Fair and well made point .... I still don't like it though haha

there shouldn't be a way to effectively kill your character at creation unless you are damn well trying, but i think SPECIAL should be an extremely important choice, it is what you character is supposed to be after-all

An average of 4 says to me there's going to be a lot of ways to increase SPECIAL during the game and they want them all to matter in terms of personalizing our characters.

i dont think so (hence why making them all equal makes you below average in everything) i think they want people to choose and not be good at everything.. for instance if your a scientist character having 10 int and 10 charisma might make sense.. or 10 int and 10 perception with little else...

remember that this time around the perks you get are directly tied to your special stats... im planning on going 10 int and 10 charisma so i can get all the leadership and science ranks for use in my custom made settlement (and so i get all dialog options guarenteed)

Made it into the vault implying good luck, too

We already know that at least for Strength and Agility, power armor paint can add up to six points. There's one more type of paint that increases something else we haven't seen, so unless you're chasing perks those stats never need to exceed 4. In addition, it would be highly irregular for them to require a 10 in any SPECIAL for perks. The highest that's ever been is 8, and that was in DLCs.

well your not always going to be wearing your power armor... and considering its basically a walking tank it should be strong.. id imagine the +strength is so it makes sense when you hit someone with it (considering if enemies close in attacks in vats change to melee strikes even with a gun equipted and it wouldnt make sense if being punched by a giant metal mech was the same strength as your normal punching)

The nice thing about the Lone Survivor is he or she could have any stats.

Maybe he served in special forces for 17 years and is very fit or maybe he put in 8 years as a PA tech, used the GI bill to get a Masters, and is currently working on a PHD, and has been a desk jockey the entire time.

I think the entire thing is meh overall. previously in F3 Charisma and to a degree luck were dump stats, hotkey stims to 1 and endurance also be a dump stat, Str over what you needed for the weapon you wanted to end up with was a bit of a dump as well because of fast travel to pick up all of your loot and sell it. Perception? in NV with Ed-E as a partner? dont make me laugh. ok lock picks and sneek but still dump 9 or so points into int and you are golden in just a couple of levels....

Look this is Fallout Bethesda style, Todd was probably going ok HOW THE HECK do we top NV letting you become the de-facto KING OF VEGAS? during development.

I almost suspect one of the posible endings is you turning into the king of a Triple army of Androids BOS and Supermutants.

But seriously if this is sutch a deal breaker for you just wait a few weeks Im sure someone will drop a cheet mod that will give you 10s in every special.

Well, we don't actually know that, it's just speculation based on the layout of the perk chart. The columns are related to the SPECIAL stats, but I don't personally believe that the rows of the chart correspond to SPECIAL prerequisites--they might, but they might just as well represent level requirements. Afterall, the perk poster is made to look like a vault, with stairs on the left side between each floor. Deeper levels of the vault = higher character levels?

I could do with not having 10 CHR, I could do with low LCK too if they hadn't tied Grim Reaper's Sprint to it.

Here is my problem, your not choosing to not be good at everything, if 5 is average I am choosing to be good at something terrible at something else and below average at everything else, and honestly I don't expect my veteran to be that awful at anything

That sounds limiting enough to ruin the game for me. With intense training you can improve your stats not max them out. Choice still matters in what you choose.

I agree without intense training or something similar in perks stats would be way to low for me

I'm hoping having a high stat offers a noticeable improvement, but the game balance will be calibrated for a Lone Survivors with some of his stats being fairly low.

I mean everyone will be starting out with fairly low stats so having low stats shouldn't effect game play that negatively.

It is just having a really high stat will offer a lot of benefits both in game and through access to the higher perks.

Now if a player wants to use a particular stat as a dump stats and puts 1 in it then he is fair game.

As a matter of fact I hope you can get certain dialog lines if you have a stat set to 1.

So what if you can't fast talk your around the Dean or pick pocket the launch code from the Brotherhood scribe, there will be other fun ways to get the job done.

I mean a good roleplaying game should offer a different story based on the role the player is taking on for his or her Lone Survivor.

There should be different solutions, different friends, different enemies, and different dialog depending on the Lone Survivor and his or her stats, perks and past actions.

See this is where I have a problem, being punished for trying to have a basic level of skill in one stat causing another to be very low (sticking to the current rules of 5 being average)

Having lower starting stats would be favourable to gameplay. It allows you to define your character more uniquely. Would your character be a charismatic leader? Perhaps a skilled engineer? Or maybe a brilliant sharpshooter. It adds a lot to replayability to the game. Plus, if you're not satisfied with "5" as average, there's always the Gifted trait (assuming they haven't removed those already.)

Being brilliant at everything would just sap out all the fun from the game. Ultimately, you'd end up playing the same character on each playthrough. It also severely dampens the challenge.

But from a story stand point would this veteran be an overweight, weak, moronic blind man? unlikely, I would expect him to be average over all and pretty good at this or that, if there where say 35 points to distribute and I could have higher perception for slightly lower charisma that would be find but its just having an overall total forcing you below average that just doesn't sit with me

I agree with this. Skills also had the same problem that by the end you could easily have a character who was brilliant at everything. In real life people aren't good at everything and are above average at some things and below average at others. It allows for more personalisation IMO.

Totally agree.

And I think the point is to make high Special Stats very rewarding not to punish you for having low special stats.

After all as an FPS, we are the ones actually doing the shooting.

I also expect to find that 5 is not the average for Special Stats any more and a lot of the Wastelanders have several stats at 2 or 3.

By the end of the game the player character should be good at everything he wants to be good at. He should never reach a point where he says "My mind r ful! Me lern no mo!".

My character doesn't have to be good at 'everything'. He's not going to be good at basketball, underwater basketweaving or skateboarding. He just needs to master one skillset: wasteland adventuring. That includes weapon use, barrier penetration, technology and whatever else is needed to gain access to the games various nooks and crannies.

Character diversity is for party based games, where you build a team of specialiists. The gunman doesn't have to be able to pick locks because that's what the burglar is for, etc. But while a single character doesn't need to be able to do everything in a game, the player does. If he's going to have only a single character, that single character has to be able to carry his own weight. Otherwise, he needs to be able to bring somebody along who can ... which would require a much better follower system than we've seen in previous games.

this

But by the end of fallout 3 I had a character who had mastered big guns, small guns, energy weapons, melee, unarmed, etc despite never using a big gun, melee weapon or going unarmed just because by the end I was running out of things to spend skill points on.

I agree we should be able to improve skills and special but we shouldn't be able to master everything IMO. It ruins replayability by making the later parts of the game very similar no matter how I made my initial character and makes me feel OP.

Or things should take longer to learn since my character could max out most stats and special after about a month in game. But in game time is another problem all thogether.

Or things should take longer to learn since my character could max out most stats and special after about a month in game. But in game time is another problem all thogether.

See this I disagree with, ideally for me I should be able to max out by the end, I should just have to try to achieve this and have to do extra work to get there