Was at Quakecon and saw the Fallout 4 presentation.

it was awesome!

Todd Howard said Perks every level.

When you level up, you go to the Perk Chart on your Pipboy.

The chart was shown briefly hanging on the garage and is in your pipboy.

The header row lists each Special Stat.

There are 10 perks listed under each one listed as 1 through 10.

What ever your rating in a Special Stat determines which perks you can take.

Have 4 in all seven Special Stats then you can chose from the the first through 4th rows on each stat.

Most perks can be taken more than once.

If you stat is not high enough then the perk is greyed out.

There are no level requirements.

To take Sniper (a Perception Perk on the ninth row), you have to have a nine in Perception.

So you start with a nine In Perception, you can start the game with Sniper.

This makes sense if the Sole Survivor is a vet.

There are 70 base stats and most of them but not all have four ranks.

So the Science Perk has Science Rank 1 through Science Rank 4.

Tod Howard said with all the Perk ranks there were something like a 170 perks total.

He said they found limiting what perks you can take by your Special Stats makes the Sole Survivor very unique with vary different play styles.

Oh man, thanks for the info! This is freaking awesome! Did he show any way to increase our SPECIAL, or any limitations beyond SPECIAL requirements?

I wonder will leveling allow us to add points in SPECIAL( 1 point per 10 level? )

Tho I can understand some might not approve, I welcome it, especially tied to the lower SPECIAL stats, makes your character nuanced with more defined weaknesses and strengths, something the previous Fallout games (including the old ones) lacked to some degree.

I hope so or being a energy sniper is going to svck.

Did they show if different ranks add different effects to the perk?

I'm sure that Stat Bobbleheads and cyberware will be available.

Dr ZImmer of the Institute was using cyberware (Wired Reflexes) to pay the Lone Wanderer for finding his android in Fallout 3.

On the perks, I didn't see any level ones.

I could see some minor Skill Perk requirements being a requirement before you could take some perks.

Say to take the Mad Bomber perk you need a 7 intelligence and have rating one in both the Demolitions and Science Perk but this is just speculation on my part.

Yes! Too true.

It looks like you start with 28 points of Special stats.

If you could add one stat point for the Stat Bobblehead and for the right piece of cyberware to each stat (a total of 14), then you would have a total of 42 perks available.

That leaves 28 perks that will have to wait for another play through.

And since you have to have a very high stat to take all the perks under a Special Stat, it will take several play thoughs to try all the perks out.

Is Intense Training out as a perk?

So it works exactly like we suspected it would?

Good to know.

YAY! S.P.E.C.I.A.L. is not removed like some people thought.

Do you have or can you confirm that not just Power Armor, but all armor and weapons in Fallout 4 can break? I will be very upset if armor and weapons can't break like in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Sorry I have no additional information on that.

I figure that Extensive Training will return.

It makes sense that a family man that has been out of the military for several years, would not be in top physical condition.

The Boston Wasteland would toughen you up real fast.

And having to spend a perk to get access to another perk seems fair.

Not to mention, the advantages of the increased Special Stat.

Lasting character diversity. My character from the get go is already different than other peoples characters. Awesome.

I hope there's a lot of options for enhancing the SPECIAL, since I plan to have my characters stats be 4's across the board and then have his experiences in the wasteland inform what he chooses to focus on.

My theory for raising SPECIAL will be how they will replace skill books with say... SPECIAL books, but they will be more rare than skill books were.

Honestly not enjoying the thought that they abolished the skills.

Limiting perks with Special leads to more unique play styles and unique characters, yes please.

As much as I like Skills, this new system is way better.

I kind of hope they don't bring back SPECIAL bobbleheads/perks, just so that it doesn't feel like a waste to put 10 in a stat at chargen. Of course, being able to take Solar Powered as my first perk is very cool. I really like that.

I can see that many people might think that a system forcing a more varied character approach is good/better, and I generally agree, but there is a critical caveat that isn't normally mentioned. Specifically, the game world must be designed so that tasks/rewards for various character archetypes are feasible with various builds (and not really feasible for other builds that normally would not care about unrelated tasks/rewards).

For example, a task/reward that is desirable for a character archetype focused on physical Strength (e.g., melee/unarmed specialists) must be able to be accomplished by such a character based on them specializing in Strength and associated Perks. Likewise, such a task/reward would not normally be able to be accomplished by an Intelligence-focused archetype such as an engineer or technical scientist but such a character archetype would not need such a task/reward and would find it useless for that play style.

Regarding requirements and effects for ranks, we already saw in the E3 presentation that there are requirements in ranks for crafting projectile weapons/small guns (Gun Nut ranks) and energy weapons (Science ranks). We also saw that settlements require a related perk rank in order to attract people to reside there and do business there, probably from Charisma, I'd guess.

Edit:

Also, I don't think that most characters would attempt a "min/max" approach for the perks selected in a single playthru (i.e., I can't imagine players building a character that takes Rank 1 in each perk available for a single playthru). This means that a single playthru probably would not yield a total of 48 perks selected at Rank 1 with 22 remaining for a different character (assuming that SPECIAL bobbleheads give +1 and some form of other enhancement also gives +1). Doing this might be an experiment for a player, but it wouldn't be a very practical build for a character. For example, we already know that only low level, low quality weapons are available for Rank 1 in Gun Nut and Science, so it is not very practical to only take Rank 1 in those perks. It's far more practical to perhaps have Rank 1 in one of them whole specializing in the other by taking higher ranks to get to higher level/higher quality weapons (and it's likely to be a necessity, of course, for tougher foes). The same think applies to certain tasks. For example, it's likely that we'll need higher level Locksmith perks for various locked areas with higher level/quality of rewards.

Were we told that there are no level requirements, or is that inferred from not being shown level requirements?

Who thought this? The SPECIAL selection screen was shown at E3. Are you perhaps thinking of skills, which seem very unlikely to be in the game at this point?

Before the game was announced, people were saying that they might remove SPECIAL from Fallout since they removed attributes in Skyrim. I always thought that was a little silly, but it did make me suspect that they'd dump skills for a more intuitive system.

I disagree. If each perk is tied to one stat and one stat only, I don't think it opens a variety of different play styles. It opens The Perception playstyle. The Strength playstyle. The Luck playstyle. It doesn't let you be the drooling moron who is nonetheless brilliant at medicine. It doesn't open the door for charming bodybuilders or the sneaky mechanic. It doesn't let you be a completely unlikable jerk who nonetheless can convince people you're right.

Skills working in tandem with SPECIAL and perks did do that, but I don't see how this system is going to facilitate playing against your perceived aptitudes in the same way as you could in the past.

Also, Sniper needs a 9 in Perception? They must have reworked it extensively because that perk is awful.

Oh, my mistake then. I dropped off the forums a couple years ago and came back because of the Fallout 4 announcement. I suppose I missed the conversation.

They merged Skills in to Perks.

The old system was a relic from F1 and F2 the doesn't work so well for a FPS roleplaying game.

I'd rather have perks that tell me clearly what effect they have in game.

Also perks with in game effects help define a character better than just a flat skill percentage.

Taking perks that deal with automatic weapons is a lot different than taking perks that deal with a sniper rifle or perks that deal with energy weapons.

Based on what perks you take, you can determine what your Sole Survivor is skilled at.

Not much difference between 25/50/75/100 and having rating 1 through 4 of a Skill perk.

And using Special Stats for stuff like Vats Accuracy is more clear than using skills.

And having your Charisma directly impact your Persuasion and Bartering makes real sense.

You can be a great fast talker but unless you have some Charisma to back it up, you are not going to get far.

And the Special Stats have a real impact now on your character and game play even before you consider how they impact which perks you can take.

We got off a lot better than the Elder Scroll fans in Skyrim.

Instead of having stats, you got a HP total, a Stamina total, and a Mana total.

it was strongly implied by Tod Howard that if you started with a 10 in a Special Stat then you could start with any perk for that stat.

Since you start at level one, it seems to me there are no level requirements.

Was anyone else there?