As long as they give me a amazing massive open world wich is probably guaranteed Im happy.

OP your theory here is plausible.

Starting with 4 in everything and taking four perks plus bobblehead would net you 9s across the board. The having four levels per stat raising perk would be consistent, elegant and fit the scheme of the perk layout chart of having four levels per perk.

The big question is what is the level cap and is it hard or soft? Around fifty or sixty would give lots of options between maximizing stats and opening up perk choices that you could not take due to a lack of perk points or specializing your fewer stat points into a deeper mastery of fewer things.

If the system allows a unique character to go from early-end game without homogenizing character playstyles, then it's fine. In Skyrim, my characters were never the same, even though the system eventually unlocked the hard cap and let players get every perk. That was 251 levels of work though. I can guarantee you that no playthrough achieved that in the stages of the game that mattered.

I think you can choose to increase any attribut when you level up any number of times upto 10.

Because of the interview with Hines.


So you can go from 1 in charisma. Level 9 times and chose to increase charisma all the way to 10

consider you can access the perk chart whenever you want from your pip boy, similar to Dkyrim I would assume you can.

A level cap of 50 would actually fit perfectly, and would net us a total of 49 perk points before we hit the cap.

Lets say that you used 12 points to increase your base stats. This would give you a total of 47 stat points out of a possible maximum of 70, if you also include the 7 stat related bobbleheads. By the time you reach level 50, you would have acquired a further 37 perk points. Now factor in the 13 skill bobbleheads, which would give one free level for each of the 13 skill perks, and we would have a total of 50 perks in any given playthrough. (If we choose not to increase any of our stats in the way that I suggested, then this figure would actually be 62)

This would work out as 12 fully maxed out perks, along with 2 single perks, which if we were playing as a really focused character would be the same as one complete perk tree, plus around a quarter of another. Or we could just choose a broader combination of many different perks. Note that this would technically allow us to choose at least one from each of our 47 'unlocked' perks, especially if we factor in the 13 free ranks as explained above.

Is it just me, or do these bobbleheads now genuinely seem like hidden treasure!!

EDIT: corrected for mathematical errors, due to lack of sleep!

I hope there is a lvl cap. I am afraid there isnt one though

Based on my above post, it looks like the level cap will be fifty. I would imagine that this would be a soft cap, but with a very slow increase afterwards, just to give us an incentive to keep going. It felt a bit odd in Fallout 3 and skyrim once we stopped earning XP.

I doubt 50 will be the cap. What do you base this on?

A soft cap could be good if its really
"hard". So that every level after the cap takes forever. So if you do 400 extra hours you would get a couple of extra levels

I just think that 50 would fit perfectly without allowing us to become too overpowered, and it would also take a very long time to reach.

If this is in fact a soft cap, further levelling would of course take much longer but would give us an incentive to keep exploring

I think the level cap will be higher.

Also did you read hines interview? Going from str 4 to 10.

I dont think increasing attributes will have a limit other than 10.

We will see soon

?

I took this all into account with my calculations. If we start at 4 in strength (which would be an average score if we distribute our 28 points equally), and add 4 ranks using the 'stat perk' as I have described, we would have a strength score of 8. Add in the Bobblehead, and this increases to 9. Which leaves room for a 'temporary' increase from either chems, a skill book, or even a stat increasing item, bringing us up to 10.

As for the level cap, I don't think the soft cap would be higher than 50. But that still wouldn't stop us from levelling further, if we are patient. And besides, I'm confident that it will take a very long time to explore every nook and cranny in Fallout 4!

As a side note, after some extensive 'digging', I think I may have solved the mystery of the new 'V.A.N.S.' perk, and if I'm right, it sounds totally awesome!

More on this with the update a bit later on

Looking forward to more updates.

Do you agree with that you can go from 4 - 10 in any stat? Im not clear on what you mean.

Do you also agree that you can go from 1 - 10?

I feel confident in challenging the idea you have of 4 ranks per attribute increase. You can keep buying attributes upto 10.

One small detail, originally many of the icons used for S P E C I A L were for perks that trained that specific skill one level,


http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Gain_(statistic)

What I mean is that even if you start with a 4, you could technically achieve a 10, although it would require a temporary buff of some kind, possibly from an item of clothing. The permanent increase would be 4 ranks in the stat perk, plus another 1 for the associated bobblehead, totalling 5 points. Add this to the original 4, and your actual stat level would be 9. I just think this would make a lot more sense from a balance perspective.

Don't forget that even if this is correct, across all 7 stats, you would still be able to add up to 28 points. And so all you would need to do is make sure than anything you want maxed out starts higher than 4.

From what I can tell, I don't think any of those are included. The only one we know of so far is 'Gun Nut', which is actually the new name for one of the skills I mentioned in the OP. I do believe there is one more, however, but I don't want to say anything else until I do the update.

EDIT: I've just seen the link, and I don't think they would fit in with what the devs appear to be doing. The way I have described the use of 'stat perks' seems to be a lot more organic, and it could also be implemented without taking up any of the 70 base perks.

The SPECIAL ICONS on the top row of the poster, because of how those were originally used I just think it's possible that those are used for the train this stat perk.

That's exactly how I've described it earlier in the thread. If we want to increase one of our stats instead of choosing a regular or skill perk, we simply select the relevant icon and our stat goes up by 1 point. From what I worked out, it would make sense that this would then be ranked alongside all (or most) of the other perks up to a maximum rank of 4 for each stat.

just pointing out that there's 11 rows of icons.

The top row are the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Icons.

Useing the S.P.E.C.I.A.L Icons the same way they did in fallout 1 does 2 things for them

One it keeps all of the perk use on that panel

Two it becomes the way for them to raise the level with each DLC

Ok just saw your reply sorry, got lost in who was arguing what.

No worries, I didn't realise either that we were actually talking about exactly the same thing

But what's really interesting is that this idea actually has a basis in Fallout 1, which could mean that the devs have also looked that far back for 'other inspiration' in the latest release as well.

It's initially restrictive, but so was the old system. Whether it proves restrictive later depends on whether there is a level cap.

I disagree. I don't think there will be a limit at all. Bethesda has a design philosophy that encourages you to do what you want, be what you want and in Skyrim they very deliberately designed the system so that a player couldn't make a mistake in character creation and then feel he needs to start over. They won't limit your SPECIAL gains because they won't want to lock you into choices you made at the beginning of the game when you didn't know the rules yet.

This is actually a really good point. I will have to consider this when I post the update, hopefully wont be too long

I just about always take at least one Animal Friend perk.

Also wondering if Educated and Comprehension (Intelligence) will still be there? Of course if there are no skill books, I guess we wouldn't need Comprehension. edit: I see Comprehension is on the chart.

I think 50 levels sounds about right. I hope that it's a soft cap though so we can keep playing through the DLC.

I agree with your balance stand point. But hines interview shows that there is no 4 rank cap to increase attributes. But as you waste a perk to get a stat point its still well balanced

Ah good. You have come around to what i said