Apart from the fact that I feel slightly constricted with the dialog preprogrammed with my character, I have found nothing hindering me from roleplaying to my hearts content.

I sometimes wish I had some people to roleplay with/against, but that is not how a singleplayer game has ever worked so.

One of the shortcomings of FO3, FONV, and Skyrim is that along about Level 40-50, ALL of the Skills had maxed out at 100. What is all-100s anything other than "godlike" perfection? Not even remotely "realistic", even in a game sense. A significant part of the challenge is too strive when there is a likely chance of failure.

Upon lengthy consideration I have to agree with Bethesda's decision to switch to Perks over Skills. All a Perk is is "can do ______ somewhat better". How much better? Really can't say. And that's the way it should be. "There's always room for improvement." As in Life, improvement in any Skill area takes practice, experience, and time. Hence the Level requirement for the several Perks. You simply well NEVER see a 5th grade student that is a Grand Master of any skill because to be that focused would have required accepting mastery at the cost of being a total incompetent at everything else. (Note that skills are NOT Intelligence. It takes Intelligence to help develop proficiency, but being skillful does not improve Intelligence.) So as in Life, we start by being somewhat "rounded out", then we decide what think we want to concentrate on. And more often people choose to be a Jack-Of-All-Trades instead of a Master-Of-ONE.

"the game is overall bad"

Yeah now i know i cant take you seriously. Im not a really devoted fan like you seem to be not of this game though, i can see things that someone can criticize about the game but saying its overall bad is just a butthurt statement.

op howmany complain treath are you going to make?

I can't say I really miss skills. They were just another number that you pumped points into until you got what you wanted. That was about it. Whether you get the skill through the perk system or a numbering system, it doesn't really matter to me, I guess. I'm playing the character I wanted to play and I'm loving it.

To me, Role Playing is more about the story than the system anyway. And hey, it's a lot better than Mass Effect 2 and 3 when it comes to customization and traditional role playing aspects.

Technically there IS 270 perks. Since each rank of a perk adds an entirely new feature.

There was definately skills in Fallout 3, in which you invested skillpoints as you levelled. I myself cannot say I miss them, I would be ok with them, I am ok without them.

To me it is like exchanging a pen and paper game of D&D for a game of Vampire the Masquerade or 7th Sea. Different ruleset, but still ways to make and break your chosen character.

In so many game forums, I keep encountering members that feel that whatever the game is, it's too d*** easy. For them maybe. Is it the developers' or anyone else's fault that they were born with a big S tattooed on their chests? That is what being Exceptional in Real Life is all about: things difficult for others come easily for them. Hence the Difficulty levels.

Then again, I also wonder how many "it's too easy" posters are really just "legends in their own minds" giving a description of their Fantasy selves. Feeling better about themselves by making others feel bad about themselves.

But they did.
You level up faster than the previous two games.
Some perks are pure perks. The other typee, Skill related perks, are incremental, just as the different skill check levels were for F3 and NV.
What we wind up getting get is a blend of pure perks and skill perks that place more emphasis on SPECIAL attributes, which is far more balanced than F3 or NV ever were.
You can't for instance have a 1 in INT and maxed out Science skill.

Yes and no. Some perk ranks do that, true. With others it′s just do +x% more damage for example. But, there are perks that are not obtainable by normal means and they have to be counted in aswell.

Some mags also unlock tats and new build options for your settlement. It would be interesting to know whether those count as perks too.

I think the Picket fences bit showed up in my perks list. Will double check when I come home.

i dont understand these posts everyone has the ability to alter difficulty via console comands

i use em not to cheat but to debuff my character and make the game much tougher to play

try changing your health point and carryweight to 50 and tell me its easy

they havent removed skills they just moved them and did them in a different way

I like it i played all the old games and im loving this one

Best fallout ever, tho they need new creative writers the quests can be quite generic

its a far better game than both fallout 3 and NV and its not even remotely close

Fallout Shelter is good enough to be called a Fallout game for cell phones and tablets. You couldn't fit the kind of content and missions in Fallout 4 in a cell phone game. Maybe a PSP or Nintendo DS title (even then they might cut some corners), but certainly not a cell phone game.

SOOO they go and fix the Skill system that was horrible broken, and ppl complain bc they need to wait for levels to access different perk rank, yeah right, bc is SUPER rpg that as soon as u hit level 3 after probably opening 2 lock door. (during the time that took u to level up) u are good to get a better perk.

The system they have now is pretty good but does need a bit of tweaking the level requirements on some of the perks I think should be lowered a bit seeing as how unless your Intelligence is maxed out the level progression is slow as is your characters overall development

Perks do replace skills imho, there's just two problems with it:

-Level locking (cannot specialise like with skills).

-The characters doesn't begins with some perks points, so you begin the game as an incompetent person.

Honestly, I do not think the perks 'replace' the skills in the traditional sense. The skills were too generalized, however, and you had to use perks to spec your character anyways. Want to focus on lasers? You needed laser commander in Vegas to get the high crit chance. Shotguns had two perks to make them good, otherwise, it was a waste to use those kinds of weapons rather than automatic weapons.

@OP:

As I have explained many times, skills are not required for an RPG nor are they in most RPGs at all. The new Perk system does the same thing as skills but far more precisely. The old system was silly because the vast amount of points had no effect whatsoever on character development making leveling pointless until you gained 10s of points for any one skill. This is why they had to include the overabundance of skill points in the prior games. The new system actually rewards leveling up and makes for a much more varied character until very high levels.

What's wrong with that ~so long as it was their choice, that they elected to be deficient in other major areas?

If a person wants to play as a bruiser, and is willing to give up playing the diplomat... Why should the game care? (...and not simply react.)
*And the same reversed; Why prevent them from playing the manipulative conversationalist at the expense of being John Rambo ~if that was their preferred choice?

I can guess
It's harder to design the game to support that; to fully support fringe cases. Bethesda seems comfortable with designing for a mutable middle range PC where everything is acceptably averaged, where a couple points either way does not really affect anything.

(FO4 opinions on that anyone? ~For me it's just a guess with that game; I don't have FO4 yet; the GECK hasn't been released.)

I disagree. Leveling up is less rewarding.

FO4: You get one star to spend toward a perk or attribute. That's it. One at a time.

3/NV: You get 10+ skill points to distribute to any skill you want AND you get to pick a perk every 1-2 levels, and even a perk which adds to your otherwise unchageable attributes on top of it.

I can tell which one is more rewarding just by the length of the sentences.

Hey its not the length that matters. Its the motion of the ocean, the feel of the deal, you dig? Why can't you just accept that some people actually like this system and to them it does not feel as Bethesda removed RPG elements.

The 5,000+ negative steam reviews say otherwise. Why can't you accept that some people don't like the changes Bethesda made to a franchise that was otherwise headed in the perfect direction? If you ask me, FO4 disturbed the motion of the ocean, and ruined the feel of the deal, ya dig?

A curious Fallout fact... During development of Fallout, the company founder took the beta game home and played it, and loved it; but he said to them, "There is not enough for me to do when I level up"... And Perks were born.
(One Perk was given out every three levels; every four levels, if the PC had taken the 'Skilled' trait.)

Perks were originally not planned in Fallout, and were added on top of the level up process, as a bonus.

**And they are supposed to have influenced the Feats in D&D; and the Feats influenced WoW.

___

So it's odd to me that they replaced the previous level up process with a single choice of perk.

Interesting indeed. Just another example of how FO4 deviates from the core principles of the original franchise.