Normal. I might pump it up a bit if things start dying too fast but i really hate the difficulty setting in Bethesda games, if i want challange i like things like Bloodborne and Dark Souls, not bullet sponges.

But if i could have survival mode with normal damage done and alot scarcer supplies/ammo i'd play that in a heart beat.

I generally play on Very Easy, just because I like the aspect it provides to me.... if I put a double barrel to your chest and pull both triggers, I expect you to die. Yet, the tougher mobs take more shots and tactics to deal with - power armor, death claws, etc. So it gives me a sense of realism combat wise - and yes I realize it is one directional. I want the game to respond realistically, not project realism on to me. That'd be like Bruce Willis getting killed in Die Hard!

Tried Normal at first then after a while I bumped up to Hard with a new start, Elder Scrolls always felt fine for me on Normal but I added in ASIS with Skyrim so that compensates, Morrowind was an exception once you really knew the game Very Hard was O/K because you knew where to go and even better where not to go for a while. FO3 was always set to Hard even with MMM extra, extra spawns. New Vegas on Hard as well, so FO4 falls into place with the previous ones. I'm finding FO4 not quite so easy to play no matter what the level setting compared to FO3, NV, Skyrim and all the others purely because of their change to this odd new boxed crosshair, throws my playing off a hell of a lot after using a normal crosshair with Beth games for something like 15+ years?

I play on normal and still die a lot.. lol

Hard for me, OP. Tried it on Very Hard, but kept getting spanked. May up it again at some point if I feel the need, but at the moment I don't.

I don't require a massive challenge. I play games for fun, not to achieve something. If I wanted to do that I wouldn't be sitting my bum on the couch engaging in leisure activities now, would I?

with the mirelurk queen, I had difficulty too. I ended up throwing all my mines at the breech she comes through, and using molotovs and grenades

On Very Hard and I just hosed her down with my Gatling Laser

I started it on Normal, then changed it to Hard after some time and once I got MacCready's bugged Perk, I changed it to Very Hard.

I play on a modified difficulty. 1.5x damage dealt, 3x damage received (For reference, Survival has 0.5x and 2x respectively), while maintaining the occurrence chances of legendaries.

Makes the combat feel more realistic on top of my other minor audio/visual mods. I can sneak attack crit everything but bosses in one shot, but if I ever get caught, everything but the lowliest of enemies will kill me in moments or very few bullets. Especially melee creeps like Mutant Hounds and the more difficult Ferals.

It forces me to make extensive use of cover, VATS, and the dog to make my way through combat without the stealth that I'm spec'ed in. On some enemies, I even need simultaneous doping from both the syringer and Psycho Jet.

Was playing on Survival.. Then said nope when I had to fight a certain cyborg thing guy and bumped if to easy shot him and his Synth buddy in the face then after words put it on hard.. Or was it very hard.. Pretty sure it was just hard.. Whatever difficultly it may be on it's my happy medium. Only trouble I have now are bloodbugs and anything big and scary. Mirelirk queen wasn't a really hard challenge, managed to not die in the end

I don't play on survival because it's nonsense how many rounds a bad guys svcks up. I get hit once or twice... dead. They get hit 15 times and nothing.

Plaing survival. It was fun and challenging in the begining now its just stupid easy at lvl 40.

Yeah by level 40 you are a god, for most builds. I can clean a whole room and get hit 0 times wearing nothing but grognak underwear and power fist in like 10 seconds.

I have this legenary combate rifle that does double damage to enemies with full health so 107 x 2, and when i sneak attack i get x5.3, so that over 650 damage i think. That is more than a mini nuke, fat man, with no perks on explosive whick is around 400. With all perk its around 800. Thus my sneak attack with a .308 round is like shooting off nukes. Thats stupid OP lol.

She kicked my ass so bad I loaded a previous save and came back 10 levels later with my Power Armor and mini gun. She went down pretty easy then.

I played normal in the beginning but then changed it to high. Considering going back to normal though. Not because it too hard (in that sense i like the hard setting) but it just gets so weird when I have to headshot a raider 3-4 times with a heavily modified sniper rifle for him to die. Not talking about sneak attacks but still just feels strange and ruins my immersion. I dont mind mutated beasts and other enemies being able to take lots of bullets but not humans wearing "normal" armor.

I do. Even had a hard time on normal. Guess I'm just not really that good at blasting and surviving.

Yep, that's what I always play too. I figure that's what the game makers think of as the perfect balance. .. sometimes that's not the case but it's where I always start anyway. So far I haven't felt any need to ramp up difficulty. Things can still kill me pretty easily.

I really just want a mod to make my own difficulty level. Give mobs, around 'hard' setting level of hp, get survivals hp regen (with food etc), make radstorms *lethal* without rad-x/etc. Tweak loot lists so both vendors and enemies have access to more dangerous items...

I am really not a fan of unloading several magazines of ammo at a persons unprotected head to kill them.

edit: And whats with perks having level requirements? There seems to be no logic behind it. Takes level 20+ to get good at bargaining with traders? Or to know how to maximize power armor energy?

Yeah I am around lvl 49 or so and have all max modded weapons and a full suit of stealth heavy combat armor. A little bit ago I was clearing a small camp of mutants and all were dying as expected until came out of a building, a Primus, and he killed me in a few seconds before I could stimpack. Even on easy they throw tough mobs at you here and there to keep it interesting and if you aren`t paying attention you`ll be looking at the reload screen. I think it would annoy me on a higher difficulty having to use more ammo then I do now to kill mobs.

I played on hard, as it was the highest difficulty I could go, and still kill the deathclaw with the minigun and rounds I was given in concord. My tolerance for bullet sponges isn't super good.

That was also when I first got the game, now that I'm better at i, I can probably bump it up again.

i am playing on hard.

But i play with mods, so that is not really saying much

I play on Normal, though I would still love a modular difficulty level. It isn't going to happen outside of mods, but the ability to select how common ammunition drops are, how long it takes to heal, how you heal crippling wounds, and a whole slew of other things would be nice.

Playing on hard. Died several times. Had fun.

^^^^

We should petition Bethesda to make difficulty modular. Mount & Blade has it and iirc, one of the Anno games. That would solve alot of problems and, if i know Bethesda correctly, create alot more.