So you never dumped points into a skill you never use, because you might want to use it later? Heck, I am betting most of us here have done it. Be it leveling energy weapons or explosives.

Actually increasing your skill as you *use* the skill just makes more sense.

Even if it is, I wouldn't use that. Maxing out your SPECIAL is a garbage perk anyway. My perks tended to be more passive in nature like Animal Friend or Lady Killer, stuff like that.

I do and I did. But it is your choice to do so, it doesn't just happen out of the blue without a cause.

Learn by using takes a lot the fun out of building your character (especially if there's no RNG involved) because all progression happens behind the screen and is based on never ending amounts of repetition and grind.

OH, is it that time again?
Let me grab my pitchfork real quick.

But seriously, are we yet starting another bickering? Again the "you obviously don't know RPG because you didn't play this and you don't do that"?
How about we wait to have more information on how the whole thing is going to work, before going on nerdrage induced posting trips?

And as for my very personal opinion: no skills doesn't mean no RPG for me. Witcher 3 has no skills and is very much an RPG, as were it's predecessors. Many other RPG's rely on perks rather than skills.
And honestly, did you find the skill-system in Fallout 3 and New Vegas good? Becoming a master of energy weapons without ever having touched one? Becoming a suave talker despite having a Charisma of 1 (come on, we've all done that, haven't we?)?
The skill system of the previous 2 Fallout games needed reworking, and I understand that one might miss it because it was a familiar system, so typically associated with the Fallout series. But it wasn't good, it wasn't very subtle or intuitive, and it needed being reworked. Just my opinion though, so put away the stake and the gasoline please.

Learn by using?

Leveling perks? leveling skills by using them? ......Skyrim? it sounds like it & if anyone remembers Skyrims system got to be a pain in the neck.

I don't mind the change but please don't make it like Skyrim I loved skyrim but I don't want to waste perks to able to pick harder locks like in Skyrim.

There's like a 100% chance lockpicking will be on the perk chart since Hacker is, but "waste" might not be the case since we still don't know how the selection will work out.

Every true, I really want to hear from Bethesda on how this will work.

Skillupgrades through the use of the skill. Like in every TES game.

Agreed!

Look Bethesda said they wanted to have your Special stats have an important role in game play.

This has been on the Fallout player's wishlist for a long time.

They also wanted to make a better shooter since F3 and FONV were only OK shooters.

Which makes perfect sense since the shooter genre has seriously evolved in the last seven years.

How do you have the Special stats have a larger impact on the game play?

Obviously you can have the Special stats have more impact to your derived in game stats like Action Points, Hit Points and Vats Accuracy.

But how do you get them to have an impact on the rest of the game?

In F3 and FONV, the Special stats providing a fairly small boast to your skill total and then the skill either provided a fairly behind the scenes impact on some of the game mechanics or had the 25/50/75/100 thresholds.

Some perks had a Special Stat requirement but many had a skill requirement.

And towards the latter part of the game, there was a tendency to find all of your skills maxed out.

So they cut out the middlemen.

Have your Agility stat determine how stealthy you are.

Have your Charisma determine your barter prices and your persuasion ability.

So instead of getting away with having a Charisma of just one and a 100 in Speech and Barter, you are going to have to have a high Charisma and get some perks dealing with barter and persuasion.

Perks that likely require a certain level of Charisma to get in the first place.

By using perks instead of a skill total for in game mechanics, you can pull the curtain and clearly define what the perk will do for you in game.

Instead of taking two levels to get to a break point in a skill like Lockpicking or Science, you just have to get the perk and you are there.

And frankly splitting the Science skill in to Science perk for building stuff and a Hacking perk for bypassing computer security makes a lot of sense.

This will also make it a better shooter but provides perks to give you in game benefits like less recoil or more accurate Vats.

If you want to be able to hold your breath when you take a sniper shot, be able to get more out a scope (by increasing the magnification in game), or have a better chance to make a head shot in vats then you have to have a certain level of Perception to take the perk that provides that ability.

Instead of having a high skill in something you have your character take a stat that makes him good at something then get the perks that stat allows make your Lone Survivor better at it in game.

Using Perks instead of skills actually provides more options to define your character.

Instead of just having a character with a 100 in guns, you will have a selection of perks that make you a better gunslinger, grunt, sniper, or shotgun user in the game.

I don't think this will be a dumbing down of the game, but more of making it more elegant, more clear, and providing you a way to better customize your Lone Survivor.

I know I'm repeating myself, but I really think Fallout 4 will play very different depending on how you distribute your Special Stats.

A stats of 3 will play VERY different than a stat of 10.

It's weird that there aren't skills but I think they've been implemented as Perks because if you look at the crafting, you can see certain things require say a Science of Rank 2. Science was a skill but maybe they moved it to a perk. If they did, hopefully they've made the game where you choose a perk each rank because if the level cap is 50, it would be difficult to get that balance between crafting perks, survival perks, and weapon perks.

this is actually interesting

instead of my typical 10, 4, 4, 1, 10, 4, 7 for max carry weight and skill gain per level i might have to come up with character stats that work in the game like maybe i'll max agility and strength now or maybe only get 2 skills up to 7 or 8 and balance out rest

Figuring it took two levels to increase a skill by 25% to reach the next threshold in F3 and FONV, then if we get one perk per level in Fallout 4, you could get one skill perk every other level and still get one normal perk every other level.

That is about the same progress rate as Fallout New Vegas which had 1 perk per 2 levels.

Yes. Leveling now is just going to be pick a perk. Like in many non-rpg action games.

And better than classic RPGs. Like Final Fantasy VII. Where you can't pick anything on a level-up.

Jesus im getting tired of these threads.

Nothing is sure yet, so stop panicing.

If we don't have skills there will be something else to replace them.

Meh. I liked skills a lot.

Ehh... where were skills at Baldur's Gate? The only skills were for thiefs. Beside this there were not really skills. Weapon skills were more like ranked perks in FO with 5 ranks. But skills like in FO? No. Not in Baldur's Gate. The most things were based on your stats.

Skill levels, as they were implemented in Fallout 3/NV, were redundant. There was very little progression as you leveled a skill. Part of the reason was because the games weren't much of a challenge (in terms of combat, certain gameplay elements like hacking, sneaking etc). I could either practically excel at every skill or some of the skills were rendered useless, a consequence of player-skill focused gameplay rather than player-character focused gameplay.

The perk system looks like a compromise between balancing skills and their application. But, if they are going for FPS styled combat, then I doubt they would retain a hit-probability for weapons in combat.

Baldur's Gate and Fallout are inherently different games. Just because that system worked for BG doesn't mean it is apt for Fallout

Bethesda doesn't do replacing. They remove things they don't know how to fix. They are like a car mechanic that doesn't know how to fix a flat tire, so you'll find a lot of cars with missing tires in their garage.

I never said otherwise. I was just saying you don't need skills to have an RPG. Because many people say the game isn't a RPG anymore...

Not really relevant to Fallout 4 but this is why I think that The Sims is an RPG series.

I'm not bothered about the lack of skills, SPECIAL is more core to Fallout IMO. Skills were important in the days of F1 and F2 when everything ran on background calculations and that but no now. I don't think an expanded, Skyrim-style, system of perk trees is a bad thing.

you have no role in the sims, so no way it's a role playing game

Skills should take the basic role of increasing damage and proficiency and perks should be gameplay changers that define the role your character plays.

But nah, too "spreadhseety". We all saw such claims fail when Skyrim came out. The perk system in Skyrim reeked from how horrid it was as it consisted of many dull damage increase perks.