If Fallout: New Vegas was developed by Bethesda

[Makta]

Rad scorpions and nighkins.
or super mutant master at jack rabbit spring.
I can't kill the mutant master but I can shoot thier hand and let them drop their weapon. and I get thier weapon then avenge will start.

Normal radscorpions are nothing special but if you are hunting the big ones early on for some reason you may need some AP rounds.. And a better gun.

What difficulty do you usually play at?

I found the Service Rifle with AP ammo very helpful against the Legion assassins. Granted, they will only come after you if you get your rep way down that early in the game, by killing the Legionnaires in Nipton for example. This is on Very Hard.

But at that point of the game, you get better and improve your equipment rather rapidly. I didn't use the Service Rifle for long before I picked up That Gun, which I also mainly had as a side arm with AP ammo for assassins.

The point is that it's pretty dependant on how you play, where you go and what you do at which level. You can definitely circumvent the use of different ammo types, at least on other difficulties than Very Hard, but there's no denying that they can also be very useful for different situations.

I'm always playing on the hardest difficulty unless it is some kind of game i never tried before.
And the leg's in Nipton are normal ones so even the service rifle will make short work of them!


Actually when i think about it the only weapon i use other rounds for is the AM with handloaded rounds for overkill in late game or with the GRA i may use explosive rounds but that is not a common thing.

 

[woo1108]

what's the better gun?
anti-material rifle's damage is good but it's too heavy and it's ammo is heavy too. and it's DPS is weak.
lightmechinegun's DPS is high but uses tons of ammo and it's damage isn't that good.
not only damage is important but also for DPS.
you can't kill horde of cazadors with anti-material rifle.
but with 9mm SMG with JHP of HP it would be much better.

Service rifle is actually good weapon if fully modified+use perk grant.
it's quite accurate, fast, have enough damage to kill critters.
with AP, it is possible to kill strong enemies like deathclaw(aim at eye and keep distance.), giant rad scorpion.

 

[Makta]

what's the better gun?
anti-material rifle's damage is good but it's too heavy and it's ammo is heavy too. and it's DPS is weak.
lightmechinegun's DPS is high but uses tons of ammo and it's damage isn't that good.
not only damage is important but also for DPS.
you can't kill horde of cazadors with anti-material rifle.
but with 9mm SMG with JHP of HP it would be much better.

Service rifle is actually good weapon if fully modified+use perk grant.
it's quite accurate, fast, have enough damage to kill critters.
with AP, it is possible to kill strong enemies like deathclaw(aim at eye and keep distance.), giant rad scorpion.

Thats why you use 2-3 weapons. 1 machinegun/semi auto rifle/shotgun for cazadors and minor crap. 1 sniper for dangerous enemies/suprice and brush/medicine stick for anything tough that didn't die by your sniper.

Early on you have lucky for high damage and pretty much any weapon for trah enemies. Also you can get a hunting rifle early and it has 7th highest damage for any rifle out there.

 

[aenemic]

I'm always playing on the hardest difficulty unless it is some kind of game i never tried before.
And the leg's in Nipton are normal ones so even the service rifle will make short work of them!

I didn't mean those in particular, they are easy to kill. But if you kill them when you arrive at Nipton at a low level, you will get assassins after you that are pretty tough for your level. That's when I found AP rounds useful. Same with giant radscorpions around the first half of the game.

 

[SnapSlav]

Hmmm, I personally never looked at difficulty from the perspective of "exaggerating the differences in ammo types". Sounds like an intriguing idea. I just always saw it from the outlook of "instead of ACTUALLY making things difficult, just throw in more HP and DMG and make things more tedious".

That being said, I usually adjusted my difficulty, depending on the situation. Starting out the game, taking on those Powder Gangers? VERY HARD!!!! The game's starting enemies are just embarrassingly weak, so they need all the help they can get to pose any enjoyable challenge. Moving on, tackling The Divide and its Marked Men inhabitants? LOWER THE DIFFICULTY!!! It's like night and day; as a "response" to the difficulty, DLC enemies just have unreasonably high stats (not to mention all the scripting designed to negate player abilities like Sneak) so playing that at high difficulties is just irritating, not challenging. EpicNameBro made an awesome video about the subject of what is and isn't difficulty, I swear, but I could never seem to find it once I actually wanted to use it to recall important points. But suffice it to say, I wholeheartedly agreed with his assertion that more HP just means doing the same thing for longer, and that's just trying on your patience, it isn't really testing you. Ultimately, without a complete AI routine overhaul, I could never perceive the game as "hard", no matter how much HP you give enemies.

 

[aenemic]

Hmmm, I personally never looked at difficulty from the perspective of "exaggerating the differences in ammo types". Sounds like an intriguing idea. I just always saw it from the outlook of "instead of ACTUALLY making things difficult, just throw in more HP and DMG and make things more tedious".

That being said, I usually adjusted my difficulty, depending on the situation. Starting out the game, taking on those Powder Gangers? VERY HARD!!!! The game's starting enemies are just embarrassingly weak, so they need all the help they can get to pose any enjoyable challenge. Moving on, tackling The Divide and its Marked Men inhabitants? LOWER THE DIFFICULTY!!! It's like night and day; as a "response" to the difficulty, DLC enemies just have unreasonably high stats (not to mention all the scripting designed to negate player abilities like Sneak) so playing that at high difficulties is just irritating, not challenging. EpicNameBro made an awesome video about the subject of what is and isn't difficulty, I swear, but I could never seem to find it once I actually wanted to use it to recall important points. But suffice it to say, I wholeheartedly agreed with his assertion that more HP just means doing the same thing for longer, and that's just trying on your patience, it isn't really testing you. Ultimately, without a complete AI routine overhaul, I could never perceive the game as "hard", no matter how much HP you give enemies.

While I in whole agree with you, I wouldm't say that it's as simple as "big HP pool = tedious, not hard". It depends on a lot more than that. If you do not take much damage yourself, and you can without fear of failing just damage the enemy until it's dead, then yes, that's more tedious than challenging. But knowing that you will die in 1-2 hits, and the fight will take a while, then that's a perfectly good challenge in my opinion. Obviously this depends on other things at that, such as enemy AI, resources such as ammo and healing available and so on.

But take Dark Souls for example. I think that game is nearly perfect when it comes to difficulty. It is really hard the first time you play it, and can become pretty easy when you learn how combat works, how the enemies and bosses work, where to find the good stuff and so on. Yet it will never trivialize the challenge - even as a veteran, one misstep can mean you're dead. And one of the most challenging things in that game is taking on tough bosses that will take a while to kill but who will kill you very easily.

As for NV, I don't feel more enemy HP is the entirely right way to go. Tough enemies should be even tougher on higher difficulties, such as deathclaws and robots. But headshots (or equivalent) to organic beings should be equally deadly all-around, and humanoid enemies should not be bullet-sponges. What higher difficulties in NV needed were much rarer supplies, smarter enemies that use tactics and are more resourceful when it comes to weapons and buffs and slowed character progress.

 

[SnapSlav]

I feel the powerful urge to utter a phrase that would succinctly make a quick point before jumping into making my point, but that would undermine my universal stance against uttering popular phrases (usually memes) to make one's points without actually making a point. I'd LIKE to say "You used the wrong analogy, mother fucker!" but... yeah. Contradicts my previous sentiments.

But onto the point, not a good idea to use Dark Souls as an example, and it WAS DkS that ENB was basing his argument off of (which I completely agreed with, at the time) about "More HP =/= More Difficult = More Tedious". I agreed because I WAS a total veteran of the game, and it presented no challenge to me, no matter how many times I beat it and the enemies grew deadlier and more more resilient to damage. The reason it wasn't challenging was EXACTLY because I memorized everything. Every "secret" location, every spawn point, every attack animation of every enemy, I'd memorized it all. That was the scope of the game's challenge, and having entered into the Souls series from Demon's Souls, I could NOT praise DkS for its "challenge". It was tougher than the average game, but it was a casual gamer's easymode game next to its predecessor.

True, there is more to "is or isn't more difficult" than JUST total HP, however when you consider that those other factors remain static, the argument can be made that adding more HP does NOTHING for difficulty, it just makes it more tedious, and tedious alone. Being next to death in 1 or 2 hits didn't make a particular boss or enemy "harder" to deal with when their HP pool was raised, provided you were no less spry and your skills hadn't dulled since the last time you faced them nor did you forget their unique move set. But even if those factors had lessened, it wasn't the enemy that became harder, you had simply grown less capable. Having to last longer against a deadly foe didn't make that foe more deadly, so it didn't present a tougher challenge. Rather than test your skills, it merely tested your patience.

In answer to this, ENB created his infamous "Epic Challenges" to the community, and they involved self-imposed restrictions to approach the game, and if you had video recording capabilities you could submit runs you made which he would host for you, forever including your name as one of his "Epic Bros". I answered the call to most of his challenges, and they alone served to increase Dark Souls' difficulty for me; although I never got the title as I couldn't (and still can't) record any of my exploits. I beat the game at SL1. I beat the game using one of the starting Classes and NEVER exchanging their starting equipment. I beat bosses without using any Estus (healing) which essentially meant I "perfected" the toughest challenges in the game. And every one of ENB's challenges were solo, because coop would just negate any tests of will entirely. DkS didn't present a challenge once you memorized it (and thanks to being "open world", it was far smaller and had less to memorize than its predecessor), and that didn't change no matter how far you increased enemy HP and boosted enemy DMG. What's worse, after NG+++++++ it would stop increasing enemy attributes AT ALL. But the game would grow stale well before NG+++ because it would all simply fall into routine, at that point.

More HP, ultimately, was nothing BUT more tedium. Challenge had to come from elsewhere, and it's utilizing other methods that make increased enemy resilience "more dangerous". Spice up enemy AI, randomize their patterns so they're less predictable. Things of that nature affect challenge, because they actually test a person beyond the point of simple memorization. In the case of the classic Fallouts, it's certainly true that they largely depended on increase HP and deadlier weapons, but they also relied on environmental factors (Choke points? Open spaces?) and the NUMBER of enemies you had to face, so combined with the randomization of instant-death critical attacks, there was added challenge. FOT exemplified the model by adding more titular "tactics" to the matter and throwing them into the mix. A single Super Mutant with a SAW won't pose a particular threat out in the open, but if he's behind cover, and you need to get past him, and cannot do so without coming within spitting distance (usually resulting in an instant death), then that presents a new challenge to you. In this case, it's the perfect usage of the established "There are other factors" concept. By himself, that enemy isn't hard, but OTHER factors made his presence something tough to deal with.

The problem with FONV's difficulty was the same with FO3, and again, they stemmed almost entirely from poor game design. There's very little you can do to increase the challenge when your enemies stand up out in the open while firing blindly in your direction. If they had programming that caused them to use cover, or they had dodging routines, or they had group tactics programmed, these might influence their level of challenge. But increasing their HP and DMG without affecting anything was just..... fucking tedious.

 

[aenemic]

I wrote a long-ass text, but this damn site lost it when I tried previewing the post.

So I'll just give you the short version here:

I don't really see how I used the wrong analogy. ENB is awesome, I love his videos, but he (and apparantly you) doesn't represent the entire Souls fan base. Even for a lot of experienced gamers, those games are very challenging for the reasons I mentioned, amongst other reasons.

Randomness alone does not make fun challenge. It only throws strategy out the window. Look at the old X-Com games, which I love and have spent a lot of time with. Strategy in those games is mostly based around abusing the game and doing crazy stuff to have a chance against an (almost) cheating enemy that acts so randomly and unpredictably that you can't really plan ahead. Then compare with the new game, where actual strategy and adapting to the situation is key, and part of the strategy is in minimizing the randomized elements.

And lastly, if you re-read my post (which may have been worded a bit badly, since I find it a bit hard to express myself perfectly in english), you might realize that I'm of pretty much the same mindset as you. I don't think that increasing enemy HP is a good way to increase difficulty. But in some cases, doing so along with other adjustments, can provide a more challenging game without only being tedious. Saying that increased HP is only tedium and not challenge in any way or in any situation is a gross oversimplification.

 

[SnapSlav]

I wrote a long-ass text, but this damn site lost it when I tried previewing the post.

That's a bummer. That's why I almost always CTRL+C my posts when the site seems to be taking "longer than usual" to either post my reply or show me a preview. I don't want the time and effort put into some posts to go to waste, and many times an argument is formed or worded entirely based on the moment you write it down, so losing that first edition is something you sometimes can't retrieve.

But I think you misinterpreted my post. To begin with, "wrong" analogy was part of the token phrase I felt tempted to use, but I also stated I was going to "opt out of". It was a poor analogy (not a "wrong" one) because you were addressing a point that had been previously refuted.

The issue I take with your assertion that "the vast majority of the Souls player base" considering it challenging is that, unlike Demon's Souls, which STRICTLY targeted its core audience, Dark Souls took many measures to reach "a broader audience", which has long been established as one of the major banes of the games industry. Seeking more players by rendering titles more and more generic, instead of producing higher quality titles at the cost of targeting a smaller, but far more dedicated, audience. Sure, the majority of DkS players think it's challenging, but the majority of DS players who migrated to DkS are the only players I'd consider that "count". The players to whom the game "belonged to", in a sense. They found a game lacking in many of the qualities that they admired in the first title, and many returned to the first in response. DkS and DS have a very similar relationship to FO2 and FO3, in that players who started with the first didn't like the followup, while players introduced to the series from the later installment thought that it was "better", and that mindset curiously didn't change, even when they played the originals, later. I'm not saying DkS is a shitty game, as I've specified before I think it's a fine game, but it's just not NEARLY as good of a game compared to its predecessor (a very important qualifying statement). It's still the lesser game compared to the first, so I don't like seeing casual gamers pick it up, find it "hard", and then use their numbers as a cause to tell me that the game truly is difficult. Harder than the average game, but several steps down in difficulty compared to Demon's Souls. Several.

I got that you were largely agreeing with my original point, but that's irrelevant to how I address a point. I target the parts I DON'T agree with, whatever the reason may be, regardless of how much of the post I side with. You stressed that under certain circumstances, bigger HP pools can contribute to an enemy's deadliness, and I structured my point to address that, because I disagreed. As one variable on its own, I don't consider "more HP" to EVER increase difficulty or enemy threat, because if the other variables are what cause it to present that threat, then they're what deserve all the credit. In scientific terms, you'd call the HP pool "the control". Controls aren't what tests are designed to target, they're used to uncover the acting agents that cause some kind of reaction.

But in the case of Souls games, I don't think there IS any other kind of variable that can contribute to difficulty outside of randomizing AI patterns. If you perfect the technique to parry/riposte 3 separate combos of a Black Knight's move set, and that Black Knight instead utilizes 2 other combos, throwing you off, then using 1 of the 3 you're adept at countering, you'll be out of stamina or perhaps even low on health, so you won't be ready to instantly kill that "tough" enemy, and that's entirely due to a small level of randomization in its attack patterns. No amount of damage or health boosts would make it more difficult if you could parry/riposte every combo it would throw at you. Variety is the only thing it has to maintain its threat level.

But the major point of this whole discussion was to underline that increased HP WILL NOT increase difficulty, not what WOULD increase difficulty. What works in the Souls series to provide added challenge doesn't apply to FONV, unfortunately. There are no bottomless pits, and boss encounters can be talked down provided you have enough points in certain skills. They're 2 entirely different kinds of RPG, so I'm not going to assert that "randomizing attack patterns" will help address FONV's lackluster difficulty. I recognize far too many engine issues, that I personally couldn't say WHAT would add to the game's difficulty. Consequences definitely need to have stronger impacts (for example, "Oooooooh, -1 ST, big whoop..." Well maybe -3 will get your attention!) and various mods have addressed this. I keep "making plans" to mod my FONV to what I'd like to call "perfection", but I've yet to actually undertake this, but perhaps a certain combination of mods HAS addressed the game's difficulty? Unfortunately, until I actually undertake that endeavor, I wouldn't know. =/

 

[sigma1932]

To sum up the last 3 wall-of-text posts:
A combat situation mechanically designed from the ground up to take advantage of the enemies having relatively high HP might make it more challenging given other factors involved, but when a combat situation is designed in an unchallenging way from the start, simply altering the enemies to have more HP (or rather, just be able to take more hits) and changing nothing else just makes the fight take more iterations of established methods to achieve victory.

That arbitrary increase in repetition just translates into increased tedium rather than increased challenge... unless of course we're talking about a greater challenge through testing the player's patience in tolerating unnecessary time-wasting bullshit.

To give an example, I just recently punched a reaver to death in FO3 on normal difficutly. By just running up and spamming the attack button at melee range, I took 75% of its health bar off before I had to heal, after which I went back to spamming the attack button until it was dead. Overall, a very unchallenging fight.

Increasing the difficulty setting to Very Hard (i.e. it takes half damage, I take double) just means I would've taken less of its health bar off before having to heal, so overall, the only difference is that I would've had to stop to heal 2-3 times instead of once, and needed 5-6 stimpaks instead of 1-2. The fight would be no more challenging because I don't have to change tactics at all, but the added repetition of the same actions would result in unnecessary monotony/tedium.

 

[Wumbology]

Increasing the difficulty setting to Very Hard (i.e. it takes half damage, I take double) just means I would've taken less of its health bar off before having to heal, so overall, the only difference is that I would've had to stop to heal 2-3 times instead of once, and needed 5-6 stimpaks instead of 1-2. The fight would be no more challenging because I don't have to change tactics at all, but the added repetition of the same actions would result in unnecessary monotony/tedium.

Still, punching something to death is usually not the average fight. And other factors apply to a lot of the enemies in the game. Deathclaws or Cazadors, for instance- so this only totally applies to the purely anthro enemies, like ghouls and humans, but not others.

 

[sigma1932]

Still, punching something to death is usually not the average fight.

Which is why I used it as an example.

Reavers are supposed to be one of the toughest (i.e. "most challenging") enemies in all of FO3... if they can be punched to death with bare fists while only needing minimal healing, obviously that means their thousands of HP don't do much to make them more of a challenge so much as just more time-consuming (i.e. tedious) to take down, and increasing the difficulty just further extends that same concept.

And other factors apply to a lot of the enemies in the game. Deathclaws or Cazadors, for instance- so this only totally applies to the purely anthro enemies, like ghouls and humans, but not others.

Which was exactly my point... it's the "other factors" that make those enemies more challenging, not just arbitrarily making them able to absorb/inflict more damage by increasing their HP or the game's difficulty settings.

Maybe this is a better example:
Compare the Deathclaws in NV to those of FO3... NV deathclaws are without a doubt tougher (at least in the early levels with low-tier gear) than FO3 Deathclaws due to changes in the combat mechanics (i.e. DT instead of DR, changes to VATS, non-instant healing, Deathclaws actually have defensive stats in NV whereas in FO3 they don't, etc).

If they had simply transplanted the same Deathclaw from FO3 into NV but with, say, quadruple the HP while changing nothing else (including keeping the same combat mechanics from FO3), they'd be no more challenging than they are in FO3... they'd just take more shots/swings to bring down, and you might have to heal yourself a bit more.

Also, just as an FYI, FO3 Deathclaws are practically identical to FO3 reavers from a mechanical standpoint, except reavers have more HP and the ranged attack, so the arthro- vs. animal/monster-type enemy argument doesn't really fit.

 

[Onholyservicebound]

No, you slobbering retard, the original post proves you're more biased than the people you're targeting.

I didn't even play video games before Bethesda, Oblivion was the first game I actually played for more than a few hours. Fallout 3 the second, when NV came out, I had no idea about Obsidian and all that shit. I thought it was better than Fallout 3 in every way, Voice acting, perks, levelling, difficulty, combat, weapons, perks, factions, story, dialogue, companions, traits, SPECIAL, mods, DLC, etc etc. It spoiled me and FO3 and Oblivion looked like steaming piles of shit when compared. Skyrim as well, when I played it I was disappointed at the shitty characters and lame grind based levelling. The perks were shit and every character ends up the same at the end of the game. The DR system is stupid as shit and the main storyline was trash.