And who says I'm not in one role at times?

well, this makes you a role playing person, but it doesn't make the game a role playing game.

just because you, like, strongly identify with chuck the plant, doesn't make chuck the plant an rpg...

I have no idea what you're getting at. There were literally no skills in old school D&D and AD&D. There were class abilities you usually had no choice taking and AD&D 2nd Ed. had non-weapon proficiencies as a totally optional rule, both which were much less skill-like than what the new F4 perks will supposedly be.

Fallout 4 not having skills does not make it less of an RPG then it already is. As much as I like skills I always hated getting 100 in all of them without effort because of how unbalanced the skill point system was in Fallout 3 and New Vegas (After level cap increase). I hope this system brings more choices with perks and Special this time around.

I'm pretty disappointed about the prospect of not having skills, granted the system was flawed but I would rather bethesda attempt to fix it rather then scrap it completely.. It's attributes all over again.

I'll still try to keep an open mind but it's looking like it'll be a farcry 3 type system, which to me was lacking and felt hollow.

A fighter is skilled in tactics and HtH combat, that's what they train to do... Notice that non-fighters cannot use a battle axe, or heavy plate armor. A magician is skilled in spell theory, and can cast spells; the fighter cannot... they didn't spend their time studying the arcane ~and so they haven't the skills for it. The magician can't cope with restrictive heavy armor, they are not trained for that; where as those accustomed to its use can all but ignore it as a second skin.

Classes [in all RPGs] are skill sets; it's what the character has learned, and aspires to do in life; no different than modern day electricians, dietitians, and SWAT team members; and no less interchangeable.

All you people comparing Bethesda's mediocre "RPGs" to Baldur's Gate need to effing stop, Bethesda could never, ever make a game nearly as complex, interactive, and choice dependent as Baldur's Gate, every character has a background in Baldur's Gate, every item has a distinct background and story, the closest Bethesda has came to making a game like Baldur's Gate was Morrowind

I don't believe that. They have enough money from their mediocre "RPGs" to hire experts at crafting superb RPGs... but... with todays narrow markets, there is not enough money in making superb RPGs... and sick fortunes to be made peddling relative crap.

That's an incredibly broad definition of "skills." To the point that everything is a skill, then. Advantages and Disadvantages in GURPS? Skills, apparently. Attributes? Skills. AD&D THAC0? Skills. Saving Throws? Skills. Disciplines in Vampire the Masquerade? You guessed it. Even though in games like GURPS and the White Wolf games in my examples, there are literally skills called SKILLS. So, therefore new Fallout 4 perks = skills.

I have to agree with you, these streamlined and dumbed down so called RPGs get more money than traditional RPGs that actually give you a real character, with morals, choices, a background and a story, I wonder when we'll get an RPG like Baldur's Gate.

They do get alot of money from their games, yet they don't seem to actually make better games, or hire better story writers, they just make every game simpler and easier than the one before it, that's a shame, Bethesda has so much untapped potential

Also, let's not forget, quality over quantity, more sales doesn't make a game better or mean it's better.

Seeing how Beth has handled things, this is certainly true to a degree. It is much due to what was done with the skills. But their removal does remove the possibility of it being more of an RPG. The current way of doing things only achors the position they took in 2008; a semi-RPG sandbox action/adventure simulation.

That's not the fault of having skills. That's the fault of the design and balance they chose to use with them.

I think it's worse than that these days... I think that it's not simply that they don't have to ~to make the money (which I think is become true), but that actually trying to would risk their better sales; and that the sales come of a simpler more accessible product.

Perks in the Fallout series are not supposed to be the skill system, they are intended as additional ~perks. Minor special case rule bending for the PC's benefit... not skill supplements, or the skill system itself.

Pick any game you choose, and we can probably turn it into an RPG by applying a simple rule change.

A game is either an RPG or not depending soley upon whether or not the player is meant to confront the game's challenges through role-play. The relative quality of the RP experience afforded by such things as robust, clearly-defined roles and the game world's responsiveness to those roles is relevant only to the quality of the game, not to the kind of game. You are fixated on a particular execution of role-play, and your fixation appears to blinding you to Bethesda's execution of role-play. So, you refer to their games as sandbox adventure sims because you cannot see the real game that is happening.

Similarly, some people's fixation on a particular implementation of (and nomenclature for) skills prevents them from recognizing a different implementation of skills.

Things that we would regard as skills in our world have discreet units of measure in Fallout 4. They have definition in the game and they affect what our character can do and how well he can do it.

One-sided roleplay doesn't make an RPG. Everything the player can do, needs to have an impact in some way, and the game itself, must ~must~ bend and twist with their choices to support a narrative change that reflects their decision one way or the other. In Fallout, if the PC finds and takes [steals] the water chip; those people die of thirst if they don't have any alternative drinking water.... That's even if the player never talks to them, and never finds out during the game.

A proper RPG is like a lens into the [game] world, and each different PC shows the player a slightly different view of it, due to the unique attributes (of that lens).

Each possible character should enforce (or inflict) a set of changes and restrictions upon the player for choosing them. The player's http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/Clipboard03_zpsa3e03c3c.jpg should play noticeably different, and commensurate to their differences; they should not be able to progress by the same actions and same dialog choices. That's the problem with Bethesda's games, they all start the same, and all converge on the same archetype.

(Their games never say, "no"; only "not yet". It's not RPG, it's playing bumper-cars, where you get to pick your color and car frame.)

You know, I actually remember a couple of years ago suggesting that, given Bethesda's style of gameplay and considering the SPECIAL system was designed for a different sort of RPG, that they'd probably do just as well making the whole system nothing but perks.

At the time I was seeing some foundational balance issues with how they'd implemented skills. A primary issue I had with Fallout 3 and New Vegas was that by the end of the game every character was essentially the same build. Attributes had very little noticeable impact on gameplay, and you were going to have 100 in every skill by then - the only thing that was differentiating one character from another were the perks I'd selected as I'd leveled, and those tended to have a more profound impact on the way I'd approach the game with different characters than any other mechanic within the game.

So my reasoning was that if perks were the only thing really setting one character apart from another, that it might be interesting to just double-down on the one mechanic that already was working properly for Bethesda-style gameplay focuses, and build a new ruleset around that from the ground up.

I don't think you innately need "skills" to make an RPG, and I certainly don't think you need complex rules to make a good RPG. Rather, I tend to be more interested in the elegance of a ruleset and most importantly it's suitability to the game-play it wants to encourage. (I'm kind of a rules nerd - I used to collect obscure tabletop RPGs just so I could look under the hood at how the mechanics functioned.) For example, at the moment I'm in a tabletop campaign of 5th Edition D&D - it's a fine ruleset, but that doesn't mean I'd use those rules (which are geared more for a swashbuckling adventure) to run a campaign in a Cyberpunk setting; or that if I wanted a grittier fantasy campaign that there aren't other rulesets out there better suited to a higher degree of granularity.

So anyway, I can't really fault Bethesda for coming up with something that's in-line with something I'd been suggesting in the past anyway (though I highly doubt my suggestions had anything to do with it.) I actually do think this could work well for a game like this. The thing that I'd hope for now would be that hopefully not all of your Perks come from levelling up and advancing along the tree - it would still be nice to gain interesting Perks as gameplay rewards, too. If we're going this route, then the more Perks you get, the better, after all.

Florid interpretations of what you can or can't do in an RPG do not an RPG make. I haven't seen Fallout 4 do anything that precludes it from being an RPG.

Totally agree except I think they are doubling down on Perks AND the Special Stats.

Fallout gamers have been asking for the Special Stats to play more of a role in the game.

There is going be a real difference in playing with a 3 in a stat and playing with a 10 in a stat.

And making the Special Stats have a real impact on the game will make it easier to role play.

Now Agility will directly effect your stealth ability and Charisma your persuasion ability and barter prices.

I could see perks being rewarded like Alpha Geek, plus 3 charisma with Geeks, Hackers, and Scientists.

This is nothing new either.

I mean Power Armor Training was always a Perk.

Same for Handloader or Mad Bomber.

You make a lot of good points. It's not that I don't think a Fallout without skills can't work, it's just that I don't have faith Bethesda will do it without "dumbing down" (that dreaded phrase, I know) the game in the process. If it worked the way you described, then I'd be all for it, but I'm afraid given Bethesda's track record, that we'll end up with a shallow perk system like Skyrim, where at the end of the you still have the same problem of everyone being perfect at everything by the end of the game.

If a mechanic started with a snow-mobile, and removed the skis, then the treads and replaced them with a set of hydrofoil fins...(and got it to work)...there would be no argument that it was cool; but could it still be called a snow-mobile? Lots seem to be arguing the point that one can apparently stick a corvette body on a pinto chassis , and still call it a corvette if it looks the part. [Or the other way around!]

You take away enough of Fallout, and all you have is an empty shell of the series. The ultimate sheep in wolf's clothing.

I haven't seen it do anything yet that would make it an RPG. Everything that's shown is all around the place; fluid FPS and wanton violence, helirides, jetpacks, tycoon feature extravaganza, "cool kill cams", a trimmed down character system seemingly similiar to what you can find in Farcry or Saints Row, a vague promise of slightly more CYOA than in Fallout 3, face sculpting...

Player determined (not character determined) combat would impugn this claim.At this moment it's an arrogation, but Fallout 4's looks no more of an RPG than Call of Duty in regards to combat.

I'll have to see more of the new system before I make a judgment.

I think a lot will be determined by what limits are placed on the Lone Survivor as far as increasing his or her stats and which perks are available.

If you can max your stats to all 10s and get every perk in the game in a single normal play through then F4 won't be much of a roleplaying game.

All the Lone Survivors will feel and play pretty much the same by the end of the game.

Good story telling can make up for that but the game mechanics are an important part.

if you can only increase your stats slightly and many perks are only available if you have a high enough stat then each play through will be very different.

You will have the difference in the stats like a low Intelligence Lone Survivor talking longer to level up than a high Intelligence Lone Survivor and a low Charisma Lone Survivor will always pay higher prices and be less persuasive than a high Charisma Lone Survivor.

And you will have the fact that certain perks are not available unless you have high enough stats so you have to chose which stats you are are going to specialize in to get the higher perks under that stat.

At least for the first three or found play throughs much of the game play experience will be like playing it for the first time.

You will be using different builds with very different tactics, having very different stats, and having perks that you have never used before.

I daresay the combat in Call of Duty is more fun than the combat in Fallout 1 & 2. If we're talking about character skill vs player skill, I prefer the modern trend in RPGs of character skills defining what's more effective for the player to use, rather than character skills being the deciding factor in failure or success. And Fallout 4 already has more RPG mechanics in it's combat than Call of Duty, since we have perks that govern the efficacy of certain things: critical hits, what types of weapons we're skilled at crafting, the kinds of weapons we're skilled at using, and of course the effectiveness of VATS for people like me who svck at shooters.

That's a bold statement. Personally, I disagree. Combat in Fallout 1&2 had its shortcomings, what with it not being very engaging and being fairly simplistic. Compare that with, say Jagged Alliance 2, which was a tactical game. But, the character skills had a role to play. When you chose your stats, you defined your character. Effectively, you were conforming to rules set by yourself for the duration of the game.

The aspect of improving your skills overtime as you gained experience made the games more engrossing. You could see your character progress, get better at the skills (s)he used. You decided how you armed your party, what range you fired from, when you used stimpacks. AP was the currency of combat. There was a level of strategy involved when you went up against a foe. Edit: Let's not forget the damage thresholds, resistances, firing range, effect of luck, critical hits and most importantly, VATS.

Now, Call of Duty relies entirely on player-skill. There are no rules to follow, no roles to play, the primary objective is to kill or be killed. Combat is entirely player-skill based. Every player is on a playing field dictated by their skill, not their characters. That is the realm of FPS games. That sort of combat cannot be complex because their is no tactical challenge in the game. Steeper learning curve? Maybe. Complex combat? No.

If Fallout 4 goes the route of an FPS for its perks system then that would be most unfortunate. It would eliminate any semblance to an RPG. It would be no different than Far Cry 4 with some conversations thrown in.