Why do so many people find Dead Money "unplayable"?

[joey]

I found it less annoying than OWB. In OWB you almost exclusively find energy ammo so if you are running a gun build the dlc just completely drains your ammo. The K9000 gun also just completely eats through ammo like crazy.

The fact that you lose all your stuff for dead money makes it so the dlc is designed with the player only relying on the resources found in the dlc in mind. I find it very calming to know that I am not wasting any of my core resources while playing dead money. But I guess that's just me because I'm a huge hoarder and hate wasting ammo/resources. OWB made me feel like Im draining more resources than I am gaining.

And in terms of combat difficulty I really didnt find it too bad either. most of the time you can just walk past the ghost people, and even if you fight them, you can kill them pretty easily with the knife spear / beartrap fist you find in the dlc. I mean the whole gimmick about them standing up again unless they get gibbed is easily taken care of by just smacking them once on the head with either the knife spear or beartrap fist when they are uncouncious.
The environmental hazards are also easily avoidable, most of the time you can just quickly run through the cloud to the end / a safe zone, same with the radios / transmitters.

Does this notion that the dlc is so incredibly annoyingly difficult only stem from hardcore playthroughs?

[Sana-kan]

Probably because people can't use their OP gear. Which ads some irony since the Holorifle is one of the best weapons in the game.
Can't say it's without flaws, but it's a whole lot better than OWB imo.

[AC Denton]

They are weak

[Ladez]

I guess they don't like the gimmick of having their gear taken away and dropped into a maze, which I can kind of understand. Personally I like it quite a lot for the story and atmosphere. And it's at least a whole lot more coherent and playable than OWB, which is just a mess all around.

[joey]

Originally posted by Ladez:

I guess they don't like the gimmick of having their gear taken away and dropped into a maze, which I can kind of understand. Personally I like it quite a lot for the story and atmosphere. And it's at least a whole lot more coherent and playable than OWB, which is just a mess all around.

Yeah I really liked the story and atmosphere too. It had sort of a "fable" / "biblical story" feel to it. It kind of reminded me of i have no mouth and i must scream too.

[Tiretracker]

for me it was because of the games ticks being screwy with the framerate.
Back in the day I had a low-end PC with graphical lag and would frequently have my collar blow up well before the countdowns finish or the countdown not being anywhere near long enough to even escape the speakers radius, because of how slow the game ran despite the timer running in real time.

Been meaning to replay it to get a better estimate now that I have a better PC but now I'm dealing with an unrelated game-wide problem preventing me from playing.

[Wehzy]

Its not unplayble, its just annoying and awful to play.

[Vezera]

It forces the player to abide by a different 'set of rules' compared to the rest of the game. Not everyone appreciates that. Especially when that happens to include instant-death gimmicks.

[Vex Hilarius]

It's the perfect filter

[Memnarch]

I just didn't like how maze-like the whole area is. Every section looked the same and I ended up going in circles a lot of the time if I wasn't opening up the map every few steps. Otherwise great DLC.

[joey]

Originally posted by Vezera:

It forces the player to abide by a different 'set of rules' compared to the rest of the game. Not everyone appreciates that. Especially when that happens to include instant-death gimmicks.

I wouldn't call it "a different set of rules". It just adds new game mechanics in the form of environmental hazards. Under "different rules" I'd understand more something like previous game mechanics being changed (e.g. you can only repair weapons at a workbench and not in your inventory, something like that).

Also I wouldn't call it "instant death". You have the beepers. You get plenty of warning.

[Vassago Rain]

You can only ever visit it once.
You're locked in little fallout 3 styled corridors for the whole thing. There's little to no exploration, and you can't backtrack to the other sets of 'corridors.'
They felt the need to put a 'rocks fall, everyone dies' dialogue option in right at the start, so you know precisely what sort of terrible railroaded mess you've gotten yourself in.
There's a tiny selection of weapons in dead money, despite new Vegas itself having a billion guns.
The "gameplay" is limited to annoying fetch quests and escorting NPCs around.
You have zero agency.
Using skills and stats in conversations with NPCs will turn them against you later. This would be fine if there were some hints that such a thing would be a realistic outcome, but it's not.
The enemies are bullet sponges, invincible, or traps on the ground.
It's extremely tedious to get through, and Chris Avellone felt it'd be a great idea to make it even more tedious by draining your HP and crippling your limbs.
Your reward for finishing the thing is a gamebreaking infinite supplies ATM. Despite this, people still don't want to replay it on new saves.
The writing's hypocritical, edgy, and feels like something Chris wanted to put in fallout 2, but wasn't allowed to at the time, so he saved it for new Vegas.
The environments are ugly and uninspired. It's just fallout 3.

Stealth/survival horror doesn't work when you're using an open world game engine, a setting where the player's power is tied to gear, and the whole game is about exploration and having multiple solutions to quests and problems.

Edit: worth noting that dead money is the lowest rated DLC for any fallout game by a huge margin. It's still getting bad reviews to this very day, which is quite the achievement for something so old, and shows you just how bad it actually is.

[Rez Elwin]

Well, when I walk into OWB I have like 3,000 rounds for my Main gun, so I don't have any Ammo Issues with that one.

The reason I don't like Dead Money is the forced way they make you play. I play these games for the freedom and choices they allow, Dead Money is the opposite of that. If there was an option to find an just assassinate Elijah, that would be my choice. Like Nuka World, don't listen to the bad guys, just shoot them, then sort everything else out.

[Vassago Rain]

Originally posted by Rez Elwin:

Well, when I walk into OWB I have like 3,000 rounds for my Main gun, so I don't have any Ammo Issues with that one.

The reason I don't like Dead Money is the forced way they make you play. I play these games for the freedom and choices they allow, Dead Money is the opposite of that. If there was an option to find an just assassinate Elijah, that would be my choice. Like Nuka World, don't listen to the bad guys, just shoot them, then sort everything else out.

Chris felt his dungeon master character was more important than your own character, so you're stuck obeying him for about 5 hours.

I'm sure it's a complete coincidence that Chris was demoted after dead money, and had little to no control over how the other DLCs actually played.

[KM]

Because Casuls die in Normal withouth their Power Armor/400 Stimps so they cry and tag the dlc as bad , Only true chads that play Legendary Hardcore with Kings Outfit are the ones enjoying the game the most.

[Daxonzion-]

probably because it's just frustrating to go through? specially if you've gone through it several times in your playthroughs before.
the way Dead Money forces you to go through everything it can offer without your previous equipments before accessing Sierra Madre can be pretty frustrating. your characters are lacking resources and the enemies are pretty hard to kill, a ton of bear traps here and there, and that radio beeps that could blow your head off if you're staying in it too long. so ye, i can see why Dead Money is the least liked content from NV.

not me tho lmao. i actually like Dead Money as it is. i just think it gave me a breath of fresh air in each of my playthroughs because most of the time, my character gets a bit too overpowered, and the wasteland dont really give me any challenges anymore. and Dead Money give me just that.
tho tbf, it really is frustrating to go through on Hardcore and Very Hard