Does anyone actually play at anything other then UV?

I was thinking about difficulty levels and it occurred to me that I don't think I have ever played Doom at anything other then Ultra Violence. I just don't see the point, there are more monsters present in UV and thus more action, so every time I try to play at a lower difficulty level I just can't escape the feeling that I am playing a watered down version of the level and that I am missing out on a lot. Not to mention that almost everyone seems to develop their custom levels with UV in mind.

So, does anyone actually play the game and other WADS on anything other then UV?

The only exception I can think of in my own case is when I am playing ultra difficult WADS like Hell Revealed 1 and 2 where the difficulty is so utterly insane on UV that its just too much.

Discuss.

I always use skill 3, with keyboard only (I don't even own a mouse). And I don't even play slaughtermaps or stuff like HR, Plutonia, etc. Just ain't my thing.

Playing on HMP (Normal) is the only way for me to judge whether a WAD is properly balanced.

I play tougher maps on HMP when I'm stuck without a mouse. Sometimes I'll play on ITYTD when I'm playing with only one hand.

Always UV for me.

ITYTD if I'm not familiar with a map. UV if I am very familiar with a map (say E1 of Doom). HMP for anything inbetween.

Usually HMP with -fast (because most PWADS are too hard on UV -fast and I don't like to turn off the -fast option.)

If I still cannot get anywhere, then I turn off -fast (I don't bother with ITYTD or HNTR because they are often not play-tested at all.)

mr freeze said
Playing on HMP (Normal) is the only way for me to judge whether a WAD is properly balanced.

If you playtest and adjust your map difficulty to be challenging enough for HMP and masters-only for UV, you'll be making NM much too hard.

I always play UV on Ultimate Doom, but never Doom II. I always use HMP for Doom II. I never really liked Doom II on UV, especially since in the first level you pretty much had to fight an unruly nmber of Imps with a pistol. Something that gets annoying fast.

I often play skill 3 just because it's the default and I just stab the enter key until the game is started. Mostly when doing a quick playthrough just to check something out; or sometimes when trying recent maps which I know have a baseline difficulty much higher than even Plutonia.

I do, however, tend to use skill 4 for "serious" playthroughs.

Clonehunter said:

I always play UV on Ultimate Doom, but never Doom II. I always use HMP for Doom II. I never really liked Doom II on UV, especially since in the first level you pretty much had to fight an unruly nmber of Imps with a pistol. Something that gets annoying fast.

I can't remember the last time I played Doom II MAP01 with the pistol. I just always, always grab the chainsaw and use it against all the monsters in the map. It's the map where I never use any ammo.

And each time I play it in UV, I make it a challenge to saw all the imps in the secret outside area without getting hit once. It's not too difficult, but it requires good footwork and a bit of luck.

I tend to play on UV but have no problem dropping down the difficulty if I'm in over my head.

HMP for me. I feel that it is the "ideal" way to first play anything, sort of like the "Normal" mode.

I play on ITYTD on notoriously hard maps and megawads, and UV on classic style maps, it's weird I never really play on HMP which I may try, as it could be a good balance.

Picking a map difficulty - any difficulty - is a game of luck. You never know what the map's difficulty is going to be in advance: Maybe it'll be the perfect match for you on UV, maybe it'll be too hard? Or maybe it'll be too easy even with fast monsters. Both difficulty and notions of balance are subjective. Now, to generalize, you could say there are two kinds of people: Those who want to be challenged (lets call them phmls) and those who want to have a leisurely time (lets call them DRMs). Phmls should, and are likely to, always play on UV, since it's most likely to provide them with the kind of gameplay they're interested in. Similarly DRMs are like to play on either ITYTD or HNTR since, again, those are most likely to provide these people their favourite kind of gameplay. HMP is an in between level that you can fall back to if UV is too rough or HNTR is too easy.

It's not unusual for me to play on Hurt Me Plenty, and I played through Plutonia 2 on Hey, Not Too Rough.

I always default to HMP and then switch it if the game gets too boring. One of the biggest reasons is balance. An extremely simple example would be e1m1. The shotgun secret is still satisfying to me even now but if I play with UV that secret is very underwhelming. Of course that mostly applies to secrets with shotgun ammo but I always feel like i'm missing the intended experience if I play in UV.

I usually play on Hurt Me Plenty, seems about right.

hex11 said:

I always use skill 3, with keyboard only (I don't even own a mouse). And I don't even play slaughtermaps or stuff like HR, Plutonia, etc. Just ain't my thing.

OK I'm stumped. I just have to ask: how can you not own a mouse in 2011?

Jodwin said:

(lets call them DRMs)

o u

chungy said:

OK I'm stumped. I just have to ask: how can you not own a mouse in 2011?

Have you read any of his posts? He's trapped in the 80s and is somehow playing Doom and posting through time.

I almost always play on UV exclusively, unless I know what I'm getting into is way out of my league on that difficulty (stuff like HR, the last few Scythe maps, etc).

My laptop has a touchpad, but I don't use it for Doom. :D And actually, not for much of anything except occasional Firefox session and of course Yadex map editor. The Links-2 web browser works fine with just keyboard, as do most other tools I use (most of them even work in text terminal). A lot of games, esp. older stuff works fine with keyboard or gamepad...

I don't, but I prefer trial by fire (masochist)

Every game (including Doom) I start on the easiest difficulty, then once I've beaten it start on the difficulty above that.

DuckReconMajor said:

Have you read any of his posts? He's trapped in the 80s and is somehow playing Doom and posting through time.

He uses OpenBSD, that's far from being in the 80s :P But anyway, I didn't realize he just has a laptop, I suppose that makes more sense now.

Gez said:

I can't remember the last time I played Doom II MAP01 with the pistol. I just always, always grab the chainsaw and use it against all the monsters in the map. It's the map where I never use any ammo.

And each time I play it in UV, I make it a challenge to saw all the imps in the secret outside area without getting hit once. It's not too difficult, but it requires good footwork and a bit of luck.

I usually forget the chainsaw, plus it usually has me getting hit by something and recieving damage. I really don't like losing health so I always try to stay hidden and fire around corners where they can't hit me.

UV always. I've tried Nightmare once in a while but it seems that its impossible to enjoy it and play it. I do put fast monsters on sometimes though, not quite Nightmare but close.

If I find a wad hard, I'll iddqd it. I like to play doom to enjoy it, if its hard I won't play it. The challenge is nice once in a while so Ill have a good go at it.

I always feel that a difficulty lower than UV is just a "remove some monsters and add some pick-ups" button, kind of like a weak cheat, and who wants that? Even if i'm frustrated like hell with a map, i still try to beat it on UV or give up. Just feels like i get the intended challenge only on UV, like everybody maps for UV first and then makes the maps easier for other difficulties. Though i realize that's probably not how people map.
Same with most games actually, i pick the last or second to last difficulty (when the last one is insane like doom's nightmare, that's not too rare), because playing on easies sounds like a waste of time.

The only game where i lower the difficulty to the minimum is morrowind :) because even on "zero" (it goes from -100 to 100) combat is bullshit and stupidly not how it would happen in actuality (who the hell misses 39 ttimes out of 40 with a knife?).

Unless the map has a reputation for being hard I'll start on UV. If I'm getting nowhere in UV or I know in advance of playing I'll drop down to HMP. If I'm still having trouble but I really like the map(s) I'll drop to HNTR or even ITYTD.

I always play Heretic and Hexen on skill 5, because the monsters there are all like the imps and melee monsters, so they need boosting.

I don't play Strife on Bloodbath because that skill is buggy:

- some enemies receive speed boosts, others don't at all
- only a few objects respawn, notably ceiling turrets, but not people (wtf)
- ammo is still doubled, becoming way more than enough.
- Strife is a game where I have to save and load. If I load after restarting the program, the speed information is lost, resulting in a game easier than skill 4.

I wish I'd become as badass in Doom to play any map on Nightmare, but the monsters are still raping me there.

I feel this is as good a time as ever to discuss how I plan to manipulate the skill levels in a project I'm currently working on.

To evade what is more popularly believed that UV = more monsters, I decided to take skill level settings into my own hands and make them the focal point of all the maps.

I intend to make all skill levels have generally the same number of monsters, except for HNTR, which will do things like turn most shotgun guys into former humans and herds of Hell knights into a single Hell Baron. But the main purpose is instead of watering down the maps with less monsters, the harder skill level you pick, the more difficult it will be to obtain weapons and sufficient ammo, armor and health. For example, on Easy, there maybe a shotgun and body armor in the starting room, but on harder skill levels, you may be expected to have to run past some monsters to acquire the first shotgun, and use your ammo sparingly on monsters that are most detrimental to your health until you find the armor. Lesser skill levels feel much more tame because you enter levels feeling more prepared, while harder skill levels will force the player to be quicker and more precise. I found this style of gameplay to be way more enjoyable and accurate to the words "skill level" in terms of how the maps play.

In addition to that I opened up a new spectrum of difficulty levels with multiplayer things as well, since you can specify skill levels for that too. I decided against stuffing extra monsters into the map and instead created isolated rooms outside the map reserved for teleport ambushes that are inhabited by monsters only available on coop, the monsters start appearing in random locations of the map when players acquire keys, hit switches or locate secrets. I added some monsters and ammo for HNTR and UV, and a bunch of both for HMP. Before you ask why HMP has more monsters than UV on coop, allow me to explain.

In my experience with playing Doom on coop, I found that the best maps to play are ones with high tier monsters in large quantities coming at you from different directions. This gives all the players something to kill and the high health of the monsters keeps rooms from being cleared out too fast. On the contrary, playing Nightmare on these types of maps (coop or single player) is a real chore. It takes longer to kill the monsters than for them to respawn, which makes the map almost impossible to achieve any progress in. So HMP is reserved for high quantities of monsters, while UV is a little more thinned out to make room for the possibility of players playing coop on nightmare (and still able to have fun)

I rarely play on UV, and even then only on maps that I've beaten many times before. My skill of choice is HMP, and despite this, I'll still notch it down to HNTR if I feel I'm having trouble. I never play on skill 1, because as far as I can tell, all that does is double the ammo - ammo is never the reason I die.