I'm fine with the no level cap. Though Bethesda should add an option where we can tweak Very Hard difficulty settings, similar to difficulty mods, like:

%300 damage taken


%30 less damage delivered.

Bethesda can't please everyone, which is why the games are moddable and difficulty is moddable too. Just look at all the threads complaining about difficulty, this is the only thread I've seen complaining about how easy it is. People say that they don't want bullet sponges, ie. enemies with high health. They don't want to be one or two shotted either. Well I don't see how difficulty can be raised then, and no, they can't make better and smarter AI or else they'd have already put it into the game. Plus a "smart" AI would be extremely annoying as it would play defensively, hiding in rooms with only one access point (a door) and waiting for you to go through that door while it waits in cover. That's how a human would play and I'm sure if the AI did that, people would complain.

Most people want the game to be easy, but they want the illusion of difficulty so that they can feel like they're good. If you remember, Oblivion was level scaled and that received a huge number of complaints because people couldn't rampage through everything quickly.

I'm playing on survival (very hard) and using mods that level scale enemies in all zones to above my level. My point is that there are mods for difficulty and Bethesda knows it can't please everyone so it allows mods that can be customized.

I think Bethesda are actually tackling the bullet sponge/being one shotted thing with Survival mode. Realistic damage outputs are to be applied to your weapons AND the enemies, making it a more even playing field. Heres hoping it works out well!

People complain about overpowered perks/weapons in a single-player game because they don't like elements that trivialize the challenge of the game.

While there is always the option of "well then don't use it/don't take that perk," that doesn't help much if you grabbed the killshot perk without knowing that it completely removed any chance of failing headshot and eliminated all combat challenge from the game (it has since been fixed.) While a few people don't mind blowing everything away and experiencing no challenge to the game, most people want at least some form of balance, and the developers want that balance, as well.

Since most players and the developers want the perks and combat mechanics to be balanced, it doesn't make sense to leave broken OP elements just to keep people happy who don't want the game to challenge them. There is already an easy combat difficulty available for those people, so I think the rest of us are entitled to encourage the developers to achieve their goal of properly balancing the game.

Yep, I'm not understanding how playing the game as it was intended to be played makes the lack of challenge the fault of the player.

The payoff should be feeling powerful, not overpowered. You shouldn't be one-hitting everything with zero effort and taking little damage, you should still be faced with a challenge at high levels, using the perks and items at your disposal tactically and with a real threat of getting killed and failing. You should just have more tricks in your bag at high levels, not be a demi-god.

Mods aren't the answer to making enemies not svck, and "can't please everyone" isn't a good excuse for having poor enemy scaling in the first place. "Bullet sponges" and better leveled equipment for enemies are pretty much how it has to be done, and by the time the tougher enemies start showing up the player should be well prepared to deal with them anyway.

You are right, there is no smarter AI, because even the very best video game AI is still fairly dumb and basic most of the time and ponderously stupid occasionally. I think the statement that people would complain about being annoyed by "smart" AI is ridiculous though.

Whoa, wait, wow. What thread did you read? Or are you talking about some of the replies, compared to my post that started the whole thing?

I wasn't complaining about the game being easy, at all. I feel like by level 60 I've earned a little "easy". And I still meet challenges aplenty.

Maybe you took my post as sarcasm, which it wasn't. I honestly enjoy plastering raiders and mutants across the landscape, after so many levels of hiding from them and sneaking around because they could kill me with one hit. Now THEY hide from ME... it's a good feeling.

What if instead of preset difficulty modes there was a difficulty menu where you could precisely adjust Player/AI damage output/input, whether you need food, water and sleep, healing rates, level and hp caps, ammo drop rates, etc

Challenge junkies could be like "I can't level past 20, only have 100 hp, take 1000% damage and deal only 10%, need to eat at least 30 HP worth of food 3 times a day and drink at least 50 HP worth of water and sleep for 8 hours" or whatever else

I'm glad of this thread. It has inspired me to make some ultra hard special dungeons/zones once the construction set drops. Am thinking something along the lines of a very long dungeon littered with traps and very high level enemies that once you enter, you can't leave until you have made your way through it. Indiana jones-esque.

As long as I get a sweetroll at the end I'm down for that.

A perfectly preserved sweet roll. Though you do have to get it from one of those port-o-diners that has been rigged up with a timed nuclear bomb.

That's why I like Dark Souls series, no [censored] there. You can kill an enemy in few hits with an upgraded weapon but so they can do the same to you. Too bad Bethesda's games dont have new game + and beyond, i feel like that would really change the difficulty.

I'm pretty low still ( in the 30s) because i play multiple characters and back and forth with Witcher and Skyrim also but my son is level 78 and feels LESS powerful than he did earlier and feels his stealth is broken because when he enters a place and all the supermmutants are overlords ( shouldn't there not be multiple OVERlords together anyway?) that laugh at 15x damage sneak attacks he feels discouraged. he says settlement attacks are now completely insane.

Still beats radiant quests from preston.

To those saying that being overpowered is something you earn in this game,

While you do expect to be quite dominant in the endgame, it still svcks when you are more or less immune to everything and capable of killing everything in one hit. Better levelling of enemies would help at the highest end, but this isn't really a big problem.

Much more important is that this can't be used as an argument to say that FO4s balance is fine, because you can get heaps of incredibly broken stuff not long after leaving the vault, like the double barrel shotgun, jet, the syringer, purchasable 'uniques', power armour, legendaries, numerous broken perks, explosives and more.

That double barrel in particular is crazy strong with a few T0 mods, give it a sawn off barrel and calibrated receiver, and its crits one shot mr gutsies, radscorpions, raiders in power armour, withered ones and the legendary versions of feral ghoul reavers, mirelurk razorclaws, supermutant skirmishers, with a crit and 2 normal shots can kill a glowing one..... with 2 crits you can kill deathclaws, stunted yao guai, infected bloodbugs, mirelurk hunters, supermutant butchers, assaultrons, even The Director, and with an extra shot or two (in the same VATS sequence), blow a leg off a putrid glowing one. Its absolutely absurd that whats basically a starter weapon can lay waste to things that are still threatening to mid level players with such ease without needing sneak attacks and with no, or only one perk (critical banker).

The gauss rifle people have brought up isn't a problem for two reasons, first its end game so it should be strong, but also it has drawbacks, in this case a charge time that slowls RoF and expensive rare ammo. It also struggles outside of its sniping role and there are actual gameplay reasons that some people prefer things like the combat and assault rifle as snipers.

And to those saying that we should just not use whats broken,

If there wre only a small number of things that were truly broken then simply avoiding them would be reasonable. Unfortunately there aren't just a few things, there's a whole hell of a lot that is far, far too powerful, the list I gave above with robots, higher level perks, and much more that you gain access to as the game goes on. If we were to avoid them all we would be missing half the game!

I've seen video's of people one shotting Behemoths with certain guns and stealth. You should only need a weapon that does around 75 damage to one shot an overlord with a 15% stealth attack.

EDIT: Actually no scrap that. They have 85 damage resistance which is around 55% damage reduction so in order to one shot an overlord, you would need to do around 1.5k worth of damage to them. Ouch

You can never have an overpowered weapon. After 20yrs in a regular Army serving in several conflicts, I have fired many, many weapons (and used them as intended). 9mm, 5.56mm and 7.62mm - plus all the AT stuff.


Of the personal ballistic weapons I would go for a long barrel 7.62mm. It will stop an elephant in it's tracks at 100-200m. Try that with 9mm or 5.56mm, it will still keep coming.


There is a reason Armies mainly use 5.56mm and it isn't to stop or kill on first shot - but that's another long story.

IRL guns aren't really relevant to this topic