EDIT: I initially titled this thread, "Playing on Hard..." I had actually picked Very Hard, not Hard. Goofed when I typed the post.
(hi you goofy hipsters you)
...and that is, ammo shortage. As far as I can tell, the Hard setting doesn't increase enemy AI or awareness, enemy equipment or even enemy numbers (though granted these observations are based entirely on enemy encounters seeming much sparser than they could have been and foes being uniformly ill-equipped.)
You see, I suspect that the difficulty slider either raises the level of your enemies by a factor of 5 or so, or, more likely, simply raises their HP/damage-resistance and lowers your own. This leads to absurdities such as shooting a bare-faced Raider four or five times point-blank in the face with a 10mm before they die, which is so "gamey" as to obliterate the meagre "immersion" that had previously been achieved.
So I find myself in mindless clickfests wherever I go, because combat is reduced to putting more bullets into the enemy faster than they can put them into my own poorly-animated form. The enemies are still stupid, so I still win, but it merely takes more shots to do it; ergo, the main effect of a higher difficulty is simply to drain my inventory of ammo, which is not a challenge but a huge frustration, as there are only so many ammo stores in the game and my firearms-focused character, even without wasting more than a few shots each combat, simply cannot find more in any area remotely survivable for him.
Strangely, it would make the game very fun if there simply weren't many bullets in the world (a la Mad Max) and I had to cope - that would be logical and, as a result, stimulating. But even though the end result is largely the same (with ammo shortage caused by absurdly impervious enemies) I'm so dismayed by the unreason of it all that I wonder whether the (unmodded) game can hold any interest for me at all. It's not a matter of "making each shot count," but instead just of burning through ammo and then being stuck with nothing but a baseball bat...and a 3 STR character.
I think the most sensible way to affect difficulty would've been one of the simplest for Bethesda: just raise the arms skills of enemies so that they're more likely to hit you and, as a consequence, you need to manoeuvre more skillfully during combat. Provided, of course, that Bethesda would've had no interest in improving the AI...
Oh, but what would a Bethesda release be without a world of frustrations at braindead design decisions, you know? Lordy lordy I do declare, they're like little boys with toys, and aggression disorders.
Anyway, if you can imagine some means by which I can mitigate the frustration (without doing something Beth-fany like "play normel but onley take halfe teh bullits" or whatever) do offer your suggestion, I'd appreciate it, you lemon-faced sponge-bathers, you.
edit: of course i can just wait for the shops to restock, i'm very aware of that, thank you. but that fact detracts in no way from the essential idea of my post, as i'm sure you can see easily. ta
(hi you goofy hipsters you)
...and that is, ammo shortage. As far as I can tell, the Hard setting doesn't increase enemy AI or awareness, enemy equipment or even enemy numbers (though granted these observations are based entirely on enemy encounters seeming much sparser than they could have been and foes being uniformly ill-equipped.)
You see, I suspect that the difficulty slider either raises the level of your enemies by a factor of 5 or so, or, more likely, simply raises their HP/damage-resistance and lowers your own. This leads to absurdities such as shooting a bare-faced Raider four or five times point-blank in the face with a 10mm before they die, which is so "gamey" as to obliterate the meagre "immersion" that had previously been achieved.
So I find myself in mindless clickfests wherever I go, because combat is reduced to putting more bullets into the enemy faster than they can put them into my own poorly-animated form. The enemies are still stupid, so I still win, but it merely takes more shots to do it; ergo, the main effect of a higher difficulty is simply to drain my inventory of ammo, which is not a challenge but a huge frustration, as there are only so many ammo stores in the game and my firearms-focused character, even without wasting more than a few shots each combat, simply cannot find more in any area remotely survivable for him.
Strangely, it would make the game very fun if there simply weren't many bullets in the world (a la Mad Max) and I had to cope - that would be logical and, as a result, stimulating. But even though the end result is largely the same (with ammo shortage caused by absurdly impervious enemies) I'm so dismayed by the unreason of it all that I wonder whether the (unmodded) game can hold any interest for me at all. It's not a matter of "making each shot count," but instead just of burning through ammo and then being stuck with nothing but a baseball bat...and a 3 STR character.
I think the most sensible way to affect difficulty would've been one of the simplest for Bethesda: just raise the arms skills of enemies so that they're more likely to hit you and, as a consequence, you need to manoeuvre more skillfully during combat. Provided, of course, that Bethesda would've had no interest in improving the AI...
Oh, but what would a Bethesda release be without a world of frustrations at braindead design decisions, you know? Lordy lordy I do declare, they're like little boys with toys, and aggression disorders.
Anyway, if you can imagine some means by which I can mitigate the frustration (without doing something Beth-fany like "play normel but onley take halfe teh bullits" or whatever) do offer your suggestion, I'd appreciate it, you lemon-faced sponge-bathers, you.
edit: of course i can just wait for the shops to restock, i'm very aware of that, thank you. but that fact detracts in no way from the essential idea of my post, as i'm sure you can see easily. ta
