Fallout 4 has been
making waves in the gaming community since its release. People have
been singing its praises on many fronts, including the town building,
crafting, improved character animation, and voice acting. Another
area of accolades is in the leveling system. More than just a new and
unique way to streamline one the most fundamental RPG mechanics,
Fallout 4's character development system represents an evolution in
how Bethesda empowers its players.
In order to
understand what that means, we must first take a look at its
predecessors. Oblivion, being Bethesda’s first open-world RPG with
no dice-worlds and fully realized combat, makes a fine starting-point
for our purposes. Character progression in Oblivion was unique
compared to most other RPGs of the time. When the player creates
their character, they select 7 of the game's 21 total skills, which
become their major skills. Skills increase as they get used (ex. the
Swords skill will go up the more the player uses bladed weapons).
After increasing their major skills enough times, the player can
level up by sleeping in a bed.
Then, they can
choose three stats to increase. Stats, like skills, are measured from
1 to 100, and can increase in increments of +1 to +5. The exact
increment depends on how many skills that use the statistic were
increased since the last level-up. Swords, as an example, are
governed by Strength. By increasing the Swords skill, the player is
increasing the amount that Strength will be raised if they choose to
increase Strength when they level up.
Now, if you haven't
played Oblivion before reading that explanation, that might sound
more like legal-ese than the way characters progress in an RPG. There
is a very good reason for that. A common complaint about Oblivion, in
hindsight, is that this system was overly-complicated. In order to
make a decent character, one had to be extremely careful about what
skills they trained and when, lest they only get small stat
increases. The fact that enemies scale to the player character's
level, and that every stat bonus they receive is always +5, gravely
exacerbates this problem. Their equipment also grows stronger, to the
point where no-name bandits will accost players for 5 gold while
wearing highly protective, expertly-crafted armor worth thousands.
On top of that, the
enemies dotting the open-world would be replaced by stronger monsters
with more powerful skills as the player grew stronger. When starting
the game, players are often accosted by wolves and other forest
animals. While annoying, these creatures are more of a minor nuisance
than anything else. After getting to about level 20 or so, those
woodland beasts are exchanged for Minotaurs, which are significantly
stronger, faster, and more relentless. Later, even more ruthless
Minotaur Lords take their place. As a result, it’s not just that
leveling up leaves players with even lower stats than their foes.
Those same foes are also being thrown to the wayside so that even
more terrifying enemies can litter the field. This problem is so bad
that not only are there
detailed guides for how to level, but some of
them even advocate
not leveling up at all as a reasonable solution.
After all, unless players are willing to meticulously study and train
specific skills in particular orders, leveling up will almost leave
them in a worse position.
Despite its
problems, Oblivion did serve a purpose. It brought skill-based,
real-time to the open-world format, doing away with the invisible
dice-rolls of its predecessor Morrowind. The radiant-AI that gave all
NPCs set schedules also breathed life to the world (if you ignore the
absolutely hideous faces and voice-acting). It wasn’t stellar, but
it’s a base. Crucially, it is a base that can be modified and
built-upon to create something significantly better.
Using their
now-established open-world format, they were going to bring Fallout
to modern audiences with Fallout 3. With a new property comes new
progression systems. Though similar to Oblivion, Fallout 3 had a more
standard leveling system. Like Bethesda's previous game, characters’
abilities were quantified by a combination of individual stats and
skills. However, instead of building up their stats as they
developed, players chose them at the start of the game, and mostly
stuck with them. As they adventured, their character would gain
experience and eventually level up. Of course, that is when the
player spent points to increase their skills. More importantly, they
selected a perk. Though skills go a long way towards determining what
one can do, they are only half of the equation. The perks also go a
long way in effectively defining a Fallout 3 character. Each one
comes with a powerful benefit, from increased stats or skills to
stronger critical hits and even new dialogue options to take
advantage of. These passive benefits, combined with skills and stats,
give a holistic, yet easy to comprehend, view of a character’s
abilities.
There were obvious
advantages that the Fallout 3 system had over Oblivion's. Firstly, it
eliminated the need for meta-gaming that came from Oblivion. Stats
were basically determined at the very start of the game, and there
was no need to train skills individually since the player can
allocate skill points at level up. This meant that players didn't
feel pressure to modify their playstyle in order to stay ahead of the
enemies. Maximizing a character's performance by researching and
planning a build was purely optional, instead of being damn-near
required to keep up.
More importantly,
this simplified the process of character development when compared to
Oblivion. Players gain experience, level up, then acquire skill
points and a perk before beginning the process all over again. Though
one might expect that adding the variables of perks and perk
requirements would further complicated the system, the fact the
progression is so transparent and plain compared to Oblivion makes it
easier to understand what is going on. By glancing at any given
character's skills and perks, it is simple to intuit what kind of
character they are, and how they are likely to develop in the future.
The problem of
enemies scaling out of control was also corrected in two ways. First,
all characters use the same number of stat points, which are by and
large locked in from the very beginning of the game. Furthermore, the
number of skill points both players and enemies acquire on level up
are based on the Intelligence stat, and nothing else. In this way,
the enemies’ skills increase at roughly the same rate as the
player’s skills, give or take a few points difference in
Intelligence. Given that players are often continually augmenting
themselves with new perks and equipment, this gives a total net
benefit when leveling up, even if they don’t choose an “optimal”
build.
The other, less
obvious measure Bethesda took when level-scaling is to control how it
occurs in the game world. In general, the world scales with the
player as one would expect. As the player grows stronger, so too do
enemies through the wasteland. This changes slightly when new
locations are discovered. By finding a new place to explore, the
enemies in and around that area get locked to whatever level the
player was at the time.
Immediately after
leaving the vault, many players, for a number of reasons, don’t
follow the road to Megaton and instead head to the nearby Springvale
School. As a “dungeon”, for lack of a better term, Springvale is
filled with raiders. By finding it this early on, players will lock
the enemies there to level 2 or 3. At this point, a large subset of
these players will realize their mistake and run away. After
completing quests and getting a little stronger, to around level 5 or
so, they may desire to go back to Springvale to extract bloody
revenge on the raiders that previously humiliated them. Although the
world has scaled to level 5 in the meantime, to match the player,
Springvale has not. It was previously locked to level 2, where it
remains.
In Oblivion,
players could level up a similar way that the above player could in
Fallout 3. However, if they did, and returned to a dungeon this same
way, they would likely find that it grew harder due to a combination
of the level-scaling and enemies acquiring stronger gear. By
locking-in a location’s level when it’s discovered, Fallout 3
makes it possible for a player to realize they are outnumbered and
out-gunned, then take steps to get stronger and try again, that they
may succeed where they once failed. This system worked so well that
Skyrim and Fallout 4 would continue to use it in the future.
Bethesda learned
their lesson when developing Fallout 3. By building off the
foundation of Oblivion, working in some of the design principles of
early Fallout games, and mixing in their own observations from the
reception of Oblivion, they unknowingly began to embark on a journey
of streamlining a simplifying RPG mechanics.
Later, when they
returned to their iconic Elder Scrolls series with Skyrim, they
continued this journey by overhauling the way characters developed in
Oblivion. Players still need to use a skill in order to increase it.
However, these skills are no longer governed by stats. In fact, stats
aside from Health, Mana, and Stamina are gone. Whenever the player
improves one of their skills, they gain experience which goes toward
leveling up. Advancing a level allows the player to increase Health,
Mana, or Stamina and gain a point which can be spent on a perk.
Yes. Inspired by
their experience developing Fallout 3, Bethesda added perks to
Skyrim. Attached to each skill is a perk tree, which lists each perk
that falls under that skill, and the prerequisite perks and the
minimum skill requirements to take the next rank in each one. Each
individual perk costs a single point. Players can purchase any perk
that they meet the preconditions for, but may also choose to save up
their perk points if there is nothing they wish to acquire.
This is important,
because it solves a problem that cropped up in Fallout 3. When the
player goes up in level in Fallout 3, players are forced to take the
skill increases and perk immediately. Occasionally, players in
Fallout 3 find that they do not want any of the perks available to
them. However, they are still forced to choose one of them to apply
to their character. Since skills are trained with repeated use in
Skyrim, the odds of this happening are significantly greater. By
allowing players to stock up perk points, this problem is deftly
avoided.
Yet despite how
simple the system is, there was a noticeable drawback. Skills that
had no perks invested into their skill trees were practically
useless, no matter how much they were trained. I very clearly
remember a character that I had played in Skyrim that bests
demonstrates this point. By utilizing an exploit, I was able to
quickly raise each of his skills to 100. However, I had chosen to
focus his perks in Stealth, One-Handed, and Illusion above all else.
When I tried to use Destruction magic, despite having a skill rating
of 100, the effects of those spells were so minimal, and their Mana
costs so high, I might as well have been meekly shoving my enemies
for all the damage I was doing. This is because I had not invested in
Destruction perks which increase damage and decrease Mana costs.
Though the skill ratings did have a slight effect, they were
absolutely worthless without perks.
But that on its own
isn’t the problem. When I tried using Destruction-magic with that
character, it was really more of an experiment, to see how well my
supposed “master-wizard” could actually cast without perks. The
problem here is that this system asks, especially later in the game,
for players to use skills that they wouldn’t otherwise want to use,
in order to acquire points to spend on perks in skills they do want
to use. I didn’t raise my characters stats to 100 in order to
become a god in a mortal vessel. I did it so that I could get the
perk points needed to be a better dagger-wielding, illusionist thief.
Without the perks afforded by raising these skills, and thus my
character’s level, it’s harder to justify taking perks that
aren’t core to my character, but are otherwise useful, like
Smithing and Enchanting. Investing in them would eat away at perks I
can use on my most useful skills.
This might explain
the approach taken in Fallout 4. Like Skyrim before it, Fallout 4
attempts to simplify and streamline the leveling process. Rather than
go the same direction Skyrim took, Fallout 4 used a different
technique more suited to the trappings of the franchise. Instead of
removing stats and using skills/perks to determine what a character
can do, Fallout 4 opted to remove skills, and use only stats and
perks.
At the start of the
game, the player is given a set total of points that they can apply
to their 7 base stats. These stats determine how much health the
player has, their maximum carry weight, their ability to make
critical hits, etc, as they did in Fallout 3. Experience, as is also
the case in the previous Fallout, is earned by exploring the world
and doing what comes naturally. And, as Skyrim players would be
familiar with, a point is gained on level up. This point can be spent
in several ways: The player can choose to take a new perk or advance
a rank in one they already have (assuming the meet the requirements)
OR increase one of their base stats by a single point.
Perks also function
somewhat differently to accommodate this new system. Each perk
corresponds to a prerequisite rank in one of the base stats, without
which one cannot take them. Strong Back, as an example, is a perk
which raises the player's maximum carry weight. It is the Rank 5
Strength perk, and cannot be taken unless the character in question
already has 5 points in Strength. Every perk also has multiple ranks,
which provide even bigger bonuses, and these are gated off by the
current level of the player character. Rank 2 of Strong Back, to
continue our example, increases the benefit of Rank 1 and can only to
taken once the player is level 10 or higher.
Even more than in
Skyrim, this means that any given player's build is closely tied to
what perks they have. By looking at what perks one has taken, it is
easy to tell what kind of playstyle they have and/or are going for.
The character I played has 5 Ranks each in Rifleman and Sneak, along
with 3 Ranks in Sniper, Better Criticals, and Grim Reaper's Sprint
and 2 Ranks in Action Boy and Ninja. Someone who has never played
Fallout 4 has no idea what any of this means. To one who has played
Fallout 4, and even to some who have only placed Fallout 3 or New
Vegas, this tells them that I like to abuse VATS to get tons of Sneak
Attacks and Critical Hits from a distance using scoped, non-automatic
rifles. It also gives a rough idea of what stats I'd need to have in
order to acquire all of these perks, since each one has a minimum
requirement.
It also solves the
problem that Skyrim had where skills and perks weren’t always in
alignment. Since skills don’t exist, the “master-wizard”
problem I outlined earlier from Skyrim is no longer an issue. As a
result, the player character’s abilities are more accurately
reflected by their stats and perk ratings than their skills in
Skyrim. Perks are also dependent on having a minimum stat rating
before they can be taken, increasing the likelihood that stats will
correlate with the perks acquired. This all results in a cohesiveness
of character absent from the higher-level Skyrim characters.
But despite that,
there is still some noticeable room for improvement. Even if the
concept behind the perk trees is extremely simple, Bethesda didn't
give much in the way of tutorial for how to use it. If one didn't
follow the pre-release materials that explained how these systems
worked, as I had, they could easily be forgiven for not understanding
the system. By looking at the
in-game perk chart, it is easy to see
why so many assume that they need to get a given stat's perks in
order, from top to bottom. The chart makes it seem like such linear
progression is necessary. Because of this, it's possible to put
points in perks one does not want or need not knowing that they can
easily bypass them to get the perks they want if they have high
enough stats. The combination of the graphic designer and the lack of
tutorials conspire against the player.
The another primary
issue is that leveling-up doesn’t feel as meaningful as it did in
previous Bethesda games. The only thing players gain at level-up is
the perk point, and a few extra hit points. To compensate for this
small reward, level-ups are much more frequent than in previous
games.
In Fallout 3 and
Skyrim, leveling up felt like a special event. After enduring many
tough trials, Fallout 3 characters were rewarded with the chance to
strengthen their skills and obtain a unique bonus for themselves. And
although Skryim also gave only a perk point and some bonus
health/mana/stamina on level-up, the skill training required to grow
stronger was a reward itself. Not only were the rewards more
substantial, but they came infrequently that the player could eagerly
look forward to the next time they built up enough experience to see
that screen just one more time. Perks, and thus levels, have to
arrive at increasingly frequency in Fallout 4, depriving players of
their dopamine fix.
Fallout 4's level
system isn't perfect, but it is another step in a long journey that
Bethesda started in 2006 with Oblivion. For better or worse, Bethesda
has been focusing on refining and streamlining the mechanics in their
games, the leveling system being only one prominent example. Even if
there are some flaws, one must appreciate the desire to experiment
and improve these systems. Once people have had enough time to
properly digest Fallout 4, I have no doubt that we will discover
flaws that have been otherwise overlooked at the time of writing. It
will be interesting to see what Bethesda does in response to these
criticisms, and which direction they’ll along this road to refining
their mechanics.
