I have been thinking of making a short and to the point list, that lists why FNV is a better RPG. Instead of paragraph after paragraph I argue for only, one paragraph and one example.

Example 1: Player Skill vs Character Skill

In Fallout New Vegas your character is limited to what he or she can do, by his or her skills and SPECIAL. In Skyrim a character with level 15 lockpicking, can pick a master lockpick even without the perk. Fallout New Vegas not only has a skill requirement for weapons, but also a strength check. If your character doesn't have the skill requirement, you wont be as accurate. While if you dont have the strength requirement, you swing slower or again not as accurate. In Skyrim a Khajjt with the weight slider at 0 and 15 Two Handed skill can swing a warhammer exactly the same as an Orc, with the weight slider at the max and 100 Two Handed skill.

I agree with that. And it is something i like in New Vegas. Character and his skill and attributes matter. In Skyrim every race and gender starts the same, and ends up the same

-Which also doesn't make sense from any sort of character or player skill standpoint, as even if you didn't have X skill level, a person, be it the player or the character, would still be able to try to pick the lock anyways, it would just be harder.

-Except the Khajiit with 15 one handed would have no perks, whereas the Orc with 100 one handed would have most of them, meaning the Orc would be doing many times more damage, along with having less stamina cost for power attacks, and more types of power attacks. Meaning the Orc does in fact have a better handling of two handed weapons then the Khajiit.

Also, weight has nothing to do with skill, a morbidly obese man could swing a giant hammer less effectively then a skinny guy, if the skinny guy actually trained on how to use the hammer. Which is why character weight has no correlation on stats. Weight =/= strength.

A mile wide and an inch deep is pretty much how I'd sum up my experience with Skyrim, especially when it comes to implementation of RPG mechanics; I find Fallout to be far superior.

When it comes to lockpicking, you can sure as hell bet Bethesda is going to allow any character to pick a lock regardless of their skill in Fallout 4. It comes with their silly ethos of trying to accommodate every type of gamer, unfortunately.

I completely agree its the reason I left skyrim and went back to NV.

If thats the case why do I need a PHD do to be a doctor? Shouldn't my high school diploma allow me to operate on another person, even though it will be more difficult because of my lack of skill. I'd rather take a experienced doctor than some fresh faced kid out of medical school.

What about weapon swing speed and the fact the "perks", are arbitrary plus 10% damage. I should hit harder because of my strength not some perk.

In Skyrim weight = muscle. Go ahead and check it out for yourself. 0 Weight is skinny while 10 weight is steroid level muscles.

-I really hope you are joking kid because if not... wow... just... wow. The difference between picking a lock, and operating on people, is that operating on people could get them killed, so yes, they are going to make sure you know what you are doing by making sure you have a diploma. Besides that, one CAN operate on people without a license, it's just illegal.

-What about it? Fallout doesn't have a gun fire speed.

-Well they aren't. Two Handed http://uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Two-handed

The two handed skill has 9 perks, and 19 perk levels, and only 5 of them are just + 20% damage. The others are various special special skills, from causing bleeding, giving you the ability to ignore armor, giving you better crits, various special power attack powers such as paralyzation, and power attack stamina cost reduction. Have you even actually played skyrim?

-So what you are saying is that weapon skills should have no purpose? And besides that, why does it matter if you get more damage from a STR stat, or from perks........ they do the EXACT same thing in terms of gameplay mechanics, the only difference is that perks can do everything themselves, while STATs need multiple systems to do the same thing. Perks just reduce redundancy.

-Actually, muscle is determined by Stamina, which affects your carry weight. The weight slider is just a superficial appearance slider, much like how if you make your character have one blind eye, both his eyes still work in game.

Please go test your theory by attempting to pick the lock on your neighbor's door with no experience doing so or knowledge about how it's done whatsoever.

-And likewise, one can fail at doing so, just like one would fail if they tried to pick a complex lock without experience. I actually HAVE lockpicked before out of sheer curiousity, and I've found doors I can get into as well as doors I can't quite open and doors I don't even know where to freaking begin with. This idea that I would eventually succeed with the complex locks? It's ridiculous; we're talking days or weeks worth of time and effort and thinking and planning, but Skyrim wants to claim that no, people will overcome it in minutes.

-Yes it does. It's called Fast Shot, Trigger Discipline and Ain't Like that Now.

-Yes, they are, and he's absolutely right. 5 of them are 20% cooler perks, another 6 or 9 add lame effects that BARELY function and once again add more damage, except instead of 20% more damage, they're like .5% more damage and therefore worthless. Go look up the raw numbers on the bleed, armor ignore, and better crits. You'll realize that those perks are a waste of time that makes barely any difference whatsoever in gameplay. The remaining 8 or so perks AGAIN focus on how to deal more damage. IIRC the two-handed has only TWO perks that truly act like perks: one gives you an AOE side-swipe, another gives a backwards attack a paralyze effect. You could also argue the 25% less stamina for power attack one is useful, albeit not very much and it's hardly a unique perk.

If I rubbed a magic lamp and a genie popped out, my very first wish would be for him to stop people from mindlessly quoting Todd Howard without even realizing that what he's saying makes no sense whatsoever, re-using a hot-button word without understanding it's meaning.

No, there are plenty of things Perks cannot do that stats can. For example if you tried to replace Endurance in New Vegas with multiple levels of Life Giver for HP, yknow what the result would be? Terribad game balance, because you'd either have to accomidate for those who opted out of ALL of those perks, thus making the game too simple for those that took all, or you wouldn't bother, thus basically making Life Giver a requirement. It's a sloppy, broad stroke of an attempt at balance that SPECIAL simply does better. SPECIAL, in this case, provides for much, MUCH better game balance. Please count the number of times you've played Skyrim only to be oneshot by the same opponent multiple times, now please compare to how many times that's happened in New Vegas. (excusing certain deathclaws or the Legendary Bloatfly, which are designed to oneshot, of course)

Overall though, the different systems function to increase character customization. How? SPECIAL and traits, only so many can be picked, forcing you to choose consequences as well as benefits. Perks? Perks are pure benefits. If you tried to make New Vegas with the traits as perks, barely anyone would take them. They'd opt for Math Wrath instead of Fast Shot, Piercing Strike instead of Heavy Handed, Strong Back instead of Hoarder, etc etc. If you made SPECIAL fully perkable (which Skyrim did), then everyone ends up being the same god character that can do literally anything. It's worth mentioning that as it stands, you CAN get every perk and everything in Skyrim thanks to their last patch.

And as most of us can see, the result of Todd's ingenius little "redundancy" argument is that every character in Skyrim feels exactly the same. The different dimensions of customization are neccesary to expand the depth of customization, and therefore are hardly redundant. They act as catalysts and amplifiers to their purpose, and when taken out of the equation, the result is but a simplistic, watered down version of the system that once was.

-Right, and as it stands it's impossible to have a muscular character that can't run greater distances or get tired as quick. It's a rather sloppy and broad stat assignment.

-There's not much difference in this at all, as the lockpicker could get killed by getting caught without the right training and skillset, Or simply be devoid of access to another region, which could easily help him/her in their next situation, thus increasing their chances of survival. Both of them CAN do it without the right know-how, but this is extremely dangerous and both have deadly consequences. In other words "anyone can do it...but it would be stupid and suicidal to do so without the right training".

-They do, but only in 2 Traits, a next step in RPG mechanics for Fallout, Trigger Discipline and Fast Shot.

Like I said, it would be harder, I could eventually figure out to do it..... after like an age. Also, your situation ignores that the player character does have some knowledge about the subject, that's why they start off with a skill level of 15.

-Getting killed yourself =/= killing other people. Two ENTIRELY different situations.

However, I do agree that lockpicking should be done in realtime, in order to allow for bad lockpickers to be caught. But that's a different topic then what we were talking about entirely.

-I didn't know those existed, traits were rather....... pointless in New Vegas. Anyways, they could just be added as perks.

Its just another example of character skill vs player skill. If your character tries to operate on Caesar without a high enough medicine skill, he dies. There is no its harder to be successful with a lower medicine skill, he dies.

No but it has accuracy and melee swing speed.

Dont forget the actual weapon perks ala sword, mace, and axe perks are useless along with the sprint critical damage perk. So thats 5 perks and 16 perk levels that are borderline useless.

As it stands? No. Only because a sword, axe, and mace are exactly the same with only a minor speed difference. Maybe just maybe if we had more variety of weapons with different characteristics, I could see a point of having weapon skills having a real purpose. For example a shortsword would have a low skill requirement than say a longsword. In Fallout New Vegas you need a high strength to use a heavy weapon, but in Skyrim theres no requirement not even a perk you can take.

Stamina is stamina and strength is strength.

Thats because the developers thrust that upon us and its not our choice.

-Which is also rather nonsensical, because there is the possibility, however slim, that the Courier could have done it, even without being a super trained doctor. Yet another example of character skill ignoring how the real world actually works, and enforcing binary pass/fail mechanics in a world with various levels of randomness, and severity.

-It's also a melee weapon, where accuracy is determined by the player's ability to point, like in NV. As for swing speed, there is a shout that can change that.

-Except they aren't useless, and the sprinting critical perk is actually quite useful for a first attack on an enemy, to close the distance.

-Actually, there's speed, noise, and reach difference, along with DPS, between every weapons.

-The STR requirement has been folded into the skill damage increases. You dont have the STR to use a weapon properly -> you do less damage -> you get a higher skill/perks -> you learn how to use a weapon more effectively to get more damage. It serves the same effective gameplay mechanic, it just does so with less redundancy.

-Only in real life, in a game, it doesn't matter how the mechanics are named or fused, as long as they are there.

so u mean in real life i cant even attempt to pick a lock that is difficult to open?

challenge accepted

No, it certainly does matter. I for one hate when I wanna make myself, but I can't for example make myself physically strong without making myself physically fast or the like. They begin attributing stats to the player they may or may not have in mind for that character idea, thus this should be avoided when possible.

You can, you just won't succeed.

Whereas New Vegas simply skips over the failed attempt by not allowing you to attempt, Skyrim lets the player attempt and, lo and behold, that minigame becomes easy as [censored] when it's something you do LITERALLY EVERY DUNGEON. Then you have every player under the sun opening master locks with minimum skill, thus making the entire skill in and of itself quite pointless.

Ask yourself, what would be the point in keeping Lockpicking or Science if you could access every lock and attempt to get in? Those of you arguing you should, I promise you you're encouraging Bethesda to cut the lockpicking and science skills entirely and simply have the minigames take their place, whether that be your intention or not. You wanna talk redundant? Redundant IS the lockpick skill when anyone is allowed to unlock any lock, and it's incredibly naive to believe 90% of the community won't master that minigame if they encounter it literally every dungeon.

Go ahead and try, lockpicking in reality isn't easy to begin with and demands a lot of patience and a light finger, come back in the next month or so swearing in disgust as you try to break a sophisticated locking system with a lockpick kit along with people who own that locking system and haven't given you permission to open it, and their pet dog doesn't like you very much. Go ahead, see what happens, I'm sure they'll pause in silence and never attack you or stop you from your actions, just like in the video game world, right?

Okay scratch the example number one, player skill vs character skill is officially number one. Anything else we can add to the list? I was thinking SPECIAL, weapon degradation, better story, better written characters, better freedom to be who you want to be, and etc.

http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2013/091/f/c/desk_flip_guy_in_hd_by_lemmino-d6021t4.png

LOL you're joking right? Traits were specific Character qualities in how the character is shaped up for the game, with specific benefits and drawbacks, each one that can be uber powerful in the right hands, while not ideal for others.

But why would we want that when we can HAVE THE ABILITY TO DO 50 POINTS OF FIRE DAMAGE ONCE PER DAY?!?!

OMG, I'M SUCH AN IDIOT! YOU'RE RIGHT! THAT'S TOTALLY BETTER THAN RPG QUALITIES AND CHARACTER BUILDUP! My apologies!

-SPECIAL is an outdated and broken system, much like all attribute systems, and Skyrim pretty much smashed it into pieces by doing everything it did, just with less redundancy, and far more malleability.

How I broke SPECIAL or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

-Skyrim's weapon improvement system serves the same purpose as weapon degradation, by being a system that gives those who take the repair skill access to consistently stronger and more powerful weapons/armor, while at the same time making those who don't take it have weaker weapons/armor, making the game far harder, yet still playable, without all the balance problems weapon/armor decay rates have.

-If by better characters and story you mean "every single cliche character/faction archetype with no original twist put on them" sure.

--NCR was the same generic bloated corrupt America cypher that all other cyphers are

--Boone was the stereotypical "solider who gave on life cuz even with his skills he couldn't save his family".

--Veronica was the stereotypical "peppy girl who is active and outgoing to get away from an abusive family"

--Arcade was the stereotypical "smart guy who is a dike because he doesn't think he is living p to his families expectations"

And the problem is that is ALL they were. They had no original twist to them at all to make them stand out from every other same character in other games/movies/ tv shows/books, and that isn't good writing, that just copy pasting other people's good characters, without trying to add anything original to them. Even in cases like Raul, who is a ghoul, him being a ghoul changed nothing about his stereotype of the "old man who doesn't use special talent because he thinks he is too old to be of use", beyond making his back story further in the past.

Copying the cliche character/faction archetypes of media that is actually smart doesn't make your story smart, it just means you copied someone's work, added nothing to it, then tried to pass it off as your own. Which means you are just wearing the clothes of smart people, without actually being smart yourself.

The Family from Fallout 3, a group of cannibals who act like vampires as a means to try to control their hunger, and not eat flesh so people dont think of them as monsters, showed more real originality, and had more of an interesting twist upon a classic stereotype, then anything in New Vegas, expect maybe the boomers.

-New Vegas doesn't offer that either. The SPECIAL system, much like all attribute systems, largely destroys character freedom by enforcing linear path after linear path, railroading everyone into being largely similar. On top of that, perks are so vague and generalized that's its pretty much impossible to specialize in any weapon type, as almost every upgrade you can get covers all weapons in a very blanket manner.

Except they didn't because the game provided you with enough chems and items to negate any sort of detriment you have have gotten. Essentially just making traits into more perks.