"Enemy and Loot Repopulation

Locations you've cleared will now repopulate enemies and loot at a significantly slower rate."


Slower rate? What idiot thought an empty world adds to the difficulty.

Hopefully they upgrade the combat effectiveness of companions. Not asking for the lethality of NV where they killed everything a mile away, but it feels like they only hit once every fifteen shots while enemy NPCs land every shot.

I get that, but this is the most stable Fallout release we've had, with 4 patches released when this feature arrives.

Yes, this will make a rare CTD doubly frustrating, but the lack of instant saving significantly increases the challenge because it removes the ability to quicksave every 30 seconds before taking another shot. This would encourage me to take a rest in-between encounters, 'Alien: Isolation' did the same with its fixed save points.

This is going to get beta tested, but the concept makes sense, and this is an optional mode.

This also prevents people from exploiting companion affinity with save/reloads.

I presume that anyone who feels too vulnerable about not having a save, could just kick the difficulty down to 'Very Hard' momentarily

make a save and reset the difficulty, just takes a few moments more to do.

I'm not saying I'm against the individual toggle idea and some modder will likely build that anyway,

but the whole point of a challenging mode is the challenge, which restricted save and no fast travel does add to.

I don't really get this part either. Loot respawning more slowly I can understand. That makes it harder to acquire the materials that you need and harder to find ammo and healing and so on. Making enemies respawn at a slower rate though? That seems completely pointless to me.

Yes, this is an optional mode. But when I want 99% of the features in the mod, but not the last 1%, simply not using it seems like a stupid option when they could just make the 2 features that TONS of people are concerned about into optional parts of the mode. Kicking the difficulty down to very hard momentarily is an unnecessary complication. I'll install a mod to change this if I need to, but there are a lot of people saying that they want this feature to be optional. Like 3/4 of the people I've seen discussing it. I think Bethesda should take some input from many of their fans here.

I have a very frequent issue with my Pip-boy and my weapons not appearing. It happens at least once almost every time I play the game. The only way of fixing it that's worked for me is quicksaving and reloading the game. I do this, and things work fine. For some of us these bugs are not a rare or occasional thing. They're a nearly every time we play the game kind of thing.

I don't think it would really affect exploiting companion affinity. You'd just have to sleep for an hour instead of quick saving and reloading. With the majority of the companions you can use these exploits at a settlement.

And that would potentially remove any negative effects (Hunger ect) your character may have had because the lower settings don't have it.

Ditto. I'm glad to see Bethesda doing something for the hardcoe players who want a harder mode to play on, even if it's not for me. I *might* try hard, but normal difficulty is challenging enough. By the time things get easy I've already finished the MQ and am ready to start over from scratch again (which is what I think I'll be doing since the big expansion won't be for awhile.)

Agree. And not only bugs. Just trying to use dialog options can be a problem (since you do not even see what you are going to say). So each time I say something unexpected, I`ll have to load a save and to do all my way to the npc again. It has nothining to do with surviving. I want combat to be difficult, so I`m fine with no saves during combat or no saves in some certain locations. There are not so much beds as people think. Many locations do not have a single bed that can be used.

Might make the Institute a more viable choice from a practical point of view, as the only way to Fast Travel

Saving needs a rethink, slower repop needs a rethink as well. Food, hunger and sleep were woefully implemented in NV, here's hoping Beth do it better.

Like most of the rest though.

No saving does not need a rethink.

If you want to save like other people suggested switch the difficulty from Survival Mode to another difficulty and save or join the institute I guess like Cutter De Blanc said a comment above yours.

Well, color me surprised


Never would have expected this comprehensive and deep difficulty mechanics from BGS.


And this will be released as a free update? Faith and goodwill for Bethesda, increasing

Once we get the "Construction Kit" so we can restore the CTD recovery system (quick save) this is going to be great!

Me replying to Sofajockey saying the same things:

"And that would potentially remove any negative effects (Hunger ect) your character may have had because the lower settings don't have it."

It makes Survival Mode irrelevant. Oh, I'm really Tired, what ever, switch to Very Hard and remove those effects. Oh No, I'm injured but don't want to wait for the stimpack to heal slowly. Switch to Normal ... ect.

I guess, but whatever people are complaining too much about wanting the saves to be there.

People who don't want them have been asking for this to get from Bethesda Game Studios for years.

Personally the dialog isn't an issue for me. I've never really had any instances where I ended up saying something that was totally different than what I intended based on the dialog prompts. But I think this is still a very valid point. If you select an option and they end up saying something totally different than you expected, it's not really your fault for choosing the wrong option since you didn't know what they were going to say. It's due to the lack of description in the dialog options.

I'd be okay with having two different options for this mode. One that only allowed saving while sleeping, and another that only allowed manual saves while not in combat or not in a dungeon with live enemies in it. This still provides more immersion while also mostly circumventing the issue that would be present as a result of crashes and bugs. If the game decides to crash while in combat or in a dungeon, I might lose 5-10 minutes of progress, but this isn't really a big deal. If I lose an entire hour though, it's a slightly bigger deal.

Then suggest it be toggle-able. Or you could just not Save ... no one if forcing you to.

Same goes for Fast Travel. Sometimes I don't us it sometimes I do.

I would be fine with this as well, or optionally, Auto Save on Zone. If you are at base doing construction ... you most likely have a bed nearby.

Why is there so much resistance to making this optional? I really don't get it. Switching the difficulty every time I want to save is a ridiculously and unnecessarily complicated method (not to mention that we don't know how switching difficulties on the fly would impact your hunger/adrenaline/rested status and so on) when an alternative like putting a box with a check mark next to this option is such an incredibly simple thing to add. I'm not as hardcoe as you. That's fine. I don't need to be. I'm trying to get more enjoyment out of a game that I have spent over 600 hours playing. This overhaul sounds awesome. I can't wait to try it out and I think it's going to add a lot of value to the game. But there's this tiny 1% of the overhaul that the majority of people seem to want as an optional feature. There's another thread going about this very topic. In the poll, about 55% of the people have said that they don't want the sleep/save portion. I think Bethesda should take that under very close consideration.

If sleep/saves and fast travel were made optional, why would it affect your enjoyment? Some people seem to just be of the opinion that it shouldn't even be optional, and I really don't get why. You could still limit your saves to only while sleeping by choosing the corresponding option. And the rest of us would also be able to play it the way that we prefer. Tons of us are just going to add mods to enable manual saves in survival mode anyway. Why not just integrate an option into it right from the beginning?

Yup, this makes it perfect.

Awesome. Go Bethesda!

I didn't think they'd go through with it, I am so thrilled.

I agree with you Quantum. I don't some people.

I don't get it either. I like Big Macs and I'm not a fan of pickles. This leaves me with two options. I can order a regular Big Mac and remove the pickles myself. Or I can order a Big Mac with no pickles. I'm going to go for the latter of the two options.

Because people will actually be tempted to abuse Fast Travel and saves.

How so? If they were so inclined, couldn't they just switch the level down to Very Hard temporarily and do it anyway, as you yourself already suggested as a workaround for this very thing?

It's still considered a difficulty level.

That's precisesly, and most relevantly, where you and Bethesda disagree - and why it can't "just" be optional.

So basically, to use another fast food anology, it's like ordering the weekly save special but still wanting everything from the regular deluxe menu with it.