Fallout 4 Eliminates Skills From Character System

[Aetrion]

All the people in this thread who are like "They removed a system therefore it's dumbed down" honestly just seem like they just want to ***** about something.

Never mind the fact that we're going from a crafting system that only comprised maybe a dozen specialty items, and a maintenance system where all you could do was combine two equal items to a system where you can build custom weapons and break any object down into base components to build new things with.

Never mind the fact that we're going from a housing system where you got a choice of two living spaces with four or five visual themes to choose from to a system where we can build entire towns from scratch and establish a trade network between them.

Never mind the fact that none of the bonuses that skills used to give are actually gone from the game, they have just been rolled into a perk system that's a dozen times more complex than the old one.

Never mind that the game is giving us myriads more combat abilities like jetpacks for power armor, calling in air support, scaring off opponents so we don't even need to fight them, or hitting enemies with your rifle.

Never mind that the game has a context sensitive companion system that lets you make your companions do practically everything you can do yourself with ease.



Never mind all that. One single thing that wasn't even game defining in a positive way was removed and therefore the game is now dumber than the old one.

Pretty much every single system is more complex than it was in FO3, and people are bitching because some of the bonuses to your character were changed from skills to perks so it's all in the same screen. Wow, yea, what a huge step back that is.

 

[Benpasko]

Everything I've seen about Fallout 4 so far has just deflated my hype. I'm still gonna play it, since New Vegas and 3 are some of my favorite games of all time, but fuck. I hated Skyrim.

 

[Wuvlycuddles]

There's no two ways about it, it's about dumbing down the game for the mainstream.
The less choice you give people, the worse it is, it's that simple.

Looks to me that it's about giving the player better choice and an easier time of planning ahead. But screw Bethesda for wanting more people to enjoy their game, am I right?

 

[Kahani]

I like it. The trouble with skills in Fallout 3/NV is that they were largely an illusion. Most skills worked on skill checks with discrete steps, so that there was no difference between having your speech skill at 50 or at 74 - if you didn't have enough points to reach the next cut-off, you might as well not have added any at all. Weapon skills were more continuous but amounted to little more than small incremental improvements to damage which isn't exactly interesting, and for the most part it was a system with a limited number of discrete picks pretending to give you more choice. Having you choose from actual discrete picks isn't much of a change in practice, it just makes it much more clear that that's what you're doing.

The other problem is that it was too easy to max out your skill in whatever you wanted, with your SPECIAL attributes being largely irrelevant (although they were important in other ways). Someone with low charisma and intelligence really shouldn't be able to pass every speech check in the game. Tying skill improvements to your actual attributes makes the customisation and roleplaying much more sensible, since your genius hacker will actually need to be a genius first. It also makes choices much more meaningful; if every character has the potential to do everything, there's not much point in making any choices at the start since they won't change the gameplay or outcome. It's the difference between "this character can't open this lock, so I'll come back later when I can" and "this character can't open this lock, and will never be able to because I'm not playing the role of a sneaky thief". Choice and roleplaying means choosing to do some things and not others, it doesn't mean simply doing everything in a different order.

That's partly why the whining about it "not being an RPG" really doesn't make a lot of sense at all. RPG does not mean "must include lots of ultimately meaningless skill sliders", it means that you play a role. Forcing you to make actual choices about what your character will be able to do results in you playing a specific role much more than allowing everyone to do everything no matter what. It's exactly the same problem WoW had and has tried to fix - you used to have big talent trees that looked like they should allow lots of customisation, but in reality were just three or so options disguised with lots of extra clicking when you levelled up. The new system allows the same amount of choice, it just doesn't pretend to be giving you more choice than there actually is. That's exactly what this new Fallout system looks like - you still have just as much room for customisation and roleplaying as before, possibly even more, it just doesn't try to pretend there's more than there is by hiding limited discrete choices behind continuous sliders.

It's confirmed you're playing as one of the parents. I mean Fallout 3 was bad enough by giving you a childhood and a father, but now you have a spouse and a child. Coupled with the voice acting It doesn't feel like my character, it feels like Bethesda's.

Have to say I'm even more confused by people complaining about this. In Fallout 1, you played a specific person with a specific background, a specific task and a specific story to follow. You could change your name, appearance and skills, but that was it. In Fallout 2, you played a specific person with a specific background, a specific task and a specific story to follow. You could change your name, appearance and skills, but that was it. In Fallout 3, you played a specific person with a specific background, a specific task and a specific story to follow. You could change your name, appearance and skills, but that was it. In Fallout New Vegas, you played a specific person with a specific background, a specific task and a specific story to follow. You could change your name, appearance and skills, but that was it. In Fallout 4, you will play a specific person with a specific background, a specific task and a specific story to follow. You can change your name, appearance and skills, but that's it. But for some reason the fifth time around everyone gets all upset because it's "not their character".

And of course, we can always look at some of the classic RPGs to see how a real RPG does it instead of Fallout which apparently isn't one any more. In Baldur's Gate, you are a specific person with a specific background, raised in a specific place by specific people with specific companions, then sent out with a specific task and story to follow. You can change your name, appearance and skills, but that's it. Neverwinter Nights 2? Same. Knights of the Old Republic? Same. Dragon Age? You pick one of six different backgrounds. Dragon Age 2? You choose nothing except class. Mass Effect? A couple of choices for background and class. In Planescape: Torment, you are a specific person with a specific background, and you can't change your name, appearance, or anything else. Also you have a voice. In fact, the only one of the Infinity Engine-style games in which you can choose everything about your characters is Icewind Dale, notable for being the game that focussed almost entirely on combat and hardly at all on actual roleplaying. But for some reason it's bad when Fallout 4 does exactly the same as some of the best RPGs ever made, including every previous game in the series.

 

[IceStar100]

I though about this and I'm in the for it group. Part of the reason I liked skyrim was the just play the game mode. Want to be better with sword and shield. Use a sword and shield. I know that you could do that on morrowind but I always felt like I was missing out if I didn't grind. Even in oblivion I did it. The first hour was spent grinding before I played the game. Make me unlearn grinding and just play. Still I can see the other camps complaint. Now everyone is a god and not one is a snowflake.

 

[kenu12345]

I think we need to to just wait until we fully understand how this works and such before making claims.

Streamlining stuff doesn't necessarily mean dumbing it down, it depends how it's done. A game having lots of stat things in it doesn't always make it smarter either, it can make a game clunky and bog it down unnecessarily.

I'm just going to wait and see.

a voiced protagonist and a set character backstory. I knew this game would be a piece of shit.

Voiced can be okay, if done right. Apparently they are working their butts off on the voice stuff.

We have a set back story? No more than Fallout 3 I would assume, I'm guessing we're the kid of the parents seen at the start of the game and we just get to choose what they look like and name etc based on the parent we customize. Unless this has been confirmed and I don't know it?

Here's what Youtuber and modder Gopher had to say on the subject a couple months ago. I'm in agreement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOOz_fHHt0o

Basically, skills aren't very nuanced and removing them doesn't dumb down the game since the current system is pretty dumb to begin with. For instance, a person who has never used a mini-gun but maxed out their Guns skill for their rifles and pistols will be a mini-gun god upon picking one up for the first time.

Just want to say, I just watched this and I agree with him, I think it could be more nuanced.

They already said that they only have two voice actors, one for each gender so yeah I wouldn't hold out hope there. Plus this is Bethesda we are talking about

 

[Hagi]

Can't say I see this as a bad thing. And I completely disagree that it's dumbing down the game.

I'm sorry, but skills as they were in FO3 and FNV weren't some deep and meaningful system with endless player choice. It was about as simple and basic as a skill system could possibly be. No loss there.

Doesn't mean this new system is automatically good but at least it'll have the potential to be. If they limit the amount of perks you can get and make each sufficiently unique and impactful it'll be a great improvement.

I'd much rather have a small number of actually meaningful perks than a huge number of essentially meaningless stat-points.

 

[Lightknight]

I mean, I liked the previous style too but this mechanic looks just as usable. So I can't really formulate any complaints since its advantages or disadvantages aren't immediately apparent.

I hope it's good but at this time I just trust these guys to get the mechanics right and likely leave some game crippling bugs in the game to start that eventually get patched by them or the community.

 

[happyninja42]

I liked being able to tailor each individual skill. I liked being able to max out Science, Lockpicking and Speech early on. This method , to me, seems like a mechanic to get people to keep going back and forth between locations. Can't unlock this safe? Go over here and do a side quest!

I think the problem was that by the end, everyone had so many skill points that you had almost everything at 100, and there wasn't really any challenge for the character. They didn't make themselves unique in any way. This way, without the skills, you can only progress based on the range of perks you pick, which will make you have to play to the style you tailored. I like it personally, as perks were basically an afterthought to me, since the true factor of success/failure for most things were your skill points.

 

[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.

 

[Souplex]

On one hand... this is a radical departure from the series.

On the other... maybe now High INT+AGI, Decent Luck, Dump STR, END, and CHA characters will not be best anymore.

?
High end/int/per medium strength/charisma abysmal agility/luck characters are the best.

 

[Conrad Zimmerman]

When I think about all the time I've spent hemming and hawing over how to split up eighteen points across five skills, something with a little less busywork can sound appealing.

[silently boils inside]

Meaningful decision-making, the cornerstone of any computer RPG. Is a bad thing.

I want to go kick something.

Meaningful decision making is great, but all too often applying points to a chart feels pretty meaningless. But, then, I also think statistical busywork in tabletop RPGs is usually a waste of time too.

 

[Dalsyne]

When I think about all the time I've spent hemming and hawing over how to split up eighteen points across five skills, something with a little less busywork can sound appealing.

[silently boils inside]

Meaningful decision-making, the cornerstone of any computer RPG. Is a bad thing.

I want to go kick something.

Meaningful decision making is great, but all too often applying points to a chart feels pretty meaningless. But, then, I also think statistical busywork in tabletop RPGs is usually a waste of time too.

I was always a fan of more game complexity, not less - especially considering Fallout 2 was my favorite game for a long while, seeing one of the crucial elements of the game stripped away in favor of a World of Warcraft type of system is especially depressing.

Almost makes me want to wish we lived in an alternate universe where Interplay didn't sell the Fallout rights to Bethesda and instead kept them and used them for a Kickstarter a la Pillars of Eternity, making Fallout 3 a glorious isometric CRPG like in the old days.

No, Wasteland 2 isn't as good.

 

[pookie101]

im wary but am curious to see how this fps with rpg elements will turn out

 

[Conrad Zimmerman]

I was always a fan of more game complexity, not less - especially considering Fallout 2 was my favorite game for a long while, seeing one of the crucial elements of the game stripped away in favor of a World of Warcraft type of system is especially depressing.

Almost makes me want to wish we lived in an alternate universe where Interplay didn't sell the Fallout rights to Bethesda and instead kept them and used them for a Kickstarter a la Pillars of Eternity, making Fallout 3 a glorious isometric CRPG like in the old days.

No, Wasteland 2 isn't as good.

I definitely used to be more interested in more complex systems. Fallout 2 was one of my favorites for a long time also, and I can still play it, but it's a lot harder to find the motivation to do so due to the pace and length of time a game can take. Over time, as my commitments and responsibilities have grown, picking apart a complex (or worse, convoluted) statistical system has become significantly less appealing to me, which is probably why most of the gaming I do for my own entertainment consists primarily of arcade-style action games these days.

 

[Quellist]

Just like Mass Effect from 1-3 It's turning from an RPG with shooter elements into a shooter with RPG elements.

This argument is a huge bug-bear of mine: the skill system on the original Mass Effect made no damn sense because it assumes you're Cpl. Newbie and not, as the intro actually articulates an already skilled and reasonably famous special operations soldier. Not being able to aim down a gun sight because you haven't spent skill points in that game was bloody stupid. This is not to say gutting it like they did for ME2 was sensible, especially the weapon modification - oh how I missed that - but fabricating better parts makes a hell of a lot more sense.

Just don't mention the "Guns with limited ammo are superior to guns with unlimited ammo 'improvement'"

 

[Headsprouter]

Well, you know what? GOOD.

By max level my characters were almost always masters of nearly everything anyway (which is why my latest characters have always had low intellect). The only definition they was had was through their S.P.E.C.I.A.L. (if I hadn't gotten almost perfect/no weakness) and perks.

So yes, make everything about perks and special. And limit my choices to a reasonable extent.

 

[kenu12345]

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

 

[elvor0]

I wish they labeled the perks because I have no idea why guns are important to Strength.

I also wonder if they removed the ability to get them all up to 10 like in Fallout 3.

Some guns are very heavy. A shotgun requires a certain degree of strength or you'll break your shoulder.

OT: Well I don't actually mind this. A good few of them didn't translate very well to FPS style gameplay at ALL, especially guns. If I aim at something and shoot it dead on with a shot I know should hit, I don't want to see my bullet veer off because I failed my shoot roll, nor do I want to see homing bullets when I missed. It's great and fine in FO1 and 2, because they're based on board game rules and you're not actually shooting.

 

[Something Amyss]

Welp, Fallout has now officially lost its RPG status. How great it is!

Like "RPG" has been so specific and defined up until now.