Currently we have to choose between what I consider boring options:

Normal and below - overpowered player character

Hard - somewhat reasonably fragile player character but at cost of enemies getting unrealistically durable

Very Hard/Survival - very fragile player character, ridiculously bullet spongey enemies that take forever to kill

I think they should change survival into basically JE Sawyer mod + hardcoe mode's style of tweaks in Fallout: New Vegas. A more fragile character, but without making NPCs feel so comically tanky. More limited resources with a more limited carry weight limit. A need to eat/drink/sleep or suffer stat penalties. And, your health gains are much slower(they can keep the same speed as survival current has).

Also, make it not mutually exclusive with the other difficulty settings, so serious masochists can still add those limitations on top of their bullet sponge enemies if they really want to, for whatever reason.

There are attribute/perk tweaks I'd like to see as well, but that gets a lot more complicated. The above is really all I need to make combat enjoyable. I really hate spamming healing resources, and don't like my PC to be overly durable, but the fix to those issues are linked to an extremely tedious difficulty setting that I just can't enjoy.

You're in luck. You can go grab a mod that changes player and enemy damage to 1.4x or 2.0x, depending on your preference, at the usual place (the mod nexus). Most people download the 2x one, I did. It makes the FPS part of the game a lot more interesting because if you creep around a corner and get the first shot off it actually does significant damage instead of plinking for barely any health.

Does this help, at least for now or until we get modding tools to expand it? http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/222

Hmmmm not sure I agree totally..

I totally agree with eat drink sleep survival elements...

But at present I playing on Survival mode....... And I can say this, it's too easy. It needs to be harder. Enemies are maybe about right, in terms of damage they can take, but they don't do enough damage to me..
In terms of bullet sponges? Only Legendary enemies have I found to be real sponges, but nothing too taxing?

And the killer? There's way too many resources. I mean I've got all the Stimpaks , Rads, food in the world...... I mean I don't die hardly at all !

"...but without making NPCs feel so comically tanky"

Well this comes from the fact that this game is supposed to be a rpg. You have a sword and your enemy has hp and you try to lower that hp to zero.

By all the wonderful fps crap this seems to be forgotten. If you sneak from behind and choosed the right perks you get your advantage.

I dunno, I've been playing on survival since the start had a few issues here and there with sponges but mainly in the early game. Once I built up my arsenal (consisting of high powered isngle shot weapons, no autos) I now use the (perc) perk that identifies weakness and choose weapons accordingly - pretty much pop a psycho or some sort of psycho mixed chem and a med-x every large fight. I've accumulated around 18 fusion cores and pretty much rock my power armor non-stop with 2 ranks in nuclear physics. IF theres an encounter out there that gives me trouble theres bottlecap mines and all sorts of other [censored] I can use to liquefy the enemy. I'm level 28 and have only taken crafting and INT perks thus far havn't really specialized in any weapon type.I'm actually finding it too easy with this setup....

Try to focus on headshots (critical if you can manage it) and crippling legs on the larger stuff and make sure you use an ammo type they aren't armored against - you'll find that you no longer run into any "sponges".

Also.. when in doubt ... use EXPLOSIVES!... heh.

Very much agree. At first I thought that was the case. Unfortunately, it's only about these "legendary" sponges dropping magic items as loot.

What level would you say it starts to feel reasonable? And how VATS heavy have you gone?

I've been trying VATS-less builds, it seems like perks/SPECIAL are more VATS focused I'm wondering if my issue could be that I'm trying to play it more manually. It kind of annoys me that criticals got entirely built into the VATS system except for sneak attacks.

i love the new Survival mode, and really dont miss the sleep/drink/eat, since it wasnt really nothing big to bother me with it. U can control your food level eating whatever u find, drink level drinking from any place and sleep mean u just sleep 1hs and u are find.

plus i been playing and i still 1 shoot ppl i hit on the head or they take 3 or 4 attack when on close combat.

I never really thought it unreasonable concerning sponges they go down rather fast with headshots+high damage weapon, even the first Deathclaw fight - yea I died a few times at first but then psycho+minigun to the face solved the problem. Think I've been roaming around in my power armor since level 15 or so - that being said I use VATS very sparingly to limit fusion core consumption.

Then again, my focus was crafting (I havn't taken any weapon related specialization perks)so I always tryto upgrade my weapons to the highest per shot damage out put I was able to do. Maybe this part of my playstyle has the largest impact - my damage output scaled as I leveled so I was always able to dish it out - if I stuck with some lesser weapons I'm sure I'd have problems with sponges. Even now at level 28 I run into the occasional skull enemy and am able to quickly put them down with ease.

If you want to take out a skull or legendary even faster - a nice shotty + a critical to the face point blank is the way to go... Either build up your crit on the lesser dudes with high accuracy shots or get a weapon that feeds the crit meter. Find a way to get that crit in every encounter. If you're having issues with that, plant some mines and retreat back - cripple the legs then just walk up and put'em down with concentrated shots to the head.

What I've realized is this - save your high damage/caliber weapons for things that will give your problems (high hp enemys/skulls/legos) . DO NOT use autos on them as the per shot dmg is much lower and you'll just end up eating your ammos. My strategy for legs now is my .50 and headshots that's pretty much it and they go down in a few shots sometimes they won't even heal. Save your spam ammo/low damage shot for the cannon fodder.

I took some pics to highlight some of my points, hope it helps.

http://imgur.com/a/e6kAo