First off, I do know that the game is done, so this is a fond wish-type thread, not a "dev pleasepleasepleasepleasdothisthing!" thread.

Now, a lot of people are saying they want harder difficulties with intelligent AIs, but not just bullet sponges. We can reasonably assume there will be multiple difficulty levels. After all, every Bethesda game I've played has them, and most games in the world does too.

I dislike the concept of more hit points means more difficult. That isn't the case. It makes it more frustrating. Damage done shouldn't change regardless of the difficulty. The difficulty should be in having to be more methodical and deliberate in action.

My thoughts would include a variable to the range that Perception detects an enemy. At lower difficulties your Perception could pick them out pretty far away, but at higher difficulties you would have to be pretty close to notice them. Say just outside their visual range.

Another thought would be an increase in enemy accuracy. Lower levels would be Stormtrooper-esq levels of hit ratios, while at the highest you'd have enemies that are hitting you about 70% of the time.

Mobile enemies are also a good way to go. At the lowest difficulty setting, enemies would only jog slowly or walk. While at the highest difficulty, you'd see them sprinting, changing direction, or even backing around corners.

Thoughts?

This is a much debated question. I think that perhaps there should be more enemies per difficulty and they dish out higher damage. No bullet sponges! I would also like more intelligent enemies which could actually take the place of extra enemies at higher difficulties but I'm not sure I see Beth making different AI packages for the different difficulty levels.

I would do something like this:

Hmm. Having enemies use more varied & complex tactics, and working as a better team (smarter AI) seems like more actual/honest/real "increased difficulty" than just jacking up damage and throwing more bodies at you.

(And how would "Easy" work in your way - less spawn points/less enemies per spawn, and they can't hurt you? Seems like that would make for an empty wasteland. As opposed to just as many badguys to fight, but they aren't as coordinated, don't make as good use of cover & support skills, etc.)

edit: of course, smarter AI (let alone multiple levels of AI) is a lot more difficult & a lot more work than just doubling HP/damage/enemy numbers.

I'm with you on the AI across difficulty levels, but I don't know about increasing spawn points. That would work great in a straight shooter, but for an RPG it can start to risk the realism, when suddenly the world has way more Raiders, Deathclaws, and whatnot; plus, whether or not someone even is an enemy depends on who we side with. The gameplay footage Bethesda's been putting out has shown the Brotherhood gunning for us, and trying to gun us down.

I think a certain degree of AI scaling could work without making it weird; like, maybe NPCs won't suddenly start flanking you and working as a team when you turn up the difficulty, but maybe on an individual level they'll just get more tenacious, spot you from stealth more easily, etc.

If we think that the kind of game mechanics that encourage strategy on our part should be present across all difficulties, does it reach a point where you decide everything except damage multipliers should be on at all difficulties? What other game mechanics can be easily scalable across difficulty settings?

Most challenging difficulty maybe? No hp, everything relies completely on armor rating. I'd also want it so that no matter the armor you're wearing you'd still have to deal with the bullet impact making you unstable or knocking you down.

I would say getting rid of unweighted objects at a high level of difficulty.

Slower to earn xp as difficulty rises

Lockpicking and hacking require a higher level of 'skill" than lower difficulty games would, once past the tutorial.

more (places with) environmental damage- pockets of trapped gas, radiation, caustic fog/bigger storms from the Glowing Sea, etc..

More traps, which are placed less obviously than lower level difficulty games.

I'd like a hardcoe mod and to have menus for the difficult level and hardcoe mode so that I can fine tune the challenge.

For example, being able to make loot rarer or being able to set the respawn time for creatures and NPCs.

If I kill a pack of Death Claws, I want a couple weeks to past before any more show up.

Other people might want to increase the loot when starting out and then decrease it as the Sole Survivor gets higher in level.

Other people also might want to have a 24 hour respawn time so they always have plenty to shoot.

Had a different thought.

Instead of changing AI, just have the same quality of AI but change the array of skills that the enemies have. Like, at higher difficulties, enemies have higher perception (more aware, harder to sneak up on), have a wider array of attacks, can buff their allies/debuff their targets, can dodge or sprint, etc. And at "easy" levels, you could remove some of the base abilities (down to just walk & attack, at the simplest)

Of course, this method works best in a game that has an array of "active abilities" for the player and NPCs to use. Fallout has all those Perks, but most of them (at least in the previous game) didn't really give new specific combat abilities. Another issue with a Beth-style game is if you gave the baddies a wider array of useful gear (chems, stun/smoke/etc grenades, healing, etc).... the player would get them all after killing the badguys, which makes the game easier.

What if in some cases it's a location only weapon like turrets in a raider stronghold and they rarely drop those weapons(similar to Stealh Boys in Fallout NV)? But with the crafting system we can just make any weapon in the game anyways.

At the default difficulty setting in Fallout 3, some locations contain enemies with levels comparable to our own. Other places contain enemies with levels greater than our own.

I think the easiest way to effect difficulty may not be to tweak the characteristics of enemies, but to change up which enemies we might encounter. So, at a higher difficulty setting, fewer locations would contain enemies with levels comparable to our own. More areas would contain enemies with levels greater than our own. At a lower difficulty setting, more places would contain enemies with levels equal to, or less than, our own.

Hmmm. Better AI at higher difficulty levels?

I honestly don't know. It would seem a shame to subject players playing easier levels to idiotic AI (more than necessary).

Maybe if there were levels of AI at all settings and higher difficulty increased the chances of getting smarter opponents.

In general, I'd probably opt for a lot of small things.

Slightly more damage resistance
Slightly more damage dealt
Slightly better accuracy
Slightly less ammo found
Slightly bigger difference between buying and selling prices.
The odd higher level enemy in any group
Maybe just one more enemy in any group.

Lots of little things that you wouldn't obviously notice and wouldn't change the feel of the game, but taken together just make it generally harder.

I don't believe Fallout needs difficulty levels. It should reflect real life: where the strong and smart are rewarded and the dim and weak tend not to get very far.

This may sound harsh, but self-improvement is not denied anyone in real life, nor will it be in Fallout. If weak players want to see more of what the game has to offer they should push themselves.

I hope they don't adjust the NPC's awareness of their surrounding, I don't like playing against half-blind and deaf enemies when they can't see you crouching right before them.

Rather, I hope they adjust the number of spawns.

Personally, I think it's a game, played for entertainment by a wide variety of gamers with a wide variety of personal skill levels as well as preferences in what they look for in games (challenge, exploration, relaxation, etc).

I'd rather see the exact opposite happen, honestly, where enemies use all of those tactics at all difficulties. That way the sense of using different strategies against different enemies is preserved. What I'd like to see scale to difficulty is their ferocity; scale the likelihood of enemies using their strongest attacks, the rate of their attacks, or how much they try to block/dodge attacks. Like, they could scale some of the combat stats on http://www.creationkit.com/Combat_Style. At lower difficulties it would feel like they're holding back, at higher difficulties it would feel like they're desperately fighting for their lives.

Nah, all of that is along the same lines as enemy sponges. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference between higher accuracy and higher weapon damage.

My main guideline for increasing the difficulty is that I never want an encounter that should be fairly easy to be a life and death manner because of some cheap stat boosts to enemies. If anything increase the number of enemies or give them better armor and weapons. Ideally I would want them to actually fight more strategically and use cover more intelligently.

Higher difficulty levels should mean more epic battles.

this, is all I really think it needs. I always felt one of the best implementations of difficulty level was how they did system shock 2. as you went up in level you received less upgrade modules, started with less health, and a couple other changes. but the upgrade modules was the big on. one easiest, you could purchase everything and max it out. at impossible, you had to think very carefully about what you spent your upgrade points on, cause you wouldn't have anywhere near what you needed to max out everything. it forced you into a particular character build, you couldn't be a jack of all trades. it wasn't just about enemies getting harder, or spawning more often.

Easy-all enemies have rolling pins and rags

Very Hard-all enemies have fat men and power armor

The single biggest difficulty scale I can imagine is AI. At low levels it is dumb, with low perception. As the difficulty level increases, the enemy gets smarter and more aware. Not only in direct confrontation, but using environmental hazards (mines, C4, clouds of poisonous or explosive gas, etc.). When confronting a team, the enemies use pack/squad tactics to disorient the player. It doesn't require a lot of firepower when the baddies get you into a crossfire or chuck a grenade or three into a confined space. It would even be interesting for baddies to use other baddies to soften you up. Imagine a full tactical retreat into a room filled with caged Feral Ghouls. From a safe room, the button is pressed to release the Ghouls. While you are dealing with the immediate threat of mindless zombies wanting to svck on your marrow, the intelligent baddies above engage in a high ground advantage tactical assault. You don't have to make them tough or do extra damage. Just have them behave in a tactical, self preserving way.

It would be even more interesting (but probably frustrating) if you just simply "lost" because the bad guys became aware of your presence and locked themselves into a fortified bunker. As long as you are a threat, they stay put. You leave and it takes a while, perhaps a cell reset, for them to come back out. At the very least, maybe you have to hack a terminal in order to override the safe room locks or something.

VATS/AP would be another thing that could be tweaked, with higher difficulty levels having less (or using more) AP.

Of course, survival mechanisms, but I think that those can get to be more of an annoyance than a challenge or fun. I think tweaking some of the environmental effects (read Rads and Rad Resistance) is very viable, especially if done so dynamically (you have less Rad Resistance/more Rad susceptibility for a given time after serious exposure).

I hate bullet sponges, so the Skyrim method of higher difficulty equals higher bullet sponginess is not something I would like to see. Perhaps a higher level of damage (across the board) would not be inappropriate. When you can kill any reasonable enemy with a few shots but can be similarly dispatched, it will certainly give you pause.

Every person that plays a video game gets something different from it. Some people want a truly hard core experience and others want a casual experience. Quite frankly, if Fallout were to adopt this methodology, I know I wouldn't want it. I mean, I have no inherent problem with the idea for myself, but shutting out an entire segment of the gaming population is just dumb for business. I would lose respect for Bethesda and quite frankly be shocked that they changed their business model/philosophy so far from what makes them my favorite developer. Their mantra is to play the "game you want to play," not "you're not good enough newb."

Now, if somebody were to make a difficulty mod that encompassed your opinion, I would very likely give it a try. It depends entirely on how that mod is implemented, of course.

to be honest they should be removed as all they do is promote ego stroking and a toxic addititude on the forums. the game should be challenging at the start, the middle and the end and the difficulty settings in bethesda games is sinply nerfing the damage you do and increaseing the damage you take. Monsters arent smarter, nor do they get more helath on hard or very hard, you ( and only you) just do 50% and 25% of your normal damage while taking 100-200% increased damage ands the not including the fact that in the fallout games sure, your fighting the enclave and such, but their gear is at less than 25% durability so they arent even threat to you.

Yeah, I wouldn't play Fallout 4 if it turned out it's a Dark Souls-esque exercise in self inflicted torture, lol. Constantly dying over and over doesn't appeal to me.

Just make it so that your items take more damage during combat, gear wears out faster, health aids only give you half of what they do on normal difficulty, items cost more to buy and you don't get as much when you sell and so on. You can make the game harder by dealing with other stuff besides the enemies. A fight against a rad scorpion on easy or normal mode would leave you at half health with a little damage to your gear so you just have to pop one medkit and call it a day. On hard mode your gear is severely damaged requiring you to use a repair kit or pay someone to repair it and you need to use two or three medkits, which cost significantly more on hard mode, to get the same amount of health back.

What I can't stand is just adding HP to enemies and calling it a day.

Enemies are higher level, have more perks, and have better leveled loot lists.

Healing, chems, food aren't as effective.