All those Perks are still there.

You just get a rank of the Science perk instead of increasing your science skill.

What is the purpose of skills?

To let your character be better at things than you.

To differentiate between characters and NPCs.

If your character has a high guns skill then he will have less spread and recoil than a character or NPC that has a low guns skills.

If your character has a high melee, then your character should hit better with a sword and do more damage with the sword than a character or NPC that doesn't have the skill.

What does a Perk do?

It provides an in game benefit that other characters and NPC can't do if they don't have the perk.

For example letting a trained archer zoom in with his bow.

Or letting someone know how to use Power Armor (that sounds like a skill).

They also better define a person's ability.

Maybe a person is great at throwing a grenade or maybe they were great at whipping up some homemade explosives.

Looking at it that way, there is not much difference between perk and skills except perks are more specialized.

Percentage skills worked great for F1 and F2, but most modern games have trouble using them.

Perks on the other hand can do a variety of things, are a lot easier to explain, and provide more customization than just having a 100 in a general skill.

So to get better with a weapon, you need to take the perks that cover using that weapon.

Perk that might reduce recoil or allow you better headshots in Vats.

To get better at hacking you take more ranks of Computer Wiz.

So pretty much the same thing.

I've been saying this stuff all along. The old system is awful and tedious since the skills only go improve every 25 points you put in it (starting from 0) Move it over to perks or make it a skill tree instead.

Oh yeah, gopher pretty much sold me on the idea.

I was leaning that way, but he sold me on it.

I liked his point about hidden skills (like the vat to hit chance) and why leave it exposed to confuse us, when you can tuck it away behind some perks that at least actually explain what they do.

And I really like his point about Fallout skills already being pretty dumbed down and going to perks just let you specialize more.

I really dont think it will be as specialized as Gopher assumes. The E3 video showed "Science" as a rank requirement, Science is not a specific thing, it is the broad skill we already have that covers hacking, chemistry, physics, etc. If nothing else it will just end up with just as broad of coverage as we have now but without skills points...which means it will be less specific.

How would it be less specific? It's just like lockpick. There is no advantage to having a 66 lockpick skill over a 50 lockpick skill other than being closer to the next rank mean skill level. All they need to do is add a 5 level system of a perk (lockpick for example) which would replace the 25/50/75/100 with Rank 1/2/3/4/5 without all that useless in between space.

It showed the Science perk as a requirement.

They have found Computer Wiz at rank 4 Intelligence.

Comprehension is at rank 5.

So I expect the Science Perk to be Rank 6.

So the Science skill has been split between at least 2 perks.

The big question is do skills like Gun Slinger and Command apply to more than just VATS.

I would really expect there to be a few perks that would reduce recoil and spread for the player by reducing it in game.

Just like the perks that let you reload faster and shoot faster.

The only thing that confuses me is that there are 30 spots on the bobblehead stand. I think it safe to assume that 7 are S.P.E.C.I.A.L. It remains to be seen what the rest will be since in FO3 each one gave you 10 points in the related skill.

The assumption is that with a 5 point system (0/25/50/75/100), Bethesda must have balanced it to avoid maxing-out. With so many aspects "simplified", I find this assumption to be unlikely. Bethesda is pandering to those that appreciate such non-complexity, and they prefer to max-out as a win-state. There is also a high probability of magic clothes making a return, except this time they will have a minimum effect of 25% to a skill. I had expected their effects would have been cut, but then I found that the army paint job for power armor gives the player strength. So it seems I could have quite a bit of gameplay to mod this time around.

Doe no one else notice that the current system has been a "5 point" this whole time. Am I the only one?

Perk skills not better because you can have attributes, skills and perks as separate without overloading the mind of the lesser gamer.

*watches your hair turn grey*

"Lesser gamer"? I wasn't aware that one of the elites had deigned to walk among us.

Complexity for the sake of it is pointless and having lots of "numbers" is not automatically better than not having lots of numbers. We don't know how much FO4 will be similar to what Gopher described but he demonstrated how a skill less system "can" offer a better way for character progression.
And I have to ask what is a "lesser" gamer, what gives some of us any special privilage ?
I have yet to find any argument of why stream lining is a bad thing other than "I don't like it and I don't care that more people might like the new things better".

P.S sry if there are grammatical issues, my head is killing me and I can't be bothered to double check stuff.

Streamlining "deletes" or replaces everything "unnecessary" for progression. Like in Oblivion we had multiple different spells that did direct damage spread across different schools of magic, then through the "power of streamlining" that was removed in Skyrim since we dont "need" multiple spells that do the same basic thing. This is bad because it forces everyone to do the same thing in the same way which removes customization and choice. "What if i dont want to be a Destruction mage in order to kill enemies with direct magic? Well i guess [expletive deleted] me then..."

I dont imagine it will be too many more games before Beth removes the "drag" function in FO and TES (ya know, how we move stuff around clumsily) because it is not "needed", since it doesnt matter that we want it to stay. Streamlining is the same reason why FO4 wont have Traits because they are not "needed", Beth just cannot understand that choice means more than anything in a creative setting, the more choices (no matter how insignificant) the better

Why use an unlock spell? When you can pick the lock...oh, that's not what what mages do, but nevermind.

We can't have that stuff interfering with our mindless, open world button mashing.

Skills are not dead in Fallout 4. The way they work has been changed. Why not give the game a chance before coming here and being so critical.

Because we have 129(?) days until the game is released and we need something to do. I predict my post count to be over 1,000 by release day...

What military background?

Anyway, if that is true then perhaps just the first rank perk for PA and if your SPECIAL stats don't qualify for it then it will be useless anyway.

yeah again, I doubt they have any plans to put any restriction on PA use this time around, at least not in the form of some kind of training, the fact that a level 2 player could step into one according to what the demo showed pretty much seals this, of course I′m sure some other factor will limit it′s use for a good chunk of the game.

Since skills are being done away with in favor of perks, the real question now becomes how many perk points will we be allowed in any given playthough? If we're allowed to grab all the perks available in the game then all this talk of increased specialization will be a moot point.

Speculating is one thing, but to criticize something you know nothing about due to boredom? That makes no sense to me.

I wish many of you would play Shadowrun 4th or 5th edition tabletop (or WhiteWolf, BESM, or any other game that uses a primary build point system), as it is basically is the same system, especially when it comes to combat. You have an attribute that is the base for all of your attacks, you then add the Skill (Perk in FO4) bonuses and subtract any negatives (like injury, rad poisoning, darkness, or barriers; some of these are represented by in game things), all these things determine your success. Just because it isn't with a calculator, doesn't mean that the standard RPG skill elements aren't there. I am pretty confident that 'skill' perks will actually be pretty nice to work with, as I know that when Shadowrun removed a similar skill system to FO3 and FNV, it balanced the game out a lot more and made it an even better game.

Also, @cndblank I just noticed today that the Computer Whiz skill is called Hacker (you can barely see the perk when Todd is talking about building your own terminals in the Settlement building part of the E3 reveal.

Skill Perks and what they have be demonstrated doing or that I believe they will do.

Hacker is most likely used for anything involving a Computer, such as building terminals, programming unique actions in your town via terminals, hacking terminals (duh), and maybe some other unknown things (dialogue?).

Science seems to be used for building Energy Weapons (including for your settlement), possibly certain dialogue options, messing around with crazy in game techy stuff.

Gun Nut seems to be predominantly linked to setting up non-energy turrets and upgrading guns, but again dialogue options might exist and it would be cool to be able to sneak up on a turret and disable it with the Gun Nut perk.

Local Leader seems to be specifically linked to the community aspect of your settlement, but it would be cool if it could also be used as a dialogue modifier when getting 'legendary characters to come to your town(s).

These all seem to be pretty awesome perks already.

Additionally, what if Robotics expert is expanded under this system to where you can start building protectrons or sentry bots for you settlements? Or you could buy more levels of Strong Back or different levels do things similar to Long Haul, Heavyweight, or Pack Rat?

I really don't know why people are so afraid of this? Or think streamlining means dumbed down. Sometimes streamlining means what it actually means, more efficiently done and simpler to use.

Oh, here we go.

Just like with Skyrim, here come the people that defend the removal of options and argue it will actually be better, using double-speak and disingenious arguments.

Skyrim did not tun out to be better though. No matter how many people said before release that no spellmaking would mean better magic, the magic we actually got in the game was generic, lame, boring and dumbed down. No matter how many people said that the removal of attributes was a good thing and how it would actually enhance roleplaying, what we got was a character that was so indistinguishable from other characters aside from the skin that NPC's didn't even bother to pretend everyone wasn't a Nord in their eyes.

You see, if you remove RPG elements then the only result of that is a poorer RPG.

It's not removing RPG elements, it's changing them to something else. Again, play a build point system game like the above mentioned and you'll see what I am talking about when it comes to complexity to simplicity and streamlining making it feel more free and individual. It's just a different way of calculating how ones character does things.