Hey guys, I was just wondering which difficulty most people are playing......so please share which difficulty are you playing on and how do you find it?

I am currently playing on survival but I am finding it kind of ridiculous, i love the challenge as much the next competitive guy but I simply can't stand bullet sponges, my imagination does not stretch that far. If survival difficulty also improved the enemy AI and made enemies use new tactics then I would be loving Survival difficulty but the AI remains the same as Normal, its just that I have to use more bullets and grenades to kill enemies, so it gets boring and frustrating in a hurry...........increased legendary spawn rate is the only reason why I am still putting up with survival difficulty but I am quickly finding out that only very few legendaries are good enough to use, rest are just getting piled up in my workshops.

Thanks

I'm close to finishing my first playthrough and normal has been way too easy. I have around 180 stimpacks and should have just stopped picking them up 20 hours ago, I rarely need them. Never touched a chem except for once, and food and drink has been completely unnecessary.

I'm not a particularly skilled player either, I just looked at the perks and worked out what I thought was an effective path. I should have ramped up the difficulty a long time ago to be honest.

I'll either try survival next, or see what mods there are on the nexus to fix the balance of the game, it doesn't seem right to me.

Try it on survival, so far i can put 3 rounds from a sinper riffle (.50) in the head of a mongrel dog (mongrel not mutant) and it just pisses them off lol. Survival is the way to go brother way harder and allot of fun.

for me, after 40 hours or so survival difficulty turned into a frustrating lifeless drill as I really got tired of pumping a fantastically unrealistic amount of bullets into the enemies. Since the enemy AI does not improves with higher difficulty levels and you basically fight the same AI, as Very Easy, in survival difficulty........its the same enemies employing, the same old, not so refined tactics, its just that you have to use a lot more bullets to bring them down this time.

The reason I used the phrase 'fantastically unrealistic amount of bullets' is that, even fantasy has its limits........shooting a human raider 6 times in the naked head and he still keeps coming at you with 50% of his health intact, just doesn't make sense to me, it pulls me right out of the fiction......even a machine dies or suffers critical damage if you shoot it 5 times in the central processing unit.

I would have enjoyed the survival difficulty a lot more, if enemies used superior AI instead of turning into bullet sponges but this is not the case........so I am debating at the moment if I should turn down the difficulty to Hard but the only reason I am sticking to Survival is the increased legendary spawn rate.

I just hope its worth it in the end although I think its hurting my overall experience of the game as this is my first play through.

Playing on survival, but modded it so that I do 0.9 times normal difficulty level damage (vanilla is 0.5 for survival), but enemies deal 4.5x normal difficulty (vanilla is 2 for survival). Depends a bit on your gear, had enemy damage lower in early game, but once you get some decent gear, the above works nice for my liking.

Great topic. I started on Survival during my first playthrough. I died a bunch of times but stuck with it as I was managing to kill most of the enemies. When I got to covega I was littered with molotov coktails that I couldn't find a way defeat them.

Through hours of pain-staking efforts, I was able to see the light of day and complete the mission (with barely any ammo left). Bare in mind I wasn't using my power armor and had dogmeat as a companion.

Hard is the most enjoyable setting for me and I'm only level 18. I figure I may increase setting later on or finish it through then begin a new character at a higher difficulty. I really enjoy the survival apect though.

Started on hard with a "test toon" died like 3 times in less than 2 hours.

Re-rolled a "real toon," turned it down to Normal. After about 40 hours died, but against my general Dead is Dead ethic, kept playing another hour or so and died again. Archived that characters files with a total of 43 hours 15 minutes played.

Turned it down to Easy and re-rolled another "real toon." Played about 35 hours and died once when I was staying up too late . . . let that one slide. Played for about 35 more hours and died again, this time with no excuse but my own poor play. Archived that characters files with a total of 71 hours and 4 minutes played.

Turned it back up to Normal, re-rolled my fourth character, DETERMINED to finish as much of this damn content as possible before the GECK is released!!

Have played for 115 hours and 32 minutes on that fourth toon and have not died once.

If you die, you are playing on too hard of difficulty.

Survival here. Usually go normal, but figured I'd try it out. The slower healing is difficult at times, but chems.. glorious chems.. conquer all.

I jump between Normal, Hard and Very Hard in my second play through. I just picked Normal in the poll.

Normal until I build up my character then the hardest difficulty!

Hard, getting a bit too easy at the higher levels, but I don't like bullet-sponge mechanics, so I'll just have to wait for a combat balancing mod that tickles my fancy.

I still die though, either because of my own stupidity (gravity is a female dog) or simply because me Vs Legendary Glowing Deathclaw without heavy weapons & PA = no chance in hell (got one-shotted)

normal just got stupid easy late game. survival is tough early in the game especially when you forgo power armor. but all the legendary drops are sweet.

I always play Bethesda's games on their default difficulty. I don't play role playing games for the so-called "challenge."

Very easy for me. And it's perfect for me.

Normal. Never was a fan of bulletsponges.

Here are some mods if you are interested in tweaking the damage values yourself

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/222/?

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/217/?

In BGS games the HP Bloat Mode setting remains on Neutral for me.

I'm all for a challenge and less hand holding in games nowadays. But hitting a dog in the head 3 times with a 50 cal is not fun in my eyes. Even more so if it hasn't died from that. They need to come up with something new other than bullet sponges. Same old nonsense in every game. Bethesda need to start thinking more instead of copy pasting from one game to the next.

I play normal for now.

In Normal I always charge and VATS.

In Survival I can't do that, so the game feel more like a game without feeling like cheating only in Survival.

Bethesda's difficulty settings have no effect on HP.

Anyway, I always keep my setting on Normal. I adjust difficulty with: 1) roleplaying (which almost always makes a game more difficult and: 2) mods.

But in practice less than 1 multiplier on damage player does has the same effect.

Survival here. My guy is an army hero having served all his time in a bureau behind a desk, only the hardest difficulty can simulate his suffering in the nice new Fallout environment.

Bullet sponges can be annoying and the enemy AI is dumb as on Very Easy I presume but because you need more time and bullets to win you have to use the environment and the resources in other ways than on easier difficulties. I would also prefer a special weight limit for weaponry and a weight for ammo, name it maybe "hardcoe" or "Office Sitter" mode. What I don't like on Survival is the damage of melee weapons, it's relatively too low.

Normal for me almost all of the time. I have dropped it down to easy if I am having a lot of difficulty getting past a certain area, for example

Thanks for that, I'll definitely look into those.

I think what I need is enemies that do more damage to me but have the same (or slightly more) HP as they have in the vanilla game. I'm not a fan of bullet sponges. Headshots should be instakills on every humanoid creature, and do significant damage on things like deathclaws. Sounds like the second mod would be right up my street. Kind of worried because I don't like using power armor at all and it looks like that might be a necessity, but we'll see.

Thanks again!

I'm not terribly far into my first play through and am sticking it through on survival. It's been rough and certainly adds some interesting aspects to the game. I'm constantly battling radiation vs health vs maintaining a steady supply of chems. I haven't had too much of an issue with enemies being bullet sponges since I frequently die before this becomes and issue lol. I love the increased legendary enemies and hate it at the same time. I've occasionally began using some fairly cheap tactics in certain cases but it makes sure that I'm not taking the game too lightly at any point.