Well, with the DT in the game, looks like OP wont be wearing Power Armor.

I totaly disagree. With no challenge you might as well watch a movie instead.

I dont mind all the catering to casuals. More money for them, more games for me. But the thoughtless difficulty levels are driving me nuts. Its like their not even trying. Very hard should be very hard. Is that to much to ask for 60 bucks? Its even more insulting with names like "nightmare" and "diety". I realy had hoped demons souls success would have inspired some other game companies on how to make difficulty levels challenging, but not cheap.

Just saying that there are steps one can take to make the game more challenging without demanding the devs create a game according to your personal specifications. Last week there was a thread about how people limited themselves to three or four weapons instead of carrying the optimal weapon for every possible tactical situation. Thus the game is more challenging without requiring any mods or patches

Like I said, everyone is different. I get really, REALLY tired of just going around killing things. If a game doesn't at least occasionally make me think or force me to learn something to succeed I get really bored, really fast. There are a zillion other games out there that just give me targets to shoot. I don't need more of them. My twitch action skills are already good...don't need more target practice.

So, for you too much challenge is boring, but for me a lack of challenge is boring. Unless the game is nearly impossible I enjoy being given obstacles to overcome. I've played enough games in my life (been a gamer for nearly 26 years) that I've started seeing the majority of games on the market as "just more of the same junk." If there's nothing for me to figure out then there's no point in playing, because I've probably played 10 other games just like it and I don't need to play it again.

Like I said, everyone is different. There's no right or wrong.


Hehe...yeah, there were some parts of Fallout 2 that were pretty challenging. I remember Enclave patrols killing off all or most of my party before I even had a chance to shoot. Good times.


Yes yes...we'll just play around all of every game's shortcomings. That way the developers don't have to put any thought into game balance or pacing and the players can do all of that work themselves. Thanks! That's great! We don't even need difficulty settings now.

Holy crap, double rainbow!!! *points*

man i loved FO3 with a passion, only thing i hated was when you go very far in the game and you make a small jump, but you miss and fall into a crack or a hole you get stuckj in and cant get out, then you have to start over from last save

Limiting oneself is allways a possibility regardless of the games initial level of challenge (balanced gameplay is not always there). It's all fine and dandy if that's the way you want to play, but it is also an unneeded out-of-game chore that should not be required from everyone by default. There are difficultysettings and general gameplaybalance that should handle that side of the gameplay.

exactly like something i could say where i would understand his argument is if i was talking about how you could save and reset to win at casinos

You should check out Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. Free Roguelike RPG, pretty darn difficult.

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Also, for those who argue against selfgimping - I agree it can be a mask for bad game design, but if that's the single stumbling block you might as well give it a shot. If you wanted in FO2 you could easily get the car and power armor in your first two hours of gameplay - is avoiding this self-gimping, or just not ruining the game for yourself?

Is refraining from using the most powerful items in the game really that onerous?

I agree

I see your point (as well as The Revenginator's), but I'm not even talking about simple things like, "don't use this or that weapon." I'm talking about basics, like the fact that you can stop combat and use your inventory at will, that without thinking about it you could create a character that can one-shot most enemies with even mediocre weapons, etc. Even if I was 100% cool with self-gimping (I'm only about 25% ok with it ), it would get to a point that it's just too much work to keep track of all of the rules you've set for yourself. I've absolutely self-gimped in some games and didn't mind so much, but IMO Fallout 3 was borderline broken game-balance-wise after level 15 or so.

Sure, there were bullet sponges (which really aren't a lot of fun), but there weren't very many things that were actually a threat to the player character...even if you weren't power-gaming your level-up choices.

For me it depends on the game and the difficulty sliding. For example in Mass Effect 1 going from normal to hard becomes a pain as some side missions are simply undoable and I have to go back to normal to finish. Don't even get me started on insanity and hardcoe modes. IN ME2 its even harder I'm barely started a game on insanity and I'm dying 20 times on every fight. There's a difference between being challenged for funs sake and wanting to kill someone.

Absolutely. All I'm saying is that if I can run through the game on auto-pilot and it barely makes me sweat I'll get bored. I really don't mind dying a few times while I try to figure out how to get past something. That said, if I'm really trying and I can't get past some part of a game after 3-5 tries it stops being fun.

I wouldn't say onerous, but I stand behind my statement. It's unneeded - and for some players, unwanted. Why should the gamer need to avoid what the game has to offer in order to achieve a balanced experience? It should not be the players job to create the balance and challenge accordingly, but the games.

Have you played any of the 3D Ninja Gaiden games? Or Demon's Souls on the PS3? They're the hardest games I've played, they'd probably do it for you lol.

I'm sort of in the middle when it comes to game difficulty. It just depends what I feel like playing. Sometimes I feel like a challenge, which is why I actually went through with completing both Mass Effects on Insanity lol. Other times I want to just run through games on autopilot.

I don't know which way I'll be playing New Vegas.. All I know is that I will be playing it with hardcoe mode on, that's a must as far as I'm concerned.

I gotta be honest I don't often see the point of these chats. A well rounded discussion that is civilized is great and can be a lot of fun, but on the internet it too often boils down to "I'm right and the rest of you svck" type of things. Can't we just agree that we're a very diverse bunch, we have a lot of differences in our preferences and opinions on things and that they're just that, opinions? We will agree or disagree and thats fine, I've seen many such conversations that went well, but most of the time it doesn't go that way.

As for purposely using lesser stuff I used the Sheriff's duster and then the regulator duster the entire game and even the 10mm pistol, why, because it was part of my character. It could have been more challenging but if every enemy I encountered was a Talon Company Mercenary band then I'm liable to get a little annoyed after a while.

I for one like to simply enjoy a game for awhile, then increase the difficulty or play through again on a harder difficulty If i'm still up to playing it
(alot of games I rent I don't enjoy enough to play through again though, Fallout is one of the few games I have ever replayed more than twice though)

I never played the original Fallouts, but from what I've heard the Power Armor then was also over-powered, again I could be wrong but I think this same problem did actually persist in the previous fallout games as well. There came a point where you became just too powerful.

Thankfully I don't use Power Armor, though I'm pretty powerful even though I'm using Merc trouble Maker Armor, I still get challenge and excitement

You can get a bit overpowered in Fallout 1 after you get the power armor...but not so much in Fallout 2. Even with uber gear the Enclave or BoS could do some serious damage to you in Fallout 2.

i like demon souls alot i always felt that ninja gaiden just felt downright cheap when doing some of the things (mainly the bosses which in the only way you can beat them without frustration was to cheap then out with the A+Y move

yeah and even then the power armor was EXTREMLY rare unless you knew exactly where to go and do in the game unlike FO 3 where just walking 3 hours into the main story they hand you power armor.

I would disagree with you on that point too, the majority of games use a challenge/reward system so you have a sense of accomplishment. If you have no challenge you take the g out of rpg and you may as well be playing the Sims.

Mmmm... Lincoln's Repeater...

Yep. I'm constantly amazed at how much medical supplies and ammo I'm finding. I love exploring but it loses all meaning, because I dont need the caps or the ammo or the supplies. So why am I bothering. That balance is just so important and so few games get it right. But F3 is particularly bad. It seems to have been aimed at people who do the bare minimum exploring and who don't want anything to be particularly difficult. They completely squandered the survival element and you would think that would be an integral part of a post apocalyptic RPG. With the exception of the first few levels F3 misses it completely.

I do find the combat challenging enough because I don't wear power armour. I wear merc armour because I look cool. I'd get my head ripped off by every death claw (and yao gui for that matter if I didn't have Animal Friend) I came across and every Talon company merc ambush if it weren't for my alien blaster. I kind of regret picking that up.

I hope Vegas will be better and balance that all much better but it will probably reach a point where you get the same thing; too many caps, too much ammo/stimpaks and too powerful. They just can't balance it for every taste unless they have a setting in the options that allows you to set the amount of loot and caps you find on bodies and in containers (something like scarce, normal and plentiful), and also how much XP you get for things.

Obsidian seems to be cottened on to the fact that the more Options the better, but I don't think they've taken it that far.

I agree with pretty much everything you said. At the end of my first play through i had just about 60,000 caps and untold hordes of ammo and even though i liked exploring it is much less enjoyable to explore just for the sake of exploring. That is one of the things that really makes mods great though.