Bethesda is doing everything possible to make each Sole Survivor play play very differently based on Special Stats and perks.

The replay value of Fallout 4 looks to be through the roof.

Why would they remove the option to make the game more challenging?

The Fallout 3 FWE - FO3 Wanderers Edition has 20K endorsemants, over a million downloads, and is rated number six at Fallout 3 Nexus.

The FONV Mod Project Nevada has 52K endorsemants, over a million downloads, and is rated number one at Fallout New Vegas Nexus.

One of the main things both of them do is let you fine tune the difficulty level.

How hardcoe, how much loot, how often creatures respawn, and so on.

I think it is proven that Bethesda is looking at the best and most popular mods and pulling them in to Fallout 4.

I don't see how they could leave out hardcoe mod.

Or at least not give us a lot more options to adjust the difficulty level.

I'd be all for a hardcoe mode if there were some levels/change options to it

i loved some of the aspects of it in nv, but some just annoyed me

they werent too challenging to deal with, i just felt like some were just frustrating and made me have to go back to my home for supplies too often

Fair. when it's time to put 1 in charisma and 10 in intelligence/luck (because, """"""""""""""charisma is useless""""""""""""""), everyone wants, but no one wants to suffer punishment for it? Complicated.

Well, each playing the way that suits you. Too bad the BGS seems not to have taken into account those that not reload when the companion die.

edit: I'm ok with heal over time replaced by animation. At least that's something.

I doubt hardcoe mode will be in at launch, probably something that will be added in a patch. I wouldn't mind it if it wasn't as tedious as New Vegas. I'd like it to be something similar to some of the survival mods from Skyrim where you drink and eat but it doesn't look as tedious as New Vegas.

Not only heal over time, but appearntly there is a cooldown too, so no spamming for you, I love that change.

As for ammo weight, one can hope.

Where did you hear stimpaks has a cooldown?

That sounds awesome

Item/ammo weight, non-spammable stimpaks and cripples needing a doctor should be the default base gameplay. To not have them only seems like unnecessary player cuddling in a game that's most likely going to be very easy (and exploitable) to begin with.

I don't need any sleep/thirst o' meters either. I think the possible "HC" mode would much better serve as something that affects the base character mechanics like how much the skill level or lack thereof affects the characters performance (how much it distorts the player control) and how fast the character progression works (along with other things, like item base prices and availability, and such).

If stimpaks work like that (heal over time, a cooldown and an animation) than that sounds like a very good change, I always thought that's how they should work. Ammo having weight would make sense too.

If stimpaks heal over time and ammo has weight I will be a happy camper. I also liked that you could lose your companions permanently in NV on hardcoe. But I can live with them being invincible I suppose.

Eventually I found the sleep/eat/drink system to get to be a bit boring and no challenge at all due to the abundance of food and water, but I'd like to see it return as an option for those who want to use it.

I also hate how it is called hardcoe mode, it should be survival/realism mode. hardcoe mode should be realistic damage to both you and NPC's and only one life, when you die it's game over. Lose your saves for that character, everything. That is hardcoe.

Never gonna happen though.

Indeed

I think it's just assumed - if they heal over time, then you can't apply another one while the first is still counting down.

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Personally, I'm of two minds on the issue. On the one hand, okay - control over the healing you can do. Balance. Challenge. Sure. On the other hand, thinking back... most of the times I've needed stimpacks at all, where times when I needed to spam them. Fighting mutants or Talon guys, another one comes around the corner and - crap, he's got a missile launcher. One hit, something else nearby explodes, suddenly you're at 10% health & 3+ crippled limbs. With cover down the hallway in either direction & no sprint/dive/dodge key.

Surviving moments like that are awesome though, they can really get the blood pumping and make you feel something.

Being able to pause the game whilst calmly spamming 6 stimpacks is automatic I win mode. Where's the challenge? Where's the fun?

I feel so much on this issue I will nerf the crap out of stimpaks...

I'd also like for there to be critical damage, where if you get really bad damage to a body part or your health is really low, you slowly lose health points until you die if you don't do anything about it.

It would be cool if they implemented things like this on the higher difficulty settings rather than the damage sponge NPC's and damage modifiers that we get now.

Crippled limbs that will kill you eventually, critical hit head shots that can kill you in one go, bigger enemy spawns etc. Actually make the game a challenge on very hard at least.

Stimpak animation was confirmed (via some video gameplay), but the actual healing over time has not been (that I'm aware of). There is a difference between an animation causing a DELAY of an insta-heal and an actual heal over time mechanic. hardcoe mode in general has NOT been confirmed (that I'm aware of) and if not, keep in mind that Mods can likely provide a better solution to this need than what would be built into the vanilla game. The "hardcoe" mode of FNV was a nice addition but was certainly lacking as a real "survival" mode. It was actually more annoying than challenging, IMO (but I still played with it on).

Keep in mind that any type of hardcoe / Survival mode is going to appeal to the RPG oriented gamers and this (and Fallout 3 AND New Vegas) were attempts at making a "hybrid" game that would also possibly appeal to FPS shooter fans. It certainly appears that FO4 is going to move more in the FPS / Shooter fan direction than back to the old school Fallout (1 & 2) RPG roots. Pages of posts exist on this forum listing the Pros & Cons of this "evolution" and I personally have a positive view of this potential direction at this point, but I'm certainly keeping an open mind while not blindly deciding FO4 will be the greatest game since sliced bread before I play it.

Heal over time and animation in vanilla would be so cool. In Skyrim , I have mods for that the it really is a very positive change for me.