Companions are the one thing I am really wimpy about. I do NOT like losing them (and or their quests), so why bother (for me) to roleplay that way. lol. For a long time now I compromise by avoiding healing them in battle. I equip them well, put a few aids in their own inventory, and they're on their own. If they fall unconscious, they fall unconscious.

I still tend to give them a couple stimpacks in a big fights tho. Or, since I use more-spawn mods, in certain areas where the odds start to become super-redonkulous.

It depends, I have one casual and one hardcoe save. The casual for a less stressful playthrough to just go around scavenging,killing,etc and in the hardcoe mode I will do the same but there will be challenges and I see myself approaching situations differently. Overall I prefer hardcoe mode.


There's no reason to stress over a video game.

"hardcoe" is actually extremely easy. I like not carrying around enough ammo to keep the US army supplied for a month. I only carry a few things, 10mm pistol, This Machine, Dinner Bell, and Love & Hate. And the ammo of course.

Turned it on in my first playthrough and, well I didn't look back, but there was no back to look to so that doesn't count. Um, I never looked foward? Nah, that's dumb.

I turned it on and never looked sideways.

hardcoe mode was a wash for me.

Eating and drinking are mindless tedium because there is no shortage of food/water and the game isn't designed around the mechanic. Sleeping is a little more interesting because you can only do it in certain places, but it still isn't implemented in a way that affected my exploration of the game world. It just makes me hit the rest button every time I see an open bed. Ammo weight is generally a good idea, but it just ended up reducing my latency on trips to the store. It's easy to find pack mules and you can carry a ton of stuff. I never had to make a difficult choice involving ammo, so it didn't accomplish anything. I would say that all of those aspects were bad.

The changes to stimpaks, doctor's bags, and companions were all good. All of those things make the game a little harder and more interesting. In the future, I think they could drop the pointless "realism" crap like eating and drinking (or at least make it automated), and make changes to the leveling system to make the game more challenging. I would like to see a hardcoe mode that limits skill advancement and bonuses from items, so I need to think more about character progression. And if they are going to have thirst and hunger, then portable food and water should be difficult to find, which really wouldn't work in a setting like New Vegas.

There were a few things which I would change. Food and water were far too abundant and easy to come by, plus you could carry around heaps of them. Real nourishing meals should have required cooking. A nice feature to supplement this would have been being able to make a campfire. I'd have also liked to have seen hardcoe mode drastically reduce the carrying capacity. This would shift the emphasis away from having to carry around hundreds of tin cans, to having to hunt down animals in the wastes and cooking their meat.

The penalties for not eating/drinking/sleeping, and also radiation poisoning, were not noticeable enough. I played through the whole game on hardcoe mode and I'll be honest, it really had no effect on me. I ate, drank and slept just to get rid of the labels telling me I was hungry, thirsty, or tired. I never did so because I felt like I was suffering. Instead, vision could have become fuzzy, the PC may not be able to run for as long, maybe collapse, or even black out.

Just my thoughts.

Yes, this is a lot of the reason I don't like hardcoe mode; I do a lot of this stuff anyway (finding a bed for the night, carrying food and water, drinking out of sinks to heal rather than using stimpaks etc.) and so don't appreciate the game's nagging. Having a bunch of extra health bars to worry about does not make for a more immersive experience at all, if anything it's just another reminder that I'm playing a game rather than actually wandering the wastes.

Pretty much the only way I play. Adds another layer to the game I enjoy. Makes carry weight actually matter, makes survival useful. Ridiculous name for the game mode, but not a bad addition. Hopefully the next game has hardcoe-er mode.

I completely agree regarding the vanilla version of hardcoe mode - it didn't work for me because food and drink were too plentiful and you only needed to sleep about once per week.

After installing Harder hardcoe Rates (Refined Rates) and Expensive Wasteland (5x prices) mods, then food and drink became more scarce and I began suffering sleep deprivation effects more frequently.

I'm confused about your post however, you said that you didn't eat, drink or sleep and you never experienced any penalties. If you go long enough without doing this, even in the vanilla version, you die. That is a pretty serious penalty.

If you continue like this for a while, before dying, your stats are reduced as follows:
DEHYDRATION: -2 PER, -3 END, -2 AGL, -1 INT
STARVATION: -3 STR, -2 PER, -2 CHR
SLEEP DEPRIVATION: -2 INT, -2 END, -3 AGL

As a result of installing the mods, I spent most of the game suffering from some of these effects, as well as hobbling around with all my limbs crippled, and I died from dehydration several times. Whether it is "realistic" or "immersive" etc., doesn't matter to me, but I found these challenges made the game much more fun to play.

I could never go back to playing without a modded version of hardcoe mode. In fact, I went back and installed some mods for Oblivion that do the same thing. (COBL Real Hunger, Real Thirst, Real Sleep Extended), and I very much hope Skyrim implements some kind of survival or hardcoe mode similar to FNV.

I like having hardcoe Mode. It makes me think. I tried it without hardcoe mode and I found it way to easy. I like hardcoe Mode because it brings back an element of the originals. Ammo weight and can't heal crippled limbs with stimpaks or sleep. Having ammo weight makes me plan ahead of what I want to carry, what weapons I want to use. Without it I noticed I had over 200 missles missiles and thousands of rounds of ammo and pretty much every weapon in the game in my invantory, which to me is just dumb.

Thank's Obsidian for having hardcoe mode.

Seconded. I'm enjoying it more with hardcoe on. I find in combat I have to actually take cover, eat some food/hit a stimpack, instead of just insta-healing while the guy shoots me. I find that things like water and doctor's bags are actually important whereas before they were completely meaningless. Travelling without a companion makes it more challenging because you have to carefully consider your inventory. No more carrying 800 rounds of ammo. It all adds to the experience for me.

ill just say that I cannot play Fallout 3 after experiencing FNV's hardcoe mode

I didn't mean that I didn't eat, drink or sleep, apologies if that's how it came across. I did do those things, what I meant was that I never went long enough without them for it to take any major impact on my character. Even the times I did go hungry/thirsty/tired for a while, the stats penalties weren't really noticeable to me.

Which is the basic problem with the mode. I use it on every character anyway, due to the limitations it provides, but since the low-end penalties essentially have no 'teeth' there's really nothing to worry about if you miss a meal or three.

On the other hand, if the low-end penalties were fairly harsh, then the upper-end ones would be brutal, and I suspect there are few people who would want that. I know I would, but then if my character hasn't eaten or slept in days he/she should be a useless wreck who can barely stand up rather than someone who's barely affected at all. The only reason I haven't modded the penalties to be that harsh is that some of my characters' RPs run counter to doing so and would be a real pain to account for in the current system.

I miss hardcoe mode in Fallout 3 but more because I'm missing out on a new feature, rather than the difficulty/realism that NV hardcoe actually brings. If you're on console, check out our http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1176044-fallout-3-hardcoe/ discussion. Whatever you do, don't let it stop you playing Fallout 3. :happy:

I liked the idea of hardcoe mode, and certainly felt that it was a step in the right direction. However, it did not go far enough for me. The healing over time (it only takes a few seconds anyway) and ammo having weight (its still pretty light) were good features, but the food, water and sleep levels really just amounted to slightly annoying things to check and remedy. They didn't actually make the gameworld tougher to survive in, at least for me. :shrug: