I frequently see people complaining about "removed skills" in Fallout 4. Can someone explain to me what this means? Are people talking about TES style skills? (1handed, 2handed, sneak, lockpicking, etc.)

If so I fail to see the issue, as Fallout 3 didn't have these things either. They basically took the Fallout 3 systems and massively expanded on them. Or is it something else?

As far as I know they are talking about the weapon skills.

They weren't removed, just rolled into perks.

Hey OP,

Your not missing anything, every action that your doing in the game right now used to be governed by a skill that was 1%-100% but the thing is these skills actually had break points of importance that were 25, 50, 75, 100.

So basically perks were re-jigged to replace that so that's why most perks are 4 or 5 stages cause that's all that really matters.

Also you'll read about perks being entirely changed or not being special like before but that's also non-sense cause in the previous games a lot of perks were so specific to be entirely useless more of the time you played. In fact some perks were just broken and didn't function as advertised in previous games.

Basically they are full of it. This system is better by leagues.

In Fallout 3, they had Small Guns Skill which ranged from 1 to 100, and Speechcraft which ranged from 1 to 100 and so on. In Fallout 4 those do not exist as such. You get the ~effect~ of high speechcraft skill through high Charisma stat and Lady Killer / Black Widow perk, possibly the "inspirational" ones higher in the Charisma tree. Your "small guns" skill is now sort of broken between Commando (automatic weapons), Gunslinger (non-automatic pistols) and Rifleman (non-automatic long-range).

Some people lament the loss of the Skills in Fallout 3 (and New Vegas) but really having 34% Speechcraft or 56% Small Guns skill doesn't really define you any better than having 4 CHA and Gunslinger perk rank 2, for example. It's different, and that annoys some people, but the best case for the change is Lockpicking / Hacking --- those skills were basically 1 - 25, 26 - 50, 51 - 75 and 76 - 100. Having a skill of 1 was the same as having a skill of 24 ---- you still could not open a lock that required a 25 lockpicking skill. Since it was basically just four "ranks" that mattered, they changed it to a Lockpicking perk that has four ranks. Simple, elegant.

EDIT: Spelling; also four posts got in while I was typing.

I miss silent running, nothing like running around at waist level like Sonic

Still there my friend at rank 4

It means they don't really know what they are talking about, in my view.

Other 'concerns' such as dialogue and graphics, there is a case that can be argued.

But skills loss not so much in my opinion as the new perk structure is just as complex.

Unfortunately there are many people that seem to fail to realize this. They don't see a name or 1-100 scale and they freak out. It's like they don't even try to understand the new system and are so blinded that they can't see why it's better.

But, but , the dermin down! You mean its actually a knee jerk reaction to restructuring skills into perks? People are silly, the new system is actually a big improvement imo, 20/100=1/5, and a lot of people fail to grasp it.

Strange double post.

They're too married to the idea of a 1-100 scale for skills. They fail to grasp that by divorcing the skills from that scale, not only have they become more transparent (a good thing), but Bethesda now has infinitely more flexibility in how they handle skills. This has actually allowed Bethesda to increase the number of skills available.

Once upon a time, Fallout had with it rather ridiculous amount of skills of which to allocate points into, that served a lot of purposes, some more than others. These are a thing of the past, having been rolled into the new perk system.

Gone are the days of ranking up skills every level with points dictated by your intelligence level.

I'm embarrassed to say I somehow managed to completely forget about the entire skill system in Fallout 3. For some reason I was stuck thinking about fallout perks vs TES style skills.

Thanks everyone!

Or, to say it another way, Fallout used to have a wonderful amount of skills which allowed for lots of customisation. SPECIAL was largely set at the beginning of the game and skills were how a character diversified.

*console bashing removed against rules.*

They were not rolled into perks, they were removed. Perks used to be unique gamechangers. Not 4 ranks of percentage increases.

People miss the fact that before you got to put for example 20 individual skill points into a variety of different skills. On top of that they got to choose a special bonus perk. Each skill point was a tiny little present that filled their hearts with joy.

Bethesda has taken away all their presents and replaced it with only one present every level. This makes everyone sad.

Recap-lots o presents makes people happy compared to one

So if I give you a chocolate each day from a box of chocolates, then it would make you happier than just giving you the box?

We didn't get the box. We used to have the box. The box has been removed.

Meanwhile, in the future fallout forums for Fallout 5...

-"I don't see why you are complaining! They integrated perks into the SPECIAL stats and now you can just add special to your character without having to also add these pesky perks! You just get them automatically! Haters gonna hate lol."

-"Yea like people don't know what they are talking about, they didn't remove perks lol."

-"Lol yes it's my first fallout but I think perks were redundant. Why not have everything into SPECIAL, its like, deeper, because they improved the importance of the SPECIAL from FO4!."

-"Yea like ppl are butthurtz because they took away their presentz and each little perk filled their hearts with joy and replaced it with 1 special per 3 levels, now they can't enjoy COD23... err FO5, so sad!."

Couldn't they just fix the darn skill system? Oh no, it's easier to remove it. But when it comes to things such as settlement building, they really have to make it from scratch.

This is NOT how skills worked in 1 & 2 and yes, yes we all are missing something. This "Streamlining!" has removed much of the beautiful intracacies in character building which made the original games so compelling and replayable.