Perks / special - am I the only who hated the new system?

That definition implies that the concept of "Role-playing" has nothing to do with RPGs. I do agree that Witcher 3 has a focused role which you play, but it remains a role - and by that I was wrong in stating it is a hardcore RPG.

But FO4, in the inherent concept of role-playing games, makes the entire system of previous fallout titles worse, not better than its predecessors. You are not developing a character, you're not developing a role. FO3 and NV utilized SPECIAL, a concrete set of statistics that defined your character's fundamental attributes. Fallout 4 does not use SPECIAL. It uses a fluid system of tech-tree type upgrades with no limits at all, that ostentatiously uses the same acronym for the base layer of those branches. And in that way, it has undermined the entire basis of its RPG origin.

NV was better than 3 because of how it utilized those stats, not because of what those stats were. Again, how systems interact.
 
Making a game - any game - closer to a shooter is a huge improvement over Fallout 3. Is it better than NV though? The combat, probably. But what we should not ignore here is the fact how often New Vegas allowed you to use certain skills outside of combat. Something that neither F3 or F4 really do.
Playing NV felt like playing Oblivion to me. It was so obviously a shooter trying to masquerade as an RPG that both elements suffered for it, heavily.
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I think we can thank Bethesda for that. For forcing Fallout 3s gameplay and engine on Obsidian, we will never know in detail how the contract was, but I am pretty sure Bethesdsa had to approve everything in the end. Still, Obsidian most probably did the best they could, in those 18 months of development. This sounds like an excuse, but I think there is only so much you can do in such a short time. Outside of that though, they created a game where skills and your choice in skills matters a lot in the game and not just in combat situations, unlike F3 and F4.

If you think New Vegas is "a shooter trying to masquerade as an RPG" then what is Fallout 4?
A game that flagrantly admits its an action game with only mild RPG elements.

Not if you ask Todd, Emil, Pete and most of the press doing reviews. For them F4 and F3 are "RPGs". For some even "hardcore RPGs". Well. At least you do seem to think that it is an action game with midl RPG elements. That's a start.

I like it a lot, you can customize your PC to whatever playstyle you like

You can do the same with Ken and Barbie. I agree though, that is one very positive trait of Bethesdas games. Probably their biggest one, which is even made better trough mods.

But sadly that's not enough for a game to be a good role playing game. It's just dressing up your doll.
 
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I think you can thank Bethesda for forcing Fallout 3s gameplay and engine on Obsidian. They still did most probably the best they could in those 18 months of development. THis sounds like an excuse, but I think there is only so much you can do. Outside of that though, they created a game where skills and your choice in skills matters a lot in the game and not just in combat situations, unlike F3 and F4.

Not if you ask Todd, Emil, Pete and most of the press doing reviews. For them F4 and F3 are "RPGs". For some even "hardcore RPGs". Well. At least you do seem to think that it is an action game with midl RPG elements. That's a start.
Skills didn't matter much in NV because it was trivially easy to get every skill to 100. There was nothing preventing you from being a master of everything, and there were so many chems, and clothing boosts, and magazines, that you didn't even really need high base skills either, you could just stack away. And there were so many ways of getting through speech checks that you had to intentionally avoid every major skill in the game to not have a way to not have some way of getting through basically all of them. Skill choice didn't mean jack because you were never impaired by taking one skill over the other.


I don't disagree with their statements either. The term RPG is probably the singularly most changed in gaming. Fallout 4 is an RPG by all modern definition, because the term RPG stopped meaning the kind of games like Pillars, and NWN, and BG, ages ago. Just like how FPS used to be "those games where you shoot from the hip, carry 30 guns at once, and have to pick up health pack and armor" but are now "those games where you use irongsight, have regenerating health, and can carry only two weapons at once".
 
Trivially easy to get every skill to 100? I kinda doubt that, with the level cap and all.
 
Trivially easy to get every skill to 100? I kinda doubt that, with the level cap and all.
You could start of with an INT of 7, and get the implant to raise it to 8, and max every skills to 100 due to all the skill books + skill points you got from your int score.

The DLCs just made the problem even worse since they raised the cap. I spend the last 10-15 levels of nearly every playthrough not being able to level skills when I level up because I got them all to 100 already.

You have to intentionally gimp yourself, by setting you INT to like 1-2, in order to avoid it. Its one of the most constantly mocked problems of both Fallout 3 and NV.
 
I think you can thank Bethesda for forcing Fallout 3s gameplay and engine on Obsidian. They still did most probably the best they could in those 18 months of development. THis sounds like an excuse, but I think there is only so much you can do. Outside of that though, they created a game where skills and your choice in skills matters a lot in the game and not just in combat situations, unlike F3 and F4.

Not if you ask Todd, Emil, Pete and most of the press doing reviews. For them F4 and F3 are "RPGs". For some even "hardcore RPGs". Well. At least you do seem to think that it is an action game with midl RPG elements. That's a start.
Skills didn't matter much in NV because it was trivially easy to get every skill to 100. There was nothing preventing you from being a master of everything, and there were so many chems, and clothing boosts, and magazines, that you didn't even really need high base skills either, you could just stack away. And there were so many ways of getting through speech checks that you had to intentionally avoid every major skill in the game to not have a way to not have some way of getting through basically all of them. Skill choice didn't mean jack because you were never impaired by taking one skill over the other.


I don't disagree with their statements either. The term RPG is probably the singularly most changed in gaming. Fallout 4 is an RPG by all modern definition, because the term RPG stopped meaning the kind of games like Pillars, and NWN, and BG, ages ago. Just like how FPS used to be "those games where you shoot from the hip, carry 30 guns at once, and have to pick up health pack and armor" but are now "those games where you use irongsight, have regenerating health, and can carry only two weapons at once".

Maybe, but at least it gave you the OPTION to role play and use skills in conversations and quests where as Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 have almost none.

If I had to pick between Obisidian and Bethesdas way of thinking, I would know which option to chose.
 
Trivially easy to get every skill to 100? I kinda doubt that, with the level cap and all.
You could start of with an INT of 7, and get the implant to raise it to 8, and max every skills to 100 due to all the skill books + skill points you got from your int score.

The DLCs just made the problem even worse since they raised the cap. I spend the last 10-15 levels of nearly every playthrough not being able to level skills when I level up because I got them all to 100 already.

You have to intentionally gimp yourself, by setting you INT to like 1-2, in order to avoid it. Its one of the most constantly mocked problems of both Fallout 3 and NV.

Actually is impossible to max out all skills without having all the DLC and abusing a bunch of exploits not to mention you can't get all the perks on a single character. "Trivialy easy"? I doubt you have actually achieved that, and well in New Vegas is even remotely possible because of bugs + a raised level cap and a very VERY specific build (and you can't max out SPECIAL in any legitimate way), in FO4 maxing out everything it's the entire goal of the leveling system but maxing out everything has the same effect as not doing it because the quests have no branching paths.
 
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Actually is impossible to max out all skills without having all the DLC and abusing a bunch of exploits not to mention you can't get all the perks on a single character. "Trivialy easy"? I doubt you have actually achieved that, and well in New Vegas is even remotely possible because of bugs + a raised level cap, in FO4 maxing out everything it's the entire goal of the leveling system but maxing out everything has the same effect as not doing it because the quests have no branching paths.
An exploit, by definition, is an unintended result in programming that one wasn't supposed to happen normally. Having 10 INT, and being able to get all the skill books, was intended. Stop trying to make excuses for shoddy game design.

Also, not having all the perks in NV means little because most of the perks didn't do much to begin with.


And no, the point of Fo4 isn't to max out everything, you cant even do it in-game because only like 3 monsters go past level 68, and you would need to get to level like 320+ to max everything. Fo4 objectively does more to prevent you from being able to max everything then Fo3 or NV did, by miles.
 
Well, methinks that, regardless of the genre classification, Fallout is a memorable game precisely because its recipe includes RPG elements, among other thingies, to be sure. Once you lose even those elements, no matter how minimal they may be, the game sorts of lose its identity, and I see that as fatal to the franchise. NV is my fav in the franchise, because the RPG elements are more evident, and because I feel that what I do matters (I wanted to try different approaches and build my character thus) - I don't get that at any point F4, that's my point. If you improve the shooter aspect of the game, that's fine, and I'd say necessary. But that's not what happened: it improved slightly shooter aspect, as well as a void was left and there was little to replace it.

I think a lot of nuance is lost with mentioned simplification. I've played old school RPG games like Ultima, and sometimes you had to get 10 points of a skill so that it would have a significant impact in the game. Bet. 40-50 of a given school you used to get only slight improvements in a skill. That's important, I feel. A lot of what we do in RPGs is really ''farming'' (in a broad sense), I suppose, and what you get are incremental improvements most of the time.

Also, I feel like that a tiny range of choices has been imposed on you. Sometimes I don't choose a skill that will mathematically improve my character, I just want something cool, and I think that's pretty realist. I spent an unreasonable amount of money on a powerful laptop and on Fallout 4, which sucked, and the benefits I got for these aren't proportional, or maybe I should spend it elsewhere/save it for grad school, or whatever. But I made a choice. That is lost in F4 system. Maybe it's really meant for this new generation. As a clever political strategist once said, if you say three things, you say nothing. So let's just make it simple, so they can chew it. On the other hand, I'm not saying the 1-100 system cannot be made to be more logical. While the previous system wasn't perfect, it's flexibility and range of choice made up for it's defects. It was fun, and it felt like a choice.

I guess that, talking about NV, bypassing speech checks was just another example of the different approaches the game offered. I see it as positive, actually. Of all the games, I'd say it is the one that offers more choices. To be fair, it has to be compared to the others in the franchise. Against the sorry standards displayed by F4, it's way above it. The overall feeling I get from F4 is that Beth is going the wrong way with this.

''you can with FO4's system customize your character to be all playstyles simultaneously'' - you said it. If you can play all styles simultaneously, than obviously it is something amorphous. No particular style is given emphasis. Ugh, I just hate this. The richer people/company get, the dumber and the more arrogant, I guess.
 
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An exploit, by definition, is an unintended result in programming that one wasn't supposed to happen normally. Having 10 INT, and being able to get all the skill books, was intended. Stop trying to make excuses for shoddy game design.

Also, not having all the perks in NV means little because most of the perks didn't do much to begin with.


And no, the point of Fo4 isn't to max out everything, you cant even do it in-game because only like 3 monsters go past level 68, and you would need to get to level like 320+ to max everything. Fo4 objectively does more to prevent you from being able to max everything then Fo3 or NV did, by miles.

It's pretty obvious you haven't actually done it because Having 10 int isn't actually the way to max out everything, it actually hinders the ability to acheive that through the very specific build you need to make to achieve 100 on everything. I am not claiming New Vegas has a perfect system, but it's miles better than FO4's and nowhere near as "easy to max everything out" as you are implying.

What does Fallout 4 make to stop you from maxing everything out? It makes leveling up an unrewarding boring grind. The only thing stopping you from maxing ABSOLUTELY everything out in FO4 is to stop giving a shit. That's not good game design. Definetly it's worse level design than New Vegas or even FO3.
 
What defines an RPG has never been about the dialogue, and many old RPGs gave you barely actual choices.

I strenuously disagree. To me there are two ways of qualifying as an RPG, first that you are a game that is first and foremost about creating and acting out a role, secondly (in the case of video games) you are a game that attempts to replicate as best as technology allows the experience of playing a tabletop roleplaying game. Older examples of the latter are forgiven for not offering much in the way of customization, choice, or consequence because of technological limitations. But in 2015 if you don't bother to do that, you really shouldn't qualify as an RPG. Simply "playing a story" and "leveling up with stats" shouldn't qualify you as a roleplaying game if you don't actually make any efforts to enable roleplaying either mechanically or narratively (ideally both).
 
It's pretty obvious you haven't actually done it because Having 10 int isn't actually the way to max out everything, it actually hinders the ability to acheive that through the very specific build you need to make to achieve 100 on everything. I am not claiming New Vegas has a perfect system, but it's miles better than FO4's and nowhere near as "easy to max everything out" as you are implying.

What does Fallout 4 make to stop you from maxing everything out? It makes leveling up an unrewarding boring grind. The only thing stopping you from maxing ABSOLUTELY everything out in FO4 is to stop giving a shit. That's not good game design. Definetly it's worse level design than New Vegas or even FO3.
It actually is because INT is directly tied to how many skill points you get. Having 9 INT from character generation, then sneaking around the deathclaws at the quarry to get to the medical center to get the implant to boost to 10 INT is THE way to make sure you can max out all the skills.


It has increasing levels of XP needed to reach each level, and on top of the fact that the game has a limited amount of locations means its impossible to actually reach level 320+ plus in any given playthrough. Unlike Fallout 3 or NV where you can just sent INT to 9, and get either bobbleheads or implants, and then max out all your skills just by playing the game, since both games have FAR more content and EXP rewards then is needed to reach max level, one can easily reach 100 in all skills long before one beats the all the game's content in fo3/NV.
 
I think since they've chosen the path of the First Person Shooter, they should simply get rid of the SPECIAL system. It's a pen and paper system that works well with a turn base system, where the player decide the action of his character, but have no control over how well his character is going to perform outside of characters building and dice rolls.

In a FPS you are directly in control of the action of the chara, and it's going to be extremelly frustrating if you're movement is slowed down because of low Agility, or that you can't shoot straight and hit anything (despite having your target head in your crosshair), because you've just don't have enough perception, and have only 20% in small arms. What you will end up with, in a FPS SPECIAL system is either a bad FPS, because you can't hit shit if you don't make a shooty build, or a bad RPG, because if you're good at an FPS, it don't matter if you're characters is bad or not at shooting shit, he will shoot, because you are good at FPS.
 
I think since they've chosen the path of the First Person Shooter, they should simply get rid of the SPECIAL system. It's a pen and paper system that works well with a turn base system, where the player decide the action of his character, but have no control over how well his character is going to perform outside of characters building and dice rolls.

In a FPS you are directly in control of the action of the chara, and it's going to be extremelly frustrating if you're movement is slowed down because of low Agility, or that you can't shoot straight and hit anything (despite having your target head in your crosshair), because you've just don't have enough perception, and have only 20% in small arms. What you will end up with, in a FPS SPECIAL system is either a bad FPS, because you can't hit shit if you don't make a shooty build, or a bad RPG, because if you're good at an FPS, it don't matter if you're characters is bad or not at shooting shit, he will shoot, because you are good at FPS.

Bethesda can't make a true FPS because it goes against what their fans like, hybrid FPS-RPGs.
 
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