Skills
Fallout 3 has Skills and Perks while Fallout 4 has Perks. What’s the difference? Well, in Fallout 3, Skills were more general, determining your effectiveness in different things. If you wanted to be good in trading, then the Barter skill was the way to go, for example. Three Skills could be tagged, giving a 15 point bonus in that Skill and SPECIAL points could be used to boost them once by an additional two points. Perks, on the other hand, are more like general boosts and abilities that depend on your SPECIAL stats. Things like Life Giver (providing 30 more HP) required 5 points in Endurance while Master Trader (cause all items to cost 25 percent less) needed 6 points in Charisma and 60 points in the Barter Skill. As a result, depending on your SPECIAL stat allotments, Skills, tagged Skills and Perks, you could have a phenomenally different experience with each character.
However, in Fallout 4, everything is rolled into Perks. While armour and gear can help further define a build with different affixes and modifiers, characters can still end up feeling uniform in the long run because – by default – there’s very little restriction on what Perks you can have. Which brings us to the next point.
