Great post! ^^

Indeed, ultimately being able to max out all stats, and obtain all perks is a recipe for boredom.

Actually, I think in a post apocalypse, improving your skills as a marksman would be top priority. But, I never used VATS, so a lot of the magazines and bobbleheads were useless to me, at least the critical damage ones. Beth didn't seem to think this through for non VATS players.

I agree. You should not be...erm..."un-penalized" (... ...) for doing what is logical during the game. Reading a bunch of half-burned magazines should not result in the game switching to "cakewalk mode".

As for VATS, I honestly don't think Beth ever seriously considered the possibility that sooo many players would avoid VATS. It's a classic, core Fallout mechanic. It -- IS -- Fallout. The new shooting mechanics were simply put in place to address one of Fallout 3's major complaints: real-time gunfights felt cheap and were just wasting ammo. (Incidentally, I never felt this.) So Beth made the real-time gunplay more effective and functional.

I don't know... I actively SEARCH for opportune moments to go into VATS and lay waste to like 3-4 enemies at the same time. I utterly PINE for those moments.


Thanks!

-Patient: It hurts when I lift my arm.

-Doctor: Then don't lift your arm.

The perfect solution to every broken mechanic; don't do it. Ridiculous. The game is too easy, how about Beth simply fixes the problem instead of ignoring there even is a problem at all, huh. How about that.

So when you just change the Calculator does it effect every Enemy? There are some No Level Scaling Mods out. Makes the Calculator them meaningless or do we have still to change the calculated Value for each Enemy?? I think this Calculator is the Main Problem of an bad Endgame. I just remember the Skyrim CK and almost every Enemy/Companion had a different Calculator Value/Setting.

No, Calc Max Level is attached to each mob individually. It doesn't scale them all.

As for level scaling itself, actual mobs will already appear at very high levels (I see ~85s a lot) - the problem is that once you've visited an area, it's level is 'cooked' - so if you visit all the Commonwealth before level 35, you won't see many (if any) high level mobs at all. This 'feature' is not modifiable at this time.

Simply used VATS, along with Psycho, as my encounter with them before on my gunslinger taught me damage resistance means nothing to acid/poison damage. If I would do it again, I would still be able to kill her with incredible ease outside of VATS, simply because of what I had as perks. For Deathclaws, you actually do better fighting against them unarmed and learning to block as well as "bob and weave" through their attacks for massive damage.

This is why I think something must be wrong. I was on the mid 30s level when I found a Mirelurk Queen. No idea she has poison actually. I just blam-blam-blam and shotgunned "her". No damage to myself, not even a second thought. No VATS. No Power Armor. No companions. No chems.

Based on the size of that mob, I'd anticipate it was supposed to be hard, but it was not.

There's no way it should be that easy.

I've just started playing Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen for the first time. I know we're all creatures of our environment, so past experience makes everything subjective. I also acknowledge I don't have enough experience with the game to make any final judgments, but I'll respond to what I've seen thus far:

Almost perfect balance, in my opinion.

Light mobs (goblins and wolves) are pushovers...unless they swarm you -- then you're fighting for dear life. Boss mobs (the cyclops and that hydra) are a Dark-Souls-level of difficult but without the risk of being one-shotted. So, the game creates a whole range of challenges that make sense at-a-glance.

I see 3 goblins, I charge in, laughing.

I see 10 goblins, I gulp and wade in carefully.

I see a 2-story-tall monster rise up over a castle wall, I call for more underwear and let the Pawns go first.

This "lava lamp" structure of easy-pickin's, to furrowed brow, to panicked survival, back to easy-pickin's works really well, and I think all developers should look carefully at what was done here. I don't know how well this holds up as the game progresses, but it's something that would work for any RPG. I can see a character in Fallout being able to off-handedly one-shot the occasional bandit in armored pajamas. But the Mirelurk Queen, Behemoths, or Legendary Deathclaws should be a devastating challenge at any level. I also think DDDA's approach to boss battles is a standard that no other game has lived up to. They're puzzles. You can just chop away at a huge monster's legs until they fall down, then chop away at their head...or you can try to study them as the fight begins, look for an opening, then risk life and limb to bring them down in 1/3rd the time...and with style.

The gargantuan monsters in FO4 should be epic fights that rely on players finding and exploiting a few specific weaknesses, then using skill to pull it off. Not just bullet sponges with extra damage bonuses that players can eventually outclass. How...how does a 6-foot tall human "outclass" a crab-monster the size of an office building? How!?

Now that you mention it, I was very disappointed with the Coursers - unless it gets more difficult later.

There's a lot of build up, and fear-mongering in the storyline, which is great. "They are killers". "We run away from them - we don't fight them." Etc.

Ultimately though, same issue: blam-blam-blam. Dead.

If you are closeup and relentless with a foe like a Mirelurk Queen they are more or less in a stagger state and don't have a chance to do their poison spurting.

The higher level Coursers are fun because they punch really hard, unleashing crippling blows and soak up a bit of melee damage.

So it's a good round of boxing once they drop their laser.

"If you don't like it go do something else" seems to be your input on most things on these boards. This is for debating Fallout 4. If he wasn't interested in debating Fallout 4 he'd be doing something else.

What does "Find a harder game to play" even mean?

Happened to me around lvl 42, so I stopped putting points in dmg related perks and explored some of the other stuff. I'm also playing around with weapon modding so I don't just go for max dmg output. This is typically the time in Beth games where I start wearing the armor and using the weapons I think looks cool, not those that are most efficient. Time to nerf yourself a bit, cause it's no fun playing on Survival, which just turns everything into a bullet sponge.

Yes, as the poster above. It's time to nerf myself and I do. PA just for show in my settlements. I use clothes and some armor that gives bonus to "special". I'm able to getting killed and how I play it now, the game still a challenge even at lvl 115. Mine goal when I do quests, I'm not pleased if mine companion is "down"/badly hurt so I reload just to remind myself that *I* can do better. Companions cannot die (except for some special reasons...), but I want to play perfect. If I cannot find some items belongs to a certain radiant quest, I have failed and I usual reload from scratch (I usual save before I enter a building).

Cheers,

-Klevs

6th char (survival) being the first one with high intelligence, I'm now lvl35 and haven't really explored much or done much questing (never went to talk to Preston, let him rot in the attic ). Wanted P=10 and A=10 for a VATS character, so I had to spend a few levels on those. Most enemies are too easy, and only in rear occasions do I need to chem/food up, but grenades can be a problem early on for an E=1 character

I am trying this approach in order to keep up the challenge later on in the game, but I'm not sure it will work. Previously I've been heavy on exploring and "locked" levels early on, so any higher level creatures pretty much never spawned.

Some reasons I can find that makes this too easy:

1) What's the point with limb damage when all you do is hit '0' to fix it? Adamentum skeleton made sense in FONV because you really didn't want to get critted.

2) Far too much aid stuffs to be found. Difficulty setting could (optionally?) make loot harder to come by. Even better if it was kind of dynamic what we would find, based on our needs; no stimpacks anywhere if you had 1 (survival), 2 (very hard), 3 (hard) etc, and charisma/bartering might have higher value in order to (maybe) get these things from there. Non combat perks should be far more valuable.

3) Downsides are way too trivial. Limbs as mentioned already, addictions, no deceases except one which few know about and even fewer cares about.

4) A lot less legendary item spawns, and maybe level restrictions for vendors to have received them, and only on humanoids/synths (no animals/insects). Legendary enemy should be about his capabilities and less about the loot. Legendary bloatfly carrying a double shot gauss? For heaven's sake

5) Difficulty based percentage (not guaranteed like in other games) that awesome stuff can be found in locked containers or behind terminal doors.

6) Add 5-10 based on difficulty for speech checks. Currently low charisma players can quite easily get around them, and only penalty - which you can't even get a feedback in numbers from - is companion dislikes (maybe shift affection rewards/penalties with difficulty) since addictions are completely ignorable.

7) Maybe current addiction problem only on very easy, with higher sufferings on higher difficulties?

However, I don't think the balance is all bad, especially if true that tougher enemies will come later. I can shoot good but I can't open containers or build defenses or do any kind of settlement building/management. There is some kind of tradeoff, but - especially with the settlement autofail "bug" - settlements can be easily ignored as they have little reward in them (other than experience for crafting).

I guess my main issue is that difficulty only deals with damage. The only reason not to wear eye-glasses would be role playing. At least in FONV we had four eyed trait which made it have a little more sense (penalized when using stuff where you couldn't wear glasses). Everything with FONV hardcoe mode made more sense than this damage only based difficulty.

Yeah, I was having fun unloading my .38 auto pipe rifle (w/ drum magazine) on a super mutant overlord two days ago. I think I had reload two or three time before I was able to finish it off. I also took on an annihilator sentry bot Mk II with the same gun. He was chasing me around train boxcar and around each corner I would fire off a few quick burst before it started to fire on me.

The most difficult enemy I dealt with was a vampiric blood bug. Damn giant mosquitoes are hard to hit sometimes, plus I took a lot damage from the sting and poison.

Super mutant overlord? Annihilator sentry bot Mk II? Bah... pushovers compared to a vampiric blood bug... Run for your life!!!

Just when I thought I would only carry my trusty 10mm pistol and 45 sniper rifle since they can kill everything I have come across with relative ease, I ran into a Mutant infested salvage yard with not one but two legendary mutants and many a higher level mutant. Running for cover, stimpacking like mad and blasting away with the combat shotgun got me through it. I was surprised how much damage I was taking even with ballistic woven military fatigues and heavy combat armor. I guess sometimes it pays to be a "casual" gamer with poor twitch reflexes!

Yeah, I think it is about time I start modding my armor... I don't have access yet to ballistic weave though because I barely started the main quest and I have not done very many side missions and I got sidetracked when looking for the railroad; I only came across the 1st "secret code".

I had been doing shadowed and deep pocketed, but will be changing to muffled and shadowed for sneaking. Taking Lone Wanderer perks and dumping companions should even out the loss of carrying capacity from giving up deep pockets.

For me, Oblivion was the only one that had a true God-Mode obtainable in- game. 100% chameleon was possible with sigil stones. No cheating, just patience.

You could do more than that. I did all these spells without any explotations. My mans regen took me 30 seconds.


100% chameleon for 30 seconds


100% reduce damage + 3 heal every second for 60 seconds. I noticed that the 100% damage reduce didn't reduce everything. The extra 3 heal made me tottally invinsible.


I even made a spell where I was able to heal enough at part 3-4 vamp while in the sunlight.

I meant 100% chameleon all the time. Using sigil stones you could have enough clothing pieces enchanted with chameleon to walk around at 100% at all times. Enemies could never see you or attack you in any way whatsoever.