I haven't seen too many people discussing this topic, nor anyone providing a confirmation one way or the other. Thankfully, I ended up randomly answering the question for myself without intending to. Bear in mind that the information below is based on the Character System video released by Bethesda on 9/24/15 and as we all know, details of a game can change before they are released.

To preface this, harken back to the E3 reveal trailer where we saw that at level 1, you have a total of 28 SPECIAL points to start the game. At level 2, you'll start gaining Perk/SPECIAL points to distribute.

Now, onto the Character System video: The character used in the video is level 14 and has not distributed their point for leveling up yet. So as far as points distributed are concerned, the character can be considered to be level 13. At 23 seconds into the video, we see the players SPECIAL stats are a total of 32 points. So, 4 points from leveling up have been placed in SPECIAL. At 30 seconds into the video, we see that a total of 8 points have been distributed to Perks (2 in Gun Nut for a total of 8). So, 4 SPECIAL + 8 Perks = 12 points distributed. With 1 point gained per level starting at level 2, it all adds up.

One point per level confirmed.

Perfectly fine with this.

It has been said multiple times that we would get a point per level, and with it we can either get a perk or raise our special stat by one. Think of it as the SPECIAL stats being perks themselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsFpH4jm-QI

As others have said, you have three choices to use your point on.

1. Increase your SPECIAL

2. Get a new perk

3. Level up a perk

I haven't seen it discussed, but I didn't think it was ever in doubt.

Never questioned that this is how it works either.

It's basically like the perk we had in FO3 and NV that could do just this. I can't seem to remember what it was called, Intense Training, maybe?

It was intense training. Also, it has been a point of discussion within the group of friends I have that play fallout.

I was certainly on the point-every-level side of the debate, but when asked for proof that Bethesda had confirmed it, I couldn't seem to locate any verbal or written confirmation from them. In the moment, I just happened to stumble onto this.

This has been known (maybe I recall this wrong, but I thought Todd even talked about this during the E3 demo. At the very least, I believe it was confirmed in one of the Bethesda.net entries.) Anyway, to further the discussion I suppose:

I like getting a Perk (or advancing my Attributes) every level. Especially since it's now a Perk system of advancement - you kind of have to get a Perk at every level, otherwise you're not gaining anything at all on level-up.

Even previously, I feel it was more a matter of the balancing act. Fallout 1 and 2, Perks were special traits you would gain rarely that customized your character and granted you very powerful bonuses. (A similar system is used in the new 5th Edition D&D, where you get the choice of gaining a Feat or an Attribute increase every 4 levels.) You have a decreased variety of options available to you, but each Perk is more powerful in relation.

When you get a Perk every level, you're going to need a wider variety to choose from (since you're burning through them at a much faster rate, and you need enough so that you aren't likely to run out of choices.) Conversely, each Perk is relatively less "powerful" in game terms - many of them are replacing functions that skills previously covered.

I quite like the system, myself. At least on paper. A few years back I remember a couple of threads where we were playing with a similar idea - the concept being that given Bethesda's style of gameplay, something akin to this might actually be a better fit. Rather than taking a square hole (the original Fallout SPECIAL ruleset) and trying to cram a round peg into it (Bethesda's open-world style of exploration RPG,) that maybe it would be better to try to come up with a round hole that drew inspiration from the original system, but was created from scratch to be a better fit for the gameplay Bethesda was going for.

The potential drawback to a system like this is that in other games the RPG advancement system serves more as an extended tutorial than traditional RPG advancement. (Take the Arkham games, Deus Ex, or the more recent Assassin's Creed games where "Perk Trees" really function as a way to introduce gameplay concepts piecemeal as you play the game - almost akin to the Legend of Zelda paradigm. The choices you are given are more to let you choose what special moves you want to learn next - by the end of the game Batman is Batman, after all. If he's good at everything and unlocks every feat, then no one's going to lose any sleep.)

If you want Perks to serve more as an RPG-style advancement where you incrementally advance your character in a way that is unique to your playstyle, then you need to make sure there's enough room in the skill tree so that by the time your run through the content, you haven't run out of choices. (Because otherwise in every play-through you're going to be Batman by the end, regardless of the choices you make in advancement - the end is always the same even if the path may diverge. It's more the illusion of choice than actual choices with consequences and benefits.)

It appears that Fallout 4 will have mitigated this potential shortfall. You're going to need nearly 300 levels before you've run out of areas to advance. I'd imagine that during an "average" playthrough of the game, you're going to be well-advised to consider the sort of character you want, and make appropriate choices in specializing them. As there is no level cap, you are of course free to continue advancing your character for as long as you want - but by the point that becomes an issue, I'm guessing you'll have eaten through all the content and are playing with the post-credit grinding and messing around with the settlement-building, etc.

It's just a shame that some perks are level locked, because it makes you unable to fully invest in the way you wants to play.

Level locking allows for the possibility of more powerful perks without unbalancing the game. They would all have to be fairly weaksauce if you could pick them at second level.

With the system Fallout 4 has I prefer every level. The old system I preferred the way it was done in New Vegas.

Level locking makes great sense.
What is the incentive to develop and grow a character, if you are able to make your PC a master of their basic archetype in the first quarter of the game?

I mean, lets say you enter a career in a technical/skilled industry, just after finishing the schooling required. Can it be expected you will perform as well as someone who has been at the job far longer? Or do you need more experience to become a master at your trade? Savants and prodigies aside, likely on job experience is vital.

I actually missed picking a perk every level in New Vegas. Glad it's back in F4

I never saw what the big draw was for changing the perk rate to every other level in New Vegas. Leveling up just felt uneven because of that - I would have much preferred if they just halved the leveling speed and cap, doubled the skill point gain, and given us a perk every level for the same net gain and basic progression. A perk every other level just felt like an unnecessary change done in the name of making it "more like the originals". And in the end I don't think it really had that much an effect on the balance. In Fallout 3 you'd get 20 perks, or 30 with all of the DLC. In New Vegas you'd get five less either way (and it made me sad, because New Vegas's perks were so much better but I couldn't take that many of them.)

As for Fallout 4, it would make absolutely no sense if we didn't get a perk every level. That's the only step there is in leveling now. Why bother changing the perk rate when it would make so much more sense to just tweak the XP rate and the HP growth?

From the blog http://bethesda.net/?utm_source=Twitter.com&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=092415-Zur&hootPostID=ed42c6b0210067c7e5652eabe8a7f275#en/events/game/fallout-4s-character-system/2015/09/24/31

Even taking bobble heads and magazines/books in to consideration you'll have to be around level 250 to max everything out.

The perk rate in New Vegas was due to it being more influenced by Fallout 1 and 2 than Fallout 3 was. The perk rate in Fallout 1 and 2 is 1 perk for every 3 levels. After all, a few of the devs that worked on New Vegas worked on Fallout 1 and 2.

Though simple, this is like so many Table-Top RPGs I have played and that makes so very happy. Oddly enough, my first character is going to be from a system that uses a 1-100 skill system, with purchasable increases, and the Stats inform the skills/perks (which are the same in this game, see Unknown Armies).

In practice it will be every other level for me, for a few levels at least.

I'd like a SPECIAL of 4,5,3,8,8,3,8, but won't have that at the start, so I'll take a SPECIAL upgrade every second level until level 22,

then I'll continue to take SPECIAL upgrades every 4th level thereafter.

Taking perks naturally in the intervening slots.

My thing is, I want to spend points to bump up Charisma just for being able to pass speech checks - a lot of my character builds wouldn't be that interested in most of the Charisma perks, but it'll be so weird for me to play Fallout without doing great on speech checks. The new character system still gets you to make sacrifices at chargen, even if those can be "soaked up" later on.

I know all of that, I just thought it was completely unnecessary.

In spite of my predictions regarding bobbleheads and skill magazines, the way that level locking has been incorporated would make this near impossible to implement. We already know that magazines will each grant a unique perk not found on the chart, or in some cases a free rank in a unique perk not found on the chart (such as Barbarian), and so it would make sense that the 13 bobbleheads not pertaining to stats would grant a similar bonus. My guess is that we would still have the exact same line-up of bobbleheads, including Big Guns, Barter (confirmed), Speech, Energy Weapons, etc, and that each would give us a unique related perk of some kind that would effectively be a single rank.

What this means in terms of levelling is that in order to max everything out (taking into account the 7 stat bobbleheads that would still give us 1 free point each), we would need 35 levels for the additional stat increases, and 268 levels to cover every rank in all 70 perks (the figure of 275 includes training perks). This would result in 35 + 268 = 303 level increases out of a total of 310 (maximum level would still be 311). Taking this into account, especially considering the amount of XP that would be required to get anywhere even close to this, one point per level would seem like the only sensible way to go.

Is this the point where I say "challenge accepted"?

http://at-cdn-s01.audiotool.com/2014/02/26/documents/fixit_-_challenge_accepted/2/cover256x256-adb5b94f4a6a4017a4933d9c63e696b3.jpg

Has to be one perk per level, can't imagine New Vegas's system working well in Fallout 4. It would be too restrictive and as much as I like choice, I prefer wiggle room to be flexible.

I don't see this becoming an issue. At least not to the extent of the games you mentioned. The issues with the types of games you're mentioning and the advancements being the illusion of choice is that they are necessary to progress through the game. Sure, in previous games, there have been hard skill checks for lockpicking, computer hacking and certain skill and SPECIAL checks during interactions with NPCs, but you can still progress through the game just fine without investing into those skills. You just won't be able to get to some of that sweet, sweet loot behind the door.

I trust Bethesda to keep in the style of player freedom.

Given the changes in character development (no skills, all perks) you can't really compare FO4 to FO3. Because of the emphasis on perks one per level probably makes sense, but we'll have to see.