I'm currently playing on survival which gives a 0.5x damage output and 2x damage taken modifier in place.

Essentially everything was a bullet sponge!

I've now tweaked this using http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/222/?And its much better.

Its now 1.5x damage out and 2x damage in.

At level 13 most headshots on humans and ghouls kill. 2-3 shots to a limb will maim. Other enemies are still much tougher. 3-5 body shots kill.

Just wondering what everyone else plays at in survival? Trying to find that perfect balance for realism

0.75x for PC/me . 2x (default) for NPCs.

2 days ago I was playing 1x for me, 1.5x for NPCs but some perks made it waaayy too easy.

I usually dislike spongefest but somehow 1x allowed me to do practically anything without fear. I don't like when I can one shot anything unless it's a good headshot critical. 0.75x allows me to clean the floor until they are in position then the action starts I also kill in 2-3 body shots unless it's a hard/high level zone.

But in all honesty, the very restricted level scaling the game has make it more bearable than previous Bethesda's game. Legendaries and higher level zones are hard, and low level zones are easy. This is a very welcome change. I hope they stick to this method.

I tried survival until I ran into mushroom cloud sponges ( using fat man).

I turned it to hard after as I thought that was too dumb.

You're supposed to move the difficulty up as you level, not start at survival. Nothing is spongey for me.

I just play on very hard. If i can't handle native survival, why should i get the loot of survival? If you like cheating, go for it, i don't dig it and therefore play on very hard but will soon start over on survival (very few times that very hard is really "very hard")

I turned it on at lvl 34ish. Not everything was a bullet sponge, but the ones that were, were too ridiculous. I ran around enough thinking it wasn't too bad, then I hit 'that guy' and said enough.

I made a bat file to set my outgoing damage to 100% and played on Survival. I still have the high incoming damage and the heal over time so it's still a challenge. 50% outgoing damage is not a good mechanic. Shooting an unarmored head from few feet away with a shotgun should kill a chump-level mob. With 50% damage it does not even stagger him most of the time.

No you are not. That is just piss poor game design if you have to tinker about with option slider through put the game to keep it balanced as you level

I do it because I like the little differences between survival and lower difficulties. I was pretty happy with very hard difficulty in term of combat but the slower healing makes a lot of difference.

Its the other mechanics that make survival fun for me too.

By putting the damage multiplier up it's not cheating its fixing a lazy (IMO) system.