every level perk, then you are effectively at the level cap with the only advancement being maximum health points.

According to the math on the wiki in order to get every perk at every rank it will take 264 levels

That explains a great deal about this forum ...