This may have been mentioned already, but, it seems there's actually 275 total perks; 70 "base" perks based on S.P.E.C.I.A.L + ranks on those 70 base perks to equal 275.

This somewhat begs the question if Rank 1 is the initial perk, or, added onto initial perk where 3 Ranks would be the Base Perk + 3 added levels.

Aside from that, we haven't seen Perks added during Character Creation yet.

I wonder if any perks are given then, and, how many?

If I recall correctly, in previous games, you got 2 or 3 perks at the very beginning, or, maybe that was skill tags?

I wonder if the TAG system will return? How would that work? TAG perk and you can skip a rank? TAG a SPECIAL attribute and get either an extra one-time point, or, an extra perk every two or three levels?

I uh, what?

Perks are mandatory to take in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, right? I wasnt hallucinating all that? It is possible to delete every perk you take if you're on PC, so have you done a perk-less playthrough making heavy use of the player.removeperk XXRefId command?

You're right, they're mandatory. Longknife's point is that they are not what carry you through the game. They help, as perks should, by the very definition of the word, and provide some nice bonuses, but they don't represent the PC's skill at something. In a hypothetical world, you could play through New Vegas without any perks at all, and it would not be much more difficult. Just less fun.

By that logic the burden of proof is on you, the one suggesting Bethesda change their system, rather then on me, who is advocating it stays the same. But I will play your game regardless.

As mentioned before, the difference between having all the +20% perks, and missing one, on the best sword in the game, is 3 damage. There are a number of ways to make up for that,

-First off is enchants

--Absorb health enchants do anywhere from 5-25 points of HP damage. Meaning even the worst ones utterly negate at least one +20% perk, while the best negate the need for 8 +20% perks, which is more then there are in the game.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Generic_Magic_Weapons#Absorb_Health

--Fire, Frost, and Shock enchants deal anywhere from 5 to 30 points of damage. Meaning they can negate the need for anywhere from 1 to 10 of the +20% damage perks, again, more then there are in the game.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Generic_Magic_Weapons#Fire_Damage

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Generic_Magic_Weapons#Frost_Damage

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Generic_Magic_Weapons#Shock_Damage

--Fortify One-Handed enchants, which do anywhere from +15%, to +40% skill effectiveness. Meaning one can negate needing to take up to 2 of those perks from just one item, not to mention you can have several of these items at once, a necklace, ring, and gauntlets, allowing the player to negate the need to take up to 6 of the +20% perks if they have all three items.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Generic_Magic_Apparel#Fortify_One-Handed

-Second is smithing, which can improve a weapons damage by up to 10 points, assuming you have zero of the +20% weapon damage perks, as the damage increases get weird if you have one or more of them, as it all stacks.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Smithing#Item_Quality

-Third is potions and poisons, which can do everything from boosting one handed damage by 50%, to dealing up to 65 points of HP damage on a target when hit.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Potions#Potions

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Potions#Poisons

And this isn't even getting into this like unique weapons, artifacts, leveled items, and other magic items like scrolls, all of which offer their own unique bonuses, many of them damage related, that can make up for not having some or all of those +20% damage perks

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Unique_Weapons

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Artifacts

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Leveled_Items

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Scrolls

In short, you basically have to avoid 90% of the game to actually have not having one or several of those +20% damage perks actually make the game noticeably harder, as the game gives you SO MANY things that deal damage that not having all of those perks basically becomes a non issue beyond a trivial few more seconds of hitting M1 at the enemy.

And again, this is all with the best one handed sword in the game. With lesser weapons, the +20% perks offer even less damage increases, meaning these values only negate the need for those perks to get equal damage with said weapon if you did have them all, even more.

Grumpy old man. Because your acting like any change is automagicaly for the worse.

Ok first off

The development team is known for making there games hyper mod-able. Something which you are somehow obvious to despite having your current post count. so either you have never played a Bethesda game or your just pooping in here to complain for no apparent reason while acting totaly cluelsess and dismisive at the same time, just like the Goms from nma

Second the Team is also known for not doing the same thing two games in a row if they can help it. Seriously I suspect the main reason why they grabbed fallout when the Herve Brothers tried so hard to destroy Interplay was so they could jettison the old Morrowind-Oblivion formula for leveling and to do something besides Bows and blades and magic.

Third, Seriously? you dont know who the GOMs from NMA are? Let me guess it will come as a surprise to you to learn that the game is set in a Post WWIII setting where most of the nukes that hit the US came from China? That there is a company called Vaultech that created supposed survival vaults for a shadow government in the US for the purpose of highly unethical experimentation?(seriously all you had to do was put NMA fallout in a search engine and boom.)

Forth oh you say your 26 on the internet? you really think that proves anything? For all you know Im a retired 70 year old 500 pound fat guy sitting at his computer munching cheetos and I can say well Im 21 and I Obviously know [censored] you dont....which obviously I do.

Bluntly what you did was pop in here and throw a cheep shot without doing much to explain why you felt that way and literally having nothing (unless your going to say yah I played the game already so I know it svcks) to base it on.

Yes, they aren't what carry you through the game. Its the weapons that do that, since the balance is constructed in such a way that there's a whole bunch of god-tier weapons lying around that you have easy access to. I had to mod in a rifle that I tweaked the stats on to make it challenging. Its not so much your skills or perks that made the Survivalist Rifle completely unstoppable, it was the Survivalist Rifle or Medicine Stick or the standard Brush Gun or Trail Carbine itself that would still have been a "I win" button regardless. It could still be that way in Fallout 4, since its just how guns are balanced in the Fallout games, but it looks to be a step towards making character skill the deciding factor in a firefight, and not the logistics of feeding and mantaining your god weapon.

Jeez man. There's no need to be so salty. I know I sometimes take the internet way too seriously, especially when people just flat out insult my favourite works of fiction and say that its literally for dumb people. But if you turn that same kind of hate that they have for something as wonderful as a videogame onto a group of people its not that much better.

Weapons and gear help, true, but they have nothing to do with the character build. Skills clearly play a major role in it. Try using an anti-material rifle or marksman carbine with a guns skill of 18 and you'll have a difficult time. Try picking a locked door without any points in lockpick and it'll be above your capabilities. A speech skill of 100 can be used to turn away armies, but a speech of 20 might only be enough to convince someone to give you a bottle of soda. It's your character's skills that carry them through the game, and gear is just a way to utilize a few of them to their fullest potential. Hell, one can very easily beat New Vegas using weak weapons if they have developed their character to be effective in things besides combat.

The perks in New Vegas were awesome because they were actually perks. They were bonuses that made your actions more fun, or made you more powerful, but there are very few things in the game that you need perks for, which is the way a perk should be by definition.

I wouldn't say easily. You'll have to engage in combat at some point but it can be done.

You can sneak through most of the game, especially if you use explosives to lay mines or put grenades in people's pockets. Also you can do a pacifist build using the compliance regulator

The heck is the compliance regulator?

Unique Laser Weapon in Zion, pretty much a stun gun

I actually would. Most weapons in the game are fairly viable if used right, and I'm not saying that you have to stick with tier 1 or anything, but going through the game with, say, high speech and sneak, but low combat skills and a cowboy repeater is not difficult at all if you've played it enough. Many encounters can be avoided or made easier with passive skills, and when you DO get into tussles, you can use companions, or make do with your weaker weapons.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Compliance_Regulator

Bascialy a more lethal stun gun....

Alrighty then. Well now I want to replay through New Vegas. So if you'll excuse me.

Edit- Nevermind I forgot my brother gave away my ps3 controllers and the PS4 controller won't allow me to aim or use vats.

I'm averse to gutting out the skill system, but I will concede that the new system does seem balanced (hypothetically).

Edit:

When did everyone become so surly?

Pretty sure the burden of proof lands on the person making an extraordinary-positive claim. The skeptic doesn't need to state his/her proof, it's the one who's making a positive claim. It's always been like this in Science, at least, so why no there?

Well that's one thing I was worried about being alleviated. At least now I no that I can enjoy reading memos (provided the screen for them isn't completely terrible like it's been in the past) and listen to audio logs without having to exit the menu to focus on the environment or risk being blindsided by an enemy.

Ad hominem is such a great way of engaging in debate, isn't it?

I frankly don't see the customization. I think it railroads us a lot more than we were before.

As for becoming master of all, I don't mind being able to do that. It can be fun, and as long as it isn't an inevitability, it seems fine to me. I actually think the Legendary Skills thing in Skyrim was a good move, as it removed the need to master every skill in order to get the perks you wanted. At the same time, you are never actually forced to take a perk. That said, the system had a bunch of flaws, most especially the fact that perks smothered skills, and the frankly abysmal design that was the perk tree, which really railroaded your build by locking perks behind skill level and other perks.

That's like getting rid of your legal team because you have an accountant. "Sheila, Bill, Howard, Ron? We don't need you to go to court for us anymore. We just realized Terry can do your job. Sure, he's an accountant, and is much better at budgeting and number crunching, but we think he can do both jobs at once."

Skills should be handling your overall, well, skill in a certain area. The amount you repair something, the quality of your cooking, your ability to be stealthy, etc. Perks should augment that in a way beyond the standard issue "You do that, but better." Maybe you do more damage to legs so it's easier to cripple things, maybe you become more resistant to poison, or learn how do do another ability that adds to combat in a way that simply upping the damage doesn't do.

Wow. A lot of bile coming from you. Even if they didn't back up their statements that they aren't fond of the changes, is that any reason to be so rude to them? I mean, I don't see you hurling insults at people who aren't backing up why they are fond of the changes. If someone says that they think something is cool, you haven't attacked them. Or maybe you have, in which case you need to learn better manners.

This is the first I've heard of GOMs or NMA. Is NMA a game, as your language suggests it is? You go from mentioning GOMs from NMA and then talk about "the game" suggesting NMA is the title of a game and the GOMs are characters in it. Because I found a fan site for Fallout that goes by NMA only after knowing to search for Fallout and NMA at the same time. Before, when it was just a contextless post about those two abbreviations, I found literally nothing about Fallout when I googled the two terms together.

Man, talk about arguing semantics. The major problem people seem to be having is that the name of the new system. If they had called the system "skills" instead of perks, then, according to most of the arguments made here, everything would be peachy. Actually, I am sure a group of people would be [censored]ing about the loss of perks then.

Let's call the new system skerks, as it combines the relevant influences from previous systems. In fact, the new system is remarkably similar to the old since most perks had a skill requirement.

In addition, any system that punishes you for a dump stat is a step in the right direction.

The only thing that concerns me about the perks is if it forces us to pick a gun damage one or other damage types, much like you had to pick One Handed/TwoHanded/Archery 20% in Skyrim, otherwise battles would take 5 minutes. To me that would be very lazy if it's just that and not something more in depth.

So I'm going to make a couple guesses about how this is all going to play out, we'll see how close I am in a few months:

1) I have a feeling you'll be able to do at least some basic crafting from the get-go without any particular perks or much in the way of relevant attribute scores. Bethesda appears to be really pushing the crafting angle this time out, I'd be surprised if you couldn't at least dip your toe in to the various crafting areas. I'm also expecting most of the crafting perks to be like low to mid-tier (3-6? but I'm thinking maybe 4?) Probably also a couple higher-tier perks that unlock more specialized things. They're going to want to let players jump right in and start modding weapons and armor or building settlements, and I doubt you're going to be half-way through the game before you start being able to even start crafting stuff. Obviously, some of the highest-tier perks are going to be reserved for the best crafting options, but you're likely to have some ability to do something with the system regardless.

2) Ditto for talents like picking locks, hacking, and repairing, etc - I have a feeling that you might not even need a perk to attempt a Very Easy lock, for example. And even then I'd wager that you're looking at tier 3-5 for whatever the relevant perk is going to be for that. And again for there also being mid- and high-tier perks that complement those abilities.

3) Something that hasn't been brought up much is that even if you have a 1 in an attribute, that still gives you access to that attribute's first-tier perk, whatever that would be. I'm actually very curious what the lowest-tier perks are going to be. Consider this - even if you have a 3 in INT, that's 3 perks you have access to. If even one of those is a multi-level perk then you're looking at, what, level 7 before you've maxed out the perks in one of your lowest-ranked attributes? (Assuming that you start at level 1 and pick your first perk at level 2, with just one of those perks having 4 levels.) Depending on what those perks are, that could be very interesting balance-wise. Seems to me that possibly it'd allow some variety in your builds ("I have low STR but my perks sort of mitigate that.")

This being an internet forum, burden of proof generally tends to fall on the first one to give up arguing about said burden and link to the first three websites they find on a Google search, which will all be ignored or discredited anyway...

I would complain about the loss of perks. Because Perks and Skills should not be interchangeable. They are different things, and they should be used to accomplish different tasks.

As for similarities, I see very few, especially because S.P.E.C.I.A.L. shouldn't be the same thing as Skills. You can be a weak, but skilled fighter. Several different martial arts are based more around using your opponents strength against them rather than you using your own raw power to defeat them. Strength should be affecting a few of the perks you can get, and what weapons you can use and so on, but the majority of your prowess should be determined by your melee/unarmed skill. You could be as strong as the Hulk, but it doesn't matter if you don't know how to hold your own in a fight. Perception should determine how far you see/what you notice, but your ability to absorb your gun's recoil should be based on your knowledge using that gun (read: skill with it). Charisma can help people like you, but that only gets you so far in an argument, and sooner or later, your argument's strength will come from the facts and examples you pull. I've agreed with plenty of people I don't like, and disagreed with people I do, because just raw charisma isn't what determines if they can convince me of something.

And I disagree about the game punishing you for a dump state. There shouldn't be dump stats.

And they are, its just Beth decided to shift from a 1-100 scale to a 0-4(5?) Scale similar to popular tabletop RPG like Shadowrun and in doing so I guess Beth figured why keep a skill tab when the skill progression is going to be like perks anyway, so skills where integrated into the perk chart.

The complaint about skills becoming perks is that it does away with the actual perks.

I don't see how it does that honestly.

Fallout-Fallout New Vegas had skills and perks. Skills did one thing. Perks did another. Fallout 4 has perks that do what skills used to do. Therefore, nothing is doing what perks used to do.