I am starting this thread to find out how other people play. When I started Fallout 3 I did not even look at the difficulty. I just played it on the normal default setting. By level 20 I was able to one shot a guy in power armour with a simple hunting rifle. When New Vegas came out I started off the same way until a friend suggested I put it onto hardcoe mode and also put it on the very hard difficulty.

At first I thought he was nuts. I like the hardcoe mode but did not think the game would be at all playable on the very hard setting. It is, as the name suggests, VERY hard. What I was really pleasantly surprised about was how the atmosphere of the game changed. All of a sudden, instead of going from town to town completing all the quests at each town before moving on, I am suddenly finding myself having to carefully pick my battles so that I stand even a remote chance of winning.

I am now level 12 in the game and have explored about the same amount of the map as I did when I gave up on my first normal difficulty game. The difference is that Most of the places I have visited have some unfinished business for me to return there for. I am having to carefully go around the map doing whatever I can to get experience to get my skills to sufficient level so I can return and finish all the quests I have not started or only partly finished.

Anyone who only plays the game on normal difficulty, I highly recommend playing on both hardcoe Mode and Very Hard difficulty. It is the only way to give the wasteland the dangerous atmosphere it should have.

One example, On my first game I met a Giant Radscorpion when I was only level 5. I managed to kill it with a shotgun. It nearly killed me too but I won out. On my current game I spotted a Giant Radscorpion out in the wastes. As my game was on Very Hard I decided a shotgun would not quite cut it so I decided to soften it up first by putting down two frag mines with a bottlecap mine on top of them. I lured the Giant Radscorpion over the mines.

KABOOOM!!!! One point of the scorpions health bar!! ONE!! That is all that two frag mines and a bottlecap mine did. Needless to say I decided that going around it was the safer option. I no longer just run around in the wasteland without paying much attention.

in my opinion the default difficulty with hardcoe turned on is perfect in this game.

I'm roleplaying at the moment.
Can only use SMG's or regular pistols, no revolvers.
And if I'm out in the wastes then I'm allowed to use Cowboy Repeater and Hunting Rifle.
And for melee I use a switchblade.
Only wear a grimy pre-war suit.
And I shoot NCR on sight.

It's really really really [censored] hard to kill a NCR Ranger at lvl 6 with regular bullets and wearing a piece of clothing that gives zero DT.

I enjoy the game the most on very hard/ hardcoe, for many of the reason the OP said in their post.

Different strokes for different folks though.

I don't like "very hard" in Fallout 3/ Fallout NV because "very hard" just ends up meaning the enemies have utterly ludicrous hitpoints. I loved the way things were rebalanced in "Fallout 3: Wanderer's edition", where *everybody* got more fragile, and combat got faster and more dangerous. Even supermutants would go down pretty quickly with sustained fire, but of course, so would you. I'll wait for a New Vegas port of that before I feel like the difficulty level is ideal. Though admittedly the "normal" difficulty level of F:NV is much closer to FO3:WE than baseline FO3 was.

Very hard on hardcoe...HA! I wish, I'm not that good. Normal difficulty is fine by me.

Normal is waaaaaaay too easy, even with hardcoe (I had to get the super hardcoe mod, and that was still too easy.) At the moment i'm playing hard but i'll probably start playing very hard - the way fallout should be.

I prefer medium hardcoe mode myself. I sometimes crank the difficulty up to see what it's like, but I wouldn't play a whole game in those modes, simply because I just don't like the way they are implemented. I just don't like the way my guns will magically do less damage while everyone else magically does more damage. If the difficulty did something like make the bad guys smarter, more numerous, and better shots with deadlier weapons, then I'd jump right all over that. Otherwise, I don't like the way it is now.

Hard on hardcoe from the start.

I started the very first day on very hard hardcoe

of course I also gave myself 100 on every skill and 10 in every SPECIAL.

but guess what? I didn't want to miss game content, and in any situation I'm no better than a specialized character but just better than a vanilla balanced character.

Don't look down on me :cryvaultboy:

That's why the game has replayability.

This.

I never played Wanderer's edition because I am on the 360, but my biggest complaint with vanilla Fallout is "guns mixed with RPG numbers" It just doesn't work. "He's a general, so it takes more bullets to kill him." What? No. I want guns to matter. Not a bunch of nerds in football pads running around pretending they are Spartans that are though to kill because they are level 20 and have a million billion HP. I want the walking tanks that are the brotherhood to be the difficult ones to kill.

It's the same problem with explosives. My explosives skill should be my ability to disarm and craft explosive along with my ability to throw explosives with accuracy. Damage output should have nothing to do with it. Guns & energy weapons should be similar. How "accurate" you are with fire arms and how much you shake in "aim down sights." Okay, to an extent that is in the game, but like it should be. Unarmed and melee should be combined and damage should be based off of strength and the weapon. As you raise your skills, you should "learn" new moves along with those you can be taught in game.

I don't dislike the game, but it could have been done a lot better imo.

I play on hard/hardcoe and had à blast.
With that said, to each their own, don't worry about what other people think just do what you like.

I am playing on hardcoe mode on Very Hard Difficulty with Arwen's realism mod. I think that's about as tough as it gets. Very immersive though :gun: :gun:

Very hard, on hardcoe, on the xbox 360. First run through. It's not easy, but it's fun. Plus, if I die, I load back to my last "full" save instead of an "autosave" or a "just in case the damn thing freezes" save. I try and mark a save in Goodsprings after a significant achievement / quest.

I like it this way, because it makes me think about what I'm doing...look for landmines, which even on level 22, can kill you with one blast. Deathclaws and whatnot are just plain best avoided, since they come in pairs or more, and you have to make two good leg shots to cripple them both to escape. There's no just walking in and shooting everyone in the head just to avoid inconvenience. Even a simple fiend was scary for a while...

More like real-life - having to eat, sleep, drink, and not necessarily being the baddest MF'er in the valley ALL the time.

For me humanoids are the most fun to fight/kill. But they are also the most easy I think. Creatures don't really have tactics so much, they see you, they run up to you and start attacking. Humans use cover, move and shoot, some run up with melee, some throw grenades, some wear armor, some don't. If a harder difficulty made them better shots, or gave them better equipment (ie an excuse for more hp = better armor), or increased their numbers (I guess the game engine can't handle that) then I'd be all for it. But if it's just costing me more ammo then I'm not so interested. Maybe if it didn't also affect the giant rads or other creatures which are already kinda tough.

I play on normal hardcoe at the moment, and I may move it up to hard. But I try to make it harder myself. 2 of my characters have toughness and str under 5, and I tend to not wear armor, it depends. That makes it hard, wearing a suit. And, as I said above, wearing clothing provides a reason for opponents to do more damage - not just because it's on a harder setting.

that's not the toughest, there are plenty of mods there that makes, e.g., stimpacks weigh 999 lbs, enemies with 5x HP, player gets killed just leaving doc mitchell's house... and if there aren't those mods, I'll make them.

I said "Realism mods" not "Stupid mods"

Normal.

I really hate struggling for every inch of ground in a video game.

I play hardcoe mode and, I think, Normal difficulty.
It's just not any fun for me to keep dying over and over because one way is "off limits" because a bunch of stupid Cazadors are there.
I should be able to shoot a bug out of the sky with a couple rifle rounds, even at the lower levels, plain and simple.
It's just not any fun if freaking Gecko's are "immortal."

Very Hard. It's a cake walk on anything else and still easy if you abuse sniper rifle and or ballistic fist.

Nothing hardcoe about hardcoe mode, the only difficulty increase is with followers being able to die. Other than that you just have to make a lot more trips to sell and restock. Nothing challenging in that.

It lets people roleplay a bit more,

As someone who thought that Normal was difficult enough in Fallout 3, and who felt that Normal in FO:NV was quite a bit harder than that........ nah, I'll stick with Normal, thanks. The wasteland felt plenty dangerous. :shrug:

Aye. I put my ego aside when I play games and tend to play on easy. I can focus more on role playing that way as I don't have to worry about min/max issues or power gaming. I can just do what I want. Of course this is game play not the hardcoe mode - which is fun for RP reasons. So hardcode (for a touch more realism) and easy mode so I can play a character with whatever armor/weapons, perks, skills I want without having it decided by combat requirements.

I play games for fun, not for a huge challenge and constant reloads, but I like survival stuff (added mods to Morrowind, Oblivion, and FO3 to add the need to sleep, drink, and eat).

So I play on Normal/hardcoe, and put the difficulty down to Very Easy if need be! I like roleplaying, not so keen on dying frequently.