So what do you guys think of the new hardcoe mode?

I've only been playing for a few hours so I'm not really in a position to judge but so far I've hardly noticed it. On one hand this is a good thing, I was concerned that the food, water, and sleep requirements would be an annoyance - I'm not here to play the Sims. On the other hand it hasn't made the game more difficult or appreciably more realistic. I like that healing takes time and I like that ammo has weight however if I'm required to eat, drink, and sleep for "realism" shouldn't realistic amounts be required? It's better than some games, I remember the food requirement for Arx Fatalis was something like one piece of food a day or something equally silly. I'm also glad it isn't biased the other direction where if you don't have a hearty breakfast after your eight hours of beauty sleep you become cranky and take a penalty to your speech checks.

I am early in as well, playing hardcoe hard. Combat can be somewhat challenging if you just rambo rush in, but thats more a function of the hard mode. Relative to hardcoe .... initially appears like it will be pretty easy. That vault 13 canteen needs to be tossed as it gives you endless water and slow hp regen. There seems to be quite a bit of fresh water about and its pretty easy to stay fed with even low survival skills. That said, I play it more for the added detail as opposed to something that becomes very difficult. There are MANY ways to reduce the need to sleep and keep yourself watered and fed, along with getting hps back. Maybe it will get harder later.

Ive been playing for about 15 hours, and so far hardcoe has made almost no difference for me. The food/sleep/water requirements just take way too long to actually have a serious effect on you, and simply having a couple bottles of water and a couple food items on you are all you need.

The healing aspect of HC is the only area in which its even noticeable. Slow healing stimpacks CAN be a problem, but I have yet to die because of them. If I'm in that bad of fight, I just use them before I would have used them in non-HC mode... that way they are healing as my health is going down. If you wait till you absolutely have to use a stim... you might have some issues. Injured limbs can also be a pain in the ass since theres nothing you can do about them other then see a doctor or use a doctors bag. However, pretty quickly money becomes all but useless and buying a few doctors bags isn't an issue. Related to both health and limbs is the lack of healing while sleeping. Like the rest of HC, this CAN be a problem if you don't keep yourself well supplied with stims... but if you at all think about it, its not an issue.

Overall, I think its comical that the game recommends for you to play without hardcoe. Doing so implies that it adds an extremely difficult layer to the game... and that's simply not the case. All it does is add a bit more realism to the game... which is good. But make the game harder? No, not at all.