I played out the main quest when the game first came out with only dog as a follower (if you haven't played F3 you wont understand.) and I had a blast playing with the game set on normal dificulty. Except for one significant minuteman quest bug I had no real issues playing.

I hadn't intended to play a second time nearly this soon but lots of people go on and on about how not playing on survivor is not really playing. Plus I wanted to check out some graphics mods. So I started a second game this time taking the scenic way around . Unfortunatly taking my time helped me find a lot of issues in the game.

First up, Survivor mode added NOTHING to the fun value of F4. Turning most enemies into bullet sponges is not enjoyable or even immersive. Worse, this mode seems to spawn far more "legendaries" so much that they rapidly lost all feeling of being special. And they drop so much loot that the game started to feel easier in to many ways.

I tried Cods, Piper, Strong and Curie as followers. Where dog behaved like, well, a dog; these suposedly intelligent followers seem brian damaged. Equiped Piper with a slow fireing scoped weapon; she used it like a very short range shotgun. The others act about as poorly. Plus the command system is almost nonexistant. One would have thought that B would have learned a little from the moding comunity over the years.

And I found more bugs. Oddly not the same bugs but way to many.


Taken together I just lost interest.


Hopefully B will get around to releasing the new GECK soon and the modding community will come out with an unofficial patch and other significant improvments like they've so well done for previous games.

survival difficulty is really not worth making a playthrough around it ^^

Bethesda failed once again on making interesting difficulty settings and survival is simply 'unfair' until rank ~10

we may have to wait for mods to have something like 'Project Nevada', to make the game more challenging and fun at the same time

As far as piper, she's not a sniper. IIRC, her default weapon is a regular pistol.
Consider that these companions have somewhat of their own personalities. So, trying to make her a sniper, when she isn't isn't going to work.