What would you do to make the pistol useful?

[JadingTsunami]

I have been thinking about the best change to make the pistol useful during mid-game. Many WADs have tried this, but mostly it is forgotten once better weapons are available. E.g., add a spread to the Chaingun's first shot (so you can't quick-tap to snipe with the chaingun anymore). Or the pistol fire rate is increased.

 

One idea I came up with is this:

 

• When you switch to the pistol, it cancels the current weapon's reload animation and quick-switches to the pistol (like you just drew it from a side-holster). If/When you switch back to the original weapon, the reload animation plays before you can keep firing. This would allow you to combo weapons with slow reloads with the pistol.

 

This also would explain why Doom guy has the pistol holstered on his left side but holds two-handed weapons right-handed. :)

 

What do you think? Are there better ways to make the pistol useful?

[TheNoob_Gamer]

I already said this in another thread, but I think it's worth mentioning again.

To increase the pistol's effectiveness, chaingun also have to be tweaked as well.

Note that the following suggestions are doable in vanilla.

• Pistol:

- 100% accuracy all the time.

-Has 50% faster firing speed.

(-Has fastest weapon switching speed.)

 

• Chaingun

(-Accuracy nerf, chaingun has random spread so tapping is impossible.)

-Has 20-40% faster firing speed.

-Has a certain amount of cooldown time (3-7 secs) after done firing.

[slowtorturepukechamber]

full auto, like a glock. or just change it entirely to an assault rifle like brutal doom haha

[Gokuma]

Add a pistol whipping alternate melee attack, and when you're out of ammo, allow you to throw an empty clip really hard.

[dmslr]

3 hours ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

• Chaingun

(-Accuracy nerf, chaingun has random spread so tapping is impossible.)

-Has 20-40% faster firing speed.

-Has a certain amount of cooldown time (3-7 secs) after done firing.

This chaingun is super useless, even worse than the pistol you described above. I think an accuracy nerf is enough.

[TheNoob_Gamer]

43 minutes ago, dmslr said:

This chaingun is super useless, even worse than the pistol you described above. I think an accuracy nerf is enough.

I'm pretty sure people will still try to snipe with chaingun if there's no cooldown. Besides, even when trying to make Chaingun more inaccurate, the spread is so small they won't even notice anyway.

[fufu]

Make the pistol use a different type of ammo instead of using the same as the chaingun like in Duke Nukem 3D.
That alone would make it way more useful for me.
 

[tgawt]

Simply make it always accurate. Anything else impedes on the other weapons in the sandbox

[JadingTsunami]

30 minutes ago, Danzer said:

Make the pistol use a different type of ammo instead of using the same as the chaingun like in Duke Nukem 3D.
That alone would make it way more useful for me.
 

 

Chaingun ammo would have to be more uncommon in that case also, wouldn't it?

[Immorpher]

5 hours ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

I already said this in another thread, but I think it's worth mentioning again.

To increase the pistol's effectiveness, chaingun also have to be tweaked as well.

Note that the following suggestions are doable in vanilla.

• Pistol:

- 100% accuracy all the time.

-Has 50% faster firing speed.

(-Has fastest weapon switching speed.)

 

• Chaingun

(-Accuracy nerf, chaingun has random spread so tapping is impossible.)

-Has 20-40% faster firing speed.

-Has a certain amount of cooldown time (3-7 secs) after done firing.

Yes, I ended up doing something like this for the pistol basically inspired by the other thread. Making it near 100% accurate and a faster rate of fire. I have been using Doom 64 weapons and I think the Doom 64 chaingun is a bit faster than the original Doom one, so it ends up doing the balance as you said (https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Chaingun/Doom_64). Except no cool down but I do have it without the 100% accurate first shot. Its particularly great for lost souls in Doom 64 and my mod.

My pipe dream is to eventually replace the pistol with a variant of a sniper rifle. It wouldnt have the long barrel of a sniper rifle, but decent reload speed and a zoom ability. But if this has alt-fire like zoom ability, it means I would probably need to come up with alt fires for other weapons haha. Which luckily I have been thinking about.

[Spie812]

Honestly I think WADs like Eviternity or Valiant got it right. Just increase the firing speed and maybe give it perfect accuracy. That's all I would need to be satisfied.

[elend]

Did someone ever think about unlimited ammo for the pistol? I was wondering if that'd make an actual difference. Chaingun would need separate ammo then of course.

[plums]

Unlimited ammo encourages tedious pistol sniping though. It works but it's not exactly fun. If you have enough ammo in a map that you never want to do this, then the pistol is back to being useless.

 

I play with a fast+accurate pistol most of the time as a Dehacked mod. Another option is to make it fire 4-5 bullets at once with perfect accuracy, or make it like the chaingun and then make the chaingun a super-fast minigun, or a rifle that shoots 10+ accurate bullets. For the minigun you can add in windup and/or cooldown and/or make it less ammo-efficient if you still want to encourage the pistol to be semi-useful.

 

edit: Heretic's wand is more useful than Doom's pistol just because it uses its own ammo type, even though having to use it isn't super fun either. Having weapons share an ammo type usually means one is going to be much better than the others, or even just a strict upgrade the way the chaingun is over the pistol. The SSG is generally much better than the SG, and the BFG is largely better than the plasma gun if you're fighting more than one thing at a time, though those two are different enough that the PG isn't rendered useless by the BFG.

Edited May 7, 2020 by plums

[Deadwing]

unlimited ammo (maybe with recharging bullets like the "pistol" from unreal) + 100% accuracy would be interesting

[DynamiteKaitorn]

Could make it fire slightly faster from the start and later on, allow duel wielding that ups your damage output. To compensate for this, the chaingun would need to fire even faster.

 

Basically: Akimbo pistols = damage, Chaingun = speed

[dmslr]

@TheNoob_Gamer sorry, mate. I misread your words and somehow read it '20-40% lower rate of fire'. Stupid me. It makes sense now.

[kalaeth]

make it the only weapon that can head-shot (only useful / useable on lower tier monsters), either with free-look or a %chance to hit for max damage*2

[Andromeda]

Replace it with a BFG

[Martin Howe]

Use it to shoot demons :P Next question?

[ViolentBeetle]

I think it would make sense to merge pistol with chaingun into "SMG" or "Assault rifle" that perhaps somewhere in-between, while leaving the entire "Rapid fire high damage" niche to plasma.

[Old-Doomguy]

Add a silencer pickup. It will only alert monsters being hit. 

[ABRACADABRA]

Well I already resolved this with my little "Separate Ammo" mod that gives different ammo for EVERY weapon. e.g. clips for pistol, big ammo boxes for chaingun, small shell packs for sg, big for ssg, small cells for  plasma gun and big cells for BFG. you can try it out, maybe this is the solution for you.

separateammo1_1.zip

 

EDIT: 1) this is for zdoom compatible ports. one pk3 for all different ammo and one that leaves sg/ssg interchangable

2) this means you pickup pistol ammo from common zombiemans and chaingun ammo from chaingunners. also SSG ammo is much more rare!

[JadingTsunami]

I recall a long while back someone proposed giving the pistol a higher Pain chance than the Chaingun to make the Pistol more useful as a stun weapon.

 

Of course thematically it makes no sense (a bullet is a bullet) but I wonder how it would work in practice.

 

Maybe combined with separate ammo + high accuracy it could be a useful weapon for crowd-control target stunning.

[P41R47]

I like how Antares031 resolve this on Struggle: Antaresian Legacy.

He made a pistol that fires 3 times per shot, with a little cool down in between shots, kind of a burst-shot, and perfectly accurated. So it is useful as an sniper gun, but had the little drawback of being a little slow. On the other hand, literaly, he changed the chaingun with akimbo pistols, compensating the cooldown of one with the burst of the other one, thus having a constant deadly burst of fire and ammo devourer pair of pistols :)

[rehelekretep]

pistol is fine

it is useful for activating switches, baiting, and finishing off wounded foes

its limited use motivates you to get some other guns. i like it

[wallabra]

Shoot.

[Ichor]

Throw it at monsters and make it come back like a boomerang.

[Gifty]

The problem with making the pistol 100% accurate is I feel it invites a boring kind of min-maxing gameplay where you're encouraged to sit there are a distance plink-sniping enemies in order to save ammo.

 

I think upping both the fire rate and accuracy just a *smidge* would, together, make it less of a drag to use.

[maxmanium]

In my project which I may or may not finish, I just removed the refire check for perfect accuracy and changed the animation a bit, along with centering it. I think it works pretty well -- you can snipe enemies at a distance which makes it useful.

[SilverMiner]

Doom balance is definitely all OK and if you think it's not, it's clear that something is wrong with you.

 

Leave the pistol alone!