You now just chose between a perk or a skill.

In new vegas you only got to chose perks every other level. Now you can do perks every level or skills every level but not both. Means higher level cap, smoother gameplay and better progression

Explain how it means those thing? Explain it to me because i dont see it. You keep saying that but i can see no amount of "smoother", just dumber

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Because the 13 skills are still there. They are just called perks and have ranks now.

How does that make sense? If you wanted to specialize in guns, you could do that and become very formidable with guns at an early level, but still face a host of other problems and have a bunch of shortcomings. And how is this gone now, if you can simply just front load your character with gun based perks, especially now that they no longer require a skill cap.

The problem is that Skills and Perks are not the same thing, achieve different things, and should not be lumped together. Skills measured your aptitude in a certain area, while perks granted extensions to that aptitude or focused that general aptitude into a specific type of weapon (e.g.: Shotgun Surgeon).

Elaborate. Because simply saying this way is better without qualification isn't much of an argument.

This explain NOTHING! This does not explain how it is BETTER or SMOOTHER! It REMOVES functions, instead of building skill and adding perks for flavor it is all flavor now! It is not better!

I feel like these arguments are really grasping to defend Bethesda's choice to make the change. How many people actually had a problem with the old system? Sure, thousands may raise their hands now that Beth has changed it just as a means to defend them, but honestly, the old system was popular because it worked and everything represented what it was supposed to. Skills and perks do different things by definition of what they are supposed to represent. I don't see how to make that any clearer. Perks represent the tricks a character learns as a result of becoming more skilled and experienced. Skills represent the character's improvement in various areas. They are not supposed to be the same thing.

And the old progression was fine. Nobody got a guns skill of 100 by level 5 unless they pumped every point they had into guns, in which case, the character they have built started out focused solely on guns, and it makes sense that they would be so good with them. It's not like this is without trade off. Their other skills, like speech, lockpick, sneak, etc. will all be at their absolute bottom possible level, and the character will have lots of things closed off to them as a result. It's no different than making all your SPECIAL really low so you can jack your Strength and Endurance up to 10. The level 5 character with 100 guns will be handicapped in other areas for levels to come.

Because obviously Beth, with there several years experience making games clearly thought it needed to change, again acting like what fans love or not is some hard truth is honestly very arrogant and is straight up a problem in the gaming community.


All of this still sounds like all Beth needs to do is rename it to improvements or some such, since you're getting caught up in the old games definition of a perk.

Not really, because he clearly is pointing out that Skills and Perks had different roles. Developing your skills naturally led into getting better perks related to those skills. But now that's impossible because the only thing gating perks is your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Skills seem to have been completely changed into basic "Be 20% better perks" for the most part, with the exception of Science! which seems to be turning into Skyrim's awful Smithing tree.

With this system of 70 base perks, each of the perks that are now supposed to represent skills mean that not only have we lost a way to improve our talents and aptitudes, we've also lost room for more interesting perks. If all the Medicine perk does is improve stimpaks and whatnot, what was the point of including it? Why not just let the potency of stimpaks be handled by our skill in Medicine and use that perk slot for something more interesting?

Oh right, because Bethesda has been at this for a few years. Therefore, they can do no wrong and the fact that they changed the system means it must have been messed up in the first place. Right. /sarcasm. It's not like we don't have precedent cases on which to base base the belief that they will streamline things at the expense of character building and specialization. And it's not like there was some outcry against the old system. Certainly not like there was for Skyrim's streamlining, or the one they're doing now.

It's not the name 'perk' that I'm caught up on. It's the fact that we are literally losing perks as their own entity and having them rolled together with skills in a package labeled "perks". It's absurd.

Pac-Man does not give players the freedom to customize their character and direct them to go do what they want with it. If you don't like playing a warrior, then play a mage. Choosing a role that plays well for you is a kind of player responsibility.

If you're going to riddle-me-this me, at least call me Batman.

Any argument I might make would pertain to Skyrim, not to Fallout 4. As we level up, we know that healthier and stronger enemies will appear. In Skyrim, the player soon becomes aware of that fact and he has a means available to prevent leveling up. The means doesn't appeal to all players, but some are happy enough with it. In Fallout 4, it appears we level up as we have in the past, by gaining experience. We cannot determine to use only four skills and thereby cap our level at 15 or 20, because we keep gaining experience regardless.

So, we will level up. It is possible that we will eventually acquire everything we believe best for our characters, and then we will have to level up yet again, and we might find ourselves having to take things we don't want because those things are the only things left to take. As our characters grow beyond a certain point, they may morph into something we don't want them to be. I don't see how Fallout 4 will allow us to stop this from happening. I don't want Fallout 4 to handle character growth as Broken Steel handles it, but rather to handle it in a manner closer to what you suggest. If Bethesda has an alternative system in mind, I don't know what it is. I don't really have anything to offer as a counter argument unless I wish to get real creative, and I don't.

Inspired by Apple does not mean taught by Apple. A person might be inspired by Moby dike to crank out a work of great fiction, and then produce a mess. As I see it, Bethesda saw the kinds of interfaces Apple makes, thought they understood why those interfaces work the way they do, and thought wrong. Perhaps they saw an interface that works great on a tiny smart-phone or iPod device and display, and decided that a similar interface would work great on a big screen with a keyboard and a mouse. That's not Apple's approach to design, or at least not their approach that I studied in the early 1990's.

With the inclusion of skills as actual perks (as I have explained in detail on my new thread), we now have the option of making one meaningful decision per level up. This may be seen by some as 'dumbing down', but we do not yet fully understand how this will affect gameplay. I for one am actually very hopeful that it will work better than the previous system, and that it will allow for a much higher level of customisation.

One of the biggest advantages is that, if we wish, we could focus a great many points into one particular stat at the beginning and could start with one or two high level perks (such as sniper). But because this would close off certain other avenues until much later, we would never really end up over-powered.

Personally, I think it's a brilliant idea!

Less is not more, contrary to popular belief

Had they just named it levelling tree (and it had perks and skills named in it) yoir only complaint could be why cant i get a perk and skill every level.

Since that isnt what you are complaining about you just dont get it. Either because you like to complain or some other absurd reason

The old skill system was problematic. Every character inevitably became a master of all skills by the end-game, due to the steady supply of skill points and there being no limits on how you could spend them. The only way to prevent this was a level cap.

The new system, by limiting access to perks (skills) based on your SPECIAL stats, prevents god-like characters without imposing a level-cap. You'll be well over level 100 before you've taken all the perks allowed based on your starting SPECIAL, and yet you will still have a well-defined build based on your character's attributes, with strengths and weaknesses.

Clearly BSG felt that the skill/levelling system could do with some improvements, and it seems to me that they may have found an elegant solution.

Sure because preventing god-like characters totally worked in Skyrim...

It's like you're not even reading our posts. If they called it leveling tree, I'd still hate it because it would still be rolling the perks and skills together. They serve different functions, and represent different aspects of character growth.

You have yet to explain anything, you just keep saying "it is right because it is right". I dont think you even understand the system, i think you just hear "Bethesda did this" and now you are crammed into their bandwagon

Have you actually read the thread I mentioned? I think it proves fairly well that less, in this case, is most definitely more. An organic levelling system, one that we can just get on and use without juggling a bunch of stats on paper, is far more immersive. And as I explained, choosing one perk out of a selection of regular or 'skill perks' each time we level up gives us a far more meaningful choice.

They just wont read. Ive explained it really simply to them but they keep saying the same nonsense despite me showing them how the basic assumption they use is wrong

"meaningful" is subjective, i dont find that system to be meaningful at all, it sounds to me like they blended 2 systems that are not the same for the sake of streamlining because Bethesda genuinely believes their fanbase is dumber than boulders

But it's a choice between two things that make no sense to have to choose between. Skills represent character skill in an area, whereas perks represent abilities we gain as a result of becoming more skilled or experienced.

YOU HAVE NOT EXPLAINED ANYTHING! You just say they blended the systems! You never say why that is better!

No, you really haven't.

Read this time:

Again, the functions are still there and different but instead of two tabs we now have one.