I think the beauty of HC mode now is that they force you to do the neccesaties to survive and the rest you HAVE to RP, that way you can play it under your own restrictions instead of having things forced upon you.

I understand that some people find one shotting everything on easy "fun" , or others want more or less challenging game. Game feature might be "awesome " for one person, or gamey and cheap for others . I just suggested some things for OP if he/she finds vanilla game too easy, nothing more. But that's jsut me ofc currently playing flamethrower veteran with left hand crippled and allergic to stimpacks.

And " what would someone do" argument is kinda pointless on video game board.

Play as an Energy Weapon character.. The early stages of the game, ammo is so freakin rare.

Not really, bulk energy cell boxes are common enough in shops and give you 100 each, and if you're lucky, Chet will have a Recharger Rifle in his inventory. Microfusion Cells are rare in the beginning, but once you get your science high enough to convert Energy Cells to MF cells that problem disappears too. ED-E, my flying ammunition supply ball ^_^

Personally, I still find hardcoe fairly easy myself.

I think on my next playthrough I'll impose some restrictions on myself to make it even more realistic.

Things like:
No using stimpacks (or picking them up to sell either)
No VATS (this will probably make the game impossible for me, lol)
No "Stealth Stealing", if I want to steal, I have to do it the old fashioned way...grab and run!

Thats all I can think of at the moment. Stimpacks really make the game easy-mode (even on hardcoe), I find I only eat and drink to keep my bars down, which is fairly easy to do. My standard routine is a couple hours sleep (or 2 Nuka-Cola's after I found a massive supply of them), 1-2 Purified Waters (I have a personal stockpile), and a Steak everytime my Food and H20 go over 100. I never need to eat/drink for health, which I feel is kinda lame.

So far I'm on Normal + hardcoe on my first playthrough. I'm finding hardcoe mode not that taxing at the moment - its easy enough to find water sources or food when you need it. I'm glad I chose it, though, as its an extra thing to keep in mind when wandering the wastes. I like that stimpacks heal over time, and depend on your medicine skill. I think this is an improvement since picking and choosing your battles requires consideration, rather than just charging in and mashing the stimpacks should it go wrong. I've already died about a dozen times in my first few hours. Its great!

I would totally play on hardcoe Mode+


Limiting Fast Travel, increasing the effects of Radiation, quickening sleep and hunger meters(water seems fine as is, maybe just needs x1.5 increase.

When sleeping in the open, there should be a chance of RANDOM ENCOUNTER with Raiders or other foes.


BRING BACK RANDOM ENCOUNTERS


Allow for spear crafting also. We tribals need love

Ammo I agree is a little easy to come across but in a way I'm glad it is. Even on Normal difficulty some enemies are incredibly hard to kill and some, like the Legion Assassins, are almost impossible. I was carrying around about 300 rounds of 9mm and another 300 rounds of 5.56mm and I ran out halfway through a fight with 4 Legion Assassins. Granted, I probably missed a few times (I was running for my life, because I ran out of stimpacks too) but I finally killed them after a bit of mid-battle looting and a 3 miles run across the desert.

Water is a different story. In ideal conditions, the human body can go roughly 3 days without water. In the wasteland treking across the desert... in the middle of the day... over 30 miles... you can still go another day with only minor dehydration. It should be tweaked in my opinion so you dehydrate faster and with increased penalty.

Food on the other hand... We can go for a week or two with no food. In the game, it's fairly accurate. The food requirement could be changed to make hunger a little more detrimental though.

Now for sleep, we can only go a few days. Again, with ideal conditions. Most people can't even go 16 hours without sleep. A safe bet would be to make the sleep requirement at 20 hours. After 20 hours you feel tired, which reduces Perception. Then at 30 hours your vision starts to black out occasionally. After 36 hours you pass out wherever you are. Also, in order to make up for being tired, it should take longer to recuperate. Say for every 2 hours awake, it takes 1 hour of sleep. After the first level of being tired, it takes a full 8 hours of sleep to remove the penalty. At the second level, it takes 10 hours. At the 3rd level, it takes 12 hours in a good bed (like a hotel bed or your own bed).

Just ideas I'm throwing out there.

The real issue isn't about players "gimping themselves". The issue is why should someone, either an official Obsidian dev or a modder, waste time coding stuff that can be resolved by players placing voluntary restrictions upon themselves? Why waste the time creating a mod that limits a character to 300 total rounds of ammunition (for example) when a player could simply choose to only 300 rounds, despite having the capacity to carry more.

People are demanding mods for things that don't need to be modded.

Excuse me, what?

Have you ever tired playing without the HUD? It's amazing. It's the only way I have played since my 2ed character in Fallout 3.



You said it yourself: immersive game play. With the HUD off, it stops feeling like a video game world and more like you are there. I play on the 360 on my large TV [not bragging, just giving perspective.] You feel like you are in the world. i'll quote you again:



You have to "think" and "role play" more. Also, the pip boy plays a bigger role in your game. It is your GPS locater and it montiors your vitals.

The world is really so much mroe fun when you don't have a video game heads up display and little tick markers telling you where to go, what you can an cannot "steal," etc.

Just try it. Give it some time.

Pro tip: wanting to pick up a certain item and not another? Use "aim down sights" to point at an item and then take it.

What I would actually change to the core game is:

Make the food, water, and sleep statistics raise at a faster rate. Right now food and sleep specifically are far too slow to raise. Insteado f adjusting how all of the food in the world effect your hunger rating and/or how common food is, just make players get hungry faster. Right now I can live on one gecko steak a day at most. If you are just gaming and not role playing, you can go long periods with out food or rest. When you do get sleepy or hungry, just take a bite of food and sleep for a little bit and "it all goes away." With my 16 survival, any cooked food I buy for 5-7 caps gets rid of over 100 hunger. It takes a long time to reach 100 hunger. Having to eat more would solve a lot of the "too much food" problem. Most, if not all, other changes are simply thing you can self-impose. Later I may complie a list of things I do/would recomend to increase the difficulty an improve your "hardcoe" experience.

hardcoe mode was developed as a result of the significant number of contributors to the F3 forums who basically gimped their playstyles to make the game somewhat more realistic. There were two types - the 'this is too easy' type, and the real 'hardcoe fetishists'.

The first did things like no fast travel, limited stimpaks, and limiting the perks they took; the others did insane (relatively) stuff like no limb repair, limited ammo, etc. One of my characters hobbled around for six months game time with a crippled leg, and an addiction to chems...that was challenging and not easy.

The trouble is, no matter what they do there will always be someone who wants something else or wants it harder, but they have to make the game appealable across the range of potential players.

I thought it was a nice flavor, but I'd probably do it more if my limbs didn't seem to always get instantly crippled in it, and if doctor's bags fully healed your limbs.

I agree with this completely.

In hardcoe there shouldn't be doctors bags, because that is just a trick to make you think you are doing something different than using a stimpack.
Also, you should have to fill up a canteen or something for water. There are bottles of water, food, rad away and beds everywhere.

How about the sun?
What is the atmosphere like after a nuclear holocaust?

In hardcoe mode you shouldn't be able to just go out anytime of day or night regardless of what you are wearing. I'f I'm wearing skivvies and a pair of sunglasses I should get burnt.

hardcoe mode seems like a gimmick. I agree it is better than nothing, definitely, but it isn't really a whole new level of experience.






I agree.
There are also NO consequences for stealing anything. It is far too easy to rip off food or water right in front (or behind) an NPC.) hardcoe mode would be MUCH better exactly as implemented if items were not so freely available.

Are food, water, drugs, guns, etc. all so plentiful after a nuclear holocaust that no one even bothers to watch their stuff or care if you take it?

I've got like 500lbs of stuff before even leaving Goodsprings.

I think it is another example of Obsidian not caring about the relationship of the player to 3D space. They were simply interested in the story for New Vegas. Obsidian didn't pay attention to making the game play exciting.



true,

I play on PS3, i don't know if I can do that or if it's practical, but I'll try it out if I can.

I totally agree. I don't mind using something different to heal limbs, as long as they're actually effective at it. Making doctor's bag just about as effective as stimpacks is just stupid. Food, water, and sleep are a nice start, but I never once got low on sleep. Make us more dehydrated during the day, and perhaps even make a survival mode (maybe unlocked after beating the main game on hardcoe) that starts you out with minimal supplies and either removes all friendly NPC's or has its own map, where you have to carefully fight, scavenge, and craft whatever you can to survive for as long as possible.

The only thing HC mode is good for in New Vegas is some GS.

it's in the settings under brightness. you turn the opacity down to 0.

You also have to listen to/read the dialog. you no longer have a prompt that tells you what to do or that you have done it. You don't know what quests you have or have not failed by making a choice. it's really nice imo.

Even with this set to 0, just like in Fallout 3, when you discover a location or get a new quest the text will "roll" across the screen like normal. Like I said, you can't read if you failed a quest though. All of the sounds are still in the game.

Another tip, this is a personal choice: Turn off the in-game music. I love the in game music, but having the sound of the wasteland also help immersion.

For fun, set the cenematic kill cam to "play view" instead of cenimatic. You can turn it off, but it looks cool when set to player. I kind of think of it as my character getting "in the zone." there are three times so far that i have gotten a sneak attack critical on someone and while it is in the slow motion player view i get a second shot off. one of those times I actually got a third off and killed a third person. That was sick. Not common at all, at least for me.

I agree with the doctors bags. they feel nice at first, but you quickly realize they are over powered. I like the flavor of keeping one bag on me at all times.

In the end, it's still a video game. i don't want to deal with bathing, shaving, and using the bathroom in my video game.

I just like to add layers of "realisim/survival" to my game play and not be Master Chief jumping around and firing laser guns. A play style that is open to you if you wish. this is part of what makes Fallout so great and the haters can't grasp.

I was just unhappy with the rates at which you have to eat, sleep, and drink so I opened the G.E.C.K. and changed it. Now I have to eat 400 points of food a day, drink just over 400 points of water (6.66 bottles) per day, and sleep every 16 hours. I'm also planning on making chem addiction much more serious and if possible make it cost a lot more to recover from it. So basically if you are on PC and are unhappy with hardcoe mode then fix it yourself, it is actually surprisingly easy if you have ever even toyed with modding a game.

instead of limiting the amount ammo available in the world, really increase the weight of ammo/weapons. a soldier carrying a full load of ammo for his assault rifle can only realistically carry an extra 300-400 rounds...and these would weigh upwards of 30lbs. if your're carrying 3-4 weapons (as i am at the minute) then weight becomes a real factor

But then there is another problem.
They could just store a crap load of ammo back at their home and just run back and get more and never really be in deep need of ammo anyway.

I don't know if ammo is already weighted correctly or not though. If it is, it wouldn't be realistic to add to it. the thing is, our characters don't carry a backpack or satchel of any sort. That would be a nice mod. Bags, bag sizes, and an impact on stealth just like your armor. This is one of the things I like to think about when playing. I like to think I have a backpack strapped to me. After a dungeon crawl I try to imagine the loot I have on me and the gun i am carrying. I like to keep a knife on me at all times, a side arm, a rifle, and a shot gun. I like to sell my explosive. I don't want an errant shot to blow me to kingdom come. I know it won't, but I am role playing and my character doesn't want to take that risk, less so after killing a powder ganger that very way as they were ready to throw a stick of TNT at me/him. the back pack idea allows me to think of my items being grouped together like my pip boy has them and looking at it is like opening up my back pack and rummaging through it.

i try to keep a semi-stable routine for eating and drinking. I have no problem hoarding drinks. I only carry so much food on me at one time though and try to buy/eat food in towns and at rest stops with only a few less perishable foods on the trail. I just try to immerse myself in the game. It's not a race.I intentionally make it more difficult on myself to increase my enjoyment of it, and it's paying off. i haven't even been to the strip yet, let alone beat the game.

This is an excellent idea.
Chem addiction is a really cool idea that has been COMPLETELY overlooked in Fallout 3 and New Vegas. It definitely deserves its own storyline. Actually, it was touched on lightly in Fallout 3, and I must commend Bethesda again for thinking of nearly everything under the sun, but at Rivet City, the quest regarding drug addiction was very thin.

It also should be prohibitively expensive to use a doctor's care, just like real life!
In the wasteland, I hardly think that doctors are just sitting around their houses waiting for losers with bullets for brains to come waltzing in the door so that we can get free brain surgery and then proceed to steal everything they own upon waking up. - That really set the tone for me, that everything in Doc Mitchel's place was free for the taking. Seriously?

If I am addicted to chems I should be losing health if I am not taking the chem at a regular interval and if I take too many chems I should become disoriented, disabled, and passout... only to find myself in another part of the map, waking up in a slaver camp with nothing left on me but my skivvies. Or, in bed with a robot.

This is the kind of experience I expected after playing Oblivion, where so many actions had real repercussions, but neither Fallout 3 or New Vegas has delivered that yet. I'm not sure what is going on at gamesas really. I just pray that TESV is not going to be a half game.

Please HEAR ME BETHESDA!

I don't think hardcoe mode is hardcoe enough either. There's too much food and water easily accessible, and beds everywhere. Also the Survival skill (which is needed for a lot of perks) allows you to heal from food and drink, defeating the purpose of hardcoe mode to some extent.

I agree about the ammo also. When reading about the game months ago I kept hearing that ammo is going to be very scarce so melee and unarmed are going to be a must. And of course that's not true at all. Ammo is restocked in stores and is very cheap, and you find too much in containers (same with med supplies). Instead of twenty shotgun shells in a filing cabinet there should be one or two.

What I think they should do is allow the player to control this in the options. There could be three settings, scarce, normal and plentiful that controls how much loot you find in containers. They should also do that for the amount of XP you get. I still can't get over how simply picking a lock, hacking a terminal or using your speach skill can get you twenty or thirty XP, when any other kind of non combat action gets you five or ten.

Now this is a masochist.
The people who are unhappy are telling you that they can't believe in the world of New Vegas, but you are asking people to continue to be immersed in the game while they play a separate game in their own head, where they pretend not to see the 1,000lbs of loot in front of them.

It is ridiculous. It just isn't fun. A game is obviously flawed if your solution to play it is to pretend that it isn't what it is.
If I have $5,000 caps, why wouldn't I buy that ammo?
Am I saving for a college fund?