I'm not blaming you. It has also been like 8 years or so since I last played FO3, but the white-looking radscorp is stapled to memory and burnedbin my eyes as a nightmare.
Not only was that thing a bulletsponge feom hell, but due to its size it was also faster than you even while sprinting (as in, cant get away from it)
I dont know the devision, but your explanation tells me enough.
I also particulairly like Cyberpunks approach and design around how it deals with combat. It feels as you say intuitive and natural overall.
While I may not yet refer to myself as old, I am not a young fortnite crusader either, cant follow that and cant perform that either. (And i'm on console)
I don't recall radscorpions that stood out from the rest but I remembered one encounter from Fallout 3 that could be used to illustrate something.
I think this happened somewhere on southern side of map. There were some ruins I was heading for some reason and stopped to rest some spot in middle of large rocks. So after rest it was night and from the spot I rested earlier I was eyeing ruins from distance, if there's hostiles in there. There was a sound, wondered what it was but kept inspecting those ruins from distance and then I heard it again. I turned around and was staring radscorpio into its eyes, it was like one meter from me. I managed to survive and even kill it by going around some of the largest rocks there radscorpion couldn't pass over, it had to circle that too and I was able to land shots while circling.
Thing is, this sort of things I guess people love when they pitch their ideas in studios, but there's a but. It was very intense, very dramatic encounter when it happened first time. But then, with enemy design like that, those became just something that ate my bullets and time. So maybe studio came up with fast white radscorpion later to solve problem they themselves created to begin with.
What you wrote, intuitive and natural made me think it's like fluid, which practically means versatility. I don't know what terms they use in the industry. But say Reflex/assault build can use pretty realistic tactics and there was discussion in other topic I wrote about how different kind of assault rifles can be used with different kind of tactics. Builds that aren't that focused on assault may still find M221 Saratoga submachine gun quite useful as back up, it's IMO totally underappreciated weapon. Then at the same time we can have this build firing light machine gun from the hip and actually hitting something. It's wrong in so many ways, standing there being a huge target firing cumbersome weapon that role is most often support, in worst possible way if you mean to hit anything, something so utterly absurd that it's hilarious but it's also great fun!
What that means for difficulty, I think it could be about better cybeware for enemy NPC's and also other counters. There was mention in 1.3 patch notes that CDPR had adjusted reaction times of some enemy NPC's but could they also adjust how often and accurately enemy NPC's can throw a grenade, shortening the period of time player can camp in one spot or if player needs to think tactically about going forward/retreat from cover to cover, type of grenade can be a factor too. More than that, how effectively and fast enemy NPC's could perform pincher moves. Say player character build would be some sort of SWAT build, shotgun, stun baton and SMG, depending from location and situations, Assault/SMG could come very handy in some scenarios like that, gotta take down few first before going to close quarters / effective range of shotgun and baton.
For snipers counter would be that enemy netrunners wouldn't be easy to locate and take out. Enemy NPC reveal location quickhack uploading speed and cooldown (player may have Self-Ice) and once found, more aggressive use of offensive quickhacks.
Fluidity, so to say between story/exploration and combat should IMO always remain on high priority for this game as that's what IMO this game does best and bullet sponges are not guaranteed not to create additional problems anyway.
