Um....I never played twitch gameplay in Halo or COD. And maybe that's why I am so terrible at them. I have always been a strategist type of player. I play for range, perception, distance, strategy, tactics.

Halo and CoD's gameplay structure is twitch gameplay. It's a generalization of how the game plays. You said you've never been good at halo or cod this could be because you're just not used to the twitch gameplay it uses. Which forces the user to have very good reaction time on SP and DEFINITELY MP.

So yea I can see why it may be difficult for you. At first FPS were difficult for me but I stuck with them and gotten better and eventually i'm really good at the twitch gameplay style cod, halo and battlefield games offer.

Honestly, compared to other shooters like Half-Life or Bioshock the sponginess seems fine. They're never going to set it up so that enemies go down with a realistic number of bullets, so I think about it in terms of how quickly I can kill them. Most generic mooks I can empty 4-6 bullets into and they'll drop, while boss-tier enemies or Mirelurks I might have to empty a magazine or two... Mirelurks in particular require some aim to hit their soft crabby parts. Clearing out an area I can usually end up using over 100 bullets... which means that I have to scrimp and save my ammo, and Scrounger becomes even more important. They balanced ammo rarity based on how much you'd use it at the highest difficulty - if they balanced it so that ammo was a struggle at normal difficulty, survival mode would be a nightmare.

There was a mod called NPC Health Reducer for Skyrim that came and went. I still have it, and the concept seemed simple enough. Basically, the game awards a multiplier to NPCs based on your character level and their level. By reducing that multiplier, you effectively cap their maximum possible hit points at any level. I believe the default is pretty high, something like 5.0x. By reducing it to 1.5x, it gave enemies, especially boss characters, a bit of an edge without requiring you hammer on them for 10 minutes to drop them. And it did nothing to the amount of damage they caused.

Once the CK is released, this should only take a matter of hours to get working.

After I watched the dice summit with Howard it sounds like it won't be "sponges" in the overhaul of survival mode as in it won't depend upon bullet sponges as it does now. The enemies will probably take more hits then say normal difficulty but it seems as they are really focusing on making it different. He said something along the lines that it will be hard but not hard in the way you think, "it's a different way of playing the game". He also said there will be a lot of testing since it's quite a big change and it will take some time efore it releases. Hope that doesn't mean too long, I want it to be worked on properly but I hope it wont wait until far harbour. Though my point is that it feels like they are actually trying to make this something competely different then the current survival difficulty. Perhaps I'm getting my hopes up, but I think this new feature could really improve my fallout experience. Only time will tell...

LOL Nv have sponge enemies too. i remember alot actually White scorpion was one of them.

There is no RPG that dont have sponge enemies u guys should stop complaining about it lol

Precisely the reason I haven't played on anything harder than Normal. Scaling difficulties by simply increasing enemy health and their damage is just about the laziest and easiest way out, I like to see difficulties that include better programmed AI and more difficult enemy placement, etc.

Bullet Sponges are dumb, really the stupidest way to make a game "harder". A .44 round to the head is FATAL, full stop.

I don't care how "legendary" you are, or if I have the difficulty set to "A Brave New World". YOU HAVE NO HEAD.

I think it should be toggleable. I'm all for a level playing field or even a challenge, but making it so I receive a high amount of damage and enemies can take a ridiculous amount more doesn't accomplish that. It just feels silly filling weak enemies with lead all the time and ruins immersion for me. Weak enemies shouldn't be walking tanks. Boss enemies and overwhelming odds in my opinion should be the only thing the living legend: the sole survivor shouldn't absolutely smear all over the walls.

Players should have the option to customize the gameplay to their preferences. It's up to the developers obviously, but that's that way I feel. I hope that it becomes it's own toggleable option the way it was in NV.

I cannot imagine the new survival mode being linked to difficulty.

I completely agree. I play on Survival because it provides a bit more realism, but the bullet sponges also detract from the realism in many respects. As others have said, I don't care how high level you are or how legendary you are or whatever. If I blast you straight in the head with my .50 caliber sniper rifle from close range, you are going down. Way down. It'd be nice to see difficulty scale in a way that makes them better in combat, as opposed to just having more HP. A faster and more intelligent deathclaw would be great. Deathclaws are entirely too easy to kill in this game. In my nearly 600 hours in this game, I've been injured by a deathclaw maybe 4-5 times out of the couple hundred deathclaws that I've killed. There isn't really any kind of challenge there. And forcing me to shoot it 5-6 times instead of once or twice isn't adding much of a challenge to it.

Super Mutants 1 or 2 Shot? in Survival Mode? with 10mm Pistol? Stop playing easy lol

I use already a Mod with 2,5x more Damage and still i need a few Magazines for that.

And dont compare your Damage to Level 1 Enemies while you are 50 or whatever. This Game has to many low Level Enemies when u reach high Rank.

I'm pretty sure it will. I'd prefer not to be but when read the announcements and what They talked about it seems like a remake of survival. As in replacing it. Perhaps it just me but this quote from the official announcement seems rather obvious.

"something that we’re really excited about, a complete overhaul of Survival Mode that changes how you play the whole game"

People are complaining that two headshots to kill is too hard? I can unload two shots in less than a second with my rifle that has almost no recoil. Meanwhile they can't even spot me in stealth as I kill one after the other.

If it's OK for you to kill with one headshot, then is it OK for you to die to a headshot from a rifle? If so, then you're going to be dying pretty often.

Stop with survival and keep on playing your normal mode, you can always pretend.

No, people are not complaining it's too hard to click their mouse button several times. People are complaining because it isn't so immersive when you have to put several bullets in the unprotected head of a normal human being for them to die.

Yes, being vulnerable will make you die more often and thus you needto plan you attacks, something that makes the game harder in a complete different way then just having npcs take loads of bullets. It's up to preference.

I doubt people who think this actually plays on survival, I think the point is that they want to be able to enjoy the new features without having "bullet sponges" that is on the current survival difficulty. Seems like you completely misunderstood everything.

I'm on Hard, just hit 70, and I can't even kill any 30-40 mob with a couple of Bleeding Sniper .50 bullet....

So yeah, I think the new Survival Mode is a toggle option instead of being a part of difficulty settings..

I'm talking about the start of the game, the first ~10 levels... not level 50.

Having both Gunslinger perks and the Gun Nut perk after level 7 will make the 10mm pistol a very viable weapon, which will be way stronger than any rifle at this point. Super Mutants will go down easily with this approach on survival.

I can even imagine there being other builds that are as effective... you just have to figure out one.

The downside to the survival mode is that it requires perks, good weapons and a good build. It's not a mode where you can try many things out and go 'full settlement' without picking weapon perks.

It's really limited to the 'combat is the most important thing' approach. But if you decide to take this approach and play on survival, it's really not as 'annoying' as many people turn it out to be.

It's not really difficult, it's just stupid and boring. I am good enough at aiming to make every shot hit the head with most weapons and take cover from their return fire when I need to . A bullet sponge enemy doesn't make it any harder for me, it just means I have to spend more time unloading huge numbers of rounds into a raider.

Real World Bullet Damage Mod...No sponging in my game lol....I think most people are really over using the whole "hardcoe in Vegas" deal, that it was this great mechanic. What did it really add? Besides faster killing not much. All they need to do is tweak what we have, seems like BGS is going knew jerk reaction here. The worst thing any developer can do is listen to the forums which is always a vocal minority.

I think a post about this topic has come up at least once or twice a month since release.

Here's a solution I http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1553566-why-bullet-sponging-enemies-in-survival-t-t/?p=24530820ed back in November for PC users to customize their game.

I play on Survival (mostly for the healing rates), I enjoy spongyness in some mobs but not others.

When the Creation kit comes out I'll likely be making a mod to modify the spongyness of different creatures separately, default settings would be something like this:

Deathclaws, Behemoths, Super mutants, Feral Ghouls, and Mirelurk Queens being as spongy as they are in survival (maybe even a little more spongy).

Radscorpions, Yao Guai, Mirelurks, Canine variants, and fully power armor equipped humans will be somewhere in between hard and survival in spongyness.

And the rest Bloatflys, Stingwings, Bloodbugs, Radroach, Molerats, and unarmored Humans will be somewhere between normal and hard for spongyness. None of these should take more than 1 bullet (occasionally 2) to their weakpoints before dying. Humans with head protection against the type of weapon your using may take a few more shots.

hardcoe Mode didn't affect damage as far as I know. It just added things like thrist and hunger to the difficulty level that you chose before.

Precisely, I've got a mod for Skyrim that does precisely that. makes me vulnerable also and I love it. suddenly, you have to plan for multiple enemies in a different way because being headshot isn't just a minor inconvenience anymore. If they're going to bulletsponge higher level humans they should make them visually cyborgs or something. At least that would be less ridiculous and unimmersive

I agree when it comes to human enemies. I dont care what difficulty or level a human enemy is... If I shoot them in the face with a shot gun (or ANY gun)... their head better explode. I can understand Supermutants or other giant mutated beasts being sponges as their anatomy could be more dense or whatever from mutation.. but humans should never ever be bullet sponges when you directly hit them in the flesh. It gets better at higher levels and you have the perks to increase your damage.. but even at level 80 I have come across human enemies that have taken my bullets to the face like Robocop.

And I still dont get why there's no hardcoe mode for eating and sleeping. How you going to leave out a feature that was in a previous game? I think there should be some free DLC/Update in the near future that enables that mode. That's unacceptable. They got all this food lying around and there's zero reason to use it when you come across stimpacks as if they grow out of the ground like grass and purified water that heals you with no radiation. Food heals an inch of your health and gives you radiation without the lead belly perk and that perk is a waste for the same reasons I just gave. Makes no sense.

they announced it already ^^

And food doesn't give you any radiation when you cook it. o_o

I think they should limit some food-types though... eating Radroach or Molerat meat shouldn't be healthy and should result in some weird deseases.