Personally, yes, I would like to see the two skills combined into just Speech. If you can talk a raider down from slitting your throat then [censored] said neck hole, or talk the Brotherhood of Steel down from invading the Institute for their tech, then I should be able to talk a merchant into charging me few hundred less caps for that piece of metal armor I am going to mod onto my current suit.

I wouldn't mind it. it doesn't have a huge impact either way, except for maybe a bit of role play. This is something I think TES needs/needed more than FO though, give how long it takes to increase the barter skill and how much effort it takes.

No.

Gopher made a video about why the current skill system is actually very stupid and how the removal of skills and adaptation into perks could actually improve the system overall

Gopher is not the first to have said these same things, he just happens to have a video that explains it very well and honestly its easier for me to link that than to write a wall of text explaining why you are wrong

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOOz_fHHt0o Skip to 3:40 for an explanation as to why the Guns skill is dumb and how a new system can improve character builds

Problem is too many gamers refuse to adapt or admit an older system is terrible.

The current system is already dumb

I don't think it's dumb. I quite like the system

Gopher was also being pretty stupid in that video, because he is completely wrong.

teh ONLY time the Gun skill had anything to do with the bigger weapons was in New vegas. In EVERY other game, small guns, Big Guns, and Energy weapons were al seperate.

It is also, BY FAR, a much better made system then any version of TES's systems.

He only sets out to defend the "new system" with some wild assumptions about multidirection synergies and calling the previous system "dumb" without regard to that New Vegas already started building those synergies with a four way system where you had stat requirements for weapons, you had skill requirements for weapons, and then you had perks to specialize with certain weapon types, and then you had the "challenge" perks to specialize even further through committed use. There was a wonderful (even if flawed due to how the gameplay worked and how the skills functioned) root for a character system to build upon, much more comprehensive and varied than what is suggested to exist now and what gopher says is or might be if it works that way "better" than previously. He makes a good case for what he wants and some of the flaws of the current system, no doubt, but he ignores too much of what actually was, what could've been and what peoples actual concerns about this are.

No he wasn't being stupid.

He gives medicine as another example. Under the current system if you are 100 in science you are an effective Einstein at everything. His example was his character uses chems and is in effect a Chemist. That would not make him a great Physicist but despite that under the current system there is no difference. The Science speech check would cover all Science topics, it would also cover everything from making chems to being able to engineer a fusion reactor

Under a new system where perks are related to more specific skills you would have more diverse character builds because those perks would be specifically for a certain branch of Science, whether it were Chemistry, Biology or Physics. I am sure you can think of various in game application to all those skills, but the fact is that would force more specific builds as opposed to a one size fits all approach

This is all wild speculation and is likely not how the new system would work but if it did it would actually add more depth to the game not less. Skills as they are do not need to exist just because "RPG where is my skill tree"?

Another example could be repair.

So I am great at repairing and maintaining weaponry, more so ballistics weaponry as opposed to energy because they work completely differently skills would not as such pass across directly.

More to the point just because I can reassemble a gun that does not make me an expert at repairing robots. That is however how the current skill system works. One size fits all, jack of all trades, no specialization, dumb progression. The dumbed down system already exists.

What also exists are people too attached to an old system that is not fit for purpose or at least the purpose they seem to be defending it for i.e depth. That is actually laughable

What would improve this would be tiers of repair perks more tailored to specific things. Robots, ballistic guns, energy weapons, armor and clothing etc not just 'REPAIR'

I could myself literally take your car engine apart piece by piece and put it back together again in full working order. I could not however go up to a Satellite and work out what each part does and put it together or even indeed fix it.

Exactly what i was thinking:o

I did not vote because I don't care one way or the other.

Not fit for purpose? Come on... You could've done all the suggested with little tweaks in the previous system and its general functionality; and better since there was a much higher potential degree of actual character possibilities than there is now. What is actually laughable is not that people might like the new system better, but that they seemingly deliberately don't want to grasp what it removes and why.

But in any case, the dung has hit the fan and all there is to do is hope for the best.

Probably because it doesn't actually remove anything in terms of effective character development.

Much like the old TES game's problems with the STR attribute and melee damage, Fallout 3 and NV's weapon skills had a problem of not offering any real effective increase in weapon damage, except every 20 skill levels or so. So going from a 1-100 skill system, where only every 20 ranks mattered, to a 5 level perk or w/e, where each of the 5 perks offers the same increase as the 20 skill level increase did, doesn't remove any effective character development.

The counter argument is always something like "but they could have made more ranks important by adding a bonus weapon accuracy every 10 levels" or something like that. But those arguments ignore the fact that the 1-100 weapon skill was already somewhat balanced in how much accuracy you gained over those levels, not to mention if you got accuracy perks like commando, sniper, gunslinger, etc. etc, and adding even more accuracy bonuses on top of that just break any sort of balance the game has by giving you access to too much bonus accuracy. And even if it didn't, there would still be the 9 skill levels, between the every 10th skill level that offered bonus accuracy, that didn't offer any real effective character development, so why not just just make a 10 rank perk that does the same thing in that case?

OFC you could give skill levels more accuracy by removing things like +accuracy perks, or crippling them greatly, but then people would be complaining that those perks are now gone.useless so we lost "character possibilities" in that way.

The argument of "little tweaks" is nothing more then an assertion that there is some magical way the dev just aren't seeing, or a purposefully avoiding, to make them look lazy. However, all assertions of these magical "little tweaks" never get proven with actual math, or the logic behind them is flawed for reasoning such as the above example, and don't actually fix anything, just slightly lessen the problem.

This is a very interesting topic.

Today I can safely say that Barter is only a relevant skill in any way if money is an actual un-exploitable and limited resource in the game.

That still wouldn't make the act of bartering itself fun, but it would justify it's existence and make the choice to invest in Barter a reasonable and rewarding one. Also, Barter is different from Speech in that it gives the PC knowledge of trade and the economy.

But there's a noteworthy problem with Barter and that's specialization and progression. While many players would disagree, I would actually advocate that skills encompass several different fields of knowledge and/or ability. I'm happy that a Melee Weapon can be a Super Sledge or a Knive, two totally different pieces.

There's of course the possibility to regulate this by for example merging skills and perks to the point of common level of efficiency and effect on the game world. But that discussion's worth it's own topic. I'm sure there's still going to be a certain distinction in Bethesda's new system.

I don't want a knive skill, I don't want a seperate First Aid and Doctor skill, I don't want diversification. I want to make the choice of and investment into a skill to have immediate, noticeable consequence. I want clear specialization as in limited character-progession related resources, not in lack of reasonable choice. And yes, I want skills to overlap sometimes. You know, like all combat skills naturally do. Still, all skills need more uniqueness than sameness, except for one: Barter.

Barter can almost never yield unique consequences by definition. Barter has the inherent weakness in balance that it must allow to trade for goods that you could otherwise create (by using another skill) or find in the worldspace and thus save the money for the stuff you can only buy. With a balanced monetary system (no caps overload or easy exploits) the stage is set: There can only be so much room for unique rewards. Barter touches on a lot of other skills and has a broad range of effect. That's it's role.

Of course you could Barter your way through the final boss or Barter for unique items that nobody would ever sell to anyone (who wouldn't steal it/take it from their dead body, rendering the uniqueness almost moot) but you can get only so far without making it feel contrived.

You could also enhance Barter by making a lot - or even all - of the actual trade content in the game only accessible/in any way successfully approachable through investing in Barter. Maybe this would be a good option, but I sincerely doubt it.

I'm still convinced that Barter, although uninteresting on it's own, is a nice skill that should remain seperate (in whatever shape or form) from Speech. Both at least have a connection through Charisma, which is reasonable.

I seriously don't know how you can say that.

[censored] TES.

But this is ignoring that design is not set in stone. You cite the workings of the previous systems - the way they are balanced now, the specific workins of certain perks, and their relations and so on - as if they were somehow unalterable to serve a slightly different purpose and function through slightly different workings in the overall design. The way accuracy works and is balanced in Fallout 3 or New Vegas is not the only way it can be done, the perks they have are not the only ones that can be had, the 1-100 is not the only available scale for the skills. You know all this.

The point has never ever been to just slap a new system on top of an existing game and witness how it doesn't work with the rest of the pre-existing design. I've thought it comes without a question that if you change the system, the gameplay must change too to serve that system -- whether just slightly or drastically.

I think the problem here is that while you pose as a sharp guy, you somehow create this barrier that you can't get past on thinking about what could potentially be, and then expect some algorithms for some supposed "perfect" system that can not exist (and hence the "magical" that you've used before too -- and it's not about "what the devs are not seeing", but what they are intending; I don't pretend to know better than them about what they want, but I do know what I want; in this given context) completely designed here for you to examine. But you know what? If I was crazy enough to try and go through the trouble to sperg something up or able get a pro to do that for me, and I won't and am not, you'd dismiss it as just some random numbers that haven't been tested in practice, that can't be tested in practice before someone makes a game around them. And nobody will, so "you win" by default. We are not here to design this [censored] from the ground up. We are here discussing the broad strokes and potential that sometimes, and only sometimes, goes a bit deeper down.

Oh, and "lessening the problem" is already on the winning side. Some flaws are always to be expected and tolerated as long as the system works well enough for what it strives to achieve and as long as it serves the intended gameplay.

Well can you in detail explain what was the meaningful thing the old system provided and it's getting lost now ? Because I just see people saying it but not actually provide any actual argument for it.
What Gopher said was why the perk based system "can" potentially be better, he didn't say that's definitly the way it's going to be.
"All that could be done with little tweaks" is not a good argument btw, because those little tweaks come with all sorts of their own problems. Redundancy, cluttered progression etc

It provided a more finegrained charactersystem that doesn't rely on hard granularity like "perks only" does. You could have these skills represent a general knowledge of a give subject (like they do) and assemble the synergy between different skills and perks and stats. You could have lockpicking work as it does, but you could also have electric locks in the game (not terminal controlled, but just electrified) with whom you'd need the synergy between lockpick and science to pick open; you could have a perk that enables the creation of drugs, but whose creation relies on the combination science and medic skills; in New Vegas you already have strength and skill governing the general aptitude of weapons and perks on top of that to specialize in certain type, and further the "challenge" perks to specialize further. A system where the skills control the aptitudes and the perks and stats open up the possibilities for the skills to work their magic. That's just a few simple examples.

The short answer is that you have the full scales of the skills at your disposal, plus perks, plus attributes (plus the "challenges" in New Vegas) to create a multitude of different PC's, provided the design supports that, a multitude more than you have just with perks.

And then there's the actual feel of the game; that's not mechanical; that comes from the knowledge and ability to mold the PC in all those specific different ways, the considerations over the possibilities and combinations that come through the multi-tiered system, the molding of the specific role you wish; as opposed to just picking a couple of unlcoker perks every now and then (which is more prone to "gaming the system").

The broad strokes. If you can comprehend the stuff in the Gopher video, you should be able to grasp this too; at least the theory.

That, actually sounds like a brilliant [censored]in idea...

-Easy, math is math. A 1-100 system in which only 20, 40, 60, 80, 100 matter means you have 5 states of effectiveness. A perk system with 5 ranks, each of which do the same as the 20 ranks of the 1-100 system, means you have 5 ranks of effectiveness. 5=5, which means both are the same in terms of actual meaningful and effectual character development.

-What about the points made in relation to Fallout's system?

-Again, this amounts to nothing more then the same vague, unspecific, "BUT THERE'S A WAY!" arguments I already mentioned.
And I clearly detailed other ways of doing it such as removing perks, or offering extra bonuses after X amount of levels, and the like which are different from how the game world already, and both don't fix the problem.
Also, you are right in that a 1-100scale is not the only scale on can do skill at, 1-5 works also, and that's what this is, a 1-5 skill, where, instead of skill points, you use perk points to raise it. Its literally the exact same thing mechanically.

-I dont expect a perfect solution, I expect the most optimal one.
And your right, we cant test these things, as we can't make games with said systems implemented ourselves. However, that does not mean we cannot discuses hypothetical solutions using numbers to help prove the soundness of our hypothetical systems. I wouldn't expect anyone to actually make a game and test it to prove it, that's unreasonable.

No. Merging and cutting=Dumbing down.

Nor do I care what some nobody on Youtube says.

we also saw none finalized gameplay and until the devs themselves say they aren't in I'm not going to jump on the bandwagon everyone has set themselves on (which is assuming they aren't in just because we didn't see them ,the same bandwagon people that said you couldn't play a female cause they didn't show one in the teaser trailer.)

No way. I wish Fallout was more like the old games actually, with more skills that were really specific. Fallout has already merged a bunch of skills (e.g. First Aid and Doctor into Medicine, getting rid of Big Guns), so we don't need any more IMO.

Not the same thing.

I may be able to talk someone into lowering prices. Maybe I have been around, and know the going rate of the goods offered, and can formulate what I deem a fair price and let the vendor know I am onto any inflated prices. Maybe I plan to buy bulk, if I can get a discount, giving the vendor a large, instantaneous sum of money, even if it is slightly less than if it took 3 weeks to sell.
Maybe I know the mercantile business, because I grew up in a trade hub. Maybe I'm a numbers guy.


None of these types of things has anything to do with the ability to inspire people through a well crafted, eloquent speech. Nor does it have anything to do with recognizing the subtleties in the words someone else is saying, in order to reply to them in a way that resonates with them and earns their favor. Or the ability to use inflection, volume and tone to illicit the desired emotional response from your audience. To read your audience.

These are completely different things.

Why don't you actually take the point I made in my previous post about the 'repair' skill and explain to me then how the current system is smart and why the system suggested is dumb rather than just your blank refusal to engage in conversation detailing 'why' you hold that opinion

With that logic, we should combine all guns, energy weapons, explosives, and melee weapons into some sort of weapon skill/perk, since they all are designed to kill.

It's like with science. It makes no sense that being 100 in science makes you good at both making chemicals and hacking terminals. As with science, speech is a broad category with many different aspects that are too dissimilar to mold into one form. Just because I can convince someone to avoid killing a person, it does not make me an expert at getting low prices in shops. Especially considering that barter requires some knowledge in economy and product value, which are things that I don't necessarily need when convincing someone to not go on a murder spree.

in new vegas, guns skill didn't have much affect on damage, it DID however have an affect on accuracy, gun sway, etc. And EVERY point counted. Not just in increments of 20, or 25. Not sure where that misconception came from, look at the equations. it's right there in black and white.

Also, sure, science is a 'generic' skill..... but then, it's a game. How many different skills do you want to see? Hundreds? thousands? repairing weapons, vs. repairing robots, vs. repairing energy weapons, vs. repairing vehicles, vs repairing elevators, vs, repairing radios, ad infinitum. And that just ONE 'combined' skill......

Barter, and speechcraft should indeed be separate skills as well... after all politicians are great at speechcraft, maybe not so great at barter. (they don't have to be, they usually aren't spending their own money in any event.)