Major Perk Rework

Modding
#1

Preface: I love this game. Completely satisfied with purchase.

I think a lot of the perks in this game are useless. They need to be scrutinized a little more and they definitely don’t jibe with a hardcore play through. I think the general philosophy of perks in all games, but specifically this one, should focus on rewarding skilled players, not making the game easier as you get better (Some of the perks in this game accomplish this). Obviously you are not forced to pick perks, but a lot of them are just carrots on sticks and could be replaced by systems that actually improve the game for skilled players.

For example:
Revenant: passive health regen…why?
Light Armor: not wearing plate armor=50% easier to dodge strikes…just make armor scale correctly and let my skill decide
Thickblooded: bleed slower…unnecessary
Firm Grip: shield blocks cost opponent 15% more stamina…your kb+m shield skill progression should be sufficient
Berserk and Blood Rush are pretty egregious
Everything in the Warfare tree (excluding Bailman & Feint)…just no, all filler nerf material
There are others…

Most of the perks in the Skill (alchemy, reading, etc) trees are good, make the game more enjoyable
The ability (dodger, perfect block, etc) perks & the combos are good.
I like the tradeoff perks: gain 20% here but lose 10% here and here.

Ideas for useful perks that reward skilled players and make the game more enjoyable:

Need an archery tree:
Pin in Place: temporarily immobilize enemy with foot shot + non-plate boots, other precision/skill shot perks.
Arrow Crafting: fire arrows (near campfire, etc) , other realistic stuff

Maces and axes:
Stole My Ballons: strike to plate helmet has chance to lodge weapon, basically zombifying that opponent, but lose weapon.
Mine, Mine: Lodge weapon into wooden shield and disarm shield.
Catch This: Throw weapon at head = immediate KO, possible death depending on headwear.
These may require an easily retrievable secondary melee weapon.

Those are just a few, I’m sure you guys can come up with more, better.

1 Like
#2

Most of the vanilla perks are what I’d call “lazy” perks. +/-% perks are the least fun perks, but they’re easy to make. The type of perks I consider the best add new things to do. In my opinion, the gold standard for perks (and spells, which are triggered perks) in the Skyrim community are Ordinator and the rest of Enai Siaion’s mods. I’m not yet sure if we can do anything with similar complexity, but there’s around 500 hardcoded perk behaviors and scripted behaviors are possible. We just don’t have any documentation.

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#3

Nice man. Hopefully Warhorse facilitates the recruitment these high level modders. This guy looks amazing. I’ll keep him in mind for my impending Skyrim playthrough that I can never seem to get around to.

#4

I subscribe to this! I wanted to start a similar topic a few days ago, but I will talk about it here. I enjoy the game, it has so much more potential than the current state, I understand the existence of bugs, but what I really feel disappointed in, are the perk system and the overall character progression. I will give a few examples and a few reasonable justifications.

  • First thing that comes in to my mind is Agility. I just can’t see any of the perks there as worth getting (maybe the dice one though). To me they seem like poor trade-off’s; Not only dodging is inferior to parry+counterattack, but it makes it even less useful with the lightly armor perk, that forces us to wear less armor for a better chance to dodge. Then trading damage for less stamina cost, this one can make sense with heavy bleedings and poisons, but then again 20% less damage is a big tradeoff for just stamina cost reduction. And so on, most perks are just not so satisfying they feel like they are just fillers for the skill line.
  • Then the character progression, guys, this is the biggest problem. The replayability of the game is almost non-existent. Given the fact that you can get roughly ~90% of all perks in 1 playthrough, I don’t feel excited to replay it again. Also, character builds, I understand that there are less character archetypes than other open world RPG’s, but the ones we can get are not too well defined.
  • As a suggestion, besides introducing more perks and re-balancing the existing ones, I would also suggest limiting the total amount of perks we get, OR, make it so that it is much harder to maximize the levels so that we will feel more motivated to focus on a strong, defined character build, rather than go the jack-of-all trades route. If it were for me, I would have simply preferred the leveling system from Skyrim, because yes, it is great and makes you think what skills to level and where to allocate the perks.
2 Likes
#5

Totally agree with you Cord. I think most people haven’t gotten to their second playthrough yet and are probably enjoying being a jack-of-all-trades to learn the different systems. However, the current system is totally going to discourage multiple playthroughs. In addition to your suggestions, more and harder-to-acquire weapons/armor could help incentivize focused builds and multiple playthroughs.

1 Like
#6

Ah yes, items too! Strong gear should definitely be harder to acquire. Someone told me that there is a “chest of wonders” in the game where you get the best gear, now that might be a bug or something but still something to point out.

#7

Well the chests itself aren’t the biggest problem (you want to get best gear on start - fine , ruin your experience and loot & steal everything - here is also the re-play-ability, choose your way you will get to the end, will you steal only this and that? loot one thing from free chest only? sell only this kind of items?), but the problem is too many stuffs inside, or on same place, not much weak items in there and the problem with gear that you don’t need to have certain amount of Strength and Vitality to use them.
The perks should be here to improve your dmg and to wear certain armor items (why they even don’t slow you if you are lvl 1 anyway :D) imho. The game gets too easy after you have 10+ str and so much dmg no matter if you have starting weapon or late game one. Instead of increasing dmg by str (that much), the perks should take place there too, that would make them more useable - and more needed, tho to be lost after you choose to pick one and lost another, even its dumb if you wouldn’t be able to train everything from the realistic perspective.
Should I pick 2 lower but together strong at start or save for better later on? Why? Of course not, you don’t need them later on anyway., agree.

#8

Well, I was referring to one specific chest that apparently was left with all the late game goodies inside. As for the treasure map chests, they are OK I guess, grab them whenever you feel confortable.

#9

This one will be “removed” it was a mistake, it will show after you almost finish the main game.

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