Well hopefully we all can be happy.

If there is no level limit then some one could grind the game until they finally maxed every stat and got every perk.

I just want the advancement system set up so that you do not have a maxed out my Lone Survivor after an average play through assuming you did do a lot of exploring.

Not having to spend a perk every time you get it would be a big help.

Just putting my opinion here: For me skills were kinda pointless since it mostly mattered the 25/50/75/100 marks. I would preffer some kind of alternitive progression system which would combine (doing the thing,paying people to teach you and finding books to increase or improve the skill to achive 100% or be a master at it). The problem is fallout 4 is tied to the original game, which means that some good alternitive isn't an option only a change of the original concept. Then again if you have skills from 1-5 instead of 1-100 it's kinda the same thing. I just hope with the popularity of F4 and bethesda in general we will have a lot more modders and mods than before.

Competition and distrust; mixed loyalties.

What AD&D game was that? If you picked your class, then you picked your skills set.

Real-world special forces are not playing a game; and the games are not action sims; they are integrated rule systems; designed for a give & take balance between all characters, each with their own specialty. It isn't that they cannot... it is that they do not, have not; and didn't have any interest. It is the mage that thinks the fighter an oaf for resorting to using a stick to solve problems. It doesn't actually matter why they don't, only that they don't. It's easy and plausible to envision that a smart athletic genius mage would be able to learn the sword, and use armor; but that over balances the character, and takes away from the fighter archetype. Why play Conan when you can play Conan with spells. There has to be a system of restraint and limitation, or it becomes a digital daydream game of *let's pretend*. '

Gophers video on this sums up my opinion pretty nicely.

You cant dumb fallout down any more than the current system.

They dont compete though, the Mages Guild and Fighters Guild contract pools are wholly separate from each other, always have been. FG takes care of the mundane situations, while the Mages Guild take care of the magical. And they have never distrusted each other, in fact, they often work together on jobs that involve both sets of skills.

There is no logical narrative reason behind one barring people who are in the other, especially when classes such as spellsword, battlemage, and nightblade, exist, and feature skills from both professions. Such bars only make sense in highly political entities such as the Morrowind great houses, or when two entities are at war with other, such as Skyrim's Empire and Stormcloaks, and Nv's NCR/Legion/House setup.

Whats more, is that when someone actually bothers to RP a pure mage, they have no need for the game to bar them from joining the Fighter's Guild, as they wouldn't even attempt to as part of their RP. All setting up these kind of bars in situations like this does is prevent the people who want to do everything from doing so for no other reason beyond..... well.... no reason. The people who actually care about actually RPing see no change.

Why would it have to be logical?

*One reason plays out on campuses everywhere... Jocks vs Nerds... envy (on both sides). Imagine fighters trying to pride themselves on their skill and achievements while their "team mate" relies on cantrips to get by; then surpasses them and becomes guild leader. And of course the reverse in the Mage guild is just as easy to imagine. It would never have to be a logical reason.

Because C&C has no real value when its completely illogical stuff that happens for no other reason then "MUH C&C!". What you descried is about as valuable as the C&C from not doing companion Loyalty missions in Mass Effect causing your allied NPCs to die. Doing someone's loyalty mission or not has no logical impact on if they happen to get hit by a stray bullet during the Collector Base assault, yet it does in-game simply for forced replay value. Meaningful C&C comes from things like Fallout 1 allowing you to send water caravans to Vault 13 to help them have water longer, but also resulting in the badguy's finding out where the Vault is faster.

Actually, this video does a better ob explaining it then I do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJJaGSV75y0

They aren't envious of each other though, both melee fighting skills and magic are entirely commonplace in Tamriel, a word of swords and sorcery. They have no reason to be envious because many Fighters Guild members know magic, and many Mages Guild members know how to use a sword. Both are entirely commonplace skills, and are why classes like spellsword, battlemage, and nightblade, exist, and both guilds have ab it of each in them. They pride themselves of being able to get the job done, and at the same time the fighters know that some situations call for magic, and the mages know sometimes the sword is more needed then the spell.

What you propose is basically a one-dimensional cliche stereotype situation that robs both factions of any depth in favor of "MUH WARRIOR VS MAGES!"

Dude, telling them they can play their way and you or I can play ours does not seem to sink in to the naysayers. You either play by the very narrow set of rules they have deigned appropriate, or you are not playing "right". They can not allow that. I'm still not sure why they haunt the Bethesda boards since it is pretty obvious Bethesda ain't gonna change the game to suit them.

Don't underestimate Bethesda. After years of playing their games, i have faith in them. Come one BGS, you can do it!

Not having them at all ,and what is wrong yes it is not perfect but it still shows what you're good at and what not.

Different ways to play? does such a thing exist? ( sarcasm )

There is (and has always been) this odd disconnection. The line breaks at some point and the static drowns the vital information. Nobody is telling anyone "how to play" (except for "you people" with your occasional "just don't do it" mantra). What is being said is pzzzzzzzt..... ttttt.. my way ...ffffttttttttt....... is how .....sssshhhhhhh...krrrrr.. to play ...rrrrrrrr..... Ya dig?

No but seriously. What is being asked for is the games response and reaction over how the player plays the game, and the game to provide the options that require more commitment from the player than just "I don't think I'll bother just now". To not have these options be an ignorable shopping list of busywork but actual accomplishments that affect the game that follows and the players approach to it, that both the game and the player adapt to what is being done in a manner that actually means something and makes those options rewarding in a whole new way (due to excluding or otherwise affecting others) and overall something to actually give a [censored] about. If anything the "narrow" path is to just let everyone do everything without a second thought. The game should make the rules and give the options, not the player.

The wish is for the game to make the different ways to play to actually make a difference.

There's always been some conflict between player skill and character skill. It's absolutely true that you could largely ignore the STR and Skill weapon requirements in the last two Fallouts but they were there (mostly in FNV).

I guess I prefer to have a visceral experience (the dreaded FPS) instead of a mathematical one (the spreadsheet).

If this sounds like I'm being dismissive, I'm really not. There's a lot I like about old school RPGs and I've played a ton of them and I feel bad for you guys who liked Fallout batter when that's what it was. But I'm sure that a lot of the qualities we like were born of necessity, limited by the tech of the time.

Uhmm... not at all true, though?

Man, this makes me feel old. We've had real-time RPGs well before Fallout 1 came along. Fallout was actually a niche game at the time it came out - it was refreshing to see a turn-based game like that with "modern" graphics. Diablo came out before Fallout, that did just fine in real-time. Ultima was doing real-time gameplay (and in 3D) before Fallout 1 was released. The old D&D dungeon crawlers were real-time. Going way back, I remember playing Dungeons and Dragons on my Intellivision, and that was a real-time game as well.

These were not technological limitations. These were design choices. It's... man, I gotta be honest, it's kind of flabbergasting. I mean, hey - I can dig the new Fallout games. I'm absolutely stoked for Fallout 4. I don't have just one sort of game that I insist on playing and expect all other games to cater to my whims (and it's been a good couple of years for turn-based gaming.) But it's like a tech tree - you've got real-time stuff on one branch, and turn-based on another. And then people keep saying that all gaming technology is actually progressing along a straight line to some inevitable Platonic Ideal. It's just provably false. I mean, we all have preferences (which on this forum gets forgotten every second page.)

Anyway...

What I like about having meaningful choices in how I build my character, is that without any consequence, without my character being able to do some things at the cost of other things, is that otherwise I'm not even making any meaningful choices - I'm just progressing my character to the inevitable sameness. I just don't enjoy that philosophy as much as others - at least in an RPG.

I mean, the Arkham games have experience and skills to pick from. But you're really just participating in an extended tutorial. You don't want to overwhelm the player with special moves all at once so you parcel it out behind the RPG mechanics - you're always going to be Batman, and Batman is always going to be awesome at everything, but you learn the advanced mechanics as you play and choose which to unlock next. Mind you, I adore those games - but it's not what I'm looking for in a roleplaying experience.

If there's no consequence to any choice I make, then I'm not actually making any choices. Sure, I can RP that I'm actually specializing in meaningful ways and creating a unique character, but I'm not actually doing so - it's an empty challenge (and I'd prefer a game that isn't, quite simply.) In Fallout 3 every character was the same by the end of the game - every character I made in Fallout 3 was going to be Batman. I could pretend that my Batman was different than your Batman, but at the end of the day we were all playing Batman.

So... back to topic, that's why I'm hoping that doubling-down on Perks can add some more individuality to my characters. I can at least then choose between Micheal Keaton Batman and Christian Bale Batman.

Just don't, for the love of all that's holy, choose George Clooney Batman...

Good post.

On the quoted part.. Everyone's of course hoping the new system to be designed to deliver as much as it possibly can in terms of gameplay effects and meaningful character variety (with the current gameplay in mind) because it really, really can be done with the right set of mind put over it. But there is the underlying worry that it's once again just streamlining for the sake of streamlining because the previous streamlining produced a thing that didn't work at all.... So, to put it not so eloquently, they're fixing the faults caused by their own streamlining with some more streamlining (two wrongs trying to make a right... and in the future? Third time's the charm, right? ). That's the fear and the image given by the presentation (the SPECIAL descriptions weren't really filled with hope for example, nor the "We want to make a good FPS" statements...).

Admittedly though, the pre-streamlined system wasn't exactly great either.

Many of the original devs have admitted many of the skills inFo1/2 were simply bad or useless.

No game has been without it's own set of faults and shortcomings. But those are things that could've rather easily been improved upon; give the useless some use (ie. where and how could repair and science see more work?), check out what was bad in the bad and make the call on how to improve it (ie. what could be done with the gambling skill to make it more worthwhile to have).

.

No mater how mich fixing you do to a Mack truck your not going to be able to turn it into an interstellar space ship with our current tech base.

It may be what Bethesda decided was that fixing it was a non starter for whatever reason and went some other way. We will know in a few weeks.

I hear you. I really do. I just think you can have a differing experience by ignoring some things and focusing on others. Yes, in Fallout 3 no matter what you did you were a master of all things by the end, especially if you went your own way and ignored the main quest. On my first play through the game I had no idea it would just end when I went in the room and fixed the purifier. That character was way different than any I did after that because I focused less on the main quest and tried to make him a master of all things.

When I played Skyrim and figured out the leveling system it made more sense to me. My character was rewarded for focusing on his skills, and there was no dump stat because I wasn't forced to take points and put them somewhere. It is far from perfect, I hate not knowing a "score" both for a kill, and how many points I have. I want to see that. I found NV a little irksome because it had downsides, but I dealt with my choices, and it felt like I was doing something and it could be different depending on my choices in character and who I sided with. Maybe, just maybe, Fallout 4 will be some combination that works better for both you and me, but I have a feeling one of us will be more let down than the other.

I guess what I take issue with most in these threads is the constant naysaying of the series. We all get that it ain't the Fallout you used to love. It has changed, and like it or not gaming has changed too. People don't want to deal with consequences in real life, no matter how trivial they might be. Expecting them to accept them in something that is supposed to be fun is just unrealistic. Bethesda knows this and I suspect is walking the line as best they can to give us a rewarding gaming experience. Role playing has many meanings, and many ways to do it. This just happens to be how BGS wants to do it. If the series changes into something I don't like with Fallout 4, I will say as much in a thread, and say goodbye, not haunt the board for years and try to convince everyone that it is wrong.

Doesn't matter to me if skills are removed. Just another micromanagement system I don't need to be concerned with.

However, I hope perks are better suited to crafting a character I want to play, not throw out OP stats, such as "gain more skill points per level". I don't like being OP in a game, but at the same time, I don't want to be UP either.

A nice balance, with tons of challenge.

HCM is a must.

Its not really something that's been in conflict. Its not like a "pure" RPG would have autonomous characters and any player input is taking away from the nature of an RPG that would cease to be a game. The idea is pretty straightforward. The player directs the character the character does as directed to the best of his abilities. The character was never meant to be an avatar for the player.

And that's fine. There's nothing dreaded about the FPS I like FPS games and to like them doesn't imply you're somehow less of a gamer or person or dumber or anything else than a person who prefers to play RPGs. But an FPS objectively isn't an RPG no matter how you much like and prefer the mixup. Putting FPS elements into an RPG game isn't an evolution of RPGs or something that couldn't be done previously but was always meant to be its just a different concept for a game which is why games like Fallout 3/NV/and 4 are openly described as action-RPGs while games like Fallout 1/2, Baldur's Gate, Pillars of Eternity, Arcanum, Darklands, etc. aren't.

The gambling skill isn't supposed to improve your chances at winning (like it does in Fallout 1 & 2); what it's supposed to be for, is detecting rigged games and various types of cheating.

>the skill isn't supposed to do what the devs made it do in Fo1 and 2.

explain.

Also, what you just suggested is perception..... and we already have that.

Why should the game designers feel obligated to try and justify and "fix" old systems, if they can think of a newer, leaner system that they prefer, and better suits their goals?