Another terrible design decision. So boring.

They don't keep being bullet sponges, in my experience. You just need to get a better (higher item level) gun and get some bonuses to crit chance and crit damage on top of regular damage bonuses. And then start shooting enemies in the face.

One of the cyberpsychos took about 30-40 of those 1000 damage sniper rifle shots before he packed over. I was like - wtf???

I haven't seen that many shots required, BUT i do get what you're saying.
I attribute these encounters to the armor/protections/cyberware this person using.

Also, how many bullets can you take utilizing all your goodies to assist your plan?
Unless I am several to many levels below the person i'm engaging, I can take on 3 or 4 shooters at a time as a bullet sponge, then throw in the 1-3 melee thugs on top of it. Physical and cyber gear make the difference.

it was literally that many - the health went down by about 3% per shot. Yes, there was a lot of protection on the psycho (the wasteland one) and luckily he got stuck somewhere, allowing me to snipe him with headshots. He took 157 damage per headshot and it took at least 30 of those to knock him down...

Normal enemies are easy if they are at your level or slightly higher.

Yes, but here's the kicker - then the process starts to loop again, so they become spongebobs again. Not to mention, shotguns are useless in the game, Unless I shove it in their face the damage is next to nothing and they're very slow, so I don't use them at all.

Combining stealth approach and spongebob mechanics just isn't that funny... sniping also requires many shots.

That has been my experience so far.

If you want to use shotguns you go full body and tech, increase movement speed, health and armor as far as you can and run around the battlefield with an automatic shotgun. Very fun build imho. Knock down everything with your first shot and give it to their faces while they lie on the ground .... no sneaking, no hacking, just plain old overkill.

One exception: if they have any turrets, hack them, grab the heavy machine gun and rambo your way through the camp.

Even when they're down they're down on the ground and standing up while I pump them full several times isn't what I would call fun...

CS 1.6 was more fun there and that's an old game :D

Oh yeah, going higher on the difficulty will make them even more spongy and definitely not smarter.

If you are running into enemies that appear to be bullet sponges, you in an area that is TOO HIGH LEVEL for you.

I did this too; when I went to another area, it became apparent that this area has level intentions because the other area had easier to kill enemies.
The only bad thing is it doesn't have any apparent level listed in the people scan tags nor in the map that I can see.
Just has difficulty ratings on quests... but I think those change based on your level relative to the area intended level.

if you are having trouble defeating enemies, that they're just "bullet sponges".
than you are either in an area that is designated too hard for your current level or you have invested skill\perk points into the wrong areas for your type of play style.

most of the areas with hostiles are labeled "Moderate". these can be somewhat difficult during your first couple hours\levels of gameplay. but using some skills, stealth, and intuition they are an easy way to get some better gear and progress your character.
in areas labeled "Hard" enemies will be difficult for quite some time. i ran into a few higher level areas where enemies had ~3500HP and had what seemed like an infinite amount of recovery items. sneaking and sniping 1000+ HP from them with each shot still took many tries to escape alive.

like any good open world game, certain enemies are harder than others and certain areas are tougher overall.

I do not know why everyone feels they HAVE to disagree with the op,
but gobonzo, what you said had absolutely nothing to do with what he said. The enemies in here are bullet sponges.

At this point I have a handgun that does more than 400,000 damage per shot and kills everything instantly. You're not playing the game correctly.

because they are incorrect. the term "bullet sponge", and the OP claiming that all of the enemies are, is wrong.
a bullet sponge in a game is something that you can keep shooting forever and never affect or damage. none of the actual enemies in this game fucntion that way.
and my comment perfectly explaining why some enemies are harder to kill than others has everything to do with why what the OP stated is incorrect.

if you are personally experiencing some sort of bug where you can't damage enemies at all, that has nothing to do with someone like the OP who just can't figure out how to play the game effectively.

lol