The game is harder in a sence that you dont see enemies or any living thing on your mini compass , the help section ingame states that this should be ,it also explains that perception is a factor .

Man those mosquito [censored]s, u think they are easy till the poison and u die in seconds. First time that using poison cure is usefull

Seeing the enemies on your compass is far more dependent on PER now. I put seven pts into it, and I still have to be pretty close to enemies for them to appear on my radar.

Fallout 4 is hard even on Very easy

I disagree. I say it only gets hard at very hard and survival due to the 200%/50% thing, which is a bit much since it severely restricts builds and makes PA pretty much mandatory for melee.

I wish the modes instead increased enemy AI and attacks rather than one shoter bullet sponges.

came here specifically to see what the deal is with that. Good answer. I dont mind not being able to see enemies - I realized its adding more anticipation in my game play. What I dont like is not being able to see friendly people! when it sayd "detected", Id like to know where the friendly is.

I've been tempted to turn down the difficulty but haven't yet. The enemy AI is way better. One that happened to me yesterday was in a fight with Raiders when one rushed in and grabbed Piper and body slammed her. I just stood there like "Holy [censored]!" before blasting him with my combat shotgun and splattering his guts on the wall. I also bailed out of a fight with a Deathclaw after it handed me my ass several times. I will come back and take him out, but I will be far better prepared. Being picked up and gutted by one of those is scary!

i came across a raider boomer today.

he had a fatman... i died instantly.

:/

I beat New Vegas on the "survival" mode, where you had to eat and drink to stay alive. I'm no rookie at these games - that's my only point.

I'm playing FO4 on Normal and have become quite familiar with the loading screens.

I have a sneaky-sniper personality, so I use VATS almost all the time. The only time I blindly melee is against pesty things like radroaches. Any actual melee items I acquire are either sold or scrapped. It's just not my style.

I fought the Concorde deathclaw the "intended" way, at street level, without any hiding or blocking tricks. Yeah, I ended up pretty well battered, but that's kinda what I'd expect after a fight like that.

Right now, I've been trying to make it to a settlement that Mr. Minuteman asked me to check out (a kidnapping). I can fast-travel as far as the diner with the trader woman, then it's a hike. Along the way, I've been slaughtered by: supermutants, synths, a brutal military robot, and a legendary bloatfly. I nailed it several times with the legendary

, and knocked out maybe 10% of it's health. Bwahaha. I just got my ass handed to me by an insect. I took a break after that.

I'm glad it's hard and I will resist the urge to dial it down. I say "resist" rather than "refuse" because the older I get, the less tolerant I get. If I'm spending more time reloading and backtracking than playing and exploring, my frustration might win. So far, it hasn't. But I find myself starting to explore places, running into some tough bad guys, then booking out of there - much more than in FO3. I'm okay with that. I'll be back.

I really like how the difficulty isn't actually all artificial... I kept getting slaughtered over and over right after entering Fort Hagen, because I stubbornly kept trying to force my way in, in my lousy armor and with my lousier weapons (maybe I should have sidequested a bit, but I was waiting for a logical 'break' in the main questline where pausing to r&r wouldn't feel ooc). Once I finally learned my lesson and dropped my gung-ho tactics in favor of a more tactical approach, I was fine. Even

So, yeah, I do like how this feels more like 'damn, I'm heading out into a hostile zone and I might not make it...' than the 'why is my health slowly going down..? *turnes around* oh, it's a deathclaw... anti-materiel rifle to the face for you buddy, now let's continue' of 3/NV.

how are you people dying from those little pests. Only thing that I've died from is supermutants or my own stupidity.(taking on more than I can handle.) Oh and the annoying assualtron. shotgun works wonders on the pests.

I know every monster has gotten a "dignity" upgrade in FO4 (so we didn't take them for granted I guess) but I miss the "cute" molerats that you could almost like. The FO4 molerats are nasty and annoying instead of cute and annoying! After watching endless FONV videos from Al Chestbreach (with Steve the radroach) I almost felt that way about radroaches too but again the're nastier in FO4. Not a bad thing but just feeling a little nostalgic.

The ghouls are also darker. Now they're faster and their faces are more horrifying and they have that whole "Alien Movie" appearing from nowhere from the ceiling thing going on which is just too nasty. Then there is the play dead trick. Of course even in the beginning of my FO3 play, I had to use the same tactic of sneaking close, killing a few, and running till they reset and then doing it all over again. I just can't survive any kind of swarm.

I like the base building but I didn't like having to spend an hour to create 3 lights in my house. And I want more cooking recipes. And they should have put a chemistry station in Sanctuary hills (yes I know there is one nearby).

So far so good. Only 1 crash and 1 glitch.

Yeah it`s the swarms that really can screw you up!

I just took down the Mirelurk Queen and boy was that fight tough. Hatchlings constantly coming at you while trying to deal with the Queen and avoid that deadly spit of hers. It doesn`t help that switching weapons feels really clunky (PS4) and going from Missile Launcher to an auto when Mirelurks are swamping you, is seriously aggravating due to how slow it all is - and that`s using the quickslots. Especially if you get hit by melee and staggered. I took a few doses of Psycho just to get ramped up.."[censored]***** Die!!"

Those Assaultrons are pretty deadly as well, as I discovered doing Cait`s Quest, more than 1 attacking you can easily result in goodbye cruel world!

I love the .308 bolt action sniper rifles as well. Found a nice hardened sniper rifle on a Gunner I killed on the roof of a medical centre, near the combat zone but the game glitzed and wouldn`t allow any saving or even exit to menu. I died about 30 mins later and had to pull the plug on the PS4, reboot, and discover the saved game was corrupt. I lost my loot including the sniper rifle, a syringer, junk jet and other goodies.

Still addicted as hell though! Fallout 4 is definitely harder than FO3 and FO:NV for sure. I`ve never swore so much since maybe Dark Souls.

Jesus, this... I've died so many times because I accidentally went too far on the quickslot menu and equipped something completely useless in my then-current situation.

Eh I must be playing a different game. I am running in survivor and the only times I died was when I was too stingy to use ammo so I run up to things trying to kill them with my fists just to see if I can lol. Turns out that most wildlife stuff is easier to kill with melee (fast or medium... not slow) anyway as is indoor combat when there are lots of walls and corners. Early on I just modded a silly pipe gun into a sort of mid range assault rifle and it tore everything a new one. .38 Ammo was so plentiful I couldnt possibly use it all so it was perfect for that use. Basically I went with all damage mods except for the auto body. I then added a scope and stuff and basically used it as a mid range burst sniper rifle. When i got gun nut 2 it became ridiculous, even with its low damage of around 16, I had range of about 190 with it and could blast things from very far in auto. Even power armor legendary raiders couldnt take the concentrated fire to the helmet before it tore off and I started hitting them in the face. If anything ever got close I just switch to my bladed fist things and they dont stand a chance because i only use vats in close range so I always have at least 3 shots if they get close and nothing outside of very heavy armor can survives that.

Eventually i ran across that quest with Paladin whatshisface and he gave me his energy weapon and that thing does around 50+ damage per shot... by this point I already had about 1000 energy cells so I figured what the hell, lets turn it into a sniper rifle and its been silly ever since... Everything not in heavy armor is dead in 1 shot. Even turrets are toast in about 5 shots and I take them out at 220 distance so they cant even touch me except for a tickle here and there.

Its still early so things might change. I am only level 16. Note I have not taken a single damage perk... my build is all mod perks, community leader, opening safes/terminals. I only put 2 points in toughness and that is all. I hate to imagine what it would be like if I put points into damage perks. I dumped AGI and LUCK. I think I did something like (SPECIAL) 4/5/3/6/6/1/1 (or close to). I have not had a problem with low AGI. I barely every VATs anyway since accuracy with a gun at range svcks the big one. I only use it in melee against those damn flying bees and wasps usually.

I started with 1 endurance on survival and let me tell you, that was a bad idea. I've had to level up my endurance to 3 and get 1 rank of toughness and life giver just to survive encounters without dying constantly. It's great.

I'm finally getting around to learning how to build and modify my weapons so it has gotten a little easier, but I'm only around 17 or so. Some of the boss battles have been downright monotonous IMO to be honest. The Legendary and Alpha varieties are just stupid bullet sponges - not fun in my book. I was killed over and over by an Alpha Mongrel near one of the main settlements. For a non-uber-godlike gamer such as myself, the enemies range from being fun to fight to extremely frustrating and rage/hate inducing all in one area. Thankfully, modders will be able to balance things out, and I've never said that about a Bethesda game before as I've always felt they did things pretty fairly, but there are spots this has been stupid hard and I've just finally set the difficulty to easy and used TGM to be able to move on when I hit them. For example:

Yeah that freaked me out when I ran to help people from a swarm of feral ghouls. I shot both the arms off one in vats and the damn thing just growled at me and kept coming.

I must say I am very happy with what I have seen of this game so far. The Bethesda developers did listen to us on a lot of things.

I am avoiding the main story for the most part so I can't judge that so much yet. Over all

Also I think so far this game is pretty well balanced. I haven't become an God yet. I am about 16 hours into it.

I am not that big on Graphics but damn they look great on my PC. Running on Ultra.

Today I was attempting to take on the gunners HQ, I got torn apart and I am lvl 27.

Or get a free suit of T-60b from the Brotherhood.

I'm enjoying the difficulty added by making healing via stimpaks and food not instant. You actually need to inject yourself then let it heal over a few seconds, rather than instant heals.

There is a chem station in Sanctuary Hills.

I did exactly the same thing. I could not for the life of me figure out where I picked those things up until much later.

I'm loving the enhanced difficulty. Even Bloatfies give my lvl 32 character a run for his money. It certainly keeps the game challenging instead of becoming a god at lvl 10-15 and handle things with little to no problem.

For survival/veryhard I actually think they made either PA a bit TOO powerful or normal armor TOO weak. 6-10x the armor in all 3 defenses is a bit much lol. I can't think of a reason not to use it, and nearly 100% required for melee. Makes it seem like all the other armor they put in were a waste of effort.

I only exit if I need to go for a swim for a quest.

It's certainly a lot harder than 3. Didn't play much of new Vegas so I'm not sure how to compare to that one. The dog companion helps a little with the occasional take down on some enemies but he's mostly just good for distracting enemies. I just got a human companion tho so I'm hoping that if I give her some good weapons and gear she'll be able to actually put up a fight. As you level up and get better gear, perks, etc... I'm sure it won't be nearly as difficult..... Or it could just get harder lol