How can you tolerate the frustration, playing on these levels? I'm trying Hard and hardcoe mode, and theres a few things that really piss me off. One is the 95% VATS accuracy shot from 3 feet away that misses, and then the enemy (easy or tough enemy) proceed to do good damage before I get out of VATS. I NEVER miss 95% shots on Normal (except with the Brush Gun now and then because of that glitch) Another is the fact that an Omerta Thug who wears Grimy Business Wear, can take a Ranger Sequoia head shot with hand load ammo, with 90 guns skill, and with the cowboy perk, are you -beeping- kidding me? I like a challenge, but these little things are just ridiculous. I'm almost afraid to imagine the upcoming battle with the NCR ranger hit squad. Thankfully, I just purchased the Medicine Stick.

Anyways, sorry for the vent. I was just curious to your guys and girls thoughts on playing on these harder difficulties.

I find hard mode to be rather easy after a while, besides, if you were wearing pre-war business wear and someone shot you in the head twice with ranger seqioua you'd probably (or might) still be standing, even on hard mode. I used to play on normal, but it felt too easy, being able to kill most human enemies with little effort, which makes me get lazy, if I'm on hard, I'm always on my feet, which in turn, keeps me from getting bored (yes, I get bored faster when playing on lower difficulties), but maybe that's just me. But those are my thoughts.

Pretty much what ^he^ said, it keeps you on your toes. I'm doing a Hard/hardcoe playthrough for the first time now as well and I'm loving it. I never felt at risk of dying in Normal mode, not even in Dead Money, but now I hesitate to attack two groups of Traveling Merchants traveling together. I'm finding that weapons I've never used before are surprisingly effective. I never used That Gun for any length of time before, but it was my main sidearm for about 15 hours in this playthrough(Fast Shot makes it brilliant).

Never tried Fast Shot, but it works well? The loss in accuracy always scares me from picking it. Can I ask what armor you wear, and what your DT is? I know I do need more practice out of VATS, but I always find the aiming with sights tricky in the Fallout games. They cleaned it up for New Vegas, compared to FO3, but I find the joysticks on the xbox or ps3 to be a bit hard to aim perfectly when firing in real time.

With weapons with relatively low spread, like That Gun, Fast Shot has almost no discernible negative impact.
For this playthrough I'm playing a Great Khan scout so I've been using Great Khan Armour almost exclusively. It has 7 DT and the Toughness perk(fitting for a Great Khan) bring it up to 10.
I'm using the keyboard and mouse on the PC and it is far better for this game. I know I'm starting to sound like a PC snob, but the mouse is far easier to use accurately then the anolog sticks for either console controller. I'm also finding myself using VATS a lot less now. Nowadays I only ever use it as a panic button.

[censored] please. I dont even use VATS. I play hardcoe, very hard difficulty, without VATS. Its not that hard, just very costly as im almost completely out of caps right now.

Fast Shot is a personal favorite of mine. Commando/Gunslinger + Sniper will effectively cancel out the downsides of Fast shot, but the extra 20% firing speed is a rare benefit you can't really get any other way. The decreased accuracy is an amplifier, meaning ironically, fast shot is a problem for guns that are ALREADY inaccurate, but not for snipers. Why? Because 0 spread x1.20 is still zero. (No guns have zero spread, but snipers do go as low as .001) Fast Shot prevents you from picking up guns like This Machine and the Automatic Rifle, which have high spread, and Fast Shot does NOT benefit automatic weaponry at all, but it really only helps you with rifles and the more accurate pistols (Lucky, Ranger Sequoia). Considering you'll GENERALLY rely on a rifle as your main gun, Fast Shot seems much more beneficial to me. If you wanna run around with just an SMG then sure, avoid Fast Shot. Otherwise I'd take it.
If you have a character in Old World Blues, you could save, take that psychological test to change your traits and test out Trigger Discipline, reload the save, test out Fast Shot, and yeah, you'll quickly see a meaningful difference in firing speed. Ironically, I recently found that Fast Shot + Ain't Like that Now (40% faster firing speed total) is, imo, overdoing it. It's not super noticeable except on some guns. (Laser and plasma particularly)


As for the difficulty...


A Ranger hit squad can one shot you on Very Hard. My Dead-is-Dead Legionnaire learned that the hard way. Headshot critical from an AMR will do that. (220 damage x 2 for the headshot = 440, x2 again for very hard = 880. You're not surviving that. )

But listen, you rant about the realism of a guy surviving two bullets to the brain (ironic, cause the protagonist of this game did just that. ), but we rant about the realism of being able to one shot everyone, but we ourselves take 16 headshots to kill? No, screw that. I like it when my AMR can oneshot anyone and those Rangers with AMRs can also oneshot me. Chalk enemies surviving multiple headshots up to SCIENCE!! and positive mutations from radiation (perhaps humans can take more pain or regenerate better thanks to radiation exposure?) and just let it be, but Very Hard is going to provide you with the most leveled playing field between you and your opponents. Divide Deathclaws for example definitely live up to their name, one-shotting literally anyone who isn't taking tons of chems on Very Hard.

Thanks for the info on Fast Shot. Next character I start up, i'll give it a shot. And you're right that I sometimes forget how much damage the courier can take lol

A challenge is good, but still. an NCR ranger with the vest outfit, so no DT on that, and 1 DT on their hat. Not sure what their base DT is without the clothing. 5 feet away with a medicine stick, with cowboy perk, on psycho, 96 guns skill, and he lives to tell about it? Baffling, oh well.

Well I don't use VATS so I can't sympathize.

But I like Hard because of the added enemy damage. (I use a mod to lower enemy health though)

I would be nice to be able to mix and match the settings like that. On Normal, there are some enemies out there that can tear you a knew one, if you aren't careful. You won't stand a chance in certain situations on the higher difficulties. I'll have to learn how to keep my distance more, and try and stick to the shadows and such. Or get better with explosives too.

Dynamite did help a great deal at the beginning of this playthrough.

Remember this is an RPG, not an FPS. Well, technically it's both but you get my drift.

I always play on hard and i find it mostly easy but i can see your point cuz in real life no one takes more then two headshots to die and in new vegas some characters can take 8 .50s to the head and survive! Damn i miss those browning m2 bursts.....

There is one aspect which should be taken in consideration: Do you play on hardcoe
Let me explain:
WIthout hardcoe: Hard and very hard offer challenge .... but the healing properties of stims make it far far far more manageable. Hard even can become easy once you do Dead Money.. win big at the Sierra Madre, get the voucher and turn in you chips for stims and doctor bags.. Lesson... lower levels/enemies heal by food and save the stims... game (still challenging in some parts) can become a breeze..
Also because stims heal instantly there is no real punishment for a bad build... again.. you can get by most fight if you have enough stims...

Add hardcoe in the fray... voila different story.. Hard compared to the casual approach, were you can get away with it,... can be an enormous challenge if you play the game like a shooter...

It is this aspect which I love about HC ( unfortunately, and yes I know it adds "realism" I dislike the other aspects of this mode...). It is because of this that my PT's are HC/C/HC/C etc.. (hard...)

I play it on hard + hardcoe nd it foes get intense. Yet my fav mod for this is lethal headshots. Makes headshots instantly kill every human without a helmet, 2 shot those with one.

Only thing is some creeps like radscorpians and deathclaws arnt effected by this mod

yes I agree with http://www.gamesas.com/user/766133-abyssal-daedra/ on the subject of easier vs harder. Once you play around in Hard difficulty, you kinda get the hang of it.


and on a side note, I fell asleep once while playing my easy Caesar profile, and was killed by radroaches.
Repeatedly.
Over and over.
Mean Sonofa[censored] is awesome.

The beginning of the game and Old World Blues were a pain, but the rest wasn't so bad.

I play on Hard nowadays, since Normal just feels too easy. Perhaps not at first, but very soon after. I draw the line at Very Hard, though. I tried it once (on Fallout 3) and blasted a caravan guard in the face (in the face!) at point-blank with a Combat Shotgun, and she was still standing.

So its just too unrealistic - being able to multiple headshot people just makes the game ridiculous.

I find it very easy but then, I play very careful. Lot's of saves and strategic use of my envororment when I fight. I look for cover, I look for places to put down mines...

Its good to have two long distance companions who use guns, much as I liek using Veronica.. It allows you to chuck explosives.

But you'll figure it out, you're probably just low level now, stick with it. Try to follow main road, good springs, primm, nipton, novac, New Vegas ...