Mappers: How do go about designing difficulty settings?

Just interested in what your process is. Do you just remove some enemies for lower difficulties and add more resources, or do you have a more interesting/unique method?

As an example, here's how I've been going about it:

UV: is hard for me even after mapping it for a dozen hours. I might die a handful of times trying to FDA it. I make my UV's mean.

HMP: Tries to reinforce the same gameplay ideas as UV but through less harsh methods, and is honestly more fun for me to play through a lot of the time as I can zone out and have a blast without it being a cakewalk. I make my HMPs fun but with some bite.

HNTR: Generally just have fun killing demons. It's not a complete cakewalk, but it's not mean either. I make my HNTR's a power fantasy.

Also: If I can't FDA it it doesn't make it in the map. If it's a longer map I'll allow myself a save or two, but mostly if save-scumming is a necessity I feel I've failed as a mapper.

 So what about you? Do you have any rules about how you design difficulty? Or if you're not a mapper, how do you like your difficulty settings?

I'm not a map maker per se, but as I've tried to be, and also run into this question, I have to say that your approach seems mostly fine. It is a bit diffuse, however. When I try to design difficulties, I usually think in terms of "how many % of UV do I want on this difficulty?" There have been discussions about this too and there is some general sense of it in the map making community, I think, but for the life of me I can't remember what was said. Maybe something like 1/2/3: 33%/66%/100% or whatnot.

My “target Doom demographic” (rofl) is pretty much always those seeking some casual fun, so I rarely design encounters that are a struggle for me on UV, but otherwise my approach is pretty similar. Generally when all is said and done and the wad is complete, on HMP I can blast through while only paying half attention, and HNTR is a power trip.

I figure this is not only enjoyable for those looking to switch off and “meditate via Doom” for a while, but also means the wad will be accessible to newcomers who want to get into the custom content scene, but get their shit kicked in by, say, AV or HR2 or whatever else we can call “average pwad difficulty” these days.

I described my process recently here. 

8 minutes ago, rd. said:

I described my process recently here. 

Eh, I tried searching to see if the topic had been done but evidently I did a poor job of it. Thanks for the answer and pointing me to a thread with tons of useful info though!

While I have mainly done Wolfenstein 3D maps, I feel difficulty between it and Doom aren’t too different to process on the design aspect of it, just Doom is more advanced and the scale for difficulty can be much larger. So I’ll give my suggestion since my approach from Wolf 3D to Doom with difficulty wouldn’t be much different, and you can take it as you will.
 

I suggest doing the hard mode (UV) first, then the easiest mode (ITYTD), before doing the normal mode. 
 

In Wolf 3D and Doom, the “baby skill” reduces the amount of damage the player takes from attacks, but Doom also doubles the amount of ammo you get from pickups in this difficulty (as well as in Nightmare). 
 

Easiest (ITYTD) - intentionally made to be easy. How to make it easy? Focus on one aspect of gameplay: speed. Use this difficulty to come up with the par-time score (even if it doesn’t show up in the end screen, you could still make a time record for the level). If you can’t beat the level without dying or getting cornered the entire time when all you’re doing is deliberately running to the exit as fast as you can (ignoring the non-linear locations, only killing what gets in your way and collecting the required keys if there are any), then it’s too hard on easy and you should lower the enemy count some more. Doing this will give yet another option for play in your levels... speed running.

Now, you already have the next easy mode finished. HNTR just removes the player’s advantages from the previous skill. Should still be able to do the speed challenge, just the player will not have as much HP protection or ammo. 
 

If you did the hard mode first, then you would already have Nightmare done as well. I recommend doing “Normal” (HMP) last, because you can decide what encounters to nerf from hard and what encounters to include that weren’t in easy mode by looking between easy and hard. 
 

I design the map for my own enjoyment on HMP; usually this means that I'll die 25% of the time or more if I'm not paying attention.   When that's satisfying for me, I adjust the UV difficulty to the point I think it's hard enough and send it off to UV play-testers where they usually tell me to make it harder.  For the easy settings I add more health/armor and strip out some of the encounter's contents.

For ITYTD/HNTR, I generally like to make sure the player always has excess ammo, armour and health (makes sense since it's the easy difficulty).

HMP I try to balance things but I do keep it biased to the easier side kinda like how it is in DooM/DooM II (people surprisingly over-estimate how forgiving HMP can be sometimes. XD)

UV is the difficulty where I shove in 5 extra enemies and 1 free box of rockets without the rocket launcher.

I always start with hard skill and then, once all items are placed (ish), I cut down on the mob sizes as well as specific dangerous enemies. Probably part of the reason for doing this because I prefer to play on UV, but also it's just more efficient because of the way you set the flags in the editor. Or at least, more efficient if you haphazardly switch between enemies, items, and decorations like I do. I'd be placing keys and torches with the wrong flags constantly otherwise.

I also try to consider things like switching up weapon or key placement between difficulties, but that can be tough when you've already designed a pathway with those important elements in mind. There's a lot of possibilities there... has anyone used player starts in different locations before?

As for testing, I play HMP with no mouse to make it a bit harder, and HNTR with no strafing. 

My current method is to design around HMP and then tweak the difficulty up or down (for UV and HNTR) based on how my test runs go. I try not to change around item placement too much, aside from encounters where conserving health is the main focus. i.e. The fight provides 2 Medikits on UV, a Soulsphere on HMP, and a Megasphere on HNTR. As for monsters, just deleting enemies can make the map feel more empty. I find that it works better to replace dangerous enemies with easier variants, unless the difficulty in an area is based directly on monster density.

HNTR: fuck.

HMP: marry.

UV: kill.

Maybe I'm doing it wrong. The HMP on the map I'm working on currently has 6 more enemies than UV because I'll replace a tricky revenant placement with 3 imps or an arachnotron turret with a hell knight and some imps. I like trying to keep up the feeling I want to evoke in UV but tailor it to lower skilled players so they get a similar experience but more catered to their skill level.

4 hours ago, whybmonotacrab said:

I like trying to keep up the feeling I want to evoke in UV but tailor it to lower skilled players so they get a similar experience but more catered to their skill level.

No matter the methods, this is the desired outcome of having skill settings.

17 hours ago, Doomkid said:

for those looking to switch off and “meditate via Doom” for a while

Wholeheartedly agree with this. Pretty sure I described this elsewhere as getting a Zen feeling while playing. 

For UV I throw 2 Archviles, for HMP I throw one, and for HNTR there's a Pinky. Rule of thumb.

But really, what I always do is first design the map for UV, and along the way I disable some monsters for the lower difficulties, especially the ones that could cause the most trouble.

UV, anything goes as long as it's not obnoxious and cheap. But no truly challenging map should be able to be beaten in one-go unless out of luck. Those are rules for me. It can be as ball-breakingly difficult as I want, as long as it isn't composed of traps or set-ups that come out as cheap and have no real thought behind them. It should always have more monsters than HMP, but those monsters should change the fight dramatically. This also allows for better replayability for players who first played the wad through a lower difficulty and are now trying it on UV.

For difficulty, I usually go with place everything I want to have on easy first, then test. Then add anything I want for normal, then test. Same with hard and so on.

Then I go back and do anything special like easy difficulty I want that archvile to be a revenant and so on. It's not the best way to do it, and I think in order to improve my monster placement I may need to go about it differently.

Ultra Violence - Balance it for UV-Max and Speedrunners (Basically can I beat the map with 100% kills/secrets without dying)

Everything else doesn't even cross my mind, BUT, I will be learning how to incorporate difficulty settings and improve upon my texturing and detailing.

I'm a scrub tier player so my goal is, if it's hard for me to beat consistently on UV, with mapper knowledge, I call that good. I shoot for HMP to be consistently beatable but I'm frequently near death. I honestly don't put much thought into HNTR.

Method kind of varies by map. For arena/setpiece heavy maps with few, strong enemies I vary resources more, but I mostly just scale the number of monsters for difficulty balance