I enjoy a permanent difficulty selected at the beginning of a new play though. I understand that some people may feel very differently and thats ok. Skyrims difficulty felt more gimmicky in the ways that if a part was hard you could just turn it down for a second or, for better or worse, try things on a harder difficulty to test stuff out. I like the idea of being faced with overcoming a challenge and, as a gamer, being able to show that i achieved so. In Skyrim one could simply derp his way through Mordor and claim a legendary play through.

There is a lot of talk about "No hardcoe Mode" all over all the Fallout forums and I feel that a permanent difficulty selection would grant a tougher edge and some bragging rights to the players looking for a more immersive and challenging experience, as it would force you in a way to overcome your current situation. The Witcher 3 did this right by allowing a dynamic difficulty yet also debunking your chances of the difficulty achievement if you placed the slider too low, warning you of that before you were able to press Accept.

This of course has it's ups and downs especially for a game that, hopefully, will be very long. I understand that this is subjective which is why I have decided to post this here; to gather the opinions of the fellow community and to see if anyone knows how difficulty will work in Fallout 4. I am almost positive it will be like Skyrims but heres to hoping..

Thank you!

EDIT: People seem to think you can change the difficulty on the fly which will spawn more legendary enemies with better loot. I feel as though the vanilla value of this system as we understand it right now would be highly exploitable. Thoughts on this?

I usually never change my difficulty, but I'd like to be ABLE to. I don't really care about 'bragging rights' (who am I gonna brag to? How do I prove it, anyway?).... historically I play on easy or very easy, just for the story. My current playthrough of New Vegas, I set on NORMAL and I was surprised by how "normal" raiders were actually ~killing~ me?!? And I was popping stimpacks like candy! Then I remembered I was on harder difficulty setting.... which also explained why my ammo was going away so fast....

More fun than I had thought it would be, but if I ran into an area that was just too tough, too frustrating, I'd like to be able to ~lower~ the difficulty, rather than potentially block part of the story off.

I wouldn't be averse to some Achievement or something if you DO go though the whole game on X difficulty setting without changing it... but I wouldn't want to be locked into it.

There are no Difficulty Level achievements on Fallout 4, and I doubt Bethesda would want to lock players into not being able to change the difficulty level on the fly. What would their alternative be if they were having a hard time? Start the whole game over? That doesn't fit with Bethesda's design philosophy.

I think there are 5 difficulty levels in Fallout 4, so people may want to try them out and fine tune their selection as they go. It would be madness to give players that level of granularity and then punish them for wanting to play-test it to find the right settings for themselves.

I love a fixed difficulty. It eliminates the temptation to turn it down to kill hard enemies.

Bragging rights? Didn't know people did that on a non leaderboarded single player game.

I'd prefer modifiable difficulty. I was playing NV today, I'd been playing on Hard without to much difficulty but then suddenly I hit a brick wall: a band of Caesar's Legion on my way to Boulder City. It was such a difficulty spike that after a few attempts I knocked the difficulty to very easy just so I could continue. I think that something like a warning ala TW3 is a good idea (well, if there was that achievement anyway)

Kind of what I was thinking.

Anyway I just prefer to use whatever difficulty I want. I don't really play Bethesda games for a challenge anyway. It's more for the role-play and world exploration. I generally just use whatever the normal setting is and don't need to touch it.

Course I do enjoy it when someone writes on the board that they are having trouble with boss fight X and someone always writes back that they killed Boss X on nightmare difficulty while naked and using a wooden fork. Lets me know I'm back in the forums.

If they made it fixed many people would complain about it. You can't please everybody. It's a single player game, who cares if you turn the difficulty up and down while playing? Why should others suffer just because you cannot keep yourself from changing it? There will probably be a mod to make it that way. Heck, I've seen a mod that delete your saves so your death is permanent.

I usually leave it in Normal and just go with it. If the fight is too hard I will run away or load earlier saves, do some side quests, and come back.

This. And also I'm pretty sure if you turned off hardcoe at any time in New Vegas you didn't get the achievement, would imagine it's the same for Skyrim.

Ah yes, fighting a dragon with a fork while wearing chef's outfit, no shouts, no magic, no potions. Good times...

To me, changing the difficulty in the middle of a game is like raising or lowering the net in the middle of a tennis match.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

I understand each opinion. Although it's not really about bragging rights at all, that was just an example that I may have used too many times in my original post. It's actually just the principle of the entire matter. Being able to change the difficulty is cool, i agree. I just personally like being locked in more. In a game like Fallout when you hit a wall you are not blocked off from the story or forced to start anew. Open world games like this give you the ability to prepare more for something you are having trouble with, I think that's where the RPG aspects really come into play for me with a hybrid style game of this caliber.

dynamic. It is single player game. Won't effect me if someone wants to change up their difficulty settings.

This is only an issue if difficulty still equals bullet sponges. If I can't beat an enemy, I'm not thinking laterally enough.

"Now that's some lateral thinking, Boss!"

I just really want to know more details about survival mode.

Me too, it sounds like it's a little more than just a normal difficulty spike.

One does not simply derp through Mordor...

But this thread raises good points, a fixed difficulty adds a different challenge and eliminates the challenge to change it but would obviously not be a fit for many gamers, so anticipate a mod that locks the difficulty starting from a new game and removes the option to change it in the settings while playing.

It seems to be a very very hard mode, or perhaps it has the same damage given/received modifiers that very hard has. The defining difference, however, is that legendary enemies spawn more often which can drop great loot.

Yes! This is why I will start my first play through on at least Hard.

Won't mind enemies having better weapons; I'd also like heightened senses and better armor... but an entire magazine put into someone's head shouldn't make them stagger a little and laugh.

Reward me for thinking outside of the box, not for bringing a lot of ammo.

I prefer difficulty that can be changed at any given time. I could imagine that there would be potential situations that, if one isn't careful enough when they save in, they might not be able to get out of feasibly.

I don't think it's really much of an issue at all either way, personally.

With New Vegas, there was some incentive to stay with the same difficulty because of the "hardcoe" achievement.

Exactly. I remember someone posting a thread about changing the save system so he wouldn't be tempted to save scum. So basically, we should get rid of a system that has worked well in single player RPGs for over a decade because someone doesn't want to be able to take advantage of it.

Of course.

*It's unfortunate that the trend has become to not even include content that you have to work for, and can experience only for 'earning' it. I do believe Witcher 2 had this though, possibly Witcher 3, but then... that's CDProjekt.

From leaks so far it sounds like you get to choose your difficulty and I don't think it'll change on its own though I think you'll be able to change it yourself throughout the game.....no reason to force someone who wanted to try very hard to start over because things got out of hand 20 hours into the game. From leaks it sounds like the higher difficulties spawn unique enemies you wouldn't encounter on lower difficulties that have special loot.....I am interested in that loot but not looking to play the entire game on very hard so what interests me more is the locations where these special enemies spawn so I can prepare in advance and take them down swiftly.