Fallout 4’s Character System

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Kilus

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Bethesda has provide a little more in depth look at Fallout 4's character system and what changes it does to SPECIAL. Here is a look at the perk chart in action:

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And on Bethesda.net there is an article outlining the changes and Bethesda's reasoning.

Bethesda outlines the role of SPECIAL in Fallout.

Key Details:

A each level you can select a perk or increase a SPECIAL point by one.
Each rank of every SPECIAL has a perk attracted to it.
Skill have been changed to perks.
The base rank of a perk only has a SPECIAL requirement.
The second and higher ranks of a perk have increasing level requirements.
Some perks from previous games have been rolled into higher ranks of a particular perk. For example the perk Sneak has the effects of Silent Running and Light Step in higher ranks.
Levelling is faster than in Fallout 3.
Skill books either give a unique perk or increase a standard perk's rank.
 
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I always have the feeling that the general tone at Bethesda is:

Visuals over content

It doesnt matter if it makes sense, if it works in the game really or what ever. It has to look awesome. If it looks awesome, than the rest will follow. As long as it is halfway useable, eveything else has to take a back seat to the presentation/look.

Like Skyrims skill system and GUI. It's unbalanced, not really user-friendly, sometimes outright frustrating like their inventory system. But it sure looks pretty! Who cares if the skills are really usefull or if the progression makes sense. It has to fitt this star-system in the sky! Let us see if they have spend more thoughts on this perk-system of theirs. It definitely is further away from Fallout than any Fallout game ever was. Not to mention that it seems to be 99% combat oriented. Another thing that feels rather strange, for an RPG at least.
 
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I stand corrected on all Perks lacking a level requirement it seems. Still can't see the logic behind meshing everything into mini-trees and leaving no level-only Perks, or Skills, though.

And it looks like being able to level a SPECIAL stat every level has been confirmed. (For all their talk of making each letter of SPECIAL mean something, we're still seeing no hint of what, or to what extent, derived attributes are affected per point invested. Probably a sign.)
 
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That's terrifying as poo. For real though, I bet navigating the UI is harder than the game itself i'm sure and all the animated avatars have me expecting Mickey Mouse to give a cameo.
Sorry for the bitterness, I woke up early today since my brother doesn't know how to use wifi on his laptop.
 
I was going to write an extensive rant but, 1000 words can't describe my anger right now. It's sad to see Fallout go like this.. It's like this whole system was designed for braindead people, really :(
 
What really needs to be said? It speaks for itself, it awful. It singlehandedly managed to dumb down SPECIAL, Discard Skills and make Perks boring all the same time, it's like the revenge of Fallout 3's dumbing down.
 
raynor009 said:
I was going to write an extensive rant but, 1000 words can't describe my anger right now. It's sad to see Fallout go like this..
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It's sad to watch Fallout let itself go indeed or maybe we're all wrong which is likely a pipe dream. I'm afraid to ask if SPECIAL is one big dump stat.
 
I have a feeling the 24 hour video that they released when they were going to announce Fallout 4, Had immense forshadowing.

The song "It's all over" Perfectly describes the lack of recognition that Fallout has become and will continue to become.

Is this Fallout or Skyrim with guns i'm looking at?

The Mod community will have a level of problems doing quest. The pacing of the leveling will be fucked. S.P.E.C.I.A.L is fucked.

But hey, At least we have fucking animations for our perks.. Right guise? Right?
 
There are things that I like about this new system. I like that now you have perks that specialize with certain weapons like bolt-action rifles and assault rifles. In New Vegas you just dumped all of your points in guns and you got really good at using all of the guns in the game from snipers to pistols, now you can specialize into the gun types that you like, unlike in NV/3 where the only bonus you got was accuracy in vats. I like that if you want your character to be a complete master of all guns it will come at the expense of him being able to get other more utility based specs like animal friend, increased carry weight or being able to persuade people, encouraging different character builds in that way.

I get why you guys would be upset about this, I was upset about it when I first found out that they got rid of skills but seeing as how this is bethesda's fallout, no one should be remotely surprised that they are doing this. Bethesda's goal since about fallout 3 or skyrim was to rebuild their leveling systems with every game they make, I'm almost 100 percent certain todd howard can be quoted on that. I think it's healthy for the fallout franchise to change things, I don't want them to use the same system for every game. However, I don't want them to change the leveling system or use this new one with every new entry in the series either and hopefully when obsidian gets their shot we'll see a return of the old system or maybe a mix of the new and old system into something completely new and superior.
 
What are you talking about? New Vegas had lots of perks specializing in specific weapon types (Cowboy, Grunt, Run N' Gun, Shotgun Surgeon, plasma spazz, etc.) That's not a new thing.
 
After Fallout 3, most of my venom's drained. I get far less pissed about game mechanic decisions then I do about Story changes. I wasn't bothered by how Fallout 3 changed up the way companions worked. But I still rant about how idiotic the Capital Wasteland was, the whole irradiated water plot, and Megaton...Just Megaton. (angry grunt).

But this doesn't bother me as much. I can see how it works from a game design perspective. You want to balance player choice vs clarity. So they do something like merge Doctor and First Aid from F2 into F3's Medicine. From a setting player choice perspective it makes sense to hold onto them, but from a game design perspective it begs the question "why 2 skills instead of 1"
So with that in mind the drop of skills in general is a very very dramatic move, but I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. I kinda want to see where they go with this. I do wonder how this will look in modding. Can we add new perks (that table looks very finished), or will we have to rely on temporary bonuses or item related ones? It won't kill modding though. Just look at the Nexus. Most of those add items, npcs, locations and quests to the game or change existing textures.

The one item I am very hesitant on though is the idea of magazines adding perks. One issue with removing a level cap is that your specific style character becomes a "can do everything" at some point. Every play-though of FNV I do ends with me having 100 in every skill. I both like that (it's a goal) and hate it (it reduces the impact of my choices as I create a character). If you make the perks achievable via magazines, that breaks the system. If perks are your limiting factor on skill advancement. That's fine. You're just redesigning the way the player interacts with the world. There's still a good amount of variety and choice. It's still an RPG, and it kinda reminds me of OD&D and even 5th ed in some ways. But if you want to play a sniper, every time you find a copy of "Grognak the Barbarian" you gain a level of the melee damage boosting Barbarian perk. So now you aren't limited by your build. Your sniper has melee as an option suddenly. You could avoid using the magazine, but when playing, who really does that on their first few play-through? Perhaps they should have kept the magazines as a temporary bonus tool.
 
You are right, I forgot about a few of those, specifically cowboy and grunt, however I don't believe those perks were ranked, now that perks like that are ranked you can boost damage significantly instead of just a 25 percent boost.
 
Paladin Waffles said:
Bethesda's goal since about fallout 3 or skyrim was to rebuild their leveling systems with every game they make, I'm almost 100 percent certain todd howard can be quoted on that. I think it's healthy for the fallout franchise to change things, I don't want them to use the same system for every game. However, I don't want them to change the leveling system or use this new one with every new entry in the series either and hopefully when obsidian gets their shot we'll see a return of the old system or maybe a mix of the new and old system into something completely new and superior.
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Oh, farther back then that. Oblivion's the first time I noticed them doing it and I only started with Morrowind. Though, what studio doesn't screw with their skill systems between games these days?
 
Making all perks ranked just removes the uniqueness of them, they are no longer a Special bonus you work towards, they are just routine.

I mean there are only 70 perks this time, they just repeat them 3 times, that's the kind of laziness only AAA developers can get away with nowadays.
 
I think there is a lot to gain from making some perks have like 5 or 6 different ranks, like the specialization ones I mentioned earlier but I do agree, making ALL of them ranked is lazy and is a really cheap way for them to say "we tripled the amount of perks this time" when they didn't really. EDIT and I have to say how they handled speech is also disappointing. Speech is such an important part of fallout and just merging it with charisma and not having any perks/skills that have an effect on dialog options is really bad and not very fallout like. As much as I hate to say it though I do understand why they made that choice, charisma in 3 and new vegas was kind of pointless, most people would just spec into a high speech and leave their charisma at 5 or 6, I still disagree with it though.
 
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Paladin Waffles said:
You are right, I forgot about a few of those, specifically cowboy and grunt, however I don't believe those perks were ranked, now that perks like that are ranked you can boost damage significantly instead of just a 25 percent boost.
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Yeah, but ranked perks in Fallout 4 are probably more focused on grinding implications to make yourself feel like you're achieving something. So instead of +25%, it's +5% per rank, with 5 ranks in. So ranked perks are mostly useless shite to make people feel like they're making progress when they're not.
 
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