Fallout 4

NO ITS NOT! If the game REQUIRES you to take a Perk on level up ITS NOT A CHOICE. Key difference there as every Fallout game in Bethesda's era requires you take your perk on level up. It doesn't matter if you DON'T want to be Uber Master Wastelander Race. You will HAVE to be one mechanically.

You keep focusing on Lockpicking as just being thresholds as an example when I've already pointed out even 5 points into the skill resulted in an increase in passing already unlocked thresholds on locks. But now that's gonna be a perk instead of a passive bonus. And I remember those perks in Skyrim. People considered them a waste of a perk. So they've actually REMOVED a bonus with this system. Those "filler" skill points weren't filer. I've said that repeatedly and you say I'm wrong. You say its choice and I point out that its forgotten what these choices were.

Your SPECIAL is supposed is no different than your ability scores in D&D. You claim to be a GM, what if you cut out the skills in that game and just make it the ability scores, which can be leveled up. You've claimed its a false equivalency but ITS NOT. While it can't mimic exactly the same functions due to the limitations of a computer, it IS designed to emulate that. That's the reason you had SPECIAL/Skills/Perks as a unified system until now. Now they've yanked it out and its a table with two legs instead of three. The skills in Fallout were supposed to be filling that role and if you truly believe that this simplified system is BETTER at that, go ahead and use it in your campaign you claim to be running. This system wasn't complex for the sake of being complex. It was complex because its supposed to be emulating a Pen and Paper RPG campaign.

So far, other people have chimed in and said that the existing skill system worked and that they liked it. And your response to all of them is that because this is simpler and removes "meaningless" levels. And when we tell you they're not meaningless you stick your fingers in your ears and go "la-la-la you're wrong, they were meaningless." I've wasted way too much energy on this. I still think you are very very wrong on this regard, but I'm not creating another fight in this thread.

I mean mods to make the game harder are fairly common and it would be trivial to decrease the amount of XP gained (I think. I'm not a modder) so leveling is slower.

The only issue I have with the system is tying tiers of the tree to levels could lead to the skyrim problem of hoarding perk points for later. Until dragonborn I generally had one of two points sitting around waiting to hit lvl 90 blacksmithing or w/e as there were these big gaps in useful perks vs levels gained. I get that's a balancing factor for people getting 10 SPECIAL outta the gate but its a shitty way to go about it.

is embedding still broken? Let's find out! The Intelligence video is out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

edited 7th Oct '15 7:45:31 AM by thatguythere47

We have fewer SPECIAL points now than we usually have. That alone would be a good balancing factor. Adding in not having that many Perk Points to start with, and only gaining one a level, they could easily balance out the "ten out the starting gate" issue without tying the perks to character levels.

No, it is a false equivalency because there are differences in the two. They are similar yes, but not identical, and those differences are what matter and make it a false comparison. Base stats and SPECIAL are close, but not identical. The stats govern far more then SPECIAL does, for the most part, the only reason you want X number in a SPECIAL is to count for a certain perk. The SPECIAL boosting drugs are mostly taken for how the increase in SPECIAL boosts skills. Yeah there is SOME point beyond them, but not to the level of DND stats.

Same for skills, Fallout skill are meaningless outside tiny little bonuses you can account for with player skill and never notice, or hard 'y/n' check gates. If you had x skill, you passed, x-y you failed. Versus DND skills just increasing the chance of you getting something, till you got to a ridiculous level. As well as having no cap to them, no incremental anything really.

Yes they are similar, they are not identical.

The lockpicking bonus is a waste, due to how the lockpicking worked, all it took was patience, and a good supply of picks to beat any lock, so long as you passed the y/n gate to try, which again meant that 96% of the points in that skill were meaningless. Bar maybe a tiny little, barely noticeable boost, that could likely just be given with a single perk point.

This system give no functional change, and just reduces excess bloat of useless numbers. Hell, by the end of the leveling up, most people just had 100 in every skill save the weapons they didn't use anyway more or less. You lose nothing except a bunch of meaningless numbers that you just plug into yet another set of stats to try to reach the next gate. Now, one point, one gate.

Nerd Rage confirmed.

Well, duh. It's on the poster.

And in this thread

And for anyone who got super excited from the shot of the vault boy on a car: that is almost certainly the VANS system which works like the skyrim clairvoyance spell. From the perks video before it mentions VANS being an intel perk that highlights your closest quest and marks a route.

I Knew It!!! Vault-Tec Assisted Navigation System, saw it coming miles away.

edited 7th Oct '15 12:02:27 PM by YoKab

This sure took a turn from whining about marriage to whining about how things suck now that they have changed.

Any comments about balance are just speculation. We don't know how the game will be balanced, plain and simple. I mean, I can't really say it's reasonable to assume that just because the game doesn't have a level cap you'll just max everything out even if you don't want to be an Übermensch.

Fallout 2 had a level cap at 99. The top two perks unlocked at level 24, which was around where you completed the game with a reasonable amount of questing. Was that unbalanced because you could in theory get all skills high enough to where it didn't matter anymore?

Maybe something about the expansions becoming a cakewalk as the game does not stop after the end, which makes people think any further DLC is post-endgame

I wouldn't know, I can't find the stinking key in the temple of trials so I've never gone far.

edited 7th Oct '15 12:15:27 PM by Journeyman

There was a key? I thought exploding the door was the solution!

edited 7th Oct '15 12:32:51 PM by YoKab

It is! It's always the solution to lock doors you can't pick in 2. I had to blow up a Locker in Navarro to get the Tanker FOB.

There are ways you can play Fallout to make it harder if it's not "balanced" enough. I always thought the fun was in how absurdly powerful you became around levels 15-20, to the point that you're a name to run away from.

Logans Loophole is my favriote new vegas perk...

I mixed it with a mod that lowers the requirements for any perk above level 30 so I can still grab them.

And honestly, the game is a lot more diverse and fun that way....

Explode . . . what? How do you blow that door down? It's been a long time since I've played it so I don't remember there being explosives in the temple.

There is some dynamite in a container IIRC.

I will remember that.

Keep in mind I last played FO 2 in september of 2011.

My memory might not be the best on the subject.

So how does the new perk tree thing work exactly? I don't have to, like, take lead belly to get cannibal (or something that makes less sense) for example, do I?

Also... I'm not gonna complain about it extensively cause I really don't want to argue with anyone, but I will be livid if the homosexuality perks really are locked behind the straight perks.

Technically, if it's a sexuality perk, and you pick one for the same sex, wouldn't it only work against characters who're not straight? Or if it did, it would make sense to have it on a higher level, since it's something that goes against their sexuality.

Nah. You'll only need 8 Charisma to unlock it. For the base levels of the perks, you'll only need the required SPECIAL to get it. Higher ranks of the perks, on the other hand, will need you to be a higher level. Not sure if they'll require your SPECIAL to be higher, but as far as I'm aware you'll only need to be of a higher level to unlock the next rank of each perk.

edited 7th Oct '15 2:01:35 PM by ITNW1989

The perk chart works as follows

Every level up you get one perk point that can either be used to level up one of your SPECIALS or be used on a perk. Perks are setup in a tier along the SPECIAL axis. You can access any park on that axis assuming you meet the SPECIAL requirement. So for example if you go for a ten in luck right out of the gate at level one you can pick up the tier 10 luck perk as your first perk. Most perks now come in tiers that are level locked for further progression. So the 10 LUCK perk seems to be grim reapers spirit so maybe the first rank gets you 33% of you AP back per kill in vats and the next one gets you 66% but you need to be lvl 15 to get it. How this effects straight/gay options is unknown. Specifically to me. The perk video showed all the charisma perks but I can't be arsed to go and figure out whether or not black widow/confirmed bachelor/whatever are still in the game and tied to the same tier.

From the perk tree itself, Black Widow/Lady Killer are the only visible sexuality perks, so it appears (at least for the moment) that Cherchez La Femme and Confirmed Bachelor are gated behind the straight perks... which is kinda annoying.

On that note, I still think Lone Wanderer and Cap Collector should be switched.

Best we can hope for is that the initial perk is actually a generic "sexually attractive" perk that isn't gender dependent and they just used Lady killer as the artwork for it.