Death's Heretic Rebalance Mod (update: v1.1)

[deathzero021]

Download: Dropbox

 

So recently I was playing The Wayfarer for Heretic and while I appreciated the weapon modifications, it still didn't feel like it was enough to really save the combat at times. I've always felt the weapons in Heretic were a little boring and in some cases, awful. The combat can drag on at times due to the low damage of the weapons. So I decided to throw together a small and simple weapon rebalance mod tailored to my preferences. I'm not claiming this to be a "superior" balance of Heretic's weapons, just my personal taste in balance. Either way, I thought I'd share it in case anyone might enjoy it the same.

 

In general, the weapons are a bit stronger, so DPS has increased for the most part. This results in faster combat and a slight conservation of ammo. Enemy health has been adjusted a bit as well but overall this mod will make the game easier, so I recommend playing at a higher difficulty than you usually would.

 

The weapons balance is inspired from Doom's weapons even more so than Heretic originally was, as it's just more satisfying to me.

 

This mod changes:

- Weapon fire rates

- Projectile damage and speed

- Powered up functionality has changed for all weapons

- Enemy health slightly adjusted

 

Requires: Zdoom-based source port. Should work on just about any Zdoom-based source port that is compatible with decorate. Although I only tested it on recent gzDoom builds, so I recommend gzDoom for now, until further testing.

 

Uses only vanilla assets, so no sounds or graphics are included. Thus, there isn't much to show off in screenshots. Perhaps I'll throw together a video later, if I continue working on this. In the future, I may rebalance the enemies as well to compensate for the increased strength of the player, although it isn't a necessity. Let me know what you think of it and if you have any further suggestions!

 

Download: Dropbox

 

Changelog:

-v1.1 fixes the autoaim issue for the GoldWand's powered up attack.

Edited January 30, 2020 by deathzero021

[TravyB]

This is great, it actually gives me a reason to try and finish Heretic, at long last. I've never even finished the first episode so I'm the opposite of familiar with the game but I did notice that the wand, when powered up, doesn't adjust for auto-aim whenever you're not playing with mouselook. 

[ReaperAA]

I tried it out and I really liked it. Although I overall prefer the balance changes of Wayfarer's Tome over this, there are certain things I liked here more. Though there are also things that I didn't like.

 

What I liked:

- For the first time in history of Heretic, the firemace does not suck.

- Fast weapon switching.

- No recoil from Phoenix rod.

- Higher damage of untomed staff.

 

What I didn't like:

- Hitscan crossbow. It feels wrong to me that the arrows just hit the target as soon as they are released. I feel that fast projectiles would be better than hitscan. Right now, it feels too much like the regular shotgun from Doom.

- Wand ammo balance.  We start with zero ammo and then get regular wand ammo with same quantity as in vanilla. I think that having player start with about 30 ammo and then giving about 2/3 of vanilla's ammo quantity from ammo pickups (to compensate for increased damage output) would work better.

- Removing unique tomed attacks of dragon claw, hellstaff and phoenix rod.

- Staff's attack is manual now.

 

[deathzero021]

On 1/28/2020 at 6:14 AM, ReaperAA said:

What I liked:

- For the first time in history of Heretic, the firemace does not suck.

- Fast weapon switching.

- No recoil from Phoenix rod.

- Higher damage of untomed staff.

 

What I didn't like:

- Hitscan crossbow. It feels wrong to me that the arrows just hit the target as soon as they are released. I feel that fast projectiles would be better than hitscan. Right now, it feels too much like the regular shotgun from Doom.

- Wand ammo balance.  We start with zero ammo and then get regular wand ammo with same quantity as in vanilla. I think that having player start with about 30 ammo and then giving about 2/3 of vanilla's ammo quantity from ammo pickups (to compensate for increased damage output) would work better.

- Removing unique tomed attacks of dragon claw, hellstaff and phoenix rod.

- Staff's attack is manual now.

Thanks for checking it out. I'm glad you liked some things about it at least. I guess I understand where you are coming from with the crossbow, but honestly making it hitscan was the first thing I did with this mod, as the vanilla crossbow has terrible range and accuracy due to how slow the projectiles are. Yeah, making faster projectiles could help with this but I really enjoy the immediate explosive results of hitscan.

 

I actually don't like the tomed attacks for those weapons, they often don't feel useful. yeah the flamethrower is powerful but it's short range makes it too risky, and the other 2 weapons just lack a powerful feeling and have questionable use. I decided to go with tomed attacks that are more inline with the primary use of those weapons and just crank them up to 11.

 

Although that gives me an idea for a potential future update. Perhaps I could add in alt fires for the tomed attacks that are similar to vanilla tomed attacks but also rebalanced to be a bit more impactful. Maybe even add a similar alt fire for untomed attacks too, like a mini version of the vanilla tomed attacks. Hmm..

 

Oh and for the staff, I just disliked the autofire on it, actually makes it feel harder to successfully hit your target and NOT take damage yourself. This way you can more reliably run in, hit a monster, and back out without accidentally refiring and missing the timing. I suppose this says more about my play-style though than anything else haha.

 

Edit: Fixed the autoaim issue for the GoldWand's powered up attack. Link should be updated.

Edited January 30, 2020 by deathzero021