Many teenyboppers think using cheats is equivalent to beating the game without cheating.

They think it makes them " hackers ".

The concept that " cheating is OK " is so rampant in America ( and around the world ) that game designers even design the cheats into the game because if they don't give the kiddies a way to cheat they won't buy the game.

Many people were on here claiming to have finished the game in 100 hours.

IMPOSSIBLE

they are flat out LIARS

They may have got to the final Boss but they damn well didn't finish the game in 100 hours ( or less as they claim ) without using cheats and a game guide that tells you every move to make.

Everyone knows that.

If they think they are great gamers ... well that tells you a lot about their thinking, doesn't it?

Run up to your enimies with a Deathclaw Gauntlet, I never die from doing that. Also @ Arizona their are people on YouTube who do speed runs beating the game in an hour without any cheats or mods.

I've been playing without companions, no power armor, and I just don't like VATS. The difficulty was about right until I found a combat shotgun with additional explosive damage. I've max-modded it thanks to Gun Nut and Science, and it throws out 240 dmg. (Unsure if that includes Rifleman or not.)

That one weapon changed the game for me. It's not a long-range tool, but 4 shots kill a Deathclaw in 3 seconds, and the first Courser was a breeze.

I'm just not scared in any indoor close-range scenario, and that's probably a bad thing.

No - I won't stop using that weapon though.

Excluding instances when an opponents simply drops on top of me (like the deathclaw in my above post), I rely on stealth and sniping from a distance. My Ninja perk is rank 2 which means sneak attacks with a ranged weapon can do 3x critical damage when I am not detected (5x damage for melee). I should probably increase it to rank 3 though for 3.5x damage.

That means when sniping with my .308 recon sniper combat rifle, I can do up to 138 damage (92 damage x 3 x 50% survival difficulty). So staying hidden by using the terrain and moving from location to location (if possible) comes in handy. When I am detected I switch to my trusty .38 automatic pipe rifle and either close the distance or back up while firing; it depends on the situation. If it runs out of ammo (48 round drum) I switch to my trusty 10mm pistol with the extended 24 clip magazine.

In close quarters combat (like the deathclaw I mentioned), there really isn't anything to do other than to back up unload as quickly as possible, and inject a stimpak even when at full health because it takes time for stimpaks to heal you. Hopefully, at that moment in time I am not holding a sniper rifle because it takes a bit of time to switch to my pistol / automatic rifle.

I think most of the people saying fallout 4 is easy go with a maximized stealth or maximized melee/blitz/ninja build.


Chems also make the game a lot easier, I never bothered with Chems in F3 and only started using about half way through NV - benefits are huge and addiction isn't even that bad and it's easy to deal with.


VATS can make the game a lot easier too if you are perked for it.


Game is plenty hard though IMO. Especially if you don't know how to "work the fallout system" so to speak.

I think we also have a different opinion on what is easy and what not.

When I have to put 6-7 shots with a 200+ damage weapon into a Super Mutant Master at level 60+, I think that the game is hard

It doesn't matter if he only managed to take 5% of my life... the fact that he took more than one shot to fall over at level 60, already shows how hard the game is.

Having played 150+ hours, I expect everything to be way weaker than my two-shot weapons, but they aren't

Survival stays challenging, even within very high levels.

Damn, even some Mongrel or Ghoul versions take more than 3 shots, once you have actually been spotted by them.

It doesn't mean that you die too often, but it still provides an interesting challenge and costs tons of ammo.

you don't need ninja for Melee, stealth only slows down the slaughter

Situational awareness is probably the most important skill to make the game easy.

If you are doing a stealth sniping type build, you are almost sure to have a good idea of what enemys are where and get the drop on them. And generally you thin the numbers before they really engage.

If you are doing a rush in melee blitz build, you can get away with dropping enemys fast enough that they dont have time to properly react to you. You can still get overwhelmed at times though.

For most other builds, the difference between easy and hard is often as simple as knowing to back around a corner and pick enemys off as they come to you instead of standing out in the open with 5 guys shooting you. Know how many enemys are out there, and know how many you can handle, and retreat if you start to feel overwhelmed. The npc ai is poor, and will never be able to keep up with a rapid retreat.

In conjunction with this, know your exits. Remember how you entered an area and which directions you have cleared out. Retreating from a pack of raiders into a pack of super mutants will not help your survivability.

Time is always on your side, dont be afraid to use it. Even without stealth skills, if you break line of site and go into hide mode, enemys will often just walk away after a bit. The story wont progress unless you progress it, and most npcs that would be bad to lose cannot die even if you abandon them to an angry deathclaw. Take your time.

Lastly, maintain your gear. Look through loot drops for better armor somewhat often in the early levels. If you have crafting perks, upgrade your weapons and armor when you can. Watch your ammo, and make sure you have weapons on hotkey for different ranges and ammo types with as high damage as you can get your hands on.

Right situmalational awarmaness... I hit things till they stop shooting, biting, or moving than I eat them for their strength unless it is a robot, metal hurts my teeth.

umm, I got to level 10 before exploring past Red Rocket!

Easy.. scrap all of Sanctuary. Start building. Everything you have skill and material. when you run out, go to Red Rocket and do the same. or carry as much back to continue in Sanctuary.

Now, you have a nice base and 10 levels under your belt with sufficient Perks to start dealing damage

it gets very boring doing that, I would rather smash people and monsters in their faces with my fists but that is one way I guess.

well, you still have to FIND the weapons to use your new skills! That is still challenging!

you do die a lot in the game , you get one shotted once in a while, its hard to avoid, fast travel to the quincy police station and you'll have an assaultron firing a super powerfull plasma beam at you, if you're not expecting that it will take you out, or the raider with the fatman near the top of some building in lexington, until you can spot him, he'll one shot you the fatman shell, i've been one shotted many times out of nowhere, as you level up and pick your perks you can become a lot more durable and figure out how to deal with most of the enemies but i wouldn't call it easy, the enemies put up a good fight, the guys in the quincy ruins are very well armed, the forged are hard to deal with, some raiders are tougher than others, the synths and super mutants aren't too difficult but the game has some tough enemies. so i wouldn't call ti easy, any game once you figure out how to deal with certain enemies you can call "easy", the first playthrough is always gonna be a lot harder.

I find it surprisingly easy and I'm not even a FPS gamer. Firstly, FO4 for some reason runs smoother than Skyrim did for me, making it easier to aim, but melee svcks in both games and Skyrim just had more of that. If you use ranged weapons and grenades and mines in FO4, it's a complete cakewalk. I play on Hard or Very Hard, depending on my mood, usually Hard, though. Very Hard is where the enemies starts getting bullet spongy, which is just annoying and not "difficult".

There are sooooo many resources that you never have to stop and think about resource management, really. I have over 1000 bullets of every kinds, and at least 50 grenades and mines of every type, not to mention my 180 Stimpaks. It's literally impossible to run out of vital items. Since Beth decided weapon and armor degradation was too hard for us to manage and thus removed it, every single item you find can be sold for top Caps or used to improve your own weapons and armor.

The most difficult thing about FO4 is managing the clunky-ass UI and suffering through the pre-recorded dialogue about poor Shaun.

I agree with this. I suffer from the "Dead is Dead Ethos" affliction and I have so far been unsuccessful in an absolutely untarnished "dead is dead" playthrough even on Normal. I do have one toon at level 74 who only died once, but it was a 'sort of' illegitimate death (meaning one I could discount as 'not entirely my mistake'). That toon was a total min-max delight, and while she was hard-pressed and suffered many close calls for the first ~20 levels, after level 40 or so, she has just been impervious. The combination of high damage resistance, sneak, a 505 damage freezing gauss sniper rifle, incendiary shotgun max modded, etc. Nothing can touch her. I got bored with the playthrough and have archived it.

If you want an "easier" playthrough, do what I did with that character: balanced starting perks but with slightly high INT. Use building and crafting to level up as much, paying particular attention to always wear INT enhancing gear and chems and use of the Well-Rested perk (if you wanted to take that to an even higher level, read my post in the Spoilers section about "How to Get Piper to Give It up" in which I describe the exact method to get her perk as early as possible). Sneak and snipe a lot. Be prepared to use VATS when close combat ensues and always have lots of the higher tier chems to max out VATS destructiveness. Soon you'll be one-shotting top-tier mobs and getting bored with the game.

If you allow yourself meta-gaming of any sort, the game can be made even easier than that.

I need to do this on Hard (not going to bother with Very Hard and Surival) and then I'll know I've used up most "first wave" replayability and am ready to stop playing and start modding.

Overall, I've come to appreciate Hard in a recent playthrough, despite my general dislike of bullet sponge dynamics. But here I very much agree with you. The random grenade from a raider that just cuts you in half makes it seem that: without lots of very careful grinding of lower tier enemies before ever getting south of the Charles, Dead is Dead on Hard will remain a true Xanadu of FO4 Gamers.

I doubt they took item degradation out of the game for that reason. I for one am a gear fondler and like to deal with managing gear upkeep. But I think that most players did not like it and complained a lot.

Actually just got blown in half by a bomb or mine NORTH of the Charles!

I won't tell you where, so you too can share the love. Time for some cushioned armor.

It depends how you play. For my 1st playthrough, I am playing on normal difficulty. I don't use power armor, even though I have one displayed at Sanctuary. First time I died was level 10, I was exploring the north side of the map, where the huge highway bridge is and found a abandoned shack underneath. Then noticed a communication tower outpost nearby occupied by raiders. First, I used my sniper rifle to pop the heads of 2 sentries. Then I got closer on top of the rocks, to finish off the reminder with my frag. Not knowing at the time that one of them was armed with a mini nuke. So after I threw it. Bam, got a kill. A second later, a mini nuke whizzes by my face and I died.

Second death was Preston's fault. On our way to Covenant, we were attacked by molerats at Rotten Landmark. The way those svckers popped out of the ground reminded me of Tremors movie. I quickly jumped on a car, killed one and jumped back down. Another popped up behind me. Then Preston throws a frag at the direction of it but kills me instead. That was the last time I gave him a frag.

There are easier ways and ways which aren't that easy. I also die a lot in the game, more did so on lower levels but I still die on higher levels. I never played for long other than on Survival, so I cannot judge the other difficulty modes, but on Survival some enemies need two shots to kill me and sometimes there are lots of enemies shooting at you. Of course I can one-shot most enemies in the game when sneaking. But I avoid to snipe all the time. It's boring. In normal firefights against a multitude of partly legendary enemies or in a fight against the most frightening ingame foe (flying insects) it's not uncommon to die the one time or the other. But where's the problem? I don't have one to restrict myself a little bit to have more balance and fun in the game.

You can see the answer to the question in some of the replies here. To wit:

You have some people who do not play these types of games as they are designed to be played. Specifically, these games are supposed to be RPGs and are designed accordingly (i.e., you conceive of a character concept and do things according to that concept while not doing things that do not fit the concept). Instead, you have these who exploit game mechanics and ignore any sort of character concept or role playing at all simply to "defeat the game" ... and then claim that "it's too easy". No, it isn't easy at all if you actually play it as it is designed to be played (as an RPG). Anyone can exploit combinations of game mechanics because there are a wide variety of mechanics included in order to allow role playing a diverse range of character archetypes.

For example, if you are playing a character who is very against drug use, you will not use drugs, make drugs, deal in chems, and probably even simply get rid of them rather than store them anywhere. Stimpacks, Radaway and Rad-X are exceptions and can be considered properly researched and created medicines as opposed to off the street illegal drugs. If you go to a doctor and the doctor heals you, you can be sure a stimpack or radway was used by the doctor in the process of doing the work. Such a character avoids alcohol and other chems and will not use them to defeat hostile creatures.

If you are role playing a scientist who focuses on exercising the mind and not the body, you won't have a character with a high strength and endurance, probably not even average, at least not until much later in the game where it makes sense that the harsh environment has caused the character to toughen up physically even if they were not in shape at the start and never exercised before in their life.

Or you may have a character who is in good physical shape but not as far as sheer strength or constitution, instead focusing on dexterity/agility and acuity/perception.

Role playing and sticking to character concepts makes the game reasonably difficult. Exploiting any number of game mechanics simply to defeat the game while ignoring any semblance of role playing obviously makes playing the game trivial. RPGs are not up to developers to "balance" because they have to allow players the right to choose how to play a character and what type of characters to play. People who want a developer to "balance" an RPG for their specific preference in playing a game are playing the wrong type of game because doing this would cause many other players to have difficulty in role playing their preferred characters (or even find it impossible to do so).

Facetanking Behemoths is a bad tactic.

I used artillery the last time when I saw one in the southern swamp. It was so satisfying to lure him into the shells sitting there with arms crossed.

Overall I agree with the point you are making, but I don't really agree that "it was designed to be played" in any particular way. Bethesda makes a point of making the console relatively easy to decipher (and so much so, that they project extending that functionality to console gaming platforms) and that just doesn't fit with what you are suggesting: that the game was "intended" to be played with highly canolized play styles, i.e., "in-character" play throughs. The other thing is the openness of this game (and all of them since at least Morrowind) to being modified with user content and plugins. They are happy to let you play the game HOWEVER you want to play it, as long as you do not breach the EULA!

In sum, it was almost assuredly "designed to be played however the end user chooses to play it" although with some 'suggestions' and nudges in some particular directions that they think might be most edifying for a large segment of users (particularly those new to the franchise, or to games in general). Its called "good branding" or else "good marketing" and Bethesda have shown themselves to be masters of it and we should all thank them for the incredible value we get out of their products as a result of this specific type of design.

There is nothing at all "wrong" with strict "in character" play style, in any game really, single player, multiplayer or coop (well, it might get real annoying with some coop groups and you might find yourself locked out of the Teamspeak channel ) but then again, for a single player game there is nothing "wrong" with doing anything you want to do as long as it doesn't breach the EULA.

I myself was first a historical military strategy gamer, and second a D&D player. I can enjoy some good "in character" play, but even in the groups I've played with where that was mutually encouraged, there were frequent shifts into "strategic optimization" mode! After all, if you invested hundreds of hours into a character that you really get into and enjoy the last thing you want to do is have it get killed because the DM or the game put you in a situation where doing something that was wise and self-preservational was mutually-exclusive with "being in character." Indeed, I would say that, in some campaigns I've participated in, as much time was spent discussing the tradeoffs between these two imperatives (being "in character" versus "doing the wise" thing) as was spent making progress through the game world!

The other thing with computer games is, the rule systems, the "ecology" as I call it, the invisible boundaries, hierarchies and forces that govern the game world are best understood by trying different things. For example, by virtue of engaging in a long play through of out-and-out min-maxing (but without any use of guides, wikis, or any other "meta-gaming" crutches, etc.) I was able to have several hundred hours of fun, died only once and now have a level 74 character that is Godlike. Not exactly "game over" but not exactly fun anymore either. No regrets! I loved it!

Now I can go back and do it a different way, and again, and again, and again.

Just keep in mind, the OP expressed confusion or incomplete understanding of how it is that some of us say "the game gets too easy at higher levels," so some of us who have had that experience have been explaining what we think accounts for it. You are correct that, part of it is "our fault" but it isn't really "faults" so much as it is "cause." You can handicap your character however you want and as a consequence face death more often (and thus either, run away, expend damage mitigating resources or die more often), or you can anolyze out the wazoo, throw "in-character" out with the baby and the bathwater and avoid damage, risk and death progressively as you level up. The choice is one each of us makes whenever we play, but if you don't understand how to do the latter and are asking how it is even possible it might be helpful for those of us who are good at the min-maxing approach (or whatever you want to call it) to explain how it is done.

I don't even think that making the decisions one makes in the course of a "min-max" play through are necessarily that "out of character" for any but the most irrational or dogmatic of "characters." Most humanoid entities want to survive as long as possible and if you try to imagine yourself, or most sane individuals, in the situation the Sole Survivor faces as they awake in Vault 111 I would argue that "most" of the min-max decisions are simple common sense.

You know that:

1. There was a long drawn out war between your country and China

2. Nuclear apocalypse was largely regarded as inevitable

3. It happened, and now you find yourself awakening after an undisclosed period of time inside a vault, underground near your hometown.

4. At some point in the interim, your spouse was killed and your infant son was kidnapped by some "strange" looking people.

There are real people who think in these terms and have shaped their entire lives in anticipation of this sort of eventuality, they are called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivalism. Most of us probably don't think and live that way in normal life, and you raise a good point that: many of the characters we might be portraying when we enter teh vault probably also would not be of that ilk.

But even BEFORE you exit the chamber with the frozen cadaver of your deceased spouse, you have already faced enough evidence that most sane and resourceful people would already be shifting their mindset in the direction of survivalism I think. It sort of doesn't make sense that anyone would emerge from the vault the same person as when they went in and if anything an overriding sense of "I need to figure out just how harsh and deadly this world really is now and what I need to do to survive it" would tend to undermine and antecedent character elements that contradicted such a cautionary and preparatory perspective.

heh now OP just to be sure what exactly is the problem? is it more that you can't play realistic mode as in when you die your died and you have to start a new character. If that is the problem then I see no problem.

I find the game not bad. it has a nice balance, but I have found that when you get some weapons than mod them as long as you have ammo. you are unstoppable. I have a legendary combat shot gun that when I got it it did around 31 damage +15 area effect damage.

Now after modding it it does 153 +15 area effect. I can kill most things in one or 2 shots groups make things even easier.

just make sure your enemy isn't too close.

When i make my characters I have a base line then will randomly add either a perk or raise a stat. this will depend on my given situation and what I need at that moment. I really don't plan out a character.

When people say this game is easy, they usually mean it is easiER than previous Fallout games, which I agree.

The game starts off pretty rough at high difficulty and low levels but once you have your skills and gear it does become ridiculously easy.

Take my character:

I only use 2 weapons, the deliverer (railroad quest, max upgrades) and a maxed out 2 shot .44 pistol. I dont wear armour, only a ballistic weave fatigues (pickpocket Desdemona) and a ballistic weave newsboy cap. No need for upgraded clothing with armour on top. With a maxed out sneak skill, gunslinger, mister sandman and ninja I can quite comfortably clear pretty much any area and enemies have to be practically at arms length before they can detect me. By that time the deliverer has shot them for 6.3 sneak attack bonus damage.

Its only hard to start with, once you've got your character set up you're more or less unstoppable unless you do something really stupid. I'm now at the point where I might just go melee only (greaser jacket/baseball bat/big leagues perk and play as Negan from the Walking Dead) just to see if that makes the game harder.