Difficulty Modes

From Doom 2016:

I'm too young to die: Enemies are much weaker with less aggressive AI.

Hurt me plenty: Normal Mode with no changes

Ultra-Violence: Enemies are stronger and more resilient to damage.

Nightmare: Enemies are significantly more resilient to damage and hit much harder. Enemy AI is also more aggressive.

Ultra-Nightmare: Same as "Nightmare", but if the player dies, the game is over. Saving possible only after the end of levels.

One of my few criticisms of Doom 2016 was that the difficulties felt uninspired. In classic doom the biggest change between difficulty was monster count and/or placement. I always felt that different monster encounters made the game more immersive and repayable. Nightmare did have FAST monsters and that was a flag I turned on manually every time I play Classic Doom. Which goes into my next point; maybe the difficulties can be further adjusted by the user?

My hope is for custom difficulties. I would prefer to play Ultra-Violence with the more aggressive AI imo. Getting one shot by the SAME monster when at nearly full health isn't my idea of fun or immersive gameplay. Having a single life to play is another feature I would like to try on the easier difficulties. Basically I want to define my own difficulty like I could in Classic Doom. This lets users define his/her play experience to their liking. Here are some of the parameters that each player could set. Most of these can have 2-3 different levels of difficulty.

Demon Count: The amount of monsters that are spawned in the level, just like classic.  Expect higher ranked monsters earlier on in the campaign! 

Demon Rank: A new dynamic difficulty that involves new classes of demons that in turn give out more damage and have more health. 

For example;  Instead  imps spawning in a arena, you could get a stronger class of demon (hell knight) or a stronger imp variant such as Black Imps.  These throws purple fire balls that damage you like a normal imp would on Nightmare mode.  He look!  A ingame reason why the imps hit twice as hard instead of a lazy damage increase!

Having the same Demon doing the same damage would also make balancing Invasions simpler since invading player health/damage will be standardized and not convoluted by the Doom 2016 difficulties.  We do not know how they plan to balance "I am too young to die" invaders versus "nightmare" and this remains to be seen.

Aggression: This could determine the monsters attack speed and movement speed.  This could also be adjusted with demon ranks.

Toggles:

Invasion: Toggles turning invasions on or off.

Super Invasions: Invading demons can use their summoning abilities!

Lives: Toggles turning lives (from in game items) on or off.

Hardcore: Toggles ironman mode. One life!

I played the Mars Core Demo 5 times at QC. I was able to play on both difficulties (medium and easy). I couldn't tell if the monster damage was the same or not but there were more shield guys on Medium than easy. So perhaps there is some different monster placements in Doom Eternal.

Finally, the Remix levels announced for Deluxe edition will have some of these features already.

I really like this post! You are so right about one shots and lazy difficulty in d2016. I like that they are perhaps changing it to an easy/medium/hard mode with different difficulty scaling practices. Hey BTW, what do you mean remix levels? I thought it was only one, the cultist base. And its with any preorder, not necessarily the deluxe. Are there any other levels I missed?

2 hours ago, massivefanofdoom said:

I really like this post! You are so right about one shots and lazy difficulty in d2016. I like that they are perhaps changing it to an easy/medium/hard mode with different difficulty scaling practices. Hey BTW, what do you mean remix levels? I thought it was only one, the cultist base. And its with any preorder, not necessarily the deluxe. Are there any other levels I missed?

On the Slayer's Club page for the preorder bonus it says that the Master level is "Cultists Base Ed. 1," indicating that there may be more Master levels in the game. However, this hasn't been 100% confirmed.

https://slayersclub.bethesda.net/en/article/3Ih5Ik95HYT3beWIumpfko/prepare-to-raze-hell-doom-eternal-arrives-november-2019

20 hours ago, Hunting4r2d2 said:

On the Slayer's Club page for the preorder bonus it says that the Master level is "Cultists Base Ed. 1," indicating that there may be more Master levels in the game. However, this hasn't been 100% confirmed.

 

https://slayersclub.bethesda.net/en/article/3Ih5Ik95HYT3beWIumpfko/prepare-to-raze-hell-doom-eternal-arrives-november-2019

Hey it could also mean ed. 2 is the one in the game. Or like '1' cuz its the hardest. I dunno. From the indepth description after that title you quoted, I don't personally get the sense there are more and that this is a one off made as a preorder bonus.

What a great Idea for adjusting difficulty and parameters.

I'm fully expecting to have the toggle for invasion.

Resident Evil 6 had the option for players to invade other players campaigns and be a zombie or some other creature. It was essentially the same idea as invasion mode. You were able to toggle that on and off no problem.

With all the mechanics and content in the game, there could be a lot of potential with this.

Like enemies acting more aggressive instead of stunned when in Glory Kill mode or even some occasional hitscan for zombiemen.

1 hour ago, whatup876 said:

With all the mechanics and content in the game, there could be a lot of potential with this.

Like enemies acting more aggressive instead of stunned when in Glory Kill mode or even some occasional hitscan for zombiemen.

Love it, you have to be careful and it makes getting that boost of health very rewarding. Cool stuff!!

17 hours ago, Eurisko said:

What a great Idea for adjusting difficulty and parameters.

 

I'm fully expecting to have the toggle for invasion.

Resident Evil 6 had the option for players to invade other players campaigns and be a zombie or some other creature. It was essentially the same idea as invasion mode. You were able to toggle that on and off no problem.

Yes, they already said in an interview that it's your choice if you wanna be invaded or not in your campaign. I can't quote it because I don't remember which one was. 

5 hours ago, Martin-CAI said:

 

Yes, they already said in an interview that it's your choice if you wanna be invaded or not in your campaign. I can't quote it because I don't remember which one was. 

Marty said it at Quakecon 2018 right after Invasion was shown.

Here's another option they could add for challenge: pistol start mode: each level starts with the player only having a pistol and upgrading themselves through each level, by finding their weapons and related.

There are floating weapon pick ups in levels, that aren't part of the "main" campaign but it's because the player starts with only a pistol.

Depending on the sizes of the levels, it could be cool.