They're not incompetent! They're "flawed". Bethesda can't help themselves! Although if you're developer whose not Bethesda, you're incompetent.

Perhaps. It's hard to find any other statistics on the topic, though. (....why would one turn it off occasionally? I'd think you'd either like it and play with it, or not like it and turn it off permanently. Genuinely curious.)

Only other sorta-statistic I can find is the "unique downloads" stat for Frostfall (compared to other popular Skyrim mods) on Nexus. Assuming, of course, that Frostfall wasn't also hosted elsewhere (hmmm, is it on Steam Workshop?)

For the curious:

Hard to do the same comparison for Fallout 3... there isn't an obvious front runner for One True Primary Needs mod. It's included in FWE, for instance - but that mod includes vast amounts of other changes as well, so it's hard to say "X people downloaded FWE for the eat/drink/sleep aspect".

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Anyway. Yes, it would be a nice option for the people who're interested in that sort of thing. Doesn't seem like it would take much code or dev time. I just don't think it's quite as "big"/popular a feature as the forums make it out to be.

(Also have a minor objection to calling it "hardcoe" - as opposed to Survival or Simulation mode - but that's probably just because the term hardcoe leaves a bad taste in my mouth after all the stupid "hardcoe vs casual" arguments I've seen over the years on various game forums. An exclusionary club meant to be wielded against those you feel as "lesser" and to prop up fragile gamer egos/make people feel more important, for no good reason. )

I think we will get a hardcoe mode but not at launch, it'll probably be added in a patch and it'll be similar to New Vegas's version, that's my prediction.

Yes...exactly....and after all these years I expect something better. Maybe that's my fault.

Skyrim was easily 10X more stable, and had 10X less obvious bugs then NV, Fo3, or Oblivion.

The quality improvement was honestly fairly staggering. I, to this day, have yet to get a CTD from anything other then an improper mod installation in Skyrim. The same cannot be said for any other Bethesda game.

That's a very low bar you're setting for yourself, but alright.

Compared to GTA, and MMORPGs, the only games of roughly equal size, Skyrim's stability is in the upper bar.

I don't really see it as setting a low bar when those kinds of games are just buggy and unstable by their nature of being so large.

I suppose our experiences with the game are just far too different.

I experienced far more game breaking bugs, as well as general jankiness, lag glitches and strangeness playing Skyrim (I started playing it on console) than I did playing any of the games you mentioned, except for a few mediocre mmos I've played, but at least there you have game masters who can help fix your problems.

We're getting off topic here, so I say we just leave this side conversation for another time.

That makes sense with the results you are getting.

Last word I'll say on this:

That's not an excuse for a buggy experience, especially when other similar games on the same system run better. I had the exact same issues on my pc version of skyrim afterward, and I have a decently powerful PC.

The difference is between a developer who reaches high and fails (at least until they can patch it all) and someone who is just trying to get the game out the door (in which cases the patches are few and far between).

Still looking at all the long list of wishlist stuff that we have seen in actual game play in Fallout 4, it is obvious that if Bethesda does have failures in Fallout 4 it will because they reached too high.

I don't really like hardcoe mode, after a time all that bs just becomes tedious instead of challenging. That said, I would consider it a red flag if the game had no hardcoe mode.

I can't see Bethesda not giving us an option to make Fallout, a post-apocalyptic game, more challenging to survive without just increasing the hit points and damage of the opposition.

Another thing to remember is mods like Project Nevada allowed you to fine tune the hardcoe mod in multiple ways.

I never wanted to bother with sleep so I would just set the period needed before sleep to a much higher number.

I expect a lot more people will use Hardcord mode if it is more tunable.

My bet is there will be some type of hardcoe mod in Fallout 4 from the get go and people will still mod it extensively.

Exactly.

Like, did people enjoy the absolutely garbage shooting mechanics that was FO3? I recall it being absolutely terrible.

FNV improved upon what was there, but it still felt clunky as all hell.

FO4 looks like it actually will be fun to FPS it. So hardly a bad change.

As for your first point, I'm not so sure. Oblivion had some jankiness to it, likely because of the engine. Skyrim had some incredibly smooth animations, and then some incredibly stupid looking ones. As for the DLCs, you misunderstood. I wasn't saying that Bethesda put in stuff they didn't get a chance to do in the main game, but rather that the main game didn't have stuff like that in the first place. Fallout 4 does, however.

You can't? After they did exactly that in Fallout 3? Especially when you have people on the forums justifying not having it, I don't think Bethesda feels the need to add it, even if the game would surely benefit from an improved and re-balanced survival system.

I don't know. I mean, it should be included if Bethesda aren't completely ignorant. New Vegas' hardcoe mode, as basic as it was, was quite popular. But I'm doubtful, as the new combat and crafting mechanics and some of the new gimmicks make me think that Bethesda are focusing on the "fun and explosions!" rather than the darker, more hardcoe elements of Fallout.

Plus, I know Todd Howard can't possibly have mentioned everything in the e3 press conference, and they may want to wait and reveal an amazing, revamped hardcoe mode later in the year, but the fact that Todd didn't just quickly mention "you can play in normal mode or hardcoe mode" at the very start of the e3 playthrough is suss to me.

That would imply they wanted to do that stuff in the base game.

Todd even said the face sculptor thing in Dawnguard was only something he thought of later when he really thought about how stupid it was that the first decision you make about your character, aka their appearance, could never be changed.

Nothing suggest they wanted/had plans to do anything in the DLC in the base game, only to get removed before the game came out, and then later re-added in DLC.

Not necessarily. Often times, once you're at the end of a development cycle, you go back and see if there are any features/additions you'd like to add with your remaining time. For Skyrim, that only happened during the DLC planning stage. However, I believe that they got that chance with Fallout 4. So what I meant was that they probably didn't even get much of a chance to plan any additions during the development phase.

hardcoe mode in New Vegas wan't difficult...Ok, it did make the Dead Money DLC more of a challenge. Hopefully the ideas will be part of Fallout 4 as normal game play. Ammo has weight, stimpaks heal over time and trivial food/water/sleep needs just make sense in the context of a survival game.

Given all the additions they came up with for skyrim in the FIRST WEEK after the game was released, all the stuff in the Skyrim gamejam video, I find it unlikely that they don't have MANY plans for additional Fo4 content already i nthe works.

I said that in relation to Skyrim, not Fallout 4. Fallout 4 is sure to have plenty more unique content around the corner. My point is that Bethesda probably got the chance to implement some of it this time, whereas before I don't think they did (until they released the DLC).

Hopefully, an optional part of gameplay.

Todd and Pete have said settlement building is optional.

Though some of the best weapons/weapon mods are only available from settlement merchants.

Yeah I am a tad mixed on hardcoe mode. I never once died because of running out food/drink. So its debatable how much difficulty that caused. It was more of an annoyance of keeping a couple bits of food/drink around.

Ammo however, that was the real challenge. Couldn't just stock up on your .50 caliber rounds and call it a day. That sort of challenge I found interesting. Challenge being which heavy weapon your going to lug around? How much and what type of ammo? And then deciding on your secondary weapon(which would be your main critter killing item)