Having recently finished Fallout: New Vegas it is now time to vent my frustrations. Typically I play this sort of game as a sneaky sniper-thief and try to talk my way out of rough situations (or apply my other wits: science, medicine, and lockpicking). New Vegas offers ample opportunities to talk, hack, repair, or lockpick your way through situations - but it seems to me the requirements are far higher than they ever were in Fallout 3.
I never passed a single speech check in the game. It seems they were all between 60-100 and speech has never been that useful as a skill so I did not invest in it. That turned out to be a mistake, as the game would have been much less fetch quest-heavy and grind-y with high speech given my character build (small guns, light armor).
I also never passed any science checks, which is abominable for me. Again, the requirements were always too high! I sometimes managed to use my mediocre repair skill, but really it's not that useful as a skill even to fix damaged gear. It's easier to just find a repair merchant and pay him. Caps are ridiculously easy to come by, even with low/no charisma and barter.
Worse, I was rarely able to attempt any of the lockpicking opportunities in the game. The locks worth picking to advance the story and make certain missions easier all seem to be Hard or Very Hard, meaning you need 75 or 100 in that skill.
This is a lot to invest in skills that don't make your character stronger or tougher. Sure, you can get the skills that high but your character will be really unbalanced. I've found that in Fallout it's really, really easy to let your character's level outpace her survivability. I beat the game at level 15 with a maxed out guns skill; normal human enemies were simple one-shot kills but armored enemies and deathclaws (even young ones) would simply murder me.
This is an issue I think Skyrim addresses really well: I never once found myself feeling outmatched as I progressed through the game, even though I went into it without a real game plan. I wasn't min/maxing or even planning my character; just upgrading what felt fun to play with allowed me to progress through the game without being overpowered by a basic insect enemy. Hopefully Fallout 4 will have learned from Skyrim's fantastic balance because otherwise I really do enjoy the post-apocalyptic scavenging and exploration.
