I tried it, but I only finished one game with it on and never used it again. The ammo weight, stimpacks healing over time etc. was great, but the 'needs' felt arbitrary and got annoying very quickly. They didn't even provide extra challenge because the items were so ridiculously easy to come by.

With regards to Fallout 4, I'll play it if the needs can be separated from the other features like healing over time. If they can't then I won't even consider it.

I didn't like the survival aspects of it like eating and drinking and that sort of tedious stuff, but I liked things such as ammo weight and stims healing over time etc

I don't want a survival game, or mode for that matter, I want mechanics that make the game more interesting. I don't even think things like ammo weight or stims healing over should be in hardcoe mode, that should be a normal part of the game. They should reverse it and have a casual mode and the so called "hardcoe" mode should be the normal mode.

It's something I'd like to try. I might fire up New Vegas and try it out after my Fallout 2 playthrough.

See to me that would be like having to continually hit the B button to Breath or you pass out. There are just certain things that I assume are getting done without me having to actually do them in game. Granted even in RL I don't have to think about breathing, but the point is there can be too much micro management of personal hygiene.

Now it would appear in FO4 that it is assumed that we are maintaining our weapons and gear without having to stop to repair them constantly. Not sure I'm crazy about this though. I mean that system needed tweaked for sure, but as before Bethesda fixes something by removing it completely.

Yes and yes. Insta-spamming a dozen stims sure is imbalanced.

Neither is eating a dozen bowls of soup during a inventory time-stop in Skyrim. The problem is the way combat was designed demanded it. Armor wasn't nearly as effective as it should have been in deflecting damage. Any average combat all but required you to stop and drink some pots to finish. I do wish the healing was more realistic in these games, but at the same time they have to redesign combat so it will work.

Curious now if auto-healing will be in FO4.

I always played HC in NV but there are some things that they could have done to make it less annoying.

I don't mind having to carry food and water, for example. I don't like having to actually feed my character. He should feed himself if food and water is available in his backpack.

Walking around NV felt like I had a toddler sometimes. If I didn't feed and water my character manually he'd just stand there starving and dehydrating.

Ok, courier, time for the airplane to go into the hanger...

The HC mechanic should not revolve around busy-work. It should revolve around management of resources.

Yes and Yes. I play hardcoe mode most of the time, sometimes I'll do a "less serious" character on normal mode. I think FNV was intended to be played in hardcoe mode really, because on normal all of the crafted food and drink items are completely unneeded. All you need are stimpacks and maybe some of the Sunset Sass bottles that can be found everywhere.

For some reason the sleeping meter is the only HC feature I don't like. It's kind of silly to have to sleep in only certain beds, you should be able to curl up on a shelf anywhere.

as soon as I played hardcoe mode, I sticked with it. Early-mid game combat is extremely hectic with hardcoe mode on and brings more thrill to the game, especially when you mod it with something like Project Nevada and a lucky hit could royally screw you over, forcing you to hide and heal over time, desperately trying to survive before the enemy group comes around the corner and all hell breaks loose. So yeah, hardcoe mode did in fact bring some challenge into the game, it was only into Late-game that it kind was just "eh!" And this was only if you focused on Survival and loved to cook . If you didn't, than even late-game, hardcoe mode could still send misery down your lane.

No & maybe.

While some mechanics are great like the mentioned healing over time of stimpaks, many others are not. The need to drink, eat and sleep are just unnecessary in mind and add only pointless burden. I don't play RPGs in order to do the same things I do in real life.

Also, as a hoarder the ammo weight is also a slight problem.

Weirdly for some reason I did get HC achievement in New Vegas even though I've never used HC. Yet another one of the bazillion bugs in NV?

Yes, but only for the achievement, then I realized I actually preferred playing hard core mode(or survival as we seem to be calling it now), so yes, I'm going to savour everything FO4 has to offer including hard-core/survival mode.

I seriously doubt that, I think you just clicked on it, forgot about it, and continued gaming without really noticing the difference. There is no such thing as a 'bug' like that, in fact quite the opposite occurs on PC when transferring saves to a new computer can screw it over in grabbing the achievement.

I don't mind taking out the drink, food, and sleep, but seriously, ammo problems? I think that's the point, so you don't open up your tiny pocket and pull out 569 Mininukes because 'lulz'. It's forcing you to organize your gear so you figure out what you want to take, what you're using, what you're NOT using, and forces you to be a bit more...pro-active?

Nope, I've NEVER used hardcoe mode. Do I really have to repeat it?

It's either a bug (which are plentiful in NV) or some mod caused it. Whatever the case, the HC achievement is unlocked on my Steam account.

Most likely the latter, because I NEVER heard of this, at all. You must be like the only person to encounter this.

I had characters who were in HC and some who were not, it depended on the purpose of the character. However i do feel that NV was kind of un-balanced on it because food and clean water were SOOOOOO plentiful that the survival aspect of it was irrelevant, if the mode had been in F3 however it would have worked since it was much harder to find clean water and all the food was either raw animal meat or 200 year old canned/boxed food

What I liked about hardcoe Mode in New Vegas was the difference in how healing and damage worked, mostly. Since healing was more of a timed element, it could really change the pacing of battles - I still kept my Stimpaks hotkeyed on my keyboard, but with HC on I would often have to make sure I found some cover to wait for my HP to heal up.

All those meters I felt just amounted to busywork I felt, though. I was never even close to running out of food or water, and needing to sleep was just a nuisance to me, that when it did become something I even noticed was more of an annoyance than anything.

I think there's more than one way to skin a cat, and I don't think you need survival meters to encourage the same sort of gameplay. I don't feel a hunger meter is the only way to make food an important resource, for example. If items like Stimpaks and other healing items were a relatively rare resource that you'd want to stockpile and save for dire emergencies, then food and water could likely be something you'd keep around for healing up between battles. And if you're eating and drinking to top off your HP (or gain other status effects potentially) then you're already eating and drinking enough that you wouldn't need to be watching a survival meter anyway.

In Fallout 3, sleeping in a bed already gave you an XP bonus for being Well Rested - I would tend to sleep whenever I got back to a base of operations or if I need to heal up out in the Wastes anyway.

Basically, I think you can add survival elements by granting bonuses just as well as you can by having a series of meters that debuff you. I think the important thing is to consider what sort of gameplay each system encourages and how it fits in the pacing of the gameplay.

With meters I am encouraged to scavenge for as much food and water as I can find and to make sure I'm eating and drinking regularly; and to sleep on occasion.

With just having applicable bonuses and a focus on balancing rare resources appropriately you can also encourage players to scavenge for all the food and water they can find (as a primary means of healing between combat.) In both scenarios I'm encouraging essentially the same gameplay, just for different reasons. I don't necessarily need a survival meter to encourage scavenging and eating the same amount of food and water, I feel.

Yeah, I don't care for the whole "feed the meter" thing, but I do find myself eating & drinking stuff constantly in Fallout 3, just to top off my HP. (There are some food & drink overhauls included alongside the all the GunsGunsGuns! in the FOOK2 mod I use, so perhaps that might be helping. I don't actually remember how much healing you got from food in default FO3....)

I use the food because it's there, because it's not as valuable to sell as other things, and to save Stimpacks for Real Emergencies?..... which means that I don't use Stimpacks often (being down 50% hits? Nah. Holy crap, those three Talon dudes had uber-guns and put me to 10% hits & three crippled limbs in under 15 seconds? AAAAA! Stimpacks! ). And that, combined with how many stims you find, means that my current playthrough has, oh, 300+ stashed in my house? And 90ish alien biogels.

I've always felt that even if "hardcoe" is not implemented per NV, how about just a few tweaks to the difficulty setting?

• Stimpaks healing is applied over time (per NV hardcoe)
• You can only use one Stimpak at a time (or you just waste them).
• Stimpaks and other consumables are NOT hot key-able (require you to enter pip-boy and use them). Alternatively, they can NOT be used during direct combat or they require a cutscene animation that cannot be avoided (some timed period where you cannot be fighting).
• Stimpaks are much rarer to find and require rare ingredients to make (if possible).

All of these have been suggested in the past, but I get if Bethesda wants to cater to the casual gamer crowd and make your 99 insta heal items just a console button click away. For the record, I have NEVER hotkeyed anything other than weapons in any Bethesda game as I consider it "cheating" on a personal level.

I -only- play hardcoe.

I will really be deceived if they don't include it in 4 somewhere down the road

If Obsidian was granted all the time they wanted to make NV, I don't think anyone would argue that 3 is better. They had A LOT of special things planned. The only problem it had to have a holiday release. As we know, the following year Skyrim was releasd. It would've been silly releasing gamebryo New Vegas next to Creation (Gamebryo 2) engine Skyrim.

Played it on one character. I would like to see it back but modified so that the player can pick the parts they want. For me it is ammo weight and stim reduction. I hated having to eat and sleep; not that it ever was a problem just something I didn't want to micro-manage my character to that level and it just interrupted the flow of the game at times.

Oh I definitely agree. It just amazes me that they were able to make such a good game in that short amount of time and I am happy to that they were able to 'squeeze' it in between FO3 and Skyrim.

Yes and yes
but I do think "hardcoe" can be improved.
1 when you are hungry you lose strength and your weapons shake when you aim them (and melee weapons do less damage)
2 when you are tired you lose perception and your eyes get very blurry as a constant effect
3 weapons do increased damage and limb damage
healing over time and all the good stuff
EDIT forgot to put this in but dehydration should lower endurance and make you easier to knock over

Eh. Given the design of the stimpacks (visually), they seem to be a quick-inject device. Kind of like current-day Epi-Pens. The kind of thing you would have on your belt, to quickly grab and stab into your thigh as a quick reaction. Now, that could still be "balanced" by making a single pack (or otherwise limited number) take up a quickslot, rather than having the hotkey access your entire inventory.

(I've never hotkeyed a stimpack, but that's because there's no real need to - going to the PipBoy pauses the game. And I don't use them that often.)

I gave it a chance with one character. Different strokes, I guess - most of you seem to like it but I found it a tiresome fun-svcker.