So there are about 4 really interesting sounding perks in this game (intimidate, wasteland whisperer, animal friend, and robotics expert) you could possibly argue a 5th with rank 3 ghoulish.


The idea or pacifying and even having ememies eventually be able to fight for you is very cool - but the implementation has several Problems.


1. Highly unreliable, even wth very high charisma and luck everytime you attempt to pacify it's still a dice roll. The time it takes to attempt to pacify wastes precious moments as the enemy is closing in or already inflicting damage.


2. Redundancy - these are 4 perks that work almost exactly the same way and each require 3 perk points to reach max level.


3. Level one of each of these is practically useless. Just pacifying the enemy for them to sit there is pretty meh. Especially considering that to unlock these perks (except animal friend) you need a pretty high SPECIAL level.


4. There's also issues with companions/NPCs attacking pacified creatures etc and some bugs with highlighting (power armor helmet mod and night vision) causing issues with it. May have been fixed.


5. Pacify does not work with Melee characters.


6. Successfully pacifying grants no XP.



I feel like when they started developing these perks they decided it could be too OP and just made them completely lackluster. Then went over to the luck skill tree and completely blew the idea of OP out of the water. If luck can be so OP as a killing machine why can't charisma be as equally OP at pacification?


I'm not sure what the changes need to be but j would really like if they went back in and reworked these perks. XP gain and more usefulness at rank 1 would be a good start. Also, maybe have them each work a bit differently?


And ghoulish should have increased chance to have ghouls become friendly with each rank - not just at rank 3.

You have a baseball bat and they have a gun, and you want to intimidate them into dropping their gun with your bat?

Well that doesn't seem it would work would it.

My only problems with the pacify perks is how much like filler they seem. Why do we need three separate perks when one perk tree would be enough? Just set it so at level one of the pacify perk, we can pacify animals. The next for humans, then wasteland creatures etc. No need for three same-y trees to waste points on.

Yea man, knife to a gun fight...yea...

Animals/creatures don't know your pointing a gun at them...


And I dunno about you but I'd be alot more intimidated by a guy with a massive flaming sword than a guy with a rusty pipe pistol. The threat is there either way.


People and creatures were intimidated/controlled long before guns existed.

Well, i dunno about that..

You've just seen the sole survivor bat 3 of your buddies heads off like a ball

And you're stood there with a pipe pistol


Yikes

I`v tried pacifying people. Took all 3 ranks. It worked, but I found the perk useless for me.

After pacifying, they randomly can become hostile again. I guess, it could be userful on lower levels, to help with surviving. But I took at lvl 80 just to avoid killing. I like to RP a peaceful monk and to avoid violance . Animal friend in FO3 was really cool for it.

I wanted to pacify

. I`v managed to pacify half of them I think, but then some of them became hostile again and Valentine killed them. I got tired to aim at them and to repacify them, and it ended up with all them being killed.

With 2-3 enemies it`s easier, but my companions often kill them before I get a chance to pacify them.

I've heard that the robotics expert perk has a 100% chance of working and you can now do it from a distance. People are saying it's now one of the game's strongest perks by far. Haven't gotten it yet, but it sounds like something you might want.

When you hack an robot it brings up the pipboy for you to give it commands, pretty cool perk all around now that it's fixed to work in combat... and you can also blow up the robots to ensure they don't turn back on you (not sure if they do but I always blow them up )

Anyway apart from the melee part (for humans at least) I agree with bullfrog on his points and think the perks could have been handle better, perhaps AF & WW could have been combined together and a new perk added for level 10 charisma, an extra follower perhaps? or an disguise ability?

like bull suggested it was probably though as op but then perhaps it could have been limited (at lv 3 at least) to only pacify one thing/person at all times but get to keep them as an proper part-time follower (and let you trade with them! ) until they either die or you fast travel..

Not only is this an imaginary world where you're able to take a ridiculous amount of gun shots without any armor, but also if you've ever had someone threaten you with a knife you would understand how scary it might be, even if you had a gun.... There are a lot of videos that show someone with a knife being able to stab people holstering a gun before they can get their gun out, even when starting quite a distance away.....And getting back to the fantasy part of the game.. your character is able to knockout deathclaws and behemoths more than twice your size with their bare hands..... If I was a raider and I saw a psycho'd up raging lunatic sprinting at me after killing my raider friends, who put more than a clip full of bullets in the player's belly, I would run my butt off or beg the character not to kill me...

Also found it funny that it is called intimidate, yet the player is never really being intimidating. ("easy now hands up".............)

I am not a fan of the way the pacify ability works. I don't think it should be an active skill. Personally I think the Perk should be a passive skill. And you actually hold the gun at the enemy and stare them down.

First level of pacify, enemy would become shaken by your intimidating presence and may be unable to shoot

Second level of pacify, enemy would become shaken for longer periods of time, and you may activate the pacify which would use the dice rolling system, but the first level is passive and getting the shaken state is passive

Third level of pacify, enemies would flee or become paralyzed with fear, you may activate pacify with a higher pecentage of pacifying the shaken enemy

Fourth level of pacify, fully passive ability, all you need to do is point the gun at enemies lower than you and they will flee from you or surrender. But you may also than use the Rally command and have them fight for you

That's how I would have done the pacify feature. Because taking damage while trying to pacify is ridiculous

Which is why I have a rule of thumb of avoiding any perks that come with the words "chance to" in their description, and literally ALL of the animal pacifying ones do. If that isn't obvious to you it can't be relied on, that is your own wishful thinking getting the better of you.

I liked the idea of what X27 was saying - although maybe not implemented exactly like that. But atleast in some way the perks should be passive.


Also, like I was saying before I don't think all the perks should do the exact same thing for different entities.


a couple of thoughts:


Rank one of each would passively/randomly cause entities to be come friendly or flee. You would still get the vault-boy animation but also a small XP gain equal to a quarter of the entities kill value.

Rank 2 they would randomly fight for/follow you - but you would not control them.

Essentially first two ranks would be a passive version of what they already are.


Rank 3 could be different for each - you could command humans to join your settlements or just let them go (would lose their allegiance and become nomad settlers), for animal friend rank 3 would alow you to take them as "permanent" companions (basically like dog meat, except they could die, also would not count against lone wanderer) Rank 3 of wasteland whisperer would allow you to ride some of the larger creatures.



Doing it like that would fix several problems - one it's less task intensive and would grant a small amount of XP, two while the first couple ranks are identical for all three the last rank would allow you to do something different, third it would be more fun and better role playing.

I want it to have a dice roll to be passive. To explain further, you go into a fight, start murdering raiders left and right, and then a couple of them surrender. During the course of the whole murder spree though you still can try and force the surrender vanilla style. The end goal is give the impression that raiders have a mind of their own, and can try to surrender.

*shrugs* In any event, we need to see what the new dlc adds. Since it apparently is going to give us a way to capture raiders. It'd be interesting to see how the current pacify perks will work with that system.