Hey all, I assume most people are probably on the default difficulty/normal, but I wanted to see if anyone has given Survivalist a shot. I began the game on this mode, having just finished Witcher 3 on Death March and loving it. But after roughly 15 or so hours I've decided to turn it down. I don't think Bethesda does a great job with difficulty balancing (their last several games have been like this); playing on Survivalist means dying in just a few hits while all of your opponents take several clips to down. I'm talking 5-6 shots from a fully upgraded combat shotgun to the head to kill. It's nuts! I like struggling to maintain a good supply of ammo, but from my experience Survivalist discourages exploration because I end up using all of my ammo in a single firefight (and enemies are so finicky with stealth on Survivalist that so far it's not even viable).

I'm gonna try switching my playthrough to easy or normal but wear normal clothes instead of armor, so I can maybe preserve the danger of combat without having to deal with superpowered opponents. Is anyone still sticking with Survivalist or another hard mode? What's your experience been like?

I went through it once on normal. Starting my second play-through on easy just because the amount of bulletsponge just by default is was pretty tedious. I found myself mostly annoyed by a lot of the combat engagements, which isn't good. And the legendary drops didn't really seem to be all that great to balance it out, personally. I wish there was more options for the difficulty besides just "moar bulets." I'm sure modders will take care of that eventually though.

And same thing with the clothing. They add cloth physics to the outfits that I never wore because the protection was garbage and it wouldn't layer with the other armor bits.

Never had great time with bethesda's hard modes because as you said, they just turn enemies into bullet sponges. I feel like Survivalist was a lot better in New Vegas, but I havent played that in a while.

I'm playing through on survivalist. Eh, I probably wouldn't recommend it. It doesn't add any meaningful challenge - it just means you get one-shotted by tons of stuff and you end up cheesing most of the enemies.

I started on Normal because I heard that the beginning was difficult from somewhere, not sure where. I managed to get through the first fight where you have the power armor with barely a scratch (although some wonky Fallout-style luck came into play, but still). I would consider bumping it up to hard at this point.

Survivalist didn't sound like it was worth the hassle. I like playing games where I am challenged, but I don't like being super frustrated. Bethesda seems to conflate the two, at least imho.

Im playing on hard.I would say its the perfect balance between challenge and fun,so i recommend it.

Is the difficulty still just making enemy damage higher and player damage lower?

I'm playing on hard and I think it's reasonably challenging. Even on hard the enemies are a little too bullet-spongey for my taste, so I can't imagine playing this on a harder difficulty, especially survival. In fact, I'm sort of considering lowering the difficulty to normal to see if it's more enjoyable.

I started it on Very Hard. It's fine for fighting humans, but anything bulkier will seriously eat bullet after bullet and not die, reloading at least once per enemy. I found Hard to be the sweet spot, it forces you to be more careful but doesn't detract from exploration. Difficulty settings in Bethesda games have always been boring, it's always "enemies do more damage and take less damage by x%". The AI doesn't get smarter or use different tactics, they just kill you in fewer hits.

Hard

I got excited when I saw "survival" and had assumed that Bethesda picked up on Obsidian's Hardcore mode for Fallout: New Vegas. So i'm playing through on that. Combat is nice, and quite scary which is great. Ghouls eat my bullets like a fat kid in front of the dessert table at Golden Corral, and best of all I alway seem to encounter them in packs. Really adds to the tension I guess.

I dunno maybe i'm a glutton for punishment and enjoy these super hard difficulties in these kind of games..

I started out on normal and thought it was to easy, so am now playing on hard.

The only thing that can be a real son of a bitch now are some legendary enemies, deathclaws (because fuck them) and boss enemies.

What ever default is, normal I would assume. And surprisingly I've died a bunch. Getting myself into situations early on that I probably shouldn't be in at a low level with bad equipment.

I didn't even know there were difficulty settings I just pushed start New Game and it loaded right into the game. Do they affect trophy/achievements?

There are difficulties?! This is the first I've heard of it. I guess I'm on the default, whatever that is.

Started on Normal, then took it down to Easy. I'm there for the world and quests, not really interested in the combat and resource management.

They don't.

Survival mode baaaaabbby. I have the most fun when Fallout is at it's hardest.

Just normal. I don't really come to these games for the combat as much as i do the exploration

Going normal here...full time adult job, don't have time for anything more difficult. Going to be hard enough finishing another long open world game so shortly after MGSV.

Hard seems to be the right balance between challenge and enemy bullet sponges. Makes the stealth viable since you can still 1HKO enemies if you spec right and get a good rifle.

I'm on Normal, might turn it up to hard next time around. It's working fine for me, I don't die much, but I don't like to die.

Very Easy because I'm shit at fallout but enjoy the atmosphere ^.^

I'm playing on hard and enjoying it. raiders, molerats, radroaches, and wild mongrels seem to have more of a bite to them but are still wholly manageable even in groups. It makes the other enemies in the game such as mirelurks and deathclaws something to be incredibly weary of. I was exploring the river near Vault 111 and got jumped by some mirelurks and barely got away with my life, and the one Mr.Gutsy I fought was a hard won battle. Packs of feral ghouls are also absolutely terrifying since they do enough damage now that dealing with a small group of them now is a major concern.

I love it.

I think I eventually moved it to easy on Fallout 3 because at some point radscorpions were ubiquitous and were absorbing all my damn ammo. It just wasn't fun fighting the enemies like that. I'd rather a hard mode be more about skill and forethought than patience. I'd honestly rather a game be more about killing me over and over again than me being strong but it just taking forever to kill enemies, if that makes sense.

I'm on normal on Fallout 4 and it feels okay for now. The Deathclaw fight was a little tiresome, but I managed to blow up one of the cars next to him and that sped things along. I have no shame dropping that difficulty down if it quits being fun for me.

Hard. It's a sufficent challenge for me.

Normal, like any normal dude. I just want to experience the story/stories. The combat is hard enough with all the jank on Xbox One.

I played Fallout 3 and NV on Very Hard, so I continued that here, as well. I haven't gotten super far, but so far it's provided me a nice challenge and has made some of the bigger fights I've been in very intense and rewarding. I always found this difficulty to provide me the kind of experience I want from these games.

Alright, I've been playing on Hard for a bit and like several people said it feels like a good balance. I'm wearing a trench coat so my only defense comes from the level two endurance perk that I have. Need to be careful but if I land good shots enemies will go down nicely (haven't fought any Super Mutants on hard yet though).

You change it in gameplay settings after you start the game. And nope, no difficulty achievements/trophies.

I am just playing it on normal. I don't get the urge to be super challenged when I play a Fallout game, I just like experiencing all of the things in it.

I'm playing on survival and I've had very few issues actually. I even managed to survive getting jumped by skull mirelurk hunters, of which one was legendary. Super Mutants are generally quite easy, but the legendary ones can be very, very difficult. The only real issue is explosives which instakill you almost guaranteed. I also met a legendary deathclaw which was a kitefest but a fun challenge as I could only survive two hits.

Then again, I do a LOT of drugs, which increases damage by an incredible amount. I have built for rifles/shotguns as well and do quite a lot of damage. I really don't feel like enemies are bullet sponges however, even normal Super Mutants that are presumably at or below my level (18) go down in 4-5 shots with my hunting rifle (80 damage unbuffed). With Psycho it's like 2-3, and add Jet to that and you can kill a lot of people in a very short amount of time.

I generally just use a lot of drugs, explosives and aggression and it working a hell of a lot better then I expected. Wearing combat armor, got quite a bit of END and PER.

For me, the changes to how power armor works complicates matters a great deal.

Like On normal/hard (forget which I'm on) WIthout power armor, I get creamed by guys way above my level..with it I am mowing them down with no trouble at all.

I feel like if I used the console to cheat away the limited usage item (again name escapes me) that I could bump the difficulty up to survivalist, and just roll out in power armor all the time and be perfectly fine? Like maybe because my lucks at 10 my ammo issues are non-existent..but I've got literally 2k bullets among my various guns..and I've played maybe 8 hours? Completed 3 whole quests aside from the starter and cleared out, now, a single "dungeon"..which was really just a location I am sure ties to some late game quest given I did it in power armor..making all those skull next to their name enemies I fought not be able to kill me faster then my healing/instant death crits to the head popped them.

I'm not sure how to think of this games combat. I don't feel like I built a combat ready character. Like I went out of my way not too. 10 luck and poor to average everything else. I've spent 2 whole level up points on perks, one to get another crit-bar and one on the perk you get for having a 10 luck (cause I figured, wth). The first is useful, the second I've only seen trigger once in the..well at least 500+ shots taken at me.

Only then I realized to make my normal FO character (100 gun, speach, lockpick, science) I'd need to max two stats and spend 6 points on the needed perks. Well, I'm lvl 9, almost all the rest of my points got dumped into a starting charisma of 3..

Yet go back and note I said I took on what must have been latter game content well before I should have? All due to power armor. Its causes a massive drop in difficulty.

Hard but also but basically all of initial perk points into Charisma and Intelligence which makes fighting a bit harder

Survivalist mode here. It's not a walk in the park and you really feel the bite when you encounter enemies that have the red skull next to their name...

I like it because it really makes the game a challenge and you basically cannot rely on healing during combat. Stimpacks are so easy to collect, manufacture and hoard that otherwise combat is just about pressing the stimpack hotkey every time it gets a little rough. This way you have to plan your fights AND plan your retreats to have time to heal if things go rough.

I believe Survivalist is just the very hard more with the healing time nerf added.

I've been playing on Survival and i'm level 16. It has been pretty smooth sailing, except enemies who throw grenades or molotovs can be real pain in the ass, because those are insta kill.

Anyone noticed that there are less, but tougher enemies on Survival? After watching the Quick Look i noticed that Jeff is running to enemies constantly, but i only see them rarely.

I'm playing on normal is it's already a big bummer in spots. Seemingly everywhere I go I end up finding a skull-tagged enemy who 1 or 2 shots me.

I can't even imagine this being fun in a harder difficulty.

Normal. I'm finding Fallout 4 to be very difficult.

I also think I may not understand how the armor system works.

Very hard. I agree with how the harder difficulties in Bethesda games are poorly implemented. It's just no fun when every enemy is a massive bullet sponge. Can't wait for a mod where both the player and enemies go down fast. Can't remember the names of the mods for New Vegas and Skyrim which did this, but both of those made the games much more enjoyable for me.

The options seem to be either too easy or annoying and tedious. So I just played most of it on hard and that was alright.

I'm playing on hard. Smaller engagements early in the game, and the Corvega plant mission, felt okay as long as I at least got the first shot off while undetected, for 2X sneak damage.

Thanks to Bethesda AI, you can pop someone's head off and lean back behind the wall, friends of the diseased will attribute their sudden lack of life and head as "too much Jet." Lean back out and pop another, etc.

This approach was surprisingly fun in the mission set-piece areas, but full on battles out in the wild can get rather tedious with how bullet sponge-y the bigger enemies are, plus the lack of cover makes it really hard to play without a companion to pull most of the aggro. When playing the more involved missions on the other hand, bringing along a companion is a fatal mistake. They run headfirst into traps and destroy any chance of staying undetected.

I'm considering lowering the difficulty for now, at least until someone can hobble together a mod where an increase in difficulty doesn't just mean an increase in enemy health + chance of legendary enemies.

I'm on Normal difficulty. I like the idea of Survival difficulty and may well switch my lvl 20+ characters over to it, but what time I did play on Survival with a fresh character just felt like too much. It makes me think hard/very hard could well be the sweet spot.

Seems like the right challenge curve for this game is to start on hard, when you get enough bullets/upgraded guns/gun perks you move to very hard then you move to survivalist.

Normal because I don't really want games like this to be too difficult. Having put some points into the rifles perk has helped a lot in terms of taking down enemies. I guess I am bad at cover (even with the limited peeking system) because I need to stimpack pretty much every encounter.

Also one location in particular was and still kinda is a pain in the ass: Saugus Iron Works. Fuck Flamethrowers.

Are people playing on the harder difficulties loading quicksaves a lot? I've made an effort not to for quest related stuff that goes bad but I think I would need it to get out of difficult combat situations if the game were much harder for me.

Hard seems perfect for me so far.

I do die a bunch but that's what I'm looking for.

Normal, and not moving it from there. It doesn't seem like the game was designed with anything else in mind. I don't play Fallout games for the difficulty, and leveling up a certain way, picking specific skills all with the goal of getting a character overpowered in one area (unarmed in my case) seems totally arbitrary if I'm going to just mess with a menu to give the enemies more or less damage/hit points anyway.

Playing on normal right now since Bethesda is bad at creating actual difficulty in their games. But at the moment with normal I'm breezing through to many battles where I feel I shouldn't (including some Deathclaws) and I might bump it up to hard since everyone here says its the sweet spot.

I bumped up to hard a couple hours in and am now thinking about bumping it up again. Weapon perks get pretty OP higher up.