Fallout 76 » Discussions


Character Building in Fallout:76

  • October 30, 2018

    I've been on a bit of a tear through some Fallout 76 B.E.T.A videos lately (Watched all of Many a True Nerd's playthrough so far and have highly enjoyed it) so I thought I'd jump in on a conversation that's going to be a really complicated one. Well actually there are a few complicated questions but I think it might be worth approaching, because it's something that's tough...

    How are we going to tackle Character Building in F:76 as a site? 

    We've had a bit of experience with how difficult it can be in an MMO to create meaningful character builds (simply take a look at the limited number of ESO Builds we've produced as a site), but Character Building has always been a pretty fundamental part of the site, with both Skyrim and Fallout 4 being great draws and sources of pretty much endless discussion over the years. So I'd like to kind of get the ball rolling on discussing a few topics, but the general one just being Character Building in Fallout 76.

    Q1 -What are some of the positives of Fallout: 76 Character Building, or aspects of the game that will allow more freedom or variety compared to what we have in Skyrim/F4?

    Q2 - Should we use the traditional formatting for Builds? Or try something utterly different (and if so what should that be)?

    Q3 - What are some potential issues that we may face when creating Fallout: 76 Character Builds?

    Q4 - How will Multiplayer Builds work? Is it better to create 'Party Style' Builds or just focus on a single character and how it works in a Party. 

    Q5 - Should there be a significant difference between how we present a Solo Build and Multiplayer Build?

    I could probably think of more questions, but you guys get the idea surely :P The point is that it's kind of complicated but it's something that has me quite excited, Fallout:76 from what I've been able to see has so many options for builds, with even a sort of 'Pack Mule' being a completely logical and probably useful build to run (for Multiplayer, but maybe for Solo if that means you can work as a merchant). RP is, strange but still interesting and something that is entirely possible. 

  • October 30, 2018

    Ok, I'll bite...

    1.  I think one of the positive aspects is also a negative aspect--namely, swapping perk cards at will.  It allows the player to fine-tune his/her character on the fly, which can be a real boon in certain situations (e.g., lockpicking, hacking, a focused weapon-specific capability before a boss fight).  However, this freedom is also very disruptive to roleplaying.  While one could argue mutations, radiation sickness, or something else, to wildly jump your build around to fit the need just screams "immersion breaking" to me.  However, until I try it (hopefully, tonight), I can't really speak with complete confidence.

    2.  Characters are focused around S.P.E.C.I.A.L. and perk cards (and any corresponding weapons and armor), so I believe that should be paramount.  However, any lore, backstory, goals and motivations, etc. can still be included.  We think we should focus on character roles (like we do with other builds) to help organize the builds, though we can also have tags for the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats when builds really max out a given statistic (or three).

    3.  See question 1 above.  The real issues are all the possible variations with perk cards, as well as the random nature of Fallout 76.  You might have that Gatling laser toting, power armor wearing, BoS character build, but there isn't an absolute guarantee that you can create him.  Again, this is also said in ignorance, as we don't know how all the random loot and player trading features truly work.  But just the overall variations that seem to be possible with a single character stagger the mind.

    4. If you focus on character roles, then it might be nice to see a solo-oriented layout and a party-oriented layout in the same build.  Of course, if someone is making a pure solo build (or party build), then perhaps a tag for that could be used to identify it as such?  I always enjoyed the Skyrim builds where there were multiple possible races for the build (and the author suggested them and how/why they worked).  I see this as a nice parallel to that.

    5. See #4.

     

    My F76 character will be a doctor--Doc Silver (or something else if this is taken).  He will focus on Charisma, Intelligence, and Luck initially.  He will be solo-focused, though I will gladly join teams when practical (in real life).  Thus, I could list my choices for perks for my solo and party play in the build.  The backstory would still fit both, and I would likely not focus on perk swapping as an anytime capability, but more for tweaking between solo and party play (yes, Lone Wanderer, I am looking at you!).  Just my 2-cents worth!

  • October 30, 2018

    1.  I think one of the positive aspects is also a negative aspect--namely, swapping perk cards at will.  It allows the player to fine-tune his/her character on the fly, which can be a real boon in certain situations (e.g., lockpicking, hacking, a focused weapon-specific capability before a boss fight).  However, this freedom is also very disruptive to roleplaying.  While one could argue mutations, radiation sickness, or something else, to wildly jump your build around to fit the need just screams "immersion breaking" to me.  However, until I try it (hopefully, tonight), I can't really speak with complete confidence.

    Oh if you do get around to playing it a bit let me know how it is. I've only really been able to watch a few Streams/Videos for it, but that's always going to be a bit limited because it's hard for me to get a good grip on the game purely through video. Now gotta stop myself there before I start on a rant about the B.E.T.A so...

    Yeah that's essentially exactly what my thought process is regarding Perk Cards. I've quite enjoyed the progression so far from what I've seen, but it's really tough to say how effectively you can grab Perk Cards as you start levelling up. Bethesda has done a fairly solid job of balancing them, but I'm a bit worried about that. On top of that, and more relevant to what you said (:P) it is something that'll be difficult to work around the issue of Gameplay and Roleplay conflicitng a little bit. 

    2.  Characters are focused around S.P.E.C.I.A.L. and perk cards (and any corresponding weapons and armor), so I believe that should be paramount.  However, any lore, backstory, goals and motivations, etc. can still be included.  We think we should focus on character roles (like we do with other builds) to help organize the builds, though we can also have tags for the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats when builds really max out a given statistic (or three).

    That's all makes sense. At the moment I do think Gameplay is more or less the primary aspect of creating a build in Fallout: 76, which is true to an extent with F4/Skyrim, but I'm not sure how large the difference is without playing it. Obviously there is the problem that it's a little harder to play any sort of 'Villain' character without throwing PvP into the mix (something I'm personally against, and could rant about a little something there), and really it's harder to Roleplay from what I've seen so far.

    3.  See question 1 above.  The real issues are all the possible variations with perk cards, as well as the random nature of Fallout 76.  You might have that Gatling laser toting, power armor wearing, BoS character build, but there isn't an absolute guarantee that you can create him.  Again, this is also said in ignorance, as we don't know how all the random loot and player trading features truly work.  But just the overall variations that seem to be possible with a single character stagger the mind.

    That's exactly the issue that I see. I feel like it's a lot harder to go into a game and set up a progression. The potential way around this is to focus on getting misc. cards early on, and then building up the core of your character more late-game (and that's assuming there's something a bit more conclusive for finding cards in the late-game for Solo players), but even then, there's no guarentee at any point. 

    4. If you focus on character roles, then it might be nice to see a solo-oriented layout and a party-oriented layout in the same build.  Of course, if someone is making a pure solo build (or party build), then perhaps a tag for that could be used to identify it as such?  I always enjoyed the Skyrim builds where there were multiple possible races for the build (and the author suggested them and how/why they worked).  I see this as a nice parallel to that.

    That's fair, I'm wondering if we'd be better off with a clearer title scheme for Fallout: 76, you know differentiating between Solo and Group builds in the title...Something that does really interest me is how prominent Full Group Builds will work. Essentially creating a build for the entire team you run with rather than just the single character. Obviously that will work better if we get a fair few members of the site who want to play Fallout:76 together, but it's something interesting to think about.

    5. See #4.

    My F76 character will be a doctor--Doc Silver (or something else if this is taken).  He will focus on Charisma, Intelligence, and Luck initially.  He will be solo-focused, though I will gladly join teams when practical (in real life).  Thus, I could list my choices for perks for my solo and party play in the build.  The backstory would still fit both, and I would likely not focus on perk swapping as an anytime capability, but more for tweaking between solo and party play (yes, Lone Wanderer, I am looking at you!).  Just my 2-cents worth!

    Thanks for dropping some thoughts Feint, definitely some good things going on here...Doc Silver sounds rather interesting, I'd like to see how well he does with Solo-Play because it seems like a fairly team-oriented build style (from what I've seen of Charisma, Intelligence and Luck.)

  • October 31, 2018

    So I've just thought of something that's going to be a bit tricky to work with. With Skyrim we had the very easy level of 50 to work with, maybe 35 as a sort of secondary 'self-imposed cap' to builds. Uh, not sure on Fallout 4's but it's a bit more limiting because of how some perks (the latter levels and the better perks) are more level-locked than earlier ones. Kind of makes it a bit strange to level up sometimes. Anyway, the point is that Skyrim has a consistant levelling scheme to how Builds work, and while obviously you can go to whatever you want, that's just the optimal level for most characters. But will Fallout: 76 have anything similar?

    Logically speaking, you probably need at least 2 max or near-max Attributes to make a succesful Character, with 10 and 15 being the two caps that I can see working. That puts you at a minimum at 18/28 levels, with probably those extra 2 so you can grab Perk Cards at 20/30. But then if you have three attributes you need at near max it puts you close to 26/42 with the boost to 30/45.

    Essentially there's a 10/15 level bump for each attribute you need to near-max, but that doesn't effect the probability that you actually need to keep investing in a few secondary perks from time to time to grab key perk levels.

     

  • Member
    October 31, 2018

    I'd say that the build level cap will still be 50 for 76 since that is when you stop earning SPECIAL points; unless there are perk cards locked behind higher levels then that.

  • October 31, 2018

    I'd say that the build level cap will still be 50 for 76 since that is when you stop earning SPECIAL points; unless there are perk cards locked behind higher levels then that.

    Right...Don't know why but I managed to confuse myself with the whole "15 being the max" stat for each SPECIAL Attribute. If the cap is 50, I...hm so that's 49 points I guess. 

    So on average you can hit 8 in each stat, or lets test out a few combinations. If you have two maxed out attributes, you can use 48 to hit 5's in evereything else. 

    15 Strength | 5 Perception | 15 Endurance | 5 Charisma | 5 Intelligence | 5 Agility | 5 Luck 

    If you want three maxed out Attributes you could have something like this (with 49 SPECIAL points)

    15 Strength | 15 Perception | 15 Endurance | 3 Charisma | 3 Intelligence | 3 Agility | 2 Luck 

    An average "Jack of All Trades" with 49 points should have 

    8 Strength | 8 Perception | 8 Endurance | 8 Charisma | 8 Intelligence | 8 Agility | 8 Luck

    If you wanted to go with a more classic feeling build (10 max Special) it gets a little trickier with a two or three set. 

    10 Strength | 10 Perception | 10 Endurance | 7 Charisma | 7 Intelligence | 6 Agility | 6 Luck

    Hmm. I suppose it's not too bad. I was a tad worried that builds would just feel a little too general or too specialised with not much in the middle. But I suppose if you look at it outside of Fallout 4's system, it feels a lot better. Well actually just taking it as a purely unique levelling system rather than comparing it to Fallout's makes the most sense (or Skyrim's for that matter). 

    I think we'll have to see how long it takes to level up late-game. Personally I find post 40 to be a chore in Fallout because it's got a rather strange levelling system (it doesn't scale all that well IMO, tooo much levelling at lower levels and not enough later) but we'll have to see I suppose. That said, yeah 50 really feels like it's going to be the optimal time to end. Gives you that final level of Perk Cards and a decent spread of SPECIAL.

     

  • November 1, 2018

    Dragonborn2021 said:

    That said, yeah 50 really feels like it's going to be the optimal time to end. Gives you that final level of Perk Cards and a decent spread of SPECIAL.

    As you both mentioned, 50 is the last level you receive S.P.E.C.I.A.L. points, though you do continue gaining perk cards.  Golden Fool made a good point regarding the possibility of higher level-locked perk cards.  That might prove to be an interesting game mechanic (and a reason to keep playing your character), should they utilize it.

    Well, I missed the first beta test entirely due to the bug, I guess.  I never clicked anything on the launcher (as it was running in the background all day), but when I saw it at 5:58 pm (CST), it was "Unlocking" the files.  Unfortunately, that seemed to be another name for "downloading" everything again.  When Bethesda throttled down the download speed of everyone, my night was over.  Thankfully, the launcher was finished yesterday morning and Fallout 76 is now installed (and running, minus the server being online) on my PC.  I hope to give it a good testing tonight.  I might rush through areas just to grasp the mechanics without detailed examination of the lore.  I say that, as I will likely reroll my character on 14 Nov.  It just depends on what I see when I start 'er up this afternoon.

    PS:  I plan on going heavy Int and Cha early just to see if that harms my ability to fight enemies.  I want the Lone Wanderer and Animal Friends perks, as well as the ability to craft higher quality weapons, armor, and explosives.

  • Member
    November 1, 2018

    Feint said:

    PS:  I plan on going heavy Int and Cha early just to see if that harms my ability to fight enemies.  I want the Lone Wanderer and Animal Friends perks, as well as the ability to craft higher quality weapons, armor, and explosives.

    If it's anything like fallout 4's survival mode it wont harm your ability to fight at all since weapon mods can easily make up for a lack of weapon perks (I generally don't take weapon perks in survival until like level 30 or something). Although I've heard that while certainly possible combat is harder for a solo player, which makes sense given the multiplayer focus of the game.

     

  • November 1, 2018

    If it's anything like fallout 4's survival mode it wont harm your ability to fight at all since weapon mods can easily make up for a lack of weapon perks (I generally don't take weapon perks in survival until like level 30 or something). Although I've heard that while certainly possible combat is harder for a solo player, which makes sense given the multiplayer focus of the game.

    I've seen conflicting information on the exact challenge level. I think maybe Bethesda altered a few things after that first exclusive BETA test (The one where a bunch of content creators went to West Virginia to play) because most of the more recent gameplay I've been watching has seemed relatively easy. I mean, it's not impossible as long as your smart/have good enough weapons, even if you don't go crazy with damage boosting perk cards. Hard to say without playing it but I think that Solo play isn't going to be restrictive to any major extent (as long as you don't go crazy and fight a Scorchbeast at Level 5 :P).

     

  • Member
    November 1, 2018

    Dragonborn2021 said:

    (as long as you don't go crazy and fight a Scorchbeast at Level 5 :P).

    That sounds like a challenge :P