For all the crap I give Traits, they would still fit in really nicely with this game. It would be a pleasant surprise if they were actually in the game, just not revealed yet; Fallout 3's chargen sequence didn't stop at SPECIAL, after all. I just wish the traits were more noticeable, and more of them were worth taking.

Wasteland 2 is adding traits (they're calling them quirks) to it's Director's Cut and I'm excited as hell about it. I'll be disappointed if Bethesda hasn't taken everything they could from New Vegas that made it a better role playing game.

I don't really have any opinion on the new system in Fallout 4 since I haven't experienced it yet. Perks can be more fun than skills, but only time will tell if I'm still reaching for New Vegas when I want to play some first person Fallout.

I think we will have to wait for mods

Mine and pretty much 95% or more of the old fallout players.

Bruiser, heavy handed and skilled gimped the character hard. The downside weighed 100 kgs, the upside 0.1 kg. The reverse was true for gifted.

Hang in there 'old man'. Hey, I'm in my 50's and I'm trying to roll with change.

The proof is in the pudding.

We've read about change, so we may be sad about something that isn't the way it was.

But we haven't yet had the opportunity to try it in its new form.

Personally my instinct is that it will not only be fine, but better.

We'll only know for sure in November.

I can't wait for the WL2 DC to land. I had fun with the base game, but it needed some re-working, have they set a release date yet?

Bethesda doesn't even seem to acknowledge NV and that worries me. I'm starting to think that Beth. doesn't want to improve, or add, anything that Obsidian did because they want to do things their way. No hardcoe and no traits will be some of the biggest disappointments about F4 to me. Easy systems to implement and balance, adds a layer of immersion and re-playability, respectively.

Maybe I'm wrong here and they just haven't showed them yet, hopefully, but I seriously doubt it.

To be brutally honest for one second, I′ve never given a rat′s behind about how skill systems work in any Beth game I′ve played (Oblivion, Morrowind and Fallout 3). They may be flawed to the brim but my reason for gaming is, among other things, the journey itself. Going from weak to strong is what I enjoy the most aside from exploring, and I never cared how it was implemented. I enjoy figuring things out and then applying that knowledge the further I go.

I′m sure I′d enjoy Fallout 4′s system too.

Sorry while I loved the game the skill system even back then was known for being broken if not outright garbage. Many of the skills were either pointless to raise unless you really wanted something out of that skill, or were redundant(seriously why did we need a separate skill to steal? We already needed lock pick and sneak), or the few times you actually needed that skill justt reloading a save was usually less of a hassle than sinking points into it and not having points to dump into whatever end game gun was the best. Never mind the switch you needed to make mid game to energy/ heavy weapons.

That said Betesda with its every skill can be maxed was roughly just as bad, but at least you actualy had more of a reason to want everything leveled....

I just had a thought after reading your post, what if they do have a hardcoe mode, and in it includes the weapon repair system they haven't been talking about, because it is part of that mode?

I also want traits, but there should also be a neutral trait, for those that would like to play the 'average' game.

Agreed. I have no interest whatsoever in playing "Fallout 4: Now With 110% More Fallout 3!". My real hope is that Obsidian is given another crack at a NV-style spinoff, but I'm not holding my breath.

Which I think ironically is something Obsidian taught them with NV.

I think bethesda taught obsidian that a realtime action oriented rpg is great. Something they never would have managed.

The Director's Cut comes out October 13th I think. With that game, Fallout 4, Shadowrun Hong Kong coming out this August, and the Pillars of Eternity expansion, my free time is completely booked.

Shadowrun is the only one of those series that Obsidian developers have had some hand in. I get that Bethesda has always been about the open world and doing whatever you want with your character (that's the whole reason I fell in love with Morrowind) than about story driven RPGs, but taking a leaf out of Obsidian's book to make a game set in a universe that deserves deep RPG mechanics and a well written story would make me happy beyond words.

Far less funamental to a Fallout game than the SPECIAL system. Skills were already becoming pretty crappy in Fallout 3 and NV, amalgamating them into the SPECIAL system might very well be a good direction.

Now hang on a second, don't forget about the two games Obsidian developed prior to New Vegas. Knights of the Old Republic 2 and Alpha Protocol - both action RPGs. This wasn't at all a new concept to them by the time Bethesda hired them out to do New Vegas, Obsidian's first attempt at creating an original IP was in the form of an action RPG. I'm not sure what you're talking about...

Come to think of it, I rather enjoyed Alpha Protocol's system. It also featured a sort of perk-based setup that managed rather well to account for a variety of characters and character advancement choices that were meaningful and impactful. One thing I really liked about their combat system was how accuracy was improved as you leveled up and selected different skills to focus on, and was (I felt rather elegantly) portrayed via a shrinking and growing of your targeting crosshairs. The game had some issues, but I thought it was a really great action RPG - too bad they never got to do a sequel to kind of iron out some of it's kinks.

Back to topic, I feel like the new system at least has the potential to make for some compelling choices during character advancement in an elegant manner. Simple's not bad so long as it's well refined, I feel - and here we have a couple layers of mechanics that tie nicely into each other, at least on paper. Hopefully we'll see a more unified system where everything that is included in the ruleset is balanced out and functional in important ways.

That was one of the biggest things in that game that I appreciated - the inherent character centricism - and one of those things I hoped would carry over to New Vegas (and further Fallouts as aRPG's) once I learned it was going to be modeled after Fallout 3. Too bad Sawyer disagreed (and as far as I know, still does) with that, and it doesn't seem to be something we'll see in Fallout 4. At least not to that length. A shame, really, since now with the skills thrown in the river and replaced with 4 ranked perks the accuracy effect could really shine as a tangible gameplay defining effect and produce good appreciable character progression.

There's nothing from what we've seen of Fallout 4's system that wouldn't allow for something similar, though. Alpha Protocol's skill tree isn't all that dissimilar from Fallout 4's perk tree. There's no reason there couldn't be a ranked perk in Fallout 4 that would tighten up your aiming reticule in much the same way that advancing your relevant weapon skill would in Alpha Protocol.

What I'm really curious about is just what impact the Attributes are going to have in terms of gameplay. Theoretically, just about every Attribute could tie into some aspect of combat and other gameplay cycles - it's just a matter of how deeply ingrained the mechanics for these Attributes are going to be. (I mean, STR could impact how quickly you recover from recoil and general handling of heavier weapons, AGI could affect how much spread you experience while moving or strafing, PER how quickly your reticule could tighten while you aim, and so on.)

I don't see anything in the new system that would innately eliminate the potential for a deep system - it's just a matter of where Bethesda's going to go with it.

Oh, I don't mean the system can't allow for such; of course it can, fi it is made to; but that it's not likely to be that way. Tha's coming from the implication from Todd that the effects won't as "tangible" as in Fallout 3, which already wasn't much at all to start with.

I'm also interested in seeing how the system works, but I'm not all that confident over what I think would (theoratically) work effectively is something that will happen (seeing that so far everything I kept my fingers crossed for happened the exact opposite manner).

Neither do I, aside from its creators.

Time will tell of course, but from my perspective the proverbial stars are not really aligned right now.

Whut?

*I'm really not sure what you your exact reasoning is; I get that you think it damaged a PC... yet I don't think that was that serious, and I wouldn't have a problem with it if it was. All optional traits do that; they all have a positive, and a negative trade off.

Bethesda barely acknowledged Fallout 3 in most of their interviews and presentations, too. They've talked more about other franchises that influenced their direction with Fallout 4, frankly. And a lot of the things they do talk about in retrospect to the prior Fallouts applies to New Vegas as well. Why would Beth let Obsidian make a Fallout, and then pretend it doesn't exist?

If Bethesda doesn't include things like traits or hardcoe mode, it won't be out of spite for Obsidian. And I'm already seeing a New Vegas influence in crafting and companions; New Vegas is an obvious step in between Fallout 3 and 4 in those regards.

Re-watching the combat footage again, there seems to be a lot of variability in the size of the crosshairs. Probably more to do with the specific guns, but it would be a lost opportunity if stats didn't have an effect.

This is all true. More fleshed out companions in particular are a huge upgrade. And I'm just a svcker for romance, so I'm pretty excited to see how well Bethesda can handle that.

Eh. Fallout 3/NV's skills were pretty bad honestly... Like seriously bad. Removing wouldn't really ruin the game in the long run as long as they kept the perks and changed a few minor details. From the looks of it, they might've did the new perk system correctly or at least pretty dang good.

They seem to not like using "traits" (birthsigns) in their games after Oblivion. Sure they have the constellation standing stones in Skyrim but you can change what you have at any time.