Wondering if others have this question as well. The Fallout 3's speech checks made it easy to game with save/reload. Hoping for a different system in Fallout 4.

Since skills seam to be gone I assume its just your charisma stat, podibly some perk might boost ya chance.

Probably like New Vegas, it's going to check the amount of Charisma you have and there's probably a Persuade perk chart where there are different levels of persuade. That's at least my theory on it.

If you cannot see a % chance to succeed at a dialog option, but rather you either GET the option or you DON'T based on your Charisma, then I'm clearly going to have to make a 10 CHA character so I can see what options I'll miss when I play a lower-CHA character. On the one hand, I want a high-CHA character to be more persuasive, have more dialog opportunities than a gruff 1 CHA character who used it as a dump-stat.... but I don't want to feel that I sank 7 points into CHA just to get three more dialog options over the course of the game, none of which substantially alter the game. Kind of a toss-up, making it valuable and yet not essential.

That's player error. The game should ignore player error; people inclined to cheat, will cheat with or without reasons.

What precisely is the difference in this case? These are the same thing; the percentile value is an indication of the character's skill level affording them control and influence over a situation. The greater their ability, the greater probability of them convincing the NPCs to see things their way. Situations are all subtly different, and even a consummate expert can make a misstep, or be in for a surprise once in a while. That is what the percentile result reflects; that is why an expert and a total novice, can both fail miserably, and why (in some instances) a novice can succeed unexpectedly. In general though, the novice fails more often than not, and the expert succeeds more often than not; and unexpected difficulties, and/or good fortune do affect this.

*The percentile chance is what enforces skill based success or failure. Thresholds (like the rest of FO3's PC skills ~unfortunately) merely encourage PC infallibility, seeing as it's impossible for them to risk failure ~ever.

___________
Not to worry though; it is unlikely that the Fallout series will ever recover from Bethesda's treatment of it; and we will never have that level of mutable depth to the skill system again. (I'm not even sure if we have skills at all anymore. )

other reasons of influance on success could be how well the person you talk to likes you, and to an extend how well his/her faction likes you. I doubt a Cha 10 player is going to convice a NPC from a faction that hates him to see his way of things quite so easily as he could with someone from a factions that loves him.

All reasons can apply; the NPC could even just be irritable for having a headache, and not want to talk... and the 95% silver tongued negotiator gets the brush off [with a 96].

Charisma based. Charisma increas the chance for successful speech checks (read the description of Charisma at the character creation).

All Fallout games [prior] use charisma and luck for the initial skill level; but that's not related to what I described.

*In Fallout 1 & 2 [afaik] all percentile checks are affected by the Luck stat.

There's a big difference between the two, in that you can't cheat or get unlucky with a black and white skill check.

I prefer to just have it as a skill check rather than a success chance.

If I have a 10 in charisma there's no reason saying "I think I should get this for free after what I did for you" should succeed once on one person and then fail when saying the exact same thing to the exact same person at the exact same instance on a prior save to the conversation.

Why on Earth would you want to remove any element of luck from it? (The game even has a Luck stat... That's supposed to affect the PC's luck.)

*Aside: Of course anyone can cheat, they can raise the PC's skill via mod or console; or ~in the case of Lock picking (for instance), just unlock the door via console. This is no different than reloading.

The problem with a black & white skill check, is that there is no point in trying ~and not even the option to try. The player knows in advance that the PC will succeed ~or doesn't try; and the PC never makes a mistake...No one never makes a mistake. No matter how expert a person is at something they can always fail at it. A person trying to open their own front door with the key can fail at it.

This is something I can say that we both agree on.... shocking I know.

A person can always try, and a person can always fail, IRL, this is not the chase with threshold skill checks, and why they are broken.

because if you're not basing your speech success on a % chance, there's no reason luck should have anything to do with how you verbally communicate with someone, or your skill in actually opening your mouth and producing words.

It doesn't have to; it can (certainly), but doesn't have to.

If you don't see it immediately, consider that the other person might not care what the PC is saying at the moment ~for some unlucky reason of their own... Perhaps they have a toothache and don't want to be bothered (convincing or not). This can be indicated by an unfortunate high roll, that means the situation did not go as they would have hoped. (It doesn't matter the reason, the roll indicates that the effort was unsuccessful.)

A valid failure at opening a lock is as simple as dropping one's keys; then they try again. This cannot happen with a threshold skill system.

In Fallout, the PC's skill was their measure of ability and confidence at the task. They could fail, but if they were really good at it, this was rare. Fallout also allowed that a failure could be final; locks could jam, NPCs could become set in their opinions. FO3 lost all of this from the series, by using simple thresholds.

You're not locked out of opening that door if you drop your keys though.

In the case of speech failure, it's gone. No attempt at trying to say something else to try and gain that back its just erased from the world like it never happened.

Surely a charismatic individual could still come up with ways to try and negotiate certain terms when their initial attempt from one perspective fails.

I don't like chance-based outcomes in RPGs, particularly in single-player RPGs where it just encourages save scumming. It works in tabletop RPGs because they're designed to be abstracted, and you're encouraged to explain why you failed when you should have succeeded, and so on; a video game can't possibly account for every possible player action/failure in the same way a good GM can.

I'm fine with a threshold system, especially if it just uses Charisma for a metric, but I'd naturally like it to be a bit flexible. Lots of modifiers, based on any buffs/debuffs you have or the NPCs' disposition rank with you, or just a good old fashioned persuasion perk.

I wonder how the Charisma perks will work out. We've got a few perks for barter, the Lady Killer and Animal Friend perks, and perks to do with companions - if they still balanced companions so that you could only have one humanoid companion, a Magnetic Personality perk would actually be really helpful. Or, more ridiculously, a perk that gives all of your companions the same perks you have.

You are if you break the blade of the key in the lock when the rest fall.

This is reflected in Fallout 1 & 2' skill system.

That's a limitation of the game; why make it more limited by removing even the abstract of it?

I find the threshold system to be bitterly predictable, and unrealistic.

*And it doesn't account or allow for situations like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCqYLrhdtEc

Things don't/haven't branched out that far with any recent title though.

True...and that's terribly unfortunate.

Many modern games are basically a kind of New-Speak. They look cleaner and cleaner, as they become less and less flexible, and more specialized. Eventually it becomes impossible to use them for anything but the intended experience; which is intentionally simplified.

A real RPG should not be simplified; great care should be invested in thoughtful use of its designed complexity...and not invested in removing that complexity.

Hopefully chance. I like the randomness over the sure thing. Especially on 50/50 type situations.

In the leaked document the Preston Garvey mission went a lot differently. Instead of going outside he found a power source inside the building. So he essentially bypassed all the combat with intelligence. That's how I think it will work. Every time you get into a conversation you will likely have options available to you based on SPECIAL checks and perks.

What's upsetting, is that I would bet that each option is painfully laid out for perfect clarity... Choose X get Y; Choose A get B. Some options should not be dialog based, and some conversation options should [ideally] be similar, but of subtly different meaning; and perhaps with drastic difference in outcome. I really do hope it's not distilled down to a neatly packaged option A, B or C.

I really feel cheated when a game fails to surprise; or have unintended [though hinted at] consequences, as a result of the player's ~possibly mistaken choices.