At first I wasn't too thrilled about the new Perk system because it appears inherently very limitating.

They said at first you could only get 50 perks and that there were 280 to pick from.

But we now know you will be getting perks all the way to the level cap somewhere around level 75. Furthermore, the total amount of perks has been lowered to 220.

So that's about the third of the perks.

But considering you can safely ignore either Light armor OR Heavy Armor and either One-handed or Two-handed without sacrificing anything other than a small amount of versatility...

Thats another 30 perks you dont need to worry about. From what we've seen, certain trees will also have redundant perks; for instance Block includes stuff about blocking with weapons that you can ignore if you went One-handed, and vice-versa for shield users.

At the end of the day, I'm now convinced a maxed out chaacter will be able to get about half the perks he could possibly have a real use for.

Hopefully there may be other in-game ways to earn bonus perks, but that's probably just wishful thinking. Still, even an unmodded game is likely to offer alot of potential for our good old Jack-of-all-trades, Master of All.

I know some people would rather have harsher forced specialization in place, but I still thought I'd share my optimistic views on the issue given I'm a proponent of old school TES character development where you can master it all in time. Thoughts?

Source?

When was the perk count lowered to 220?

About 75/220, third of the perks thing? That's not brand new, I believe we know this since the last video interview with Pete Hines. I can dig it up... just a minute.

Found It: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ieuv8Qw4uic

Revelant part at 2:40, until 3:00.

He says basically verbatim, you can take about a third of all perks, repeats the numbers i gave above. This is dated 20 August.

I've heard it said that 220 is the number of base perks with 280 including all the ranked ones, but never really saw a clear source on that. I was actually somewhat upset by the fact that they removed the cap on perks since it means less character variety overall.

This ^

Honestly 50/280 sounds far better to me: I’d rather have more perk options and characters that are more individual.

Yeah, me too.

Thanks for the update.

You will have to level up unused skills to reach the highest levels, for example a mage will have to start using heavy and light armour, two handed, and lockpicking. If you don't do this, level won't get much beyond 50, so it won't matter anyway.

Nah they did lower it to about 220. There are way too many ranked perks for that math to work out.

Actually the (imo welcome) drop from 280 to 220 seems to have been caused by them reworking most (maybe all?) 5-rank perks into 3-rank perks.

It was probably too annoying to have to drop so many levels into a single perk, basically.

He literally says, "there are over 220 perks."

Just a guess, but I think the number of base perks is probably around 150 or less not including ranks.

+1 from me.

There are over 220 perks now and over 280 perk ranks... how many more of either they dont want to say. I can tell you restoration has something like 8 different perk lines...

And this is a good thing, how?

I would rather not be able to get most of the perks. The idea of getting all the perks makes for less replay value. If I am a Nord Warrior I don't want to chose the perk that makes my turn undead spell have greater effectiveness at making the undead faster when the run away. But if thats the only perk left then you might as well choose it.

For those who feel compelled to pick more perks than they feel a character should have, and plan to play many different kinds of builds this may be true.

For my part though, meh. My character builds are all pretty similar anyhow so I'm sure I'll appreciate all the perks I can pile on. I never play characters that aren't some variation of the battlemage for long (I get bored with stealth and pure fighter builds quickly) and I'm sure all my characters will specialize in a weapon skill, destruction and conjuration. The variation between characters will be on the fringes.

thats 220 ways the player will be overpowered.

I will personally choose no perks, to keep whats left of the survival element.

In MW, being lost in the ashlands, low health, low supplies, broken equipment, middle of a sandstorm, being chased by cliffracers, alits, rats and an ashlander.. close to death and fighting for life and having no idea where you were.. was one of the greatest experiences you can have in the series. Being overpowered removes this survival element completely.

Doesn't matter. The perks will be useless garbage anyhow. They are just attributes with a pretty face and restrictive system.

Thats definitely not it.

There's not 220 unique perks. The total number was cut from over 280 to over 220, and both figures included ranks.

If I was wrong, he wouldn't have said you could get a third of total perks with a character in his 70s.

A cap on perks would be redundant. It takes a hell of a lot of time and effort to get to their idea of a top tier level. My current Oblivion character is at level 16 and I'm about on my 100th hour with him. In Skyrim he'd probably be around level 25 at this point. That's 25 perks I'd have to define my character for the past 100 hours of his life. He'd probably make it to level 35 before I finally got bored with him and wanted to start a new character.

My point is you shouldn't think of your character as running around with 50 perks from the start of the game. What will define your character is the perks you earn well before you reach that point.

And which "third" you choose is up to you.

Why don't they just give us all the perks at level 1. We wouldn't have to do all the spreadsheety perk choosing on level up then.

1 third of all perks should suffice seeing you can safely skip at least half the perks because they don't match your playstyle. And then there are bound to be less useful perks that do match your playstyle which will make the whole thing mostly moot.

The number of perks was not cut:

http://twitter.com/#!/DCDeacon/status/106033869836390400