Has anyone made a mod to remove the adaptive difficulty? I can't play this game because of how stupidly easy it's become

[thenicknacknick]

Enemies like convicts and Powder Gangers are running away from me when I engage in combat or just not shooting. I'm hitting them in the head when aiming almost one-body's width away from them and most recently I killed the Powder Gangers in the southern camp for Eddie by aiming at Carlos' head only to shoot the dynamite out of his hand and kill the other three PGs (high luck but this shouldn't be happening). Enemies are also not pursuing me when I shoot them in sneak mode (from a reasonably large distance) and will walk around for a few seconds and then stop looking for me (my sneak is only 43) allowing me to do repeated sneak attacks. Enemies have very little HP or I do inflated damage. This was less noticable on my last character until Honest Hearts, possibly because I got so close to the enemy (shotgun build).

 

On my previous playthrough there was the occasional issue of enemies attacking one-by-one instead of all at once (Vault 34 glowing ghouls) and enemies getting stuck for 20 seconds on terrain (this could possibly be a bug) and I couldn't finish Honest Hearts because it got so boring - giant cazadors, giant green geckos and giant yao guai stopped spawning after I died. I tried fooling the game into thinking I was a pro by spawning in a deathclaw and turning godmode on to kill it and when I spawned it, it literally just stood there looking at me (its AI was on) and wouldn't attack until after I did. While I got better spawns, their AI was gimped and couldn't see me sneaking in front of them (sneak indicator went to [caution] then [danger] for a split second then back to [caution]) and sneak attacks with the lever-action shotgun killed White Legs in a single hit but after a while it removed only half of their HP. I felt that my enemies were adapting to me not the other way around so I went looking for mods.

 

There's nothing under 'adaptive' on Nexus and the gold standard for difficulty seems to be the JSawyer mod but I can't find anything related to the above system in the changelog. Does anyone have issue with the game dumbing down AI with this mod or giving huge advantage to the player? Are there any other solutions like Cheat Engine giving me access to the variables responsible for this if it's baked into the engine?

 

I've played both characters on very hard with hardcore mode on and am playing the latest GOG release with all DLC and two YUP base game and DLC patches and launch the game with the NVSE binary.

 

[Radioactivelad]

New Vegas doesn't have adaptive difficulty under any definition that I'm aware of. What's most likely happening is you're playing on Very Hard, which nerfs your damage by 50% so you're outputting s*** damage in general. The damage spread your seeing is likely because of using a Shotgun, which allows for every pellet to deal Critical Damage individually, creating additional variance.

 

Bethesda's engine does not do long-distance combat AI very well and this is a problem all the way up to Fallout 4 where it's better-ish because they can shoot at you without being explicitly aware of your position (In Danger status). There have been in-development mod attempting to address this, but are not yet available.

Sneak is also a broken mechanic in every one of Bethesda's engine games.

 

Why shouldn't taking out 4 guys by shooting the dynamite out of one of their hands work? That sounds awesome. On another note: Powder Gangers are effectively the Sewer Rats of New Vegas: Bottom-tier enemies that aren't *supposed* to be a challenge after the glorified tutorial section of the game they inhabit.

 

I would recommend Sawyer mod. Or you could try my own Oxmod, which lifts several basic combat balance decisions from it and is made to be used with YUP.

Edited April 22, 2021 by Radioactivelad

[HadToRegister]

Do you use any mods that increases spawns, like Monster Mod?

[dudeapocalypse]

 

and sneak attacks with the lever-action shotgun killed White Legs in a single hit but after a while it removed only half of their HP. I felt that my enemies were adapting to me not the other way around so I went looking for mods.

Well some NPCs level up with player, so their health increases with each level.

 

I think you should try a mod that lets you to just adjust every setting to your liking, i would try

Cover Based Stealth Mechanics (has weapon damage modifier too)

or

Project Nevada's Rebalance module (the main module may be outdated by today's standards but the Rebalance I think is still the best for such tuning considering the variety of settings and that everything is easily configurable in game through the Mod Configuration Menu).

Edited April 23, 2021 by dudeapocalypse