why is this too easy on even very hard

[Zes]

I had played Fallout 3 damn too long ago, like a decade.. or more. But game remained in my mind as a hard game or somewhat balanced, there was no loophole or anything.. It was a cool post-apocalyptic wasteland survival experience.. as i recall it.

Yesterday I started to play and make some nostalgia, thought it'd be fun and refreshing to play again. I got out of vault, killed a few guards with a baseball bat and claimed some guard armor and a 10mm pistol.. didnt forget the overseer and sent him to hell for what he did to jonas..

After leaving the vault i didnt go to megaton, wanted to play different. checked my quests and saw 'outcasts looking for help' since I'm an outcast myself too i decided to go there.. map marker didnt look too far to my eyes. strange i played fo3 before but i didnt recall any details about outcasts, i only remembered their red power armor, and they shooed me out when i approached their base.. years ago mind you.

I went there anyways but this was a different place, i help them to fend off some mutants and they took me inside their base. because i had a pipboy. and they put me in a simulation which i had never seen it before.. anchorage ;) i remember the word but nothing was familiar. after completing the simulation (was a unique experience btw) i was rewarded with a t51b whooa.. I remember we used to have to get a pa training to use it (at yhe very end of the game) but they already gave me the training. I was like waht!!

Plus, i gained ~10 levels inside the simulation and almost maxed small guns and repair and speech lockpick etc.. some outcastd began fighting and i collected 4 full set of outcast power armor, i got out of the place with a govenrment size arsenal and came across an enclave soldier killed him and got a hellfire power armor, minigun and laser gatler...

I slowly walked back and entered the megaton, disarmed the thing and got a house.. whooa.. i set foot in front of the door meet a trader, asked about their base and went there.. it wasnt hard, just a few bears and ghouls and i found their central location, sold many things and invested all four traders and wolfgang reached 75 repair ability..

now i have everything in full condition, combat armor, gauss rifle, power armors house and a 75 repair skilled trader.. and i'm just at level 10.

what the heck

[Doggy Friend]

Seems like it's your first time playing Fallout 3 with DLC, because this is what Operation Anchorage is.

The game is easy only for a few first levels, then it becomes easy even on the hardest difficulty (I do not count bullet sponge enemies as a difficulty). This is why it's fun to come up with your own challenges and restrictions. Last time I played, I've never ever bought anything from vendors and I barely used their repair services (only for some rare stuff).

Maybe getting Operation Anchorage reward at the beginning of the game makes it even easier. I think there is a bug related to t51b armor from the DLC - it's unbreakable.

[Zes]

Originally posted by Doggy Friend:

Seems like it's your first time playing Fallout 3 with DLC, because this is what Operation Anchorage is.

The game is easy only for a few first levels, then it becomes easy even on the hardest difficulty (I do not count bullet sponge enemies as a difficulty). This is why it's fun to come up with your own challenges and restrictions. Last time I played, I've never ever bought anything from vendors and I barely used their repair services (only for some rare stuff).

Maybe getting Operation Anchorage reward at the beginning of the game makes it even easier. I think there is a bug related to t51b armor from the DLC - it's unbreakable.

ah heck.. i dont like limiting myself just to make game more playable, i was expecting a better game design. I played it very while ago, and i wasnt aware of anchorage thing apparently.. becuase i remember i got my pa training in the very end of the game and couldnt even use it properly back then.

this time i went for achorage mission by a complete random choice, it was on top of the quest list, and i took myself as an outcast from the vault.. and suddenly became too op.

still i liked it actually, start, go to achorage, come back with power armor + gauss rifle + smallguns 85 :) get a house, sell some ammo and meds and invest wolfgang twice and get a repair 75 guy at the gate of megaton.. since manual repairing requires material, you can just pay him.. and stay in top shape :)

i liked it because i can focus on quests only. not too ginding gameplay. i2m very use to play like a hardcore veteran, maybe i should change that mindset and go with speech and start talking to people :D

[Death Approaches]

So mod it.

Bethesda games are always simple, even on Very Hard or Survival in the later ones; to them, difficulty is how many bullets it takes to kill the bad guy, and how many bullets it takes the bad guy to kill you.

They are businessmen first, gamers second. The story is the game, the combat something to do to help tell the story. And making a Dark Souls kind of game where you troll each other with "git guud" comments over finger dexterity just limits sales to the would-be casual gamer. They are multimillionares over making the game approachable to anyone, and this will never change.

You want to make it STALKER? one-shot headshots but 10 shots in armored sections? Mods. You see a albino scorp and go OH HELL! and take off sprinting away because even one sting is fatal to your maxxed character? Easy. But not everyone wants that.

[Zes]

Originally posted by Death Approaches:

So mod it.

I don't know if I'm the only one living this but I'm not able to play modded games. I tried a lot to overcome this but failed everytime. I start alright, play a while then i feel like contaminated.. If i play and finish it (very hard chance) i'm not able to say i played 'that game'.. it was something else.. that's what i feel.

Either it's kind of obsession or something else, that doesn't change the outcome.

So.. if you have any suggestion that i can do in the vanilla game, then i can do it. thanks eitherway.

[Death Approaches]

well, no, you just made it impossible to make recommendations, even little tweaks, i'm going to ruin your "strive to achieve!" feeling... I mean if you find walking too slow, and I tell you to open the console and 'player.setgs fmoverunmult 8.5' now you're moving about 4x faster than everyone else. Will the difficulty matter at all, then?

Why don't we just wait til you're bored of vanilla, got all those feelings out of the way, then we'll send you on a mod hunting quest for all the things you'd like to have experienced, then it can be a whole different game, yeah?

[Zes]

Originally posted by Death Approaches:

well, no, you just made it impossible to make recommendations, even little tweaks, i'm going to ruin your "strive to achieve!" feeling...

I actually found a way to play it more challenging and more fun without modding or setting self made rules. like no buying or repairing kinda challenges.

I have restarted but this time i'm playing quests in different orders and visiting places in a different patterns. One good thing about the fo3 is that there is a level cap and i will eventually stop leveling.

You are still welcome to make suggestions, related 'how to play and still have fun with vanilla..' Any other modding ot console suggestions won't mean much to me as i know myself, and none can ruin my strive to achieve.. (as you call it) cause things dont work like that on my side. I tried to explain it honestly but you don't seem like to get it properly.

[Death Approaches]

I do get it, I was trying to be funny. such is the internet, miscommunications abound. ^.^ I was referencing one of those Tony Little infomercials of the early 2000s, like the Swing Jogger, where he has a fake ponytail hat on and yells at the screen, yeah baby, you can do it! strive to achieve! yeah!

I really love 'ultrahardcore' modding, where armour only takes a hit or two of hard ammo and only 4-6 of soft ammo and it's broken, where grenades are fatal when they land at your feet no matter what you're wearing; (surviving a rocket launcher to the face, alright now, c'mon that's just bonkers!)

but it really changes the way you play; walking in the open without cover can be fatal, you'll ragdoll and won't even see the shot that killed you... smaller hitboxes, ballistic trajectory (where you have to lead your shot, not put the crosshair on someone running lateral to your position and still hitting them, at ~200m out, etc.) and such... there are dozens if not hundreds of "realistic damage" kind of combat mods... but while it makes the game more difficult, most people find it infuriating and not fun, and it slows down the game immensely.

I think what you arrived at on your own is the best vanilla run, self-imposed limitations. you can always mod later, that's the beauty, it's not an either/or scenario.