Variable-based difficulty level

I had an idea for a difficulty based off variables for EE : you pick the options, can save them as a profile, etc.

Also, perhaps if someday I made an EDF for it, you could optionally turn on a "new monster attacks" variable..

2x Ammo (like ITY and N!)
Zombie-men have semi-random HP, speed, attack frequency and amount of ammo dropped.
Shotgun guys have semi-random HP, speed, etc.
Imps have semi-random HP, speed, etc.
Cacodemons have a semi-random speed, pain chance and attack frequency
Barons of Hell have a semi-random HP, pain chance, AF and speed
HK have semi-randon stuff
PEs can fire out Lost Souls in sucession and have a semi-random speed, and can spew 3-6 LSs on death
Rev and Mancubus fireballs have a semi-random per-attack basis speed
Chainsaw now uses ammo, picking up a chainsaw resets it to 999 (make it drain pretty slow)
Spectres can have semi-random speed
Cyberdemons will sometimes fire more than 3 missiles, up to 8 in succession, even if the player leaves his sight

Any other ideas?

Most of that sounds annoying and disruptive of player skill; DOOM is already quite more random than Quake, for example, where all the weapons inflict a fixed amount of damage.

Maybe it could semi-randomly apply doomu sprites intead of the standard ones; there have to be some exhibitionist monsters out there.

The chainsaw idea isn't bad; it could spend ammo for simply being on, and then more so when attacking. You could also add a fuel bottle pick up item.

Similar ideas have been suggested in the past and I'm still considering it :P

myk said:

Most of that sounds annoying and disruptive of player skill; DOOM is already quite more random than Quake, for example, where all the weapons inflict a fixed amount of damage.

Maybe it could semi-randomly apply doomu sprites intead of the standard ones; there have to be some exhibitionist monsters out there.

The chainsaw idea isn't bad; it could spend ammo for simply being on, and then more so when attacking. You could also add a fuel bottle pick up item.

It's not that random, the enemies are all the same, damnit. If a zombie-man, for example, shot more often and could take 2 shotgun blasts, then you might have a tougher time in say, E2M1. Since it's variable, n00bs can choose things that help them, skilled players can mix up the gameplay and make it a little different than the game they've been playing for 13 friggin' years.

Naked Snake said:
skilled players can mix up the gameplay and make it a little different than the game they've been playing for 13 friggin' years.

More like bored old timers. Not sure what noob can't play on "too young to die", though.

But I was talking about adding a "semi-random" factor to variables like hit points. Skilled players already have to cope with the varying weapon damage factor, and adding variable hit points would make the game only less consistent. Being able to do something is what makes up skill, and randomness works against that; that's the main reason skilled players are sometimes put off by an excess of hitscanners in maps (which makes playability unpredictable), for example. Perhaps I misunderstood you, though, if you meant the option to apply less hit points on a case by case basis (though you said semi-random many times). That could work, maybe, but more so if there is some way to tell those modified monsters apart (by recoloring or whatever). Take the Hell knight as an example; it's the same as the Baron of hell but has less hit points. To mark the difference in the game, the sprite is of a different color, and it makes a couple of different sounds.

This will only work with vanilla Doom levels. On any other add-on that uses EDF it can wreak havoc, since you do not know what you're going to change.

Sounds more like you want a patch for the original Doom, to make it more interesting. You can do all the things you mentioned already by writing an EDF patch for it. I don't see the need to complicate stuff by making a "magic" variable for it.