What would you replace the Pistol with?

[tsunstealer]

Personally, I wouldn’t want to replace the pistol. I would just want it to work better, maybe more like the pistol in Wolf 3D. While Romero definitely had a point about making each weapon not seem useless when picking up the next, Doom is not the best example of this in action, as the pistol is fairly useless even against weaker enemies. I think making it deal damage more like the pistol in Wolfenstein 3D would give it a whole lot more use than how it behaves currently. 
 

also, I don’t mean that it would’ve had to require the player to press shoot each time, I mean the way the wolf pistol deals damage, but keep the pistol the same in everything else. 
 

however, if I had to replace the pistol, it would definitely be an assault rifle. Why? Because the Doomguy should have a battle rifle if he’s a Marine. 
 

I also think that the pistol and chaingun should’ve had separate ammo types, and they should have used separate sound effects, but I am so use to it that I don’t see any reason to change it myself despite how easy it is to do.
 

Having it use different ammo would’ve given it a little more effectiveness, and different sound effects would’ve given the gun character on its own, and it could’ve became iconic like Duke’s pistol if it was given just a little more depth, maybe even with a reload in between a certain number of shots. I have seen mods that do this but the animation never looks quite right because they try to make it way too smooth when they should be trying to make it look good with less frames of animation so it keeps the vanilla vibe, but this is just personal taste. 

[TheMightyHeracross]

Just make the chaingun have to pause before refiring, like the plasma rifle or Skulltag minigun. Tapping won't be very useful then.