Fallout 4 Eliminates Skills From Character System

[Grampy_bone]

Kinda odd how with Skyrim they ditch stats, but with Fallout they ditch skills and make everything based on stats. I'm fine with this though, as long as there are diverse vectors for character improvement I'm not adverse to altering the individual mechanics.

Fun fact: Intelligence was an essential part of communication in the original Fallouts. Making it your dump stat would result in hilarious interactions with other people.

Oh man... I just imagined a voice acted low intelligence character. All my yes!

IIRC, Fallout 1 this didn't matter, but in Fallout 2 it was gloriously implemented. Not only was a 1 INT character barely able to speak, but people treated you entirely differently.

The village elder, to a normal character "You must venture out, find Vic, find Vault 13, save us all, Chosen One!"

Make that INT 1 and... "FIND VAULT 13! FIND VAULT 13! FIND VAULT 13! FIND VAULT 13!"

As well as people in Arroyo going "You're the chosen one? Oh god..."

As a long time fan of the franchise though I'm of course a little put off with the change, but interested to see it applied. The Elder Scrolls way of leveling up skills always made more sense to me (it improves with use, not because you put points into it.)

Hands down, the best thing about playing a low-int character was talking to Torr, the simpleton in Klamath. Normally he's a dumb, unintelligible brute, but speak to him as a low-int character and his grunts become Shakespeare. Hilarious.

 

[AgedGrunt]

Fallout 4's perk system appears to lack the nuance that the skill point based system had.

With lockpick and science, the hard targets (25/50/75/100) made nuance pointless (and forcing is a lock-out risk I never took, it's also pointless when you can just keep resetting; if you fail the force you're either save scumming or walking away), but outside of that I can agree. Even so I don't think many people will miss subtle differences.

Sure, up until this point it was far too easy to become an master at just about everything with enough skill points, levels, and books but that's simply the result of the developers being far too generous with skill points than they should be and thus easily fixable.

Fewer skill points would fix the late game problem but would starve characters in early and mid game. Grinding levels just to get some decent skills doesn't sound like fun. I like the sound of a wholesome perk system that gives me tons of choices without complication and sacrifice.

I'm just glad they aren't going with a use equals skill increases equals levels as the Elder Scrolls uses.

A use system would be welcome, minus the leveling part, for accuracy and making you efficient with everything. Enough time with a revolver should make you the fastest gun in the wasteland, but you should still have to learn the finer points of rifle shooting.

Fun fact: Intelligence was an essential part of communication in the original Fallouts. Making it your dump stat would result in hilarious interactions with other people.

That's how it should be. I think SPECIAL should change function and interaction with the world while perks are for specialization and abilities.

 

[otakon17]

Also is no one going to bring up that this game has less perks due to this system? I really ain't confident for the amount of fun perks in this game. I always loved the skill system and it was especially awesome in New Vegas since it made it possible to make any sort of build

It has 1 perk per point of SPECIAL, that's 70 unique perks(not counting ranking up, we don't know if that adds new dimensions to each perk yet). That...doesn't seem like less to be honest. And there's always expansions to add more perks.

New Vegas had 87 perks not including follower perks,challenge perks, or dlc perks and they all had an additional effect. Without skills, most of these 70 are probably variations of more damage. I would also like to point out to everyone while it was possible to min max in previous games, its actually easier here since leveling is infinite and its all perk/special based now

And how many of those Perks only just boosted Skill point gain or Skills? Remove those and I bet the number dwindles down a lot. Them merging Skills and Perks together is not necessarily gonna be a bad thing, only another month or so, so let's give'em a shot.

 

[Vicarious Reality]

Why do you look like my dad...

Basing combat efficiency in this kind of FPS game on skills is rather stupid to begin with

 

[Something Amyss]

This change is shite, fellow escapists.

I still maintain that it's too soon to know that. However, whether the change is shite or not has nothing to do with whether it's an RPG or not. This sounds more like a "they changed it, now it sucks" argument than whether or not it is an RPG. Which is fine, thought I personally find it needlessly reactionary. Just don't dress it up as "this isn't an RPG."

As Jon from Many A True Nerd put it, in his list of things he wanted to see in FO 4, I want to be bad at things. I don't want to be able to do everything in the game, because then I don't have to actually try and think my way through the problem.

I can get behind the concept. I just question whether it will happen.

 

[WonkyWarmaiden]

How about the doomsayers in this thread actually wait to see more info on the system before you guys actually judge it? I get being wary but I don't think judging something without seeing an in depth example is a good idea.

I am seeing the info right now and I am not liking it. I hate this sort of argument. Its not productive at all.

Yes, because immediately hating on a game because it has a few new features is super productive.

I'm just saying that people shouldn't judge Fallout 4 before they actually play it themselves and see how the system fully works in the game.

 

[immortalfrieza]

With lockpick and science, the hard targets (25/50/75/100) made nuance pointless (and forcing is a lock-out risk I never took, it's also pointless when you can just keep resetting; if you fail the force you're either save scumming or walking away), but outside of that I can agree. Even so I don't think many people will miss subtle differences.

I don't think many people will miss the subtle differences either, especially since so many people are ignorant that those subtle differences even exist, however I know those differences were there and unless this new leveling system somehow mimics that I know I will definitely miss them.

Fewer skill points would fix the late game problem but would starve characters in early and mid game. Grinding levels just to get some decent skills doesn't sound like fun. I like the sound of a wholesome perk system that gives me tons of choices without complication and sacrifice.

The perk system will have a lot of complication and sacrifice. You'll have to take one perk or one level of a perk every single level and forgo any that you don't currently have the SPECIAL stat points for, sometimes forgoing perks just to raise a SPECIAL stat for later. All this means is you'll have a ton of choices many of which you'll have to give up until you level up an excessive number of times.

BTW, the answer to that "starving for skill points" issue is to increase the number of skill points given at lower levels and significantly decrease them at higher levels as the player gets used to the game more and more and thus can compensate for skills in other ways like better equipment, this would also deal with DLC unlocked levels eventually coming into play.

A use system would be welcome, minus the leveling part, for accuracy and making you efficient with everything. Enough time with a revolver should make you the fastest gun in the wasteland, but you should still have to learn the finer points of rifle shooting.

I greatly enjoy a EXP leveling system as simply killing multiple enemies and completing quests getting EXP for it, leveling up and assigning skill points to improve my ability to shoot, I have to actually play the game to get good at it. I have a massive problem with a usage system because with that I could do some simple exploit like take a 9mm pistol, find a Super Mutant Behemoth, get to a spot out of it's reach and shoot a Super Mutant Behemoth a thousand times to max out my guns skill, and then go find say a molerat and just stand there letting a it chew on me for a few hours healing every couple seconds to max out my medicine skill, and so on. A usage system sounds more realistic in theory but not in practice, at least the way Bethesda has used it so far.It's tedious, boring, doesn't make the player actually have to DO anything to get good at anything, and makes the rest of the game much worse as a result. What's worse is that the usage system punishes the player for not using these sorts of exploits because otherwise you'll suck at pretty much everything you try to do for a very long time, especially at earlier levels and with the earlier Elder Scrolls games. I always looked for and used exp leveling mods for Elder Scrolls games precisely for this reason and just how much it improves the games is ridiculous, the difference is night and day and Fallout starts out just that much better. The more I can just sit back, relax, and just play a game and the less I have to worry about what skills my character is using and just use them whenever I want or need to the better.

This is why I can live with the perk system despite the potential caveats, I don't have to constantly worry about what I'm doing, I can just DO things and let playing the game progress naturally as a result.

 

[kenu12345]

How about the doomsayers in this thread actually wait to see more info on the system before you guys actually judge it? I get being wary but I don't think judging something without seeing an in depth example is a good idea.

I am seeing the info right now and I am not liking it. I hate this sort of argument. Its not productive at all.

Yes, because immediately hating on a game because it has a few new features is super productive.

I'm just saying that people shouldn't judge Fallout 4 before they actually play it themselves and see how the system fully works in the game.

This is not new features, this is re doing the system that I like about the game

 

[Rastrelly]

This change is shite, fellow escapists.

I still maintain that it's too soon to know that. However, whether the change is shite or not has nothing to do with whether it's an RPG or not. This sounds more like a "they changed it, now it sucks" argument than whether or not it is an RPG. Which is fine, thought I personally find it needlessly reactionary. Just don't dress it up as "this isn't an RPG."

Heh, I don't base my 'not-an-RPG' statement on the fact of skill removal; on the contrary, I thinks skill removal is kind of cementation of that fact. Fallout 3 could barely scratch the bottom of RPG definition; it had basically zero roleplaying value with options boiling don to "Gimme moneh!!!1111" / "Naaaah, keep yer moneh" or "Blow da bomb!!!!111" / "Disarm da bomb". It's not roleplaying. These chioces can be present in RPG, but they don't make an RPG. Fallout 3 mechanics do not support actual roleplaying unless you crank the difficulty to absurdly low level (thus eliminating all the remains of challenge) and then stop using anything but 3 or 4 skills you've chosen. You cannot BUILD a character, you always gaet an allmighty Thor who, for some reason, gets worse and worse at actually killing enemies. The rest of ckills - not combat-oriented - are, in fact, useless, due to nature of this game; you do not need speech, you do not need barter. You can basically choose go all HP or go all sneak in the beginning with getting both ways fully operational at level 15+-.

New Vegas partially fixed it with much more skill checks in dialogs, highly raising the role of dialogs in gameplay, building all quests around pacifist solutions and so on (I don't remember a single quest in NV that would demand you to kill someone except, I think, that mission with Fiend leaders). While this solution works only partially, it actually makes NV a proper RPG with some serious flaws.

But now, getting to Fallout 4, you can see the same process one could observe with Skyrim - throwing away essential mechanics in favor of 'simplicity and focus on main stuff', which more or less means NO ROLEPLAYING FOCUS. You can try to roleplay if you want in Skyrim - but this way you can do even in Quake, and this doesn't make Quake a proper RPG. Proper RPG enforces roleplaying, it makes playing certain role a better option then not playing one. Fallout 3 failed at that department, Skyrim failed at that department, and, I am sure, Fallout 4 will fail at that department, because the path Bethesda has chosen for their games is pretty much obvious.

And the worst part - even mods won't be able to fix that.

 

[croc3629]

The system needs to have more than one perk per level of SPECIAL stat to encourage differences even among those with similarly built characters, and to make it much harder to go for a master of all build.

Also, the perks themselves need to be real game changers. Not just number modifiers. Stuff that really changes the way your character interacts with the world.

The issue here is not the skills, but keeping what the skills represented in this format. Tying it to SPECIAL is something I'm willing to try, but flawed if the perks themselves are lackluster.

I would also have wished that there was a level limit in this game as well, combined with a doubling of the perk numbers. That would help to further ensure players really thoughht about their perk choice while leveling up.

Still, won't matter if the game is mechanically sound if the body has no soul. That's what I'm really waiting for. If at least a low intelligence character doesn't get special dialogue, then I have no idea what the hell all those recorded lines were for.

Why in the hell did Fallout of all games need a voiced protagonist? Why is it so important these days? Who is going to care? That is something I could rant about for ages and is potentially far more damaging to the experience. This though? This could have some potential, if the perks are not braindead.

 

[IceForce]

Well at least we're moving back to the old kind of shitstorms.

Already we're seeing the good old "No True Scotsman" fallacy being trotted out in terms of what constitutes an RPG and a genre being declared dead because of changes because apparently the old ways were always better.

I don't even understand why it's even an argument. Okay, so, the game is now a different genre I guess? And that's a bad thing, how?

Have our complaints really gotten so base that we're now complaining that we can't pigeonhole a particular video game? I just don't get it.

 

[Rastrelly]

Well at least we're moving back to the old kind of shitstorms.

Already we're seeing the good old "No True Scotsman" fallacy being trotted out in terms of what constitutes an RPG and a genre being declared dead because of changes because apparently the old ways were always better.

I don't even understand why it's even an argument. Okay, so, the game is now a different genre I guess? And that's a bad thing, how?

Have our complaints really gotten so base that we're now complaining that we can't pigeonhole a particular video game? I just don't get it.

Need for Speed is a racer. Doom is a shooter. Fallout is an RPG. Want make it a different genre? Release a spinoff.

 

[EternallyBored]

The perks were always better game changers than the skills from 3 onwards. Skills in 3 were either incremental improvements that were often only noticeable in increased VATS hit chances or more HP healed, handy but often times I could barely tell what was being improved and by how much. It didn't help that the skills system heavily rewarded and favored INT heavy builds

Others were just hardline increases at 25 point intervals which sometimes left you with the absolutely shitty situation where you dump all your points into lockpicking or science and fall just short of the 25 point threshold, meaning your level up was basically just setting yourself up with 0 improvements until the next level up, and if you didn't get a perk that level then the entire level up screen was basically pointless except to increase a separate meter in anticipation for the level after that one where you actually get something useful.

Skills in 3 and NV were mostly worthless nonsense, and they either needed extensive changes or to be part of a new system, they just don't work outside of a turn-based system where everything can be calculated in percentages. Whether this new system is the improvement the Fallout leveling system has desperately needed since 3, or an even worse alternative, remains to be seen.

I am a bit confused by people talking about Skyrim's leveling system being shit and using the fact that leveling mods quickly came out to fix some people's perceived problems with the system as some sort of proof of this. That's been true of every Elder Scrolls game since Morrowind, there have always been people who have wanted to change the way the leveling works, people hated the Morrowind system, then the Oblivion system, then the Skyrim system, different people, different complaints, but leveling system changes have always been some of the first mods to hit after a Bethesda game launches, only UI fixes come out faster.

I remember some of the first mods out for Morrowind were to fix those fucking stupid attribute multipliers you got on level up which could cripple your attributes if you didn't plan the skills you improved on your way to the next level. It resulted in seriously dumb situations like getting lower multipliers because athletics got leveled up one too many times while trying to improve your magic, or jumping a couple times and having your acrobatics skill increasing fuck up getting the strength multiplier you wanted. The Skyrim system has problems, but at least I didn't have to purposely avoid leveling up skills in order to increase my stats efficiently, especially acrobatics and athletics which always messed up the multipliers just by walking around or jumping too much.

 

[Auron225]

For now, the only thing I can anticipate is agonizing even longer at the beginning over how to spend my SPECIAL points, in exchange for the occasional "Hmm, how to split up my 18 points this time?"

I may try & decide (based on what perks are available within each attribute) how to build my character before I ever get the game.

 

[GladiatorUA]

This might work, it also might not.

As long as they don't Skyrimize it, it should be fine. Skyrim perks sucked so very hard. Fallout3/NV Perk system was much better. On the other hand, now some perks are hidden behind other perks which would definitely suck for some builds.

I just Hope they don't remove the option of reading magazines and chemming up for certain dialogue options.

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

Well at least we're moving back to the old kind of shitstorms.

Already we're seeing the good old "No True Scotsman" fallacy being trotted out in terms of what constitutes an RPG and a genre being declared dead because of changes because apparently the old ways were always better.

I feel like people put too much into certain systems.

That old Rush lyric, "Changes aren't permanent, but change is" is a hell of a thing ain't it?

OT: I'm amused, once again, by all of the pre-emptive doom saying and moaning about a game no one has even played yet. We can all do the same whining about how the game is so different from what it has been; but, until the day when we can actually play the game, I give no shits about about the game and other people's opinion about it one way or the other. After all, there's still the chance the game can be changed down the road.

...and then, obviously, the chance for more bitching at that, too.

 

[PapaGreg096]

I don't see the dumbing down, what was the concept of putting a ton of numbers into a category was considered smart.

 

[tacotrainwreck]

It's times like this where I'm glad I didn't jump on the pre-order bandwagon. I'll be waiting for it to actually release so I can weigh all the changes before I decide to probably not buy it.

 

[Zen Bard]

So Skyrim removed abilities and classes and added a perk system based on leveled skills. Fallout 4 will remove the skills system and retool the perks to be based on leveled abilities.

Hmmmm...

Could work. Or it could be a complete disaster.

As long as there are no repetitive fetch quests involving dungeon...er...vault...crawls and draugr...I mean...ghouls, I'll wait and give it a try.