One of the major flaws of FO3 that really bugged me is the hard cap on stats and skills.

If your STR is 10 and you get into a power armor, your STR will still be 10. This means it's stupid to start the game with your STR at 10, because that's a waste of stat points (not just because your INT would be low ). The hard limit on skills was also bad, if say my small gun reached 100 I will have to dump points into other skills, even if I only want to be a sniper that shoots everyone. In FO and FO2, combat skills above 100 would increase crit rate and gun skills above 100 would let your shot remain accurate at even longer distance. I really hope I won't see the same limitation in FO4 again, as I don't see any good reasons to prevent players from creating extremely specialized characters.

Just an assumption (hah!), but given that the Power Armor is being run less as clothing and more as vehicle now, I'd bet it doesn't do stats like that anymore. Like, rather than giving a ST bonus so that you can wield that "min ST 8" gun, it could be more along the line of "can use any normal ST-req gun, and there are some weapons that say 'PA only'"

(and it's only "stupid" to pick stats that would be "wasted" by certain equipment, if you're min-maxing and plan your entire build around getting those equipment boosts. If you're not going to use PA - I've certainly never used it in Fallout 3 - then the ST isn't wasted. If you get benefit out of that ST - in melee power, carrying capacity, whatever - in all the game time before you gain that equipment, it could also be worth it.)

...also, it doesn't seem like PA in Fallout 4 is going to be something you just wear all the time. They appear to be making it more "special" than that.

As for skill caps.... If the system is designed around a 1-100 scale, why would it go higher? Fallout 1 and 2 were designed around a larger scale, so of course they could go higher. 100 wasn't the max. But those were different games with a different skill system. (Which apparently also still had a cap, of 300. No idea if you could ever get that many skill points without a level uncapper, but if you did.... then you'd be in the same position. "I want to put more points in Skill X, but it won't let me!" )

Well, the player should only be able to increase a stat to 10 on their own, but yeah, if you get something that forces it higher then it should be forced higher.

Skills are now a form of perk chart most likely, so they can't be increased the way you want to. I'm certain you can just avoid spending "skill" points in the chart though.

Yes obviously FO, FO2, FO3 are all different games, but I still don't see any good reason to have the hard cap in place.

It would be nice if they could at least allow a mod to remove the cap. AFAIK, this was not possible in FO3 and FONV.

It should be done like in FoT. SPECIAL should be capped at 10, but overcome with power armor or temporary drugs (with heavy side effects) to further augment it. Gain stat perks should only be once for each stat. No bobbleheads. Nothing like full 10s on everything. I didn't like how FO3 handled it.

I noticed the right arrow was still there when he put luck at 10....so maybe you can pump them up more as you level.

I want 10 on everything though, if people don't wanna be OP they can just not pick the perk(s), find bobbleheads, etc that would make them so.

Having game systems that function properly?

Games, like all computer things, run on math. Game balance, especially. If you're going to have a game where skills range from 1-300 (instead of 1-100), you need to design your formulas & systems around that. Now, obviously you can do this. But unless you specifically choose to from the start and build everything that way, it probably wouldn't work right if you uncap it later.

(And yeah - mods do this. Which frequently results in all sorts of wacky results, as game systems that weren't designed for those numbers suddenly get them. I remember some of the fun things that happened in games 20+ years ago, when variables were jacked up to 255 and higher, in systems that didn't go that high. Or that article that talked about why Ghandi was so nuke-happy in the early Civ games - it had to do with some numbers going so low that pacifism suddenly turned into crazy warmongering due to interactions with other math.)

Well, under all accounts-- what's the usual answer, Audience!

Audience: "HOW. THE F---. SHOULD WE KNOW!!" *cheeeeeeer*

Thaaaaaat's right, ladies and gentlemen, the correct answer IS, How the f--- should we know. Hopefully this information will become concrete further down the line the closer we get to the lovely lovely month of November! Oh and don't forget, Fallout goes great with Thanksgiving dinner. Spay your pets.

Based on what I can see I don't see how remove the cap would break anything. Especially if a DLC can raise the level cap without causing much problems.

And to my knowledge there wasn't any mod that can remove the cap on stats and skills.

The whole purpose of the SPECIAL system is that you cannot be perfect in stats, but have to make a combination that works for you. It's no longer SPECIAL when you can increase everything to 10. It's not a matter of game balance but game system.