Monsters Difficulty Settings

Currently working on a megawad, I am not exactly a fan of the difficulty setting so I usually get stuck deciding what monsters to downgrade for the easier difficulty, I find making hard difficulty easy but not for easy difficulty, usually it ends up not making much difference or it gets waaay to easy (or maybe my judgement on easy difficulty is skewed badly?).

Would like to hear opinions from different mappers/players: What's your method on planning/implementing difficulty settings, do you often follow a formula of some kind? What monster/s on the hard difficulty do you replace with for the easy difficulty? I've played many wads but all seems to vary, but what would be considered as 'normal', if there is such thing, for arguments sake?

Hopefully, I can be inspired to finish off my maps :3

The best way is probably to identify the most difficult situations in the map and then just downgrade those encounters. It is kind of pointless to downgrade 2 lone imps in the open to one imp on easy skill but it makes sense to downgrade 2 barons of hell in a very narrow passage to just one or to two hell knights.

My impression is that most modders here don't bother with difficulty settings... which is unfortunate.

Also: monsters are there to entertain & challenge the player, not to kill him.

Personally, my stuff gets finetuned to the point where I can complete the map on UV with 100% kills without using secrets nor fists, from a pistol start. Since most levels are non-linear, I usually end up testing certain sections over and over again, writing down health/armor/ammo and use that as a base to test the next segment. Traps get tested by just blundering into them and judge its survivability.

I have no illusions about being a good player (hell, I still use keyboard to move around in Doom) so if UV is survivable for me, it will be for other players.

From there, other skill settings are done by downgrading encounters. That means less monsters, or using different less dangerous monsters. This makes the 'easy' skill setting indeed easy... but wasn't that the point?

Erik said:

The best way is probably to identify the most difficult situations in the map and then just downgrade those encounters. It is kind of pointless to downgrade 2 lone imps in the open to one imp on easy skill but it makes sense to downgrade 2 barons of hell in a very narrow passage to just one or to two hell knights.

Seconded.

That seems pretty obvious, but i still didn't think of that. Thanks for the tip :) I'm sure i would go and reduce the number of zombiemen in a room from 3 to 2 or something if this wasn't pointed out to me.

Mordeth said:

My impression is that most modders here don't bother with difficulty settings... which is unfortunate.

I guess it is unfortunate. But personally I always felt that every map I play should always be played on Ultra Violence. I feel as though playing on a lower skill level detracts from the gameplay, as it keeps me flying through the maps picking off easy monsters one by one with big weapons and tons of ammo and getting to the exit in no-time. Yawn. I prefer to play maps at their most difficult settings. Especially since at this point, all of the doom monsters are relatively easy for me given how predictable their behavior is. But I guess doomers who haven't been playing doom constantly since the age of 3 feel otherwise?

I like difficulty settings in megawads that are intentionally made to be batshit insane difficult. Like in the AV readme how it says skill 2 is normal, skill 3 plays like Plutonia on skill 4, and skill 4 itself is for total badasses.

For PWADs of one-to-few levels, I try play on UV. I don't mind playing and replaying the same bit over and over again till I finish it, but if I have to do it every encounter I'll get bored and either try HMP if it's there, or just delete the file.

To downgrade or to upgrade.
Downgrading monsters can be less of same monsters or same amount of easier monsters. Or a mix of those.
I like to make slightly less of same monsters but also upgrade. Give a player an ssg instead of sg, a soulsphere instead of a medikit or two.
Can move keys or weapons. Give easier skills a bigger weapon earlier.

Really all depends on situation in map. A perfect combo of upgrade and downgrade can make skills not seem like UV just easier.

Super Jamie said:

I like difficulty settings in megawads that are intentionally made to be batshit insane difficult. Like in the AV readme how it says skill 2 is normal, skill 3 plays like Plutonia on skill 4, and skill 4 itself is for total badasses.

I agree with you here for the most part. I really don't like that I can play 95% of maps on UV. A WAD that's appropriate for my skill level on HMP or even HNTR leaves room for me to master the levels and come back later on a more difficult setting if I want to. Replay value.

It truly is a shame that more attention isn't given to all three settings rather than just skill 4 and 5. I think part of the reason for that is most players generally go into everything on UV anyway, even without thinking, so why should authors put much planning into Thing placement on lower settings if no one is going to play them? It's a vicious circle of sorts.