Should be optional.
I don't want realistic damage but I do want the other changes that hardcoe brings to the table.

normal or easy for me. but will always play hardcoe. Never understood raising difficulty, sure it makes the game more dangerous and think twice but thats why i picked hardcoe mode instead. Also I want my headshots to mean something.

Well some people like being masochists and have a great challenge even if they die a crap load of times.
I fit into that group. :goodjob:
But FO3 wasn't a great challenge though and I hardly think New Vegas is going to be one either.
Why? The problem in Fallout 3 was health, you got too much health and enemies got too much health.
From the gameplay videos I've seen it seems like they're sticking to the Fallout 3 health system for the PC.
So we'll probably be crazy powerful like a god again anyway. :rolleyes:

:foodndrink:


Masochists unite! :rock:

Me too. I like the adrenaline-rush feeling of just barely making it through a really tough battle, even if I had to take a few cracks at it. Makes me feel like I accomplished something.

Could get annoying in some games though, like when you've played fallout 2 for five hours without saving and accidentally die from a super critical from a ghoul krazie.
But then I just reload and re-do it all again.
Hell, in Baldurs Gate II they even said in loading screens that THE QUICKSAVE FUNCTION IS ASSIGNED TO Q!!! Meaning that even the devs knew players would die A LOT. :laugh:
And did I quicksave after 1 hour of tough enemies? Nope. Died and had to re-do it all again.

What happened to the challenging games anyway?
Why'd they die out?

i dont think very hard is even neccesary in a game like changing the dificulty is changing how the game was made in the first place. if you want a challenge then go do a rubix cube with a blindfold in a sharktank dont play an rpg. boss fights tho should be insanley difficult other than that i dont get the point.

Why?
I played fallout 1, fallout 2 and both baldurs gate games with their expansions which are all RPGs and some of the old JRPGs that were actually good and they posed a hard challenge to an extreme challenge.
Why do I have to abandon all hope that a game can actually be hard and not lolcat easy?

Totally disagree. :shrug: I play games for a challenge. If I didn't want a challenge I can watch TV or read a book.

What's the point of playing if there's no chance I'll fail? Isn't that what a "game" is all about? I've been playing RPGs for 23 years, and all of the best ones were challenging.

gabriel77dan, you were asking why they died out? There's your answer.

I've played Fallout 3 on "Very Hard" mode for awhile, and like that article in Game Informer a few months back, decided it's not much fun with the limited time I have to play.

So for now, I play Fallout 3 not for the challenge, but for the freedom to explore the game without dying, thanks to "Very Easy" mode. You can walk across the land knowing you'll make it from one end of the map to the other.

If a gamer wants a tough challenge, use a .32 revolver as your sole weapon, and a knife for melee, wearing only a Wastland Wanderer outfit. And don't use stimpaks to heal, but rely on doctors and food.

Create your own difficulty setting with some imagination if the game doesn't challenge you.

Seems I read somewhere that difficulty would effect enemy AI, instead of making them better bullet sponges.

I'd like to see more enemies use more cover tactics, like ducking behind cover, taking shots and ducking back in FNV. Hopefully that's what they're referring to.

In Fallout 3, they're fairly smart, but their main tactic is to run up to you and blast away, which makes it tougher, but easier to blast them away behind a corner wall.

I was impressed overall though, with Fallout 3's enemy AI. They'll even run sometimes, when they take too much damage.