I play normal + hardcoe.

I wish that a higher difficulty would increase enemy damage AND decrease the amount of xp I get for killing one -- but leave my damage were it is. A pity that the difficulty settings dont work that way.

normal on hardcoe any higher is just stupid you need 10 headshots with a 44 magnum just to kill a fiend

I play on hard and a fiend goes down fine to 2 headshots with a 44 magnum, or one with a crit (mysterious magnum anyway).

So all your saves are locked once that character dies?

Normal. Don't want it too hard or too easy. But I feel it a bit easy though. Might switch off to Hard at a later time.

Ahyeah.
Normal hardcoe for me.
Energy Weapons were too crap for me to play on Very Hard since enemies took forever to die.
Unarmed was kinda hard since enemies are so quick.
And my current roleplay I want it to be a bit more realistic and seeing as I only use a pre-war suit that means I have no DT what so ever, so Normal there as well.

I play on very hard but not hardcoe, my husband plays normal hardcoe and that even looks too difficult for me.

What you said and to some extent their equipment could be a bit better. I still play on Very Hard though because otherwise the game is far too easy. I still don't really know what hardcoe is doing other making me eat drink and sleep and be annoyed at ammo weight.

Stimpaks are currency, not for healing.....found that feels more right in Normal then Very Hard.

hardcoe remained me too much of the days back when I addicted to MMO, so I only played it once.

Hard/hardcoe. The DT system doesn't play well with very hard. I got shot by a fiend with a cowboy repeater on very hard and lost 3/4 of my health with one shot, i was wearing T-51b and at level 30. Thats a bit much. Hard is the best setting I think. I played FO3 on VH.

hardcoe mode on, Hard difficulty. I'd go Very Hard if it made the game harder without turning enemies into bullet sponges...it just kinda feels wrong.

No hardcoe

Hard

Slow leveling mod

hardcoe and Very Hard. I made some changes to my game also though because Very Hard isn't really all that hard.

Weapons now do 25% less damage. I am sure this affects the NPCs too but they could kill you pretty easy anyway. I just didn't like all the times I could 1 hit them before they knew what was even happening.
No more silencers or scopes unless the weapon already had them. The AMR should now be a little better than the sniper rifle. I also lowered 3 weapons that had critical chance values of 5 down to 3. Ratslayer, sniper and Gobi.
A few settings I took from another mod which should make the NPC's a little smarter.
Sneak criticals are now a lot lower or I totally messed something up by changing some sneak crit setting.
I also don't take combat related perks or traits.

I am only level 7 but so far so good. I might have to lower the global DT down but I am not sure. I put on a few light Armours and I was blocking their damage but they were a couple of low level guys too though. I couldn't rescue the deputy at level 3 and had to run out. Maybe that was because I put all my points in survival though.

I did Fallout 3 on Hard and Very Hard, but only when I was looking to rinse the last drops out of the game. Having to shoot a raider in the head half-a-dozen times before he drops makes it kinda tedious as much as anything. I wish that upping the difficulty'd increase enemy damage without dramatically increasing HP/defence. But it doesn't, so with NV I'm sticking to Normal for now.

hardcoe mode's interesting, but I'm not fully enamoured with it yet. Adds as much fiddlyness as difficulty I'm finding.

Normal and hardcoe on my first playthrough, but I aso found hardcoe more fidly as I tend to play without stimpacks and drink / eat / sleep anyway.

Normal HC for my first 3 playthroughs just to get well acquainted with the game like I was with Fallout 3. 82Hrs and I'm done with my 1st char. I'm currently on my 2nd and have one more planned; then my 4th will be Very Hard HC and maybe stay that way from then on.

Very hard hardcoe. Frankly, it's a little too easy after spending so much time in FO3 w/ FWE hardcoe. Hoping for another FWE for FNV. Don't get me wrong - I find myself running into an occasional deathclaw when I'm not ready for it but all-in-all I rarely die and the iron sight mode is better than using vats.

At the moment im playing very hard/hardcoe, i only use shotguns, i only use normal cloathing, i havent spended any points in offensive skills, my endurance is at 1 to have low health and resistance to damage and im RP'ing as a trader/scavenger/prospector and Boone is my muscle.

I would love to play a realistic mode! One shot with 9mm pistol to the head in point blank range should be a instant kill.....both ways. Getting shot to any other body part should be insta criple on that body part and it would take out at least half of the HP

At the moment im playing very hard/hardcoe, i only use shotguns, i only use normal cloathing, i havent spended any points in offensive skills, my endurance is at 1 to have low health and resistance to damage and im RP'ing as a trader/scavenger/prospector and Boone is my muscle.

I would love to play a realistic mode! One shot with 9mm pistol to the head in point blank range should be a instant kill.....both ways. Getting shot to any other body part should be insta criple on that body part and it would take out at least half of the HP

Firstly, WOO HOO!! My first thread that got enought interest to get 4 pages of responses.

It has been interesting to read different viewpoints on how people play. As I put in my original post, I played half way through first time on normal and then started over on very hard. My experience of the difference was not purely how tough enemies were. I wanted my character to be relatively self sufficient. i.e good at repair, science and survival. My first game on normal I started to build those skills up straight away. On very hard I didn't spend my points on anything but guns and sneak for the first 6 levels. I found that I could not win a fight unless I got the first shot off as a sneak attack. Even then I had to use cover a lot.

I now certainly see the point a few of you made about the companions. I have been using Veronica and the robot Ede. I downloaded the unlimited companions patch but quickly realised that it would destroy the difficulty of the game. For a time I added Boone to my party alongside Veronica and Ede and the challenge became getting a single shot off before my companions obliterated all the enemies we came across. I went into Vault 34 with my 3 companions. All I did was collect loot. I did not have to fire a single shot.

I have not added many mods but will give a few a try as some of you have mentioned realism mods which could be interesting. I agree with a comment one of you made about headshots. It would be great if the difficulty setting of the game changed the AI rather than just the number of hitpoits the enemies have. If an enemy is more difficult then I want it to be because he will hide behind cover, work as a team with other enemies and through clever tactics. Not simply because he has so many more hitpoints that I have to shoot him more.

The toughest human enemy in the game should still die from one headshot with a 9mm if his head is unarmoured. And I definitely should not be able to make a Brotherhood of Steel Paladin's head explode with a simple hunting rifle. Hell, Power Armour should be impervious to all but the toughest ballistic weapons.

Anyway, thank you for all the interesting comments. This thread has been an interesting read.

Would you recommend playing on Normal or Hard when playing in hardcoe mode, with no companions (as that's how I'm going to play it)?

I'm not interested in Very Hard, as it was really annoying pumping bullets into enemies endlessly in F3 (as stated here many times), but I would like a reasonable challenge (I began F3 on normal, then upped it to Hard midway through to keep the challenge up, then eventually upped it to Very Hard near the end because it was getting boring killing everything in sight with one shot).

I play unarmed, so very hard is not an option lol

I'm currently playing Hard and hardcoe mode on. I played Fallout 3 on Very Hard but since I now can't carry around a medium-sized country's ammo stores that would probably be overwhelming in New Vegas.

Oh yeah, I forgot that ammo has weight in hardcoe mode. I'm guessing that would make a big difference.

hardcoe \ very hard, my characters health modded to 50, i use a modded weapon that will mostly 1-3 shot kill people to avoid bullet sponges, which i just find annoying.

my set up makes the game much harder even with the modded gun, 1-3 shots they die... 1-3 shots i die.

i wouldn't call it combat sim hard, because the bad guys are pretty stupid, but it makes the combat aspect more enjoyable for me.