At least Very Hard should be cranked up a few notches. Your damage output and healing rate remains the same, though enemy damage is increased 2x. Enemies don't need to be bullet sponges or a scarcity of ammo, but more things like:

• Enemy AI will fight more strategically by flanking more often, chasing you in formation using point and cover, throwing grenades while reloading


• Enemies showing up in greater numbers, sometimes even shooting flares to call for back up, keeping you on your toes


• More behemoths and gigantic versions of enemies like mole rats, scorpions, stingwings


• Certain enemies like behemoths and deathclaws will always be higher levels than you to avoid one-shot kills


• Human enemies and Super Mutants can heal themselves and comrades by using stimpaks in battle just like you and your companion

This could be a fun alternative for anyone who wants a higher difficulty without playing a revamped Survival, worrying about food and drink.

I second the idea, I would hate to have the game be way too easy because you have to play on a lower difficulty if you want to avoid the annoying BS of new survival

We don't know if "Survival" has any relation to the difficulty of that same name yet. It might be a mode rather than strictly a difficulty replacement... I mean, if old Survival suddenly gets replaced by new Survival, what's going to happen to Survival saves made prepatch? The idea you could just load your save and be confronted with an immediate rule change sounds silly so I'm veering towards it being a seperate mode that can be experienced on any difficulty.

If its a revamp then something old is being changed and not something new being added so its replacing current survival and no need to worry about the change since it will function just like changing difficulty currently works and how going from hardcoe to regular gameplay in new vegas, it wont corrupt anything just shift over like it already does.

This still means old Survival saves would need to be altered on load - either to full Survival (which presents problems if folks can just import level 300 copper glitched characters into that mode at varying points in the story) or down to the next easier difficulty. It sounds weird, and way to easy to exploit to make the mode way easier than it should be. A third possibility is old Survival saves being made invalid - but that's going to go down like a ton of bricks and the backlash would be huge.

Regarding your first point, if they were able to scale the A.I dont you think they would have? Its good that they dont since that would mean we would have braindead enemies at lower levels. The A.I remains the same throughout all levels it other factors that govern the difficulty levels.

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Why do people seem to have such high hope that the new survival will be seperate? Sure there's a small chance but most likely it will be close to what have been writer in the "hidden" game files, which is that it will replace current survival.

Certain enemies like deathclaws and behemoths should always be a few levels higher than you regardless of what level you are. Either that, or they should be set to an insanely high difficulty level, similar to the Ebony Warrior in Skyrim. There should be no way to one shot a legendary deathclaw with a sneak attack. That doesn't mean enemies have to be brain dead at lower levels. It would just mean certain enemies would always remain a challenge throughout your entire playthrough. There's nothing worse than becoming a walking God, one or two shotting everything in site. I enjoy higher difficulties in combat, though I'm not interested in worrying about hunger, dehydration and fatigue since I do that in real life everyday, lol.

Their health, level, gear etc. have nothing to do with their AI... So I don't really get your point. What I'm saying is if

• Enemy AI will fight more strategically by flanking more often, chasing you in formation using point and cover, throwing grenades while reloading

It's not a matter of simply improving the AI. If they could improve the AI like that they would not have improved it for one difficulty only, that would make the game as a whole much better, hard or not. I think if anyone got the chance so choose from an AI that simply stands glued to the spot shooting without a "thought" or an AI that would be more advanced in form of tactics, taking cover etc., I think everyone would choose the latter even if they would want an easier experience.

Yeah, if Beth could just "make better AI", they'd have done it games ago. That's also not a terribly trivial thing to do, so it wouldn't be something they could just quickly toss together as part of a patch/"revamp" of V.Hard difficulty.

Enemy AI is set to do all of these already and/or the game is already set to have deathclaws and Behemoths be a higher level then you.

They do not chase you in formation. I have fought plenty of Deathclaws lower levelled than me. Only the last point is true...

That being said I do think a lot of this is easier said than done. AI as I understand it is tough as hell to code properly and I can't imagine how hard it'd be in an open world.

EDIT: Should point out that I never take the awareness perk, but if damage is anything to go by then it FEELS like the Deathclaws are lower levelled than me a lot of the time. So I might be wrong there...

I hate playing on Very Hard because the enemies just become bullet sponges

I like this. Now that I think about it, they should do normal difficulty next. It just isn't 'normal' enough for me.

I disagree. If that were the case, there would be no Easy difficulty to choose. I didn't say anything about health or gear. I said, enemies should fight smarter at higher difficulties. For most games, higher difficulties means fighting bullet sponges at the cost of the player having lowered damage and resistance.

Games in general have become easier for people who don't play games as much or for people who just want to experience the story. Easy mode should remain intact for players like that, where enemies react slower and make it 'easy' for the player to get a kill, level up and progress through the story. Higher difficulties should require more strategic thinking from the player. Similar to multiplayer games, when you are playing human opponents versus playing against 'bots', you are going to adapt more and not just run and gun.

I believe gaming is technologically advanced enough for devs to take time and program smarter AI for players who want a challenge, by more ways than enemies becoming bullet sponges. I'm not a COD player, though I remember seeing one of the COD games had bots you could play against that did somewhat unpredictable moves like dropping to the ground and taking shots or jumping somewhere you wouldn't expect. It's not much, but it's a sign that devs can work to develop smarter AI and not just focus on players who want Easy mode gaming. It's great that Bethesda is rebuilding Survival mode, but someone may want a higher difficulty without managing food, water and sleep meters.

Lol, that's why I never play Bethesda RPGs on normal. I could only imagine, you'd be God mode by level 20 or so.