Adding weapon mods and crafting weapons from scrap either to use or sell sounds like a big enough perk.

Why would they put the basic gun handling skill under intellegence? And intellegence 9 just to fire energy weapons well? No way.

I think it's more likely that gunslinger and commando cover basic shooting inside and outside of vats. Basic combat skills are low in tree making them accessible to all characters. Because it's an actiony RPG.

Also icons may have changed and you're looking at very blurry pictures.

I know this is a bit late to be talking about what I would like to see in fallout 4 or even if this is the right place for my post so I do apologise for that & my spelling & grammar it's shocking i know so about the game & what I would like to see them add to it is a veterancy to the skills and perks I know it would probably make you so op but it sort of feels empty after reaching the max level for both the player level & the perk system and no xp shows up after killing an enemy and your perks are all done and dusted I would like to work towards levelling up my gun nut perk to 1x & 2x & so on you now what I mean & if not maybe show what xp I would be getting if I could still earn it. I know it sounds a bit stupid but I started fallout 3 so many times from the beginning just to feel like I was gaining something for all the hours of roaming around the wastelands killing anything that moved even to this day I still go back and start up a new game just to get that joy again. Fallout 3 was for me is one of the best games I've played solo anyway & I've got to say that I loved it properly enjoyed the game so let's hope this one is as good as fallout 3 & a huge map to keep me happy.

Excellent work Sherlock gkk7z !

I don't think you have anything to worry about with regards to not gaining xp for a kill. The general consensus is that there wont be a level cap, which means you could potential achieve something around level 300 before you exhausted everything.

Oh, and please accept this for your first post on the forum:

http://i.imgur.com/ueBDSnO.png

Kind of a tradition on here

Thank you. It took me long enough, and all I can see now is tiny little icons everywhere I look!

That sounds good mate thanks.

First off, I appreciate your props and like some ideas you have in your massive theory (The Jack and Nory One). Some of your thoughts are interesting and certainly challenge the mind.

But, and this is a big BUT, I seriously doubt the logic of many of your perk positions.

1: Tell me, why would you be capable of learning and physically capable of wielding a bat before your own fists? This is one of the most perplexing elements of your setup.

2: As they have made a point of having a huge focus, in the thread of mine you link, I have suggested a specific scene on the Perk Chart where a perception perk (Heave, Ho!) is pitching to a strength perk (Little Leaguer), both at the 2nd level.

3: Why would Ninja, a martial art specifically based in stealth and agility, be in strength? It would only make sense in Agility, the domain of Sneak (what Agility effects). Also, you don't see the Shuriken in the tenth perk in the Agility Perk column?

4: Why would any reasonable game designer gate 20-30% (probably) of the weapons (Plasma Pistols, Plasma Rifles, Laser Pistols, Laser Rifles, Gatling Lasers, Cryo lasers, and flamers) at such a high stat? I honestly feel that most major 'skills' and crafting abilities will be 6 and below. Intelligence 9 is likely very powerful, but very limited, like the Educated I suggest in my thread. I feel Science is 6, mostly because it looks much more like it, as the energy weapon is much more level with the head (like it is in the E3 demo), where as the "energy weapons" (see cap) is way higher in the rank 9 perk.

5: Chemist and Medicine/First Aid are likely combined in their effects. Also, Fast metabolism is likely wrapped up in the medicine skill.

6: Attack Dog is likely a perk that boosts your companions effectiveness in combat.

7: I believe that most of the perks in the relevant stat predominantly relate to that stat and leave that domain very rarely, if at all. So, I don't see how an intelligence perk is going to affect your shot, as it seems that Agility and Perception contain those elements.

There may be more criticisms, but these are the biggest ones I notice right off the bat. Like I said, I appreciate your props, but I have some serious doubts on your deductions here.

ooo this thread just got intresting *grabs the popcorn*

As a OT note I to agree that it makes more sense range weapon accuracy falls more naturally under agility.

i like this new system looks alot smarter than just dumping skillpoints into a generic skill

i see alot more opportunities in creating very specialized types of characters , especially mid to high levels , in the old system every character from a certain level was the same with maxed out skills and small variety in perks

Have you considered that "science" could also cover crafting explosives?

That could account for account for the ambiguous name.

I found interesting that, in the Combat Compilation video, we see [Raider Scum: Level 4 and stuff] while using V.A.T.S. Maybe it's another perk.

I agree with all this (except nr1)

I'm still not convinced that each tier of the Perks is a hard limitation from the associated SPECIAL score. Several of the Quakecon blogs I have read indicated that the SPECIAL score limitation for taking a higher ranking Perk had to do with WHEN you could take the higher Perk in terms of character level. This could also have been related back to the requirement that leveling up would be needed to raise the SPECIAL score so you could then take the higher level perk, so it could just be some confusion.

I also feel there HAS to be some limitation to increasing SPECIAL scores or every player is going to have 10s across the board halfway thru the game.

Here are some of my random thoughts about things.

First of all, I am kind of excited about a couple of things you pointed out. I am glad to hear that skill books and magazines will still be in the game. I was wondering about that.

Acrobatics sounds really good to me, especially if our PC will finally be able to properly jump and climb! I wonder if it would have any affect on the ability to use the jet packs on power armor?

Attack Dog is a neat one. I hope it gives the Dog some new attack/defensive abilities, such as we could tell him to be sneaky?

Quick Reflexes, as described, would definitely be a perk that I would be interested in. My real reflexes are not as sharp as they once were.

The fact that Big Guns are missing is okay. Basically guns are guns, although I wonder how strength will factor into using them?

Well, that's a lot of good stuff to consider. I still want to read through the link about the real-life V.A.N.S. Good job!

That picture looks like he is wearing a padded training suit that dogs can bite and you dont get hurt. The dog looks to be biting the guys arm.

With the name called attack dog its totally that.

God I hope there is a level cap.

Also I feel like they've taken weapon skills out completely now, since science wouldn't really effect how much damage some raider's plasma pistol would do, and judging from what gun nut did in fallout 3 I'm assuming its crafting related.

It's possible that different ranks of perks actually do different things. Like, rank 1 of Medic could boost the effectiveness of Stimpaks, rank 2 could improve Rad-X and RadAway, and then rank 3 improves all other chems. That would be way more interesting than just "Stimpaks are 25/50/75/100% more effective".

On "Attack Dog": My initial thought when I saw that perk was that we were looking at Dogmeat and one of the as-yet unrevealed humanoid companions. I'm guessing it's a perk that improves using companions in some way. As an aside, with the 1 follower limit, I'd personally love to see Magnetic Personality make a return as one of the high CH perks, personally.

Why would it matter if there was a level cap? Not like you'll be breaking level 300 any time soon anyway. Or even level 100.

If I read this original post correctly, your theory is that we would be able to level up each of our special stats to 10? That seems ridiculous and I certainly hope this isn't the case. Taking the R out of RPG right there, by allowing a god to be created. Although, considering this has been possible in Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Skyrim (skills), it just might be the case in Fo4.

You underestimate how much I'm gonna play this game.
Plus there would be no point in making a sniper build if by the end of the game I could of mastered every combat style, own every perk and be twice the level of the games toughest deathclaws since they don't level with your character.

Consider: if there are actually 275 perks to take (counting all of the ranks), and we can raise our SPECIAL by spending perk points (which would be the most intuitive and logical way to do it, IMO), that's 42 levels to max out our SPECIAL (without taking any other perk), and then 275 more levels to take every perk. Even if we leveled as fast as in Skyrim, that would take a long time.

Also: There are no level requirements for perks, just SPECIAL, so we can grow our character in virtually any order. Instead of having 2-6 perk choices on your first level up, you have 28. You need to start somewhere, and there's a lot of game between level 1 and level 100 (or 200, or 300). Maybe, after hundreds of hours, our characters will all become the same; but how we get there is more open-ended than it's ever been in a Fallout game.

So if you plan on playing this game a lot, wouldn't it be nicer if you could still get rewarded with XP even after you take all the perks you want? And assuming we can bank perks (no reason why we can't, unlike the last games where we had to pick a perk right then and there), you wouldn't even have to spend those perks if you feel your character is "done".

Bear in mind, if you DO raise your SPECIAL to 10, that would require 42 perk choices (assuming you have no limit on how man times you can raise a stat)... or at least 35 perk choices (if you use bobbleheads or some other way to get one more point per stat). Assuming one perk per level, that's at least 35 levels when you have selected ~no other perks~. No lockpicking, no medicine, no gun nut, no sniper, no stealth, nothing. Only raw stats. If someone managed to play the game that way, more power to them, but at some point I have to believe that the benefit of raw stat increase would be outweighed by a "real" perk. In short, I'm not worried if you, theoretically, can raise every stat to 10.

While I'm here...

I find it hard to believe they would devote an entire perk (with potentially four ranks) to the dog pet.... true, you could say that the four ranks of Gun Nut are "useless" to someone who only uses melee weapons, so the four perks of dog-boost are only "useless" to the character who doesn't use the dog.... but still seems a bit narrowly defined.

And speaking of narrowly defined perks. Are we seriously saying that the Sandman perk is in and has four ranks? Does anyone even USE this? How often do you even ~find~ enemies sleeping? THIS perk, even moreso than the dog-boost perk seems unnecessary. I can't think what ELSE the icon would refer to, however.... just seems an oddly narrow use for a perk.

Let's say we chose to level all of our stats first, so that we could gain access to every perk. Even if we collected all 7 stat related bobbleheads, as well as the 13 skill related ones, we would be level 36 by the time we maxed out our stats, and the only perks we would have acquired are the first rank in all of the skill related ones. Bear in mind that this is assuming we were able to find every single bobblehead.

Now let's go to the other extreme and assume we can't find any. Our stats would max out at level 43 and would not have gained even a single perk. Considering the fact that Fallout 3 caps at level 30, and New Vegas at 50, you can see that this would most certainly not break the game in any way.

EDIT: just saw the two posts above this one.

Maybe they just reused the artwork, and it's a perk to modify the damage multiplier for sneak attacks? If it's just a classic ranked perk like in older Bethesda games, they could do "Sneak attacks do 2x/4x/8x/16x" more damage. If the ranks are different like I hope, it could be improving sneak attacks in different contexts, like on sleeping targets or with a melee weapon or from a sniper rifle.

Awesome detective work.

Thank you, and I'm glad you appreciate the effort

The reason I work so hard to put this all of together, along with my various theory threads, is so that we can all gain a better understanding of what to expect by the time the game launches. And as such, I must take into consideration the views of all those who have posted here. Some of my best discoveries have been a result of people challenging my suggestions, forcing me to dig a little deeper. And so I would encourage all of you to keep looking for flaws, and to pick apart every detail. That way, we will collectively unlock more secrets as time goes on.

In fact, I am currently working on a few 'tweaks' to the thread based on the many comments you see above. Not all suggestions will be included, but those that reveal insights I may not have picked up on the first time round have actually led to a few interesting developments