Bullet Sponge enemies = false, artificial difficulty levels.

Irwin John Finster

Irwin John Finster

Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
Anyone else noticing that Fallout 4's difficulty levels seem artificial? By artificial I mean increasing difficulty simply increases the bullet sponge capacity of enemies and gives all enemies aimbots with grenades that will headshot you everytime with a molotov.

Or am I just bad at the game? I have to turn the difficulty down to easy for some encounters especially in the beginning of the game because of the ridiculous amount of ammo enemies soak up.

Experiencing things like this, I really wish Fallout 4 went towards S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and away from Borderlands. Stalker's difficulty wasn't perfectly managed, but it was an unforgiving, foreboding, absolutely terrifying experience especially if you played it with the Misery Mod. Borderlands was an arcade shooty-shooty bang bang where bullet sponges fit the fast-paced action.
 
I've felt that ever since Oblivion.
I'm kind of a difficulty-level-sissy, mostly because I am impatient. My mind works it like this: "If I know that I'll have the capacity to kill an enemy with ease, I expect to kill that enemy with ease", that way, challenges prove challenging either way - if they are indeed challenging. I prefer when there's no difficulty slider, and you just gotta deal with the situation as it is presented to you. GTA will bring tears of rage to my eyes, but damn, it's up there with my absolute favorites! :D

But yeah, I give it a shot, I did with Oblivion, hack, hackity hack hack hack, checks my watch, hack hack hack, run away, heal, heal, run back, hack hack, yawns, hack hack, heal, hack, hackity hack... this was one ogre btw, hack hack hack, is this supposed to entertain me? hack hack, hack, then why this weird paradoxal feeling of frustrated drousyness? hack hack hack...

FO3, difficulty hard, feral ghoul reaver - - - *inhales deeply* Ratatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatata[...]tatatatatatatatata[... ... ...]tatatataaaaaaaaaaaaa[igetthepoint]tatatatatata[player.additem 4240 250000]Ratatatatatatatatatata

I will always prefer: enemy dies with 1-2 shots + I die with a few shots (there will always be that tweak towards player survivability, otherwise none of us would survive an uneven encounter :D)
 
The worst thing is that even though the high level enemies are bullet sponges, certain weapons are just way too powerful even for those. Overseer's Guardian with an Auto receiver rips right through everything in seconds.
 
And even in Borderlands, with the correct gear for your build and situation, enemies stop being stone hard to butter in the microwave. In Fo4 it's just shootin em ded.
 
I played Fallout 4 on survival. It was miserable until I got an overpowered weapon, then trivial for a long time, then miserable again once the game started spawning nothing but super mutant warlords, skullfucker radscorpions and other bullshit that scaled without limit to my level and had no upper limit on its health. No one finds this fun. Bethesda are fucking terrible at game design, did you guys know??
 
Lanfear said:
Bethesda are fucking terrible at game design, did you guys know??
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This news just in, more at eleven. ::shuffles papers::

Why I really despise bullet sponge enemies...

I hit a Gunner... with a nuke... as a crit shot to the head ... He took 40% of his HP as damage and then had the audacity to throw a grenade about 200+ meters at my face (he was on top of one of the raised roadways, I was so far away he was about 12 pixels high viewed un-zoomed.

Nuke... Head... Crit... :freak:

Immersion immediately broken drop the mouse and move on.
 
Bullet sponge enemies should be situational, for instance a super mutant should pretty much laugh off low caliber weapons but a raider in rags shouldn't. Personally I like difficulty scaling that adds new tactics and abilities to enemies based on difficulty setting not player level. We saw a glimmer of this with the addition of burrowing enemies, SM suiciders, and deathclaws, but along side being bullet sponges negates any positive from it.
 
Most games do that. Until we develop some decent AI, the difficult level will be implemented by simply giving the mobs more health, more damage, or throwing a dozen of them instead of 2-3.
 
They made the AI somewhat better at combat in Fallout 4, but rather than having it use advanced tactics on higher difficulty levels, they had it behave in exactly the same way across all difficulty levels and used bullet sponge shit to distinguish difficulties instead. Why? Because they want to show off their new AI behaviour to everyone, not just those playing on hard. And that will probably never change.

I prefer it when games treat players and AI equally. One of the few games I actually thought was more fun to play on hard difficulty rather than simply more of a chore was STALKER, which made bullets deadiler for everyone if you played it on hard.
 
cratchety ol joe said:
This news just in, more at eleven. ::shuffles papers::

Why I really despise bullet sponge enemies...

I hit a Gunner... with a nuke... as a crit shot to the head ... He took 40% of his HP as damage and then had the audacity to throw a grenade about 200+ meters at my face
Immersion immediately broken drop the mouse and move on.
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Yea this grenade-aimbot crap with enemies in Fallout 4 is ridiculous. I can't believe someone thought that it would be fun or realistic in any way to be getting hit with molotovs IN THE FACE EVERY TIME that completely obstruct your vision. They literally hit you in the face with grenades and molotovs every time. It's a disgrace.
 
I get that they improved the AI, changed all the enemy tactics. That's great. Wasn't expected.

I get that they've decided to make all enemies bullet sponges to account for not having the time to make properly designed battles throughout a whole open world. Fair enough, since Borderlands did it right.

What I don't get is in what world does combining the two sound like a good idea? You end up with the frustrating kind of fun rather than the fast-paced one. Even if you decide to play the Half-Life style of reloading your save every few minutes, you can't thanks to the poor performance causing long loading times and save load crashes.

It's not the big things that bring Fallout 4 down, it's several little things that accumulate.
 
Bullet sponge enemies are soooooo boring

*Backpedaling away from legendary glowing ghoul*

*Starts shooting*

Okay 1, 2, 3, 4....
*Minutes later*
455, 456, 457 *starts snoring*

I added that survival mod that makes enemies kill you as fast as you can kill them.
I find it funny how the same weapon you pick up from them can tear through your own health but only does half of that damage when you use it.
 
Yeah, because most enemies don't get loads of perks, generally don't use legendary weapons, etc., so they get given a flat damage buff instead. It was the same in Skyrim because enemies didn't usually have damage bonus perks and never had tempered weapons. I always wondered why, though; why not have them use the same tricks the player does rather than having them cheat?
 
Lanfear said:
Yeah, because most enemies don't get loads of perks, generally don't use legendary weapons, etc., so they get given a flat damage buff instead. It was the same in Skyrim because enemies didn't usually have damage bonus perks and never had tempered weapons. I always wondered why, though; why not have them use the same tricks the player does rather than having them cheat?
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I would have to assume they give the enemy all that health and damage due to the brain dead AI. I mean seriously, I had Piper downstairs in a building rubbing up against the front of a ghoul zombie and that thing stood there blind then turned away.
 
You know what made enemies hard, without turning them into ridiculous bullet sponges?

DAMAGE THRESHOLD.

Even with it shoved in their faces in NV, Bethesda can't seem to wrap their minds around this relatively simple gameplay mechanic.
 
Never hurts to add more enemies to the picture as well, would add to muh immurshun people as well without making one of the biggest parts of your game shit.
 
MercenarySnake said:
Never hurts to add more enemies to the picture as well, would add to muh immurshun people as well without making one of the biggest parts of your game shit.
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Riiiiiiight. Ironically, the Creation engine can't have too many creations in them. In anything short of a high-end PC, too many NPCs and the game is fried. It gets particularly ridiculous when there are supposed to be massive battles. The Battle of Bunker Hill just ended up looking like a friendly skirmish, or the kind of fire exchange we get in real life with misunderstandings and border patrols.

whirlingdervish said:
You know what made enemies hard, without turning them into ridiculous bullet sponges?

DAMAGE THRESHOLD.

Even with it shoved in their faces in NV, Bethesda can't seem to wrap their minds around this relatively simple gameplay mechanic.
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The Fallout Wiki description is hilarious to me for some reason.

Fallout Wikia said:
Damage Threshold is a combat statistic in Fallout, Fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel. It was removed in Fallout 3, leaving Damage Resistance as the only armor statistic. However, it was restored in Fallout: New Vegas, before being removed yet again in Fallout 4.
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Removed twice by the same company, it's as if they hate progress or something.
 
Yeah well until they ditch that worthless tacked together engine then things like battles will suffer. I mean since when did a "huge battle" consist of only 12 people, that's such a joke and makes me laugh every time they put these "epic battles" like the civil war for Skyrim.
 
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