How our characters level in Fallout 4 actually means a lot for its future on the site. The more intricate the leveling system is and the more options it provides correlates directly to how many different builds you can create and of course how re-playable Fallout 4 is actually going to be!
Gym Leader Matt takes us through many of the things we know so far! Post your own thoughts and expectations below!
Good video Matt!
I have a few thoughts of my own here.
Intelligence is certainly looking like its going to be a strong stat due to the fact it determines the amount of EXP you receive for completing tasks and kills. This means that IF there is a 'soft cap' to your characters level as we saw in Skyrim (and I strongly suspect there will be) intelligence is probably going to manipulate that soft cap...
For example a character with very low INT may start feeling 'done'/hard to level by just level 40.
But a character with very high INT will feel like they are comfortably leveling all the way up to level 50 - 55.
So I guess it depends just how powerful INT effects your EXP gain.
Another thing that I'm beginning to suspect is that although you can technically unlock a tier 10 perk at the very start of the game by placing 10 points into END (for example) you will not be able to select that perk at level 1. You're going to have to start at the bottom of the chart and work your way up to unlock the most powerful perks.
This is a little bit disappointing but to be honest it does make sense to me. If we could just place perks wherever we wanted it would result in us all basically building our character backwards...it wouldn't feel right if we were being forced to take lesser perks at level 50+ for example.
Stronger perks will have some kind of prerequisite, either you'll have to select the perk that came previously first or there will be some kind of minimum level requirement tied to them. (or both)
Like you said in your video Matt we've seen that there's definitely going to be ways of increasing our SPECIAL stats. It may be that there is little point in placing 10 points in STR at the very start of the game because it just creates a gimped character that can't take advantage of the strong perks straight away anyway..
...may as well distribute SPECIAL a little more evenly at the start of the game and then become a specialist later on when you're bonus points start coming in and you can unlock the higher ranked perks.
Of course it could still possibly work the other way around! You could place 10END at level 1 because you've decided that your character is going to want/need 'Solar Powered' by level 10 (or ASAP) in order to make your character build 'work'.....then place the bonus SPECIAL points to cover your weaknesses as you progress...
All sounds like fun anyway!
I hate the idea of being able to re-spec. What's the point in carefully building up your character if you can just pay a random npc 1000caps and juggle things around...
...no, I much prefer the 'cock up your character = restart' approach to RPG's, it encourages better planning/buildmaking.
Well, if they do introduce some kind of re-spec mechanic I hope they leave it until DLC.
I just can't get behind a system that allows you to create one character and try out every playstyle in the game simply by juggling points (Utopian style).
It just ruins character building in my opinion. There's nothing unique about your build if you can pop into a shop and mysteriously 'forget' 20 levels of grinding out a perk path only to wake up with a completely new skill set that you didn't 'earn'.
The new 'leaked' footage has a few clues, this word here looks like 'requires:' below all the perks on the chart...
But then we also see that perks on the chart seem to have been placed fairly randomly in this next picture...
So its difficult to tell what exactly is going to be 'required' when selecting perks...