the problem with enemies getting more health is that my damage capped at lvl 46 when i got my last rank of Rifleman perk

that means i get punished by leveling up and while other perks like : Commando , Heavy Leagues are interesting choices they don't "add " to u're damage u can either swing , or shoot but u can't to both

having the player feel punished by playing the game is not what u want as a developer

... and so comes the WORKAROUND .....

you increase damage instead of health , by doing this u achieve two things :

1) the player also has his health increased so he can take on more dangerous foes and this makes the enemies the player faces " scaled " to his level

2) the player won't feel punished for picking up cosmetic perks that don't increase his damage

have a nice day

bulletsponges are a major feature of any RPG :/

it's a common game design to make the character development more noticable throughout the game

Witcher, Diablo, Final Fantasy, Dark Souls, Bloodbourne... they all have enemies that require tons of hits, before actually going down

It's just a typical game mechanic of this genre

I'm pretty sure we would see tons of complains, about people not noticing 'leveling' and developing with their character, when they'd manage to remove sponges and make the combat consistent, like it is in many linear shooters

As much as the system itself is flawed, I really don't think there is a better solution :/

I haven't noticed a problem with "bullet sponges" myself.

Perhaps you need a better gun.

That's something I like about the weapon modding feature of the game.

You can modify a weapon to suit your style, take it for a test run and discard it if you don't like it.

You can cripple a foe with a shotgun, switch to melee to finish it off and save ammo.

You can damage a foe with a sniper and move in closer with another weapon.

The weapon combinations are numerous.

One proviso is the Supermutant Warlord.

So easy to cripple but takes forever to finish them off.

There is always a better solution. I agree with the OP. I hate fights that have you just pumping round after round into an enemy. It's, frankly, boring. And non-immersive.

I agree that most RPG's have done this to certain extents. But there are many that have not:

- All of the old Ultima games featured very little in the way of super powerful enemies with 10,000 HP after U4. And yet combat in these games was brutal. It was meant to be fast and frightening -- you were always at risk of losing progress.

- The Thief series (not counting the latest..."attempt") were great in that you "leveled up" by acquiring better gear. If you were ever faced by 2-3 opponents, you'd better run like hell. You had to defeat them using other skills...or just never be seen.

- Deus Ex (again, the original, not the "sequels and reboots") could be played through from beginning to end...with a 9mm pistol. I could take down 25 tons of military-grade attack robot with the little crossbow mounted on my wrist. Or just hack a terminal and turn it on the enemy.

- The Gothic series was masterful at creating areas that posed a good challenge once you were ready. It never became "too easy" as you leveled up, nor did fights ever consist of clicking "LMB, LMB, RMB" for 21 minutes straight. (Maybe a bit, but only early on.)

I think having only damage scaling is a nice solution. I say, what's more exciting? --

a.) two characters running back-and-forth, back-and-forth, firing rocket after rocket and emptying 2 complete belts of ammo through a minigun while nothing apparently happens until someone finally drops dead

b.) two characters diving from cover to cover taking snap shots at each other before ducking down again, because both know: the first one to get hit is goner.

I think that a Skyrim mod "Deadly Dragons" has set an excellent example. It divided foes up into classes like Dragon, Undead, creature, and humanoid. Then the options were up to the player. Each category had several sliders to set health, damage, armor, magic resistance, so for each category you could set the damage to outrageous levels without increasing enemy health at all if you wanted, or make the enemy immune to magic. Do nothing, and leveling/difficulty would occur as per vanilla. You could reset the sliders at any point in the game, so if the game seemed too easy, just turn up the enemy sliders... or reduce them.

I think the choice offered by such a system would be a great thing in FO4! Maybe a mod will come along, eh?

So on survival mode enemies should be easy to kill? One bullet each?

http://www.gamesas.com/user/966808-d4rkinv4d3r/: " Witcher, Diablo, Final Fantasy, Dark Souls, Bloodbourne... they all have enemies that require tons of hits "

- the only one i played is diablo , and the enemies didn't increase in health if u had higher level

Sure... as long as one bullet from them ends you as well, eh?

Every level of difficulty the hp increases exponentially in diablo. You are bonkers.

I think head shots is where I found this kinda lame. On normal mode unless i was using like a combat rifle/gauss rifle very high level super mutants head shots were very bullet sponge like. Don't care what you are but 20 bullets to the head should leave nothing left. Though I guess if they had fancy head armor on maybe I could buy it... on the other hand its just a game mechanic so doesn't really matter to me.

Well, not exactly. I was going to the extremes to make the point. I think feel strongly that no RPG should ever kill the Player Character with 1 hit. You should always be given a chance to realize the situation and be able to use your chosen skills wisely in order to win.

I'm thinking enemy "bosses" in Bethesda should adjust to your level as if they were your equal according to their own class. So an NPC like the Super-Mutant Warlords would be your level, but gain the types of Health, Resistances, and Damage that they would receive if they had chosen all of the "Warrior"-type Perks in the tree. They may have 300+ HP. Just not 600+ HP as the game seems to do now. In essence, 5-10 solid hits should drop them, and the fight should be frenetic. It shouldn't be two characters emptying clip after clip into each other. There's very little tension in that.

Why create 3 minutes of tedious repetition to come to the same result that you could arrive at in 1 exciting minute?

it's not about increasing in health or levelscaling

what I mean by 'bulletsponges' is when an enemy has a big healthbar and takes hits that would be not survivable in real life

the several bullets to the head, raiders take in Fallout at the start, are just as unrealistic as the several hits with the axe you have to do on enemies in Diablo

after all... it's obiously more noticable in a Fallout, where some enemies are humans

seeing several missiles not being able to kill a gunner seems definitely more unrealistic, than having to hit a fantasy skeleton-creature 20 times... simply because we see Fallout as something a tiny bit more 'realistic' and not as 'fantasy' as some other games are ^^

I like the perk that makes those tough mutants fall down if you hit them in the head.

It makes it harder to snipe them as they lie down dazed.

Without that perk many times they just stand there instead of taking cover.

I think he was referring to leveled enemies that Beth titles spawn. They gain additional Health and Damage based on your character's level at the time they're spawned. We're not discussing the "Easy, Normal, Hard" difficulty settings in the menu.

Its RPG,

Enemies should be able to eat Mini-Nukes and Rockets like they were little cup cakes.

....Sarcasm Label goes here....

Bullet Sponging is bad but Role Playing Game fans don't honestly know better and most people really haven't experienced Mods so they don't know about alternatives.

Sure, I agree that getting one-shoted would normally be very hard to deal with... But Roachor specified survival mode, eh? Certain levels of difficulty or styles of play have different consequences. So, if you're wanting a quick dangerous game you give the opponent very high damage levels and perhaps no increase to health at all. In that kind of play, you'd have to be exceptionally alert all the time.

Personally, as in the case of deadly dragons, which I cited earlier, I gave my opponents a +10% to both health and damage right at the start of the game. I like being able to take two or three hits, and my opponents being able to do the same, but I don't want it to drag on and on. My primary reason for not playing increased difficulty is right there.

Hey, I like role playing games.

I also like first person shooters.

There are some games I've played that require you to go multiplayer if you want to take down a particular area Boss because that's the way the publishers have designed it.

I personally don't mind adapting to whatever the software writers come up with.

If i don't like a game I stop playing and find another.

I like this one, though.

I hate bullet-sponges. I play on normal, hard/very hard/survival are pointless IMO.

There's a subtle difference between "harder" and "more challenging". "More challenging" can make a game more fun. "Harder" usually just makes a game frustrating.

I love driving games, the more realistic, the better. Giving me a twistier track is "more challenging". Making the AI cars impossibly fast is "harder".

In FO4, making the enemies "smarter", with better tactics, use of cover & stealth, etc. would have made it "more challenging". What they DID (enemy = bullet sponge, SS armor = paper) only makes it "harder", not more fun.

More accurately: Most RPG fans aren't willing to accept anything else as an RPG. I blame Gary Gygax. And THAC0. Screw THAC0.

A "LIKE" button is so necessary at times.

pugsley100 : " I haven't noticed a problem with "bullet sponges" myself. Perhaps you need a better gun. "

Lol @ the overseer being the best gun. Instigating gauss rifle all day. But seriously this whole "bullet-sponge" concept is

1. Not how the game handles higher difficulty


2. Not a bad thing. Your complaint is hard mode isn't easy.

It's pretty funny. The enemies that are levels above you should be difficult. Making them hard to kill is most of that although some better AI seem to be in place for some of them. I routinely venture into areas well above my level and expect to use a lot of ammo on what's there.

Arbitration is the best nexus mod.


2x player damage, 5x NPC damage is insanely fun on Survival difficulty and makes you use cover to survive.


Also radscorps are 2 hit kills(with 420 defens) and deathclaw are installed kills. Such a blast.


I'll never understand how people equate difficulty to scaling HP of enemies when your damage caps out. Pimping 500 rounds insto one supermutants warlord isn't hard, its tedious because they also have to pump 30-50 rounds into me that my stimpacks can overcome.

Whole-heartedly agree. I've played only on Normal and Hard. The Hard playthrough may be going back to Normal soon for exactly the reasons you specify -- I enjoy not being able to steamroll enemies...but I can still steamroll enemies. It just takes more bullets/time to do so. It was pretty awesome until I hit ~level 20. Then fights just started to drag.

This is getting a bit too much toward a platformer/bullet-hell game for me. I hate "twitch" scenarios like that unless they're used very sparsely for thematic effect (kind of like the interactive cutscenes in the Assasin's Creed series. If you're Johnny-on-the-spot with your controls, you cinematically head-butt a fool, or you're treated to a bit of side-boob for your efforts. Fair enough!)

You're completely missing the point. Hard doesn't mean "make me do the same thing more times". Hard means "increase my level of challenge". Simply increasing the health of an enemy does not make them any harder to defeat. It makes them more annoying to defeat. A "hard difficulty" enemy should provide more threat, new tactics, additional abilities -- a challenge that requires more to overcome than simply pressing "attack" 25 times instead of 12 times.


Using The Witcher series as a comparison, you can mindlessly hack and slash your way through Normal difficulty -- potions and oils will make it even easier. On Hard difficulty, you will have a grueling time unless you use the proper potions and oils to defeat the proper foe. On the Hardest difficulty, you will die unless you research your enemy in advance, prepare ALL of the necessary potions and oils in advance, and fight for dear life from the beginning of the fight until the end. Fights are decided most quickly at the Hardest settings.