The Complicated Dynamic Between Doom 1 and the SSG

I strongly feel the inclusion of the SSG upset the atmosphere and gameplay of Doom. The tension of dark corridors, the roaming pink demons, 3 shots  required to take one down, the tension was palpable. Barons and cacos were more than a nuisance. The bestiary and arsenal were matched in lock-step. 

With the inclusion of the new monsters and SSG, Doom 2 simultaneously trivialized a majority of the cast from Doom 1 in order to provide balance to the newcomers. Because of this, I actually believe that the dynamic established in Doom was upset in its sequel. 

This is a splinter off of the controversial opinions thread, but this subject merits its own. No, it demands it. Let's figure this out. 

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The one major flaw of the SSG is that it fires almost 3 shells worth of pellets at the cost of 2. If it fired only 14-15 pellets as it should instead of the 20, the problem would be greatly alleviated. You just get a free 50% damage bonus for no reason whenever using the SSG.

I remember the SSG as being mindblowinlgy powerful but very slow to reload. So it was extremeley good but also at a cost. Today when everyone playing knows all mechanics and enemy patterns etc, the SSG can of course feel overpowered.

I agree that Doom 1 was fine as it was, a great atmospheric game, but Doom 2 needed more enemies and at least one more weapon to even warrant existing as a sequel. It differentiated itself with a new weapon and new cast of enemies and I think that’s a good thing.

I shudder to think what impact it would have on the history of Doom modding/mapping if Doom 2 never happened.. Not to mention, after that first initial scare in e1m8, an enemy as big, slow and meaty as the Baron needs something like an SSG to make fighting him way less repetitive and drawn out. Take him down a peg!

Doom 1 and Doom 2 benefit from having a somewhat different cast. They both have their own identity and the world of Doom would be incomplete without both of them.

EDIT: Got a lost soul problem? An SSG is your antidote!

IMO the problem isn't that the SSG is worth 3 shotgun shots, it's that the shotgun is worth 1/3 of an SSG shot.

IMX just tweaking the basic shotgun so that it shoots 8 pellets instead of 7 was already a big improvement, with a lot more one-shot-kills for the popcorn enemies (zombies, imps) and two shots for the demons quite regularly.

1 hour ago, Gez said:

IMO the problem isn't that the SSG is worth 3 shotgun shots, it's that the shotgun is worth 1/3 of an SSG shot.

 

IMX just tweaking the basic shotgun so that it shoots 8 pellets instead of 7 was already a big improvement, with a lot more one-shot-kills for the popcorn enemies (zombies, imps) and two shots for the demons quite regularly.

On the other hand, I quite like the dynamic there. You can either take a risk and try saving a shell on enemies which usually get one-shot by the Shotgun (but not always) or just make sure and use the SSG.

The SSG regularly does more damage than a direct rocket hit which just feels wrong. True, that is partly a fault of the ludicrous damage spread  the Rocket Launcher has (20-160) but nonetheless...

Barons and cacos can only be so much of a nusiance as long as their attack patterns are useless against a circle-strafing player in open space. You *can* make hard UDoom maps but they tend to revolve around things like constraining player supplies and movement (E4M1 and E4M2 are the obvious examples), rather than having active threats like archies/arachs/PEs/revs. 

2 hours ago, Gez said:

IMX just tweaking the basic shotgun so that it shoots 8 pellets instead of 7 was already a big improvement

What is IMX? A quick google doesn't seem to bring anything up

As for the thread topic: I agree with the OP, but the main complaint I have is the repetitive 'BOOM-clack-clack' when watching demos gets irritating at times.

10 hours ago, Job said:

With the inclusion of the new monsters and SSG, Doom 2 simultaneously trivialized a majority of the cast from Doom 1 in order to provide balance to the newcomers. Because of this, I actually believe that the dynamic established in Doom was upset in its sequel. 

I agree, it made it better.

1 hour ago, idbeholdME said:

The SSG regularly does more damage than a direct rocket hit which just feels wrong. True, that is partly a fault of the ludicrous damage spread  the Rocket Launcher has (20-160) but nonetheless...

The RL will still out dps the ssg in 99% of situations, so maybe not so wrong.

10 hours ago, Job said:

With the inclusion of the new monsters and SSG, Doom 2 simultaneously trivialized a majority of the cast from Doom 1 in order to provide balance to the newcomers.

I dont think the dynamic is that complicated at all; doom needed a more accessible "power weapon" (really it's the lowest tier of power weapon in doom) that the current set didnt provide for the rl being 'scary to use,' the pg being even more powerful and easily capable of pain-locking targets down, and the bfg of course being what it is. Look at the fact that an HK with less health than the baron was added, instead of say something with more health than the already existing baron.

I think as players got better and more familiar with the game, it became clear that a roster of monsters who shoot straight-firing, non-lead projectiles are just meat to be cleaved, to which another power weapon would be well used.

Also on this note, the ssg trivializes far less of the doom 1 bestiary than the rl, pg, or of course the bfg.

As far as the dynamics of making a map using an ssg vs making a doom 1 map, it's no surprise that doom 1 feels much more limited, especially when going for the "safe" weapon progression of shotty->cg->rl->maybe more it's actually kinda hard to make a map that both provides a sufficient challenge without being super tedious, unless you also follow the lead on the monster use of doom's ep 1 and mostly place hitscanners to damage, imps for fodder, and bulls to break the flow/be something different. At least for the average player that shies away from using the rl, which is hands down one of the most powerful guns in most situations for its splash dmg and firing speed.

But idk, all of this undercuts the point that if the ssg can trivialize an encounter, there's a large chance that bold rocket usage would trivialize it more/easier/faster/whatever; it's simply a superior weapon.

Everyone's talking about how the SSG fires 3 times the pellets of the SG but only uses double the ammo, but don't forget that there's more to it, the SSG is a slower than the regular shotgun and worse at long distances due to it having a wider spread. The balance is fine imo.

14 hours ago, Job said:

The tension of dark corridors, the roaming pink demons, 3 shots  required to take one down, the tension was palpable.

Yeah the boredom of sinking several shots into a toothless monster surely was palpable. So much so that I'm mildly annoyed when a pinkie just gets put in my way as an ammo-tax.

14 hours ago, Job said:

Barons and cacos were more than a nuisance.

In "Doom 1"? When and where were those ever more than a bullet sponge?

14 hours ago, Job said:

With the inclusion of the new monsters and SSG, Doom 2 simultaneously trivialized a majority of the cast from Doom 1 in order to provide balance to the newcomers. Because of this, I actually believe that the dynamic established in Doom was upset in its sequel. 

The cast of Doom 1 was already trivial, and the SSG changed nothing about it, other than the fact that the SSG feels less garbage to use than the combat shotgun. Doom 1 wasn't very "dynamic". You had low-tier scanners (yeah, sorry SMM in DIS is a low-tier threat), demons/lost souls, and straight-line-shooters with different hitpoint and damage totals. There was no dynamic to speak of, because tapping strafe left or right all the time meant you were practically unkillable. In other words, nothing of value was lost.

The almighty Super Shotgun (accept no imitations) makes Doom more varied and fun than it was before it existed. If there ever was a downside to the weapon it would be that it makes the chaingun and the original shotgun a bit less useful. 

I don't know enough about udoom mapping*, but I'd like to see the hardest Ultimate Doom maps available and how many of them are based around constraining player movement via platforms/ledges/etc. That's like the one thing you can do to get around the "everything can be avoided if you don't stop strafing" problem. 

*though e4m2 is my favorite map of all time, funny enough

Like stated before the problem doesn't come from the SSG being overpowered, but the shotgun being underpowered. With a bump to 8 pellets and an increased fire rate, I would use the shotgun a lot more often. 

I think a lot of us, as sophisticated veteran Doomers, have a tough time remembering "way back when." There's a tendency to paint our past experiences with the colors of our current experience. Maybe that doesn't apply now since gamers, whether they've played Doom or not, are more experienced (jaded) and Doom as we struggle to remember it would not have made the same impression on those individuals. In my OP, I forgot to add that I also feel that the tone of the game transitioned from quasi-survival horror to the fast paced arcade-eque game we know today. We have plenty of evidence to support that statement. Doom 3 was intended to get back to those roots, and although it missed the target, anyone who's watched Eternal gameplay footage would be shouting at clouds if they disagree that is the fruit borne from the Doom 2's respective tree. Preference is another matter altogether, and is entirely subjective, but that's why we're a community. Even though we might disagree on certain points, we're still in agreement with one common point, that Doom is great. A lot of great things have been built upon the framework laid by Doom 2, there's no denying it, but I still find myself reaching for another fix of that elusive drug, Nostalgia.

3 minutes ago, Job said:

 I still find myself reaching for another fix of that elusive drug, Nostalgia.

I hear that!

53 minutes ago, Fonze said:

 

The RL will still out dps the ssg in 99% of situations, so maybe not so wrong.

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But idk, all of this undercuts the point that if the ssg can trivialize an encounter, there's a large chance that bold rocket usage would trivialize it more/easier/faster/whatever; it's simply a superior weapon.

Purely on the DPS side, yes. That is if you:

1) Can use the Rocket Launcher safely without hurting yourself (cramped spaces etc.).

2) Can keep yourself exposed to fully utilize the DPS. Corner peeking is much riskier with the RL.

3) Aren't facing a SMM or Cyberdemon.

4) There aren't any stray Demons, Spectres or Lost Souls around, supposing you play on -fast. Unless you are willing to risk it of course.

One place where RL shines is crowds due to splash damage. And in open spaces with some distance where you can use it fully, it is absolutely better. But attaining the optimal conditions for RL is much, much harder than the SSG.

When comparing damage from a single shot and supposing you can't afford more than a peek around the corner without getting hit in return, SSG is just better. That is at least how it is with -fast (can't speak much for how it is without -fast these days...). Counting in the disparity between the availability of rockets vs shells it just feels disproportionate.

24 minutes ago, Job said:

I think a lot of us, as sophisticated veteran Doomers, have a tough time remembering "way back when." There's a tendency to paint our past experiences with the colors of our current experience. Maybe that doesn't apply now since gamers, whether they've played Doom or not, are more experienced (jaded) and Doom as we struggle to remember it would not have made the same impression on those individuals.

I might be wrong (I wasn't even born when the game was released) but i was under the impression that when doom came out, it had its share of people who thought it was too easy even back then (the addition of nightmare was a jab at such players IIRC), the idea of difficulty in games isn't recent invension, and some of the most difficult games i've ever played predate doom by years :p

12 minutes ago, xdarkmasterx said:

I might be wrong (I wasn't even born when the game was released) but i was under the impression that when doom came out, it had its share of people who thought it was too easy even back then (the addition of nightmare was a jab at such players IIRC)

^This. Doom wasn't really that hard even when it came out. I feel like Doom 2's more complex and dangerous monsters were added precisely to counter the issue.

16 minutes ago, xdarkmasterx said:

 the idea of difficulty in games isn't recent invension, and some of the most difficult games i've ever played predate doom by years :p

Also this. In fact, even id software's older games were actually harder than Doom. Wolf3D on IADI is much harder than Doom 1 on UV.

1 hour ago, Job said:

I think a lot of us, as sophisticated veteran Doomers, have a tough time remembering "way back when." There's a tendency to paint our past experiences with the colors of our current experience. Maybe that doesn't apply now since gamers, whether they've played Doom or not, are more experienced (jaded) and Doom as we struggle to remember it would not have made the same impression on those individuals. In my OP, I forgot to add that I also feel that the tone of the game transitioned from quasi-survival horror to the fast paced arcade-eque game we know today. We have plenty of evidence to support that statement. Doom 3 was intended to get back to those roots, and although it missed the target, anyone who's watched Eternal gameplay footage would be shouting at clouds if they disagree that is the fruit borne from the Doom 2's respective tree. Preference is another matter altogether, and is entirely subjective, but that's why we're a community. Even though we might disagree on certain points, we're still in agreement with one common point, that Doom is great. A lot of great things have been built upon the framework laid by Doom 2, there's no denying it, but I still find myself reaching for another fix of that elusive drug, Nostalgia.

Doom has never been quasi-survival horror. It had horror elements yes, but it is a far cry from the likes of Resident Evil. Even Doom 3, which leans heavily on that horror angle, is still an action game at it's core. 

52 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

3) Aren't facing a SMM or Cyberdemon.

IIRC spamming rockets on any of those two would kill them earlier than with SSG.

2 hours ago, DuckReconMajor said:

What is IMX? A quick google doesn't seem to bring anything up

"In my experience"

Gotcha. Did they change the original shotgun to 8 pellets? I can't find any reference to that.

No, but it's ridiculously easy to change that in ports that let you fully redefine content. DECORATE, DDF, EDF...

1 hour ago, idbeholdME said:

Purely on the DPS side, yes. That is if you:

 

1) Can use the Rocket Launcher safely without hurting yourself (cramped spaces etc.).

2) Can keep yourself exposed to fully utilize the DPS. Corner peeking is much riskier with the RL.

3) Aren't facing a SMM or Cyberdemon.

4) There aren't any stray Demons, Spectres or Lost Souls around, supposing you play on -fast. Unless you are willing to risk it of course.

 

One place where RL shines is crowds due to splash damage. And in open spaces with some distance where you can use it fully, it is absolutely better. But attaining the optimal conditions for RL is much, much harder than the SSG.

 

When comparing damage from a single shot and supposing you can't afford more than a peek around the corner without getting hit in return, SSG is just better. That is at least how it is with -fast (can't speak much for how it is without -fast these days...). Counting in the disparity between the availability of rockets vs shells it just feels disproportionate.

Comparing -fast to the base gameplay is not a very accurate thing to do especially when your points are all situational and would be flat out wrong without -fast enabled. Using the rocket launcher without hurting oneself is a skill to be practiced, and it's not as hard as people make it out to be. Excepting the cases of archviles, it's almost always best to "take cover" behind other enemies and focus on movement, dealing damage (to clear space or dismantle a threat, as examples) and priorities over corner camping a wall. RL still kills the smm and cyber in the same amount of time, if not slightly faster. Rocketing demons and lost souls is not as bad as some doomers tend to think. Optimal is relative in this case as it could be better to optimize time (maybe to survive an encounter, not necessarily to be speedy) over damage per shot. It's much easier to hit an enemy with one rocket than all 21 pellets from the ssg. I could go on. Also I had this better formatted and with more clearly laid out logic but dw ate my reply so /shrug have word salad.

1 hour ago, galileo31dos01 said:

IIRC spamming rockets on any of those two would kill them earlier than with SSG.

Using the average to calculate, if you hit everything, RL is about 1 second quicker than using SSG. When you're fighting a Cyberdemon in an open space, it's a little bit awkward to use the RL because you need to keep a strange distance that you don't take RL splash damage to yourself, but this may result in missing quite a few of those. However, from some of my runs where the map forces me to fight Cyberdemon with RL, it doesn't seem slow at all, so basically they are equal.

9 minutes ago, Fonze said:

Rocketing demons and lost souls is not as bad as some doomers tend to think. Optimal is relative in this case as it could be better to optimize time (maybe to survive an encounter, not necessarily to be speedy) over damage per shot. It's much easier to hit an enemy with one rocket than all 21 pellets from the ssg.

Maybe 20 pellets? Not sure. I do agree with you that rocketing Demons/Lost Souls/PEs is valuable skill to have. So many players refuse to do this because of the risk, but this risk has high reward associated with it because you can kill these way quicker than using SSG (well, mostly, Lost Souls can be propelled into separated small groups which is a little bit annoying for sure).

14 hours ago, Job said:

I strongly feel the inclusion of the SSG upset the atmosphere and gameplay of Doom.

I definitely agree with what you said. Although I think that the SSG was an important addition, sure it might've ruined the atmosphere and all but

it added a new exciting element to the game. Which was an important step in my opinion, because without the SSG Doom II would probably feel like a carbon copy of the original to me. However that isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you get what I'm trying to say.

I think a far greater crime is how utterly useless the pistol is in both games. I'm struggling to think of a more hopelessly pathetic and milquetoast default weapon in all of gaming.