Fallout: New Vegas - J.E. Sawyer "Hardcore" Mod Released

I don't want the game turend into Black Isle/Reflexive Lionheart. So I'm skipping this.
 
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It's a pity it requires all the DLCs, since this makes it unavailable to anyone from Eastern Europe.

It only requires all mods because he mickey-moused the level cap down from 50 most likely. That and he had to nerf all the new food items. Although, making things like alcohol and softdrinks hydrate but "heal less" isn't really a nerf. More of a buff, really. Anyone who takes heavy damage in New Vegas isn't playing the game right and I have to take care of food and water needs a hell of a lot more often than I need to heal up. The only thing I saw on his list that looked like it's really going to make a big difference was the lowered weight limit. And, that's an "annoyance factor" issue not a "challenge" issue. That's why I'm not going to bother with this even though i have all the DLCs. I don't really trust these guys when it comes to tweaks having the desired effect (and without breaking something else in the process) and actually I'm not even sure I trust their stated intent. The faction system for instance is deliberately broken in that there are scripts which force factions to "enemy" regardless of the player's interactions with that faction in the past. There are others which send hit teams after the player based on how the player finished a quest, even if the player previously wasn't "vilified" by that faction. And the player will then be "vilified" because the hit-team script makes it so. Ever seen somebody on the forums complaining they don't understand why NRC (or whoever) is trying to kill them when they'd been working on raising their NCR(or whoever) faction? Well, that's why. Kinda sucks they give you so many options to do things without pissing anyone of and then issue a scripted "screw you" without any warning. I assume they put that in at the last minute because they had all the cool faction disguises and a clever player never even needed them. And Karma? Seriously? Why is that even in this game? You can get to very evil in 10 minutes by picking up junk off the ground and you can get to very good again in another 10 minutes by killing respawning powder gangers or any other respawning random mobs. Karma is ever more pathetic in New Vegas than it was in FO3. Am I supposed to take a dev's word for it that these issues (which seem to me to be deliberate) are better now, and not worse?

And by the way, can I still take a cowboy repeater off a dead prospector when I'm level 2 and kill all the giant scorpions that are supposed to be blocking me from going where I'm not supposed to be just by sneak attacking them repeatedly while I stand on a rock they can't (or won't) get to? Nobody but me ever does that, though, right? Everyone else does as the dev's intended and runs in with a worn out shovel and dies a heroic death and says "damn this game is HARD!" right? :)
 
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This I am not 100% sure of. How often will it mean that you will have to eat/drink in game hours ? I thought the current rates on Hardcore were not that bad…

All DLC means you have the cheat canteen which means you have to drink water only about once a week or whatever. I'm not sure what he did about that but considering water was the only real problem in hardcore mode that's a big problem. I ended up sticking mine in a locker in doc mitchell's house and pretending I didn't have it because it takes whatever "hardcore" there was in hardcore mode right out of it.
 
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Re: * H2O/FOD/SLP rates doubled, but the first threshold is moved from 200 to 400 (statuses roll over ever 150 after).

This I am not 100% sure of. How often will it mean that you will have to eat/drink in game hours ?

Should be the same amount of time before you get the first prompt, and twice as fast after that. Looks like he's going for "when you're already hungry/thirsty you get hungrier/thirstier a LOT faster!".

I thought the current rates on Hardcore were not that bad…

They aren't. Unless you aren't making any effort at all to make sure you've got food and water in your inventory it's not ever a problem with the default game.
 
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The original "hardcore" mode of NV seemed appropriate for the game.

To me it was a joke, just a minor nuisance. I wanted hardcore mode to bring survivalist aspects to a post-apoc game, I wanted to have to drink out of an irradiated toilet bowl because there was no other water source for miles of scorching desert, I wanted to have to carefully consider each item I would bring with me on a trek because I'd have limited carrying capacity, should I bring one more water bottle or 12 more shotgun shells?

The original hardcore mode added none of these challenges to the game, world was saturated with water and food sources, same with ammo and magic potions.

Then again the setting and gameworld themselves don't lend themselves to such a "hardcore" mode to begin with, it's a post-post-apoc game where plentiful water, food and ammo are par for the course and with such short running distances between settlements any attempt to shove survivalist aspects of running out of food, water or medicine during a 1-2 minute run between settlements will only be annoying.

Up until this point I always assumed that NV's hardcore mode was just something they tacked onto the game copying whatever mods were most popular for FO3, same as the weapon upgrades. FO3's setting is the one that actually lends itself well to scarcity of clean water, food, ammo and medicine.
 
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Played it with the mod for bout 3 hrs last night, it's like a whole new game now. I found myself having to rethink often, and really having to decide what I'd carry into the wilderness with me. Best free mod I've ever used so far. Now, here's hoping he gets bored and does one for Skyrim! =)


-Carn
 
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This sort of reminds me of how Bethesda released a couple free plugins for Morrowind back when they were trying to get people excited about the construction set. While it's doubtful this will happen, it would be kind of cool if they did something similar in trying to get people excited about their utilization of Steam Workshop.
 
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I have to agree with Kapitan - in the vanilla HC mode, food and water were too plentiful and you only needed to sleep something like once per week.

I seem to recall installing a mod within the first week of release that drastically increased the rates for FOD/SLP/H20, increased all merchant prices by 5x and cut resell prices in half. That was a gamechanger and the only mod I needed to give hardcore mode some teeth until Arwen released her Realism Tweaks.

Talk about challenging!

With Arwen's Tweaks I have to approach every encounter very carefully, sometimes using frag mines or explosives in strategic locations.

if you get hit, you develop a wound that you can't heal during combat.

if you bleed out you start losing too much blood and you have to use bandages or a belt as a tourniquet to to slow down the bleeding or inject a stimpak into the wound (reduces your STR and can only be done outside combat)

If you lose too much blood your carry weight goes down by 15 pounds. it can be treated by a blood transfusion

If your wound infection level gets too high you start continuously losing health unless you treat it with antibiotics.

If your left or right arm is crippled, you can't use rifles or 2-handed melee weapons.

To treat fractured limbs you have to apply a medical brace for a period of time until it heals. For fractured skull or ribs, you have to inject morphine into the fracture. You can only use a doctor's bag if your medicine skill is high enough (I think 50).

Eating food and drinking liquids does not provide HP.

if you don't cook your food it increases your Bacteria Level quickly and if it goes over 5.0, you get Food Poisoning.

The total carry weight is massively reduced (walking around with some injuries, I can only carry about 70-80 lbs as a 2nd level character with 6 STR). Skill magazines all weigh 1.0 lb and the skill boost is cut in half.

So - I'm interested in checking out Josh's mod but it seems like I will probably need to start a new playthrough and carefully review all the modules in Arwen's Tweaks to see what might conflict etc.

EDIT: Incidentally, Arwen mentioned she is working on her Skyrim Tweaks mod - can't wait to see what that will entail.
 
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You don't think he'll do a horse armor mod?

Horses are out. Titties are in. Bethesda only likes titties when they can blame them on modders since they like to sell their games to kids. However, anime barbie dolls made out of shiny vinyl are also in and kids like that so I predict Todd Howard will do a ruberized anime barbie doll mod and that he will call it Elder Scrolls VI.

Arwen's mod sounds interesting. Seems like she tried to compensate for the poor game mechanics by turning into a survival simulator. That's not really what the devs envisioned - I think they're aiming at sandbox shooter with an RPG veneer - but it could be fun nonetheless. Maybe I'll give it a look in a year or two when I get ready to play through it again :)
 
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(level 15 a few hours into the game is ridiculous especially considering all the level lists seem to think level 8 should qualify for > noob loot drops) and it just doesn't matter what I do. They made this game to be easy enough that a retarded 9 year old could play it without much trouble, and that's what it is.

I prefer Fallout2 where you could have over 1mil caps and be in a full set of adv power armor mk2 in less than 30 minutes.
 
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I prefer Fallout2 where you could have over 1mil caps and be in a full set of adv power armor mk2 in less than 30 minutes.

There are quite a few New Vegas mods that improve the economy and make it more challenging to become wealthy, even taking gambling winnings into account.
 
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I prefer Fallout2 where you could have over 1mil caps and be in a full set of adv power armor mk2 in less than 30 minutes.

Yeah 30 minutes into a new game, after you'd already played through enough hours to know exactly how to break it. I think I used to always make a run for the free bozars and free gauss rifles :)

That still doesn't compare to New Vegas feeding you level after level every 10 minutes or so like clockwork whether you like it or not. If I've ever played a game that pushed the player to the level cap in a shorter amount of time, I can't recall it. I just find it hugely discouraging that these days devs at any company think the player should be at the level cap for the whole second half (or more) of the game. The leveling is so fast in NV that you never even get to see what the game is like with low end gear and low skills. That just leaves me scratching my head and wondering exactly what kind of RPGs these devs were playing when they were growing up. It's figuring out how to do stuff that's really beyond you that accounts most of the fun and the feeling of satisfaction in an RPG. I'm really not happy about having to make my own mod that reduced exp by 90% just so that the pace of the game felt right. They got the exp awards wrong by 90%? That's not unintended.
 
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