How to make Heretic and Hexen fun to play !

[koke]

I was a little bit disappointed with Heretic and Hexen gameplay,all enemies are bullet sponges,weapons feels underpowered and both games is slow paced overall compared to doom,fortunately one of doom mods where you can customize the game works in both heretic and hexen and possibly strife and wolfenstein 3d tc.You can change your damage,damage that you taken,monsters speed,monsters health,add regeneration,add degeneration,add ranzomider,pistol/wand start,% health start...

 

Here the mod: https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=51446

 

Just start the game and press "o" to open menu or bind the menu configuration to any key you want in customize controls

 

For heretic i put:

 

weapon damage to 1.7

damage takien 1.5

monsters speed 1.5

 

these values are porcentages,for exemple if you put damage taken to 0.8 you take 20% less damage if you put 2.5 you take 250% more damage.

 

other things you can do is decrease music volume,heretic music is way too loud ! decrease brightness to make torch useful,decrease auto aim.Play in difficulty 4 or 5 with fast monsters turned on,otherwise its become too easy.

 

for hexen:

 

weapon damage 2

damage tanken 1.5

monsters speed 2

 

play difficulty 4 and 5 with fast monsters turned on.

 

after you put these values you need to restart the game to take effect.

 

At least for me Hexen,heretic become much better to play with this mod.

 

[Doge Sword]

Heretic and Hexen are fun.  Even without the full version I still really like them.

[[McD] James]

I've never had these issues, but hey, people should play and modify games however they want (provided that they're not hindering the experiences of others).  

[Solmyr]

Weird, i understand Hexen as it relies on puzzles and is slower than Heretic and Doom. But Heretic is almost Doom set in fantasy land. 

Leaving that aside, it's great that players can mod the games to suit their own needs and gameplay style.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Play Heretic on the last difficulty, That's the equivalent of UV in doom. -No it isn't the dumb bullshit mode like NM at first glance-

 

Heretic weapons are overpowered, if you think their damage is too low feel free to compare their damage % to monster's health compared to doom. +50% damage to monsters with fast sounds extremely bullshit the moment knight ghosts or disciples appear in traps -episode 4 and 5-. If you want it to be hard just remove the stupid shield pickups and invulnerability rings from the game, none of them do any good to the game beside trivializing whatever might've been challenging in a map. (For reference, the enchanted shield blocks a whooping 75% damage, that with the insane number of quartz flasks everywhere makes the player outright immortal for most monsters until the shield is gone)

Edited August 17, 2018 by Pegg

[koke]

lets compare heretic weapons damage with doom weapons damage at normal difficulty:

 

in heretic you start with magic wand then you pick up a crossbow.

in doom is a pistol then a shotgun.

 

first enemy in doom is a zombieman/shotgunguy that takes 2/3 pistol shots to die most of time takes 2 shoots and its takes just 1 shoot of shotgun to kill,sometimes 2 but you can kill multiples zombies/shotgunguys at the same time with 1 shotgun shot.

first enemy in heretic is a gargoyle that takes 4/5 magic wand shoots to die,with crossbow its takes 1/2 shoots.

 

second enemy in doom is a imp its takes 6/7 shoots of a pistol to kill him 1/2 shoot of a shotgun,1 if you hit it at medium/short range.

second enemy in heretic is a golem its takes 6/7/8 shoots of a magic wand to kill him 1 crossbow shoot if you hit it at very short range 2 at medium range most of the time is 2.

 

third enemy in doom is a pinky that takes 3/4 shotgun shots to die.

third enemy in heretic is a undead warror that takes 3/4/5 crossbow shots to die.

 

notes:

 

the crossbow damage is very incosistent specially if you use low auto-aim

there always ammo available to shotgun.

if we compare heretic with doom 2 then doom 2 wins by a landside since at map 02 we get a super shotgun.the only huge bullet-sponges enemies in doom 2 are the cyberdemon and spider-mastermind.in doom 1 i feel that barons and cacodemons are bullet-sponges.

 

 

now hexen is in another whole level of bullet-sponges enemies.

[Gez]

The way to make Hexen fun to play is to give yourself an infinite supply of discs of repulsion and then use them constantly.

 

Pushing a centaur into a bottomless pit remains my all-time favorite thing in Hexen.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

The crossbow has a higher dps than the shotgun in a game with lower monster health than doom. Comparing them shot by shot completely missed my point. Unless you are spamming plasma\rockets all day you aren't going to top the damage of hellstaff\dragonclaw (which are hilariously overpowered and kill everything short of bosses in under 2.5 secs, that being the ophidian with 280 hp, compared to a caco with 400 hp). Keep that crossbow on the bench unless you have a tome or the other weapons are out of ammo and heretic's monsters are a complete pushover health-wise. You also have time bombs to oneshot any horde of trash monsters and the game DROWNS the hell out of some maps with them. Not even going to mention how overpowered the phoenix rod is at killing hordes of heretic's "high-tier" enemies. (the splash alone is almost half the health of an ophidian, rocket launcher dies in jealousy at doing the same to barons or viles)

 

And about ammo.. are you seriously saying the crossbow can run out of ammo aside from one map in all heretic? monster's drop it left and right, most maps have enough ammo for it to kill everything before even accounting for drops, and it doesn't take half a map in any chapter aside from the first to get to the op dragonclaw. 

 

Hexen's monsters usually have too much health and annoying gimmicks to keep them alive for even longer. There is no denying most of them completely kill the pacing of the game at times. (unless you are a mage with death arc, then just oneshot them with triple damage bonus lol.

[koke]

So i replayed doom and heretic first 3 levels of the second episode of each game to compare themselves,i think the biggest difference is that in doom you are fighting imps and zombies/shotgunguys most of the time,in heretic the enemies vary more.i think out of the 40 enemies i killed in level 2 in doom at least 32 of them are imps most of the time one-shoting them with a shotgun.Gargoyles are harder to kill than imp's ! gargoyles have smaller hitbox,are faster and fly,the crossbow being a inconsistent projectile weapon don't help neither.

 

Also the monsters sprites and audio clarity are much better in doom than in heretic.in doom you can clearly hear monsters moans,music and see either they dying or infighting.

 

I think heretic just lacked some polish overall,if they added more personality to monsters and better audio clarity to the game it could be just good as doom.Still a good game i having fun playing with tweaked gameplay,increasing monsters speed make melee monsters threatening.

 

Now hexen is just bullshit ! killing centaurs and ettins all day for hours straight was a fucking slog !! there no way i play hexen vanilla again. 

Edited August 17, 2018 by koke

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Oh are those the gargoyles that toss fire balls? Those have double health which makes them annoying as shit to kill (And them sharing the sprites of normal afrits is just icing). Episode 2 in general suffers from way too many of them, especially the first 4 maps. The crossbow's projectiles just autoaim individually, not inconsistently. 

 

If monster speed buffed them enough to make melee monster's a threat things are about to get terrible once maps start using more disciples :P.

[koke]

thing is,increasing their speed doens't change their rate of fire but only their movement speed.what change their rate of fire is the "fast monsters" option.

[wallabra]

Heretic is boring for me, it's mostly monotone to me. It's a pseudo-medieval land, with a few Doom elements, and, well, lots, LOTS of boring items.

 

Hexen is a big improvement, in my opinion — I like these creative puzzles, the hub system, the ACS, all these new elements added. There was a whole new chunk of unexplored Doom engine area unveiled by Hexen before anyone else could (heck, even ZDoom was late compared to Hexen)! Not only that, but the realism is strong there, even without a true 3D engine, like Quake, or the later Unreal.

 

I feel like Heretic lacks the... oomph. The audiovisual feedback of killing enemies and firing big weapons. The Dragonclaw might be extremely powerful, but it doesn't feel like it. Mentally, it trembles compared to the Super Shotgun in Doom II or the Wraithverge in Hexen. You know what I mean when big weapons need big sounds, and small weapons need enjoyable sounds and decent fallback mechanisms (like the Automag in Unreal was a good fallback for situations where it is fine to use it, because it had infinite ammo).

 

Hexen has power. Hexen has oomph.

[MegaZzZeux]

50 minutes ago, Gustavo6046 said:

Heretic is boring for me, it's mostly monotone to me. It's a pseudo-medieval land, with a few Doom elements, and, well, lots, LOTS of boring items.

 

Hexen is a big improvement, in my opinion — I like these creative puzzles, the hub system, the ACS, all these new elements added. There was a whole new chunk of unexplored Doom engine area unveiled by Hexen before anyone else could (heck, even ZDoom was late compared to Hexen)! Not only that, but the realism is strong there, even without a true 3D engine, like Quake, or the later Unreal.

 

I feel like Heretic lacks the... oomph. The audiovisual feedback of killing enemies and firing big weapons. The Dragonclaw might be extremely powerful, but it doesn't feel like it. Mentally, it trembles compared to the Super Shotgun in Doom II or the Wraithverge in Hexen. You know what I mean when big weapons need big sounds, and small weapons need enjoyable sounds and decent fallback mechanisms (like the Automag in Unreal was a good fallback for situations where it is fine to use it, because it had infinite ammo).

 

Hexen has power. Hexen has oomph.

 

Glad someone feels the way I do. Heretic is pretty bland to me.

[Avoozl]

Yeah, I've always preferred Hexen over Heretic.

[whirledtsar]

2 hours ago, Gustavo6046 said:

I feel like Heretic lacks the... oomph. The audiovisual feedback of killing enemies and firing big weapons. The Dragonclaw might be extremely powerful, but it doesn't feel like it. Mentally, it trembles compared to the Super Shotgun in Doom II or the Wraithverge in Hexen. You know what I mean when big weapons need big sounds, and small weapons need enjoyable sounds and decent fallback mechanisms (like the Automag in Unreal was a good fallback for situations where it is fine to use it, because it had infinite ammo).

 

Hexen has power. Hexen has oomph.

I feel the same way. I think it's because the player has to use their starting weapon more and longer alone than they do in Doom or Heretic, more effort was put into making them useful and satisfying.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Idk the mace and holy flame weapons have shit tier damage that makes the pistol look good, completely terrible useless weapons, at least holy flame is good vs chaos serpents, the monster the cleric has HUGE problems killing \s.

 

And whatever dps the serpent staff whenever it hits a centaur it will force you into an afking simulator else a single reflected shot deletes half your health (because the poison only works on you)', it even has an attack up close to waste your mana way faster anf still does the projectiles attack if you melee a blocking centaur.

 

Wraithverge completely trivializes over half the game. No wonder it feels good to get an op wep after being stuck with garbage for hours. And don't mention the flechette am not going to waste even more time than the mace to kill a centaur. Mage also has the shitty ice weapon that blocks your way most of the time slowing the game even more.

 

Hey at least 1 class has well designed weapons in the game. Fighter doesn't waste all day chipping tanks until he gets an op weapon that beats the game while you sleep from running from switch to switch.

 

[riderr3]

Hexen have some cool technical improvements and more texture schemes, but I prefer Heretic gameplay, monsters and weapons.

So there is Heretic in Hexen format is exist for mappers who need use Hexen Features in Heretic. Sure nowadays you can use UDMF.

[leodoom85]

I enjoy both games because they have their own charm...so, how to make it fun?

Mess around with the weapons and items, throw some idiots to a bottomless pit in Hexen or fart them with poison flechette...play in the highest skill in Heretic...spend some time around to discover more stuff and enjoy the game.

Any technical issues are just that, issues that most people won't be happy. Can't please everyone ;)

[koke]

hexen has better graphics and audio than heretic but in hexen you are fighting centaurs and ettins 90% of time,they barely hit you since they are slow and they are bullets sponges,also takes alot of time to you find the third weapon and not to mention the atrocious confusing level design in hexen,these things ruins the game for me.I take heretic over hexen anytime unless its a custom wad with good level design and enemies placement.

Edited August 19, 2018 by koke

[amackert]

Pretty much every enemy in Heretic, even the irritating red, flying gargoyles, takes multiple hits and this is what causes the game to have a bullet-spongey feel to it. That said, if you know how to play the game, you can still tear through groups of enemies quickly without issue. A part of it is using particular weapons against specific enemies, as some are weak to certain ones. Also, actually using the power-ups that are given to you is important. Tomes of Power are littered all over the maps and these help you rip through scenes faster than anything in DOOM. While modding the game is an option to make things smoother, so is actually getting better at the game.

 

On ‎8‎/‎17‎/‎2018 at 8:28 PM, Gustavo6046 said:

I feel like Heretic lacks the... oomph. The audiovisual feedback of killing enemies and firing big weapons. The Dragonclaw might be extremely powerful, but it doesn't feel like it. Mentally, it trembles compared to the Super Shotgun in Doom II or the Wraithverge in Hexen. You know what I mean when big weapons need big sounds, and small weapons need enjoyable sounds and decent fallback mechanisms (like the Automag in Unreal was a good fallback for situations where it is fine to use it, because it had infinite ammo).

 

While I personally much prefer Heretic over Hexen (My preferences have always leaned more towards linear FPS progression, ala Wolf 3D, Doom, etc), I can fully get behind this statement. Heretic's weapons are quite varied, useful, and dangerous when used properly. However, they are certainly underwhelming when fired or when they make contact. The combination of the visuals and sound effects used just fails to provide that visceral feeling you get from DOOM's super shotgun, rocket launcher, or BFG. The closest is probably the powered up Dragon Claw.

Edited August 22, 2018 by amackert

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Don't think any wep does bonus damage in heretic, only some monsters resisting explosives and powered up side effects (Rippers and hell rain). 

 

I think people try to use the dragon claw similar to doom's chaingun to abuse dead on accuracy in the first shot, Oversighting the weapon taking 6 tics to power up -It fires every 3 tics so you basically cut your dps in half (2 shots every 12 tics instead of 6) and are better off sniping with hell staff, Phoenix rod or even elven wand. Hoarding items until you need them is another especially chaos devices and tome of power, So it ends up with the game discarding most of them on exits instead. Unless there is a maulotaur read your books vs hordes!

[Dragonsbrethren]

5 hours ago, Pegg said:

Hoarding items until you need them is another especially chaos devices and tome of power, So it ends up with the game discarding most of them on exits instead. Unless there is a maulotaur read your books vs hordes! 

I started having a lot more fun with Heretic when I decided to just activate items as soon as I got them.

[koke]

i have been playing heretic with HYMN: A Heretic Community Project wad,pretty good wad,big and detailed maps ! anyone know what song plays at map E1M6 ?

Edited August 25, 2018 by koke

[wallabra]

Let's make a good Hexetic total conversion in Unreal! Heck, I'm waiting for the day Unreal Engine 1 is open-sourced!

 

[SOSU]

I have no idea what this thread is even about but I will give my answer to the OPs question :) (Just for Heretic)

1.Make fights Serious Sam like,big arena battles and not run and gun like Doom (I)

2.Add a lot of tomes of power

3.Just limit yourself to the first shield,the other one is too overpowered and makes you nearly immortal (you can use it in a big fight with all the strongest enemies though)

[Nems]

This is how I make Heretic and Hexen fun to play. :V

[Impie]

Heretic: reduce enemy health and increase speed and deadliness.

 

Hexen: more enemy and weapon variety, greater dependence on artifacts.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

I've played Mage on Archmage for the first time since I always thought he'd be the easiest class to beat on max difficulty a while ago and always picked one of the other two. Boy I was wrong. His maps are filled with way more ranged shit than the other 2 you'll have to use most artifacts or die a horrible death in many rooms. It does get easier in some places (gibbet and last level are a joke) but some maps are hell (Hello reaver graveyard's start without ammo).

 

Am sure I've killed 1-2 thousand bishops and centaurs by the end of the game haha.

[Vermil]

I like that Heretic and HeXen play differently to Doom. It allows me to pick a game based on my mood.