From a recent http://www.xbox360achievements.org/news/news-6140-Gamescom-2010--Fallout--New-Vegas-Preview---Viva-New-Vegas-.html



While I am looking forward to hardcoe Mode, I was really just hoping for stimpaks dealing health over time and ammo having weight and such. The eat/sleep/drink requirements make sense but did they really have to make your weapons more prone to breaking?

hardcoe mode should've brought the difficulty more in line with FO1&2, not the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games!

That's why I'm probably not going to play hardcoe until playthrough #4 (#2 Melee, #3 Evil) if at all. Games are more fun when you don't have to deal with the minutia of day to day life.

Do stimpacks only heal over time in hardcoe and on casual its automatic healing?

Some gaming journo made the comment that weapons deteriorate at a faster rate in hardcoe mode. I hope this is not the case.

I hadn't heard that one before, are we sure he isn't confusing hardcoe Mode with the special ammo types in the demo (assuming they were there) that do more damage but break the gun faster aswell?

I wouldn't mind as much if it was only marginally more frequent (say 5% more prone to breaking), but if it's like three time more frequent... that's not hardcoe, that's just plain annoying :mellow:

The devs have never mentioned higher rate of weapon decay as a part of hardcoe mode. Since the weapon condition mechanic already exists in the base game, I don't see why it would be tweaked for hardcoe. Weapons already deteriorate fast enough! I'm pretty sure that this previewer was incorrectly attributing this to hardcoe mode.

The first thing I'll do when I start playing is check the timescale and lower it if it's still set to 30. I'm sure the eat/drink/sleep meters will run based on the timescale (all the 'Needs' mods I've tried do). I prefer a setting of 15 to 1, making an in-game day last for 96 minutes. I find this makes the frequency of needing sleep reasonable gameplay-wise.

Hopefully there will be a bedroll for nights spent out in the wastes. They've supposedly fixed the problem of not being able to sleep in owned beds (now you can do it with a karma penalty), so it shouldn't be such a hassle to find a place to sleep in NV.

Having to eat, drink or sleep every 30-45 minutes or so really wouldn't bother me.

On average, thats usually how long some of the longer quests (and quests are suppoed to be more plentiful but shorter in New Vegas) and dungeons takes me to finish and I usually stop between towns for supplies and storage anyway so it's not that big of a deal as long as that fast travel warp back to town just knocks down some of my stats rather than outright killing me.

Basically, as long as it's not a situation like Vampirism in Oblivion where it wrecks havoc on quick transportation and is a death trap, I'm completely cool with it.

This. Even if there isn't a bedroll item, in New Vegas you can now sleep in owned beds, and only get a karma hit. Also, I'm sure they put mattresses or beds, or cardboard beds regularly throughout the wasteland and "dungeons" taking into account this new requirement. Even in FO3 it was easy enough to find beds or mattresses everywhere. I don't see this as a problem.


I would only want a pop-up if the hunger/condition was reaching dangerous levels. If you only have to sleep say 4 hours once every 24-36 hours, its not a big deal. Say you start getting penalties after 48 minutes with no sleep, and then start getting more severe penalties for each additional 6 hours without sleep. Like someone else said, 48 minutes is about the length of time to run a dungeon or quest, and assuming you also have to drink and eat once during that period as well, all it means is that on hardcoe mode you are going to have to think more about your actions and plan ahead. Probably the preferred method of exploration will be picking a central spot or site that can fulfill your survival needs (either a settlement or a building you have stocked with supplies that has a bed) and making sorties out from it. Using Fallout 3 as a theoretical example, if it had hardcoe mode, maybe your base of operations would be Megaton, and you would stock at least 2 days of food and water each time you left, catch a night's sleep, then go explore Springvale fully, then return. Catch some shut-eye, resupply, go check out the Superduper Market, return. Etc. Etc.

Really, you'd just have to be careless to die on hardcoe by dehydration or starvation. Even if you want to just explore without returning to a central spot all the time, just make sure you have a lot of supplies, and then divide them by 2. Say you have 6 days worth of supplies. Now you know you can explore for 3 days, and if you haven't encountered fresh supplies or a new settlement, you know to turn around and use your remaining 3 days of supplies to make it back to your starting position.

I'm not sure what will happen when your sleep meter runs out. You shouldn't die from this, just collapse and sleep it off, but who knows. Maybe New Vegas has some of the non-standard game overs from the first two Fallouts, something like "Exhaustion overcomes you, and you slip into darkness. Maybe an animal preyed upon your sleeping flesh, perhaps a raider found an easy mark. Regardless, you never awaken." Unless the penalties get really bad before you pass out, I don't see how just sleeping it off and waking up again in a few hours would be a suitable setback for neglecting sleep.


I don't really agree with it, but if weapons do break down more easily on hardcoe mode, it's not such a big deal. It took a long time for the condition meters on a fully repaired weapon in FO3 to go down to the point that they broke. Keep in mind that we now have Repair Kits in New Vegas, and you won't have to find another version of the same weapon to do repairs. Again, this will just emphasize planning your actions before heading into the wastes all willy-nilly. With ammo having weight, you are probably going to just focus on 2 or 3 weapons at most. Invest in the Repair skill, or get your weapons repaired in town before heading out. Also, just like food and water, no real survivor of the wastes would consider heading out without a repair kit for their weapon.

I can see it becoming a common practice for hardcoe Mode characters to carry a pistol, a rifle or assault weapon, and a melee weapon for backup if you run out of ammo or your weapons break.

Is stimpack regen over time only a hardcoe thing?

Yes.

I doubt you'll havta eat/drink/sleep more than once a day. Otherwise it starts to become more like a meter managment game than anything.

To me, that sounds like real life. I thought we played this game to get away from real life.

I thought you started your own thread to get away from this one...

I didn't see an answer here that I was looking for. Now all these posts make more sense now after finding out. I thought I was going crazy.

In real life, it would take more than just thirty seconds to get some good sleep, a real meal and some drink so not really.

If you only have to drink and eat one or two items to keep on your feet, that sounds pretty good to me. And some stat penalties for those few times I can't immediately get back to town for supplies when hunger, thirst or sleep deprivation first kick in don't sound so bad.

I could take a chunk off my special stats in FO3 and still manage pretty well, I think. I think it would have done my horribly overpowered character a favor by knocking him down a few pegs once in awhile.

Which is why hardcoe Mode is a separate option from everything else that can be turned on or off per your preference.


If it even takes thirty seconds. If food is consumed from the Pipboy like FO3, it will take even less. And depending on how many hours of sleep are needed a day, that can be done in less than 10 seconds.

Hopefully we are stuck with our starting SPECIAL stats, save for the very rare quest to boost one or two. This should make any penalties in New Vegas more severe.