Make "hardcoe" hardcoe : Fallout: New Vegas

» Sat Dec 10, 2011 9:56 am

I can agree that the game is a bit too easy, and the effects of the difficultyslider are lazy at best.

And I have tried limiting my resources. But I will not do it again because it feels false and artificial and detracts from my experience. I feel genuinely appalled if - in order the make the game better for my self - I have to selfimpose rules that the game does not recognize (I'll play the game for what it offers and mark the deficiencies as flaws in design, hoping them to be rectified in future installments). There is not a game in existence where selfgimping isn't a possibility, but games with balanced difficulty are much more scarce.

Seeing as you agree with "the devs should make the game harder by default" there is not much to argue here. That is the whole point of difficultyslider, it's use should be more comprehensive and broad than just adjusting HP and DMG as there is much more in the game than just combat.

Yes, that's the point.

I'm glad they gave us hardcoe, but they didn't do a very good job of implementing it. If you don't want to take steps to make the game more difficult for yourself, then don't. that's fine. The point I keep making though is that you really can't complain the game is "too easy" when you [the generic you, not you specifically] choose to loot everything that is not nailed down. When you choose to only sleep the 2 or so hours needed, when prompted. When you choose to only eat or drink when the game says that you have minor starvation or minor dehydration. That's all up to you. Also, don't act like you are "1337" cuz you play on "very hard/hardcoe." You're not. Play how ever you want. Enjoy the game, that's what it's there for. The title of this thread and the point of all of this is how to make hardcoe more hardcoe. The key, to me, is to identify what keeps it from being hardcoe and making changes to fix those problems. As a result, I am doing things that are unnecessary to complete the game simply for role playing reasons and my own enjoyment of surviving in the wasteland.

I really think this keeps coming down to the "i'm better than you" mentality that doesn't belong in single player RPGs.

» Sat Dec 10, 2011 2:38 pm

You guys must have made strength characters or something.. I made a character with 4 strength and 4 endurance.. I have to say that survival mode feels like survival mode. To leave any room for my to find and pick things up while exploring I really have to limit what I'm initially carrying. I choose gun types that use the same ammo, I carry 10 bottles of water and 10 items to eat in case I don't find anything. Basically I limit myself to carrying 100 pounds every time I go and drop off gear.. this leaves me 100 pounds to carry stuff with. And no, I don't use my companions to carry gear. I don't use fast travel and I sell as much gear as possible to the first traveling merchant I find.. Only keeping the stuff I really want to keep.
You can easily make the game as hard or as easy as you want. If you don't want easy don't make it easy on yourself.

» Sat Dec 10, 2011 12:02 pm

Personally, I am less concerned with difficulty than with realism/immersion. I'd be interested in a hardcoe mode (or hardcoe+ Mode) that makes makes eating, drinking, and sleeping need to be more frequent, as others have noted, and I'd go a step further and say that food/drink items' only purpose be to nourish or give stat boosts/penalties – no healing.

Most of all, though, I'd like using food or healing items require some action that precludes other actions. You should not be able to inject yourself with stims or wolf down a steak in one hand while firing a gun with the other hand. Take a page from Far Cry 2, which shows your character pulling out and jabbing himself with a syrette every time he needs to heal mid-fight. (Even better is when a buddy drags you out of a fight as you're dying and you need to yank bullets or rebar out of your own limbs, but how you'd implement that with the Fallout companions may be a discussion for another day.)

And for those who keep saying "just impose this stuff on yourself," put simply, it's less fun that way. I'll save the "let's play pretend" sessions for pen-and-paper RPGs; one of the main strengths of video game RPGs is that it's got a more formalized set of rules encouraging certain kinds of actions and discouraging others. Once you simply ignore the rules to make up your own, it stops being like a game and starts being like a toy. Toys are rad, but that's not what I play Fallout for.

Well it is a game, and although it's a very immersive game it's still a toy, yes a radiated toy. a rad toy.

imho stimpacks i agree with you, they need work on. the pip-boy makes it too easy to pause and heal. i suppose the alternative is just don't use the pip-boy in combat situations.

The problem mostly comes down with how far the game wants to become realistic, trouble is if the producers make the game realistic or adapt the settings too much on hardcoe they suffer complaints from new players. If they make the game too "arcadey" or easier, then they suffer a backlash from the pros who find the game empty.

either way they alter it they loose out, so a rather rocky compromise is made. and as is the case with most compromises, no one is happy with it.