Jump to content
Search In
  • More options...
Find results that contain...
Find results in...
TheNoob_Gamer

Advanced gameplay tactics new players should know if they want to get better at Doom?

Recommended Posts

38 minutes ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

@Chopkinsca What was this training WAD like? I'm a bit curious.

 

I can't remember much of it at all. It didn't get very far. If I do remember anything, it will probably go into my current project though.

Share this post


Link to post

This thread reminds me, in a French speedrun marathon, @JCD and @S6kana demonstrated a Plutonia Nightmare! co-op run, but before that they showed a "tutorial" map of sorts demonstrating a bunch of different techniques used in speedruns. I don't know what wad this is, but it was very interesting to me. You can see it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1006866857?t=5m45s

 

Something in a similar vein to this would be cool. Or something like avj.wad for something other than arch-vile jumps.

Share this post


Link to post

If you're at low health and a mancubus is shooting at you, then act like there's no walls cause that's when the clipping fireballs will get ya

Share this post


Link to post

@Shepardus AVJ is a good example of training WADs, though I feel it's more like a series of challenges if anything.

That Twitch footage looks pretty cool, seems like a map meant for warming up movement.

Share this post


Link to post

I don't know many tactics that haven't been stated here already, so I'll post things that always help me become better as I play. I guess some of these fall into the tips/tricks category you didn't want us to turn this thread into, but I feel like there isn't much difference between those and Tactics. 

 

At first, I often tried to conserve ammo for the Chaingun/Plasma Rifle/BFG. You should not do that. if you are in a sticky situation with some mid-tier enemies (Chaingunners, Revenants, Arachnotrons), it is always a smart move to use the Chaingun. The Chaingun kills enemies fast and staggers their moves. If you are in a slaughter room (or a slaughter map), it's alright to use the BFG a few times in sticky situations. if you don't happen to have a BFG, then the Plasma rifle is a great second choice. it is fast, deals a lot of damage, and is also good at putting enemies into their pain state. 

 

Rockets are fine in open maps. Just because you think you have enough room in a cramped space does not mean that you should just shoot a crapload of rockets. I also recommend using Chainguns and Plasma rifles in these sections. 

 

Plan out Door combat. This is if you are low on health, there is a door, and there are monsters on the other side of said door. If you are far away enough and in an open space, Rockets are fine to use, but not for long. Get a few good shots in, then change your weapon. Otherwise, that door will close, and your rocket will end up killing you instead of the demons. Automatic guns are not great for this type of combat. You'll want to save those for more open fights. You can run out of a few good shots with the door closing, or you strafing to the side for cover. Shotguns and SSGs are okay for only a few enemies, and only up close. Imps, Zombiemen, and shotgun dudes behind a door are fine to take out with a shotgun. Pinky's/spectres, Barons/Hell Knights, and Caco's are good for taking out with SSGs. Other enemies are not big enough in this door combat situation. if there are Arachnotrons, there are two ways to deal with them. Either use the rocket launcher if they are far away or abandon Door Combat altogether.

 

Lock onto targets before picking up your invulnerability. If there is an invulnerability sphere in the middle of an empty room, look for a switch first then grab it. the switch will probably activate enemies. If there is only the sphere, that might activate the enemies, so grab it. these are rare cases, though. In slaughter maps, prioritize the big guys and lure them towards the invulnerability, then grab it. don't use it against some imps or small guys just because it is there and it makes the screen look good. 

 

Oh, and NEVER PICK UP THE BERSERKS MID-COMBAT!!! I don't know why I sometimes did it, but I did. 

Share this post


Link to post
2 hours ago, Chip said:

NEVER PICK UP THE BERSERKS MID-COMBAT!!!

The berserk instantly boosts your fist's damage output and automatically restores your health if you are lower than 100%. It also appears rather sparingly - so why shouldn't I do this?

 

2 hours ago, Chip said:

Door Combat

I actually think this tactic is somewhat scummy and might hurt you in the long run. Useful, but is borderline cheesing.

Share this post


Link to post

Adding stops and forward\backward to strafes will make a lot of encounters much easier than trying to circle strafe or just using strafe left\right by itself. If you can't do it automatically then just try using a hexagon rather than a circle as your strafe pattern. The slower your pattern can take to do a circle\square the better it is in a fight. Harder to do if arch-viles and hit scanners exist, if there are no revenants you can probably do zigzags to make it even better against enemies from all directions.

Share this post


Link to post
8 hours ago, Shepardus said:

This thread reminds me, in a French speedrun marathon, @JCD and @S6kana demonstrated a Plutonia Nightmare! co-op run, but before that they showed a "tutorial" map of sorts demonstrating a bunch of different techniques used in speedruns. I don't know what wad this is, but it was very interesting to me. You can see it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1006866857?t=5m45s

 

Something in a similar vein to this would be cool. Or something like avj.wad for something other than arch-vile jumps.

I was there with them for commentary and I made the wad showcasing the tricks. I only have to implement a linedef-skip setup by replicating the one we see on Map10. The wad was built for Coop and with Plutonia as an IWad. I will eventually finish it up and release it.

Also, YouTube mirror in case Twitch's gets deleted.

Share this post


Link to post

Forgot an incredibly useful one: close range rocket launcher. Its pretty much necessary in some slaughter maps, and even in regular ones it can help alot.

Share this post


Link to post
6 hours ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

 

I actually think this tactic is somewhat scummy and might hurt you in the long run. Useful, but is borderline cheesing.

 

It's not cheesing if the map maker allows it to happen.

Share this post


Link to post

try to not grab the chainsaw unless the map has no ammo and no berserk

belive me the chainsaw is only going to kill you when you need to berserk punch some enemies 

change weapons using the keyboard it will make you more precise and it will be faster

always try to see if you can use a cyber demon to kill the other enemies by infighting most of the time when they appear in a wad on a room full of monsters its so you can make him infight

Share this post


Link to post

Hey, I haven't been here in 10 years and am happy to see the community is alive and well, thank you all for all the great hints, but I had to add to this because I didn't see it, the swing shot with the super shotgun, it helps more in DM matches, I'm not to sure if it helps in single player but I still do it to concentrate my pellets.

Share this post


Link to post
19 hours ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

so why shouldn't I do this?

Oh shoot, I should have specified this. I meant when you're in a fight with enemies you can't/shouldn't punch. Arachnotrons, Cyberdemons, Spider masterminds, Mancubi, and so on. I forgot that it brings your health to 100, but if you're already at or close to 100, it isn't that much of a boost. 

 

I'm sort of sorry about my post. I was working on something else at the time of writing it which distracted me and some of what I wrote. 

18 minutes ago, Monry said:

I haven't been here in 10 years

Good to have you back! I assume this is an alt account since it was recently made! But it's always nice to see new or familiar faces around here! :D

Share this post


Link to post
19 hours ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

why shouldn't I do this?

prolly because of weapon auto-switching. it is not fun to find yourself force-switched to fists. it is also a slow process, and switching back is slow too.

Share this post


Link to post
23 minutes ago, Chip said:

Good to have you back! I assume this is an alt account since it was recently made! But it's always nice to see new or familiar faces around here! :D

Thank you! good to be back I dont know if Im a familiar face I was young when I was more active here but getting back into it I love how this community has been kept alive by passtionate people :}}}

Share this post


Link to post

Some various topics that came to mind that I could be better at:

 

Herding - Monsters move in the general direction of their target.  By moving in a rough close semi-cricle around a large mob, one can keep them occupying a smaller space than they would otherwise if running around without thought and it's allowed to spread randomly.  Another application is trapping part or all of a horde behind parts of the level geometry.  I feel like I'm barely scratching the surface as far as this topic goes.

 

Luring revenant missiles into walls in an open area - It's something I often forget about in the heat of combat but is a useful ability to call upon.  Even after learning it, there's still the matter of doing so in a busy battlefield with other stuff going on.

 

Dodging a mancubus shot pattern that is behind me while in a small space.  The dance for one in front is muscle memory at this point and I keep forgetting when to reverse it and get burned.

 

When do I need to attack infighting monsters for safety? - Infight baiting is invaluable for saving ammo and having fewer monsters after the player at once.  But sometimes it is best not to let two (or more) combatants finish before resuming attack.  Cybers in tight spaces are the easiest example that come to mind; while they're occupied by infighting is the safest time to line up a point-blank BFG shot.  Also remembering how the targeting threshhold works. (when a monster is damaged, further damage does not reset the timer if it hasn't counted down to zero, among other traits)

Share this post


Link to post

Chainsaw is Continuous

Pistol is Accurate

Shotgun is Immediate

Super Shotgun is Power

Changing is Ranged

Rocket Launcher is Grouped

Plasma Rifle is Fast

And BFG is OP

 

- BONUS ROUND -

 

Fist is Berserk

Unmaker is Unholy

Share this post


Link to post

-Always keep your armor repaired

-Have some whetstones handy

-Mushrooms make you grow, this protects you

-Big pellets turn enemies blue so you can eat them

-Sword beats dagger, dagger beats axe, axe beats sword

-Don't spend too much AP per turn

-Collect every big coin to open secret exits

-Juggle enemies in the air to increase your combo

-Use the whammy bar for extra points

-Never get your wanted level to six stars

 

Share this post


Link to post

Monsters are alerted when they "hear" your attacks. Note, however, that what they "hear" is not the sound of your gunfire (or punches), they hear the click of your trigger. (Yes, your punches have a trigger, too.) This leads to non-intuitive situations like punching empty air alerts the monsters, while an idling chainsaw doesn't. A closed door blocks these alerts (as well as a pair of "sound-blocking lines" but as a player you can't really tell where those are, while closed doors are obvious).

 

Where this becomes relevant is with this weapon:

On mercredi 28 juillet 2021 at 10:21 PM, Nootrac4571 said:

BFG:

Read up on how the BFG works, because it's really *really* unintuitive.

 

Very quickly: When you fire the BFG, the game records the direction you're facing. When the big glowing ball hits something - no matter how far away, or how long it's been flying through the air - a massive invisible shotgun blast is fired from the *player* in the direction the game remembers you were facing when it was fired.

 

The ball itself does some damage, but not that much. It's the massive invisible and completely illogical shotgun blast that does the real damage.

The BFG has a considerable interval of time between the moment you click to attack, and the moment the projectile actually comes out. This makes it possible to do something like this:

1. stand in front of a door

2. shoot

3. quickly open the door while your BFG is charging

4. monsters are blasted through the now-open door, and yet those that didn't have line of sight to you are not alerted.

 

A variant of this can be used with teleporters. Shoot first, then step on the teleporter. With some foreknowledge of the map you can use that to completely cheese some teleport ambushes. Like imagine the teleporter will put your back to a chaingunner firing squad. Did you know that when you teleport there's a fraction of a second during which you can't move? Well what if you take advantage of the BFG's quirks to make sure that the "invisible shotgun blast" will be there to kill the gunners as soon as you go through the teleporter? Takes some practice to master the timing, and you need to know in which direction to fire before teleporting, but that lets you get out of some nasty ambushes unscathed.

Share this post


Link to post
On 7/28/2021 at 3:21 PM, Nootrac4571 said:

Spider Mastermind:

You can - most of the time, there is some RNG involved - one-shot a SMM with a point blank BFG shot.

 

This is only true on ZDoom-based ports. I do think it's possible on other ports but it's much less likely.

Share this post


Link to post
1 hour ago, maxmanium said:

 

This is only true on ZDoom-based ports. I do think it's possible on other ports but it's much less likely.

For vanilla it has an estimate chance of about 3% last time it was discussed, due to a combination of the blockmap behaviours and the nature of the PRNG table removing the possibility of consecutive high rolls from the damage traces.

Share this post


Link to post

First 2 Chaingun shots are always accurate, no matter what, wait for the pistol animation to finish and your pistol shots are always accurate too.

Share this post


Link to post
19 minutes ago, Sergeant_Mark_IV said:

Read and try to memorize Doom's damage tables.

http://www.doom2.net/single/weaponfaq.html

Did you know that Super Shotguns are more effective against Cyberdemons than rockets?

 

Interesting, it's still faster in terms of time to kill a cyber with rockets than SSG, but by much less than I thought.

Share this post


Link to post
2 hours ago, Redoom said:

First 2 Chaingun shots are always accurate, no matter what, wait for the pistol animation to finish and your pistol shots are always accurate too.

Or just never use the pistol after you get the chaingun. Pistol is too horrible to justify saving 1 clip per enemy against using the chaingun.

Share this post


Link to post
5 minutes ago, Pegg said:

Or just never use the pistol after you get the chaingun. Pistol is too horrible to justify saving 1 clip per enemy against using the chaingun.

Perhaps in the case of shotgun not taking out imps after a hit, or pinkies after 2 full blast; then the pistol is more viable.

Share this post


Link to post

My best tip for getting better would be to start playing with fast monsters right away. Seriously. Nothing will teach you to minimize exposure time and improve your reaction time like fast hitscanners, leading to you conserving health much more efficiently.

 

It should also be noted, that playing with fast often requires different tactics than normal speed. A lot of the tips mentioned here are ill advised with fast monsters.

Share this post


Link to post
4 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

fast monsters

I have not taken this into account given your dedication in playing Doom with fast monsters (if memory serves me right), and this is indeed a viable strategy.

..Then again, on slaughterwads (which require you to have an intermediate - advanced understanding of the game's oddities), a lot of times turbo mobs can make you easily tear your hair out because of how fast they can be.

Spoiler

And given my original purpose of starting this thread, I feel regular -fast players only cover a minimal part of Classic Doom playbase, and would not be my targeted audience for my potential project.

 

Share this post


Link to post

I'm not sure if playing on -fast is such a good idea, because no-one actually balances their maps for -fast, so playing on that setting can result in a different experience than the mapper intended.

Share this post


Link to post

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×