Unlike a lot of you, I am not very far in New Vegas. Following the path layed out in front of me, I just recently left Prim and went through the next town. I am level 4 nearing level 5 right now.

Guns are my primary form of combat, and I have gotten to a point where the game is just frustrating. I have the best firearms that I have seen for sale or have been available to pick up and my Guns skill isn't that bad, however, the enemies have gotten to a point where their HP is really high. I will face off against a pack of 3 or 4 gangsters [of some sort or another] and it will take all my action points in V.A.T.S. to maybe kill one person. Now, obviously if I get a crit, that's fine and dandy, and I don't expect to just roll over people, but this is getting out of hand. These are guns, you know, ballistics! I'm not shooting bean bags [even though there are bean bags in the game I'm told.] At some pint the line between fire arms and RPG numbers is crossed and the game is becoming less fun to play. What's the point in shooting people in the head with .357mag rounds to only damage a portion of their HP?

What am I doing wrong? Should I try and go back and "grind" XP to level up and pump even more points into my guns skill?

If you have a pc version you can always mod it for more realistic fights.

Bullet sponges svck, did you venture off target into higher lvl area?

At level 4 or 5, unless you have been pouring your skills at each level into Guns and not much else, your gun skills will, well, svck still.

My advice, go do the Quest to get Boone (Novac) to be your companion and let him help you in fights. It was not until my Gun Skills got up near 50 that I stopped wondering if I was going to run out of ammo before the fight was over. Also, it was not until they were in the high 30's that I even looked forward to battles, prior to that I dreaded them. Of course by then, better weapons were made availible to me.

Also, the condition of your weapons can have a large impact on their impact on the enemy.

As I said, I am following "the main path."



That's it. I'm on the 360. Have I gone too far? Are there things I should be doing? I am level 4 and am around 200 XP away from lvl5. It's just not fun in combat anymore. Pouring round after round after round of .357mag ammo into average gangers should be overkill. Say what you will, but Fallout 3 didn't stop being fun for me. The story, presentation and more are great, but combat is becoming a chore. As a result, it's getting to a point where I don't want to play anymore.

"BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG... reload.. BANG BANG!" Okay, one person dead, now for the other three. :sigh:

My skill is 40, and my guns are repaired over 75%. I am playing on normal difficulty on "hardcoe" if that matters.

I can tell you that there was a point, maybe about where you are, where I considered changing my difficulty from Normal to Easy. I just kept going though and eventually found better weapons and when I got ED-E and Boone, my game became a challenge and not an impossibility. I went for an even character in SPECIAL and combat skills and Speech in the rest. It eventually got a whole lot better. Good luck!

:fallout:

That sounds a lot like how I am playing. I think I may do the same. Playing on XBox makes me wish there were sliders like in sports games. Sliders that can adjust your damage output and the enemies along with health. For example, in most games, developers just make games more difficult by making your weapons deal less damage and making the enemies deal more dame while your health value is lower and theirs is higher. That way, it takes more bullets to deal the same amount of damage as before and the enemies have more health than before. I wish I could modify these variables myself. i don't really fear getting killed as much as I fear using up all my action points and ammo on one or two baddies when getting swarmed. I should fear getting caught in a cross fire and should try to find cover, these sorts of things. i should fear that a few hits take me down. In return, I want to know that some well placed shots will take them down as well. This is one of the reasons I like Mafia II a lot. Action games in general. When you mix RPB numbers with guns, it gets silly. I love Fallout 3 and New vegas, it's just the RPG numbers are getting in my way... and don;t get me wrong, i love leveling and putting points into speech and lock picking and such, but combat... guns... it just isn't right imo.