Which doesn't make it a survival game. Survival is something that is vital to survive hense the name. Only thing FO has for survival is health and rads, keep one up high and one down low and it's all good.

here is how u increase / decrease difficulty :

if u want lower enemy health - find a two-shot weapon

if u want higher health pool on enemies - use unmoded weapons

sleeping / eating / drinking u can do you're self , it won't increase difficulty

Yeah, you're right.

My character, generally doesn't carry Stimpaks, (unless looted from a foe during an ongoing battle), so when his health is low, during battle and he is near death, he retreats, hides and has a bite to eat or drink then returns.

It doesn't make the game harder, it just means the character has to regularly go on hunting trips to stock up on supplies.

He has some favourite spots that he goes to do that.

For me that's the meaning of survival mode, living off the land.

Well I think 1 thing should be change for a more survival feel would be saving system. Save only when you quit the game, when you load, the save get deleted. then implement the death penalty system, like Jpo mentioned, randomly drop stuff and just died entirely.

FWE for fo4 mmmm Curious how that might work.

In pretty much every FPS game, the hardest mode gets its difficulty by making the PC did quickly and the enemies into bullet sponges. The biggest gripe with Borderlands 2 higher difficulty modes was that enemies weren't really any more difficult, they just killed with cheap explosions and took a ton of bullets to bring down.


Personally, I think the best way to make a real hardcoe mode would be to make it truer to life-- you die quickly, enemies die quickly. So, you need to use strategy to win, but don't spend 20 minutes trying to bring one enemy down. You're still a badass, but one mistake can spell doom. Take away healing from food and water, limiting the stimpak healing to 25-30% and the same rate as Survival mode, with the perk increasing the speed at which they heal instead of having them heal more with (maybe) max rank allowing a slight regen to crippled limbs (not the full regen we have now).


Add in the need for food, water, and sleep to survive (with realistic rates-- 2-3 good meals a day, plenty of water-- not that slow stuff from New Vegas where you only had to drink once every two days and eat every four) as well as needing to repair weapons and armor using the parts used to upgrade and build. Make it so sprinting actually increases your dehydration levels faster based on Endurance. Suddenly perks like Lead Belly, Scrapper, Adamantium Skeleton and Medic become much more useful. Life Giver can really mean the difference between surviving a shot and not.


Heck, you can throw all that in and even have it for different difficulties. I think it would be challenging and provide a much more immersive experience for those who want it.

Want a survival game? play vanilla FO4 on a permadeath run set to survival difficulty without using any nexus mods, or exploits, or farming caps/equipment. Player decisions are made only once and are final and no reloading old saves except for glitches. Once player dies, then you restart from the very beginning. Complete all main quests and at least 75% of side quests.....

Some examples,

Surprise missile or mini-nuke killed your character.... start over.

Got crippled and couldn't run away fast enough, then died from relentless attacks..... start over.

Didn't notice that landmine/tripwire that ripped your body apart..... start over...... now try to survive.

I'd only do that from an alternative start at a random location, repeating the first part of the game to get out the vault is just a grind.

I started the game on Survival but became annoyed by the low player damage (yes, enemies are bullet sponges on Survival) and the high amount of loot I got, making all so easy. I installed a mod with 1x damage factor for the player (like on Normal), kept the 2x damage for NPC and use a loot overhaul making all rather rare. That's a bit more to my pleasure. At some point in the game I had no Radaway and not ingredients to craft it, I hated every radiation tick I heard in the time. I even had to postpone a quest for later because I got too much radiation. Living in the wasteland shouldn't be easy.

Slain animals have no cookable food in it except deer and brahmins unless you find a certain magazin. No tasty meat to cook from a radcroach or molerat or dog or .... Puts you under pressure. Now at lvl 50 where I also have about 30 stimpaks it's ok but the first 40 levels it's a struggle to have enough food. I even hunted deer deliberately to get enough steaks.

I also play with a minimal HUD, no info for HPs or ammo for example, you just see floating markers and quest text, so usually the screen is totally without HUD. Be careful not to be without a loaded clip during longer firefights. Makes also taking screenshots easier.

On the other hand, the need to eat, drink and sleep per se is just tedious for me, no thanks to such a hardcoe mechanic. And just disabling fast travel were also rather tedious. Although I play Skyrim without fast travel, FO4 is even more made with fast travel in mind. We needed a different fast travel system, only to certain fixed points, while you can build fast travel stations in certain bigger settlements.

Not only FPS, Oblivion is much of the trope setter here.

Agree on the low health overall, also only heal over time is an major changer.

For food and drink, days is far to short, one day is 20 minutes I think, setting them to 1-2 hour works better.

Most of this will be added in mods.

True hard mode: Your character dies, it's completely dead, and you start over from scratch at character generation.

I used the same mods, except added way more enemies, 2x player damage, and normal heal rate. Game plays a lot better without legendaries and bullet sponges. Rifles are actually effective now. This game actually needs mods to be good, at least on higher difficulties.

Charred feral ghouls are still bullet sponges though, but humans and most mutants aren't any more.

I could be wont but there's too many instant/unexpected 1-hit kills for that. You could just round a corner with no idea/notification/way to scout and get blasted by a missle launcher(or half a dozen other type things)


That type of mode only works in "rail" type shooters IMO.


I haven't read all the posts but this is my two cents. I am not overly fond of the difficulty slider in this line of games. Bullet sponge enemies just aren't run/interesting for me in any way. Much better ways of increasing difficulty is drastically limiting loot/ammo/stimpack drops and ofc making the player somewhat more vulnerable.


Again, bullet sponge enemies just svck. What's more is that the difficulty system had always been messed up. In F3 you got more XP - so you quickly evened the odds. F4 you quickly even the odds wig ridiculous weapon drops - and is RNG. Get and explosive etc weapon and you dominate? Pff

While I agree with the OP, it really wouldn't be a Beth game if the Harder the mode the more of a sponge your opponents became.

I mean, honestly, after the Skyrim: "Let's handicap you and OP your opponents" solution to difficulty, I haven't played the harder difficulties extensively on any of their games.