I stopped watching when he called Fallout system as dumb based on just New Vegas since he says "guns govern both pistols and miniguns", apparently he never played any of the older games. Way to prove himself ignorant about the whole system.

Go back to play FO1, it has TONS of different skills but you use half of them twice in the whole game. They condensed the skills because of that and it worked great, now you need to use most of them throughout the game.

Take Wasteland 2 for example, has TONS of skills, even more than FO1. And you don't use 75% of them, like ever. It wasted (pun intended) the game because of too many skills. Even though that game has a party of several people to distribute the skills.

I'm still holding judgement on FO4 system since it's all speculation but having too many skills doesn't make a system automatically good and anyone claiming so obviously never played the roots of Fallout games, the system is great but the vast number of skills was its greatest weakness.

No, stuff like speech, barter etc skill checks can be at 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 etc in New Vegas.

The problem with fallout though is that every character is the same mid-late-game. At lvl30+ every single character if min-maxed will be a clone with 8 all special and 80+ all skills. The new perk system and lower starting special stats might actually be good in that we may finally be able to play the game and have different characters in the end.

Powergaming is too easy in FO3+NV, its hurtful to roleplaying when you have a character with no weakness and all strengths. It also hurts replayability.

Skyrim removed but didn't replace

If the current theory with skills in FO is true then skills have just been reworked.

A system just because it is old and been used widely before does not mean it is good just that it was updated into a system that makes more sense.

The only way I see "Only Perks" being better is if these Perks are powerful and extremely specific, with many ranks.

Just like the guy in the video theorized, The result will be a for more specialized character than FO3. instead of Guns you now pick Commando(2h ranged) or Gunslinger (1h ranged), and then the higher Perks get more specific with a Submachinegun, Rifle, Revolver, Shotgun, etc. perks with multiple (1-6) ranks.

However, I have my doubts if Bethesda will do it that way and it was more or less wishful thinking from people like me and the youtube dude. I was wrong in the past with Skyrim:

I had extremely less build options in Skyrim than previous TES. Every character I played was practically the same after level 20/30 (Not too far into the game).

The defenders of attribute/magic-stuff removal were objectively flat out wrong. And I was one of them.

Alright, I will now go to great length to prove why that is not a correct statement. The difference between the games were not so that "dumb" people can also play the game, they were "design" decisions that were intended to work better for the majority of people and actually giving them a better progression system.

Spells not present from Oblivion:

Alteration ---> Burden, feather, Open Lock, water walking, Shield (Replaced by Flesh spells in Skyrim).
Conjuration ----> bound armor, Couple of deadric summons
Destruction ----> Corrode Armor, drain skill, weakness to element spell
Illusion ----> Charm, chameleon, Night Eye (It does exist in Skyrim but always as a lesser power like being a khajiit or vamp or werewolf), Silence, Command creature (Still exists in Skyrim but it's moved to shouts basically)
Mysticism ----> Dispel, reflect spell
Restoration ----> Absorb Attribute, Absorb health & fatigue, cure disease, Resist magic


That's it. Now before we move on to what Skyrim "added" to the game, let's take a moment and see what happened in Bethesda mind here.
Aside from Dispel and deadric summons and water walking which I miss, spells were either got transfered to other disciplines (Alchemy, Enchanting, Shouts etc) like Night eye, cure disease, resist magic, command creature and Weakness to Elements spells,, or were removed because of gameplay "design" decisions.
For example Open Lock is a spell from Alteration which trivializes the whole skill of Lock picking (not that lock picking in Skyrim was any good mind you).

Now lets see what Skyrim added:

Alteration ---> Flesh spells, transmute, Equilibrium, detect dead//
Conjuration ----> Major overhaul to Necromancy spells, banish Deadra//
Destruction ----> Runes as a trap mechanic for destruction, Elemental cloaks (and Whirlwind cloak from DB), Wall of Fire/Frost/Storm spells//
Illusion ----> clairvoyance, muffle//
Restoration ----> Wards, Heal other, Necromantic Healing, Sun fire, Poison Rune, Turn undead (This was present in Oblivion but under Cunjuration) but in Skyrim we also have the "circle" of turn spells for Restoration as well.

Now lets look at the "new" effect added in the form of shouts:

Battle fury, Become Ethereal, Clear Skies, Cyclone, Disarm, Drain Vitality (which is not new, they moved it from being a spell to being a shout), Elemental Fury, Ice Form, Marked for death (which is again not new but another form of drain spells appearing in the form of shouts), Slow time, Storm call, Throw voice, Unrelenting Force, Whirlwind Sprint.

Now to top it all they added the new mechanic of "equiping" the spells to your left and right hand, making you able to do dual casting or just using two spells at one time. Which made using magic much more fun and diverse in my opinion.

Now is Skyrim magic perfect ?? Hell no, but it was a step (and a pretty big step) in the right direction.

So I'm sorry if I'm not buying this "OMG Bethesda is dumbing everything down" nonsense,, I'm not happy that attributes were cut out, but I wasn't a fan of how they handled them in previous games either.
Unfortunately Bethesda tends to cut problematic features but here's the thing, Streamlining is a perfectly "good" thing in my book, if it attracts more crowd to their game it's a good thing, it makes their games more important, it would prevent Bethesda games to die.
But a lot of the things they have done were not because they wanted to attract "lesser" gamers, they were design choices aiming to make a more fun and interesting game.

The removal of a few effects wasn't game-breaking, but it did remove many options and choices. But the removal of spell-crafting had extremely negative gameplay impacts on magic, removing all options/choices:

Almost all these cool spells you listed quickly became worthless without spell-crafting and/or spell-scaling. I was stuck using the same 1-3 spells for 90% of my play through, which I couldn't even further customize. I had less play-styles and useful spells than Dragon Age mage class for crying out loud. Can you imagine being stuck with one pre-set damage spell in Oblivion, with the same magnitude and shape? Unacceptable. They MUST have run out of time for spell crafting.

This made the game less diverse. There goes 2H/Bow caster hybrids for a clunky R/L hand system that has thankfully been likely scrapped in FO4. (Likely due to feedback of how meh it was).

Wow at how much garbage you have spewed in this post.

Let us see: They removed unlock spells to make lockpick worth something? That is NOT choice! Mages dont pick locks, they use MAGIC! It is up to the player to CHOOSE how they want to play the game, not have 1 option. BTW if you ever actually played Oblivion you would know that the "optimum" way to pick locks wasnt even the Spells, it was the Skeleton Key which could use "auto-attempt" infinitely to break any lock. Why build up Alteration when you can unlock anything with the Key? oh yeah, because CHOICE!

Transmute was in Oblivion as a scroll during the Mehrunes Razor dlc, Flesh spells are the blank Shield spells but without any of the elemental resistances which is dumbing down, no overhaul to Necromancy was made but rather they took the spell from Shivering Isles and the Worm King's staff and made it into a Conjuration spell, Runes are destruction damage trapped on a surface so big f*cking whoop, oh look more "fancy looking" version of the same elemental spells, Clairvoyance was literally the most useless spell in the game since Skyrim refused to use intelligent dungeon design, Wards are magic-only shields that eat your magicka so they are worse than Oblivion's equivalents, Heal Other was in Oblivion, Necromantic Healing is worthless, Sun Fire is regular fire but can only hurt Vampires, Poison Runes just does damage over time and is not actually "poison" so it is no better than Oblivion's damage spells, enjoy this wall of corrections

All shouts are irrelevant, they require you to be the Dragonborn while also not using Magicka which makes them completely wasted for Mage characters. Removing a huge chunks of spells and moving them to a 1-game gimmick is not acceptable.

Equipping spells removes tons of character build options such as Witchhunter because it replaces the ability to use your melee weapon/ranged weapon in both hands.

You may be crammed 20ft up gamesas's rear but that doesnt the rest of us have to lie to ourselves to make Beth's poor decisions seem not so bad

I'm honestly going to hold my breath on this one, I don't think that the removal of skills in-favour of perk trees is necessarily a bad thing. However, I have more than enough sense to know that Bethesda's idea of streamlining things isn't always what I actually want. I could work well, or it could svck. Either way though, I was never entirely sold on skills being absolutely indelible to Fallout, they worked in the old games where everything was down to calculations being done in the background but, being an FPS, negates many of these things greatly. All the weapons skills did was buff damage or add some minor sway to the gun. Since we aren't going back to those times I'm not opposed to new things being tried on this front.

Honestly, after the removal of attributes in Skyrim, I was more concerned for SPECIAL - which is required for Fallout, the system being made specifically for the games - which has survived at-least.

And back to Fallout 4...... How do you guys think the Bobblehead stand will work? It has spaces for 20 Bobbleheads on it and 3 are shown in the E3 footage, Barter, Agility, and Charisma. Will they be tied to unlocking a perk directly?

Bobbleheads for "skills" will just boost the appropriate action directly this time.

Like "Guns" Bobblehead might give x% damage to all guns.

Pretty much this^

Good to read a reasonable response and that someone is open minded even though concerned

Breaking news! the ones who are complaining about this system are mostly a part of the remnants of the old guard who go on about how Beth is destroying Fallout. (never mind that back then they were also complaining about how the newest fallout was destroying "Their" Fallout) Back then you could actually take naps waiting for the Computer to finish up everyone else's turn and let you wake up and get caught up...that is assuming that one of your guys had not shot you in the back accidentally. . .The rest are the ones who bascialy just want to play in"God of everything" Mode without console cheats and will be installing the Hacked Vitomatic Vigor testor with Extra SPECIAL points and ALL PERKS unlocker the second it pops up on Nexus. . .

It cant be worse than the old system. . . hopefully. . . . and hopefully it cant be gamed like Morowind Oblivion and Skyrim ......

sigh were talking about Bethesday arent we?

Well Im sure there will be a mod for that soon.....

http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp.php?id=324

We know that magazines are still in the game, we saw them in the garage.

I figure they will give you a temperary plus one in a skill perk for a short period of time.

So reading Programmers Digest will give you rating one in Hacker or increase it by one if you already have it.

Letting you hack consoles you normally couldn't or program stuff that was too advanced for you.

Agreed!

The male Sole Survivor is a vet based on him planning to go to the Veteran's Hall to give a speech.

I totally agree with you about Skyrim, but they removed the Stats not the Skills.

And if they would have kept the Elder Scroll stats, removed the skills, the Perk trees would have done a great job replacing the skills.

They took all the stats and combined them in to your Hit Points, your Stamina, and your Mana.

There was no way to play a really smart Dragonborn or a really dumb one.

No way to play a low Charisma Dragonborn or a very Perceptive one.

Which meant the game's NPCs treated you exactly the same.

The game had no way to offer you a different option if you had an exceptionally low or high stat.

Which meant less chances to roleplay.

Yeah they dumbed it down.

Skill percentages worked great for Fallout 1 and Fallout 2.

But we don't actually use them in Speech, or Lockpick, or Science, expect to see if the skill percentage is high enough.

Most of what a Skill does effect in game is all behind the scenes now.

Perks already do some of the things that skills do.

Power Armor Training is a perk.

Demolition Expert is a perk.

Rapid Reload is a perk.

And understanding what taking the Rapid Reload perk means is easy then understanding what adding 15% to the guns skills means.

We just have the perk do what the skill did behind the scene (like reducing recoil).

Plus they are putting the Special Stats front and center where they have a direct impact on the game including persuasion, barter, and stealth.

So they move Special Stats way up and combined Skills and Perks together.

And it can be shown having a bunch of perks which cover different aspects of the skill (say automatic fire vs sniping vs pistols) means the F4 Sole Survivor is going to play and handle much more different then either the Lone Wanderer or the Courier.

And isn't that what skills are suppose to do in a roleplaying game?

Allow a character to do things that the player can't?

Provide a real difference between what the other characters and NPC can do based on what skills they have or don't have?

I think we have come out a head.

Guess we find out in 4 months.

At the beginning of this interview Todd states "we're almost done". So, the game wasn't even finished yet at the time of that interview which was during E3.

They may very well add a skills tab to the pip-boy. We just won't know until the game is released. Like some others, I think a lot of the perks that were in Fallout 3 were somewhat redundant as they affected skills directly. Personally, I would prefer skills, and perks that don't affect skills, but add special features like night vision, carry weight, or some other special abilities.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how these ranked skills work that we saw from the E3 demo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNgEO6ehqp0

I don't think they would add skills this late in development. The game hits store shelves in less than five months. I think at this point they're just wrapping up recording the voice acting, making balance tweaks, and fixing bugs. They might still be working on what perks do, but if the perk poster with the Collector's Edition is already printed out I think perks (or at least, what/where they are and their artwork) is already finalized.

It modifies how much XP you gain this time around. And the perks dependent on Intelligence seem to be really important.

The Hacking perk is on Row four of the Intelligence row of the Perk Chart (as a programmer I won't comment on where the perks fall out).

So you need a 4 Intelligence to hack a computer with a higher rating depending on how tough the security is.

Taking it more times makes you a better hacker.

First Aid is on row two so you need a 2 Intelligence to learn how to heal yourself and others better.

Gun Nut is on row three so you need a 3 Intelligence to mod your guns.

I'm thinking the Science Perk will be on row six so you need a 6 intelligence to be a Scientist.

Then it is a question of how many times you get the Scientist perk as to how good a Scientist you are.

There are 4 other perks only available to Sole Survivor with a high enough Intelligence.

Likely a Robotics perk of some kind.

And who knows for the rest.

There may be special dialog if you have a high Intelligence or a low Intelligence.

And of course your Intelligence play a major role on how fast you advance in level per the Vault Tec representative's clip board's descriptions of the Special Stats.

An Intelligent person learns things quicker than a less intelligent person.

Intelligence doesn't affect number of perks per level, but the speed you get them, by increasing earned experience, and thus how fast you level. Smart characters will learn things quicker than dumber ones. I actually really like that. Instead of getting a ton of skill points for skills you won't use (which I actually don't mind), you get levels faster and thus more perks that add to your character, which sounds like a better conceptual design for leveling.