Yeah this game is pretty bad. I've finished the game and explored most of the map, and truly I don't know what Bethesda was thinking when they removed skills from the game. I don't want to hear another casual Fallout player talking about how "Skills only mattered in fallout 3 and fallout new vegas when you put in 25, 50, 75, and 100 points into them". NO. Skills played a much greater role than unlocking doors and hacking computer terminals. By simplifying an amazing character building concept that was vital to the RPG, they appealed to the new generation, the "Mobile Gamers". Every ounce of thought that once went into specializing your character is completely gone. You are now able to distribute your attribute points in any way that you choose without any noticeable difference in the long run. The saddest part of Fallout 4 is the new perk system. There are a total of 70 perks to choose from, all of which [censored]-block you from reaching the next rank of the said perk with a LEVEL REQUIREMENT.

So the game is basically choosing our perks for us. We can't be a thief that specializes in sneaking/lockpicking/backstabbing, NO. We must be a "thief" that is kind of good at sneaking/lockpicking/backstabbing, and also good at hacking, base building, explosives, and 2 other things as well, or at least until you are level 30 and meet the level requirement for it!

TLDR

Lets see the differences here.

Fallout 3/New Vegas:

-Can level up the skills that I want to take to role play the way I want to.

-Does not need to play as a Jack of all trades God that practically cannot die on even the hardest difficulty.

-Skills are a fun and inventive way to build your character into a way that suits you perfectly.

Fallout 4

-Perks are boring and level restricted

-You are always a jack of all trades throughout the entirety of the game.

-You don't need to take a single perk to win the game on survival difficulty with ease.

Bethesda, you messed up.

You're kinda late to the party don't you think?

You're crazy. For all intents and purposes, Perks ARE Skills by another name. The "problems" you list seem to be mostly of lack of imagination on your part.

Skills only mattered in FO3, 4 and NV when you put in 25, 50, 75 and 100

Ohh you didn't just do that.

I'm going to ignore most of the OP because of the attitude displayed, but I would have liked to have seen the level requirements of the perks depend on the special.

So, for instance, the level requirements for perks in the INT tree would be considerably lower for people with 8 INT than for people with 4 INT.

It would make sense that it takes a dumb person a lot longer to learn how to hack computers than it would take a smart one.

Most of the good perks in 3/nv were no less level restricted by another name. Sure you could easily rush through one line and have ridiculously overpowered perks early, but it did not make it more fun.

Jury rigging was the worst culprit. There simply was no reason to not use your most potent gun after you unlocked that perk, which changed the entire game dynamic. I played little of fallout 3, because I hated it, but I do not doubt there were such vital perks that made sense in endgame, but were horribly broken when you rushed them early.

Fallout 4 blunts specialization until you have played a bit to get to level 25 or so, but some of the high tier perks would be utterly game breaking if you could get them early on, gun nut, science, armorer, if you could max those 3 out by level 16 you would be able to completely destroy the entirety of the wasteland's opponents with absolutely no reasonable threat. Any maxed out weapon with full upgraded armor means you can more or less take on any enemy the game throws at you with no real threat even at level 50, let alone 20.

I prefer the stagger it gives to keep game breakers out of players' hands until the enemies are at least formidable enough to justify merciless slaughter. Not that 76 damage explosive miniguns at level 11 wouldn't be hilarious.

the only real change is the level requirement on the skills?!

the rest is just 'perks' instead of 'numbers', which is basically the same because of the 25, 50, 75 system that we always had

I'm sure there are already mods to remove the level requirements

they are actually only there to keep you from getting overpowered by level 5, when you skilled something to 100 immediately

I like the change and there is still as much room for building different characters, as there was before

the perks are far more useful, than they have ever been

It's a view OP, but a fairly miserable one and smacks of 'flame-bait'.

While there are some possible game-breakers available early on (on one run-through I scored a wounding double barrel shotgun at lvl 7, it one-shot everything, even radscorpions at that level), I find the perk system pretty good.


What I do miss is the little things like having to put points in explosives to allow me to get close enough to disarm frag mines etc. I thought that FO3 did that pretty well. The points spent were needed to accomplish certain things.


The thinking might be that main protagonist is ex army and already has a skill set applicable to combat where in FO3 you were a noob.

What I really don'tunderstand is his and others complaint of the new system making you a jack of all trades, god. In FO3, after about 30 hours you hit the level cap, have maxed out just about all of the skills, and have all the good and decent perks, plus a few stupid or useless ones just because you have to pick one each level up. From there it was just a grind to find the unique version of each weapon and the bobbleheads. After 8o or so hours, and level 44 i find myself far more restricted than I ever was in FO3. None of my special are over 7, so i haven't even unlocked all the perks yet. Of the ones I've unlocked, have only taken about half, and only a couple are at the highest level. I loved FO3, but for somebody to say that system was more limiting and less prone to godliness just tells me they haven't played FO4 much, if at all.

I am reminded of a Robert Heinlein literary quote:

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, anolyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

There are sooooo many fatal threats of soooo many kinds in the post-Apocalyptic world, I believe most over-specialized individuals wouldn't live long enough to become so narrowly focused in their abilities. The Skills systems of FO3, FNV, and TES tended to create specialists that were so narrowly focused, that their development probably would not have been likely. (In the context of their environments.) [Total Master-of-all-Trades was a very late game development that occurred purely because the characters ran out of places to put Skill points after the primary skills already maxed out.]

I applaud Bethesda for the decision to switch to the Perk system. Especially because they also added the limitation that higher perk levels were also tied to the character levels (experience in Life and the environment/education).

I like the new system a lot.

I also prefer the new system. Although I would like them to include our apparent non existent skills like science, chemist, robotics, etc. in speech checks in the future.

the game is bad?, the skills are there still, they're just called perks and actually with the rank system and much lower SPECIAL to start the game, i'm finding it a lot more specialized, in fallout 3 every skill was close or at 100 by level 20 and in fallout 4 thats not the case, well its time for you to move on to NV i guess, have fun with that. lol

skill = perks pretty much. It's a stupid argument to just say "they removed skills". They really didn't, just converted it. Of course they did remove some skills, but they did add some extra perks instead. The real "problem" or the reason some people got upset is the way of leveling those skill/perks. In F3 and FNV you could pretty much dump as much points into one skill as you had early on, now you cant. F4 is simmilar to skyrim where perks were locked based on your skills. I personally preffer the earlier version, but we all know if they removed the levels of perks in F4 it would become unbalanced.

OP, the differences are in your head. You perceive differences because you believe them to be there, but it's simply not supported by the data. There's no functional difference between getting 20 points in a skill over the course of ten levels and picking a perk after ten levels.

I agree with op. Rpgs need to have a level cap. This perk system takes away choice. If I want to put all of. my skill points into small guns thats the players choice. That player made the choice to be great at that at an early level. Everything else suffers be it lockpick speech whatever. This. perk system doesnt add anything better, just takes away. That seems. to be the theme with this game

This one's going to go downhill fast. Fourteen posts in and there's already plenty of variations on the old standby: "anyone who disagrees with me is a casual little child." Which is kind of a conversation-stopper.