Usually I'll play on easy to familiarise with the mechanics in play before going to hard as possible difficulty. This does depend, if there are no real mechanical shifts in difficult other than % sliders (but still same AI intelligence etc.) I wouldn't dream of going beyond normal.

But this game has legendaries... and the MMO player in me screams "farm them boy!". After 150 hours of play (2 characters) I'm actually under the impression that normal is harder than survival due to the fact there are some "shut down" weapons that go way beyond the, relative, dmg to hp ratios in both difficulties

The mirelurk queen is one of the toughest bosses in the game no matter what level or difficulty you are at.. it's quite close to Dark Souls level where one misstep and it's all over. I'm assuming that the acid kills you in one hit even on the lower difficulties.

Normal, I am not a very good action gamer, I get confused too easily. If you give me a tactical game I can crank up the difficulty to max, but in action rpgs I play too much according to concepts rather than optimizing, I refuse to take out a FatMan to deal with the legendary deathclaw in front of me, damn it, I will fight it with my switchblade because that's who my character is...

I always play on normal the first time and then turn up the difficulty in subsequent playthroughs.

I play on normal, but sometimes switch to easy when an enemy has a ridiculous amount of HP. I can't stand it when game developers use that as a crutch to make the game "harder". Play an online FPS is you want a challenge. I want an experience with my offline-games, and a guy surviving a nuke to his head is not immersive. Bragging about the difficulty you play an offline game on is also silly. There are always little exploits you can use for that challenge, and when a game is too hard I find myself using them more and more, which I dislike.

Oh don't worry I make up for it all kinds of ways because I don't power-game. I don't use fast-travel. I don't use a HUD or VATS. I don't wear heavy armor because I don't want god-mode either. Most of the serious enemies have a much shorter TTK on you than you do them, even on easy.

I consider myself an avid gamer. I breeze through Fallout 3 and New Vegas on Hard. I play all my other games on 'Normal'/'Hard' but for the life of me I cannot kill anything in Fallout 4 without it being set to Very Easy. I tried and tried and tried.

I could never advance enough to level up to upgrade my weapons. I started out on Normal and had to keep knocking it down a level until I got to 'Very Easy' and even then I was getting killed left and right and had a hard time killing anyone or anything. Now that I've been leveling up and upgrading my weapons it's getting easier and I may bump it up to 'Easy'.

Does it really matter in a single player what difficulty people are playing at? People can say one thing and do something totally opposite and you'll never know for sure because it's a single player game.

Play however it is fun for you and stop worrying about what the other guy is doing.

I always play on normal in most games. I absolutely hate the idea of artificial difficulty where the it takes several mags to kill a simple raider when it only takes them two or three bullets to kill you.

I'l have to wait for mods to make things a little more realistic when it comes to damages.

All gameplay:

Normal, usually up it to hard if it get's too easy, don't think I ever upped a game to ridiculous *caugh* sorry, survival mode.

I bounce back between Hard and Normal depending on the situation.

heh fighting some mobs would be insane on anything harder than normal. When I am shooting a mob that only 5 levels above me and others that are lower then me. I am using either .308 or .50 and they survive head shot after headshot and all they are wearing is a bowler hat and suits.

If your wondering when you go find valentine. those guys.

I started on normal and by level 7 or 8 I had a ridiculous stock pile of ammo and stimpacks and wasn't really feeling challenged. Now I have it on very hard and have to plan some of my encounters out. I even have to use my more powerful weapons sometimes. I still have over 100 stimpacks though at level 19.

I haven't used power armor yet.

I play on normal. I don't like bullet sponges, which is all increased difficulty levels get you. When you get upscaled versions of enemies all clustered together, I have a real challenge on my hands. Otherwise, I feel like the appropriate bad ass that I am. It just works ™!

I always play Bethesda's games on their default difficulty. I don't play role playing games for the so-called "challenge."

I play at any setting I feel like playing at the time and that it feels right for that character. Usually Bethesda's games I play at Normal since it usually feels the most balanced to play at that mode.

I started on normal difficulty with my character. The first group of raiders I encountered did nothing but chain spam molotovs and grenades at me and that got old after about an hour or so. I moved the difficulty down to easy and it seems more realistic with the explosives spam at least. The mobs are still bullet sponges and still try to flank and cover in easy difficulty. At lvl 48 I run into mobs very often that need huge amounts of ammo and stimpacks to kill. I can still die fairly quickly if I`m not paying attention and that is enough for me. I don`t know if I`ll ever try a higher setting.

Have you upgraded your weapons some?

I'm playing on normal. Sure, I could ratchet up the difficulty.... But for me, this is an experience I plan on savoring. I'll go for a hard/survivor mode when I come back for another helping, after I've devoured and cleaned a normal playthrough to the bone, including all the sweet bits of marrow.

I'd be playing on harder settings (inc. survival) if it wasn't for the fact that it just turns enemies into bullet-sponges.

I'm all for having hard difficulties in games, but I consider just increasing the enemies HP (or lowering your damage. Or both) to be kinda cheating by the devs.
Make the AI better and put more enemies in instead.
Not just upping the HP and lowering the player damage.
That's for amateurs.

I play Normal on most games. I feel it's the most balanced game.

This. If I want fun challenge, I'll go play Halo on Legendary or Crytek games on hard.

"So, who's up for some good ol' knifey-stabby?"

*Deathclaw roars!*

"Alright guv, I said knifey-stabby, not knifey-shouty, hearing loss is a serious issue, y'know?

Also, this.

I'm playing at a custom modded difficulty. As described below:

The healing is done like the survival mode, I really like that one.
I do 25% less damage.
Enemies do 200% more damage (3X their default damage)
Legendary enemies spawn at 1.5 rate (in the vanilla game , normal is 1, survival is 3 if I remmember correctly)
*******************************

In regular survival you do 50% less damage and it makes the fight too long and repetitive, shooting someone 10 times in the head isn't fun, 25% less damage feels better to me, if it starts to feel bullet spungy I will un-nerf my damage.
In vanilla survivor enemies do 2X the damage, but I prefer 3X, getting shot hurts now but I still can tolerate a couple of shots, even with an Endurance of 2. Glass Cannons all the way.
I may reduce the rate of legendaries to 1, in survival you encounter so many of them it takes away their unique-ness a tad bit.

Personally i play on survival. I'd usually play on normal difficulty + NV hardcoe mode if there were such a thing, but survival seemed like the closest to it.

While i would agree with you in most cases, i think the extreme health stuff in this game actually works. Survival for me is a constant matter of using resources as efficiently as possible. An enemy with massive HP typically means a fight where i use up a lot of ammo and stims, leaving a noticeable impact on my inventory when it's all over. I find that makes those fights a bit more memorable

And when something has absurd health plus kills me in 1-2 hits, i generally take that as a cue that i shouldn't be here, and i go somewhere less overwhelming to train

For the first playthrough of a game I always play it at "normal"...to see how the developers, apparently, wanted the game to play like.

Then I will adjust upwards on further playthroughs depending on what type of build I am using for them.

I tried it on survival for a day. Switching back to normal (or at least sliding it back to hard) tonight since I got my ass whooped over and over again at level 7. Ran out of ammo and I have an entire building of raiders left to clear out.

The balance just seems off on that mode, taking like 10 head shots with my scoped pistol to down a lower level enemy like that. Ammo's in too short a supply and I use my perks for other areas that are more appealing.