Actually, you take 75% of damage in VATS in NV, not 100%

Close enough. It was deadly enough for me not to use.

Standing around getting shot at was almost always a bad decision, unless I got the jump on someone, much like an aimed shot.

Taking aimed shots never made sense in 2 since I was effectively lining up a shot despite being in a heated gunfight. The game can't replicate this of course, but that was what it was attempting to represent.

Have you ever played a Table-Top game, because they do this all the time, and to great appreciation to the vast majority of their players, because it makes the game more enjoyable by reducing the time it takes to be stuck on rules that only get in the way of actually playing the game. How long do you want to be stuck playing choose your skills, compared to actually using said skills? I know I'd rather have one less menu between me and continuing the game, especially if I know that menu will be something I get look at and do nothing with in 30-40 levels. Even more true when you consider that they could combine with something else and likely not lose any of the advantages of the said menu. Innovation and experimentation are keys to growing your game, staying with the old will satisfy few and will miss out on the advantages of potential. Also simple does not always equal dumbed-down, sometimes it means more efficient; like turning a key to turn on a car in the drivers seat versus cranking the engine and then getting in the drivers seat, sometimes it means having a icon to get to a program instead scrolling through a menu, or sometimes it means removing an unneeded part and currently broken aspect of game-play.

Isn't this what happens in FO3 and FONV? I mean I aim at a target and hope I hit it, I can be pretty sure I should, but it may move as I shoot (like I've seen Cazadors do many times now), another target may come in front of it (as has happened when I shot a grenade thrown at me instead of the selected target in VATS), or I might miss because the accuracy of the gun is crap (like an AR in FO3). Just because my shot is modified by my skill and not fully controlled by it, really doesn't take away the fact that I am directing my character to shoot a target does it?

Menu depth and system depth are not the same thing. A game can have superb mechanics and a terrible UI; and it can have the exact opposite too; a wonderfully polished UI that beautifully lays out a game system that amounts to little more than "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RVB2mZP3nI".

This is a good example of the opposite point. That key ignition system is by no means simpler than a crank. A lot of complexity went into designing that system, as an improvement to the crank system.
When you simplify something down by removing complexity, you remove potential. Fallout had an absurdly simplified skill set that broadly included all two handed fire arms as a single skill, and all melee weapons covered by a single skill. No two specialists could exist, because both are skilled in ALL melee weapons and all two handed firearms; (and one handed ones).

FO3 reduced Fallout's already minimal skill system even further; and NV actually lumped all firearms into the Guns skill.
This is not the way to make a rich system full of potential.

The worst case of this obsession that I know of, is when SSI added an "All Attack" button to "Eye of the Beholder 3". The series was designed for precisely timed & targeted clicking in combat, and they tried to simplify it by making one button do it all... (As in negate the core gameplay of the series).

Fallout had the player choose who got what kind of healing. The PC could only heal three crippling injuries, but could additionally heal three minor injuries ~per day. Players had to decide who got what treatment, and sometimes had battles in between, where their PC and/or NPCs hadn't had a chance to heal up yet.
In Fallout, the PC either had to find a doctor, or be one; and being one was a commitment, because you could not raise the Doctor skill except upon level up ~and that took away from other skills that couldn't be leveled up any other way.

FO3 heals even a concussion with stimpaks. , and the PC can heal any injury with meds, and heal NOTHING AT ALL without them. Crippled limbs mean nothing anymore.

The co-opting of Perks has probably made this worse.

And Fallout 3's skills were all worth investing in. New Vegas stepped it up by making each skill worth tagging at the getgo; although admittedly it would have been nice if there were perks to differentiate between Small Guns and Big Guns, but there were STR limits I guess.

I can understand missing turn-based combat, but I can't say that the way skills, SPECIAL, perks, and traits were done in the older Fallout games has more depth or intelligence in its design. Aside from having to figure out that the skills you thought were worth tagging will turn out to only help you in a handful of unimportant scenarios.

Can you say a bit more why they don't? (IYO)


*I don't see it that way. I see it as a game designed for multiple PCs, and when you get to a situation, you either have the skill for it or you don't; and if you don't, then you don't get the benefit that the skilled PC would. If you do, then your PC can shine, where others would not.

I had no qualms with ~for instance the Traps skill. It would be ridiculous for the world to be littered with traps, and a trap in every house. The PC skilled in Traps could ~in New Reno, loot the safes in the Bishops's house without alerting the guards; anyone else would trigger the traps and be in combat seconds later.

The issue with that is, those situations are either too few or too insignificant to make that choice really worth it. For me, skills should be about what you can do to get through most (or all) situations/quests. Like, there isn't enough gambling in Fallout 2 to justify tagging Gambling as a skill instead of, say, Lockpicking or Speech. There are plenty of quests in the game you can go through as a diplomat, or a mad scientist, or rugged gunman, but not really anything for an economist or a gambler. The same goes for SPECIAL; Agility and Intelligence are disproportionately more important than most of the other attributes regardless of what kind of character you make.

The way the older games handled perks and traits was less frustrating, and the reduced perk rate isn't one of my complaints, but they were just imbalanced; Sniper and Slayer gave our characters way more of an edge than any of the capstone perks in the later Fallouts, and the vast majority of other perks weren't worth taking; meaning that most characters would just go for the same few perks that were definitely good and the rest might as well not have been there. Traits are fine in theory, but the ones that weren't negligible or downright bad choices (Skilled) were stupidly overpowered, like Gifted. The character sheet works as if all things have equal importance, but the gameplay doesn't reflect that at all.

Maybe it sounds like I'm being powergamey, but I think the skills a game offers you should reflect how you can complete the majority of a game's content. Otherwise it feels like the game is telling me I can be a certain kind of character, but then there's no significant gameplay for that kind of character and I'm left feeling shortchanged. Fallout 3 tried to reduce this and was mostly successful; Intelligence was still more important than anything else, Barter wasn't really worth investing in at all, and some skills like Big Guns or Explosives still aren't worth the tag (although they're worth investing in later in the game), but overall it was an improvement. New Vegas got a little closer. Fallout 4 looks like it's getting a lot closer, by giving SPECIAL more importance and then letting perks handle all of the specifics, but that remains to be seen. I'm pretty sure there will be at least a few worthless perks.

Basically, I don't find the older systems more deep or intelligent because they're lopsided, and heavily favor some kinds of characters while putting others at a disadvantage without making that clear. Every game Bethesda's made, all the streamlining they've done to their character systems was in an effort to move away from that; so that every choice you can make in character creation/development is worth making in the game. They haven't got it down pat yet, but each game gets them a little closer.

tl;dr: dump stats svck, and so do overly-important stats

here is my opinion: I do not know how this will work. When it comes to skills, perks, and SPECIAL, neither 3 nor NV were perfect. in 3 you pretty much got skill points like candy on Holloween. NV had some things that were OP. SPECIAL has 3, strength for weapon handling and carry weight, Intelligence for skills and luck with critical hits (agility is only good for VATS and if you do not use VATS 100% of the time...). For Skills, Guns Repair and Speech are pretty much important for anyone (guns are real common, repair allows Jury Rigging, and Speech gives you the chance to win any fight without fighting). Perks, there are two I know of, Shotgun Surgeon (reduces enemy DT by 10, which combined with slugs makes any dangerous enemy nekkid) and Jury Rigging (which makes you able to repair pretty much anything with pretty much anything).

Hell, it has a pretty op weapon with the hunting shotgun+Trigger Discipline+Choke+Slugs, which is pretty decent for all ranges. throw in And Stay Back! and Shotgun Surgeon and you can pretty much own ANYTHING.

What the player wants is beside the point, as is what the player does.

What we did was take a 50% hit probability and approximate it by establishing a fixed damage-per-hit based on the average damage-per-attack that would result from a 50% hit probability. We achieve our new mathematical model of a character with a 50% hit probability by keeping the mean and discarding any values that deviate from the mean.

Our model can adjust for the character's skill level by raising or lowering the damage-per-hit accordingly. On average, a more skillful character does more damage than a less skillful character.

We could employ this model for a Fallout 1.2. Remove the hit probability and replace it with constant values that represents the average damage-per-attack afforded by a hit probability. As usual, the player does no aiming, but only selects the target. Instead of testing for a hit, however, we make the hit automatic. There is no variance in the character's damage output, so outcomes of combat are largely pre-determined according to the various combatants' starting health and per-turn damage output. The combat that results from our change won't be as much fun as when randomness is allowed to swing the battle in favor of the PC or against him, but as before our change, the system stops the PC from performing outside of his limits.

Worth it to whom? Gambling in Fallout 2? (There are several casinos in Fallout 2; what could you mean?)

I've played PCs with Gambling tagged in Fallout (1), and it meant that anytime the PC was broke, they could gamble themselves into a windfall. My PC went into the casino in Junktown with 5 caps, and left with 1500. Then went to the store and bought better equipment.

I disagree. I found no skill implausible in Fallout ~except that some were a bit overly broad in what they encompassed.

**Let me guess: You will say that money is easy, and that in your game, you looted all the dead opponents, and traded their gear.

... And I will say, that not everyone's PC is crazy enough not to run away from an armed mob, and avoid combat like the plague... and sensibly try to stay alive, and get to where they were traveling.

The skills are designed to suit more than one type of character, and to that end ~yes, not every character style benefits equally from all skills; and it would be a shame if they did.

Thanks for the tip! I checked in over there and you are right, comedy gold!

The purpose of Skills is to unlock Perks.

They also unlock dialogue options that you can easly ignore if your science expert is not into biology, for example. (Yes, they show up. But it shows up the option to have a child in montana too, and if you are younger than the guy, it makes no sense for that to be true---> that line isn't YOUR canon, your PC doesn't have a child in montana. My point is, just because some line shows up, it doesn't mean your PC is involved in that.)

Also, Skills impact the gameplay to a point: if you choose Perks like cowboy, then you should use lever action guns, not a minigun. Obviously you know how to shoot and aim, so it makes sense to have some boost in other guns too: the basic concept behind them if similar.

The RPG element is not affected at all by the fact that skills cover more areas. The character is done by Perks and your choices.

But if you turn skills in perks? They lose their purpose. Gameplay wise you'll be able to craft [censored], but they keep the name "Science!" for nostalgia and nothing else. This design decision does nothing. Surely it doesn't make the system smarter. If you think about the fact that you don't have to manage the points anymore, that makes character creation more easy AND stupid, because it takes away the progression: in NV the steps aren't always 25-50-75-100. There's stuff you can craft with 10,18,20 and on and on. By adding points, your character gets better slowly, like he is actually learning. Turning Skills in Perks means that PUFF! YOUR CHARACTER DIDN'T KNOW TO BOIL WATER FIVE SECONDS AGO, BUT NOW HE CAN COOK METH! SCIENCE!

Do not fool yourself: by turning Skills into Perks they DO dumb down the game, and they also hurt the RPG component typical of FO by a great deal.

No the purpose of skills is to have a way to communicate your characters proficiency in specific field, like Science or Unarmed fighting, not to be a gateway to unlocking perks. In fact the purpose of any stat, skill, perk, ability, attribute, spell, technique, or whatever you want to call is just to define your characters familiarity with a field, a task, an action, or a unique power. Skyrim is still an RPG, even though they barely have a stat/attribute in the game. FO4 is an rpg, even though they don't have any 'skills'. Amber Diceless is an RPG, even if it doesn't have any rolling or RNG. Final Fantasy 13 is still an RPG even though it limits your path throughout much of the game. Dragon Warrior is still an RPG, even though it doesn't have any skills or flexibility in what you get at each level, in fact it was one of the first RPGs on Nintendo. Clearly skills, randomness, stats, open world, or even open progression aren't entirely needed for any specific game, but there needs to be a combination of some of these factors (not even a majority).

As for Fallout specifically, this actually comes closer to it's origins, GURPS. A system that is a build point system, that when a player 'levels' they gain points to put into either their attributes, skills, powers, and possibly more. How is that different from what FO4 is doing? They simply removed a clearly broken system, which had you be at least fairly good at everything even if you didn't try to be. Shadowrun, a game that I feel has a lot of similarity to Fallout also has this concept of spend points in your attributes, skills, magic, qualities, or technomancer powers. White Wolf, BESM, some variations of D&D, Serenity, Legend of the 5 Rings, Unknown Armies, Silver Age Sentinels, and Aberrant are all PnP games that have you choose between raising a Stat, Skill, Power (traditional perk), or merit/flaw with your gained experience (which is equivalent to a level). Sure a lot of these games have skills, but you run into situation that skills and perks are on the same playing field when it comes to deciding what to improve.

For instance in Shadowrun 4th edition, with 10 points of Karma (about 1-2 games of experience) you can choose to initiate (if you are part of a group and do a magical test), raise a skill to 5 from 4, raise an attribute from 1 to 2, buy off a 5 point negative quality (if you've done the rping), buy a 5 point positive quality, buy a new skill group, learn 2 new spells, and a few other things. It works fine in this game and it makes a new perk worth the same as a higher level skill or about two lower level skills. While there appears to be some inequality in prices, it still comes down to choice and all of these choices give the game and especially the character depth. It makes your decision more important, as there will always be something you need for your ideal character. It'll never have you sitting there throwing points into abilities you probably won't use, like my complete disinterest in putting points in the Unarmed Skill.

It is a much smarter system, because you don't have manage more points, but you will likely get an equivalent and more singular experience. It makes the game better, because character creation has more weight and occurs faster so you can actually play the game. It doesn't remove progression, but changes how it occurs, and actually is more in line with the system Fallout is based upon. Most who have played over 30 different RPGs, between computer games and PnP, with different systems aren't fooling ourselves, as we know that skills can be great for describing a characters abilities, but are far from necessary. This is especially true when skills aren't actually gone, but folded into something else, probably to balance out what skills do. As I mentioned earlier, if skills were still in the game with the old rules, Unarmed would almost certainly be one of the worst skills, unless they split up the skills even further, which would complicate the game even more and make skills more in line with the power of a perk. Any RPG developer worth his salt, will tell you adding complexity for complexity's sake is quite stupid, because that will generally get in the way of actually role-playing the game.

I can't speak for anyone else, but all my previous Fallout (F3 & FNV) characters became world-class scientists, genius psychologists and distinguished surgeons by running around and shooting a bunch of mutants and doing people favors.

Claiming the hypothetical new Perk system is less realistic is sort of, well, dumb.

(Not asking for an ES style system! I like the Fallout system; I just don't consider it logical or realistic. But it's just a game, so it's okay.)

That's not the Fallout system, that's the FO3 system; very different; [and IMO very messed up]. In Fallout, the PC is an adventure (I don't know what they are in FO3). The PCs in Fallout 1 & 2 were never authorities in any field, no matter how high their skills went. They were all pinch hitter ~jack-of-all-trade skills... and for serious technical insight and workmanship, the PC had to find a [non-adventurer] specialist.


Both of these I can certainly agree with.

Don't scold me. I made sure to point out that I was talking about the Beth Fallouts.

That's not scolding; though I admit it's a peeve when members say "Fallout", when the mean FO3.

Any game system should rely on player skill, otherwise you have no game.

Character skill is just an extension of player skill, since the player is the one to roleplay, to pick their perks and skill and specialize. The question is how much tactical skill, how much action skill and how much long-term thinking skill does the game require of the player.

Lol, I need to shake the idea that I will have a character that's a genius scientist and make him more balanced.

No, what he means by player skill is your twitch reflexes with a controller or mouse.

I believe he understands that. The game defines the character's ability. If the player can make the character hit the target, then the character can hit the target. If the player cannot make the character hit the target, then the character cannot hit the target.

That game still gives you the "progression" feeling. You swing a sword, you get skills, once you have enough of them you can unlock one handed perks that make you better with swords. It's like FO without the experience system: in one you have to roleplay about how he got better in the field, in the other your character has to actually exercise in the field to get skills.

Second point, yes there are RPGs that don't have skills. And...? We are talking about Fallout, and one of the traits of Fallout was the Skills system that gives you a sense of progression of your skills that made it reasonable, more reasonable than jumping suddenly from ignorant to expert in the field. Taking away Skills and turning into Perks changes the nature of Fallout, and dumbs down the character creation of this RPG, in which you have to invest in Skills to unlock some Perks before you reach the end of the game or the level cap.

@Uncle AI: in most RPG with an experience system it's like that. You can get experience from turning off robots and then using the experience to boost speech. Personally I prefer the TES way to improve the attributes. But you must remember: you get to put Skills points in SKills only when you level up, and between a level and the other you sell and speak to NPCs, you kill stuff, you may hack, fix and on and on. So you can pretend a particular discussion with an NPC taught you how to deal with people. You simply have to roleplay more in Fallout than in Skyrim.

Both systems are better than unlocking "skills" perks that take away the slow progression.

The player should not be able to ~make~ the PC capable of anything, (except through the leveling up process); and [also] this is counter to how the entire series was designed to work. Bethesda shouldn't have messed that up.

I guess it comes down to how they actually implement leveling, as we still don't really know how fast progression will really be. As for you 'more reasonable' part, you don't jump from ignorant to expert, as you already start with the ability to do certain mods and each perk level adds more options to improve your gear/town (at least we know that from the video). We don't know how many perks we will get (either total or per level), if and what their prereqs will be, if they hand out perks/level or do some other form of perk buying. You say slow progression, and depending on how you play, this is somewhat true, but in the recent Fallouts you can gain anywhere from 10 to 35 points per level, and by the end of the game most people will have each skill at 60-70 minimum and be forced to consider skills they have no interest in wasting their time buying.

I guess I look at is in the sense, that you have to figure out if being traditional is worth passing on a new system, because it makes sense or it's what has always been done before. As you stated, you think this is dumbing-down, because I read your comments to mean less=stupid, but I see BGS as asking why do we an extra step in character progression, and thus smartly asking if the skill system is necessary to make the game work pretty much the same. I feel , by slow progression, you mean that there is more time to think about what you're buying or wanting to savor the leveling aspect of the game, which sounds a lot like, "missing the forest for the trees," to me. Where as I feel BGS and many people who are indifferent, excited, or carefully optimistic about the change see that the forest is full and will still feel the much the same, they just won't have to stop and look at every tree. To me streamlined doesn't mean less real options, just a more efficient and intelligent way of doing things.

My comment addresses what constitutes role-play in an RPG, and so your first "should" doesn't matter. That "should" is a judgement based on an individual's personal taste in how the PC's abilities are defined.

The mathematical model of the PC makes the PC capable of something. The player only makes him do it.

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