The arguing part is that they already killed SPECIAL stats in FO3 and NV, nearly everything is a dump stat except strength and endurance. I could never imagine a PE 1 gunslinger while that was the reality after Bethesda's time. You can play practically blind and still hit everything at extreme ranges for maximum damage. At least this time stats will be of use and skills might also work with ranked system since skill rolls were already abandoned in favor of skill checks and those are already being done at 4-5 points even though it's a 100-point system which was mostly pointless due to how it worked like that. Overall, this might be worse than the original games but better than newer sequels.

I myself found the old skill system to be a lot of useless numbers that didn't bring any noticeable changes unless you were at one of 4 numbers (excluding speech and crafting skills) Lockpick is a prime example in that there is a hundred numbers in the skill but only 25,50,75,100 mattered. And with guns and big guns and energy guns, I personally didn't notice any improvement in my characters weapons proficiency at all.

So I look forward to the new system (and the fact that guns won't magically get more accurate(or at least are supposed to) the higher your skill is.) AND I look forward to the game in general!

I try to be as moderate as I can on the topic of Fallout 4, and you can often find me sympathizing with the naysayers and old school crowd.

That being said, I really do want this system to succeed and feel rewarding. Because this game looks incredibly fun.

I think it took off a layer of customization. But the new system looks like it will make the ''godly, do everything PC'' thing very hard to do.

Fingers crossed, like always.

I am pretty positive, not only on skills-to-perks conversion, but in regards to a whole new system.

I love the idea of taking previously high lvl perks during the 1st few lvls of the game.

For example perk Silent Running is essential for playing stealthy character effectively (without him you need to wear only you underwear and sneak with a speed of a stoned turtle), yet in Fallout 3 and New Vegas we had to wait until lvl 12 to be able to get it.

Now you can play your character as you intended almost right from the start of the game.

Fallout system never was any good mechanically, it was filled with useless traits, perks and even skills, some in fact were not just useless, they were harmful (like heavy-handed or skilled traits for example) as well as crazy overpowered one - i am talking about Gifted of course.

In first two games 95% of builds had - 10 Intelligence and 9 or 10 Agility (with restoration patch you could increase your Agi in Fallout 2 by one) and had 1 or 2 points (with Gifted) in Charisma.

Now it looks like several character types will have more varied builds, there won't be any universally good stat like Intelligence (Intelligence now will be useless unless you want it's perks, because i am sure there will be enough experience points in the game world that even with Int. of 1 you will reach a lvl cap) and Agility and universally dump stat like Charisma.

To get every base perk, you would need to be level 105 with each SPECIAL bobble-head, or level 112 without them. You can't take the perk if you don't meet the SPECIAL prerequisite, and you start off 42 SPECIAL points short of max stats.

Even then, rank 1 in each perk is hardly a master of everything, assuming the additional ranks have a noticeable effect. You still have another 205 levels to go before you max out all perks.

*offers a flame protecting suit to keep you safe from the rage you'll get from all the fans that hear you say bad things about there flawless magnum opus*

Who mentioned logic? I was making a statement of personal preference: I like a bit of variety in game series.

If I were to play a sequel so different from an original that it didn't register as a sequel (in either gameplay or setting), I'd quit playing ONLY if I wasn't enjoying myself. I'm trying to think of an example I've had personal experience with but can't.

So has it been confirmed that traits are gone or are people just assuming so due to them not being mentioned?
If they are gone then yeah that kinda svcks, they had some interesting effects especially four eyes.

The change will probably be positive.

Percentage skills in computer games don't really play out all that well. Everyone just rerolls or retries until they get the exceptional result. If the game puts a limit on how many times a player can try, players just reload their games. Some crpgs try to mitigate this by putting hard locks on skill checks, but that is no different than requiring a perk.

The old system was clunky and obviously designed for a DM to manage.

There are a lot of things in a first person game that I can just *do* rather than having to simulate doing with dice rolls. The more I can do the more I'm in the role I'm playing. The more I have to rely on dice, the more I'm just playing a game.

Savescumming is a player fault, not a system fault. If one ruins their experience with that, it's on him, and it's not much different from reloading a failed lockpicking minigame or exploiting its try-counter or going through dialog to check for skill/stat checks and then reloading and investing in those to get the results, or using the console commands to pass by where on shouldn't.

Myself, I can't really find fault with this new system when I'd actually suggested something similar some years ago on here. At the time I kept thinking about how the ruleset they were working with just wasn't working anymore - Fallout 3 had some serious balance issues I felt, and New Vegas only mitigated what I feel were some pretty foundational issues with how they'd implemented the system. It was all too easy to start running out of places to dump skill points into ("well, this character has never so much as equipped a grenade or a rocket launcher but I guess I'm going to start getting 100% in Explosives just because there's nowhere else to dump them.")

And on top of that there wasn't much in the way of a unifying mechanic in how these skills were implemented into the game. Sometimes you made percentile rolls, other times you needed to reach a specific threshold. When firing a gun in real-time your stats had some nebulous effect on things but then when you used VATS that was an entirely different system that didn't relate to the other systems at all. To me, it's like if I was playing Dungeons and Dragons and if sometimes I rolled a d20 to see if I hit something, but then other times if I wanted to attack something I drew from a deck of playing cards. One way or another the whole thing needed a revision from the ground up.

I'm quite looking forward to seeing how the new perk system works out. I think leveling up and then picking one thing to advance in for that level (be it an attribute, skill, or utility perk) could be rather interesting.

More importantly, I think it might be a better fit to the game that Bethesda has been making anyway. An open world action RPG is not the same thing as a top-down turn-based RPG. I happen to think the idea that you're going to wholesale try to transplant a system designed for one playstyle into something that's functionally so very different is just silly.

One thing I'm most excited about is that it feels like it'll potentially allow for more individual and unique characters - with so many perks and levels to pick from I highly doubt I'll be maxing everything out before I finish the game, unless I specifically try to grind my levels up. Which I'd contrast with Fallout 3 where I just up and hit the level cap before I felt I was even close to finishing the Main Quest. I'm even hoping they just remove any level cap - if you want to grind all 200+ levels to get everything in the game, then by all means do so; I'd just like to not to have to worry about that happening to me unless it's a goal I set out for. It shouldn't (in my opinion) be something that's just a side effect of playing the game. I didn't even max out Batman in the Arkham games until I had completed the game and was trying to collect all the Riddler trophies...

My only real worry about the new system would be that I really liked getting those quest-specific perks or the one-off ones. Perks that you don't earn by gaining a level, but you have to complete something in the game to get it (like Excrement Excavator in the old games, or the "Kill 100 Insects" stuff from New Vegas.) I just hope that the perk list isn't all the perks we'll ever be able to get, that there's room for more "story" perks and whatnot to earn.

Of course now we've got a serious semantics issues with many of the terms in the game (Perks aren't really Perks anymore, Action Points bear no mechanic resemblance to AP from the old games, etc.) But I don't tend to worry too much about naming conventions. Technically, these are no longer Perks, by their previous definition - but that's a semantics thing that I'm not going to bother debating people about.

It's still a reality that sort of system sets up - and it's not an uncommon one either. It encourages the player to do so, in fact - the pinnacle of poor system design.

That's what I was thinking but couldn't express.

The numerical skills worked VERY well for Fallout 1 and 2, had to plan carefully.

For Fallout 3/NV... not so much, just didn't care for them.

F4 took the right route, simplified yet not dumbified. You choose YOUR SPECIAL stats and by that design of YOUR choice you pick your perks along the way to specialize (changing the gameplay in the process).

Oh not even close. That spot is well reserved for those systems that are trimmed so devoid of impact (due not wanting to interfere with players control) that the player doesn't get any tangible hands on difference.

When I think back to my time spent playing Fallout, I remember the character interactions, the setting, the tone of the game, etc. Not once I have I thought back fondly to how awesome the game mechanics were, or how I leveled my character. Considering Bethesda's game mechanics have always been some degree of passable, I'm not concerned if they're altering the system. It'll work well enough and not interfere overmuch with gameplay.

The setting, on the other hand, I fully expect to fall far short of my expectations.

Have you even played f1 and f2?

Break rules? How about a perk that makes every single weapon shot a crit?
And then a perk to make that crit do more damage (often more than x 2)?
And have it possible to bypass all DT/DR ontop of that?
And ontop of that a chance to knock enemies out?
And untop of that chance to instantly kill them?
One of the effects will happen like every single shot. And often more than 1 effect.


You havent got a clue.

Every time you die and reload your last save instead of creating a new character you are essentially doing the same thing ... undoing a bad result.

Gifted should not have allowed the player to shuffle the points. The rest, I disagree with.

*I usually played with the Skilled trait.

Yeah but even if you played with it he is still correct.
Heavy handed was terrible and so was skilled. Gifted on the other hand was so incredibly great.

I'll chime in with my thoughts on this. I don't have a problem with perks-only system in principle, I think it can work just as well as the old system and can do some things better. Having said that I'm not completely sure about the way it's implemented, with SPECIAL being the only requirement for perks. It's very intuitive of course and elegant and the chart looks nice and symmetrical but I don't know if it may end up being too simple.

One scenario I have in mind is, let's say you put 10 points in Agility with the rest distributed evenly between the other stats. You'll likely want to take the perk that needs 10 agility first, as the most powerful, then the one that needs 9, etc. So you may find yourself in strange position that the more you level up the less powerful perks you end up taking. I'm not completely sure it's a bad thing necessarily, also we're not sure exactly how increasing your SPECIAL will work. Now I probably sound like Sole Survivor when talking to Codsworth just after leaving the vault , but I think I'd need to try out the system for myself or at least see it in action to decide how well it works. For now I'm cautiously optimistic about it.

Old school player here. I'm in the wait and see category.

My problem was never with the skills system. The skills system to begin with never mad much sense increasing your choice skill to up to 140% whilst still maintaining accuracy at 95% just because you need a 5% chance to "balance" it. My problem was with FO3 giving you a Perk every level along with the 17 or so skill pts you already have.

At least now with completely discarding skills they have a reason to give you a perk every level. I'm positive about this. The original FO alignment system for example was never perfect. As far as alignment, Planescape got it right with your actions actually changing your alignment status. I have not played Arcanum for too long but being able to choose alignment right off the bat is pretty stupid. You're already Chaotic-Evil before the game even starts...

That's your opinion, and I disagree.

Skilled added 10% to all skills.

Heavy Handed and Bruiser implied brawlers. The first added +4 melee damage, and implied a PC that was impulsive and lacking finesse. Having that trait meant that the PC did 5 times the average in melee damage.
The second did not affect melee damage, but ~in theory, made the PC musclebound; stronger & slower. In practice, it had the same problem as Gifted, and should not have allowed the player to reallocate those points to another stat.

*Traits are roleplaying quirks that reflect an aspect of the PC; and it can be negative. All traits have a positive and a negative.

The only thing that bothers= me is that they didn't include traits. Other wise the system looks fine so far. I think you guys are getting so worked up because the game isn't telling you that your character is good at something in a strict 1 out of 100, but that they have odd skills/quirks they picked up along their adventure. I'm not a big fan of the old system anyway and I think shifting towards a more S.P.E.C.I.A.L focused instead of skill focused system is better in the long run.