Strength the first Fallout 4 SPECIAL video is out

Yeah, but I mean the idea that skills have an effect on your success. Like Spech, Charisma, Intelligence, Doctor etc. Neither of those are present in a game like Mass Effect. Which is alright. For Mass Effect. You are supposed to play the Shepard. It is also ok for The Witcher.

But Fallout is in that sense different. Skills should matter in conversations. If you're character has the inteligence and apperance of a Gorilla than he should have a very very hard time in convicing anyone. New Vegas did a decent job with skill checks, albeit it was waaaaay to easy to max out the stats and I had no problem to play the Einstein among the Rambo Soldiers with the charme of Jamese Dean.
 
The good thing about New Vegas was that most of its "problems" were number related. Apply a good rebalancing mod and you are all set. In Beth games instead the problems are inherent in the design. No amount of modding can change a game designed primarily around combat and lack of consequences.
 
The only thing that mildly interests me about this is that now charisma is no longer a dump stat. Which, (i think) it was virtually useless in the last four games. So will be kind of interesting to actually use it now.

edit: actually just remembered you could get more followers with more charisma, so it had a point in a very specific playthrough of 2.
 
Crni Vuk said:
Yeah, but I mean the idea that skills have an effect on your success. Like Spech, Charisma, Intelligence, Doctor etc. Neither of those are present in a game like Mass Effect. Which is alright. For Mass Effect. You are supposed to play the Shepard. It is also ok for The Witcher.

But Fallout is in that sense different. Skills should matter in conversations. If you're character has the inteligence and apperance of a Gorilla than he should have a very very hard time in convicing anyone. New Vegas did a decent job with skill checks, albeit it was waaaaay to easy to max out the stats and I had no problem to play the Einstein among the Rambo Soldiers with the charme of Jamese Dean.
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Yea... I want that too. Don't see it happening in bsg game though. Maybe in new planescape.
 
Filterfi said:
Crni Vuk said:
Yeah, but I mean the idea that skills have an effect on your success. Like Spech, Charisma, Intelligence, Doctor etc. Neither of those are present in a game like Mass Effect. Which is alright. For Mass Effect. You are supposed to play the Shepard. It is also ok for The Witcher.

But Fallout is in that sense different. Skills should matter in conversations. If you're character has the inteligence and apperance of a Gorilla than he should have a very very hard time in convicing anyone. New Vegas did a decent job with skill checks, albeit it was waaaaay to easy to max out the stats and I had no problem to play the Einstein among the Rambo Soldiers with the charme of Jamese Dean.
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Yea... I want that too. Don't see it happening in bsg game though. Maybe in new planescape.
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So you want a game devoid of consequences, where you have no need to think about anything, and you can finger mash your way to the top while savescumming, yes? Sad.
 
Doctor 0 said:
Actually thinking up a character and planning said character, oh boy. So much work just thinking about it. All I want to do is just go in and kill stuff. I don't care about story or what these faces are saying to me, just tell me who to kill, point the way. Thanks Beth, you know me so well. :twitch:
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I just started a new NV run where I'm a character fixated on CAPS, MOAR CAPS, and will do basically anything to acquire them, with a personal goal of hitting 100k caps by the end. Stealing, crafting stuff to sell, taking from corpses, but never directly killing. Instead, my character prefers to lead others into the line of fire (Merchants/NCR into Legion squads for example) and pick the corpses of whoever wins the fight. Then it's off to a shop to sell everything. Speech, Barter, and Repair are my tag skills, because I know for a fact I can complete the game even with a build like this.

Meanwhile, in Fallout 3... GUNS, SHOOT HIM IN THE FACE, MOAR GUNS... *yawn*
 
Beaushizzle said:
So you want a game devoid of consequences, where you have no need to think about anything, and you can finger mash your way to the top while savescumming, yes? Sad.
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WTF? How did you managed to get all that from that post? Skills are out in f4, so conversations might be infulenced by perks... but even that is wishfull thinking at best since they have a dialog wheel now. You will probably have to look with a microscope for the rpg elements in bgs action-rpg fallout 4. The only thing you will probably be able to choose is who will you shoot for the good/bad quest endings. Is that good? No it is not. Is that bgs style? Yea... for the last 3 games it is...
 
Crni Vuk said:
I am actually more interested how stats and perks will work in combination with Dialog. Or if there will be even any conection at all. Like a special perk. But if ME is their ... inspiration for it, every character will have the chance to say what ever he wants. No matter how inteligent or stupid he is from his stats.
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If they wanted, they could just tie dialogue checks to "do you have the appropriate perk at the appropriate level" instead. Like instead of [Guns 50] they could just ask for [Guns 3]. Of course, now that the protagonist is fully voiced every bit of dialogue that not everybody will be able to see has a cost attached to it, so I imagine they're disinclined to do too much of that. They probably figure that perks are for "being better at killing stuff" as opposed to anything else, just look at Skyrim to see this design philosophy in action.

The sort of RPG where your character build actually affects what you can do and say to people is probably going to be relegated to the realm of sub-AAA non-voiced games. But at least it looks like there's a market for that sort of thing now.
 
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Yeah, they could, but it would still be severely limited if all you have really is just this Mass Effect A,B,C,D style answers. Because I see no way of them ever giving it any debth. Not more than Fallout 3s good fight with your voice nonsense. The thing is that a voiced protagonist alone limits the possible answers you can give and if it all has to fit in this Cross-Dialog system with good - neutral - bad answers ... it simply heavily limits the amount of writing and creativity even more you can put in to it. Gone are the days of playing a mentaly handicaped character or actuall role playing based on your stats.
 
Gnarles Bronson said:
The only thing that mildly interests me about this is that now charisma is no longer a dump stat. Which, (i think) it was virtually useless in the last four games.
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Says you. In my FO2, CHA is a must because I love my party to be BIG! CHA 7, then +1 from chip, +1 from perk and +1 from mirrored shades. I always roll with ma homies: Sulik, Vic, Cassidy, Marcus and Kitsune [from Killap's RP].
 
Makenshi said:
Gnarles Bronson said:
The only thing that mildly interests me about this is that now charisma is no longer a dump stat. Which, (i think) it was virtually useless in the last four games.
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Says you. In my FO2, CHA is a must because I love my party to be BIG! CHA 7, then +1 from chip, +1 from perk and +1 from mirrored shades. I always roll with ma homies: Sulik, Vic, Cassidy, Marcus and Kitsune [from Killap's RP].
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I love me some Kitsune dude, great companion.
 
Medium to high Charisma in New Vegas was required to get a few cool Perks, and made companions more resilient but it still was a downgrade from Fo1 and 2's application due to the 2 companion Limit, there were a few Charisma checks but all the other stats and Skills had checks in dialogue too. Now it has become The Force and it determines how successful your Jedi mind tricks are.

But I always felt like the SPECIAL stats weren't ever meant to be so omni important over everything, they had very usefull effects but what you focused on where Skills and Perks to define your character, SPECIAL was always a "strengths and weaknesses" that could also be used to do challenge runs if you left some stats specially low. Now it seems like you are encouraged to have multiple low stats, so it just becomes a "what do I pick first?" rather than an actual character building or even mechanical narrative plataform.
 
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Makenshi said:
Gnarles Bronson said:
The only thing that mildly interests me about this is that now charisma is no longer a dump stat. Which, (i think) it was virtually useless in the last four games.
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Says you. In my FO2, CHA is a must because I love my party to be BIG! CHA 7, then +1 from chip, +1 from perk and +1 from mirrored shades. I always roll with ma homies: Sulik, Vic, Cassidy, Marcus and Kitsune [from Killap's RP].
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Ugh, dude. come on, read. You edited my post where I said exactly that:


Gnarles Bronson said:
you could get more followers with more charisma, so it had a point in a very specific playthrough of 2.
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So is everyone really just always playing with huge parties? Really? I had one playthrough of 2 where I maxed out my followers for sure, but that's not really the most fun as it involves a lot of babysitting and making sure they don't die or get stuck in front of you in a doorwary. If Fallout were baldurs gate where you could actually control your party's actions then it would be a lot more defensible, but because of the kind of game it is saying charisma is as important as agility... just don't see it.

As for FNV, ferocious loyalty and animal friend are fairly worthless, as is the boost to nerve charisma gives you.
 
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Walpknut said:
But I always felt like the SPECIAL stats weren't ever meant to be so omni important over everything, they had very usefull effects but what you focused on where Skills and Perks to define your character
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SPECIAL and Perks defined your character more than skills, IMO. Unless you were trying to roleplay a character that used skills with next to zero practical use (like throwing, gambling or traps) or was proficient in more than one combat skill it was too easy to become a jack of all trades. Meanwhile your SPECIAL attributes greatly influenced what you could or couldn't do, with very little means of changing them permanently.
 
Well, only Intelligence had such a hard gate on "You can't do this!!!", Agility had a more direct effecton how you played during Combat with it controlling Ap and all, Luck was the wild card.
Mmore often than not it was quest choices and skills what determined what you could and couldn't do. Inever felt like there were too many Stat gates. And in the first 2 games with their 200 and 300 cap on skills it was impossible to become a jack of all trades, altho it did have a lot of superfluous and redundant skills that needed trimming, it was always the Skill system that defined personal story instances. Then again, it's all personal experience, yet another thing that the multi layer character system has over this streamlined Perk chart shit system.

Gnarles Bronson said:
As for FNV, ferocious loyalty and animal friend are fairly worthless, as is the boost to nerve charisma gives you.
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Animal Friend Worthless? Tell that to Charlestone cave, Big MT and Zion.
 
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Crni Vuk said:
Yeah, they could, but it would still be severely limited if all you have really is just this Mass Effect A,B,C,D style answers. Because I see no way of them ever giving it any debth. Not more than Fallout 3s good fight with your voice nonsense. The thing is that a voiced protagonist alone limits the possible answers you can give and if it all has to fit in this Cross-Dialog system with good - neutral - bad answers ... it simply heavily limits the amount of writing and creativity even more you can put in to it. Gone are the days of playing a mentaly handicaped character or actuall role playing based on your stats.
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Unless they go heavy into sub-menus, or they map "special" responses to buttons other than the face buttons, it's going to be a lot worse than Mass Effect was. Mass Effect gave you six responses (three of which advance the conversation to the next step, and three of which can be tied to sub-menus) whereas Fo4 is only going to let you say four things at any one point.

I think they got this idea that "you should be able to walk around and maybe even shoot people while having a conversation" and they sacrificed a ton for that. I mean, tying the responses to face buttons is just asinine. If you just use a conversation wheel with an analog stick there are eight distinct places you can put conversation options, and even Planescape: Torment rarely had more than eight options at any particular conversation juncture.

Gnarles Bronson said:
Animal Friend Worthless? Tell that to Charlestone cave, Big MT and Zion.
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Animal Friend is pretty great because it affects Nightstalkers, yeah. The derived statistic "Nerve" is pretty darn powerful too, it's 5% damage and 5% DT for every point of Charisma you have. Which is minimal if you don't update the equipment of your followers, but give Arcade the modified Advanced LAER and some power armor and he'll clean up. But, like most things in New Vegas it's pretty optional, I've had a bunch of CHA 1 characters that worked fine, but setting STR lower than 3 is likely to be a problem.
 
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It takes 4 (assuming you get the cha implant) stat points and a perk to get animal friend. Can I emphasize that more? Four! That's huge! And what does it do? It makes it so you don't have to kill mid-level enemies, that's it. Yes, it's worthless. Those stat points and perk would be much better served virtually anywhere else.

And I guess I'm alone in this, but really I'd rather kill enemies myself, rather than hope the AI of companions does what I want it to.
 
Actually it requires 6 in CHA actually, not 5, it makes Charleston Cave a cakewalk and a lot of quests in OWB a walk in the park, same with the Green Geckos in Zion being docile and enemies thatcarry dogs getting attacked by their own dogs. You like to kill enemies, that's fine, that doesn't mean making the most enemy that isn't a Deathclaw or Cazador completely docile worthless, they also allow for completion of certain quests in pacifist easier without sneaking.
 
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