Preferred/most balanced difficulty setting.

I was just wondering what people think of the difficulty settings in DOOM 2016.
What is every ones most preferred difficulty?
which do you think allows for the most balanced experience?

I honestly struggled with 'Hurt me Plenty' from about the halfway point onwards, did anyone else find this?
I've played at other settings - easy and hard and there is a very noticeable difference. more so than other games in recent memory.

Thoughts?

Ultra-Violence is the sweet spot for me. Nightmare makes me play too carefully.

I just barely beat The UAC on Ultra-Nightmare last night just to get the achievement after dozens of attempts beforehand. So that's definitely too high. I think Ultra Violence is probably a good spot for me too. I found Hurt Me Plenty challenging as the game went on and I had to retry a few times. Especially the Spider Mastermind boss. That took me forever. After a while I never really had any problems with the arena hoardes, though. But then, I had been upgrading my weapons as well. Which is why I think Ultra-Violence is a good spot. Theoretical as I haven't tried it yet, though.

I think Ultra-Violence nails it for the most part. The only part that got really frustrating was the second-to-last Rune Trial, where you had to kill everything with a rocket launcher.

Haven't tried the middle skill level but when I first played it I intended to take turns with my wife so we played on easy. I had trouble understanding the game -- nothing seemed to be able to kill me, I ran out of ammunition often so naturally it just seemed economical to glory kill everything by just walking up and pressing the thunbstick at everything. I was bored very quickly.

I switched to ultra violence once I got to the mars surface and felt the damage monsters would do made much more sense. The most distinctive thing about the skill levels is that monsters do much less damage as you pick easier skills. The game doesn't actually get any easier to play. Monsters still run and jump everywhere, imps will still throw leading fireballs, its not a very good stepping stone for getting the feel for the game.

Enemy damage, health, and health/armour pickup values are the only things changed. I don't think there are any more or less enemies along with AI changes at all that were made for different difficulties.

I re-played some levels on easy just to see what the differences are.
The demons do much less damage on easy mode and I think there are fewer of them,also their spawn rate is slowed down enormously.
Easy mode takes away the panic of the fights too , ammo never seems to run dry either as the demons die much much quicker.

I have to admit, I never played anything below UV but even on UV I think there is an overabundance of health and ammo.

Here's what I would do. By default, Glory Kills only give 5/10 health. Weak enemies give 5 health while strong ones give 10. I would scatter Argent Orbs in the arenas that double the amount of health they drop by GK. The catch is that each orb also doubles the amount of enemies spawned. This is supported by visual aids in the form of portals spawning That way Health Kits would also be more useful since they feel just kinda...there at the moment They feel like a last-minute addition to the game. Why get a measly 25 health when I can get over 50 from a simple GK?

So this way you would have to choose between health kits and orbs.

I would totally do this if SnapMap allowed me to modify campaigns. *nudges Id employee reading the thread*

How do you replay the game without all the perks and upgrades I accrued? I like to replay random levels but the game is retarded easy now that I have 200 health, maxed out ammo, double jump and all the weapons. Im hope I'm not supposed to play as if I'm pretending not to have those things on earlier levels.

I remember having a lot of trouble in the beginning because my shotgun shell max was 20. I was like wtf am I supposed to do with 25 imps and 20 shells? Naturally the game became much more smooth overtime and then pretty easy towards the end. I'd still like to try the hell levels with all my perks removed.

40oz said:

How do you replay the game without all the perks and upgrades I accrued? I like to replay random levels but the game is retarded easy now that I have 200 health, maxed out ammo, double jump and all the weapons. Im hope I'm not supposed to play as if I'm pretending not to have those things on earlier levels.

I remember having a lot of trouble in the beginning because my shotgun shell max was 20. I was like wtf am I supposed to do with 25 imps and 20 shells? Naturally the game became much more smooth overtime and then pretty easy towards the end. I'd still like to try the hell levels with all my perks removed.

Ultra Nightmare would be quite thrilling but it has a big problem.

Since dying is so easy, subsequent runs can feel like a chore. It feels very rewarding though. You really have to memorize where each pickup is. Some enemies are also a BIT overpowered such as the Imp and the Possesed Soldier, who do a ton of damage.

What I would do is give the player extra lives at every quarter of the game and slightly nerf the damage done by lower tier enemies. I would keep the ammo balancing as it is. It's ok on nightmare.

The furthest I got was Argent Facility Destroyed, twice. Then I got bit by a caco.

I first played through on UV and found it too easy so now I only play on nightmare and ultra nightmare. On nightmare skill required is up there with Q3A online, there hasn't been a skill-based sp like this since, well ... I don't even know.

40oz said:

How do you replay the game without all the perks and upgrades I accrued? I like to replay random levels but the game is retarded easy now that I have 200 health, maxed out ammo, double jump and all the weapons. Im hope I'm not supposed to play as if I'm pretending not to have those things on earlier levels.

I remember having a lot of trouble in the beginning because my shotgun shell max was 20. I was like wtf am I supposed to do with 25 imps and 20 shells? Naturally the game became much more smooth overtime and then pretty easy towards the end. I'd still like to try the hell levels with all my perks removed.

you could try replaying the game doing a no upgrade run on a new save slot. of course, it'd require having you beat the game without any upgrades whatsoever, which can be very aggravating in the late game because of how tough it gets without any upgrades.

UV seems like the nice soft spot between challenge and playability for people that has played Classic Doom a lot. monsters still hit pretty hard, but it doesn't feel unfair like it does in Nightmare, where the damage/health scale feels like it's a bit out of whack to me. HMP and below is much easier, i don't think i actually died to a single enemy encounter on HMP when i played through the game on that, and that was my first run (the times i did die was due to falling to my death.)

I am so glad this version was scrapped. Don't miss it at all. Beth and id should better focus on the new singleplayer content instead of going back to the crappy old one. To be honest, I am much more interested in pre-release Doom 3 stuff - xlabs, bird monster etc.

I've played through the game once on Hurt Me Plenty, and now I'm doing a no-upgrades run on Hurt Me Plenty. It's been a pretty fun challenge. Once I finish that playthrough, I might be confident enough to bump it up to Ultra-VIolence.

My perfect spot might be Too young to die or HMP.

For me it would be Nightmare as it is not suffering like Ultra-Nightmare which i am still struggling to get through The UAC but Nightmare is enough of a challenge so that it makes the game insanely fun to play but I'll eventually do Ultra-Nightmare it will just take more and more practice

I find Nightmare to be quite easy with upgrades and all the weird crap I know, still fun. I think that both uv and nightmare are both decently balanced, though with the games mechanics it's pretty easy to keep ammo full.

Never played on I'm Too Young To Die, played on Hurt Me Plenty first, to memorize the levels and secrets. Died a few times because I didn't know the optimal way to handle situations at the time. After I completed, I jumped straight into Nightmare, because I felt Ultra Violence was pointless. Nightmare was quite the humbling experience after HMP, and one of the most important lessons you have to take away from Nightmare, is that Imps are the biggest threat, since they are more likely to bumrush you, have some more HP, are the highest in numbers, and have the highest fire rate combined with sniper accuracy. To the guy who mentioned leading, every demon with a projectile attack tries to lead you, even the Spider Mastermind. Although Spider Mastermind I found easy even on Nightmare. I just used Precision Bolt and used the BFG when he electrified the floor.

ahhhh i literally jumped in on nightmare first run and the only thing i had problems with was not being as mobile as i am in Doom 1 and 2. but i would say nightmare is very well balanced as it punishes errors appropriately and the weapons do enough damage that they feel powerful and satisfying to use.

Hurt me plenty.

Playing on console, HMP felt quite fair. It was a bit of a rough ride at times especially toward the end, but I still had a hell of a lot of fun with it. I'd definitely try UV or higher if I ever got to play the PC version though.

Much like with Classic Doom, Ultra-Violence seems to be my sweet spot. Nothing too serious but you'll still die if you aren't careful.

Going to say UV. After finishing the game on nightmare, the damage was a bit high for my taste. Imps doing 45 damage per hit (50% more than on UV) really didn't feel right. Even though most of my deaths were because of trying to complete the obnoxious challenges and I was able to complete it just fine, I would still pick UV over nightmare. The thing is, nightmare restricts your play too much and makes you feel like a wimp that dies in 3 hits and not a badass Marine.

I think Nightmare. The gimmicky on Ultra-Nightmare sucks

Deadwing said:

I think Nightmare. The gimmicky on Ultra-Nightmare sucks

Personally, the permadeath does not scare me too much, but the lack of checkpoints is a dealbreaker for me, because I abuse specific checkpoints for rune and weapon mastery challenge farming.

Call me crazy and crucify me, but i think NM is well-balanced already. Sure, some minor details need work but it's already there. And if you allow full upgrades, it becomes easy too.