i didnt know they had rpg for the atari back then i thought it was frogger and astroids. and i agree but would you try to sell a business suit to a construction worker? teenagers are 70% of gaming industry income so you have to tailor your product to the majority of your customers. you cant make everyone happy so you try to please aas many as you can

hardcoe didn't feel at all hard for the most part - drinking water, eating food, the odd atomic cocktail for sleep dep, it was never an effort and I never felt "caught short" - in fact towards the end, those things no longer felt like immersion or difficulty, they became irritations.

What I do like about hardcoe, and never get "boring" - was the way stimpacks/health/doctor's bags/crippled limbs worked. Those things never felt like a mere irritation that got boring, but felt to genuinely make the game just that teensy little bit harder than it would have otherwise been.

I'm on the fence about ammo weight. I think it's probably a good thing. Made you have to micromanage your inventory a little more, but again, toward the end, it approached being an irritation rather than an immersion.

I'd be tempted to play a mod that got rid of the dull sleep dep/dehydration/hunger, but made the heal-over-time for everything about 50% less effective.

My first run was on Normal hardcoe. It started out fun, but felt more like a nuisance by the end. Mostly trying to keep companions alive. I'm playing without hardcoe now and I'm actually exploring much more (leading me to have to survive in different ways). I'm honestly finding it more fun. Then again, I really don't play much. If I was unemployed again I'd probably love the hell out of hardcoe. Just my personal tastes though.

hardcoe felt pointless to me.

Sure it adds dehydration and a few other things but it didnt change the gameplay enough for me warrant playing again on hardcoe. From what i played it was just an annoyance from beginning to end. oh getting thirty just pop water in your mouth getting hungry..pull up the menu again and eat something... It never really added to the experience, if anything it tok away from the experience forcing you to always pull up your menu if you didnt have a food item bound to one of the 1-8 keys.

If they really wanted to get me more immersed they shoulda expanded the crafting like what you can make with at the benches, make those [censored]in tanned hides worth a damn, give it a purpose, let us make badass armor you can only get from skinning a deathclaws hide or some [censored]. water bottles...why does the bottles from purified and dirty water dissappear? why cant i take that same bottle go over to that water source and refill my bottle, does my character eat the [censored] glass bottle? i mean wtf. I wanted to make a tanned fire gecko suit with +5 stealth, i mean something..why cant i break down HP and AP ammo? why cant i make HP or AP ammo? why does the .50bmg only get match grade ammo, why cant the .308 or 5.56 get it as well?

there are so many things they coulda expended upon in the game but left blank...why did they leave so much out?

Only difference with harcore mode enabled, is the lack of caps you make from selling food/water.

Playing hardcoe w. the mod Hardercorepack, makes it alot more interesting.

hardcoe would've been much better if it also made ammo, meds and food scarce, and maybe traders a little harsher.

Agreed. The Stimpack and Doctors Bag changes should have been changes made to the core game also.

hardcoe mode should have added weight to all chems and medicine (no longer walking around with 200 Stimpacks, 30 Super Stimpacks, 30 RadAway, etc).

*double post*

my first playthrough was on normal difficulty with hardcoe enabled. played about 60 hours before beating the game. no companions (always hated escort quests). i must say the only noticeable issue was having to lug about 50 pounds of food and water. with high survival skill i was eating for health regen, water i hotkeyed so when the h20 light popped up i just tapped 8 and was done with it. nuka cola was my bedroll. did hardcoe mode add a level of difficulty? a slight one at best. maybe they should of called it realism mode instead

Picked up NV a few days back and just put it straight to hardcoe mode. Really love that I can't go "O [censored]e I'm in trouble, lets pop 5 stimpaks", it makes it more interesting when you gotta get away from damage for a bit while you're healing up.

hardcoe mode is really the way it's meant to be played.

Edit: the only real problem with hardcoe mode is hauling around the 5 million bullets for the Assault Carbine, always run out 'em straight out of Vegas

lol, kids who doesn't know you can play RPG without an electronic platform.....

You must have avoided Fallout 3, Fallout Tactics, Fallot 2, and Fallout 1 then.

hardcoe mode is merely a bonus to the immersion of the game, I do not feel I am missing in having to compensate for my physiological issues but that is simply my opinion. There is the Sims for that.

Reno

You obviously didn't get the mods for Fallout 2 then. Playing without hardcoe mode on would just make this game too easy just like any other "action" game. At least hardcoe mode gives me the illusion of actually role playing my character.

Really? It was pretty much exactly what I expected. I didn't notice anyone hyping that it would be extremely hard.

IMHO, hardcoe mode is what the normal game should have been more like.

Really, I was under the impression that the average gamer age was around 35. Yes, the thirties. Then again, I don't have a reference to give you, but I found this info interesting, since computer games have been around for a while now. Kids in the 80's grew up and continued to play. Maybe it's just that the style of games the "old folk" play is different. But, then, I'm 33 and play Fallout, Mafia, Max Payne, Oblivion, Morrowind and such... and I'm a girl too... I'm not representative I know.

As for hardcoe, when I was asked by the game if I wanted to play this mode, I didn't hesitate, since most of the mods I'll be adding will be to reproduce such effects. I'm only on my first playthrough and I don't think I'll go back without it.

hardcoe hardcoe mode please. Something actually challenging.

To be perfectly honest its not even that much harder, its just an annoyance, Im doing it for the achivement and them I'm going back to normal mode, Not being able to heal crippled limbs is a pain, so is carrying food for that matter.

Then that would make it "harder". lulz

I love how a lot of people are saying "it doesn't make the game harder, just annoying" so that they can justify themselves in not having to do it because they "can't" handle it.

I think enemies killing me in one hit is annoying but that doesn't mean they're not more difficult to kill.

Do people actually think hardcoe mode is difficult? I've already beaten the game in hardcoe on hard, and I didn't find it difficult at all. In fact, I found that it put the game in a whole new light. I plan to play every one of my playthroughs in hardcoe, as in my opinion it makes the game far better. The only thing that made the game even a little more difficult was being unable to heal your limbs with stimpaks, but even that grievance is settled once you start frequently finding hydra and Doctor's bags. I didn't have a problem with drinking occasionally, as all it entails is carrying around a couple of dirty waters with you. Even if you don't, water can often be found on the bodies of fiends and other enemies, as well as sources such as small ponds, bathrooms, and water towers. OP, I really didn't understand a lot of your post; could you clarify what you mean about needing a high speech? I don't see what effect hardcoe mode would have on that, and I think that applies to the game in general, no matter what mode you play on.

It is sort of a misnamed part of the game, in a broad sense people are viewing it as Very Easy-Easy-Normal-Hard-Very Hard-hardcoe. This is the impression from the people who are complaining of it too hard, or too easy - it is not my opinion, just a gathering from the forums. Interestingly those who prefer its uniqueness and immersion approach it from the angle of the genre, which is probably the best angle. I think its definition does not help us in understanding its purpose, whether it is to improve that 'lone wanderer' feeling, or it is to increase the difficulty of the game by other methods - or both.

Simply a ponder.

Reno

The only part of it that is difficult is the heal over time and finding a doctor with your first character if you killed Mitchell and are vilified with PG's.
Other than that it's pretty much cake-walk.
I would love it if they added hardcoe Mode +1 which I've suggested before.
That would raise the difficulty at least a notch or two.

Mmm. The only part that gave me trouble was taking small frame and then taking out Goodsprings. After I found a second doctor, though, things went back to easy. The other troublesome part was companions dying, but I quickly realized it was more trouble then it was worth to take them around hardcoe-y and went at it alone. Other then those two issues, I didn't find hardcoe very difficult- and I promise, I'm not usually the sort of person to go to gaming boards and do that snitty 'Well, Iiiiii thought it was easy' deal some people do. It's cool to have found it difficult. But the hunger, thirst, and sleep were so easy to get through I was a bit disappointed, and things like the ammo boxes didn't cause too much trouble, either.

Different strokes for different folks and all that, I guess.

Are we playing the same game?I thought HC was no more challenging than standard outside of stimpaks not healing limbs.