I don't quite remember a night vision rocket launcher equivalent in Skyrim, but I think I get what you're getting at. Did you see the bayoneted triple barreled rocket launcher seen when they were showing off the pipboy? I agree in that there will be modifications that aren't as good as others, but I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. Experimenting with this kind of system will be all kinds of fun. There are even some mods that increase hip-fire accuracy, so usefulness might come down to playstyle alongside perks and such.

And as for balancing, like most Beth games I think that's down to the modders and their preferences for better or worse.

I could see that being the case, but the settlement building shown required you to have rank three of local leader before you could build a basic store for merchants to show up and use, although that might be the exception to the rule. Gun-nut ranks I could see being basic 20% cooler ups for sure.

I'm interested in how moddable the system is.

When they were showing off the pipboy edition, there was a level 24 character on screen with 31 special points. So three points over 24 levels. It's hard to say if you get them as you level (it'd be one point every 7 or 8 levels) or if you have to find increases in the wild, but it's not that big of an increase. I'm personally are for it, if that really is how it's going to work. Really seems interesting, at any rate.

They tried romance in Skyrim, cept with everyone as long as you did a favor (Ysolda forever). It ended coming off really trivial, like you said. In Dawnguard they tried a romancable companion with Serana, and I think it worked much better. So I think this was just the natural progression moreso than just copy-pasting from other games.

If the pipboy doesn't freeze time, the minigames might be a cool way to pass time in the overworld without actually breaking out the wait menu. Otherwise I agree, the minigames seem really weird. A fun collectible you can play maybe, but weird all the same. I guess you could argue they show that the prewar world didn't use all their tech to try and kill one another and that people did things for fun too, I don't know. I can't see myself playing them for any real length of time.

Nonsense. I personally hold both you and AwesomePossum in high regard here, though I get the feeling neither of you are fans of one another.

CND, I agree with you about how we fared better than TES fans did. Imagine if similar to skyrim we got "combat, secondary, support" or something as else as bland as Health magicka stamina.

Though I will also say I'm with Longknife. He's far more articulate than I, so I'll let his post speak. I thought I was the only one who didn't think romance belonged in Fallout.

I'm glad they want the game to be restrictive. That's one philosophy that New Vegas focused on , In contrast to 3, where you become a pseudo god with ease.

Whether this will translate into a proper RPG, remains to be seen. I'm just scared this game will fall into the same traps Skyrim did with "YOUR CHARACTER CAN DO ANYTHING. HERE AT gamesas WE DONT HAVE 'NO' IN OUR VOCAB."

Essentially, this boils down to me.being thrilled over the words, but the actual game will speak louder.

Why would you do such a thing?

There is a pretty good description of stats and perks here.

http://www.polygon.com/2015/7/24/9036527/fallout-4-romance-options-upgrades-special-customization-progression

Pretty psyched. So excited with what they came up with in the Melee dept. I can be a Melee beast from the start yay.

In New Vegas you can become a psuedo god with ease as well.

I really don't understand folks saying it's Skyrim-y.

Everything we've heard so far leads us to believe that this system will reward specialization MUCH more than Skyrim did.

My opinions generally seem to align with your own and you're good at getting them across I guess?

Jeez. don't make me say it out loud man. /s

With what they learned in Skyrim, melee should be SOOOO much better.

Not that it is a high bar to get over.

Too true.

I did a little figuring on what level you need for a MOAT character.

We know it is one perk per level.

Assuming Extensive Training is in and there is no level limit (which is likely based on Skyrim).

And you can find a way to raise each stat by 2 (14 plus your staring 28) you can have a total of 42 Special Stat points before using Extensive Training.

There are 70 base perks and most have multiple levels.

I've heard there is something like at least 170 perks.

Other reports have listed the total number of perks at 275.

Just to be able to get any perk, you will need to use Extensive Training 28 times to max all of your stats to 10.

To get every perk your Sole Survivor will need to be some where between level 198 and level 303.

I'm betting that even with doing the game plus all the DLC, most people won't reach that level before starting another play through with a different Sole Survivor.

I'm really liking the replay value of Fallout 4.

Skills turning into perks doesn't really make sense, they should have still called them skills but tied to SPECIAL. Knowing how to use a gun isn't a perk, it's a skill. Other than that, still withholding judgment till I see the perk chart in detail and if perk levels give certain 'real perks' when they are picked. Altogether the system might be better than FO3 & FONV, yet worse than earlier games. I hope they'll show those videos soon.

I think this is the definition of arguing semantics.

Instead of calling them perks, they could have called them jellyrolls for all I care as long as every character does't end up being the same, 100 across the board clone.

Skills migrating to Perks is still something I think I can get behind. Obviously, this is all "sounds good on paper" until we get a chance to put it through the paces, though.

With all the changes being made, I think it's hard to say how it's all going to pan out. Yeah, we have less points to spend on Attributes at initial character creation, but that of itself doesn't really mean anything until we know what the Perks are, what levels various ones unlock at, what other roles Attributes may play in the game, etc. It's essentially an entirely reworked system - a "4" in one RPG doesn't mean the same thing in a different ruleset, after all.

One thing I would hope for is that those aren't the only Perks we'll be getting through the whole game. I've enjoyed in all the past Fallout games the special "earned" Perks you could get. (ie, Grave Robber in the old Fallout games, or even those minor "Kill so much of this enemy for a small damage bonus" Perks from New Vegas.) I like the idea of just having the Attributes and Perks (could conceivably be a rather elegant match to the gameplay they're going for while still allowing for character advancement to be impactful and unique.) But I'm also hoping there's more than just the ones you get through leveling-up.

As far as the restrictions go - other rulesets have worked in similar manners. Off the top of my head, at least one of the versions of the Shadowrun tabletop (can't remember which - I was a Cyberpunk player back in the day,) capped your skill levels to your relevant attribute. ie, you couldn't take rank 5 of a skill unless you had rank 5 of the attribute tied to it. Seemed to work just fine in those systems.

I feel like potentially SPECIAL will now have a lot of weight to it (something I found fault in with the previous editions of Fallout.) One thing I liked about Wasteland 2, come to think of it, was just how much thought I was putting into creating my initial party, hemming and hawing at every single stat point I was allocating; and it only got more nail-baiting as I started to level up my characters. I actually prefer an RPG where I feel like there's never going to be enough points for me to get everything I want - to me that's a sign of a well-balanced ruleset, I think.

(For example, in my current 5th ed D&D campaign when I leveled to 4 and got to pick a feat I spent pretty much all that week trying to figure out what I wanted to pick, and I'm still not sure I made the "right" choice for my character.)

More specialization and unique play style? Sweet.

I did find having so many skill points to spend just ended up making my character OP..what to do with all those skill points we had too much of..put them in useless skills we would never use.

Perhaps. Comparitively speaking, less so. In the base game you end up leaving 6 or 7 skills not maxed.

Don't like the sound of it. As others have said, it limits the range of playstyles/personalities our character can have.

I'm worried that FO4's combat will be shallow, because they're focusing on the ability for every person to be able to use every type of GUNZ and EXPLOSHION and SOORDS, which fits in with what they showed at e3.

But I'm willing to wait and see.

We thought it was silly that they might remove classes, attributes, Spellmaking, Mysticism, Unarmed, and weapons and armor degradation from TES, yet they did. The fear of SPECIAL being removed was far from a silly notion, it was a very real fear based on previous actions by Beth, and their love of cutting perfectly viable, although certainly in need of improvement, gameplay elements.

As for skills being removed...I'll wait till I play the game before I decide on that.

There is an explanation of how the Perk chart seems to work by a reddit user, who has said he was at Quakecon.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/3ehblz/just_got_out_of_the_fallout_4_demo_at_quake_con/

This all sounds like my ideal Fallout.

If that were true wouldn't you be able to max out your "small guns" skill at level 4? Since the only requirement for taking a perk is your SPECIAL.

You actually can do that in Fallout 3, pretty easily actually.

The level 10 perks must be messiah level stuff in order to get a player to neglect all their other skills to that extent.

That's right. I just never tried to do that myself.

What SPECIAL would small guns be under?

Energy weapons would probably be under Intelligence, right?

They could just make small guns, Energy Weapons, Melee perks available at SPECIAL level of 1 so they would essentially be available to everyone. Still, I don't see them doing that.

Again, more welcomed critical thinking.

I mean, there are days I play New Vegas and think "yknow, there really aren't that many weapons. I wish there were more." Then I ask myself what kind of weapon designs could be covered still, then I realize there's really not that many at all...Of all the weapon mods out there for New Vegas, the only two that I ever felt were fully balanced and added something new to the mix were a buffed Hunting Shotgun that could compete with the Riot more effectively, and a Laser rifle that had aspects more in line with a sniper, AKA it had higher base damage rather than high DPS like all the other laser weapons. Really, if you try and be super anolytical about it, Fallout can provide a weapon for each specialty: damage, DPS, accuracy, crit damage, crit rate, VATS costs and bonus usages, ammo diversity, upkeep cost, logistical management and misc utility (knockdown for example). That's about 10 categories that can be repeated 5 times over for the various weapon types, plus a few misc weapons in between that are kind of middle grounds between two categories. Ultimately, if you specialized each focal point, you end up with 50 well-balanced weapons with unique rolls and jobs, and then any extra are either going to be well-balanced compromises, or simply not very balanced or validated at all. For sake of argument let's assume there's another 50 compromises that are viable. That's still only 100 balanced weapons, but they'd be quality because each focuses highly on one of several aspects that a person might find important.

Here? Todd boasts about 700. They did NOT balance 700 weapons. I don't say that like "Bethesda svcks, they can't balance that many!!" No, nobody could. Not you, not I, not them. That's just too many; there comes a point where making new weapons unique just isn't doable.

And as you've wisely pointed out, will rank 1-2 mod unlocks be downright inferior to rank 3-4 unlocks? In Skyrim, Orcish gear is nothing but something to use UNTIL you can get ebony or daedric, which are 100% superior. Many of the weapons in Skyrim have no variance, no redeeming qualities or no purpose within an end game scenario. Really, if you wanna talk pure endgame, then the only weapon types worth mentioning are dragonbone, daedric, and maybe you could argue for glass or ebony. How many of those 700 mods are gonna go the way of steel and iron...? How many of them actually matter in the endgame and function as more than just stepping stones?

I think Bethesda needs to learn that less can be more. I appreciate Maria because it's a sidearm I can use the entirety of the game and still find uses for. It's great on upkeep cost, ammo weight, crit rate, firing speed and ammo conservation for hard hitters. It's a gun I can feasibly pull out on unarmored foes (and save money and more valuable bullets by doing so), limited only in that I need a hard-hitter for the armored guys.

But you'll never see me carry an Iron dagger beyond level two in Skyrim. It's practically worthless.

The salient issue and the salient question is...

Will there be a cap on either SPECIAL or level ups? If no, then big surprise, it's Bethesda being phobic to the word "no" and allowing the player to have their cake and eat it too again. If yes....? That'd be a welcomed curveball and quite interesting. My money is on the former because evidence from the past suggests this is Bethesda's habit.

Oh, and a side-point?

Frankly, it infuriates me to see the aesthetics of the perk poster being praised.

Why you might ask? It's just a poster right? Because I can only imagine that what the talking points you quoted are based off, are things that Todd and crew themselves said. AKA, Todd says "one of our games strong suits is feature X." Reporters in the audience will subconciously hear "strong suit" and all get out their pen and paper to note that one down.

Here we see that above all, they praised.....the ****ing aesthetics.

I'm sorry Todd, but can we rewind to Skyrim for a second? Take a guess what the top downloaded mod is for Skyrim. Oh right, it's SkyUI! Y'know, that great mod everyone and their mother downloaded because they had to fix that abomination of a UI you guys made because Todd was too high off of how pwettyful it looks while being obsessed with making the UI look like Apple?

Maybe, just maybe....functionality can be far more meaningful and important than looks and appearance. I don't care if the perk poster has a god damned flower vase on one side of it and a copy of the Mona Lisa on the other, it won't matter for jack if the functionality is counter-intuitive like it was in Skyrim.

When they were showing off the pipboy edition at the e3 show, they had a level 24 character on the screen with a total of 31 perk points. If you do gain perks every few levels, they'd only be every 7 or 8. And at that rate, the increases could have just as easily come from other factors such as bobbleheads or quests. I haven't heard any mention of intense training, and I don't know where they'd fit that with this whole perk chart and how they're tied to special now.

If I had to guess, I'd say that there'll be a soft level cap around 50 like in Skyrim where xp starts to get really grindy to gain, and something of a hard cap when you gain all the perks you can get with your current special spread.

https://youtu.be/pWMRGsy_1lc?t=1m58s (http://imgur.com/GvJH23e)

Medicine perk seems to have an intelligence requirement of 3

Hacking Perk seems to have an intelligence requirement of 5

Gun Nut seems to have an intelligence requirement of 4. That means that you won't be able to mod guns at a bench without an intelligence requirement of at least 4.

I don't see the science perk. My guess is that it wouldn't be at 2 and there is already the comprehension perk at 6.

So are they going to have an intelligence requirement of 7 just to mod your own energy weapons at a bench?

Looks like you must have an https://youtu.be/pWMRGsy_1lc?t=1m58s. It's at the very bottom meaning you need to invest 10 points in to Endurance to get it.

I don't understand how educated will work at all without skill points.

I just hope the names enemies are given become increasingly ridiculous as you become higher in level.

"RAIDER DEATHBRINGER OF HELLFIRE AND TORTURE"

"BROTHERHOOD OF STEEL CHAMPION OF LIGHT AND ALL THAT IS GOOD IN THE WORLD"

"WHY THE [censored] WOULD YOU EVEN FIGHT THIS DEATHCLAW, YOU'RE GOING TO DIE"