I think it was a huge step back from both Skyrim and New Vegas.



Both are very good at letting your actually roleplay, although in very different ways. New Vegas was all about your character and the story, and you could really approach every quest as whatever character you decided to play. Both in terms of dialogue, but also in terms of what skills and weapons you had. Every story-based quest had several outcomes based on who you were and what you chose to do. The XP based leveling system worked well with this, and provided you with character growth for doing what the game did best.



Skyrim was more about just living in a huge fantasy world. It was fun just wandering around, collecting berries and making potions, or fighting the war for either the Stormcloaks or the Imperium. The story and quests were more about taking you to cool places and getting you geared up. It's a fantasy sandbox with a shitload toys to play with. The leveling system really compliments this. You don't get XP from doing quests, you get XP from doing whatever stuff you want to do, or what your character is supposed to do.



Both games have character and leveling mechanics that suit the experience.



Fallout 4 tried to be somewhat in the middle, and it suffered for it. It wasn't fun just to just exist in the world, yet the quests and story were terrible as well. It failed on all accounts.