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Egg Boy

Difficulty in Doom 4 compared to Classic Doom

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So I recently finished my new computer, and one of the first games I tried out was Doom 4 (which I had owned on steam but never played due to my old pc's specs) and I found myself rather surprised by the difficulty. I hadn't expected it to get too hard early on. But I recall replaying the end of the "Foundry" several times because I kept dying fighting the two Hell Knights. (I'm playing ultra violence) Now, I'm by no means a slaughter map expert or anything, but I can make my way through the classics with ease. Is Doom 4 legitimately harder than the originals? Or do I need to improve my Doom 4 skills? I'd like to hear what you guys think in regards to the difficulty in Doom 4 and the classics.

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The difficulty of Doom 1 or 2 wouldn't hold up very well today. The game seems to be pretty aware of the fact that the majority of its players are people who have been playing Doom for a long time.

I think there's a pretty sharp learning curve in the beginning but once you get a feel for it, the game on the whole isn't too crazy hard.

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In comparison to what you have to your advantage, foundry is actually one of the hardest, possibly the hardest level when you look at oposition and what weapons you've at your disposal. Doom'16 I feel like nightmare is far easier then classic dooms nightmare. But to the classics advantage, it can have way more monsters active at once compaired to relative hardware in which both games were designed for.

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The game is definitely very punishing when you take hits from enemies. Possessed Soldiers can be very deadly when you have minimal cover and lack high damaging weapons - play the classic doom levels found as secrets for example.

Later game tends to feel easier once you get your bearings on how the game flows and have all the great weapons however they tend to throw everything at you at the end. But not hit scanners!

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Basic enemies are overpowered in Nightmare and UN. Much more individually dangerous than classic counterparts for sure.

That said, health and armor and a bit too overabundant. Could use more balancing.

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I'd say it's a lot more difficult than the originals, actually (at least excluding Final DOOM). The gameplay in DOOM4 is way faster and way more vicious than in previous games, pretty much any enemy is dangerous, especially on NM. In the original games enemies are very slow and it's fairly easy to dodge things, a complete opposite of 4 where almost every enemy is very fast and projectiles are fast (probably faster than -fast monsters).

DOOM4 is very much a game of skill so you've gotta learn to use each weapon to its full potential, determine which enemy is the biggest threat, take advantage of the environment and use executions at the right moments.

By the way, I wouldn't stack classic NM against the DOOM4 NM. It's not altering the game in any special way, not even as much as DOOM3 NM. So it's pretty much UV+ at best.

DooM_RO said:

That said, health and armor and a bit too overabundant. Could use more balancing.


How so? On NM even the biggest pickups (minus the ones in classic secrets) give you a max of 30 which is nothing, and the smallest ones are just +1. Any attack can nuke a lot more than that. Even executions give you like what, 15-30, maybe? I wouldn't say that's an overkill.

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Game felt like a piece of cake on all difficulties, less Health drops on higher difficulty but still, Looks so similar to Health regeneration, only difference is that you don't have to take cover.

I always get max Health even before checkpoints or next areas (which usually have Health packs behind them), IMO too much HP, could be more fun if it was more difficult, But with all the arenas i doubt this is going to work, game needs to be less linear instead of throwing you at arena after arena, That's a boring way to extend the length of levels.

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I think it balances out, the enemies are tougher but the weapons also hit harder and, more often than not, health falling out of the enemies keeps me alive if my health starts getting low. Then again, I never went to Nightmare.

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DMGUYDZ64 said:

Game felt like a piece of cake on all difficulties, less Health drops on higher difficulty but still, Looks so similar to Health regeneration, only difference is that you don't have to take cover.

I always get max Health even before checkpoints or next areas (which usually have Health packs behind them), IMO too much HP, could be more fun if it was more difficult, But with all the arenas i doubt this is going to work, game needs to be less linear instead of throwing you at arena after arena, That's a boring way to extend the length of levels.

I think Doom 4's gameplay lends itself well to the more linear, arena styled singleplayer maps of the campaign. I'm okay without the key mazes of the previous games, which I really wouldn't consider "non-linear."

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MetroidJunkie said:

I think it balances out, the enemies are tougher but the weapons also hit harder and, more often than not, health falling out of the enemies keeps me alive if my health starts getting low. Then again, I never went to Nightmare.

the guns do not hit any harder on higher difficulties, they're always doing the same amount of damage. this means that on Nightmare, you can't reliably kill an Imp with a shotgun blast at all, while he does 60-something damage with a single fireball.

Ultra Violence is the sweet spot for me. enemies are dangerous and poses a threat, but gun balance is decent and as long as you keep moving and look for vantage points, you'll be fine.

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My views on the difficulty:

Hurt me plenty's name implies, as the high difficulty was unexpected. This is coming from someone who usually has little to no problems in games like these, even on higher difficulty. That was something I liked and disliked.

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Is there any list somewhere that mentions what the difficulty settings change exactly? I was under the impression that the only differences were that enemies did more damage and maybe attacked faster/more often. My only source for the last one being one of the developers (Marty Stratton?) saying enemies were "more aggressive" on higher difficulties in a stream pre-release.

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Things that I'm sure of: enemies do more damage + health/armor pickups give less points. I have only played once on HMP and UV so it's hard to say for me if the enemies are more aggressive or not.

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I had no trouble completing the game on NM. The monsters are considerably faster and more aggressive on NM than on HMP for example. HMP felt harder because it was the first time I played the game on. While on NM it was the 3rd time, and I had learned to use the weapon mods to the max and Rich get Richer rune which gives unlimited ammo with a full armor. It made the game much easier even on NM, as it was possible to Gauss your self around with Siegemode pretty much if you carefully kept your armor high enough.

After extensive play of some maps in the arcade mode, I've got the feeling that the monster AI seems somehow dynamic and reacts to the skill of the player as sometimes when getting a lot higher score than before they seem to be working harder to stop the player from reaching through a certain area. Could be just in my head, too though. :)

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Lo_Mein said:

I think Doom 4's gameplay lends itself well to the more linear, arena styled singleplayer maps of the campaign. I'm okay without the key mazes of the previous games, which I really wouldn't consider "non-linear."

I didn't mean key and switch hunting, I meant different tasks that can be completed on different order, I noticed the game has bunch of tasks but they were all linear and needed to be completed in order.

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DMGUYDZ64 said:

I didn't mean key and switch hunting, I meant different tasks that can be completed on different order, I noticed the game has bunch of tasks but they were all linear and needed to be completed in order.

I'd say the meat of the variety in Doom 4 is in the combat. The style and fluidity of the combat remind me of a Platinum Games game, and the arenas feel genuinely well thought out and fun to run around. I dunno, if you were looking for a different experience in the new Doom, I understand, but I got exactly what I wanted.

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