Leveling and skills : Fallout: New Vegas

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 12:08 pm

I'm wondering how long will it take to get to level 30 (on average). 50 hours of gameplay or more like 100? Also, how many skills we'll be able to max. 3 skills or more?
So, what do you think?

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 8:29 am

I'm not sure, but if you mean traits, then you can have 2 - 3 of them, and there will probably be a perk where you can add one more perk. But the perks/skills, you can have to around 10, if you're gaining them every 3 levels, but I heard that it'll be every 2 levels, so you get 15 I guess.

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 8:32 am

We dont yet know about the balancing of the game, and probably wont until we get to play it. All we can do is hope that we wont hit the level cap half way through the MQ (Like F3) or max out 7+ skills without even trying (Like F3)

Is it just me, or did that have absolutely nothing to do with what the guy asked?

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 1:54 pm

i'm hoping it takes a lot more time than it did in FO3 and youre not as godlike.

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 5:45 pm

[quote name='Calgone' date='10 September 2010 - 12:33 PM' timestamp='1284118381' post='16376100']
All we can do is hope that we wont hit the level cap half way through the MQ (Like F3) or max out 7+ skills without even trying (Like F3)
:thumbsup:

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 5:03 am

I just hope skill books (or their equivilant) don't magically dissappear after you read them...

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 2:21 am

I really hope that they've doubled the exp required for each level from fallout 3.
Look at this:

Spoiler

1 0 XP Vault Guardian Vault Dweller Vault Delinquent
2 200 XP Vault Martyr Vault Renegade Vault Outlaw
3 550 XP Sentinel Seeker Opportunist
4 1,050 XP Defender Wanderer Plunderer
5 1,700 XP Dignitary Citizen Fat Cat
6 2,500 XP Peacekeeper Adventurer Marauder
7 3,450 XP Ranger of the Wastes Vagabond of the Wastes Pirate of the Wastes
8 4,550 XP Protector Mercenary Reaver
9 5,800 XP Urban Avenger Urban Ranger Urban Invader
10 7,200 XP Exemplar Observer Ne'er-do-well
11 8,750 XP Capitol Crusader Capitol Councilor Capitol Crimelord
12 10,450 XP Paladin Keeper Defiler
13 12,300 XP Vault Legend Vault Descendant Vault Boogeyman
14 14,300 XP Ambassador of Peace Pinnacle of Survival Harbinger of War
15 16,450 XP Urban Legend Urban Myth Urban Superstition
16 18,750 XP Hero of the Wastes Strider of the Wastes Villain of the Wastes
17 21,200 XP Paragon Beholder Fiend
18 23,800 XP Wasteland Savior Wasteland Watcher Wasteland Destroyer
19 26,550 XP Saint Super-Human Evil Incarnate
20 29,450 XP Last, Best Hope of Humanity Paradigm of Humanity Scourge of Humanity
Levels that can only be reached through Broken Steel or through modding
21 32,500 XP Restorer of Faith Soldier of Fortune Architect of Doom
22 35,700 XP Model of Selflessness Profiteer Bringer of Sorrow
23 39,050 XP Shepherd Egocentric Deceiver
24 42,550 XP Friend of the People Loner Consort of Discord
25 46,200 XP Champion of Justice Hero for Hire Stuff of Nightmares
26 50,000 XP Symbol of Order Model of Apathy Agent of Chaos
27 53,950 XP Herald of Tranquility Person of Refinement Instrument of Ruin
28 58,050 XP Lightbringer Moneygrubber Soultaker
29 62,300 XP Earthly Angel Gray Stranger Demon's Spawn
30 66,700 XP

Ok, now double the exp for each level, so that lvl 2 requires 400 exp, lvl 10 14400 exp, lvl 20 58900 exp and lvl 30 13200 132000 exp.
Sure it would take a looooooooooot longer to get to the last level but that means we won't hit level cap too soon like we did in fallout 3 (Even with Broken Steel we capped too early)

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 11:10 am

I'm wondering how long will it take to get to level 30 (on average). 50 hours of gameplay or more like 100?

It will take much longer to get to level 30 than in Fallout 3.

Also, how many skills we'll be able to max. 3 skills or more?
So, what do you think?

From what I understand, Intelligence is far less overpowered in relation to skill point distribution, all skill boosting perks have been removed, skill magazines only provide temporary boosts and collectibles like bobbleheads (in this case Snow Globes) don't provide skill boosts either. With an average Intelligence, you should have 3 skills maxed and 1 midway by your mid 20s.

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 8:09 am

30 66,700 XP

Ok, now double the exp for each level, so that ... lvl 30 13200 exp.

There's a slight calculation error there. The correct answer is 133400 exp.

But I do agree with the point.

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 11:28 am

Intact Garden Gnome had a character with 67 Guns skill at level 6 from the PAX demo screenshots. I totalled up the skills and it came up to 335 skill points. Something doesn't quite add up, because at that rate, you could get 1500 points by the time you hit the cap. Of course, the carry weight was at 245, so they probably just made the characters reasonably powerful so people could enjoy the demo. We'll have to wait and see if they just got sick of people whining about "god builds" and decided to spite them.

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 2:21 pm

There's a slight calculation error there. The correct answer is 133400 exp.

But I do agree with the point.

Well I'm bad at math so I just rounded the number up.

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 6:23 pm

how many skills we'll be able to max. 3 skills or more?

Also, to show I'm not pulling my response out of my hind parts:

I'm 23rd level with a 6 or 7 INT on my current playthrough and I think my three tags are at 100 and one other skill is close to 90. In any case, I'm nowhere near maxing out my skills.

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 4:46 pm

Don't worry, after the game has been out for a month people will find ways around the system so everyone can become gods again. :rolleyes:

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 11:07 am

Intact Garden Gnome had a character with 67 Guns skill at level 6 from the PAX demo screenshots. I totalled up the skills and it came up to 335 skill points. Something doesn't quite add up, because at that rate, you could get 1500 points by the time you hit the cap. Of course, the carry weight was at 245, so they probably just made the characters reasonably powerful so people could enjoy the demo.

You can not base anything on the pre-release demo builds. Those are tweaked characters so that they don't die as easilly. Any skills or perks or attributes were dialed up in an editor and not from the character progression that we would go through.

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 11:19 am

snip

good show. i thought i remember seeing that somewhere but i wasn't sure, this is great news.

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 6:56 pm

Well I'm bad at math so I just rounded the number up.

You mean waaaaay down?

Ok, I'll stop teasing.

Anyway, the "Sawyer post" Aonaran quoted sounds somewhat promising. Though I would like to see the leveling chart for it - to scratch my head for a while before the game comes out.

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 10:33 am

Back in the FO2 days, the only skills you could realistically "max" were the ones you tagged, since they went up at a higher rate than the untagged skills, plus the skills went up to 200% but at some weird ratio, but % increase for each point spent would diminish over 100%. http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_2_skills

I'm hoping you can max 3 tagged skills plus maybe one or two untagged and keep a fair balance, like maybe 25 to 50% distribution to the rest of them so that at level 30 you don't have a set of skills that are so weak they are completely useless because you are focused on maxing your faves.

Ultra Specialized characters make more sense in multiplayer and co-op, where you can follow the more traditional RPG archetypes like Damage Dealer, Defender/Tank, Doctor/Healer, etc.

With a single player RPG like Fallout, you have to be really good at a handful of skills. Guns would be an obvious choice, but you can also go Guns/Energy or Guns/Melee. But you also need to raise (and max if possible) other skills like Repair, Sneak and/or Survival.

Even for a "Diplomat" type character going for a "no kill" run, you would still need to specialize in "non lethal" weapons just in case, like Guns/Unarmed for the bean bag gun and the boxing gloves, and maybe go for Speech/Doctor as your "non attack" skills.

So yes, I do agree with most arguments, that we don't need to be able to raise an "all skills" super character by level 30, but I must emphasize that we do still need a broad range of skills, maybe 4 or 5 that we are still able to "max" by level 30, otherwise most people will just go for the obvious "max attack skills only" characters and hardly diverge their characters from there.

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 4:23 am

You mean waaaaay down?

Ok, I'll stop teasing.

Anyway, the "Sawyer post" Aonaran quoted sounds somewhat promising. Though I would like to see the leveling chart for it - to scratch my head for a while before the game comes out.

Ah [censored], just realized the error. >_<

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 10:15 am

Level balancing (as in how quickly and how often do we get to levelup) is a tough nut in games like this. Players need to be rewarded for playing the missions as well as grinding, and there tend to be enough players that enjoy either levelling action that there needs to be weight built by the developers into both styles of experience gains. Simply increasing the level up requirments puts a strain on the players that want to play main quests and side missions but who aren't interested in grinding through raider battles. I suppose they could increase the requirements and at the same time increase the XP gains earned through mission completion, while NOT increasing the XP gained by killing enemies.

As a side note: I'm curious as to whether or not you'll still be able to gain XP twice on doors and containers that are locked both through a tumbler lock and a terminal lock. In FO3 (as I'm sure most of you know) you could pick a lock and then go over to its corresponding terminal and hack that for additional XP... I often felt this was an exploit on the game system, but how do the rest of feel about that?

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 1:02 pm

If the game is anything like Fallout 2, you'll have to do pretty much EVERYTHING to get to 30. So I'd guess anything from around 30-60 hours. Of course power-gamers will probably do it in 10 or something..

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 6:07 am

Or how about this, at lvl 10 you no longer gain any experience from bloatflies and radroaches, at 15 you no longer get any experience from vicious dogs and molerats etc.

So molerat.

lvl 1 - 4exp
lvl 2 - 4exp
lvl 3 - 5exp
lvl 4 - 5exp
lvl 5 - 7exp
lvl 6 - 7exp
lvl 7 - 7exp
lvl 8 - 7exp
lvl 9 - 6exp
lvl 10 - 5exp
lvl 11 - 5exp
lvl 12 - 4exp
lvl 13 - 4exp
lvl 14 - 3exp
lvl 15 - 0exp

Etc for all creatures and enemies in the game.

For higher leveled enemies like Nightkin

lvl 14 - 0
lvl 15 - 10
lvl 16 - 15
lvl 17 - 20
lvl 18 - 35
lvl 19 - 40
lvl 20 - 50
lvl 21 - 50
lvl 22 - 50
lvl 23 - 50
lvl 24 - 48
lvl 25 - 46
lvl 26 - 43
lvl 27 - 43
lvl 28 - 40
lvl 29 - 40
lvl 30 - 40

Why should you be given less exp for defeating an enemy at lower level?
Balance.
But I'm sure a lot of people would hate this system as well.

This is of course just a quick draft and for it to actually be balanced it has to be extremely tweaked.

I just don't think you should be given experience for defeating lower lvl enemies.
It's like taking a second grade math test over and over again.
It's easy enough the first time, just cause you do it 600 times over doesn't mean you learn anything new.

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 7:32 am

^^
Yeh, I don't mind something like that... lotsa PnP games stop awarding XP when you've exceeded the enemy's level by 3 or 5 or whatever works for that system.

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 10:39 am

^^
Yeh, I don't mind something like that... lotsa PnP games stop awarding XP when you've exceeded the enemy's level by 3 or 5 or whatever works for that system.

WICKED new avatar man!

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 5:00 pm

WICKED new avatar man!

Hhhnnnn.... I awake!

Thanks fisher-man :wink_smile:

» Mon Jan 31, 2011 7:47 pm

Or how about this, at lvl 10 you no longer gain any experience from bloatflies and radroaches, at 15 you no longer get any experience from vicious dogs and molerats etc.

So molerat.

*snip*

Why should you be given less exp for defeating an enemy at lower level?
Balance.
But I'm sure a lot of people would hate this system as well.

This is of course just a quick draft and for it to actually be balanced it has to be extremely tweaked.

I just don't think you should be given experience for defeating lower lvl enemies.
It's like taking a second grade math test over and over again.
It's easy enough the first time, just cause you do it 600 times over doesn't mean you learn anything new.

Isn't the boredom and tedium of trying to farm-kill low XP radroaches and bloatflies enough of a deterrent to keep people from doing it?

I'm just saying man!

I get bored farming raiders, but I do it early on to score the needed gear and I move on to bigger and better mobs...