I am past lvl 50 but have only been able to activate 2 points into "Strong Back" and when trying to put another point into it I get a buzzing sound and no point is added.
This is a perfect mod, but it seems buggy on a non-fresh start, the perk chart is all wonky at level 51 after i refunded all my points. I'm going to use this on my next playthrough, for now I'm going to go back to vanilla perks or maybe even reduce the power of them. i'm finding that unrestricted perk unlevelers make the game broken, not easy, but broken.
This is exactly what I was looking for. Meaningful SPECIAL attributes. Now they matter again (like in the old games) so we can create different characters in different playthroughs. Thank you!
the idea seems really good, but i can very quickly think of some very broken scenarios.. 1, armorsmith. all it takes is 5 or 6 strength and level 4 to be able to make the best armors in the game. 2 melee skills: 1 strength for big hitter meaning at strength 5 or 6 you do 100% more dammage and again atainable at level 5 3 weapon smith, same arguments as armorsmith only in the case of weeaponssmith you would be able to combo it with big hitter and at level 10 or so have super powerfull melee weapons that does 100% extra dammage, you would be nearly invincible.
these are just a few quick examples i came up with in 10 seconds, how i think your mod could actualy work is if you make the higher level og skills require higher special stats, so maybe weaponsmith rank 2 requires 10 strength, and rank 3 requires 12 or something, meaning that you will either have to invest very heavely into a stat to get the higher ranks early in the game, or meet the original requirements(i dont know if its possibe to have both requirements) so if you want gun fu for instance at low levels you need to have 15 or so agility i think that would be fair and allso it would give you a way to create som good ballance...
anyway, its your mod, i am simply offering sugestions.
You're indeed correct that this makes it possible to max out weapon or crafting perks earlier than the game expects, possibly (and likely) breaking balance for some time. This is due to weapon perks being so low in the tree so that anyone can use them, but is also a design issue on Beth's front, as the most useful perks provide straight damage boosts (weapon perks, receivers etc).
Unfortunately perks only accept "hard points" in the attribute, so 10 has to be the cap for requirements.
Some small level requirements may be necessary in order to prevent a ~10 level character from maxing out their main weapon/crafting perk. That said, I do believe sinking 9 or 10 points into any S.P.E.C.I.A.L attribute should provide a meaty advantage at all levels, which presently isn't really the case. It's also silly for some of the most powerful perks to have such low requirements, making them a total non-choice, and whilst I can always increase the minimum attribute requirements I can't shift the perk's physical location on the Perk Chart, making that option highly unintuitive.
what I would like to see is all the perks taking on the equivalent to the idiot savant perk, namely this (perk) does (this) based on your correlating special level. All the crafting perks should probably be in the intelligence tree, with maybe one in the luck tree(dumb luck i created a kickass drug!)
Maybe something along the lines of, rank one uses 5*strength and adds that to melee damage. rank two adds 7.5*strength to melee damage and block reduction and has a requirement that is one or two special points higher than the first rank.
I just think that if I pumped ten into strength I should be able to kick some ass after a few levels, because I sure as hell cant open any locks or hack any terminals, I am blind, and everyone hates me.
A solid solution to this would be to make the requirements of the lower special perks to go up more rapidly. (+1 for level 2, +2 For level 3 and require +3 for level 4)
For example gun nut would level at Int 3, 4, 6, and 9. and Science! at 6,7, 9,10
Some thought into balancing would be required, but a more quadratic growth of requirements is a typical RPG method to prevent too rapid growth.
@Chardok: I already implemented this for the weapon damage perks, but wasn't sure if people also wanted it for crafting perks, and ones like Lockpicking/Hacking. One of my friends indicated to me that requiring a 10 in the related S.P.E.C.I.A.L stat for too many perks wouldn't be ideal, especially since Lockpicking/Hacking rarely provide anything too useful (usually just extra ammo in my experience).
Ideally, I want to do away with direct power increases for perks and open up greater options, but that will come down the road.
i love this leveling mod and im surprised it didn't get more attention, but yea, Bethesda designed a sucky perk tree to make casuals' lives easy. All the best perks are at the beginning and the rest aren't very interesting, so theres only so much to work with.
By the way i noticed you forgot to remove level requirements on Wasteland Whisperer, in case anyone cares. If you're interested in my two cents for tweaking, maybe toughness levels should require more endurance (like the damage perks) so early game players couldn't be basically invincible. Crafting reqs could be slightly upped, too. Like going from STR or INT 3, 4, 5, 6 to 3, 5, 7, 8. That way players could still make decent mods easily but need slightly higher levels for the really good stuff. That'd make specialization more of a thing too.
[edit: I don't know how to do these things, but it'd be cool to mix and match requirements, like Armorer 3 needing STR 6 + INT 6 (or Science! 1) or something. So if you focus on combat related things you have to spend more points you cant put towards Charisma perks, for example. Just thinking out loud]
Such a shame I've already started a second character, though the changes you've made here have convinced me it's worth restarting that character. I'll be sure to offer any feedback to perk requirements as I play through my new game. Great mod, glad I found this.
Previously I was using a mod which simply removed level requirements, and while I enjoyed that I often felt that a change to require SPECIALs would be a more suitable way to lock the perk tree. There is especially so if you take into consideration the fact that Bethesda has scrapped the skill systems entirely and folded what remained into perks.
Some might argue that changing the level requirement for perks into SPECIALs (or removing it entirely) breaks game balance, but I strongly disagree. Instead of being forced to take perks I have no absolutely no desire in and having to wait for the ones I do want, I can actually specialize my character the way I want, as it should be.
If I want to build a character who's an excellent shot and enjoys taking care of their weapons, I can do that now without having to bank perks and wait for level ups, and that's important. Certainly some people could use this to make 'broken' characters, but honestly those people aren't really the type of people who are looking for this sort of change in a roleplay fashion.
When you also combine this with other mods, especially those which rebalance the Commonwealth and remove level scaling, I can promise it's anything but broken.
I'm honestly on the fence regarding Beth's decision to "fold" the two systems into one. On one hand, skills as an abstraction of player capability made more sense for an isometric game such as Fallout 1 and 2, and often came off as redundant in FO3 and NV. Though NV did certainly breathe more life into the system, it still seemed underdeveloped for an RPG.
On the other hand, FO4's implementation of Perks seems less about creating a specific character to roleplay with, and seems focused on scaling the player's potentially unlimited power so that they can't become too powerful too quickly.
In any case, until the official mod tools are released, our capacity to tinker with this system is limited to more simplistic avenues. I've uploaded an updated file which increases the S.P.E.C.I.A.L requirements for weapon Perks, meaning you require perfect (or next to perfect) attributes to max them out, which should hopefully bring greater balance and ease people's objections. It also makes sense in my mind - being a top-notch marksman with rifles should require more than a slightly better than average Perception.
Thanks again for your comment and I hope you continue to find use for the mod.
13 comments
I'm going to use this on my next playthrough, for now I'm going to go back to vanilla perks or maybe even reduce the power of them. i'm finding that unrestricted perk unlevelers make the game broken, not easy, but broken.
1, armorsmith. all it takes is 5 or 6 strength and level 4 to be able to make the best armors in the game.
2 melee skills: 1 strength for big hitter meaning at strength 5 or 6 you do 100% more dammage and again atainable at level 5
3 weapon smith, same arguments as armorsmith only in the case of weeaponssmith you would be able to combo it with big hitter and at level 10 or so have super powerfull melee weapons that does 100% extra dammage, you would be nearly invincible.
these are just a few quick examples i came up with in 10 seconds, how i think your mod could actualy work is if you make the higher level og skills require higher special stats, so maybe weaponsmith rank 2 requires 10 strength, and rank 3 requires 12 or something, meaning that you will either have to invest very heavely into a stat to get the higher ranks early in the game, or meet the original requirements(i dont know if its possibe to have both requirements) so if you want gun fu for instance at low levels you need to have 15 or so agility i think that would be fair and allso it would give you a way to create som good ballance...
anyway, its your mod, i am simply offering sugestions.
You're indeed correct that this makes it possible to max out weapon or crafting perks earlier than the game expects, possibly (and likely) breaking balance for some time. This is due to weapon perks being so low in the tree so that anyone can use them, but is also a design issue on Beth's front, as the most useful perks provide straight damage boosts (weapon perks, receivers etc).
Unfortunately perks only accept "hard points" in the attribute, so 10 has to be the cap for requirements.
Some small level requirements may be necessary in order to prevent a ~10 level character from maxing out their main weapon/crafting perk.
That said, I do believe sinking 9 or 10 points into any S.P.E.C.I.A.L attribute should provide a meaty advantage at all levels, which presently isn't really the case.
It's also silly for some of the most powerful perks to have such low requirements, making them a total non-choice, and whilst I can always increase the minimum attribute requirements I can't shift the perk's physical location on the Perk Chart, making that option highly unintuitive.
Maybe something along the lines of, rank one uses 5*strength and adds that to melee damage. rank two adds 7.5*strength to melee damage and block reduction and has a requirement that is one or two special points higher than the first rank.
I just think that if I pumped ten into strength I should be able to kick some ass after a few levels, because I sure as hell cant open any locks or hack any terminals, I am blind, and everyone hates me.
For example gun nut would level at Int 3, 4, 6, and 9.
and Science! at 6,7, 9,10
Some thought into balancing would be required, but a more quadratic growth of requirements is a typical RPG method to prevent too rapid growth.
Ideally, I want to do away with direct power increases for perks and open up greater options, but that will come down the road.
By the way i noticed you forgot to remove level requirements on Wasteland Whisperer, in case anyone cares. If you're interested in my two cents for tweaking, maybe toughness levels should require more endurance (like the damage perks) so early game players couldn't be basically invincible. Crafting reqs could be slightly upped, too. Like going from STR or INT 3, 4, 5, 6 to 3, 5, 7, 8. That way players could still make decent mods easily but need slightly higher levels for the really good stuff. That'd make specialization more of a thing too.
[edit: I don't know how to do these things, but it'd be cool to mix and match requirements, like Armorer 3 needing STR 6 + INT 6 (or Science! 1) or something. So if you focus on combat related things you have to spend more points you cant put towards Charisma perks, for example. Just thinking out loud]
Previously I was using a mod which simply removed level requirements, and while I enjoyed that I often felt that a change to require SPECIALs would be a more suitable way to lock the perk tree. There is especially so if you take into consideration the fact that Bethesda has scrapped the skill systems entirely and folded what remained into perks.
Some might argue that changing the level requirement for perks into SPECIALs (or removing it entirely) breaks game balance, but I strongly disagree. Instead of being forced to take perks I have no absolutely no desire in and having to wait for the ones I do want, I can actually specialize my character the way I want, as it should be.
If I want to build a character who's an excellent shot and enjoys taking care of their weapons, I can do that now without having to bank perks and wait for level ups, and that's important. Certainly some people could use this to make 'broken' characters, but honestly those people aren't really the type of people who are looking for this sort of change in a roleplay fashion.
When you also combine this with other mods, especially those which rebalance the Commonwealth and remove level scaling, I can promise it's anything but broken.
Excellent work!
I'm honestly on the fence regarding Beth's decision to "fold" the two systems into one.
On one hand, skills as an abstraction of player capability made more sense for an isometric game such as Fallout 1 and 2, and often came off as redundant in FO3 and NV. Though NV did certainly breathe more life into the system, it still seemed underdeveloped for an RPG.
On the other hand, FO4's implementation of Perks seems less about creating a specific character to roleplay with, and seems focused on scaling the player's potentially unlimited power so that they can't become too powerful too quickly.
In any case, until the official mod tools are released, our capacity to tinker with this system is limited to more simplistic avenues.
I've uploaded an updated file which increases the S.P.E.C.I.A.L requirements for weapon Perks, meaning you require perfect (or next to perfect) attributes to max them out, which should hopefully bring greater balance and ease people's objections.
It also makes sense in my mind - being a top-notch marksman with rifles should require more than a slightly better than average Perception.
Thanks again for your comment and I hope you continue to find use for the mod.