If you could buff anything in Doom, what would it be? (Discussion Post)

[TheWolfman00001]

The title speaks for itself here, if you had the opportunity to buff anything in Doom that you considered weak or underpowered, what would you buff?

[baja blast rd.]

Historically, this video shows what I tend to go for: 

 

 

[TheWolfman00001]

4 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

 

Those rocket launching zombiemen though, lmao (Edit: That midi rendition of In the Air Tonight is absolute fire)

[LadyVader1138]

The pistol would be nice to be useful for once.

[Solmyr]

• Zombieman: way too weak. Its health is fine, but it needs to have a burst fire attack of 5 shots, doing 5 damage per pellet, and less dispersion (9°to 22° is way too much) so it doesn't become nearly harmless at medium to long distance, but at the same time it becomes a real treath if the player approaches a group of them while unarmored.

 

• Mastermind: Reducing its size to something slightly larger than an Arachnotron, hitbox size should be of similar size to its body/brain chasis, so mappers can use them as a proper monster rather than a turret, last but not least making its painchance and speed the same of a cyberdemon.

 

• Lost Soul: increased speed up to 12 map units, giving them a weak melee attack (1-5) that bypass armor and its death animation should do some damage, enough to annoy but not kill a player if it kills a group of them or a Pain Elemental  up close.

 

• Pain Elementals and Cacos: faster speed, Cacos' bite should do higher damage (32-96) because it's very rare to get bitten by them, Pain should have a weak bite so it doesn't compromise the tactic to run up close to them so they can't spawn Lost Souls.

[Hartwolf]

Honestly, the pistol. Even if it's as simple as 100% accuracy (without having to wait for the animation to finish).

[42PercentHealth]

The pistol, the spider mastermind, and the zombieman.

[Nine Inch Heels]

Single barrel shotgun. Nothing angers me more than getting all 7 pellets to connect on an imp and seeing it live regardless. It's a disaster. And don't get me started on having to spend 3-4 shells (or whatever the average is exacly) on pinkies. It's madness... Madness and stupidity!

[42PercentHealth]

For pinkies, it's 2-3, unless the blockmap screws you over.

[Nine Inch Heels]

1 minute ago, 42PercentHealth said:

For pinkies, it's 2-3, unless the blockmap screws you over.

Dude.... 3-4 round-pinkies exist... I've seen.... it all..... And I can never unsee it for the rest of my existence. It's horror man... Fucking horror I tell you.

[Uni]

I don't know if I would increase the damage of the melee attack but I would most definitely add a proper sound effect for it and make it so the Cacodemon is actively trying to use its melee attack on you, simliar to Imps and Hell Nobles. Also an increased projectile speed would make things a little bit better, maybe as fast as a Baron ball although having a slow projectile can be an advantage as well, similar to the Revenant's rockets.

 

I would probably give the Pain Elemental a melee attack as well plus modify its explosion death animation so it deliver splash damage to anything near by and then having Lost Souls bursting out of it.

 

 

[galileo31dos01]

- Berserk punch damage output to be somewhere between 60-200. That so exact isn't possible in vanilla (I think?).

- Chainsaw's to be 1.5x or 2x higher (not faster attack but damage per hit), so something like 4-40 I guess should be okay. 

- Applying the speed of Struggle's grenades to Doom's rockets wouldn't hurt, except keeping the original speed for cyber rockets. Another impossible thing in vanilla.

- Double pistols or faster pistol like in Valiant or Struggle.

 

- ...

 

- Oh yeah, the SMM of course, not "buffing" but correcting its properties (hitbox size, pain chance, maybe shorter frame delay for the attack) and that's enough, people should really get over the fact she and cyber were bosses once in the game, and they don't have to keep that role/hierarchy whatever. Besides everyone knows the true boss is Tommy the trooper.

[Maximum Matt]

More idling animations. Always hated the two-step they all do when you sneak up on them or after you die.

[RonnieJamesDiner]

I'd have to go with rocket speed. They always bothered me, it feels like they're moving in slow motion. Which is made all the more aggravating by the fact that they're called "rockets".

 

 

[Swalzi]

I originally wanted to give two suggestions. Here it is.

Enemies:

Zombieman: Increase chase frames to 3 from 4, making them walk as fast a shotgunner. Possibly add a light-up property when they fire. A unique property of the zombieman is that they don't light up when they shoot.

Demon: Default all bite frames to 6 from 8, increasing attack speed to that of a revenant's punch. Speeding up the attack increases the odds of infighting. It's annoying getting them to in-fight with imps. Imps have have to go through three animation frames to launch their projectile. The first two frames are 8 tics with the last frame being 6 tics.

Lost Soul (Doom II): Possibly lower HP to 70 from 100 and increase reaction time to 4 from 8. I like to think they're already balanced especially in Ultimate Doom. No lost soul limit can be devastating with no BFG and can force the player to ignore them and run wild.

Arachnotron: Reduce hitbox to the size of a mancubus.

Evil Marine (Scythe II): Increase initial FaceTarget duration to 5 tics from 2 tics. Add a "cooldown" animation frame with a duration of 5 tics after firing their barrage of plasma. It gives the player a split moment to possibly alternate movement direction and makes evil marines vulnerable to rockets. Their stats, health and speed, are fine the way they are. Adding unique sounds would also help too just to know they're active. They were never placed to roam in Scythe 2 single-player, however.

Weapons:

Chainsaw (Doom II): Lower attack frames to 3 tics from 4, increasing attack rate.

Rocket Launcher: Remove "safety pin" when switching to rocket launcher.

Plasma Gun: Lower cooldown frame to 12 tics from 20, making it faster to refire or switch to another weapon OR Increase minimum damage to 15 or 10.

BFG9000: Remove "safety pin" when switching to BFG.

Power-ups:

Partial Invisibility: Add an additional damage percent reduction of 12% (maybe more or less) for the duration of the power up, including wearing armor. If player picks up invisibility with green armor, their armor reduction is now 45%. When the power-up runs out it goes back to being 33%. If armor is destroyed then 12% then eventually 0%. It's awesome to see it work in Zdoom, but this damage reduction didn't seem to matter much with 12% from last I tested it almost a year ago. OR Projectile direction is determined by the visual direction of the monster (ALL tics of the animated attack frame) and not, what feels like, the very last tic of the animated frame. Also it effects monsters' melee attack direction.

Light Amplifier: Increase sector brightness by 64 instead of the full 256 or whatever. I like how light amp works in GZDoom, kind of similar to Duke3D.

Edited August 18, 2019 by Swalzi

[DynamiteKaitorn]

A few ideas to buff certain aspects of DooM.

 

1 - Hell Knights. They're a literal reskin of Barons and only have -50% hp. THAT'S IT. Sure it was to save space on memory back then but personally they could turn the Hell Knight into a more interesting enemy. Maybe a slightly different attack pattern from your usual projectile enemy (A-La arachnotron or Revenant)?

 

2 - The pistol. While I really don't hate this gun, it rarely has its uses outside of pistol starts or new games. Maybe buff it's damage a little so it's a nice alternative to the chaingun when spending bullet ammo? (not too much though, the shotty needs to still be your No.1 goto gun).

 

3 - Health/Armour bonus. +1hp or +1 armour is nice if you can find a mass of them but as they are they kinda suck. Why not a special, rarer variant that is say, +3?

 

4 - Partial invisibility. This does next to nothing for competent players. personally I'd like it if enemies were guaranteed to miss somtimes or make it so that chaingunners have a hard time locking on and hitting you, or at the very least, let the INVISIBILITY part make more sense, rather than I walk in front of an imp, it doesn't see me, run back and now it sees me.

 

5 - Spider Mastermind. 1-2 BFG blasts that are well aimed and she is a gonner. Maybe shrink her hitbox so you can actually fit her in rooms smaller than the size of Jupiter, plus for being the final boss of DooM, she is kinda pathetic. :P

[Doomkid]

ANYTHING in Doom you say? I’d buff the line of code that causes the blockmap bug where your bullets pass right through enemies! I swear that BS happens to me every time I play lately!

[Robo_Cola]

Make the Baron's fireball attack either faster in rate or shoot in volleys of 3.  Give the Spider Mastermind more HP at least equal to the Cyberdemon.

[Crunchynut44]

Invisibility:

 

Rather than it's current use, I think a 50% chance of a projectile passing through you would be far more useful and interesting.

[maxmanium]

I really like how Eviternity handles the pistol in the DEHACKED lump, so I guess that.

[TheWolfman00001]

13 hours ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Single barrel shotgun. Nothing angers me more than getting all 7 pellets to connect on an imp and seeing it live regardless. It's a disaster. And don't get me started on having to spend 3-4 shells (or whatever the average is exacly) on pinkies. It's madness... Madness and stupidity!

I can relate here, there is nothing that is more annoying in doom then getting screwed over by RNG damage calculation

[silentzorah]

Pistol - Slight fire rate increase, remove initial delay.

Chaingun - Slight damage increase.

Trooper - Chance to refire, maybe increase accuracy slightly.

Rocket Launcher - Remove initial fire delay.

Shotgun - Increase pellets per shot to 10, but mostly because having a pellet discrepancy between the SG and SSG drives me nuts.

Imp - Increase chance to fire.

Blursphere - Enemies "forget" where player is when player isn't firing for a period of time.

Lost Soul - Increase aggression, but decrease max HP.

[Maser]

3 hours ago, Doomkid said:

ANYTHING in Doom you say? I’d buff the line of code that causes the blockmap bug where your bullets pass right through enemies! I swear that BS happens to me every time I play lately!

 

You should see how often it happens in the PSX port. 

[The_SloVinator]

There is a buff version of Doom already out there. It's called 'Brutal Doom'.

[Zulk RS]

Here are mine:

- Greatly increase the damage of pistol and increase total ammo capacity (with backpack) from 400 to 600 or 800 (It's more for the chaingun rather than the pistol but they share ammo so I'm putting it here)

- Greatly increase the rate of fire of the chaingun

- Increase rate of fire of chainsaw.

- Have the plasma rifle use a different ammo from the BFG. The PR kinda becomes redundant once you pick up the BFG.

- Reduce Hitboxes of Arachnotrons and give them more HP.

- Reduce Hitboxes of SM, give it more HP and have them move faster (not attack faster).

[ReaperAA]

Weapons I would buff/change:

Chainsaw: Lower attack frames from 4 to 3 tics, thus increasing its rate of fire by 33%

Berserk fists: Reduce the variance of damage. Instead of doing 20-200 damage, it would do 80-140 damage. Also improve selection order priority compared to chainsaw.

Pistol: Give it 100% accuracy along with increased rate of fire (like in Eviternity)

Shotgun: Increase the number of pellets from 7 to 8. Also reduce the variance of damage per pellet from 5-15 to 8-12 damage per pellet. This ensures that a imp would die 100% of times if all pellets hit.

Chaingun: Increase rate of fire to make it more deadly, but also reduce their 2-shot burst accuracy (like in Valiant)

 

Monsters I would buff/change:

Lost souls: Reduce their HP from 100 to 50 but make them much much more aggressive (basically like Doom 64).

Arachnotrons:  Reduce Hitbox/dimensions to match the sprites size. Also increase its movement speed.

Spider Mastermind: Reduce Hitbox/dimensions to match the sprites size. Make its speed and pain chance same as that of cyberdemon.

Arch-vile: Increase pain chance so that they are guranteed to enter their pain state when all pellets of SSG hit them.

 

Items I would change:

Blursphere: Make it like Heretic's shadowsphere i.e it could make non-magic projectiles (like bullets and rockets) pass through player. But only in SP as it would be OP in MP.

Light Amplifier: Increase sector brightness by 64 instead of the full 256 (like Swalzi mentioned).

 

And last but not least:

5 hours ago, Doomkid said:

ANYTHING in Doom you say? I’d buff the line of code that causes the blockmap bug where your bullets pass right through enemies! I swear that BS happens to me every time I play lately!

 

Edited August 19, 2019 by ReaperAA

[DarkScythe13]

• Partial Invisibility sphere. That thing hurts far more than helps.
• Increase the chainsaws rate slightly (or change the pinky) enough that they cant sneak a bite in with it. At least the Pinky anyway. I feel that Pinkies are more than plentiful enough to surround you in numbers anyway. One immobile pinky shouldnt matter. If without berserk I tend to hold backwards while chainsawing just in case.
• Increase the Pistol damage to perhaps be a minimum of 10 dmg per shot. I feel dont feel it would be too much of a game changer as many enemies and level layouts would mandate the use of any other weapon anyway, but its enough to pick off a few weaker enemies more reliably in the process.
• Slightly increase the Pinky's melee range or speed. It kinda sucks that the thing struggles to even hit slowly moving enemies because they move slightly out of the melee range. Not to the extent of its fast monster behaviour, but something in between, enabling a decent opportunity for the player to dodge, but also increasing the Pinkies efficiency too.

Additionally, I'd nerf the lost soul health slightly, enough to be able to take them out with a single well placed shotgun shot but only just.

[Andromeda]

14 hours ago, DynamiteKaitorn said:

4 - Partial invisibility. This does next to nothing for competent players. 

I disagree, a competent player knows to pick it up when facing a horde of hitscanners, and to avoid it when facing a horde of projectile enemies. It's a VERY useful powerup, a lifesaver when used right.

[Zulk RS]

31 minutes ago, Andromeda said:

I disagree, a competent player knows to pick it up when facing a horde of hitscanners, and to avoid it when facing a horde of projectile enemies. It's a VERY useful powerup, a lifesaver when used right.

 

Though I personally find the "power up" very annoying at times, I agree with this 100%. I'd still like it to actually be better though. Maybe while it is active, it will cause the enemies to fire away from the player 100% of the time instead of some of the time. That way, you can still get hit by things if you strafe around too much but standing still will cause enemies to miss all the time. However, the enemies will still move towards you so you can't really stand still all the time because you're going to get mauled then.

[Deadwing]

Pistol (make it more powerful and with 100% accuracy) and the Single Shotgun (increase fire rate, maybe?)