Redvenge said:
Level gating in a single player game, in an open world sandbox, is lazy game design. There is no excuse for it.
You feel like qualifying that statement? It seems a profoundly broad and specific rule. Why is level gating in a single player game an inherently bad mechanic?
You can increase your Guns skill and get a Perk to raise your Agility by 1 in the old system. Now, you can do one or the other. The old system also had skill books for permanent increases to Skills and skill magazines, chems and outfits for temporary increases to Skills. This adds flexibility because you could do small increases to several skills and use temporary increases to even things out.
So you're issue with the new system is that you can't max out your Guns skill QUICKER? Because that's all that compounding a SPECIAL increase and a skill increase will do. You can still increase your SPECIAL stats when you level up, and like I said, you get twice as many perks now as you used to, so it's not as thought you can do so less often. Basically everything else you mentioned still exists; armor can still increase stats, skillbooks now give you unique perks, and chems didn't go anywhere.
Seems to me that the only real difference is that you can't make as many alterations to your character at the same time. This doesn't strike me as a significant change, certainly not a decrease in build variety.
The perks I mentioned were never in any other Fallout game. I'm glad they finally got rid of Here and Now (that turd has been here since FO1). There were no "mind control" perks, no mod perks, no "automatic weapons" perks. Bethesda needed 70 perks to fill out a chart. They did the exact opposite of streamlining in order to fill it out.
Daddy's Boy/Girl: +5 Medicine and Science
Gun Nut: +5 Small Guns and Repair
Little Leaguer: +5 Melee Weapons and Explosives
Thief: +5 Lockpick and Sneak
Scoundrel: +5 Speech and Barter
Size Matters: +15 Big Guns
All of these Perks have the same function as skill points; they are the very definition of filler. A significant portion of the more unique perks haven't gone anywhere.
Swift Learner's EXP boost is now the base function of Intelligence;
Intense Training is no longer a perk, just a basic function of leveling up;
Iron Fist is now just one of several perks that stand in for skills;
Bloody Mess is more or less unchanged;
Lead Belly has been expanded;
Toughness is more or less unchanged;
Fortune Finder is more or less unchanged;
Gunslinger and Commando's functions are now covered under the Perception stat;
Demolition Expert has been expanded upon;
Action Boy/Girl now has 2 ranks;
And so on, and so on.
There are some exceptions; Child at Heart no longer exists, and Lady Killer/Black Widow no longer have any unique dialogue. I don't think the new system is by any means brilliant, but I don't see how you can logically argue that it's somehow more limiting than the old system. Bethesda are not known for their skill in mechanical depth anyways.