No, I don't mean when you create your characters face and body. I talk about perks and SPECIAL in this game.

I have a lot of problem with Fallout 4s perk system, just like Skyrim. Most of these perks are simply boring and should not exist as perks. If you don't understand what I ment, perks like Rifleman, Hacker, Locksmith and etc. could easily, EASILY go back being skills again.

Perks I'm ok with in this game are perks like Cannibal, Intimidate, Mysterious Stranger, Bloody Mess. And maby boring but usefull ones like Lead Belly.

Why? Well, they give you much more to your character. You acctually create a character with special abilitys. The boring perks that ones was skills is something you are almost forced to choose in this game. That's what Skills was for IMO.

Let's take a look on Fallout 3. A problem with Fallout 3 perks was almost like in Fallout 4. Most of them were useless. I mean, Daddy's boy/girl, Gun Nut, Little Leaguer, Thief. They just give you a small boost to your skill points. You would obviously choose Black Widow/Lady Killer, Intense Training and maby Swift Learner (kinda useless) becaus they are way more usefull. And a big portion on Fallout 3s perks looked like that untill you came to the higer levels. Sadly, most of these perks were for combat. Soo in Fallout 3, you basically wanted to create a survival war mashine (which I had a problem with in Fallout 3). Like increase your hit points or deal more damage with your weapons.

Years pasts and Obsidian was able to create a new Fallout game. Fallout New Vegas. And they did right on what Bethesda failed to do in Fallout 3. first of, they re-introduced the Traits. An option to further enhance creating your character. Secondly, way, WAY better perks.

Just look what the first perks you can get here instead; Cherchez La Femme/Confirmed Bachelor, Hunter, Heave ho!, Rapid Reload, Frind of the night, and the usefull first ones Fallout 3 had at the start. And later, you had way better ones, like Jury Riggin. And they added hardcoe. Which made the game even better.

I really thought Fallout New Vegas would take the francise to the right tracks again. But no, Bethesda just had to simplify the game even more. Which pissed me off.

And if you still sit/stand there wonder why I meantiond Skyrim at the beggining. Well, just look at the magic perk trees. I can tell you. The only few I approve are good as perks are; Extra Effect, Atonach, Avoid Death, Necromage, Respite, Twin Soul, Deep Freeze (if it worked on everyone (Cough Dragons Caugh) and the % was higer) and Quite Casting. 8 out off 73

I kinda agree but did you have to say NV?

Traits would be awesome, helps in RP.

FONV hardcoe was mostly lame meter maiding, you can eat like a gumdrop and it will keep you full for like 10 days.

Worse part of Skyrim was that you did not have attributes (Str, agility, etc.,) which crippled RP, pandering to the vast dim-witted masses at its worse.

Kind of hate to say, but FO4 perks/"skills"/attributes system is the best in either series.

Care to explain why?

FONV skills/perks was unnecesarilly muddled and hoary. If you made a slight mistake in your build, you get locked out of a perk you might have wanted, and didn't know, which is stupid. Plus it was unclear if you could have an attribute above 10 (which you couldn't I believe, which was dumb).

It was kind of a ugly Rubes Goldberg type design.

While I agree the perk lineup was messy. It's still better. And if you made a mistake, well, you made it. Not games fault.

And 10 has always and will always be the cap on SPECIAL.

You learn by playing.

Actually, not "stupid" at all, where RPG's are concerned.

FO4 does a lot of unnecessary hand-holding for the millennials, who can't seem to grasp the concept of building a character, nor the consequences of fubarring it up.

Chalk me up as agreeing completely with OP.

ps: what would some of these peop think of D&D?

Well I can't RP a high soft skills/CHR/INT/PER/LUK who just so happens to tote around a mini-gun or .50 sniper rifle, if I wanted to for some reason.

I guess if you liked doing things like scheduling your next Freshman semester classes without having to go to an 8AM class, FONV skills/perks is your thing.

perks are fine

I do kind of miss a more complicated 'skills governed by attributes set up.. It gives you the illusion of having a more varied character build. However, it's all still actually there. In F4 we pick our attributes, it's just now, instead of having a separate sheet for perks and skills they are all on the same sheet and all referred to as perks. It's still slightly the same thing. You are actually choosing between perks, skills and attributes whenever you level.. it's just that everything is now referred to as a perk and it's more open. Now instead of putting points in a skill every level and then choosing a perk every level.. (or rather in the first two fallouts, waiting 3 or 4 levels to choose a perk.) You are choosing to level an attribute, skill or perk with every level. The choice is still there..it's just on one page.

I like the new system. Old one was originally based on system for tabletop RPGs. It was OK for turn based, isometric rendered RPG, but it was really struggling in new first person real time setting. You could see how developers both in Fallout 3 and New Vegas struggled with it and had hard time giving half the skills some purpose.

I am pleased with the new system, it's transparent, easily comprehensive and does what it should do well. You know exactly what you spend points on, what effects it will have and you don't need to spend one day making excel sheets and reading through pages of manual just to get your character right. You have everything on one game screen, easily accessible. You don't need to switch between 3 sets of stats, figuring out what they do and how they relate and influence each other.

Character creation and development is one of the aspects of the game I consider major improvement over previous Fallouts and I hope it will stay part of franchise for new titles to come.

I was particularly pleased to find out, that they got rid of old small guns / energy weapons division which made no sense whatsoever in first person real time setting.

The new perk system is a considerable improvement.

Glad to see the back of skills that gave an illusion of complex control.

FO:NV was the least enjoyable/elegant perk/skills system in the last 3 games in my view.

I think the new system works fine. I would prefer there were more derived skills as opposed to being required to pick Perks to do things.

My favorite character was one with little INT, no Hacking and no Crafting skills at all (just loot mods). It just freed me up to pick the more interesting Perks to make a character more fun to play. But that's the way it should have been from the beginning. Having to kill making an interesting character so I can grab those 'must have' perks just ends up making everyone character I make feel the same.

Eh. D&D's character system has been done reasonably well in some digital games. On the other hand, it's also been done in horrendous ways, like in D&D Online..... where, to have a chance at a good character, you need to plan out every skill point/etc you're going to spend and when, before you even pick your starting bits in the character creator. That's a game entirely dependant on uber-min-maxing, if you're going to succeed at "endgame" (It's an MMO)

Honestly, I've played tabletop RPGs since 1st ed D&D, digital RPGs since the original Ultima and Wizardry. I enjoyed making plenty of alts in Diablo 2, to try new skill builds because every mistake you made was permanent & you couldn't respec on a whim like in Diablo 3. I'm 45 (not a millenial) and went to college for numbers & engineering. But I'm still ok with them trying new & different things in Skyrim & FO4's systems. Sure, there are some parts that could be better, but that's true of every game I've ever played. (I definitely loved that I didn't need to keep track of my skill gains in Skyrim to make sure I didn't miss out on a +4/+5 stat gain, like in Oblivion.)

The whole handholding/"hur hur, everything dum for dum modern kids"/etc complaining just isn't my scene.

I'm getting on ok with F4s Perk/Skills method. I see the whole character building with 4s method as being building your character progressively as you play, starting with picking the SPECIAL which gives the basis of your character, or trait. You have an idea when you chose the balances in the special of what kind of things your character-trait will focus on doing mostly, but importantly you can change your character-build as you progress during the game. The old ways, you pick a trait at the start and you are stuck with it.

I like the system of F 4, ok my SPECIAL character-trait was not the most perfect for some of my plays that were 'out-of-character', but it's how I want to play it, and I'm doing ok with my 'creativity'. { smile }

I think it's a huge improvement over the older games, my only real beef with it are a few individual perks or ranks are underwhelming... but I haven't found a game that didn't have a few underwhelming character bonuses, and I'd much rather they be perks than entire skills or attributes. The perk chart fixes all the problems I had with the old system: lack of choice in the early levels, level cap, mastering at least 2/3rds of the skills by the time we reach the level cap, SPECIAL not being important, stats being poorly balanced (Charisma's a dump stat while Speech is the best skill, Intelligence is the be-all end-all for some people), none of these are issues in Fallout 4. My favorite feature is probably the fact that we can take the first rank of any perk whenever we want, as long as our SPECIAL is open for it. As for "boring" perks and skill perks, I thought they did a great job with the new effects added by different ranks. The skill perks are essentially like the mastery levels in Oblivion.

Looking at the direction they've gone with Skyrim and Fallout 4, I'm convinced they're trying to put their character systems all on the same "layer", you know. Like, in RPGs like Fallout 3, or KOTOR, or whatever, there's multiple steps to leveling: distribute skill points, maybe then distribute attribute points, then pick a perk/feat/power/whatever. Fallout 4 just gives you a perk point and puts SPECIAL and all of the perks on the same level, and you have dozens of choices where you can put that point. I like it, it feels intuitive and it seems like it's easier to arrange character choices in terms of they're actual value in the gameplay.

I'm always so confused how people come to the realization that they dislike, hate, disapprove and/or want to complain about an aspect of the game.

I just like the game...its fun to play, so I play it. I wish the settlements mattered more and the game felt alive but I don't think that takes away from the game.

How do people pick apart these games and nag the crap out of every little thing? I'll never understand it

We come to the Internet, where there is always something wrong with everything!

Some perks are based on luck, % chance of. Better have perks that is kind of certain if you meet a strong hostile. As I said before, idiot savant should be given a kind of "horseshoe" before you get it so you may choose right to get most xp as possible. "Perfect stranger" as I want to call the man who shows up with the gun should always help if you battle more than 3 hostiles at the same time. High ranked ones or "legendary ones" should always fills your critical meter. Picking "Ghoulish", you always be friends with feral ghouls if the level between player >> feral ghouls. Random doesn't make any sense because meeting a whole bunch of these and one is friendly (?). Ricochet always kicks in when youre battle more than 3 hostiles at the same time. I haven't seen very often "stagger an opponent"... seems like almost every hostiles are attacking until I "remove" them. Rooted doesn't work so good either, lost counts of how many times it's not kicking in when battle against someone who uses melee weapons. Rooted should always works when level player >> hostiles.

Btw, I have seen "Mysterious stranger" missed 3 times on different targets, as example these red widow bloodbugs. They often are same level as player. Nasty ones. Specially legendary ones. To be sure (I may quote from movie Aliens), "I may say, let's nuke this place from the orbit - only way to be sure" - using missile launchers at distance. I cannot relay on luck.

Cheers,

-klevs

Touche' lol

I agree with you about bonus effects from non-luck perks; things like the disarm chance on Big Leagues or Gunslinger, or the knockdown from Sniper, we should have more control over how to proc those. But Luck perks should absolutely be RNG - that's the entire idea behind Luck. It's supposed to be capricious.

I don't really hate the game. As a game, it's good. As a sequal, not that much IMO.

And character creation is a big [censored] deal in Fallout. Didn't you know the first Fallouts working title was even named "Fallout: A GURPS Post-Nuclear Adventure".

Things like "Rifleman, Hacker, Locksmith and etc." were made into perks specifically BECAUSE they didn't work as skills.

Making them back into skills only reverts back to a flawed system.

Just going to say this: No system is perfect. Both have their flaws. For me, the NV system had issues with RP. When playing a pistols (ballistic) character, I had a hard time getting over the fact that as I leveled up the guns skill, my pistol character became better at rifles, shotgun, and miniguns, which my character would never use, so being better at those was pointless.

Here, the perks can't really be called replacements for skills, but do a good job of splitting some of the skills up to allow for better 'specialization' of characters in a sense.

My only problem with the perk system is that far too many of them rely on the VATS system, which I don't use. This severely narrows down my potential character paths.