First post here - I have sunk easily 130 hours into this game so far.

Probably the biggest thing that becomes a bummer for me is the cartoonish combat stats. The proportion of weapon damage to HP in this game means that you often will be sinking entire magazines into a persons face to kill them. I just went through a fight where I put 15 sniper bullets into a womans head before she died. I know I can turn up the difficulty, but I am concerned that would just make the fights more of a slog than they already are.

I understand that large beasts, super mutants, and people in power armour should not go down easily... but it completely ruins the immersion for me when I am trading headshots with someone in leather armour while we each chug through stimpacks. I mentioned Metro 2033 in the title because, for those of you who haven't played it, it is another post-apocalypse shooter that has a ranger mode in which both player and AI HP decreases dramatically and weapon damage increases (ammo and other equipment is also more rare). This means that the player has to approach every engagement carefully, and can't afford to just Rambo their way out of a situation. On the other hand, if the player takes the time to line up their shots and choose good engagements then they can make several clean kills before the enemy catches on to them. I haven't built my character with a lot of sneak/critical perks, but I still think that if I put a bullet in someones exposed head that should kill them.

What are other peoples thoughts on the combat in this game?

Yeah, this would be nice as a difficulty option in Fallout and TES. I don't need it at this point because I already have mods that do something similar, but console players don't have that option.

I didn't know mods were already out which did that... I will have to look them up. Getting sick of dumping clips into peoples faces.

The game isnt a shooter, and you shouldnt expect it to act like one. Its an rpg with shooter elements

That said, a lot of actual shooters need the player to magdump into an enemy before he dies, so I dont quite get your point

Uh... you know those aren't exclusive? A game can be a shooter and an RPG. This game is definitely a shooter. It's also an RPG.

Ever hear the term "role-playing shooter," or RPS?

yeah Fallout right now is a RPS.

I tend to agree, which is why I'm using CYO Difficulty mod and put player damage taken 200% and player damage dealt 200%. I originally thought that survival meant survival for everyone, not just the player. Well, now it does.

yeah i love metro, but the story behind both game is different, i know alot of ppl dont like how easy is to find ammo or guns on Fallout, but the problem is ammo and weapons still get build on Fallout. Like on DC u have a caravans that make ammo and weapons and on the East u have 2 families that control full companies that make energies and gunpowder weapons.

Still i think Metro is one of my second post-apocalyptic games.

Times to kill really have nothing to do with it being part RPG. They just make TTKs long so that people who are slow can enjoy the game. Why not make a difficulty for people who like it fast? It's no harder to make than the other difficulty levels.

I loved the Metro games, but IIRC, all Ranger mode did besides increase bullet damage for everyone was to remove the HUD. It worked well for that game because it was primarily a shooter, but if they did it in FO4, I guarantee you that anyone who has played enough to be competently skilled will end up one shotting entire groups of enemies before they can react. The enemy AI has been improved, but it's still very easy to hit them at a distance in real time. There will be mods that can change the damage, I think one is already out now, but I have tried those in TES games and they make it really easy.

I also agree to this that it feels very cheap to just mx the damage in this way and a more realistic approach would be more preferable. I play on survival (and DiD...) because I like when you have to be careful from taking damage. But it can become really tiring to have to go through so many bullets just to sink a dog. One way to help it is to just put some perk points in the gunner and rifle perks so you get it a bit more even. But it feels a bit bad to have to put perks in these as soon as they are available, not for character development reason, but for pure balancing the game a bit so it becomes a little less of a spoonge fest.

TES games? Sure. Most enemies are melee enemies and projectiles are avoidable to an extent. Fallout? Not so much, but it depends on your character build I guess. I play with a mod that puts player and enemy damage at 150%, I have 1 END and I have a mod that makes it so your HP only goes up if you have 2+ END (I have 90 HP). It's a mix of relaxing and easy to quite challenging sometimes, depending on how many enemies there are, what the environment is like and what level they are. There are some situations where I HAVE to use power armor and/or chems to fight a group of enemies because they kill me very quickly otherwise. I can 1-shot weak enemies but it can take a few shots to kill some of the tougher enemies since I haven't gotten any of the weapon damage perks.

the epitome of difficulty in video gaming is to make all enemies bullet sponges.

That seems to be the extent of it nowadays.... Seems about as creative as the difficulty settings in the Total War games, where they just buff the enemy soldiers so that their peasants can go toe-to-toe with your professionals. It is technically more difficult, but in an immersion-breaking, cruddy kind of way.

There were several mods adding that within the first week of release look on the nexus

if i had to choose between " bullet sponge style " vs " call of duty style " i would choose the realistic one , i mean there is a limit on how many .50 cal bullets a person can take before he goes down

lol that's correct, and I would hazard a guess at one

I half agree. I'd like a difficult mode that isn't about giant bullet sponges but stealth is already really powerful and in such a mode stealth would be godly so it would also need some AI fixes to make stealth trickier and other fixes to keep it realistic and interesting. There are mods now for parts of what I'd like but I want the more refined and complete mods that will release in the future.

I can't wait until after the mod tools have been out for a while and I can mix some mods like that with survival mods for food drinking and sleep.

Metro 2033: boring

How helpful.

Ya I agree with you that in its current state stealth would be OP if the only thing to change was the HP/Dmg proportion. It would take a change in HP/Dmg and improved AI response to stealth tactics.

I liked what FWE did in Fallout 3 with its stealth difficulty options with enemies continuing to search for you if they see one of their dead allies. The new thing where enemies shoot where they think you are is also pretty great.

I like that a lot. I was happily surprised when I was first sniping with my hunting rifle and noticed people who weren't sure where I was started shooting back. I began changing position after every snipe or two which makes made more sense.