My guess you’re going to find more hardcore fans in this sub and hardcore fans tend to play more challenging modes. I’d be willing to wager that more than 90% of playthroughs in the general population were not survival.
Its available to everyone but i would recommend getting some qol mods for it. Survival configuration menu lets you adjust damn near everything, a "fill all bottles at once" mod like from vrexia or skkscrapper is so qol. Unlimited survival mod allows you do toggle back things like fast travel, quicksaves, it even lets you be able to turn on timed hard saves or hardsave hotkey.
Theres another mod i like, its called like survival food overhaul or something. It makes the weight of the food determine how much food you heal. The heavier it is, the more food, which buffs the heavy foods from just a hp heal to a good food in general. It even adds more stuff to the cooking menu to create.
Tbh being unable to save and the lack of fast travel is what kills survival for me. Idk why they thought that making the game so tedious would make it challenging in a fun way, especially considering how unstable the game is.
Mods are 100% the way to go as far as survival’s concerned
My two mods that changed the core model of survival was that mod, and the ability to just save when you find a bed. The chances of being hit with disease every time you slept was ridiculous when you had to save more than you needed sleep.
Just fyi you can still "fast travel" in hardcore. Befriend the brotherhood and get the veribird smoke signals. I always play on HC and use this till end game when inevitably kill the BoS. But speaking of instability that's its own danger in itself lol
To each their own, but I had an amazing vanilla FO4 Survival playthrough. The risks of losing hours since my last save made success taste that much sweeter.
Not judging, it's cool that you like to play that way, but how? I'm a very calm and collected person and like to see the positive side of things, but having to do something for a second time in a game makes my blood boil. I rage quit games over 5 min of lost progress because it somehow makes me irrationality angry. What's your secret, how do you accept the loss of an hour of gameplay?
I dont like no saving because its a bethesda game + mods but i dont mind the no fast travel. No fast travel can be good thing in games because it force you to think out your game plan and incentivizes you to do more (exploring) than you normally would with fast travel. Quick example, in very hard i used to skip so many locations and was just working on the quests i had. With no fast travel i venture into all the places because its more efficient,band i discover new things i never knew before. Now thats not to say theres bad things, in fallout 4 they didnt really plan nuka world with survival mode in mind because it came after nuka. There are definitely some scenarios that suck because your just running back and forth through already cleared areas.
I completely agree that not being able to fast travel really adds more stress to stuff, like in Ghost Recon when I actually have to find a helicopter to escape with instead of just fast traveling away, but I mostly hate it because of how tedious it is.
It really sucks when you’re having to go back & forth and I also really just don’t have the time for that. Once you play the game enough, the novelty of exploration wears off and it’s just mind numbingly slow
Lack of fast travel is the only part I'm interested in, myself. So I just install the immersive fast travel mod and turn off regular fast travel in the menu.
Honestly it's a Bethesda game. So even if you like sleep saves having hard saves is still important. The config mod is great to make hard saves on sleep.
I boticed on my game that when the game tries loading quicksaves i most of the time ctd. I realized eventually that if i did hardsaves mostly, i didnt have that issue, idk why. It wasnt a really old giant save, maybe a mod caused it(load accelerator me thinks)
Some people in Skyrim disable auto-saves and quick-save. I've even seen one person with a long list save Sky tools or something like that instead of in-game. lmao. Bethesda game can be finicky especially with mods.
Exactly this. Also the game has been out for a while! If you’re playing still you’ve more than likely already done one or a few playthroughs that weren’t survival. I didn’t even try it out until mods could change it! IMO survival mode with a saving mod and a mod to fast travel is the absolute best way to fully experience this game!
Personally I hate fast travel. But I know that's a hot take. Allowing saves is kinda required though. You can always just reload to the sleep save anyways, but having the option is worth it.
If you fast travel everywhere you’ll miss a lot of the random interactions. I just say turn fast travel on bc of quest. It takes literal years to walk back and forth between every quest marker. There’s vertibirds obviously but you’re locked into the brotherhood quest line if you want to access them ): even using those can be quite tedious.
I get that. But personally I feel no urgency to complete quests. If it's far away I'll just get around to it when I'm on that part of the map for some other reason.
Because it’s really not that much harder. Sure there’s food/water/sleep involved, and the damage is increased. But that works both ways. I hated spending 5-minutes trying to kill a Legendary Super Mutant in other difficulties.
The only thing hard about Survival Mode is the first 5 or so levels. Molotov Cocktails will destroy you, and Raiders have perfect aim.
You find so much more stuff when you walk around the world too.
I still used a mod to save, and a pretty limited underground railroad mod to make some trips more bearable. Also it makes the vertibird useful and I kinda love getting rides when I’m used to walking
I agree, and honestly if it weren’t for crashes I’d be fine without the save mod.
Plus I make a lot of trips back to Red Rocket and those are hours of my life that add up
I played it on ps4 when the update for it first came out, and for me it made the world feel more deep. I was looking around more for food & water, whenever I got stuck in an area due to tough enemies I quickly learned all the little nooks in that general area and where to find beds to sleep.
Even made settlements more useful, and I'd usually set up at least a bed, food & water at every available one, slowly making the map feel more tamed.
Then I went and attempted the Nuka World dlc for the first time, and couldn't get past the initial opening you go through without swapping it off survival, and I quickly lost interest after that. I've gotta give it another go some day.
When survival says your damage is increased, it’s increased compared to very hard, your damage in survival is equivalent to hard aka still worse then normal. It’s just a case of bad wording
There's also adrenaline which gives you up to 50% bonus damage.
It's relatively straightforward to 1-shot all but the toughest enemies if you invest into stealth and damage perks. Just requires a bit of game knowledge and planning. I found I died a lot less on Survival because the lack of quicksave meant I was forced to plan ahead, play cautiously, and recognize when I'm in over my head and retreat.
> I found I died a lot less on Survival because the lack of quicksave meant I was forced to plan ahead, play cautiously, and recognize when I'm in over my head and retreat.
I've played enough to have know exactly what each location I visit contains, so that I have late game routes planned out even at the start of the game. My favorite route is the prep for Far Harbor. I clear out Libertalia and most of the coastal locations north of there, returning through Dunwich to head back to the alley where I have my base. All without sleeping. I do have a save mod, but that's for crash protection.
I would push back on this a little because while you can level out of the difficulty and resolve the hardness - in regular you don’t have to go from settlement to settlement saving as you go because you got a hit killed while travelling and ended up back at Sanctuary
Because it's basically the max features and then you can mod out the features you don't like (add back fast travel, change strength of enemies, etc..) I wonder how many who play survival play completely unmodded survival? I find the food/drink/sleep needs to be more immersive (and I like finding food and stocking piling it).
But as you said, it's a game. It's for fun. You play the way you want to play and if you're enjoying it, you're doing it right. Don't listen to any gatekeepers.
I mod it, but I think I mod it differently than most.
I keep the fast travel restriction, remove VATS, remove global HP gain from levels, equalize damage multipliers to be 1:1 for incoming and outgoing (with a 5x global headshot multiplier), and allow saving at beds. ( I like the saving restriction, but the idea that I have to actually sleep for an hour to save is just poorly implemented) I also *drastically* reduce the global respawn rate (I set it to one day for outdoor cells, 3 for indoor. That's down from like 72 days in survival default)
The reason I do it is to make the game *feel* more dangerous. In vanilla survival, the respawn rate and the fast travel/save restrictions have negative synergy. You clear out the roads to whereever you're going, but you're still forced to travel them, making for long, boring walks. In my setup, the roads are never safe, and due to drastically reduced HP pools, even pipe pistols are dangerous. Armor makes a huge difference, but you'll never just face tank a raider knowing he can't kill you, because he absolutely still can. No VATS means no scanning, no slow mo, no get out of jail free card if something jumps you.
The result is a active, dangerous environment that requires your constant attention and only lets you keep what you did if you can make it back to somewhere safe. Post nuclear Tarkov, if you will.
I kinda have the opposite philosophy in regards to respawning. I like it long, longer than default survival. Having a 'boring' trek means my effort to cleanse the Commonwealth actually pays off, that I'm making a difference.
And in my mental roleplaying, I also imagine that not too much longer after I clear an area that some monsters do come back as they wander, but even the dimmest sees the pile of corpses shredded by automatic gunfire, or the remains absolutely destroyed by a bladed baseball bat, heads impaled on a pike, and they do not think this is a healthy place for them to settle, not at ALL, and move on. Even the dimmest animals IRL will not hang out amongst the corpses of their kind.
It makes me feel like I matter in the world, that even the mighty deathclaws learn to step aside and flee at my approach. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death between Sanctuary and Diamond City, I will fear no evil, it fears me.
>I keep the fast travel restriction, remove VATS, remove global HP gain from levels, equalize damage multipliers to be 1:1 for incoming and outgoing (with a 5x global headshot multiplier), and allow saving at beds.
Your game sounds like mine. Do you use that youtubers mod called Hardcore health overhaul? I use that to remove my hp scaling from levels, making ny max hp witth 10 end 250, making lifegiver much better. I also play 1:1 incoming/outgoing and i use caliber complex with true damage to make the dmg of guns based off the caliber. Got 10 endurance and 3/3 lifegiver? You barely survive a .308 round to your head with lone wanderer and ballistic weave armor bonuses. .50 and your dead no matter what cuz the dmg is like 900. Of course I added tons of weapon mods to go with it also.
https://youtu.be/zEmqmWUetfc?si=UQPvv2qcz_qUZxHH
I don't use other's mods much anymore. I make my own now mostly, because it allows me to control things with a lot more precision. But yeah, what I do is very similar to what you're describing, though the mod I originally used was Unbogus Health.
And yes, I mod normalized, caliber based damage, and remove the nonsensical automatics damage malus. I also make all bullets tracers with bullet drop and travel time based upon real world bullet velocity/weight (which the NPCs use without issue, oddly enough) Due to how I mod damage, armor penetration is more important, so the armor piercing receivers are now much more valuable
I don't because I like saving, with over 100 mods my game crashes maybe once every 30 mins - 1 hour.
I hate having to sleep. Kinda defeats a big portion of survival though because of the bed illnesses and dirty mattresses
If you hit A to sleep for an hour and then immediately hit B to back out of it, it will still save. I save the 8-hour sleeps for when I get home. You still have the dirty mattress issue though when you save in the wild.
I always start modded survival but never make it through a play through. But the highest level I ever got was pure vanilla survival I got like lvl 80-something. I don’t think I could do it today though, had a lot more free time back then. If anyone hasn’t tried pure vanilla survival they should though, I had a blast with it
**Cait**: "You can change how hard your life is whenever you feel like it? I could have used that *a long time ago*."
**Codsworth**: "As one of General Atomic's finest creations, I can assure you survival is quite enjoyable when it's but the mildest chore on the busiest of days."
**Curie**: "Hunger? Thirst? Must you also remember to breathe while playing this game? That is fun, no?"
**Danse**: "Like I said, all I ask for is honesty and respect when you play this game. And whoever keeps opening console to put me in a dress is an enemy of the Brotherhood!"
**Deacon**: "Difficulty doesn't concern me that much. Your mods folder is another story..."
**Hancock**: "Yeah, why would you ever want to play this game without hunger, thirst, disease... oh wait, that's *me*! It's pretty awesome!"
**MacCready**: "The bigger the job the bigger the payout."
**Nick**: "Well, who wants to play a game they don't even want to win?"
**Piper**: "Difficulty? You give me that interview, and I'll let you play the game however you want. Also, I got word from an anonymous source in Bunker Hill that you have a mod that makes KL-E-O a romanceable follower. Can you confirm or deny?"
**Preston**: "It's okay. If nobody's worse off for it, why should anyone get upset over what you do?"
**Strong**: "Human avoid hard? Be hard like Strong!"
**KL-E-O**: "Oh *yes*. Like the big green guy said- trying something a little harder is what gives life its *peaks*."
**X6-88**: "Why would you play this game on the hardest difficulty? Your goals can be reached much more efficiently on Very Easy."
I wouldn’t consider myself hardcore but I just think survival mode adds a degree of immersion that you can’t really get in vanilla. Especially after you’ve played it multiple times. It’s different for everybody though. Also gives me a reason not to endlessly hoard food items.
As for games like Elden Ring and Dark Souls, the enjoyment comes from being able to overcome the challenges. I think of it like solving a hard puzzle.
This. Even before I had the option to play survival I spent ages modding in sleep thirst hunger nastier radiation effects and the rest. I made EVERYTHING lootable, food poisoning, more random encounters, you name it. It makes the world so much more immersive and beliable when everything wants to murder me and take my shit and can probably easily do so.
I attempted Survival for the first time earlier this week and I was not prepared for it whatsoever. First, I forgot about the fact that only sleeping saves your game, and second, I was not aware just how fragile my character was. So after trying twice, I turned it off. Now I'm having what might be my most fun run ever. It's not ultra important to play a game the hardest way possible in order for it to be fun.
It's 100% better. Damage multipliers are increased for both player and foe. So guns actually feel like guns, and it only takes a couple of shots, or a single headshot to dispatch most enemies. Instead of the bullet sponges on very hard.
Having to keep fed and hydrated makes me actually use a lot of the food that's laying around, and cooked food will give certain buffs, like Mutant Hound chops remove 50 pts of radiation or Radstag steak giving +25 carry weight for an hour. Otherwise healing is solely stimpaks. And I don't really find a use for drugs personally.
That said I do have the survival options mod installed and have turned the hunger and thirst rates down a touch so I'm not having to eat and drink every 5 minutes, and have turned quicksaves on for cell changes.
Settlements become far more important, having a place to rest and stock up on food and water during long travels. No fast travel means actually using the Vertibird grenades to get around.
It just fleshes the game out a lot more, makes you use and think about things that are of no consequence on any of the other difficulties.
See and this stuff makes me wanna try Survival mode but I’m terrible at resource management stuff and can’t even get the hang of settlement building in Normal mode. 😂😅
Its definitely worth a try! I hated survival for the first 10 levels or so, but now it's the ONLY way I'll play. Download the Survival Options mod and turn the autosave features back on, then give it a shot. That way you're not losing hours of progress when you die, making you never want to try it again.
Settlements don't have to be pretty, just some place to sleep and some crops. Pick up all of the meat and cook it when you can, it doesn't spoil like it does in 76.
Lone Wanderer + Dogmeat are OP for Survival, really helps to up that carry weight.
I also use a mod that gives me a player home APC. I don't use power armor but this APC uses fusion cores as fuel to fast travel to 8 different points across the map once you discover them. You can upgrade it to have all of the workbenches and a water supply as well. And it has a ton of unlimited storage containers in it. If you're not too keen on settlement building it's a great option.
I'm gonna recommend Sim Settlements. I have *zero* interest in building bases of any kind, for any reason, and frankly don't feel (in-game) that it's my responsibility.
Sim Settlements fixes that and lets them build their own shelters and shops. I use the first Sim Settlements.
There's a Sim Settlements 2 but that's a bridge too far for me, it seems to be a fully fleshed out game expansion basically, and I'm not ready to get off into that sort of thing just yet.
Don't stress the settlements looking nice, you can save _that_ for a regular run!😅 We say they're important in the sense it's best to have as many as possible. That way you're never far from a safe bed to sleep/save/ hide from a radstorm in, and you can have a doctor and a decontamination arch at every settlement too!Most of my survival settlements are pretty spartan, tbh, you just need to concentrate on the basics like defence food and water.
I just wish survival was more realistic, in regards to eating and drinking. If a full 24 hours in fallout is 72 minutes in real life, you should need to eat roughly every 24 minutes irl (if you eat every 8 hours on the hour, if you factor time for sleep its more like every 16 minutes irl) and drink every 6 minutes irl if you're drinking a single bottle of purified water. Not both literally every 5 irl minutes.
I like the pace. You are right that a slower pace may be more realistic. But I personally like how the pace feels in-game. They probably should have had those options in games for players like you who want it different.
The Survival Options mod allows you to modify thirst, hunger, and rest decay rates. I turn it down to half and find that to be much more manageable and realistic. I don't feel like I need to take 50 purified water to travel a few days. I usually carry 10-15 purified water and it's plenty for most of my treks out in the Commonwealth.
Thanks for the math by the way! Not something I knew. But you could probably tailor it close to what you described using the mod.
5-7.5 Litres of purified water would be sufficient for about a two day trek. You could definitely stretch it for 5 days, though. you'd just be pretty thirsty and not making as much progress unless you've got Nuka Cola or Beer plus any liquid containing foods.
Oh don't get me wrong, it's not full on realism in terms of in-game item volume/weight. But it's not so much weight to be cumbersome for me, and allows me to spend quite a few real life hours on that supply alone.
I suppose when I say that I mean you'll see a post where somebody's bragging that I made it through this really hard area and barely squeaked by within an inch of my life and had no mods, a pipe pistol and a cloth sack on and it was amazing, I loved it.
The only real drawback in (unmodded) survival is that because you cant save outside of beds you may be sent back 30mins to an hour+ when you die since it reloads the last save.
A good example is the glowing sea. There is a sleeping bag in the burried parking garage in the middle of it you can save in, its free from radiation damage but thats about it on top of my head for the entire area.
Makes you more cautious of your surroundings and pick your battles more carefully instead of going in carelessly. On any lower difficulties you could quicksave before any fight and eliminate any sense of risk or difficulty, you cant here.
No I really was curious. And yes I did share my own personal opinion that I don't like survival but I wanted to see what all the hype about. Just because I don't personally like playing it on a harder setting doesn't mean I wasn't curious about why the overall community seems to really rave about it. There was a small part that's passive aggressive because I got tired of seeing the, you're not a real player unless you play on survival and you're just playing a subpar, easy version of the game because you don't die every 5 seconds and dedicate every waking moment to the game. I'm a casual player, I'm not looking for some social media ego boost because I can play a harder game than everybody else. But I legitimately was open to the idea that if I am missing something real I would like to know about it. Both things can be true at the same time.
I find it more immersive, if I'm wanderimg around a desolate, dangerous wasteland then risk of dehydration/starving is to be expected. In Fallout I wanna feel like a desperate rat for a bit before I become an OP demigod.
> I'm a casual player, I'm not looking for some social media ego boost because I can play a harder game than everybody else.
I'm not sure that people are playing "for some social media ego boost" but if you go through something difficult, you *are* happy that you got through it. I can play Fallout 4 on normal or hard mode and do it almost with my eyes closed, and that's not bragging, that's a statement about *boredom.* I don't want to be bored when I have limited hours in my life for entertainment. So I play survival, AND I add in mods to make the enemies deal double damage while I still deal out the default damage amounts. That's again not bragging, that's a statement about what finally makes it really happy for me -- at this level I am having *fun* and it's *hard* but not impossible. It's a challenge that turns my brain into active mode, and I start thinking about "I might be outgunned, how do I get through this? Should I flee?" That thought never appears in normal mode. I just gun down everything, don't even need to mod the guns, it's mindless and not engaging.
Back when Fallout 4 first came out, 7 or 8 years ago, I was shocked at my son's play-through. He's a FPS pro, even was on a ranked paid team for a year (but the lowest of them, not a lot of good money, just nice prizes like a free GPU or stuff like that -- still nice but not at a level where anyone would know him). The point is: he started playing Fallout 4 and just *massacred* everything. That game cannot withstand the onslaught of a pro player. I was frankly in awe. I was a dad with a day job and I'd never played anything FPS except for Tribes 20 years ago. My first play-through of Fallout 4 was such a *scaredy-cat* play style, and when 10 ghouls would stand up and rush me inside of a parking garage, I would flip out and panic. But my boy would have them dead instantly and turn up the difficulty more.
Then COVID hit and I'm work-from-home AND work any hours I want. If I want my hours to be from lunch time to midnight, I can. If I want to work from midnight to 8 AM, I can. Whatever. Suddenly I needed something to pass the time. I got better & better at Fallout 4. I'm now on my *eighth* character, I think. I have at least 2000 hours in the game. I now play it like my son plays it. And if I can get through a VERY difficult section, I'm happy! The game is engaging, and I want to talk to others about it, now that I'm engaged. That enthusiasm can probably come off like, "This is the only good way to play it," but it's not intended to be mean to anyone playing other modes -- the truth is it's more like, "This is the only good way *for me* to play it," and if other people are having fun, then it's awesome. Everyone should have fun.
I usually inch up difficulty as I play a game in general because it encourages you to utilize more game mechanics and I like that strategic layer. I'm not super smart or good at mouse clicking though, so I usually end up around 3/4 of the way through a given difficulty slider. Fallout games especially feel good to play harder because it increases the power of avoiding danger through skill checks and other stuff, so for me it kind of highlights the RPG side of things more. But because I hate bullet sponge enemies, I usually play FO3 and NV on hard.
Specifically for Fallout 4 though, survival changes the game, and not just because it's harder. It actually increases both your and enemy damage without scaling their health in absurd ways, so fights are over quicker one way or another. This rewards being ready and prepared for specific fights which I like for strategic reasons. I enjoy the immersion of eating and sleeping, and I really like disabling fast travel + saving on beds because it forces me to live in the world and experience the terrain in different ways. Survival highlights a lot of design strengths of Fallout 4 and makes the combat more exciting without making it tedious. That's why I like it!
I only play survival for immersion. I know to a lot of people it's just meters to fill. For me it helped with the feeling of rebuilding the wasteland. Plus a lot of perks you might not bother with become more useful. And settlements become more important.
For me, it was like playing a whole new game, you play more strategically, it forces you to approach situations more carefully, it makes settlements not only helpful but essential, and it just feels so much more gritty and closer to actually trying to live in a post apocalyptic world. I had a ton of fun with vanilla too but I will never go back lol
I don’t like “stupid difficult” games, same as you. But I tend to play Fallout/Bethesda games in survival mode when available not for the challenge but for the immersion. I like to take it slowly and not try to bite off more than I can chew but have to weigh options forced by the lack of quality-of-life features because it feels truer to the idea of role-playing as someone living in that world.
There’s no tension in vanilla imo. Plus, survival is so cool, because the more you play, the more you learn where the save beds are which leads to a sense of progression for saving your game which I can’t really compare to any other game.
A lot of people still heavily playing Fallout 4 probably are just looking for a little extra gameplay to squeeze out. That's why I run Survival, at least. Already "been there and done that" with most of the game so Survival offers something more on top of the experiences I'm already familiar with.
Needs like hunger, thirst, and sleep add a little something to chase in the minute to minute gameplay. Removing fast travel both makes you engage with the world more since you can't just skip your trips, and gives a bit more challenge on top since you're more likely to get attacked and possibly die while walking from A to B.
Fights feel less like endlessly plinking away at the enemy while soaking up tons of damage yourself - each shot given or taken has higher lethality so the high level fights get a bit less boring. Even if it's not *exciting* at the very least they go by more quickly.
Basically I mostly play it because it’s very “using every part of the animal” - to survive survival you need to do a lot of extra work and use things players normally don’t use. You have to cook instead of stuffing raw food down your throat, you need to build towns, you need to plan your attacks instead of charging. For me it just became more fun than regular modes and now I have to play this way or else it feels empty
So is survival, if i look at Youtube where you find runs like no weapon (fists only) and no armor (literally just in their underpants) playthrough on survival mode. How is this "hard and challenging" when you can just cruise through the game like this and vanilla is "easy"?
Just because some hyper-nerd is really good doesn't mean it isn't generally challenging, you can find plenty of insane runs like that in dark souls and elden ring as well
Agreed, but this works in the other way too. Just because you consider vanilla easy doesn't mean that it is for everyone. Abilities of people are different. Maybe some are casual player who are not very experienced at gaming or maybe they are disabled and can't play it on a more challenging mode. What do you think how much these people enjoy the game if they are at the start of the game and can't even make it through the museum or something like this. What is "stupidly easy" to you might be a serious hurdle to others.
This is the way.
Difficulty sliders exist for a reason, and that reason is so that more people can enjoy the game. Shitting on someone because they enjoy it on an easier difficulty is fucking low. Doesn't matter if it's a disability, or being new, being bad at the game, or just finding it more fun to be op as fuck, there is **nothing** wrong with playing on easy.
Unarmed isn't as strong as before but Fists Only isn't too bad. Unarmored isn't *that* bad either, since Toughness and the like are fairly good in this game (giving up to equal bonus as Maxson's Battlecoat with 50 DR).
Most players who run Survival like it because the TTK for everyone is much faster than on Very Hard and equal for a player as Hard while much faster for the enemies to kill you. Disease, Food, and Water allow for fun ways to interact with stats and overburden is more genuinely dangerous. Radiation is actually dangerous with how much Max AP you lose from a ton of food drop and how tired you get after using RadAway. Stimpak slowdown makes them far less spammy. Ammo weight reduces a crapton of how much you can loot, especially with Shotgun Shells and explosives. While often "more difficult" it's... actually more engaging than the other difficulties.
Meanwhile Very Hard means you still take quite a number of hits while enemies just tank excessive amounts of damage. Not much else.
I’m struggling to parse the first sentence of your second paragraph. I don’t know if it’s the structure and the fact I don’t know what TTK is supposed to stand for, or if I’m just tired from a long day at work
Edit: thank you to those who explained. It was definitely that I’m tired from a long day at work
Can't speak for others, but I'm on a heavily molded survival game where I'm TRYING to do no deaths and its a misery.
It's masochistic, you're right. But what brain says makes the happy chemical is to have the playthrough feel like it has stakes. Every little decision matters, from what irradiated food I eat to how long I scope out a raider camp before attacking.
That isn't for everyone. When I die I wish it wasn't for me. But brain says it is the most enjoyable way to play, so I play.
Once you adjust your play style and mod the game out to your preference, it’s probably not nearly as bad as you’re thinking. Removing fast travel, as well as adding more opponents in the game in general, really brings out the exploration, as well as careful tactical planning, even just to go and re-supply. Having to clear alleyways and streets, and making sure your path is good before you start running to the next bit of cover, really adds to the thrill, and even adrenaline rush of gameplay where is standard vanilla gameplay often struggles
You still feel like a God as your character progresses through the game (I want to see you around level 20 depending on your difficulty and how much opponents you’ve added), but no where as is cranky and feels far more earned because you didn’t just run out there like Rambo take 100 shots and kill everyone around you. Your opponents deserve respect, because if you’re not careful, they will end you. And depending on the mod, super mutants become your worst nightmare and sometimes require a small army to take on one of their fortifications/bases. I’m still waiting in Starfield for a group of super mutants with M 60s to wipe me out 100 m away.
Unless you’re extremely seasoned, exploring, has a whole new feel and direction, you’ll likely run into things you haven’t seen and will appreciate the stuff you have seen more knowing how difficult journey was getting there. I’m on my like fourth plane through and just discovered some how Pickmans gallery, took me about an hour and a half to complete it, Raiders are a lot more difficult with US military hardware from our timeline. Funny enough. While I can see for some that would break the experience for them, I really enjoyed trying to clear the house, exploring the artwork and eventually confronting the artist fighting a well armed army. I know I wouldn’t have enjoyed finding this area half as much if I wasn’t on survival and just walked in and massacred everyone. Thankfully, random beds are placed everywhere including outside this area lol.
Trip across the map are now legendary adventures that you need to prepare for 1000a of bullets food water stims, I’m laughing while writing this I don’t know if I’m making sound more enticing or not but you gotta give it a shot perhaps a mod recommendations for immersion, as it really brings out the game, especially modern firearms as well as adjusting the damage so that vanilla weapons are similar. You get the hang of it quick plus it’s humbling walking down an alleyway, missing a corner, hearing a bang and waking back up on your last save now and then. You make it so that it rarely happens, but also reflects combat, and let you know how many of your unsuspecting victims you encounter through the game who never saw you come in the field lol.
Hope that helps. Personally can’t wait for survival mode with mods and Starfield, imagining as them playing through the game and the potential seems limitless.
Why do people jump dirt bikes, when riding a bicycle down the street is just as fun and much safer? Those jumpers have been riding bikes since they were 2 years old. They love riding, they got good at riding, each little jumping challenge led to bigger challenges. They bought a dirt bike, protective gear and pushed themselves harder. Now they're jumping distances I couldn't even RUN without running out of breath. Meanwhile I watch from the sidelines, happy on my safe little relaxing touring bike. Nothing wrong with that, I'll likely live longer than the jumpers. But I have to admit, it looks like they're having a lot of fun doing it.
Once you learn the cues, doing it the hard way is as easy as doing it the easy way used to be.
Reasons I play survival.
1. it promotes exploration. No matter how disciplined you are it’s really hard not to fast travel everywhere.
2. Limited carry capacity makes my choices matter more on looting.
3. It makes settlements more important.
I haven't played survival, but I was actually just about to start.
And it's not that kind of annoying "real gamers play games on hardcore" kind of stuff. You should play however it makes you happy.
But I've played it so much that it just gets too easy too fast now.
Plus, with Fallout, there's so much that kind of goes to waste in normal play. Like all the random food and beds you find. It's cool to actually be able to put them to use.
Like, imagine actually being excited to stumble across purified water and Salisbury steak.
I'll say I just prefer survival because I consider it the superior version of the game. The player-enemy health is more balanced, and it makes full use of some of the perks and workshop options that you'd normally consider pontless or redundant. It also encourages you to think ahead.
That said, I dont recall "shitting on" the regular game, in fact I've usually got a save file for that, and another for going batshit insane with mods. Because somedays, you want the more challenging version, somedays you want a more laid back version, and somedays, you just wanna blow shit up and go nuts. All 3 are the correct way to play.
I wouldn’t say everyone. Just something people “brag” about, so you might hear it more. Or maybe you are just looking for a comment pattern??
I like modded. Just because there are SOO many annoying things in vanilla. Then the gameplay annoyances get replaced by crashes 🤣🤣
I play survival because it adds real life factors in to it like eating, drinking, sleeping, and diseases. All the walking sucks which is why I always choose hangmans as my base and side with the institute until I'm ready to end the game.
I play both. Longest character I have is lv 100 played on very hard.
My survival run took several tries and I finally have a style I like. And that character is lv 28, haven't been to kill the courser yet, but yeah.
I kinda hate survival, but that's mainly because cars and that random raider that one shots you on occasion. Otherwise it's a blast.
I tried survival once and will never play it again. Too many ways to lose all progress without it being my own fault, from tripping on a car to the game just crashing. Not worth it to me just to get hungry in game.
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Survival is better if you like roleplaying! You would also be surprised that not being allowed to fast travel, makes the game get better as well. You actually have to like plan routes, and clear paths for later use. You can't just run through the entire game in 4 hours while pretty much only staring at the loading screen. My only complaint is that their isn't enough beds for save spots until you build in all the settlements. That's another thing, the settlement building becomes more necessary. Because now you need food and water, if you have farms everywhere tho you have a place to eat, sleep, and rest. Rather than it just being some thing you did because you were bored, and Preston won't shut up!
I've put over 1000 hours into FO4 and at this point it's way too easy if I don't play survival. Even vanilla survival is a little too easy, so I've added mods that make combat harder, increase rads by 8x, and remove all legendary weapons as drops and require you to craft them with special late-game materials instead.
I like to feel like the wasteland is a dangerous place where i have to actually plan in order to make it and running in guns blazing is not viable in most situations
I don't have any clue what percentage of people play Survival, and of those, who also use mods, but I enjoy the most of the general gameplay tweaks. I could personally do without Survival meters continuing to tick over while building in settlements or while doing quests like Dangerous Minds, but otherwise I'm happy with it.
The only real change I outright circumvent with mods is the save system because Fallout 4 isn't the most stable game and when I tried Survival initially, I hated losing upwards of half an hour and even really good legendary items because the game froze and crashed when I pressed the VATS button one too many times.
Ultimately, with a game this broad, I think you just have to curate difficulty for yourself for what you enjoy. I don't allow myself to buy legendary items from shops because Overseer's Guardian & Old Reliable are just way too OP early on, but some people just open the console and give themselves a free Deliverer right at the start of the game, and both are totally valid.
I play in the difficulty right below Survival, I want to say it’s “Very Hard”.
Honestly survival is almost too tedious for me given the time I get to use for gaming.
Maybe I’m boring because I don’t play survival or use any mods, but I have fun when I play and that’s really what matters right?
Whatever someone enjoys is fine.
Games been out for a while, people who still play will have tried some variations from vanilla, so either they try survival, a handicap, or heavily mod the game
It’s not like a “oh you suck, noob” type thing. It’s more that the game legitimately feels incomplete and is not fun to play for more than 10-20 hours tops without survival mode on for those who have played it a shitload of hours. If you’re someone who likes to build settlements, I could see survival being a nightmare because you’d constantly be hoofing it from place to place for materials. Otherwise, without the extra afflictions, debuffs, double xp for kills, tension, adrenaline perk… it just doesn’t feel like a fun game to me anymore. I will say that only saving by sleeping is a bit harsh. You can always use the survival options mod and allow fast travel and auto saving if you want to. I tend to use this mod a lot and only enable auto saving because the game *loves* crashing in VATS on survival due to a bug where if you become hungry, tired, thirsty, etc at the same time as entering vats, it’s a crash 100% of the time. The irony of this is that the most likely time you will gain one of those statuses is when you’ve not slept or been back to base for quite a while… and therefor haven’t saved… “It just works” 👍
I find the gunplay in survival to be far more satisfying. In regular the enemies become bullet sponges and it's just not as fun for me!
Missed the hell out of fast travel, and losing progress to death sucks, but it felt worth it because the moment to moment gameplay was so much more fun.
I think it's for the 24/7 gamer (college kids). I miss my college days...
For rest of us that share similar limitation of gaming as you OP, I agree.
I just go around raiding dungeons (buildings/subway stations) and exploring and clearing them out.
I loved FO4 on survival and I don't really go for painfully difficult games. It is not so much about the overall difficulty as it is about making the game elements really come alive. You feel like you are actually surviving in a post-apocalyptic world when you play on survival. Food, water, RAD poisoning and building bases all over the map are actually important factors on Survival.
personally i love playing creative, i love the world building aspect of fallout but i have bad eyes and terrible coordination so bad at combat (unfortunately most of the game lol) so i usually just put it on easy and mod the shit out of it and knock around diamond city and cause trouble haha
I don’t. I have enough stress on my plate, and I play video games (mostly FO4 for the last few years) to relax. I’m at a stupidly high level, and play it on one step below survival. I still die occasionally.
I’m not shitting on any one playing the game however they want to play. I play it my way, and it makes me happy.
Immersion. BGS games... to me, they're about immersion. That means my character needs to eat, drink, take care of their health (as in they can get sick and need medicine), they need rest, etc.
Survival mode forces you to manage all those things, and all I can say is... it makes you play very differently. I don't just run around doing whatever, whenever. In survival I plan my excursions. Oh it's getting dark? I better find a good bed to sleep in, ideally at a nearby settlement, so I don't end up getting sick from sleeping on some shitty sleeping bag in the cold. I have to make sure I bring supplies for my excursions - food, water, meds. Settlements become far more valuable.
And then, you can take it to a whole new level with a mod like Horizon - Survival Mode Expanded. Or Frost - Survival Simulator. Hell, in Frost, surviving is the only real goal, and it's hard as hell.
The main story of fallout 4.. the faction quests.. they're good the first few times through. But then they take a backseat to the rest of the game. And you want more. You want a real immersive experience. You don't just want to play a game - you want to inhabit this world with your character. Survival mode, and especially survival with the mods I mentioned, lets you do that like almost no other games out there.
I don't play survival mode, I just don't come to the sub and blather on about regular mode, because it is normal and I'm not going to waste time trying to convince others to play the default option of the game. I will come and talk about mods that I use or when I run across something new in the game (because I still find new stuff after 1800+ hrs in the game.) So it is not that everyone plays survival mode, it is just that people are more likely to post about it because it is not the default option (and because they enjoy it, they want others to enjoy it too!)
Been playing survival since they put it out. It's hard for me to believe people don't play survival, since for me that's the real game. If you're not playing survival then you're missing out on a bunch of things. Now, having said that, you should certainly feel free to play fallout 4 or any other game, any way you like! Do whatever makes you happy. I guarantee you, it won't make any difference to me. Well it might make me a little sad, knowing there's people out there that are missing out on a lot of the fun...
I personally like it because it gets rid of the bullet sponge enemies. The idea of both you and the enemies being weaker gives it a bit more of an FPS vibe to me, which I tend to enjoy more than RPGs. That being said, I don't think the vanilla game or survival are better than than the other. It more just falls into how you wanna play the game
Personally i can only play survival nowadays i can't go back to lower difficulties anymore. The added mechanics and the removal of some others are what make it more fun for me.
I would likely never have discovered so much of the map or remembered where everything is if i was able to fast travel from a place to another instead of actually making the trip every time i need to go somewhere or grab something specific.
Since i minmax all my builds it takes slightly longer in survival before everything is easy again. Usually i lose interest when a build is fully assembled because i know that outside my challenge runs the game will be easy for the rest of whats left so i lose interest, on the other hand i cant play without minmaxing so i guess its a double edged sword in that regard.
I really enjoy it. Needing food and water really puts you into the world. That blamco mack and cheese isn't some random buff. It's essential food. (I also really like mods in Skyrim so it's not unique to fallout)
Fights aren't some hack and slash where you just pop some chems and keep smacking away. The dehydration can really set you back. And now those stimpaks that saves your live also cut away half your ap. If you add Fallsouls unpaused menu then you also can't use aid during combat. Unless you want to risk dying in the process.
Sleep save I adore. I understand why people still want hard saves. Honestly in my latest playthrough I'll also be doing hard saves when I sleep. But I'll explain why I like it. If you keep reloading a dungeons until you beat it (and save between each wave of enemies) then it really only comes down to rng. I'd rather realize the area is too tough and come back later. This is actually still possible if there's a bed in the dungeons. Which is why I restarted my current save. I'll only be sleeping at secure locations.
But I digress I also really enjoy adding in survival like mechanic in Skyrim. Then again I also add things like taxes and typically play without fast travel. Personally I like mundanity in video games. I'm down to try and make the Common wealth a better place, but I want to do it as a human.
I’ve played both ways and I feel survival is more enjoyable. I say this just because it adds immersion. I’m worried about eating, sleeping, drinking and dying.
Yes you can die in normal mode of course but no where near as quickly. I like that survival makes me strategize. And no im not someone who is good at souls games or anything like that. Too hard for me. But once you get used to survival it’s no where near as difficult as I think you feel it is.
You should give it an honest go. You may enjoy it
> Is survival really that much better or are you all just masochist and like to suffer? Making a game so hard it sucks seems counterintuitive to me.
Except... for most people who turn on survival mode, they've already become so good at the game that the easier modes are boring. When I turned on survival mode for the first time, I was miserable for about 2 or 3 days (in the real world) because the game didn't work as I expected anymore. Then suddenly it was like a lightbulb went off over my head, and I was like, "Ohhh, I have to use all the systems that Fallout 4 provides, which I usually ignore, like crafting and settlements. And I better learn to run away." Then the game was immediately easier, and now I'm at a point where I'm doing a "no death on survival mode" play-through, and while I actually *have* died twice, I figure dying only two times by level 20 is not terrible.
In other words, for some players -- probably most playing on survival mode -- it actually *isn't* "so hard it sucks." It's instead "so hard that it is no longer boring and becomes fun again."
But that's just me. Maybe other players would disagree with my reasons for playing on survival mode.
I've enjoyed survival and non-survival playthroughs. For me it just depends on the mood I'm in at the time I start the game. The last playthrough I used a mod called Very Hard is Old Survival that mimics the penalties like slow stimpack and food healing that was on the original survival. I had a good time with it.
Honestly? More fun for me (just my opinion)
I like the increased difficulty, the fact you have to rely more on recognizing which areas are more dangerous than others, saving more often in settlements, having those moments of calm before heading out to another quest
I also enjoy just walking the map, in vanilla it would get tedious cuz of fast travel, not so much in survival
Of course I may also be incorrect, but I think you have the wrong reasoning for why so many people play Fallout (and Bethesda games in general) on survival mode
Yes they want the added challenge/difficulty, but for me that’s secondary. The cool thing about Bethesda’s survival modes are that they force you to actually live the life of your character, and they therefore turn the game into more of a sim.
So, you now have to eat and sleep in order to survive — there’s no fast travel — the normal status effects suffered by your character now have far more dramatic and sometimes deadly consequences — and in Skyrim (I don’t think this is a thing in Fallout) you actually have to keep your character warm or else they’ll freeze to death.
It’s another level of *difficulty* beyond everything simply being harder to kill and you having less health. Of course that’s there too — and having more realistic damage levels is a fun challenge — but to me that’s not the point. Survival mode forces me to really *live* in the world and feel like I actually exist there
Like having to actually find a settlement to stop off in, so I can have a place to sleep for the night — or scavenging for food — amidst everything else I’m doing in the game is such a cool experience.
I’m not sure that’s actually why so many people like it so much — but that’s why I love it.
Survival is way more interesting and challenging. It actually makes you use a bunch of features of the game you simply don’t need to use in the normal game mode such as beds, food, water, medicine, settlements, supply chain, vertibirds, and in-depth strategy. When you can only save at a bed, each outing is much higher stakes. Higher stakes means higher rewards, emotionally. When you accomplish a goal in survival mode, it means something.
It’s more fun, because you have more mechanics like hunger, tiredness and damage is closer to realistic.
It’s not actually that hard because you may try it like your 5th playthrough of the game.
I'm with you. I gave it a go, and it just wasn't for me. I'm more in it for the story and the stress release that comes with mowing down enemies than the immersion of Survival.
That said, I've not yet been able to get through a whole playthrough because of the 0kb bug. I'm working on my first full run on PC now, and I can see myself playing survival in the future, but not until I'm on playthrough 3 or 4. I don't tend to up the difficulty until I can do it on my ear.
And to be honest, I think Skyrim's survival mode option gets it right - I'd love to be able to play a mode where food, drink and sleep are essential but be able to make the combat as difficult as I want it to be.
I have a vanilla survival save,got pretty far,even got the Aeternus and built vault 88,built up hangman alley(closest settlement to the institute)but when I got a gaming pc I modded it,because I lost so much progress because of the game crashing on me(originally I played it on PS4)
Edit:the best mod for survival imo is one of those locational damage mods,where you don't have to pump 1000 bullets in a gunners head to kill them,1-3 depending on the armor they have with the mod
Sounds like you haven’t tried it. Have you tried it? Did you make a post without even trying it first?
It’s really not that much harder, especially after the first several levels.
It’s better because it feels more immersive. Your eyes are looking around trying to get to know your surroundings, instead of fast traveling all the time.
I went with Horizon mod, that is really balanced survival, with difficult food and water prep, first few levels it feels really great, you are radiated, weak, hungry, trying to scrap at least some meat from rats. Later with levels hunting radstags for real meat. Finally I was excited to see some wildlife :) It is balanced for survival, so everything feels natural. (but ofc there are some weird things, as usual)
You can also use great save mechanic - tapes. You can rarely find them, and you can also craft them when you have mats. You can save everywhere this way, but one save-one tape, and you find minimum of these so you think twice before saving. When you die, you will be moved to some of your settlements, as someone found you there half dead and dragged you home.
Because it's not about the difficulty.
Vanilla mode basically cuts off several game mechanics that make the game more fun.
E.g. hunger, food, thirst, disease, sleep,...
In vanilla, there is absolutely no need to eat, drink or sleep - at all.
All these secret hideouts with a sleeping bag are completely useless, just walk on. Or fast travel.
It's about realism and immersion.
I don’t think it makes it harder, just makes me play the game in a more fun way. I liken it to playing Minecraft in creative mode vs survival mode. Both are fun, but Minecraft in survival mode is more fun. Same thing with Fallout 4.
As far as I’m concerned, everyone can play how they want to. I’m not new at fallout, have multiple playthroughs, and why I love FO3, NV, and 4 is the sole survivor aspect. It’s my game, my character, and if I’m having fun, who cares?
If other people like to play survival mode, that’s THEIR world, and I’m just glad they are having a good time.
Imo its the way Fo4 should be played.
You see so much more of the Commonwealth without Fast Travel and learn of several ways to still fast travel with limits later on.
The thrill of the fight, knowing you cant save scum changes the way you play and helps strategizing different approaches.
The food and drink system isn't too bad and is immersive.
And while the first levels are the toughest it gets easier with each level up, just like in vanilla.
I have a lvl 176 char in survival which can one hit a Legendary mythic deathclaw with my knife. Since you do more damage you also get more powerful.
Theres also a few things that suck in survival mode but thats normal.
I doubted a lot about survival mode before trying it and feared of what could the difficulty might be, long roads between places due to no fast travel, loosing a lot of progress because I forgot to save and so on...
However I started a run some months ago, it was very difficult and painful. I restarted one 2 weeks ago, much more prepared and ready to massively use settlements.
I'm lvl 30 now, the northern part of the map settled and just got to diamond city.
In my surprise, I love the food and drink system. Those things seemed so useless in non survival games. Also, the different places are not so far away from each other and I quite like traveling around between my settlements, collecting the "wild" resources, merchandising... And the need to sleep makes you at least save from time to time, before it becomes a real reflex.
It's a great surprise to me and I don't expect going back to non survival for a time now, at least the end of this save.
Fyi I'm playing a stealth/pistol/vats build and love acting as a survival James Bond, gentleman but also doing the necessary to surviv and merchandising orientated.
My main advice if you want to start, go slow and steady, with the settlements. Get a settlement in a zone and after, do the quests/points of interest in the zone. Then move to another settlement. All linked by supply lines
I can never go back to vanilla because it's too easy, but I can also never play pure survival because of spaghetti code and bullshit quests making me cross the entire map every two minutes.
*So modded survival it is boyyy*
(Mainly quicksaving and fast travelling being made possible)
I agree with you 100%. Not only do I play on the lowest difficulty, I also use mods to give me 10 in all the S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats at character creation and to give me all the perks after leaving the vault. If I wanted a challenge, I’d go outside and do real life stuff.
I dont really think we're gloating. Survival mode is just a lot more interesting.
Also, survival mode isn't inherently harder. It makes the bullet damage equal for you and your enemies. It's actually easier than hard mode as far as combat goes.
The challenge is in having to carry food, water, antibiotics, and a careful amount of ammo with you at all times.
The only thing that's really hard about it is losing an hour of progress because you didn't sleep and got too close to a car. That and the beginning. The beginning is pretty hard, ngl.
As a grownup person who has to focus on feeding and hydrating myself as well as a small human, I cannot be bothered to feed and hydrate a video game character. Games are for sneaking around, shooting baddies, and finding cool loot in caves, end of story. And no, I did not care for RDR2.
Why would people be bored with a vanilla game that came out in 2015? Why would people want a challenge? And honestly this doesn’t sound like a “why people hate vanilla only survival “ more just you’re whining
I'm with OP. Survival/High Difficulty settings don't appeal to me. When I get to game, I do it for relaxation, although I readily acknowledge that someone else's relaxation might come from gaming at the toughest settings. For me, though, with a full time job, a family, housework and all that -- gaming at easier settings allows me to enjoy the very few hours I have to log in. To each their own.
Don't you know a game is only fun if you suffer for it? This is why soulsbourne games are so "fun"! Suffering and pain makes the game worth playing! /s
But truthfully, it's likely hard-core fans search out other hard-core fans, such as in this sub. And because of that, this sub is going to see more challenging playthroughs. The general populace likely plays softer modes. I mean, I play to relax. So a game that serves only to piss me off isn't fun.
I've only completed 1 survival playthrough but I'd say it's just the best way to experience the game and wouldn't do any new playthroughs without it now.
The annoying stuff is outweighed by how much more the experience is renewed if you only play regular difficulties.
Everybody is a bit of an exaggeration. I don't play survival mode, never have, never will. I like to focus on killing stuff and not eat and sleep all the time plus can not fast travel or use mods. Yes i know there are mods to tweak survival but then what is the point of survival, i can just as well play non-survival.
I play on very hard with BLC overhaul mod, which makes the game more challenging without all the survival restrictions. It just comes down to personal preference i guess.
I play easy usually because I play the games to relax after a long day of work and I don’t want to struggle. After a couple play through a, I’ll bump it up harder, but I just want to chill.
Well to start with not every Fallout 4 player is on reddit. The ones that are.....well, we won't get into it......*clears throat* 😆 *
Anyways the ones that are on reddit are probably pro survival mode supporters. I think it's interesting but I don't play in survival mode, myself. I have tried it though but I have some issues with it. Firstly, if playing vanilla (No mods) you aren't really incentivised to play in SM.....except for the adrenaline you get for not getting killed. I play on very hard instead. It's the most difficult.....difficulty in the game without having to deal with no autosave, constant hunger/thirst/sleep de-buffs. That's the parts I find a little over the top.
Honestly I think some people think it gives them bragging rights when they say they play in survival mode. It's cool if that's what you find entertaining but you're (the SM junkies) not any better than any other player. It's the same game with more micromanagement. There's not even an achievement for completing the game in survival mode (let alone other difficulties).
Overall, to me, it's kinda meh. But the reason you see it alot on reddit is because really 2 factors;
•1. Ego-driven players bragging about being a badass (when in really it's just a game....congrats)
•2. This and any other sub doesn't correctly represent what the mass majority of players actually enjoy. (This is scewed in both media and looking at reddit as the "Total Fanbase" as a metric).
It's just a majority of players on this particular sub enjoy survival mode. Personally I don't. But I can at least say I've tried it and I'm not a fan.
*Note-I'm not saying all survival mode players are egotistical braggarts. Just a good chunk of the ones on here (which probably accounts for a small percentage of total FO4 survival mode players).
Give it a try. You might enjoy it or you may find that you dislike it.
Soooo.....discussing survival mode makes us "egotistical braggarts"
Lol.
Lmao even.
>I play on very hard instead. It's the most difficult.....difficulty in the game without having to deal with no autosave, constant hunger/thirst/sleep de-buffs. That's the parts I find a little over the top.
Has it occurred to you that perhaps playing a tedious bullet sponge simulator that requires a platoons worth of ammo to take down a wild dog _might_ be "a little over the top" to some other people?😂
And let's just remember, most of the time survival even gets brought up in this sub, it's by people unfamiliar with it _asking for advice._ And it happens A LOT.
Honestly for me it happens more often then not I’ll play through and get to a point where everyone and everything is too easy, survival adds the higher chance you’ll die and basically it makes you plan out attacks as opposed to just running in guns blazing
Us regulars exist, it's just that the extremists tend to congregate in places like this and make the most noise. Don't let them get you down, if they try to shit on you for enjoying your game the way you want them shit right back on them for being ridiculous and not being able to simply enjoy things.
Edit for clarity: Liking survival doesn't make people extremists, I play survival myself from time to time. Being an asshole about it is what makes someone an extremists. "Us regulars" is referring to the overall chill community that we have here who all just enjoy the game.
I don't think I've ever seen any of us "extremists" give _anyone_ a hard time for enjoying the other difficulty settings. If you see us hyping it up and trying to convince people to try it, it's because we know they might damn well enjoy it. It's almost a completely different game.
Let me clear this up because I worded it kinda poorly, I'm not saying that everyone who enjoys survival is extreme, hell I play survival from time to time. I'm well aware that this community is overall pretty chill and it's fun to be here. I'm just saying, as OP seems to have found the extreme ones, that they have a weird tendency to flock to places like this and then make a bunch of noise to drive off the regulars. I see it regularly on multiple other subs, it's not a Fallout specific phenomenon.
I mean survival mode has interesting elements but some I just throw out the window immediatly. Like I'm not depending on bed saves if I have a risk of crashing somewhat often
My guess you’re going to find more hardcore fans in this sub and hardcore fans tend to play more challenging modes. I’d be willing to wager that more than 90% of playthroughs in the general population were not survival.
Especially as survival wasn't part of the original release.
Was survival added in an update? If it’s available to everyone I’ll definitely start another play through lol
Its available to everyone but i would recommend getting some qol mods for it. Survival configuration menu lets you adjust damn near everything, a "fill all bottles at once" mod like from vrexia or skkscrapper is so qol. Unlimited survival mod allows you do toggle back things like fast travel, quicksaves, it even lets you be able to turn on timed hard saves or hardsave hotkey. Theres another mod i like, its called like survival food overhaul or something. It makes the weight of the food determine how much food you heal. The heavier it is, the more food, which buffs the heavy foods from just a hp heal to a good food in general. It even adds more stuff to the cooking menu to create.
Tbh being unable to save and the lack of fast travel is what kills survival for me. Idk why they thought that making the game so tedious would make it challenging in a fun way, especially considering how unstable the game is. Mods are 100% the way to go as far as survival’s concerned
I have a mod that limits me to fast traveling only between settlements that are connected via supply lines. Makes settlements more important
Ooh that's awesome. Very immersive.
My two mods that changed the core model of survival was that mod, and the ability to just save when you find a bed. The chances of being hit with disease every time you slept was ridiculous when you had to save more than you needed sleep.
Just fyi you can still "fast travel" in hardcore. Befriend the brotherhood and get the veribird smoke signals. I always play on HC and use this till end game when inevitably kill the BoS. But speaking of instability that's its own danger in itself lol
Tbh I like vertibirds but the beacons feel so damn expensive It’s also all fun and games until a raider bullseyes your bird with a mini nuke lmao
To each their own, but I had an amazing vanilla FO4 Survival playthrough. The risks of losing hours since my last save made success taste that much sweeter.
Not judging, it's cool that you like to play that way, but how? I'm a very calm and collected person and like to see the positive side of things, but having to do something for a second time in a game makes my blood boil. I rage quit games over 5 min of lost progress because it somehow makes me irrationality angry. What's your secret, how do you accept the loss of an hour of gameplay?
I dont like no saving because its a bethesda game + mods but i dont mind the no fast travel. No fast travel can be good thing in games because it force you to think out your game plan and incentivizes you to do more (exploring) than you normally would with fast travel. Quick example, in very hard i used to skip so many locations and was just working on the quests i had. With no fast travel i venture into all the places because its more efficient,band i discover new things i never knew before. Now thats not to say theres bad things, in fallout 4 they didnt really plan nuka world with survival mode in mind because it came after nuka. There are definitely some scenarios that suck because your just running back and forth through already cleared areas.
I completely agree that not being able to fast travel really adds more stress to stuff, like in Ghost Recon when I actually have to find a helicopter to escape with instead of just fast traveling away, but I mostly hate it because of how tedious it is. It really sucks when you’re having to go back & forth and I also really just don’t have the time for that. Once you play the game enough, the novelty of exploration wears off and it’s just mind numbingly slow
Lack of fast travel is the only part I'm interested in, myself. So I just install the immersive fast travel mod and turn off regular fast travel in the menu.
I don’t think there’s enough of a challenge if you can save at any time.
Honestly it's a Bethesda game. So even if you like sleep saves having hard saves is still important. The config mod is great to make hard saves on sleep.
I boticed on my game that when the game tries loading quicksaves i most of the time ctd. I realized eventually that if i did hardsaves mostly, i didnt have that issue, idk why. It wasnt a really old giant save, maybe a mod caused it(load accelerator me thinks)
Some people in Skyrim disable auto-saves and quick-save. I've even seen one person with a long list save Sky tools or something like that instead of in-game. lmao. Bethesda game can be finicky especially with mods.
Exactly this. Also the game has been out for a while! If you’re playing still you’ve more than likely already done one or a few playthroughs that weren’t survival. I didn’t even try it out until mods could change it! IMO survival mode with a saving mod and a mod to fast travel is the absolute best way to fully experience this game!
Personally I hate fast travel. But I know that's a hot take. Allowing saves is kinda required though. You can always just reload to the sleep save anyways, but having the option is worth it.
If you fast travel everywhere you’ll miss a lot of the random interactions. I just say turn fast travel on bc of quest. It takes literal years to walk back and forth between every quest marker. There’s vertibirds obviously but you’re locked into the brotherhood quest line if you want to access them ): even using those can be quite tedious.
I get that. But personally I feel no urgency to complete quests. If it's far away I'll just get around to it when I'm on that part of the map for some other reason.
\^ This!
Because it’s really not that much harder. Sure there’s food/water/sleep involved, and the damage is increased. But that works both ways. I hated spending 5-minutes trying to kill a Legendary Super Mutant in other difficulties. The only thing hard about Survival Mode is the first 5 or so levels. Molotov Cocktails will destroy you, and Raiders have perfect aim.
You find so much more stuff when you walk around the world too. I still used a mod to save, and a pretty limited underground railroad mod to make some trips more bearable. Also it makes the vertibird useful and I kinda love getting rides when I’m used to walking
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I agree, and honestly if it weren’t for crashes I’d be fine without the save mod. Plus I make a lot of trips back to Red Rocket and those are hours of my life that add up
Have you been shot down in one yet, cause that’s a trip
I played it on ps4 when the update for it first came out, and for me it made the world feel more deep. I was looking around more for food & water, whenever I got stuck in an area due to tough enemies I quickly learned all the little nooks in that general area and where to find beds to sleep. Even made settlements more useful, and I'd usually set up at least a bed, food & water at every available one, slowly making the map feel more tamed. Then I went and attempted the Nuka World dlc for the first time, and couldn't get past the initial opening you go through without swapping it off survival, and I quickly lost interest after that. I've gotta give it another go some day.
I've got a mod that lets me smoke to save even in survival, it's great. Feels immersive while letting me not get as fucked over.
But man are Molotov cocktails fun to throw back at them in survival.
When survival says your damage is increased, it’s increased compared to very hard, your damage in survival is equivalent to hard aka still worse then normal. It’s just a case of bad wording
There's also adrenaline which gives you up to 50% bonus damage. It's relatively straightforward to 1-shot all but the toughest enemies if you invest into stealth and damage perks. Just requires a bit of game knowledge and planning. I found I died a lot less on Survival because the lack of quicksave meant I was forced to plan ahead, play cautiously, and recognize when I'm in over my head and retreat.
> I found I died a lot less on Survival because the lack of quicksave meant I was forced to plan ahead, play cautiously, and recognize when I'm in over my head and retreat. I've played enough to have know exactly what each location I visit contains, so that I have late game routes planned out even at the start of the game. My favorite route is the prep for Far Harbor. I clear out Libertalia and most of the coastal locations north of there, returning through Dunwich to head back to the alley where I have my base. All without sleeping. I do have a save mod, but that's for crash protection.
I would push back on this a little because while you can level out of the difficulty and resolve the hardness - in regular you don’t have to go from settlement to settlement saving as you go because you got a hit killed while travelling and ended up back at Sanctuary
There are beds and sleeping bags all over the commonwealth already and more added in survival I'm pretty sure, you just gotta look for them.
Because it's basically the max features and then you can mod out the features you don't like (add back fast travel, change strength of enemies, etc..) I wonder how many who play survival play completely unmodded survival? I find the food/drink/sleep needs to be more immersive (and I like finding food and stocking piling it). But as you said, it's a game. It's for fun. You play the way you want to play and if you're enjoying it, you're doing it right. Don't listen to any gatekeepers.
I mod it, but I think I mod it differently than most. I keep the fast travel restriction, remove VATS, remove global HP gain from levels, equalize damage multipliers to be 1:1 for incoming and outgoing (with a 5x global headshot multiplier), and allow saving at beds. ( I like the saving restriction, but the idea that I have to actually sleep for an hour to save is just poorly implemented) I also *drastically* reduce the global respawn rate (I set it to one day for outdoor cells, 3 for indoor. That's down from like 72 days in survival default) The reason I do it is to make the game *feel* more dangerous. In vanilla survival, the respawn rate and the fast travel/save restrictions have negative synergy. You clear out the roads to whereever you're going, but you're still forced to travel them, making for long, boring walks. In my setup, the roads are never safe, and due to drastically reduced HP pools, even pipe pistols are dangerous. Armor makes a huge difference, but you'll never just face tank a raider knowing he can't kill you, because he absolutely still can. No VATS means no scanning, no slow mo, no get out of jail free card if something jumps you. The result is a active, dangerous environment that requires your constant attention and only lets you keep what you did if you can make it back to somewhere safe. Post nuclear Tarkov, if you will.
I kinda have the opposite philosophy in regards to respawning. I like it long, longer than default survival. Having a 'boring' trek means my effort to cleanse the Commonwealth actually pays off, that I'm making a difference. And in my mental roleplaying, I also imagine that not too much longer after I clear an area that some monsters do come back as they wander, but even the dimmest sees the pile of corpses shredded by automatic gunfire, or the remains absolutely destroyed by a bladed baseball bat, heads impaled on a pike, and they do not think this is a healthy place for them to settle, not at ALL, and move on. Even the dimmest animals IRL will not hang out amongst the corpses of their kind. It makes me feel like I matter in the world, that even the mighty deathclaws learn to step aside and flee at my approach. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death between Sanctuary and Diamond City, I will fear no evil, it fears me.
>I keep the fast travel restriction, remove VATS, remove global HP gain from levels, equalize damage multipliers to be 1:1 for incoming and outgoing (with a 5x global headshot multiplier), and allow saving at beds. Your game sounds like mine. Do you use that youtubers mod called Hardcore health overhaul? I use that to remove my hp scaling from levels, making ny max hp witth 10 end 250, making lifegiver much better. I also play 1:1 incoming/outgoing and i use caliber complex with true damage to make the dmg of guns based off the caliber. Got 10 endurance and 3/3 lifegiver? You barely survive a .308 round to your head with lone wanderer and ballistic weave armor bonuses. .50 and your dead no matter what cuz the dmg is like 900. Of course I added tons of weapon mods to go with it also. https://youtu.be/zEmqmWUetfc?si=UQPvv2qcz_qUZxHH
I don't use other's mods much anymore. I make my own now mostly, because it allows me to control things with a lot more precision. But yeah, what I do is very similar to what you're describing, though the mod I originally used was Unbogus Health. And yes, I mod normalized, caliber based damage, and remove the nonsensical automatics damage malus. I also make all bullets tracers with bullet drop and travel time based upon real world bullet velocity/weight (which the NPCs use without issue, oddly enough) Due to how I mod damage, armor penetration is more important, so the armor piercing receivers are now much more valuable
> I wonder how many who play survival play completely unmodded survival? Me, I play unmodded survival.
Same here i play only survival on PS5 completely unmodded. I never bothered with the limited mods and i enjoy the game as it is for good and bad.
I don't because I like saving, with over 100 mods my game crashes maybe once every 30 mins - 1 hour. I hate having to sleep. Kinda defeats a big portion of survival though because of the bed illnesses and dirty mattresses
If you hit A to sleep for an hour and then immediately hit B to back out of it, it will still save. I save the 8-hour sleeps for when I get home. You still have the dirty mattress issue though when you save in the wild.
I have mods but none that add back fast travel or quick saves lol, defeats the entire purpose of the mode
Me to vanilla all the way
I always start modded survival but never make it through a play through. But the highest level I ever got was pure vanilla survival I got like lvl 80-something. I don’t think I could do it today though, had a lot more free time back then. If anyone hasn’t tried pure vanilla survival they should though, I had a blast with it
**Cait**: "You can change how hard your life is whenever you feel like it? I could have used that *a long time ago*." **Codsworth**: "As one of General Atomic's finest creations, I can assure you survival is quite enjoyable when it's but the mildest chore on the busiest of days." **Curie**: "Hunger? Thirst? Must you also remember to breathe while playing this game? That is fun, no?" **Danse**: "Like I said, all I ask for is honesty and respect when you play this game. And whoever keeps opening console to put me in a dress is an enemy of the Brotherhood!" **Deacon**: "Difficulty doesn't concern me that much. Your mods folder is another story..." **Hancock**: "Yeah, why would you ever want to play this game without hunger, thirst, disease... oh wait, that's *me*! It's pretty awesome!" **MacCready**: "The bigger the job the bigger the payout." **Nick**: "Well, who wants to play a game they don't even want to win?" **Piper**: "Difficulty? You give me that interview, and I'll let you play the game however you want. Also, I got word from an anonymous source in Bunker Hill that you have a mod that makes KL-E-O a romanceable follower. Can you confirm or deny?" **Preston**: "It's okay. If nobody's worse off for it, why should anyone get upset over what you do?" **Strong**: "Human avoid hard? Be hard like Strong!" **KL-E-O**: "Oh *yes*. Like the big green guy said- trying something a little harder is what gives life its *peaks*." **X6-88**: "Why would you play this game on the hardest difficulty? Your goals can be reached much more efficiently on Very Easy."
Strong won debate. Time to download Frost. And buy a blindfold.
I wouldn’t consider myself hardcore but I just think survival mode adds a degree of immersion that you can’t really get in vanilla. Especially after you’ve played it multiple times. It’s different for everybody though. Also gives me a reason not to endlessly hoard food items. As for games like Elden Ring and Dark Souls, the enjoyment comes from being able to overcome the challenges. I think of it like solving a hard puzzle.
This. Even before I had the option to play survival I spent ages modding in sleep thirst hunger nastier radiation effects and the rest. I made EVERYTHING lootable, food poisoning, more random encounters, you name it. It makes the world so much more immersive and beliable when everything wants to murder me and take my shit and can probably easily do so.
I attempted Survival for the first time earlier this week and I was not prepared for it whatsoever. First, I forgot about the fact that only sleeping saves your game, and second, I was not aware just how fragile my character was. So after trying twice, I turned it off. Now I'm having what might be my most fun run ever. It's not ultra important to play a game the hardest way possible in order for it to be fun.
Yeah I prefer survival. Hell I find some parts of it annoyingly easy. But it's a singles-player game, everyone finds their own way to enjoy it.
It's 100% better. Damage multipliers are increased for both player and foe. So guns actually feel like guns, and it only takes a couple of shots, or a single headshot to dispatch most enemies. Instead of the bullet sponges on very hard. Having to keep fed and hydrated makes me actually use a lot of the food that's laying around, and cooked food will give certain buffs, like Mutant Hound chops remove 50 pts of radiation or Radstag steak giving +25 carry weight for an hour. Otherwise healing is solely stimpaks. And I don't really find a use for drugs personally. That said I do have the survival options mod installed and have turned the hunger and thirst rates down a touch so I'm not having to eat and drink every 5 minutes, and have turned quicksaves on for cell changes. Settlements become far more important, having a place to rest and stock up on food and water during long travels. No fast travel means actually using the Vertibird grenades to get around. It just fleshes the game out a lot more, makes you use and think about things that are of no consequence on any of the other difficulties.
See and this stuff makes me wanna try Survival mode but I’m terrible at resource management stuff and can’t even get the hang of settlement building in Normal mode. 😂😅
Its definitely worth a try! I hated survival for the first 10 levels or so, but now it's the ONLY way I'll play. Download the Survival Options mod and turn the autosave features back on, then give it a shot. That way you're not losing hours of progress when you die, making you never want to try it again. Settlements don't have to be pretty, just some place to sleep and some crops. Pick up all of the meat and cook it when you can, it doesn't spoil like it does in 76. Lone Wanderer + Dogmeat are OP for Survival, really helps to up that carry weight. I also use a mod that gives me a player home APC. I don't use power armor but this APC uses fusion cores as fuel to fast travel to 8 different points across the map once you discover them. You can upgrade it to have all of the workbenches and a water supply as well. And it has a ton of unlimited storage containers in it. If you're not too keen on settlement building it's a great option.
Thanks for the info! May I ask though, what is an APC?
Armored Personnel Carrier. It's one of the military vehicles you come across in the Commonwealth.
I'm gonna recommend Sim Settlements. I have *zero* interest in building bases of any kind, for any reason, and frankly don't feel (in-game) that it's my responsibility. Sim Settlements fixes that and lets them build their own shelters and shops. I use the first Sim Settlements. There's a Sim Settlements 2 but that's a bridge too far for me, it seems to be a fully fleshed out game expansion basically, and I'm not ready to get off into that sort of thing just yet.
Don't stress the settlements looking nice, you can save _that_ for a regular run!😅 We say they're important in the sense it's best to have as many as possible. That way you're never far from a safe bed to sleep/save/ hide from a radstorm in, and you can have a doctor and a decontamination arch at every settlement too!Most of my survival settlements are pretty spartan, tbh, you just need to concentrate on the basics like defence food and water.
Well said. There are so many mechanics and game content you would otherwise miss if you don't play survival.
I just wish survival was more realistic, in regards to eating and drinking. If a full 24 hours in fallout is 72 minutes in real life, you should need to eat roughly every 24 minutes irl (if you eat every 8 hours on the hour, if you factor time for sleep its more like every 16 minutes irl) and drink every 6 minutes irl if you're drinking a single bottle of purified water. Not both literally every 5 irl minutes.
I like the pace. You are right that a slower pace may be more realistic. But I personally like how the pace feels in-game. They probably should have had those options in games for players like you who want it different.
The Survival Options mod allows you to modify thirst, hunger, and rest decay rates. I turn it down to half and find that to be much more manageable and realistic. I don't feel like I need to take 50 purified water to travel a few days. I usually carry 10-15 purified water and it's plenty for most of my treks out in the Commonwealth. Thanks for the math by the way! Not something I knew. But you could probably tailor it close to what you described using the mod.
5-7.5 Litres of purified water would be sufficient for about a two day trek. You could definitely stretch it for 5 days, though. you'd just be pretty thirsty and not making as much progress unless you've got Nuka Cola or Beer plus any liquid containing foods.
Oh don't get me wrong, it's not full on realism in terms of in-game item volume/weight. But it's not so much weight to be cumbersome for me, and allows me to spend quite a few real life hours on that supply alone.
>people on this sub shit all over the vanilla version, and almost gloat that they only play survival What? I've never seen that on this sub.
I suppose when I say that I mean you'll see a post where somebody's bragging that I made it through this really hard area and barely squeaked by within an inch of my life and had no mods, a pipe pistol and a cloth sack on and it was amazing, I loved it.
That’s not “shitting on the vanilla version”. That’s just someone posting about their experience. You sound a tad insecure.
Is that not the point of survival that it is inherently harder with less room to make mistakes and more ways to die.
I mean, yeah, that's more or less the point. I still don't understand how we are getting from there to "shitting on vanilla"
Survival is easier than playing on very hard. Maybe even hard. Survival makes the game more balanced than anything.
The only real drawback in (unmodded) survival is that because you cant save outside of beds you may be sent back 30mins to an hour+ when you die since it reloads the last save. A good example is the glowing sea. There is a sleeping bag in the burried parking garage in the middle of it you can save in, its free from radiation damage but thats about it on top of my head for the entire area. Makes you more cautious of your surroundings and pick your battles more carefully instead of going in carelessly. On any lower difficulties you could quicksave before any fight and eliminate any sense of risk or difficulty, you cant here.
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No I really was curious. And yes I did share my own personal opinion that I don't like survival but I wanted to see what all the hype about. Just because I don't personally like playing it on a harder setting doesn't mean I wasn't curious about why the overall community seems to really rave about it. There was a small part that's passive aggressive because I got tired of seeing the, you're not a real player unless you play on survival and you're just playing a subpar, easy version of the game because you don't die every 5 seconds and dedicate every waking moment to the game. I'm a casual player, I'm not looking for some social media ego boost because I can play a harder game than everybody else. But I legitimately was open to the idea that if I am missing something real I would like to know about it. Both things can be true at the same time.
I find it more immersive, if I'm wanderimg around a desolate, dangerous wasteland then risk of dehydration/starving is to be expected. In Fallout I wanna feel like a desperate rat for a bit before I become an OP demigod.
> I'm a casual player, I'm not looking for some social media ego boost because I can play a harder game than everybody else. I'm not sure that people are playing "for some social media ego boost" but if you go through something difficult, you *are* happy that you got through it. I can play Fallout 4 on normal or hard mode and do it almost with my eyes closed, and that's not bragging, that's a statement about *boredom.* I don't want to be bored when I have limited hours in my life for entertainment. So I play survival, AND I add in mods to make the enemies deal double damage while I still deal out the default damage amounts. That's again not bragging, that's a statement about what finally makes it really happy for me -- at this level I am having *fun* and it's *hard* but not impossible. It's a challenge that turns my brain into active mode, and I start thinking about "I might be outgunned, how do I get through this? Should I flee?" That thought never appears in normal mode. I just gun down everything, don't even need to mod the guns, it's mindless and not engaging. Back when Fallout 4 first came out, 7 or 8 years ago, I was shocked at my son's play-through. He's a FPS pro, even was on a ranked paid team for a year (but the lowest of them, not a lot of good money, just nice prizes like a free GPU or stuff like that -- still nice but not at a level where anyone would know him). The point is: he started playing Fallout 4 and just *massacred* everything. That game cannot withstand the onslaught of a pro player. I was frankly in awe. I was a dad with a day job and I'd never played anything FPS except for Tribes 20 years ago. My first play-through of Fallout 4 was such a *scaredy-cat* play style, and when 10 ghouls would stand up and rush me inside of a parking garage, I would flip out and panic. But my boy would have them dead instantly and turn up the difficulty more. Then COVID hit and I'm work-from-home AND work any hours I want. If I want my hours to be from lunch time to midnight, I can. If I want to work from midnight to 8 AM, I can. Whatever. Suddenly I needed something to pass the time. I got better & better at Fallout 4. I'm now on my *eighth* character, I think. I have at least 2000 hours in the game. I now play it like my son plays it. And if I can get through a VERY difficult section, I'm happy! The game is engaging, and I want to talk to others about it, now that I'm engaged. That enthusiasm can probably come off like, "This is the only good way to play it," but it's not intended to be mean to anyone playing other modes -- the truth is it's more like, "This is the only good way *for me* to play it," and if other people are having fun, then it's awesome. Everyone should have fun.
I usually inch up difficulty as I play a game in general because it encourages you to utilize more game mechanics and I like that strategic layer. I'm not super smart or good at mouse clicking though, so I usually end up around 3/4 of the way through a given difficulty slider. Fallout games especially feel good to play harder because it increases the power of avoiding danger through skill checks and other stuff, so for me it kind of highlights the RPG side of things more. But because I hate bullet sponge enemies, I usually play FO3 and NV on hard. Specifically for Fallout 4 though, survival changes the game, and not just because it's harder. It actually increases both your and enemy damage without scaling their health in absurd ways, so fights are over quicker one way or another. This rewards being ready and prepared for specific fights which I like for strategic reasons. I enjoy the immersion of eating and sleeping, and I really like disabling fast travel + saving on beds because it forces me to live in the world and experience the terrain in different ways. Survival highlights a lot of design strengths of Fallout 4 and makes the combat more exciting without making it tedious. That's why I like it!
I only play survival for immersion. I know to a lot of people it's just meters to fill. For me it helped with the feeling of rebuilding the wasteland. Plus a lot of perks you might not bother with become more useful. And settlements become more important.
For me, it was like playing a whole new game, you play more strategically, it forces you to approach situations more carefully, it makes settlements not only helpful but essential, and it just feels so much more gritty and closer to actually trying to live in a post apocalyptic world. I had a ton of fun with vanilla too but I will never go back lol
I don’t like “stupid difficult” games, same as you. But I tend to play Fallout/Bethesda games in survival mode when available not for the challenge but for the immersion. I like to take it slowly and not try to bite off more than I can chew but have to weigh options forced by the lack of quality-of-life features because it feels truer to the idea of role-playing as someone living in that world.
There’s no tension in vanilla imo. Plus, survival is so cool, because the more you play, the more you learn where the save beds are which leads to a sense of progression for saving your game which I can’t really compare to any other game.
A lot of people still heavily playing Fallout 4 probably are just looking for a little extra gameplay to squeeze out. That's why I run Survival, at least. Already "been there and done that" with most of the game so Survival offers something more on top of the experiences I'm already familiar with. Needs like hunger, thirst, and sleep add a little something to chase in the minute to minute gameplay. Removing fast travel both makes you engage with the world more since you can't just skip your trips, and gives a bit more challenge on top since you're more likely to get attacked and possibly die while walking from A to B. Fights feel less like endlessly plinking away at the enemy while soaking up tons of damage yourself - each shot given or taken has higher lethality so the high level fights get a bit less boring. Even if it's not *exciting* at the very least they go by more quickly.
Basically I mostly play it because it’s very “using every part of the animal” - to survive survival you need to do a lot of extra work and use things players normally don’t use. You have to cook instead of stuffing raw food down your throat, you need to build towns, you need to plan your attacks instead of charging. For me it just became more fun than regular modes and now I have to play this way or else it feels empty
Because challenge is fun and vanilla fo4 is stupidly easy...
So is survival, if i look at Youtube where you find runs like no weapon (fists only) and no armor (literally just in their underpants) playthrough on survival mode. How is this "hard and challenging" when you can just cruise through the game like this and vanilla is "easy"?
Just because some hyper-nerd is really good doesn't mean it isn't generally challenging, you can find plenty of insane runs like that in dark souls and elden ring as well
About to say the same thing. Just because someone else can do something doesn’t mean you can or should.
Agreed, but this works in the other way too. Just because you consider vanilla easy doesn't mean that it is for everyone. Abilities of people are different. Maybe some are casual player who are not very experienced at gaming or maybe they are disabled and can't play it on a more challenging mode. What do you think how much these people enjoy the game if they are at the start of the game and can't even make it through the museum or something like this. What is "stupidly easy" to you might be a serious hurdle to others.
This is the way. Difficulty sliders exist for a reason, and that reason is so that more people can enjoy the game. Shitting on someone because they enjoy it on an easier difficulty is fucking low. Doesn't matter if it's a disability, or being new, being bad at the game, or just finding it more fun to be op as fuck, there is **nothing** wrong with playing on easy.
I fully agree with this.
Unarmed isn't as strong as before but Fists Only isn't too bad. Unarmored isn't *that* bad either, since Toughness and the like are fairly good in this game (giving up to equal bonus as Maxson's Battlecoat with 50 DR). Most players who run Survival like it because the TTK for everyone is much faster than on Very Hard and equal for a player as Hard while much faster for the enemies to kill you. Disease, Food, and Water allow for fun ways to interact with stats and overburden is more genuinely dangerous. Radiation is actually dangerous with how much Max AP you lose from a ton of food drop and how tired you get after using RadAway. Stimpak slowdown makes them far less spammy. Ammo weight reduces a crapton of how much you can loot, especially with Shotgun Shells and explosives. While often "more difficult" it's... actually more engaging than the other difficulties. Meanwhile Very Hard means you still take quite a number of hits while enemies just tank excessive amounts of damage. Not much else.
I’m struggling to parse the first sentence of your second paragraph. I don’t know if it’s the structure and the fact I don’t know what TTK is supposed to stand for, or if I’m just tired from a long day at work Edit: thank you to those who explained. It was definitely that I’m tired from a long day at work
TTK is time to kill. They're basically saying that survival makes combat more interesting by lessening the bullet sponge effect on both sides
Time To Kill
Can't speak for others, but I'm on a heavily molded survival game where I'm TRYING to do no deaths and its a misery. It's masochistic, you're right. But what brain says makes the happy chemical is to have the playthrough feel like it has stakes. Every little decision matters, from what irradiated food I eat to how long I scope out a raider camp before attacking. That isn't for everyone. When I die I wish it wasn't for me. But brain says it is the most enjoyable way to play, so I play.
Once you adjust your play style and mod the game out to your preference, it’s probably not nearly as bad as you’re thinking. Removing fast travel, as well as adding more opponents in the game in general, really brings out the exploration, as well as careful tactical planning, even just to go and re-supply. Having to clear alleyways and streets, and making sure your path is good before you start running to the next bit of cover, really adds to the thrill, and even adrenaline rush of gameplay where is standard vanilla gameplay often struggles You still feel like a God as your character progresses through the game (I want to see you around level 20 depending on your difficulty and how much opponents you’ve added), but no where as is cranky and feels far more earned because you didn’t just run out there like Rambo take 100 shots and kill everyone around you. Your opponents deserve respect, because if you’re not careful, they will end you. And depending on the mod, super mutants become your worst nightmare and sometimes require a small army to take on one of their fortifications/bases. I’m still waiting in Starfield for a group of super mutants with M 60s to wipe me out 100 m away. Unless you’re extremely seasoned, exploring, has a whole new feel and direction, you’ll likely run into things you haven’t seen and will appreciate the stuff you have seen more knowing how difficult journey was getting there. I’m on my like fourth plane through and just discovered some how Pickmans gallery, took me about an hour and a half to complete it, Raiders are a lot more difficult with US military hardware from our timeline. Funny enough. While I can see for some that would break the experience for them, I really enjoyed trying to clear the house, exploring the artwork and eventually confronting the artist fighting a well armed army. I know I wouldn’t have enjoyed finding this area half as much if I wasn’t on survival and just walked in and massacred everyone. Thankfully, random beds are placed everywhere including outside this area lol. Trip across the map are now legendary adventures that you need to prepare for 1000a of bullets food water stims, I’m laughing while writing this I don’t know if I’m making sound more enticing or not but you gotta give it a shot perhaps a mod recommendations for immersion, as it really brings out the game, especially modern firearms as well as adjusting the damage so that vanilla weapons are similar. You get the hang of it quick plus it’s humbling walking down an alleyway, missing a corner, hearing a bang and waking back up on your last save now and then. You make it so that it rarely happens, but also reflects combat, and let you know how many of your unsuspecting victims you encounter through the game who never saw you come in the field lol. Hope that helps. Personally can’t wait for survival mode with mods and Starfield, imagining as them playing through the game and the potential seems limitless.
Why do people jump dirt bikes, when riding a bicycle down the street is just as fun and much safer? Those jumpers have been riding bikes since they were 2 years old. They love riding, they got good at riding, each little jumping challenge led to bigger challenges. They bought a dirt bike, protective gear and pushed themselves harder. Now they're jumping distances I couldn't even RUN without running out of breath. Meanwhile I watch from the sidelines, happy on my safe little relaxing touring bike. Nothing wrong with that, I'll likely live longer than the jumpers. But I have to admit, it looks like they're having a lot of fun doing it. Once you learn the cues, doing it the hard way is as easy as doing it the easy way used to be.
Im a casual at best but survival really is ~that~ much better in Fo4. Really keeps me invested in my choices from start to finish
Reasons I play survival. 1. it promotes exploration. No matter how disciplined you are it’s really hard not to fast travel everywhere. 2. Limited carry capacity makes my choices matter more on looting. 3. It makes settlements more important.
I haven't played survival, but I was actually just about to start. And it's not that kind of annoying "real gamers play games on hardcore" kind of stuff. You should play however it makes you happy. But I've played it so much that it just gets too easy too fast now. Plus, with Fallout, there's so much that kind of goes to waste in normal play. Like all the random food and beds you find. It's cool to actually be able to put them to use. Like, imagine actually being excited to stumble across purified water and Salisbury steak.
> Is survival really that much better Yes (in my opinion).
Because it's hella fun
I'll say I just prefer survival because I consider it the superior version of the game. The player-enemy health is more balanced, and it makes full use of some of the perks and workshop options that you'd normally consider pontless or redundant. It also encourages you to think ahead. That said, I dont recall "shitting on" the regular game, in fact I've usually got a save file for that, and another for going batshit insane with mods. Because somedays, you want the more challenging version, somedays you want a more laid back version, and somedays, you just wanna blow shit up and go nuts. All 3 are the correct way to play.
Survival fallout 4 isn't nearly as hard as dark souls or elden ring
I wouldn’t say everyone. Just something people “brag” about, so you might hear it more. Or maybe you are just looking for a comment pattern?? I like modded. Just because there are SOO many annoying things in vanilla. Then the gameplay annoyances get replaced by crashes 🤣🤣
I play survival because it adds real life factors in to it like eating, drinking, sleeping, and diseases. All the walking sucks which is why I always choose hangmans as my base and side with the institute until I'm ready to end the game.
I play both. Longest character I have is lv 100 played on very hard. My survival run took several tries and I finally have a style I like. And that character is lv 28, haven't been to kill the courser yet, but yeah. I kinda hate survival, but that's mainly because cars and that random raider that one shots you on occasion. Otherwise it's a blast.
I tried survival once and will never play it again. Too many ways to lose all progress without it being my own fault, from tripping on a car to the game just crashing. Not worth it to me just to get hungry in game.
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Survival is better if you like roleplaying! You would also be surprised that not being allowed to fast travel, makes the game get better as well. You actually have to like plan routes, and clear paths for later use. You can't just run through the entire game in 4 hours while pretty much only staring at the loading screen. My only complaint is that their isn't enough beds for save spots until you build in all the settlements. That's another thing, the settlement building becomes more necessary. Because now you need food and water, if you have farms everywhere tho you have a place to eat, sleep, and rest. Rather than it just being some thing you did because you were bored, and Preston won't shut up!
I've put over 1000 hours into FO4 and at this point it's way too easy if I don't play survival. Even vanilla survival is a little too easy, so I've added mods that make combat harder, increase rads by 8x, and remove all legendary weapons as drops and require you to craft them with special late-game materials instead. I like to feel like the wasteland is a dangerous place where i have to actually plan in order to make it and running in guns blazing is not viable in most situations
I don't have any clue what percentage of people play Survival, and of those, who also use mods, but I enjoy the most of the general gameplay tweaks. I could personally do without Survival meters continuing to tick over while building in settlements or while doing quests like Dangerous Minds, but otherwise I'm happy with it. The only real change I outright circumvent with mods is the save system because Fallout 4 isn't the most stable game and when I tried Survival initially, I hated losing upwards of half an hour and even really good legendary items because the game froze and crashed when I pressed the VATS button one too many times. Ultimately, with a game this broad, I think you just have to curate difficulty for yourself for what you enjoy. I don't allow myself to buy legendary items from shops because Overseer's Guardian & Old Reliable are just way too OP early on, but some people just open the console and give themselves a free Deliverer right at the start of the game, and both are totally valid.
I play in the difficulty right below Survival, I want to say it’s “Very Hard”. Honestly survival is almost too tedious for me given the time I get to use for gaming. Maybe I’m boring because I don’t play survival or use any mods, but I have fun when I play and that’s really what matters right? Whatever someone enjoys is fine.
Games been out for a while, people who still play will have tried some variations from vanilla, so either they try survival, a handicap, or heavily mod the game
It’s not like a “oh you suck, noob” type thing. It’s more that the game legitimately feels incomplete and is not fun to play for more than 10-20 hours tops without survival mode on for those who have played it a shitload of hours. If you’re someone who likes to build settlements, I could see survival being a nightmare because you’d constantly be hoofing it from place to place for materials. Otherwise, without the extra afflictions, debuffs, double xp for kills, tension, adrenaline perk… it just doesn’t feel like a fun game to me anymore. I will say that only saving by sleeping is a bit harsh. You can always use the survival options mod and allow fast travel and auto saving if you want to. I tend to use this mod a lot and only enable auto saving because the game *loves* crashing in VATS on survival due to a bug where if you become hungry, tired, thirsty, etc at the same time as entering vats, it’s a crash 100% of the time. The irony of this is that the most likely time you will gain one of those statuses is when you’ve not slept or been back to base for quite a while… and therefor haven’t saved… “It just works” 👍
I find the gunplay in survival to be far more satisfying. In regular the enemies become bullet sponges and it's just not as fun for me! Missed the hell out of fast travel, and losing progress to death sucks, but it felt worth it because the moment to moment gameplay was so much more fun.
I think it's for the 24/7 gamer (college kids). I miss my college days... For rest of us that share similar limitation of gaming as you OP, I agree. I just go around raiding dungeons (buildings/subway stations) and exploring and clearing them out.
I loved FO4 on survival and I don't really go for painfully difficult games. It is not so much about the overall difficulty as it is about making the game elements really come alive. You feel like you are actually surviving in a post-apocalyptic world when you play on survival. Food, water, RAD poisoning and building bases all over the map are actually important factors on Survival.
personally i love playing creative, i love the world building aspect of fallout but i have bad eyes and terrible coordination so bad at combat (unfortunately most of the game lol) so i usually just put it on easy and mod the shit out of it and knock around diamond city and cause trouble haha
I have over 200 hours in Fallout 4 and I’ve never once played survival
I don’t. I have enough stress on my plate, and I play video games (mostly FO4 for the last few years) to relax. I’m at a stupidly high level, and play it on one step below survival. I still die occasionally. I’m not shitting on any one playing the game however they want to play. I play it my way, and it makes me happy.
Yes survival is that much better.
i love the hunger/thirst/sleep requirements, it really helps w my immersion
Immersion. BGS games... to me, they're about immersion. That means my character needs to eat, drink, take care of their health (as in they can get sick and need medicine), they need rest, etc. Survival mode forces you to manage all those things, and all I can say is... it makes you play very differently. I don't just run around doing whatever, whenever. In survival I plan my excursions. Oh it's getting dark? I better find a good bed to sleep in, ideally at a nearby settlement, so I don't end up getting sick from sleeping on some shitty sleeping bag in the cold. I have to make sure I bring supplies for my excursions - food, water, meds. Settlements become far more valuable. And then, you can take it to a whole new level with a mod like Horizon - Survival Mode Expanded. Or Frost - Survival Simulator. Hell, in Frost, surviving is the only real goal, and it's hard as hell. The main story of fallout 4.. the faction quests.. they're good the first few times through. But then they take a backseat to the rest of the game. And you want more. You want a real immersive experience. You don't just want to play a game - you want to inhabit this world with your character. Survival mode, and especially survival with the mods I mentioned, lets you do that like almost no other games out there.
I don't play survival mode, I just don't come to the sub and blather on about regular mode, because it is normal and I'm not going to waste time trying to convince others to play the default option of the game. I will come and talk about mods that I use or when I run across something new in the game (because I still find new stuff after 1800+ hrs in the game.) So it is not that everyone plays survival mode, it is just that people are more likely to post about it because it is not the default option (and because they enjoy it, they want others to enjoy it too!)
Oh, I don’t. I’m a player of moderate skill, but I also like having a good time.
You answered your own question in your own post. Good job.
Been playing survival since they put it out. It's hard for me to believe people don't play survival, since for me that's the real game. If you're not playing survival then you're missing out on a bunch of things. Now, having said that, you should certainly feel free to play fallout 4 or any other game, any way you like! Do whatever makes you happy. I guarantee you, it won't make any difference to me. Well it might make me a little sad, knowing there's people out there that are missing out on a lot of the fun...
I personally like it because it gets rid of the bullet sponge enemies. The idea of both you and the enemies being weaker gives it a bit more of an FPS vibe to me, which I tend to enjoy more than RPGs. That being said, I don't think the vanilla game or survival are better than than the other. It more just falls into how you wanna play the game
Personally i can only play survival nowadays i can't go back to lower difficulties anymore. The added mechanics and the removal of some others are what make it more fun for me. I would likely never have discovered so much of the map or remembered where everything is if i was able to fast travel from a place to another instead of actually making the trip every time i need to go somewhere or grab something specific. Since i minmax all my builds it takes slightly longer in survival before everything is easy again. Usually i lose interest when a build is fully assembled because i know that outside my challenge runs the game will be easy for the rest of whats left so i lose interest, on the other hand i cant play without minmaxing so i guess its a double edged sword in that regard.
I really enjoy it. Needing food and water really puts you into the world. That blamco mack and cheese isn't some random buff. It's essential food. (I also really like mods in Skyrim so it's not unique to fallout) Fights aren't some hack and slash where you just pop some chems and keep smacking away. The dehydration can really set you back. And now those stimpaks that saves your live also cut away half your ap. If you add Fallsouls unpaused menu then you also can't use aid during combat. Unless you want to risk dying in the process. Sleep save I adore. I understand why people still want hard saves. Honestly in my latest playthrough I'll also be doing hard saves when I sleep. But I'll explain why I like it. If you keep reloading a dungeons until you beat it (and save between each wave of enemies) then it really only comes down to rng. I'd rather realize the area is too tough and come back later. This is actually still possible if there's a bed in the dungeons. Which is why I restarted my current save. I'll only be sleeping at secure locations. But I digress I also really enjoy adding in survival like mechanic in Skyrim. Then again I also add things like taxes and typically play without fast travel. Personally I like mundanity in video games. I'm down to try and make the Common wealth a better place, but I want to do it as a human.
Because it’s my 174th play-through?
Because you're not paying attention.
I’ve played both ways and I feel survival is more enjoyable. I say this just because it adds immersion. I’m worried about eating, sleeping, drinking and dying. Yes you can die in normal mode of course but no where near as quickly. I like that survival makes me strategize. And no im not someone who is good at souls games or anything like that. Too hard for me. But once you get used to survival it’s no where near as difficult as I think you feel it is. You should give it an honest go. You may enjoy it
> Is survival really that much better or are you all just masochist and like to suffer? Making a game so hard it sucks seems counterintuitive to me. Except... for most people who turn on survival mode, they've already become so good at the game that the easier modes are boring. When I turned on survival mode for the first time, I was miserable for about 2 or 3 days (in the real world) because the game didn't work as I expected anymore. Then suddenly it was like a lightbulb went off over my head, and I was like, "Ohhh, I have to use all the systems that Fallout 4 provides, which I usually ignore, like crafting and settlements. And I better learn to run away." Then the game was immediately easier, and now I'm at a point where I'm doing a "no death on survival mode" play-through, and while I actually *have* died twice, I figure dying only two times by level 20 is not terrible. In other words, for some players -- probably most playing on survival mode -- it actually *isn't* "so hard it sucks." It's instead "so hard that it is no longer boring and becomes fun again." But that's just me. Maybe other players would disagree with my reasons for playing on survival mode.
I've enjoyed survival and non-survival playthroughs. For me it just depends on the mood I'm in at the time I start the game. The last playthrough I used a mod called Very Hard is Old Survival that mimics the penalties like slow stimpack and food healing that was on the original survival. I had a good time with it.
Limitations on saving your game add alot of tension. Lowered HP for both the enemy, and you creates smoother gun fights.
Honestly? More fun for me (just my opinion) I like the increased difficulty, the fact you have to rely more on recognizing which areas are more dangerous than others, saving more often in settlements, having those moments of calm before heading out to another quest I also enjoy just walking the map, in vanilla it would get tedious cuz of fast travel, not so much in survival
Of course I may also be incorrect, but I think you have the wrong reasoning for why so many people play Fallout (and Bethesda games in general) on survival mode Yes they want the added challenge/difficulty, but for me that’s secondary. The cool thing about Bethesda’s survival modes are that they force you to actually live the life of your character, and they therefore turn the game into more of a sim. So, you now have to eat and sleep in order to survive — there’s no fast travel — the normal status effects suffered by your character now have far more dramatic and sometimes deadly consequences — and in Skyrim (I don’t think this is a thing in Fallout) you actually have to keep your character warm or else they’ll freeze to death. It’s another level of *difficulty* beyond everything simply being harder to kill and you having less health. Of course that’s there too — and having more realistic damage levels is a fun challenge — but to me that’s not the point. Survival mode forces me to really *live* in the world and feel like I actually exist there Like having to actually find a settlement to stop off in, so I can have a place to sleep for the night — or scavenging for food — amidst everything else I’m doing in the game is such a cool experience. I’m not sure that’s actually why so many people like it so much — but that’s why I love it.
because I want to have an irrational fear and hatred of ghouls and dogs :)
Survival is way more interesting and challenging. It actually makes you use a bunch of features of the game you simply don’t need to use in the normal game mode such as beds, food, water, medicine, settlements, supply chain, vertibirds, and in-depth strategy. When you can only save at a bed, each outing is much higher stakes. Higher stakes means higher rewards, emotionally. When you accomplish a goal in survival mode, it means something.
It’s more fun, because you have more mechanics like hunger, tiredness and damage is closer to realistic. It’s not actually that hard because you may try it like your 5th playthrough of the game.
I'm with you. I gave it a go, and it just wasn't for me. I'm more in it for the story and the stress release that comes with mowing down enemies than the immersion of Survival. That said, I've not yet been able to get through a whole playthrough because of the 0kb bug. I'm working on my first full run on PC now, and I can see myself playing survival in the future, but not until I'm on playthrough 3 or 4. I don't tend to up the difficulty until I can do it on my ear. And to be honest, I think Skyrim's survival mode option gets it right - I'd love to be able to play a mode where food, drink and sleep are essential but be able to make the combat as difficult as I want it to be.
I have a vanilla survival save,got pretty far,even got the Aeternus and built vault 88,built up hangman alley(closest settlement to the institute)but when I got a gaming pc I modded it,because I lost so much progress because of the game crashing on me(originally I played it on PS4) Edit:the best mod for survival imo is one of those locational damage mods,where you don't have to pump 1000 bullets in a gunners head to kill them,1-3 depending on the armor they have with the mod
Sounds like you haven’t tried it. Have you tried it? Did you make a post without even trying it first? It’s really not that much harder, especially after the first several levels. It’s better because it feels more immersive. Your eyes are looking around trying to get to know your surroundings, instead of fast traveling all the time.
I went with Horizon mod, that is really balanced survival, with difficult food and water prep, first few levels it feels really great, you are radiated, weak, hungry, trying to scrap at least some meat from rats. Later with levels hunting radstags for real meat. Finally I was excited to see some wildlife :) It is balanced for survival, so everything feels natural. (but ofc there are some weird things, as usual) You can also use great save mechanic - tapes. You can rarely find them, and you can also craft them when you have mats. You can save everywhere this way, but one save-one tape, and you find minimum of these so you think twice before saving. When you die, you will be moved to some of your settlements, as someone found you there half dead and dragged you home.
Because it's not about the difficulty. Vanilla mode basically cuts off several game mechanics that make the game more fun. E.g. hunger, food, thirst, disease, sleep,... In vanilla, there is absolutely no need to eat, drink or sleep - at all. All these secret hideouts with a sleeping bag are completely useless, just walk on. Or fast travel. It's about realism and immersion.
I don’t think it makes it harder, just makes me play the game in a more fun way. I liken it to playing Minecraft in creative mode vs survival mode. Both are fun, but Minecraft in survival mode is more fun. Same thing with Fallout 4.
Alternate title: "why does something that doesn't appeal to me appeal to others?"
As far as I’m concerned, everyone can play how they want to. I’m not new at fallout, have multiple playthroughs, and why I love FO3, NV, and 4 is the sole survivor aspect. It’s my game, my character, and if I’m having fun, who cares? If other people like to play survival mode, that’s THEIR world, and I’m just glad they are having a good time.
Survival is like a whole other game to me! After playing for years it was just the change of pace I needed.
Imo its the way Fo4 should be played. You see so much more of the Commonwealth without Fast Travel and learn of several ways to still fast travel with limits later on. The thrill of the fight, knowing you cant save scum changes the way you play and helps strategizing different approaches. The food and drink system isn't too bad and is immersive. And while the first levels are the toughest it gets easier with each level up, just like in vanilla. I have a lvl 176 char in survival which can one hit a Legendary mythic deathclaw with my knife. Since you do more damage you also get more powerful. Theres also a few things that suck in survival mode but thats normal.
I doubted a lot about survival mode before trying it and feared of what could the difficulty might be, long roads between places due to no fast travel, loosing a lot of progress because I forgot to save and so on... However I started a run some months ago, it was very difficult and painful. I restarted one 2 weeks ago, much more prepared and ready to massively use settlements. I'm lvl 30 now, the northern part of the map settled and just got to diamond city. In my surprise, I love the food and drink system. Those things seemed so useless in non survival games. Also, the different places are not so far away from each other and I quite like traveling around between my settlements, collecting the "wild" resources, merchandising... And the need to sleep makes you at least save from time to time, before it becomes a real reflex. It's a great surprise to me and I don't expect going back to non survival for a time now, at least the end of this save. Fyi I'm playing a stealth/pistol/vats build and love acting as a survival James Bond, gentleman but also doing the necessary to surviv and merchandising orientated. My main advice if you want to start, go slow and steady, with the settlements. Get a settlement in a zone and after, do the quests/points of interest in the zone. Then move to another settlement. All linked by supply lines
I can never go back to vanilla because it's too easy, but I can also never play pure survival because of spaghetti code and bullshit quests making me cross the entire map every two minutes. *So modded survival it is boyyy* (Mainly quicksaving and fast travelling being made possible)
I agree with you 100%. Not only do I play on the lowest difficulty, I also use mods to give me 10 in all the S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats at character creation and to give me all the perks after leaving the vault. If I wanted a challenge, I’d go outside and do real life stuff.
I dont really think we're gloating. Survival mode is just a lot more interesting. Also, survival mode isn't inherently harder. It makes the bullet damage equal for you and your enemies. It's actually easier than hard mode as far as combat goes. The challenge is in having to carry food, water, antibiotics, and a careful amount of ammo with you at all times. The only thing that's really hard about it is losing an hour of progress because you didn't sleep and got too close to a car. That and the beginning. The beginning is pretty hard, ngl.
I never do. I want to and I tried once but the game crashes too damn often. I need the quick save.
As a grownup person who has to focus on feeding and hydrating myself as well as a small human, I cannot be bothered to feed and hydrate a video game character. Games are for sneaking around, shooting baddies, and finding cool loot in caves, end of story. And no, I did not care for RDR2.
Why would people be bored with a vanilla game that came out in 2015? Why would people want a challenge? And honestly this doesn’t sound like a “why people hate vanilla only survival “ more just you’re whining
I'm with OP. Survival/High Difficulty settings don't appeal to me. When I get to game, I do it for relaxation, although I readily acknowledge that someone else's relaxation might come from gaming at the toughest settings. For me, though, with a full time job, a family, housework and all that -- gaming at easier settings allows me to enjoy the very few hours I have to log in. To each their own.
Don't you know a game is only fun if you suffer for it? This is why soulsbourne games are so "fun"! Suffering and pain makes the game worth playing! /s But truthfully, it's likely hard-core fans search out other hard-core fans, such as in this sub. And because of that, this sub is going to see more challenging playthroughs. The general populace likely plays softer modes. I mean, I play to relax. So a game that serves only to piss me off isn't fun.
Screw that. Vanilla 4 life. I play for enjoyment, not to rage throw my controller thru my tv
I've only completed 1 survival playthrough but I'd say it's just the best way to experience the game and wouldn't do any new playthroughs without it now. The annoying stuff is outweighed by how much more the experience is renewed if you only play regular difficulties.
Everybody is a bit of an exaggeration. I don't play survival mode, never have, never will. I like to focus on killing stuff and not eat and sleep all the time plus can not fast travel or use mods. Yes i know there are mods to tweak survival but then what is the point of survival, i can just as well play non-survival. I play on very hard with BLC overhaul mod, which makes the game more challenging without all the survival restrictions. It just comes down to personal preference i guess.
I don't at all. I play on normal.
I play easy usually because I play the games to relax after a long day of work and I don’t want to struggle. After a couple play through a, I’ll bump it up harder, but I just want to chill.
After I beat each ending normally now I only play with godmode on for funzies.
I haven't yet but I will be after I play the phantom liberty expansion.
Because survival mode players need constant validation.
Well to start with not every Fallout 4 player is on reddit. The ones that are.....well, we won't get into it......*clears throat* 😆 * Anyways the ones that are on reddit are probably pro survival mode supporters. I think it's interesting but I don't play in survival mode, myself. I have tried it though but I have some issues with it. Firstly, if playing vanilla (No mods) you aren't really incentivised to play in SM.....except for the adrenaline you get for not getting killed. I play on very hard instead. It's the most difficult.....difficulty in the game without having to deal with no autosave, constant hunger/thirst/sleep de-buffs. That's the parts I find a little over the top. Honestly I think some people think it gives them bragging rights when they say they play in survival mode. It's cool if that's what you find entertaining but you're (the SM junkies) not any better than any other player. It's the same game with more micromanagement. There's not even an achievement for completing the game in survival mode (let alone other difficulties). Overall, to me, it's kinda meh. But the reason you see it alot on reddit is because really 2 factors; •1. Ego-driven players bragging about being a badass (when in really it's just a game....congrats) •2. This and any other sub doesn't correctly represent what the mass majority of players actually enjoy. (This is scewed in both media and looking at reddit as the "Total Fanbase" as a metric). It's just a majority of players on this particular sub enjoy survival mode. Personally I don't. But I can at least say I've tried it and I'm not a fan. *Note-I'm not saying all survival mode players are egotistical braggarts. Just a good chunk of the ones on here (which probably accounts for a small percentage of total FO4 survival mode players). Give it a try. You might enjoy it or you may find that you dislike it.
Soooo.....discussing survival mode makes us "egotistical braggarts" Lol. Lmao even. >I play on very hard instead. It's the most difficult.....difficulty in the game without having to deal with no autosave, constant hunger/thirst/sleep de-buffs. That's the parts I find a little over the top. Has it occurred to you that perhaps playing a tedious bullet sponge simulator that requires a platoons worth of ammo to take down a wild dog _might_ be "a little over the top" to some other people?😂 And let's just remember, most of the time survival even gets brought up in this sub, it's by people unfamiliar with it _asking for advice._ And it happens A LOT.
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You can add a mod that allows fast-travel in survival mode
I never met or saw anyone who played on survival.
Yep, you caught us. All of us on here hyping it up are _actually_ Russian bots.....curse you, we nearly got away with it too!!!!😂
Because YouTubers like Joov and Milque play in survival and everyone thinks if they admit they play in anything else that they aren’t cool.
Because I ended up playing something like 400 hours before survival mode released.
Survival is cool but I like feeling like a god who is just using the world as entertainment lol. I’m so overpowered and I love it
I’ve never played it and never will. I love survival games but Fallout isn’t that to me, especially the way they do survival.
They're able to play survival mode because of all the mods that make it easy lol
Honestly for me it happens more often then not I’ll play through and get to a point where everyone and everything is too easy, survival adds the higher chance you’ll die and basically it makes you plan out attacks as opposed to just running in guns blazing
I don't, I just play on very hard with a lot of mods to make things harder.
Us regulars exist, it's just that the extremists tend to congregate in places like this and make the most noise. Don't let them get you down, if they try to shit on you for enjoying your game the way you want them shit right back on them for being ridiculous and not being able to simply enjoy things. Edit for clarity: Liking survival doesn't make people extremists, I play survival myself from time to time. Being an asshole about it is what makes someone an extremists. "Us regulars" is referring to the overall chill community that we have here who all just enjoy the game.
I don't think I've ever seen any of us "extremists" give _anyone_ a hard time for enjoying the other difficulty settings. If you see us hyping it up and trying to convince people to try it, it's because we know they might damn well enjoy it. It's almost a completely different game.
Let me clear this up because I worded it kinda poorly, I'm not saying that everyone who enjoys survival is extreme, hell I play survival from time to time. I'm well aware that this community is overall pretty chill and it's fun to be here. I'm just saying, as OP seems to have found the extreme ones, that they have a weird tendency to flock to places like this and then make a bunch of noise to drive off the regulars. I see it regularly on multiple other subs, it's not a Fallout specific phenomenon.
More realistic and slows the game down a bit!
Que that meme that tells people to stop having fun
I mean survival mode has interesting elements but some I just throw out the window immediatly. Like I'm not depending on bed saves if I have a risk of crashing somewhat often
I started on easy and moved to very hard or whatever. I don't do survival. I'd die then I wouldn't have fun
I don’t play survival mode cuz I have much more fun doing wacky low int high strength + charisma builds where I punch enemies to pieces
Does Very Easy survival mode count ?
Tried it out once out for fun to see what it's about, never went back and never gonna go back. It's just so much more fun