I'm so sick of bullet sponges.. My suggestion for higher difficulties would be to decrease the amount of stimpaks, caps and ammo found as loot, (randomly?) increased enemy spawns, harder sneaking, higher material costs for crafting and an additional cooldown between stimpaks and other healing items on top of their current status. And allow only one chem at a time. The new and improved AI features, as well as enemy accuracy, could also be implemented in stages as per difficulty levels.
One-hit kills (limited to headshots usually) from lvl1 works in other games that are balanced in different ways than just increasing health pools and adjusting damage/resistance.

Judging from the leaked videos iv'e seen, it looks like enemies react to damage much more often than in the previous games, but it varies. Sometimes the character will shoot someone and they are thrown back from it. And other times they will shoot when the enemy is in mid attack animation and they just take getting shot without reaction.

Raiders were never bullet sponges in FO3 to begin with. The only bullet sponges in unmodded Fallout 3 were overlords, feral ghoul reavers and albino radscorpions. FWE didn't make them any less of a bullet sponges. Doesn't matter if its done more "realistically" it may be more believable that a robot takes a couple hundred rounds to take down then a human but the core mechanic is still the same.

IMO, a good way to get away from the bullet sponges would be to change how damage and armor affect each other. FONV had the right idea with the DT system though it needed tuning, but instead of jacking up the enemies HP like they did with reavers and legendary enemies just have them be naturally armored/heavily armores but with regular hp so if the PC wants to kill them they either need a strong weapon or specialized ammo (other wise they'll do negligible damage between 10-25%) to counter the armor. To balance enemies so players aren't OP just have a system to where the game gives the PC a threat rating based off of the dps of their weapons/ armor rating of their armor and as it goes up the enemies tactics change, they lay traps, set ambushes, attack in greater numbers. Occasionally throw in a legendary mixed in who has weapons/armor that rival the player. At least that's how I'd do it.

Again you are absolutely wrong. Go replay vanilla and FWE fallout please. You would shoot raiders in the face three times+ and they wouldn't die. That's a bullet sponge. FWE didn't make them any less of bullet sponges? FWE changed them dramatically. As I said earlier it increased certain DRs depending the type of monster.

It even had limb specific damage for EACH creature. For example raider head - big multiplier, because human heads, well, not that resistant to bullets. Albino radscorpion claw -well if that's what you were hitting, I can see how you didn't see the difference.

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/2761/?

Only by the mod description, you can see that what you are saying can't be correct, so don't keep insisting.

If you used a low tier weapon on a high end raider sure it survive three head shots. But even in Fallout 3 unmodded head shots dealt still double damage.

A high end raider still only had 90hp so killing him in one shot wasn't difficult nor did killing a dozen take much time either. The Combat Shotgun killed most humans and ghouls with one well placed headshot. When people complain about Bullet sponges in fallout 3 they always talk about the Overlord, The Reaver and the Albino Ranscorpion which FWE did nothing to change. They're still bullet sponges.

Nobody really cares that low end enemies take two seconds to kill instead of one.

If you have to headshot a raider with a fatman in order to kill him in one shot then he is not a bullet sponge right? So a raider in a FO4 footage being shot 3 times in the head casually minding his own business is not a bullet sponge? Also it is not about 1 or 2 seconds. It is about the ridiculousness of the whole scene. Destroys any immersion or sense of realism.

You not caring doesn't equal to everyone not caring. Like it has been said by the FWE creators themselves, it pretty much solves bullet sponging so I don't think that "none cares". Also when it comes to most other armored creatures, you can get rid of them easily by having a "high level" weapon, high caliber bullers, penetrative shots etc by shooting the right parts, but if you have a pistol it is natural you would think they are still bullet sponges. And at the same time with a pistol, when shot in the head without a helmet, raiders will die, as any human being would.

No, I don't hate it. This is an RPG, not a FPS. Hitting the head should not be an instant kill for neither the NPC nor the PC.

This is not a FPS, it's a RPG. One shot kills are not required. Having to shoot someone three times hardly counts as bullet-sponging. As long as I don't need 25 shots to kill something, I'm OK with that.

It's just as much an FPS as any other FPS out there. That it has some arcade qualities reminiscent of games like Serious Sam and which are lacking form more realism driven games, doesn't affect that.

Again, all the large overhaul mods that also make the game more of an rpg than vanilla is beg to differ. Hell, even fallout 1 and 2 begs to differ. One well placed shot in the head with a pistol would kill every unarmored human npc. At most he would need two if the pistol was terrible, after being blinded. So the "this is not FPS it's an RPG" comes from nowhere and just because you have seen 1 hit kills only in COD don't get confused and think that the world can't be plausible with the game being an RPG at the same time.

Agree with the no or few points into health. My Skyrim method was expert difficulty and crafted weapons.

I could single hit to kill anything but bosses with an sneak attack, bosses and even enemies with good gear could single hit to kill me.

Dragon bit was lethal so don't get them bit you

And a well placed hit in the head still kills most of your enemies, just like in FO1 and FO2 so comparison to those two is moot. The balance right now is, I'd say, fine enough,

The Overhaul mods comment is also moot: of course if you add 1 FPS element and 10 RPG elements it will increase the RPG value. That doesn't have anything to do with "Shoot in the head" topic and I don't trust Beth to add so many RPG elements to make up for it.

The topic here is: do I want the "one shoot in the head to be an instant kill?" My personal answer is no: I prefer if all damage be dependent on skills and other modifiers, with hit body part being a bonus at best. I don't want my Lv. 1 character to be able to handle high level enemies just because I am good at hitting enemies in the head (and I am good at it). The same way, the developer won't make NPCs try to shoot you in the head because it will make the game more frustrating for many players, especially those less skilled in FPS games (as this gets the game closer to Survival FPS genre), so all damage will be done via health. That gives the PC another unfair advantage over the NPCs.

Some people hate the bullet sponging, others don't. You do, I don't... each one of us for our own reasons.

So, do the overhaul mods with their one shot kills make it less of an RPG then? - this is for your "this is not an FPS but an RPG" comment.

Of course skills matter. In these overhaul mods skills matter even more.

Who said anything about high level enemies O.o? I clearly said, multiple times, as an example, shooting a raider without a helmet in the head. This is not a high level enemy. Also if you are good at guns - the difference should be mostly at aiming, crossair steadiness, not only damage, but that is another story.

i hate this problem but at the same time i understand why is happening, is the same problem u have when u have some monster surviving your sword crashing their skull.

For me over the year become a little irrelevant, not bc im fine with it, is bc is a game.

Almost every shooter suffer from this and is hard to translate reality to a game with guns bc most of the shoot probably will end been 1 shoot no just your head.

I'll play the game and enjoy it, but await eagerly the release of Fallout Survivor Edition or whatever the FWE team thinks to call it. With the damage modifiers all the way up, taking on an Overlord was actually a joy and a rush. Especially when coming out of the back of Congress and I was already low on ammo...!
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I don't mind bullet sponging so much as long the enemies look the part. The Behemoth was good, but could have used some extra head armor (pretty sure I dropped a whole minigun worth of bullets into his eyeballs). Or, to make up for low hp, have raiders wear helmets that if you don't hit just right fly off and alerts everybody that someone is shooting at them. Simple, little adjustments.

One of the simpler solutions is to make legendary enemies have better weapons (check), a little more hp, better armor, and heightened perception and luck values, and perks (<- how great would it be to face of against a Raider named Shelly with a shotgun that dominates you?). So, maybe instead of two to the dome, they take three but in turn can turn you into meat chuck. Sneaking is applicable but tough, requiring tons of patience. Running in screaming works if you've prepared yourself.

The "problem" is in every rpg I have ever played. Battles otherwise would amount to who had the first strike and would be extremely short. For me gameplay always trumps reality in video games like Fallout because Mutants. There are no such thing as mutants but I except them in this world because it is fun. If I want a simulator game I will play a simulator game.

I also have the feeling I'll be exploding a lot of pants with the Legendary Encounters.

It depends. I'd rather have enemies that don't get oneshotted (unless they're things like a tiny bug, obviously), but invincible common enemies that don't even move when you shoot them while they keep spamming are [censored] annoying, I say that from my experience.

To me bullet sponges mean my guns are going to do some hardwork and trust me they love hard work...

Realistic weapon damage for Fallout: New Vegas is a great example of how to handle this. If you're going to charge in with a minigun you better have the armour, as light & no armour ends with one to two hits. Heaven beware if no helmet then its one shot to the skull for instant death.

a great idea but if implemented wrong could ruin your game, that would be fun if a laser rifle or plasma rifle was one shot kills to every human, although it should be possible to survive a 9mm to the head sometimes if armour on the head or a Super Mutant etc. I think Super Mutants should always take 2 shots to the head at least unless possibly it was a Hunting or Sniper Rifle as their skin is so thick and tough. I think Melee should always take at least a few hits so the battle is fun. I think Power Armour should allow people to take a few energy weapon hits and small guns hits and withstand explosives from a few feet away. I think Leather Armour should allow for a few 10mm hits etc. Hunting Rifle hits should only kill in one if it hits a human in the head or chest. If it hits their arm or leg it should only half their health and cripple it.

Looking back I think my biggest problem with the bullet-sponges in F3 and F:NV was weapon degradation. Without the weapon breaking or losing damage over time, making future encounters even more tedious, this might not be as dramatic.

Yes I do

In FO3 and NV I had it modded so head shots were nearly always instant kills for me and the enemy. Take a shotgun point blank, yep you're stuffed.

I do not feel it makes any sense that because you level up your head starts to transform into Kevlar

I feel your leveling should improve your abilities such as holding your weapon more steady, being able to use higher grade weapons, being able to interact with the world more etc etc. I do not feel it should lead to you becoming a god

I like the feeling that no matter where I am if I make a mistake or don't take enough care any lowly raider could OHK me. For me armor should only offer small resistances against specific firearms but still do heavy damage. I'm talking 2 shots instead of 1.

I will mod this game to be the same. Walk over a mine instant death, you ain't surviving that unless your reaction are stupid fast and even if you do your entire body is crippled until you find a doctor

This makes it harder because enemies such as robots can take more shots before they die (makes sense unless you hit a critical unit) etc

great idea, friend. I am a console user but if I had FO4 on PC I would download your mods.