Fallout 4 hits me with another massive difficulty spike

in #gaming • 15 hours ago

Something that people talk a lot about when having some level of "beef" with Fallout 4 is that without any sort of warning or reason, the game will all of a sudden experience an exceptional change in difficulty. You'll be tearing through missions one-shotting almost everything and taking so little damage that you feel confident that you can keep on truckin with the missions and then something that seems innocuous gets put on your list and actually sounds kind of fun and different: You have to build up the defenses at the Castle for an incoming raid by the Institute.


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I will admit that my own arrogance (based on my last 2 hours of gameplay, mind you) lead to me getting my ass kicked so badly that I had to just run away. I never bothered to step up defenses at any of my settlements because any attacks that have happened in the past were very easily squashed simply by the people there and me.

Well the raid on the Castle is like you are playing a completely different game. Not only can you and your squad not handle the incoming Synths, but these Synths that you face in this battle are much more powerful than any you have ever seen before.

I don't like that they don't really warn you about this but even though I set up a minimum amount of turrets and had my power armor on when the assault began they turrets were almost immediately wiped out and all of my minutemen helpers got wiped almost right away as well. The same goes for my companion.

It was really annoying because it didn't take very long before I was the only defender left standing and it became a game of cat and mouse where I am just running away and planting mines behind me as I go.

I would save up my focus to make some snipe shots but as soon as I poke my head around a corner to take aim I would be hit with a dozen shots of such accuracy that I have never seen from an opponent at any point in this game. It seems completely full of shit to be honest. Also, i get seriously frustrated when I get told there is an 80% chance of a hit and routinely this misses - a lot more than 20% of the time. They don't seem to experience this same level of difficulty when striking me though.

I gave up on this one and just let the Institute overrun the castle because this was a no win situation with how I set up the defenses.

https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/3t5tkt/defending_the_castle_during_a_raid_with_a_battery/

I saw a few videos of how people were able to create a good defense but it involves some of the most powerful turrets in the game that are expensive to build as well as the construction of a high tower so that the incoming horde can't just insta-snipe any defense that you set up. It's clever, sure. But who has the resources to build a dozen missile launcher turrets as well as the generators necessary to power them?

I guess you could say that this spike encourages me to take a look at my perks in order to take on robots better. I know there are a few of them in there. What I don't like about this spike is that this is easily 4x as difficult as the area I conquered immediately before it on the path that is defined by the quests. It's not like I wandered into an area far south that I am not supposed to be in yet. The quest pushed me towards this event so I am more than a bit surprised that it would be absurdly more difficult than the mission that came just before it.

When I encounter stuff like this it kind of frustrates me out of playing because if this means that all of the following levels are going to be on this level of difficulty, that means the game intends for you to grind for levels for a while before progression, and that is just lame.

I'm gonna try the other missions and maybe I just need to gitgud. I do hate it when people suggest "gitgud" for everything, as if a 4x difficulty spike was a perfectly normal thing to face in a game.