I am a bad player, but i went from hard to very hard and then to survival. I am level 53 and i stopped playing a month ago because it was too easy. I rarely use PA and have none of the legendary weapons wich are regarded as overpowered. Since the increase spawn mod still is not safe to use, i had to put my 180 hours playthrough ar the side and wait for better (harder) times.

Well to be fair that's the point, once you reach higher levels everything's easy, this isn't exactly exclusive to Fallout 4


Maybe try using different tactics, weapons you wouldn't normally use, or try the dead is dead challenge


Ultimately even using these tactics once you hit level 50 the game will generally be easy

Remove all your armor, health aids and use a base weapon. If it's still to easy for you, you bought the wrong game.

Wouldn't be surprised if another level of difficulty was introduced at some point like they did with Skyrim.

Good game design means, that you will always be entertained, no matter the level. If i stop using abilities or tools i worked hard to get in order not to be bored, something is wrong with the balance. Games like Fallout with unlimited xp and level will never reach the balance of games who limit both, but there are ways to keep the player in check. I don′t care where more and stronger enemies come from, wether from game areas you could only survive by sneaking or not at all at lower levels, the game responding to your xp and difficulty by giving you a wanted level with enemy factions or mods like MMM wich give you the option to massively increase enemy numbers and strenght, as long as i am entertained all the way.

I've never played on anything other than Normal in any Beth game (and don't seek out "harder" mods), so.......

That said, it would be nice if Beth's difficulty system was better than "moar HP!", if only to make for less complaints from the folks who want it harder.

(can't answer the poll, because 2 and 3 don't have "none of these" or "other" options.)

i used to think the game is too hard , but it balanced out when i found a two shot assault rifle ,

this is not a multiplayer game where u need to balance those things , just play without vats / perks and u will have u're difficulty

Yeah, I don't like higher difficulty just being bullet sponges, I tend to stick to normal or easy.

Now if a higher difficulty meant a change in the enemy AI making it smarter like Mass Effect I'll be tempted to raise the difficulty.

Actually i don't find the enemies that spongy on Survival, it scales nicely aslong as you take damage perks and upgrade your weapons that is. If you don't do that, then its dull. What they should do is make legendary enemies legendary, give them new abilities etc to keep it Interesting. Also made alot of stuff optional, more options is always nice.

I played on Normal in everything from Morrowind to Skyrim, including FO 3 and FONV. I don′t know why its different in FO 4, i just can′t nail it. Btw., sorry for forgetting some options in the poll, its corected now.

Survival difficulty is based on deceasing player damage and upping the damage done to you.

Problem with that approach is perks alone negate the debuff to player damage. Throw in legendary weapon, and you are playing on a difficulty level lower then normal. Sure, you still have critters doing more damage, but.. unless you are just standing there taking it, its manageable.

Anyhow my two cents - They need to change the damage increasing perks and legendary items. Throw in a spawn increaser to provide more enemies, and rethink the amount of damage the players damage is reduced. I'd much rather have more enemies trying to kill me, then unload an entire gun at a critters unprotected head and have it just get annoyed with me.

For me, the ability to survive goes beyond just the combat options. What I list below I would like to see as player options at the beginning of the game, a player could choose to ignore them if they didn't want to deal with them, but if you choose them, you're locked in for the duration.

1- Rad Storms should be scary and damaging, instead of just pretty. They sound cool, and look cool, but I want to really be afraid of them when they start forming, knowing I'll take massive rad damage if I don't get to some kind of shelter. Not only rad damage, but maybe temporary stat damage.

2- I should have to sleep every 24-48 hours or my stats will start to go down (as in FNOV). Also eat & drink to survive, or stats gradually deplete.

3- Everything I carry should have some weight to it. Everything: stimpaks, radaway, ammo, ect. It would make me think more about what I carried for weapons, and try to figure how much ammo I would actually need.

Again, let me state that I think these should be options available to the player at the beginning. I know there are those players that dislike these things, they can ignore the options as play as they want to. I just want more of an environmental challenge to go along with an increased combat challenge.

I love when people start a complaint with "I haven't tried it myself but here s whats wrong"(not the op)



Survival doesn't just up the damage. You encounter more, higher level enemies and health items refill your bar slower. Did it add a tedious hunger and thirst mechanic? no. In NV hunger never mattered because food was plentiful so it became a timed chore. Im still eating bear meat and drinking booze by the crate. With the rng legendaries varying so wildly in power you want to maximize your chances. I have hundreds of them in my workshop and there are more doubles of lockpicking gear than I care for.


But as a melee char everything was stupid easy from the first deathclaw fight onward on survival mode. It's just hard for low hp gun builds that doesn't have stat dependant damage. I can scale my weapon to do over 50k crits, not really on the same level as anything else.

This is what mods are for. Everyone shouldn't have their games changed just to please a few.

And how would making the highest difficulty harder or adding an even harder difficulty change the game for everyone?

I like the Radiation Storm, but in Survival Mode it should be much more dangerous like higher Radiation and much longer Storms. RadAway is even in Survival Mode a good Moneygiver. But it shouldnt be like that. Its like using Stimpacks, ofcourse i have the Choice not to use the Perks for it but even in Survival Mode should Perks be a Part of the Game. The Survival Mode just feels at the start like a Survival Situation, but this feeeling is fast over. I just wait for the GECK, i have already some Ideas to improve my Survival in FO4. Adding Creatures would be, for myself, a good Choice (higher Amount)

Just copy FNV.

Problem is not unlimited level outside of some synerg between perks. Fallout 3 was even more trivial at maximum level in base game. Only enemy you could not sneak kill in one vat session was sentry bots mostly as their head was hard to hit.

Fallout 4 main weakness first that enemies don't scale well enough with you, at high level you has assembled an good selection of legendary gear in addition to getting most of the perks you need.

You still run into lots of level 15-25 enemies all over mixed with a few +50 ones. Number of enemies are not increased from earlier games even i modern systems has the power to throw in far more enemies.

Twice as many enemies will far more than double the difficulty

Beths difficulty system doesn't use "moar hp"

Did you understand that?

Its not 'moar hp"

______

Lets get on to what it actually is.

1st

Damage Resistance works off of a curve so to speak but the basic premise is this,

Capped DR is 20%

If the DR = the Damage done then the actual damage is 50% of the total stated Damage.

So if DR is 20 and Damage is 20 the actual damage done is 10 damage.

If DR is 10 and Damage is 20 than the actual damage done is 15

If DR is 30 and Damage is 20 than the actual damage done is like 5.

The least amount of actual Damage that 20 Damage Weapon can inflict in any case however is 4 Damage due to 80% DR cap.

Now think about Criticals this is where things change up a lot 500% Perk really makes that 20X5= 100 Damage

In this case 20 DR only soaks like 1/5 of the damage so 80 Damage actual, enough in the early game to one shot a target.

Next is that

Explosive, Poison, Bleeding all have really no Damage Resistance against them.......So the damage done there is always full damage in almost all cases.

Then there is Difficulty Level.

Survival reduces your Damage done by another 50% or 1/2 your damage in addition to what DR did.......So your 4 damage from a 20 Damage weapon becomes 2 Actual Damage....

Your 80 Damage sneak critical is now 40 Damage <---Not enough to one shot in early game unless its in the starter zone with gimped Raiders.

So what I often think about is why did they balance the weapons with Legendary Prefixes and why did they not make DR for so many types of Damage?

Adding more enemies would drastically increase the games difficulty and you would quickly find that the weapons at your disposal were not designed real well for handling that sort of composition.

Sure I know your thinking but I have an automatic I can handle 100% more mobs than are currently present but that simply is not true.

The weapons were all balanced for the current engagements and that includes the Auto's.

Auto's are DOT weapons which is really horrible for mass amounts of mobs, heck its just not going to work out as well as it should.

For an automatic to actually handle reasonably well with more mobs in the equation it would absolutely have to do as much damage per bullet as its semi-automatic variants.

Your also going to just need that many more bullets and you will feel the pain in the early game.

So if we double the amount of mobs we have to reconsider the weapon balance.

Or you will have to actually start using explosives as there really is no DR other than Difficulty DR to soak explosive damage.

But your automatic nope that will prove horrible in the current balance scheme to handle 100% more mobs.

_________________

Sneak would still be as broken OP as before but in any real overhaul sneak is made almost irrelevant as in you sneak attack your whole one time and from that moment on short of leaving the combat zone your not reactivating sneak ever and the targets will be able to fire at you even if your a mile away heck they will all move on your position to come into range.

With 100% more mobs your going to find that if you didn't spend 10 minutes prior to opening the engagement salting the area with mines your basically dead meat.

But you use a silencer on your weapon, so basically you get a shot off without being heard..........But if anyone of those mobs spots a dead body with a sneak overhaul active your location will be discovered on the next shot.......Also a proper weapon overhaul will remove all unrealistic silencers AKA no more silenced shotguns and most sniper riffles of large caliber will also not ever have a silencer due to fact that its basically impossible in real life to adequately silence such a weapon for engagements of this size.

Beat everything to death with your bare fists, its fun.

Being Tactical, use Mines, Guerilla Tactic. Ofcourse you shouldnt handle 10 Ghouls at once. I sold so many Mines, i just used them one Time. It was my first meeting with Kellog. I was running backward and was planting Mines. Kind of this Tactic.

On Survival the Enemies making 200% Damage while the Player makes only 50% compared to Normal Mode. This is one Setting i really dont like, i mean the Enemy is using the same Weapons like me but he makes just much more Damage. Give the Player 200% too and there you have your Weapon Balancing and then you can even add much more Enemies. Bethesdas Way is just not the best.

@ Nemorov

Well your Kelog example is really just cheese of the current use of landmines ><

But pre-engagement of salting the area is what you have to do in a real overhaul........

You just don't drop landmines on the ground in front of your feet for opponents to chase you through that's not going to happen....A decent weapon overhaul would adjust the explosion radius just enough to kill the player outright that attempts such cheese tactic this also makes it just that much more difficult to avoid those traps as well.

Also Back Peddling as its sometimes called would be reduced by 50% at least...No more running full speed backwards, you'd be surprised just how much more difficult that little tweak makes the game by itself.

Anyway difficulty overhauls are not new to Bethsada Games, you can find quite a few effective mods on the Nexus and there are bound to be a lot of really good ones once the GECK is released.

I did not know about a survivor difficulty a week after after I start playing the game.

I thought eat, drink, sleep, take chem,a ticket to use power armour and disable fast travel.

All I know now is slow health regeneration (first step in the right direction) and good weapon drops.

I do notice the npc's you fighting against instead going full frontal attack (like in Fallout 3), most of them are flanking me which is good.

I am now carrying too much Stimpacks I have to give half to Cait and she is using it at last.

Going little off track I notice Cait using that blade I got for the marble pit near The Slog. Maybe something to do I been putting points in Charisma to get perks to put shops in my settlements.