Interest Check: Perk Freedom / Perk Rebalance

[LoneVandal]

If you want to be a master thief or assassin who has maxed out Pickpocket, Lockpicking, Sneak, and Alchemy for poison brewing, wouldn't you also want to be good at wearing Light Armor and using melee weapons? What if you wanted to also train yourself to be a master bowman? What about your magic bar, is that going to be useless to you all game long because you don't have any perk points left to put into spell schools, even if you train up the associated skills? What if you wanted to craft your own light armor and enchant it after spending the time to become good at those things?

 

TLDR; I want to do more things with my character than the game will let me.

 

I feel like Bethesda made a classic design mistake with the perk system, in that, you are forced to allocate resources between combat and non-combat skills in a game entirely about combat, from the same pool of points. Nobody wants to be bad at combat, so by default you are forced to spend a lot of points in offensive and defensive capabilities before you even think about leveling things like Smithing, Enchanting, Speech, Lockpicking, Pickpocketing, and Alchemy. If you choose to put perks in those instead of fighting abilities, combat becomes unfair.

 

TLDR; It is bad design to force players to divide resources between combat and non-combat from a single pool.

 

Not only that, there are 249 perks available in this game by default. When you reach the soft cap at level 50, that means you only have access to 1/5 of the options available to your character. While you could grind yourself up to level 80 over the course of weeks, you're already basically at the end of the regular play experience at level 50. Now I know some people would think "Just make another character to try out other play styles then.", but when the most significant change to the game on a subsequent replay is whether you kill people with bow, a sword, or a spell, it is not exactly what I would call "insane replay value". I would prefer to be able to explore the different skill sets without having to start the entire game over 5 times, personally.

 

TLDR; I will only ever have 1/5 of the possible perks in the game in one regular play through, I don't want to beat the game 5 times to see all the player options.

 

I am interested in modding Skyrim to automatically grant you the perks associated with obtaining the appropriate level of skill in a tree, and removing the limitations on the number of perks you can have. It isn't about powergaming or minmaxing, it is about freedom to build the kind of character you want. As well, there are quite a few perks in the trees that are just not that interesting or useful, and under the current system would be a complete waste of points to take anyway. The mod would eventually address these issues and others related to balance and perks.

 

TLDR; The mod I am proposing would remove the perk limit by giving you any perk you attained enough skill to purchase normally through leveling up, and could possibly rebalance the trees themselves to make some crappy perks more appealing as a separate module

 

If you think this is a good idea and a mod you would want to play with, vote!

Edited November 18, 2011 by LoneVandal

[BlackCompany]

I too want to see some perks changed. I have thought about combining the useful, non-immersion/game breaking perks from Lockpicking and Pickpocket into a single, "Deft Hands" perk tree. This would involve removing perks like "pickpocketing equipped items" because its ridiculously immersion wrecking, of course.

 

I would then replace the unused tree with a new tree, with entirely new perks. To be determined, as yet.

 

However, I would caution against giving players too many freebies in this game. Skyrim has a delicate balance that keeps players away from the "god" status of past games. By forcing players to choose between Stamina, Magicka or Health every level, you are forced to specialize. Gone are the days of a level 15 deity; now, you're a struggling hero who can die in near any real fight.

 

Removing the one of the other choices in leveling breaks the game balance. Not much fun, that.

[Astral Nexus]

I think the simplest solution would be a mod that gives players 2 perks per level instead of just 1.

 

Then, you would have 100 perks at 50, and you could grind out another 62 perks if you wanted, but typically with 100 perks, your going to get most of what you want for your play style, and it wont be so punishing to take non-combat selections. Giving every possible perk automatically might be too unbalancing towards the far end of things and could make the game boring.

[dra6o0n]

This is a result of bethesda trying to 'simplify' their game, in their motto of 'evolution'.

 

Oblivion to Fallout 3 to New Vegas, the complexity increases and some simplicity makes it easier to handle, but Skyrim?

 

They TOTALLY took the easy way out and designed the system from bottom up to be a 'infinitely replayable' game.

 

By infinite, they mean you re-creating a character, replaying stuff and doing different stuff.

[Plutoman101]

I thought the choice was great. :/ I rather enjoyed having leveling feel fun. In oblivion, a level didn't mean anything. All it meant was that you had higher skills. All I felt like it was, was grinding skills till I hit the 25, 50, 75 mark and etc. Because there was very little change. Access to new spells? Great, thanks. The game feels much more involved and leveling feels more fluid and dynamic.

 

I would like to see more perks, and a distribution of different sets - combat and non-combat perks, which you get one point for each side on every level up.

[Reddimus]

I'd really have liked movement or attack speed perks.

[LoneVandal]

Well glad to see people agree in general that the perk system really needs some work.

 

I am thinking about revamping magic in general as another module of the mod, specifically making the spells have better secondary effects. Who the hell cares if your Lightning spells drain enemy magicka? That only matters if they bother using spells in the first place, and from the amount of spam I've seen it doesn't seem like your piddly drain amount is going to win you a mage-fight any better with Lightning than you would with Fire or Ice.

 

Now, wouldn't it be more interesting if the tier 1 destruction spells were more like this:

 

Fire: ramping damage over time, maximum damage over time effect after 5 seconds of exposure, and opponents drop red hot weapon / shield for 5 seconds. new perk could increase duration of damage over time component or disarm duration or both.

 

Frost: slows down enemy movement and attack speed by an increasing amount, maxing out at 5 seconds of exposure, and lasts for 5 seconds after ending your spellcast. New perk could increase slow duration, or cause the target to be rooted in place after 5 seconds exposure.

 

Lightning: increasing chance of causing paralysis while channeled on an enemy, paralysis lasts 5 seconds. New perk could increase duration of paralysis, or allow you to paralyze enemies which are normally immune or highly resistant, but only after 5 seconds of exposure.

 

This is just simple crap I farted out of my brain in 10 minutes, the possibilities for more interesting spells are endless.

[isamu99]

Well glad to see people agree in general that the perk system really needs some work.

 

I am thinking about revamping magic in general as another module of the mod, specifically making the spells have better secondary effects. Who the hell cares if your Lightning spells drain enemy magicka? That only matters if they bother using spells in the first place, and from the amount of spam I've seen it doesn't seem like your piddly drain amount is going to win you a mage-fight any better with Lightning than you would with Fire or Ice.

 

Now, wouldn't it be more interesting if the tier 1 destruction spells were more like this:

 

Fire: ramping damage over time, maximum damage over time effect after 5 seconds of exposure, and opponents drop red hot weapon / shield for 5 seconds. new perk could increase duration of damage over time component or disarm duration or both.

 

Frost: slows down enemy movement and attack speed by an increasing amount, maxing out at 5 seconds of exposure, and lasts for 5 seconds after ending your spellcast. New perk could increase slow duration, or cause the target to be rooted in place after 5 seconds exposure.

 

Lightning: increasing chance of causing paralysis while channeled on an enemy, paralysis lasts 5 seconds. New perk could increase duration of paralysis, or allow you to paralyze enemies which are normally immune or highly resistant, but only after 5 seconds of exposure.

 

This is just simple crap I farted out of my brain in 10 minutes, the possibilities for more interesting spells are endless.

 

LoneVandal if you pull this off you will be a f***ing ROCK STAR!!!!!!!!!! Please do it dude!! I want exactly what you're proposing and support this idea IN SPADES!!! Lone when do you think you will have this mod done? In a couple days hopefully?

[galzohar]

I think what you really want is a respec mod, rather than changing the system. Of course with the leveling system a respec mod would be difficult to implement, because even though you have your perks back, your skill is still high and thus your character level is high too, and a good system that lets you undo that will be quite complicated and just feel wrong.

 

I think once the game is rebalanced properly, then some respec options can be considered. But with the current system respecs are impossible.

 

As for just letting you get more perks, I don't like the idea, because basically you end up being able to have everything rather than need to actually build your character in a wise fashion.

[VegardPompey]

I think the perk system is super fun, but I hate how limiting it is. I screwed over my first build because I wrongly assumed that like in Morrowind and Oblivion, I could play a character who's good at a little bit of everything. I know specialization makes characters less interchangeable, but I prefer the way Morrowind and Oblivion handled this with classes - your characters started out with defining specializations, but could become good at everything later in the game if you wanted them to be. Skyrim does the opposite - your characters start out without defined specializations, but you're limited in what you can become good at even at max level. And in a sandbox game like Skyrim, I would *want* the chance to get good at everything I want to.

 

I want a mod that removes the 100 cap on skill levels and the "soft" level cap at 50 (I haven't gotten there yet, but I heard level gain slows down drastically) along with some perk rebalancing mods. If possible, I would also want to see the addition of more perks because I love the perk system.