Starfield - Official Gameplay Reveal

My memory must have been foggy when I wrote that. I thought you didn't do anything in F4 but you actually do get to choose an initial selection of stats (effectively perks). I didn't actually see the stat allocation in Starfield, was their anything or is that a step backwards?

Did they show character creation in one of the videos? If they did, I must have missed it, so I'm not sure. Maybe you don't start with perks but instead only unlock them as you play. I really disliked how FO4 was only perks.
 
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So 2028 by the earliest then as E6 isn't even finished yet. That is not good news.:(
There's no way FO5 would be out in 2028, they said ES6 is still in "pre-production". Maybe 2031 if you want to be optimistic?
 
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Perks are a way of describing gameplay benefits.

Attributes don't really mean anything. "I have 10 strength". Okay, and what does that mean? How does that translate into the game? Typically, it's the amount you can carry, how hard you can hit, etc. With perks, you just skip straight to that. When you take a "melee damage" perk, say, you're essentially adding strength, but you're doing so in a more direct way. You're taking out an unnecessary step.

Skills are the same way. If you have a "persuasion" skill, you can just as easily have persuasion related perks. Moreover, you can have different kinds of perks for different kinds of persuasion without having to add a bunch of skills. For example, you can have intimidation perks, deception perks, etc. You can have perks that allow you to persuade particular social groups (law enforcement, criminal underground, etc). There's a lot of potential to have colorful, specific perks with obvious gameplay uses.

I can already hear the objections. So let's hear it: what can attributes or skills add that perks can't?

Maybe you said dialogue checks? I myself like having the ability to apply attributes/skills/perks in dialogue. Fallout 4 completely went away from that, and that was a problem for me. But perks themselves aren't the issue. You can easily have the dialogues check for perks just like you can with attributes or skills. To continue the example, if there was a situation in which it made sense to dislodge or shove something, the melee damage perk could be checked for. You could do this with anything you would otherwise use attributes or skills for.
 
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There's no way FO5 would be out in 2028, they said ES6 is still in "pre-production". Maybe 2031 if you want to be optimistic?
Already admitted 2030 is more realistic.:lol:

Here's an article with most of the info on ES6

Link - https://www.pcgamer.com/elder-scrolls-6-what-we-know/
How many years of E3 has it been since we've heard about Elder Scrolls 6?

Todd Howard put a blessing and curse on us by announcing Elder Scrolls 6 at E3 2018 despite Starfield (ahead of ES6 in Bethesda's pipeline) still being in development. We are very patient so we're just going to casually tally the years of E3 in which we haven't heard any more about Elder Scrolls 6.

E3 2019: "I think everyone should be very patient," Todd Howard told IGN.

Not-E3 2020: "If you're coming at me for details now and not years from now, I'm failing to properly manage your expectations," said Pete Hines.

E3 2021: "It's good to think of The Elder Scrolls 6 as still being in a design [phase]," Todd Howard said in an interview shortly after E3 2021.

Not-E3 2022: What will this year's adage about player patience be?
Bethesda announced the game way to early.
 
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Also I'm not surprised they are using a perk system. It was first introduced in Fallout 4 and many fans objected to it. I had no problems with it just get rid of level scaling.

I detest level scaling and how fast you get XP to level up.:shakefist:

Having said that my preference is the old fashion attribute system but meh.

It is what is is.:(
 
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They're not the same. The skills gave more of a feeling of progression as you improved them. A perk is just there. You either have it or you don't. Sometimes you can unlock tiers to improve them, but it's still not the same as having a 0-100 skill system.

Ideally, I'd like to have both. Skills as the base and perks to complement them.
 
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Bethesda announced the game way to early
Yeah, looks like the earliest that ES6 would possibly be released is 2027? Maybe 2028 if you're a realist. Announcing a game 10 years in advance is kind of crazy for an AAA company.
 
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Yeah, looks like the earliest that ES6 would possibly be released is 2027? Maybe 2028 if you're a realist. Announcing a game 10 years in advance is kind of crazy for an AAA company.

Indeed. People joke about wondering if they'll still be alive when the next game is released, but sometimes they're being serious. :)

They should have stuck to waiting until the year of release before announcing a game like they did with FO4.
 
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Bethesda announced the game way to early,

To be fair, they didn't really need to announce it at all. Everyone assumed there would be an Elder Scroll 6 eventually from the day there was an Elder Scrolls 5.

They didn't announce it so much as confirm that it was in the works. They've been managing expectations about how far away it is ever since.
 
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They're not the same. The skills gave more of a feeling of progression as you improved them. A perk is just there. You either have it or you don't. Sometimes you can unlock tiers to improve them, but it's still not the same as having a 0-100 skill system.

Ideally, I'd like to have both. Skills as the base and perks to complement them.

Exactly right. They can provide flavour and be completely unrelated to actual skills i.e. Animal Friend in Fallout 1 makes animals not attack you. Then there was Bonus Move which gave some AP that could only be used for movement and not attacking - which added tactical options. There are more traditional perks but there are also high end ones that offer game changing abilities i.e. Slayer. When you combine this with SPECIAL and skills it allows for some real roleplay options i.e. a smooth talking brute with a low charisma. While stats provide an adjustment to skills they do not actually influence a skill apart from the initial points (or as a qualification for a related perk).

The perk design in Fallout 4 was purely to streamline the game for console adoption. A more details UI is just burdensome on a console i.e. distributing 20 points vs clicking a single button. That's understandable but it also destroyed some of the character options in the progress.
 
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It's not multiple genres. It's an RPG with a flight mechanic.

Having the spaceship simply be a fast travel device would be lame as hell. I think a major part of the appeal here is actually piloting our own ship and being able to explore with it.

i agree, if there is anything good to find! Normally nowdays that's a big if.
Hope it's not just a bunch of bookmarks MMo sytle that's so popular nowdays in open world rpgs… I hope that's not the case i just prefer more handcrafted narative - side missions..

The flying itself can add to the whole expraince with events - fights... true.
But hard to know how that will work without uncut gameplay.

IF it's done great sure, i'm all up for it… PoE 2 had this problem with the ship exploration the whole map was just meh. The good stuff just gets lost in a sea of generic content

The 1000 planets whisper this same problem to me. IF that's the case i prefer fast travel it gives devs more control over narrative and we know it works for sure.
 
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IF it's done great sure, i'm all up for it… PoE 2 had this problem with the ship exploration the whole map was just meh. The good stuff just gets lost in a sea of generic content

The 1000 planets whisper this same problem to me. IF that's the case i prefer fast travel it gives devs more control over narrative and we know it works for sure.

I suspect Bethesda will make it very obvious which planets have handcrafted content vs which ones are procedurally generated. That way, players won't waste their time exploring random planets unless they just want to collect extra loot and resources.
 
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Exactly right. They can provide flavour and be completely unrelated to actual skills i.e. Animal Friend in Fallout 1 makes animals not attack you. Then there was Bonus Move which gave some AP that could only be used for movement and not attacking - which added tactical options.

You've given some examples of why perks are more flexible and flavorful than skills.

Now give some examples of things you can do with skills that you can't do with perks.

"The perk design in Fallout 4 was purely to streamline the game for console adoption."

Absolute, obvious nonsense. I played every single Elder Scrolls game on console first and they were the exact same game they were on PC.
 
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I suspect Bethesda will make it very obvious which planets have handcrafted content vs which ones are procedurally generated. That way, players won't waste their time exploring random planets unless they just want to collect extra loot and resources.

We know already that there are four main cities/settlements, so no doubt they will serve as hubs of bespoke content. Perhaps including wilderness areas on the planets on which they're located.
 
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Now give some examples of things you can do with skills that you can't do with perks.

JDR already gave the answer to that. Skills (1-100+) give you fine grained control over exactly how skilled you want to be and you have to plan your skills over multiple levels. Skills determine your success rate at things you attempt i.e. having 50 skill gives you a 50% chance of success for a basic (baseline 0) skill check. Consider the persuasion perk in Fallout 4 - it has 4 levels that are directly tied to the challenge level of the skill checks. In 4 levels you can max it out (assuming you have the charisma). Perks (in Fallout 4) were also tied to the attributes which further reduced character build options. It also forces you to focus on a single thing every character level. Why can't you put points into 2 skills if you want? Or 3?

You also had the ability to "tag" skills to give you the ability to quickly level a small number of skills that were key to your character build. You can't do that with a Perk system.

Consider the trait "Gifted" - which is probably the most popular Trait in F1/2.

Gifted All of your primary stats are increased by one, but you get 5 fewer skill points per level and your secondary skills are lowered by 10%.

Something like this isn't even possible in a Perk only system. You gain less skill every level! A large drawback indeed.

There is also the aspect of player reward. Skills come every level. Perks are something you looked forward to as you only got them every 3/4 levels. The complex builds that the SPECIAL/skill/perk/trait system allowed were one of the strongest aspects of Fallout.

Absolute, obvious nonsense. I played every single Elder Scrolls game on console first and they were the exact same game they were on PC.

What has that got to do with fallout? I was referring to Fallout 4 perks as related to Fallout 1/2/3. I'm also somewhat suprised you playing Arena and Daggerfall on a console ;)

The perk redesign went hand-in-hand with the streamlined User interface design.

Morrowind was usable but clunky on the xbox gamepad compared to the PC. BS had higher aspirations for Oblivion and Skyrim - they need it had to be accessible for the masses (rightly so). That is why the SkyUI and Darnified UI mods are so popular for the ES games. PC gamers weren't satisfied with the UX.

Fallout 3 was a good inbetween design. It works "okay" on both PC and console. It had a consistent looking PIP boy interface inline with the consistent UI in Fallout 1/2. But it wasn't good enough to take Fallout to the next level (like what Skyrim did for ES).

Fallout 4 on the other hand….. The UI has horendous design for the PC (both look and usability). To exit a menu you have to use BOTH the esc and enter keys - ON DIFFERENT sides on the keyboard. FallUI makes a good attempt but it just can't rectify the fundamentally flawed UX that Fallout 4 has for the PC. Fallout 3 stats/perks/skills it was spread over 3 screens - for Fallout 4 it got crammed into a single screen. A screen that was completely disjoined from the standard PIP style (look and feel) interface that Fallout 1-3 used. Mouse and keyboard is a second class citizen compared to gamepad.

The entire problem is that the PC UI is the same as the console version. It has been streamlined for the console. The Perk screen is great for consoles indeed.
 
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So summary of the new character build system is:

Select a background - gives you 3 starting skills and npc's react to your choice. I'm guessing also unique dialogue options as well.

You can select up to 3 traits. Traits seem to be things like having improved relationships/discounts with a faction, owning a home on another planet, bonuses when with a companion etc. Nothing special here but provides some good variety i think.

Every level you gain a skill point (possibly more). Skills have 4 ranks and appear to be limited to "do X% more damage", "harvest 1 extra unit", "dodge a bit faster". Skills are grouped in areas like "combat", "science", "special", "crafting" etc. I assume there is a group for flying your ship as well?

Once a skill has been purchased with a skill point it is ranked up be performing challenges i.e. kill 100 enemies with a weapon type or making x number of something.

Haven't seen any perk system but maybe in level up screens?

A bit less flexible that I thought / would of liked. The UI actually looks like a good mix for console/PC. Very clean and consistent.
 
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JDR already gave the answer to that. Skills (1-100+) give you fine grained control over exactly how skilled you want to be and you have to plan your skills over multiple levels. Skills determine your success rate at things you attempt i.e. having 50 skill gives you a 50% chance of success for a basic (baseline 0) skill check. Consider the persuasion perk in Fallout 4 - it has 4 levels that are directly tied to the challenge level of the skill checks. In 4 levels you can max it out (assuming you have the charisma). Perks (in Fallout 4) were also tied to the attributes which further reduced character build options. It also forces you to focus on a single thing every character level. Why can't you put points into 2 skills if you want? Or 3?

Perks are fine grained enough to me. I guess if you really want to revel in the difference between being 52% likely to succeed and 55% likely to succeed, you can, but it's mostly noise to me. In fact, the thing about random rolls against percentage chances is that it's quite likely that the 55% character will fail where the 52% character would succeed. If you instead have a perk tier system, you can assign difficulties to the action and then allow characters of a sufficient tier to do it. For example, persuading an idiot to give you a cigarette requires only Persuasion 1, whereas persuading the chief security officer of a military base to allow you to enter requires Persuasion 5 (out of 5)… now imagine those scenarios with a percent based skill system. Not only are close numbers functionally the same, but a person who has a whopping 20% in persuade will get into that base 1 out of 5 times, while frequently failing to bum that cigarette.

You also had the ability to "tag" skills to give you the ability to quickly level a small number of skills that were key to your character build. You can't do that with a Perk system.

Sure you can. I mean, games typically don't, but it wouldn't be hard at all to make leveling up a perk cheaper than getting an entirely new one.

Consider the trait "Gifted" - which is probably the most popular Trait in F1/2.

Something like this isn't even possible in a Perk only system. You gain less skill every level! A large drawback indeed.

You really lack imagination. Sure it is. If a character has "gifted" as a trait or background or whatever, it could signify starting with two perks instead of one. It could mean gaining an extra perk every 5 levels. Plenty of ways to implement that.

There is also the aspect of player reward. Skills come every level. Perks are something you looked forward to as you only got them every 3/4 levels. The complex builds that the SPECIAL/skill/perk/trait system allowed were one of the strongest aspects of Fallout.

You gain perks every level in Skyrim and Fallout 4. Makes arguments based on reality, please. You've just made a pretty good argument FOR perks. You think it's exciting progression to go from 52 to 58%? I don't. Gaining a perk and along with it a new ability to do something tangible in the game is a lot more rewarding and memorable.

What has that got to do with fallout? I was referring to Fallout 4 perks as related to Fallout 1/2/3. I'm also somewhat suprised you playing Arena and Daggerfall on a console ;)

Hardy, har har. Every Elder Scrolls game I've played, obviously. Which does not extend to those two games.

Morrowind was usable but clunky on the xbox gamepad compared to the PC. BS had higher aspirations for Oblivion and Skyrim - they need it had to be accessible for the masses (rightly so). That is why the SkyUI and Darnified UI mods are so popular for the ES games. PC gamers weren't satisfied with the UX.

Hey, we agree on something! The Skyrim interface was bad. No argument there. It didn't have anything to do with character advancement options or the lack thereof, though.

The entire problem is that the PC UI is the same as the console version. It has been streamlined for the console. The Perk screen is great for consoles indeed.

The UI should be developed for consoles and PC independently. I agree with that also. But that's a separate argument from your "perks dumb the game down" argument.
 
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The UI should be developed for consoles and PC independently. I agree with that also. But that's a separate argument from your "perks dumb the game down" argument.

Okay I agree with that. I should of specified that I actually meant only having perks and hamfisting stats into "Perks" and removing skills. It is my opinion that the UX design influenced the game design and the UX is primarily designed for consoles (and there is plenty of evidence for the design focus being consoles). Of course you may disagree with how I join the two things together and that is okay.

Your hypothetical Perk system sounds much less flexible to me. Giving a couple of perks per level does not give flexibility. Flexibility comes from have multiple facets that interact together to form a cohesive design. It would be like D&D removing Attributes, Backgrounds, Class skills and replacing them with just feats. Of course, I could be convinced if I saw a full design from you :)

If you think Fallout 4 has a superior ruleset to Fallout 1/2/3 then there is no way our views will ever align and I am sure we can agree to disagree. I am not sure you are actually saying this though - I think you are just zeroing in on that Perks "could" be equivelent to a more nuanced system.
 
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If you think Fallout 4 has a superior ruleset to Fallout 1/2/3 then there is no way our views will ever align and I am sure we can agree to disagree. I am not sure you are actually saying this though - I think you are just zeroing in on that Perks "could" be equivelent to a more nuanced system.

That's correct. I'm not saying that Fallout 4's system is superior to its predecessors. But I am also saying that a perk system could provide an equal number of character build options while also making each choice more significant and interesting.

One thing I liked much, much less about Fallout 4 is how rarely skill checks were incorporated into dialogues. They definitely didn't have to do that because of their perk system (you still had a numerical score in each category), but they did do that. Dialogue should imo be part of gameplay, and they acted like it wasn't, so there wasn't much variety in how you could interact based on the character you were roleplaying. Skyrim lacked this as well, of course. So I'm not terribly optimistic about the direction they'll go with Starfield in that regard, but we'll see.
 
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