Normal - as it is now.

hardcoe - like it is now.

Survival - as realistic as possible, with weapons impacting as much damage as they would in real life, food having no affect on restoring health and implement some of the features of hardcoe - dehyration/Sleep/food etc.

No no no no.

Survival - Food having no affect on restoring health and implement some of the features of hardcoe - dehyration/Sleep/food etc.

Realism - As realistic as possible, with weapons impacting as much damage as they would in real life.

Fixed.

I +1 your first post. The official experience is set to Normal and other settings are optional. Should stay like that. The weird thing about having the slider is if I'm finding a game easy I'll be quick to jump to the options to make it harder, but when I encounter a guardian/boss or just a tough area that's [censored] me after I've done that, I've never gone back to turn the slider down. lol I just struggle through it. Sometimes being completely infuriated by the difficulty.

S'cool that you mentioned IWD. I reinstalled IWD, Heart of Winter, Trials of the Luremaster, and IWD II the other day, added them to non-steam shortcuts - not played them for years. When I finish this run through Vegas I'll be popping back into Faerún. Love those games. Fave RPGs evar! The first IWD blew my hair back way back. Loved it. You're right about the difficulty through the settings.

IMO games should retain the slider, but they should jam it up if you change it, and lock gear or something in-game depending which way you go. So if you slide it to hard you can't change back but you have access to all gear. Unique gear or something. If you slide it to easy you can't slide it back and you lose access to some of the better unique gear. Warning and click before the slider moves, "Changing the difficulty setting is permanent and cannot be changed again. Some items will be locked. Are you sure you wish to continue?" Or something.

One thing is for sure, hardcoe needs to be more hardcoe. I restricted myself so much with Fallout 3, without a hardcoe mode, that New Vegas was just a doddle with it, when I got it. Found myself barely looting corpses for anything but essentials, so not lugging a stupid amount of armours around everywhere, carrying so much water and food, not using Stimpaks. Restricting the amount of ammo I could carry. hardcoe mode in New Vegas... isn't. lol

Survival and Realism are the same to me, how can I not survive if it takes over 8 shots from a shotgun to put men down...
The Survival should almost mimic a Sim in how survival would be, this would render Realism obslete or at least the same.

Still, it's better to allow players to customize than to force something down their throats.
What if someone wants realistic combat but no FOD/H2O/SLP?

What if they also want a RPG with no dialogue?
No one get everything they want, especially when it comes to games.
Its not being shoved down anyones throats, you have Normal and hardcoe to also choose from.
If the game managed to consist of full functional and non buggy Normal, hardcoe and Survivial modes then by all means they should try implement a custom difficulty - but then its not exactly a difficulty then is it?

There is something to be said for uneven odds of longevity in RPGs. In a shooter the player tries to get from save point to save point, or through the last door; or simply to the end of the area. If they die they respawn and quickly try again. This is great for survivalist play, even simulator play; but an RPG can have many, many tasks between point A and B; too many to die too often. Party based RPGs solved this with easy ressurection, and having it that so long as 1 PC was alive and wealthy, the others could be bought back to life.... irrespective and ignoring that the one PC might be carrying 5 to 7 deceased party members back to town (in one trip).

*A bit of trivia: When designing the game Black&White the developers had intended that the Creature one gets would die permenantly if slain; (and you'd have to begin a new creature, and bring them up to speed ~again). They scrapped that because it dawned on somebody that no one was actually going to do that; training the creature is a long and involved process, one that's too long to completely repeat that often. It's the same with single PC RPGs. The character is an involved construct (unlike most shooter games), and their journey has too many sub-quests and side errands to repeat it over and over if the PC dies with their progress unsaved. So they are a little bit harder to kill.

In some respects, I think 'Realism' should be be a unique choosable mode like hardcoe mode. Make any shot to a limb with a high powered weapon or a critical shot instantly cripple the limb, head shots with logical calibers are instant kills. HOWEVER, since this IS realism, it will have all the pains of hardcoe mode and then some. On top of what hardcoe offers, I think the player should suffer the same penalties an NPC would if they shot the NPC. Don't like it? To bad, that's the realism you wanted. Drink to much soda or eat to much junk food? You suffer from a complete sugar crash. Etc, in otherwords. Add a mode that completely makes people appreciate game mechanics. On top of that, if they REALLY want realism, any mode tagged 'realism' should corrupt the moment you die, so you have to start all over again. Don't like it? To bad, realisticly, if you die, that's it, game over.

That would especially include 22's. What calibers did you have in mind.

The Witcher 2 has "Insane" difficulty (I think... I've not yet tried to use it or look for it, but I did read about it).
It's where Geralt has one life for the entire game.

I dunno. I don't know much about guns. I was thinking .22 is the equivalent of a bb pellet or something. And the .308 from a hunting rifle will pierce both ears for you. But again, I don't know much about guns and their calibers in terms of stopping power.

A 50. caliber bullet would blow a hole right through your stomach.

It just needs a revision. It should move away from damage modifiers and instead move to changing how it effect variables in the game. Such as making healing items rarer and ammunition. as well as spawning more enemies with better gear instead of just ramping up there health. Would also be cool if AI get better tactically too with harder levels set.

I think enemy difficulty is easily regulated by weapon type and level. Perhaps certain weapon types would be tied to tactical choices:

Melee/Unarmed: seek cover and close in using stealth. Charge when cover unavailable.

Handgun/shotgun/energy equivalent: seek cover, close in, flank, fire from behind cover once hit probability > X

Semi-auto/lever-action non-scoped rifles/energy equivalent: Engage once hit probability > x, close in while firing. Seek cover during reload. If target behind low cover, throw grenades. If target behind high cover, flank.

Single shot non-scoped rifles/energy equivalent: Engage once hit probability > X, maintain distance. When distance
Scoped rifles/ energy equivalent: Engage once hit probability > X. Maintain cover between shots and during reload. Keep to high ground. If distance < X, retreat, seek new cover. If distance < Y, switch to secondary weapon.

Automatic weapons: lay down suppressive fire while closing in. If target behind low cover, throw grenades; if target behind high cover, flank.

Heavy weapons: Engage once within weapon range. Disregard cover, advance openly while firing.

Grenade launchers/ Incinerators/ Missile launchers- Engage once within weapon range. Disregard cover. Maintain distance > X but < weapon range. If target behind cover, attempt to flush him out with proximity explosions. If distance < X, switch to secondary weapon.

I think everyone should remember that this is an RPG, not an FPS or other genre. Therefore, anyone who is actually RPing a character cannot simply choose to wear any particular apparel to get through any specific part of the game, or all of it, for that matter. For example, my characters never wear armor. They simply do not do so and would not do so. They wear fashionable outfits (well, fashionable to them, anyway, and they don't care what anyone else's taste in fashion may be), and some outfits may help reduce damage or some other type of effect that might also be on some armor outfits.

It's a question of what a character would do, not what a player should do to get past any part of the game.

As for difficulty... simple, really, just make it relate to actual difficulty. That does not mean combat challenge in all cases, nor does it mean simply increasing damage from enemies, enemy health, etc. It means varying things. Half-Life did this somewhat in 1998. Halo and Silent Hill probably did it best by varying actual content.

I'm currently playing with a female char who doesn't wear anything beyond Merc Armour. I'm playing Hard/hardcoe, but seriously, things like weight allowance is too high. I gave her Strength (2) as I figured while I was in character creation that she would be an educated woman who spent so much time with her nose in books she hadn't developed her strength in any way - beyond what it takes to brace against a rifle recoil. I let her carry 5 water, 5 maize, 100 .357 ammo, a modified Cowboy Repeater, and 50 10MM ammo, 10MM pistol. She's wearing Merc Troublemaker gear and an old Cowboy Hat.

At a Strength of 2 Her weight allowance is 170! That's like, around 12 stone of gear. The only good impact low Strength has apparently had, difficulty-wise, is she is extremely brittle, lol, she gets crippled when she gets hit/shot/poked on Facebook. So I've been spending most of my time making sure she doesn't get hit. Lot of Sneaking and a companion along to draw fire. But the 170 allowance. 12 Stone. *I* weigh 12 stone, six-one high, I'm pretty strong, and *I* couldn't lug my weight around a desert. lol hardcoe mode should limit ammo, weapons, foodstuffs, and clothing and should score unwieldy stuff higher or something. If you pick up some BoS armour, it should be double in hardcoe what it is in casual, while in your inventory, put it on and the servos kick in and you're good to go. But hauling it around to sell? It'd kill a lesser Courier. lol

Well, I have a .177 in my room, not considered a firearm because its too small of a caliber but could probably kill somebody if it was shot right.


Way to make fun of me. What does difficulty have anything to do with my avatar? How does that cause chuckling?

I do not like the idea of scrapping difficulties but I think one of them should be Realistic where it takes one pistols bullet to cripple a limb and one to the head to kill you.

thats because everyone gets a bonus carry wieght of like 150 or soemthing IIRC. Teh Str gives +10 per. IT really should have been like the originals where 1 str= 25 lbs. So you 2 str would have given her 50 lbs of carry wieght.

Bit off-topic but I'm curious about this. How badly does the low strength affect aim? 'cos I'd like to have a go at being brittle, I just never tried a low-strength build because I wanted to be able to shoot accurately.

Aaah that explains that then. I did take the Small Frame Trait. It just now occurred to me typing that, that it's that, that obviously made her brittle, and not the low STR stat. lol But yeah, even with a STR 2, coupled with the Small Frame Trait, she can still haul 12 stone in weight around the Mojave. 25lbs per point in STR sounds good. Would've been a nice fit for hardcoe mode.


Since I've just realised the Small Frame Trait is probably making her brittle, you won't need low Strength, lol, and you probably don't wanna know about aiming with low strength now. I'll tell you anyway. I don't use VATS (well, except as a get out of jail/catch my breath and the brick-like turd falling out of my ass button when a Nightkin appears in my face) and the Cowboy Repeater has a strength requirement of 4. But apart from the odd shot going astray in the early levels, I haven't had a problem with the aim. I did take the Trigger Discipline Trait next to the Small Frame Trait at the start, so, 20% more accurate, firing 20% more slowly. But yeah, had no problem hitting things in the head.

Edit 101: Typos. Bed time for me.

".22 is the equivelant to a BB pellet"

You REALLY don't know about guns, do you?

My first gun I got was a .22 rifle, it is VERY capable of killing. It's mainly used for pistol rounds now, it is not as weak as FO:NV makes it look, one bullet to the head and they won't have a head anymore.

A common method for understanding the actual power of a cartridge is by comparing muzzle energies. The Springfield .30-06, the standard caliber for American soldiers in both World Wars and a popular caliber amongst American hunters, can produce muzzle energies between 2000 and 3000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot-pound (between 3 and 4 kilojoules). A .50 BMG round can produce between 10,000 and 15,000 foot pounds (between 14 and 18 kilojoules) or more, depending on its powder and bullet type, as well as the rifle it was fired from. Due to the high http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_coefficient of the bullet, the .50 BMG's trajectory also suffers less "drift" from cross-winds than smaller and lighter calibers, making the .50 BMG a good choice for high-powered sniper rifles.

IF a person is hit by a 50 cal think pop liek a graqe between your fingers.

I've heard that hitmen like using .22 caliber pistols because the bullet is powerful enough to penetrate the skull, but not come out the other side so it ricochets inside the head.

My random fun fact of the day.

That is true, the .22 pistol/rifle are more for stealth then for running in.

Isn't that the reason we have the option for AutoSave on, opening doors, fast travelling, waiting and sleeping. I never said delete them and let death take its toll, but when I think of it Realism should do just that.
The only way to save a game is to sleep in a bed.
Your hungry? Eat something - Thristy? Then drink.
You took a bullet to the "x" - most likely dead or a bleed out timer begins and only medical attention and supplies can stop it, torniques can be used to slow/stop the blood flow.
Weapons do exactly what they shoud, kill and mane without needless sponges absorbing damage.
I could go on naming things that should be done for Realism but basically anything that happens in real life should be implemented to the best of the games ability.
Of course this mode is optional like all difficulties - it should also be the hardest.