No More Level Caps

Yeah, but this can be rectified with INT and still leave you spare points. One INT point gives you 0,5 skill point per level. Even without the DLCs this means 14 skill points by the time you reach the level cap - this goes up by 10 with all the DLCs. One PER point gives you six already distributed points once.

With the Educated perk and 10 INT you get 17 skill points per level (in NV, 23 in FO3). To make up the skill difference between 1 PER and 10 PER, you need 54 points. This means 4 levels with 8 spare skill points (or 3 levels in FO3 with 6 points to spare) if you start levelling those skills up immediately at the start (and take the Educated perk at level 4).

I understand that this is a roleplaying game and I've always been against this sort of practice (like playing a mage with enchanted clothes instead of actual magicka in Skyrim or a half-blind sniper in Fallout 3/NV because there is little actual difference in gameplay), but it doesn't justify the lack of balance.
 
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I think a cap is needed in 3 and New Vegas simply because if you don't it is possible to max out your stats and become some total immortal badass (a problem I have with modern rpgs). I think the level caps are balanced but I do have to mod 3 and New Vegas to receive less skill points and perks (a system similar to the original fallouts is what I am for) in order to get it truly balanced.

Fallout 1 and 2 to be honest did not need a level cap. I say this because, at least in my experiences, getting anywhere near a level like 30-50 in either game means you probably spent too much time grinding xD, thats just my opinion though.
 
Level caps are good IMO. The ones in Fallout and New Vegas worked well. Fallout 2's cap was way too high, enabling the player to become invincible and omnipotent.

Too high a level cap (or a total lack of it), like some commenters have aptly pointed out, removes the importance of the choices made when creating the character, since nearly every skill can eventually be perfected. It also introduces a tedious element of grinding that is usually required to do this. Both are bad things IMO.

Skills should be capped at 100 like in New Vegas, or it should be progressively harder to improve them after certain levels (as in Fallout 2 where after 200, it takes [strike]5[/strike] 6 skillpoints to bring the skill up by 1.

Skill books MUST ABSOLUTELY NOT RESPAWN, neither in vendors' inventory nor elsewhere. There must be a fixed, low number of skill books available in the game. Else their respective skills can be perfected through purchase grinding, which is cheesy, boring and unrealistic. Fallout and Fallout2 had this problem where you could bring your First Aid, Repair, Science, and Small Guns up to around 100% by running back and forth between vendors and buying and reading the books until the skill reached a certain level.

I think the experience-rewarding system should be redesigned to obsolete grinding altogether. It wouldn't be hard to implement. The principle would be that completing the same task would award the player progressively fewer XP points, eventually becoming a waste of time (and where applicable, ammo). For example, the first time you kill a Deathclaw in combat, you would gain 500 experience points. The second Deathclaw you killed would bring only 400 XP, and so on, until after your 30th or 50th deathclaw kill, the experience reward would either become zero or dwindle to 1XP per deathclaw. You would then have to find another way to collect XP, such as hunting Radscorpions instead, until that became unrewarding as well. And then you would eventually run out of different critters to kill for meaningful XP rewards and would have to find a non-combative way of gaining XP.

Especially in Fallout2, the way to create an invincible superhuman character was going to the same areas of the wasteland and encountering the same enemies a thousand times, always getting the same very high experience reward for the same fight, which makes zero sense.
 
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Leveling should just slow down drastically the higher you get.
FO3 and NV I was a demigod by the end. Kinda boring actually.
I've never gotten above lvl 16 or so in FO and low 20s in FO2. Still felt pretty bad ass but not invincible.
Never felt gimped by lack of levels or perks.
Makes the game more fun knowing you can still get squashed like a bug.
I like games knowing that even the smallest mistake can get you killed, even in end game. And I do want the game to end. What's the point of being lvl 50 when all you can do is step on ants ?
 
I don't think anyone can get beyond level 50 in Fo1-Fo2 unless it is their main purpose and they spend one hell of a time grinding.
 
How can anyone not realize that the original game had a level cap? The level cap in that game was 20. In Fallout 2, the cap was 99.
 
If you're into the combat/weapons aspect in Fallout, then it's not at all unusual to run into the level gap, especially in Fallout 1 and New Vegas. In Fo2, I always rather enjoyed taking my party to the more dangerous parts of the wasteland to grind for experience, look for robber caves (which are treasure troves of experience, ammo, money and weapons), and just have fun killing monsters with different weaponry. Usually ended up at least level 40 before going to the Oil Rig.
 
That never gets old. The fact that Fallout 2 has more diverse encounters and a more chaotic wasteland is what blows Fallout 1 out of the water.
 
Just to add.. In the original fallout series (and indeed part of the maths of the parent GURPS to the adapted 'S.P.E.C.I.A.L' system) Skill could go ABOVE 100 but at highly restricted rates, 100 was not 'perfection' of skill, merely a highly trained ability.

I think whats missing is some of the more in-depth aspects of this RPG's base system.

In the 'deep' system for S.P.E.C.I.A.L as example:

A gun shot attack would consider
  • Lighting & weather effects,
  • speed & direction of travel (both of attacker and target)
  • Stance
  • Target's 'cover'
  • The Range to the target
  • The Condition of the weapon used
  • If the attacker has taken time to aim

From the PnP manual:
(S) -R -L -A -C -E -P +B -T

Skill
Range
Light
Armour
Cover
Effects (applied negative of attacker)
Penalty (applied negative external of attacker)
Bonuses (applied from perks etc)
Targeting (for specific location called shot)


Even with a skill of 100 a 'normal' shot would likely calculate as 60% hit chance ...

the current 'modern' system appears only to calculate based on Skill and Range (citation required!)

I think this is what is missing. and I think developers have abandoned these deeper parts to appease simplicity and player demand. I hate to say it, but RPG games have dumbed down a LOT.

To the point:

The cap was not that you 'hit a ceiling' of ability, but that you reached a point where you had to push to really train a skill and when I got a skill to 120 I was proud that I was the marksman / ninja / whatever that I had trained to become...
 
You kinda need a Level Cap, not just for coding, but also for balance in a way. Fallout 3's original 20 level format was too low for me, even if each level gave you a Skill.

That said, if I want to go further in my stats and also be able to experiment with some stuff I didn't focus on earlier in my adventure, I want to have that leeway as possible.
 
JDogindy said:
You kinda need a Level Cap, not just for coding, but also for balance in a way.
Click to expand...

Why? Fallout 1 and 2 were essentially uncapped and well balanced, and they were coded by a tiny team of people by comparison to modern games... It can be done.
 
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I like Level Caps.

They stop you from eventually becoming the God of the Wasteland and maxing everything to 100. It makes you think more about your point and perk allocation.

JSawyer's mod severely cut down the level cap, and it really made me think about what I needed to put points into and what kind of character I wanted to be. Essentially it enforces more specified builds and playstyles rather than overpowered jack-of-all-trades characters.

My only gripe is that I wish there were some way to notify the player to the specific level cap, whether through the level-up menu or a one-time pop-up window.
 
This particular option sounds a lot like Mass Effect to be honest although it worked for that game because you had a handful of abilities to learn and weapons to choose from. When you look at fallout where you could go from using a bumper sword to a mini nuke it kinda loses that success.
 
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