What would you do to make the pistol useful?

[banjiepixel]

Easy, just replace pistol with shotgun that uses bullet ammo and you have the most useful pistol ever!

 

Or just lower the delay after firing so it is atleast more fun to use. I don't personally like making the pistol be always accurate because it removes gameplay mechanic from the game, I prefer to just tweak existing mechanics.

 

And making pistol firing rate too fast makes it too similar with chaingun. It also becomes more problematic to change other weapons just to fix the crappy pistol that is supposed to be bad because you get it for free. With ZDoom it is possible create some type of upgrade for the pistol that you can find later in the game but then again, chaingun is basically already a direct upgrade to the pistol. Just tweak the pistol to be more fun to use so pistol starting becomes smoother experience and let pistol become useless after you get the chaingun.

[hypoactive]

You people ask "how we can make it useful," but you should be asking "why should we make it useful?"

[Fonze]

I like the ideas of increasing its damage, sort of turning it into a magnum. Increasing its accuracy is boring, increasing its rate of fire makes it too similar to the cg, so why not go the other route and increase its damage; separate it in function from the cg.

[baja blast rd.]

20 hours ago, JadingTsunami said:

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.

Weapon balance is just half the battle, so I'll attack this from another angle. Also make your mapset have super-low-HP glass cannons that are fun to fight with the pistol + be stingier about handing out the chaingun (chaingunners don't drop those). Ancient Aliens has that dynamic every once in a while, just incidentally, with its plasma marine and AD79 monster. If you want to embrace it more fully, swap out pistol sounds for something more punchy.

 

The gap between the pistol and shotgun is substantial enough that you can just autobuff pistols by like 50% without altering balance much, as is. And there is no real rule that pistol and shotgun must be a big escalation, so you can go even further than that. But with slight buffs, you do have to be concerned about the unintended collateral damage of getting the player to use the pistol more and design around that -- because the kicker, after all, is that a 50%-buffed pistol against anything the slightest bit beefy, is still kind of dull. At least the current pistol, as pitiful as it is, is much less tempting. It signals: "you don't really have a weapon, go get one." 

 

Also it's fine if the pistol gets forgotten or relegated to once-in-a-blue-moon spot use if the player has a chaingun. Imo a pistol that is enjoyable to use at all -- where the player feels 'okay maybe I don't want the chaingun so fast because I'm actually liking this' is already a big improvement. :)

[ZeroTheEro]

burst fire, a slight power increase, chaingun and pistol don't share rounds.

[Nine Inch Heels]

My sarcastic 2 cents: Remove the pistol, and replace it with a rocket launcher. Problem solved.

[Dark Pulse]

Nothing. The pistol is fine. Already has 100% accuracy if you tap, fires decently fast. It's just not meant to take on big game, which is fine, because... it's a pistol.

[Splatter]

4 hours ago, JadingTsunami said:

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.

I like this idea.

[JadingTsunami]

2 hours ago, hypoactive said:

You people ask "how we can make it useful," but you should be asking "why should we make it useful?"

 

A fair question. The reason is, it's the only weapon in the arsenal that has limited to no usefulness during optimal play once other weapons are found.

 

If a small tweak could make it useful during all phases of play, it could add a new approach to many types of encounters and situations, creating new opportunities for interesting and fun gameplay.

[hypoactive]

1 hour ago, JadingTsunami said:

 

A fair question. The reason is, it's the only weapon in the arsenal that has limited to no usefulness during optimal play once other weapons are found.

that's the point! It encourages the player to take risks finding weapons.

[Lila Feuer]

Damage 1-8 instead of 1-5.

[BigBoy91]

Utilize it better. :-P

[Murdoch]

It is useful. It makes a superb paperweight.

[JadingTsunami]

2 hours ago, hypoactive said:

that's the point! It encourages the player to take risks finding weapons.

 

Sure, but in that case, I would suggest it should be replaced by a weapon with mid-game usefulness once that weapon is found. For instance, a rifle that replaces the pistol.

 

Doom's arsenal is like an orchestra and having an instrument used for a few notes in the intro and then forgotten seems like a missed opportunity.

[Danish]

An ACOG or Red Dot scope would be nice. And camo skin. Making it blacker would be cool, it's always seemed too silver to me. Seriously, leaving it out of the game entirely would be a decent choice. Just start with the chainsaw. For me, if they HAD to have a pistol in the game, I think a slower, more powerful gun would be more fun and more useful. Blood's flare gun is a good example. A mostly splash damage gun would be fun to have early on; some sort of gun that lobs bombs, for example, and that could be used as more efficient explosion-starters for later levels. A secret water pistol that does no damage would be rad. If you're going to start the game or level with a sub-par weapon, it might be fun to have a stun weapon. Something that stuns the enemy but won't allow you to kill them until you collect the first real gun, after which you have to go back and clean house. Or a literal Hi-Point. I bet they would have licensed the name for like $15. Pretty much anything OTHER than a pea shooter that's only necessary for less than 9 seconds. 

[Maes]

Just put the player in a situation where every bullet counts. Then he won't be able to afford the Chaingun's wasteful use of at least two bullets per tap.

 

8 hours ago, Lila Feuer said:

Damage 1-8 instead of 1-5.

 

Only that the damage is 5-15 or 5x1d3, if you want to put it in D&D terms.

[ABRACADABRA]

1 hour ago, Maes said:

Just put the player in a situation where every bullet counts.

you mean in doom eternal?

[yakfak]

"what would you do to make the pistol useful?" not give players any other weapons lol

[Old-Doomguy]

It should just be holstered and unholstered way faster, almost an instaswap ala Quake 1. Oh and as I mentioned before - a silencer that only alerts monsters that are hit by it. 

 

No more damage, no higher rate of fire. Just a tad more useful. 

[Mortrixs19]

Change it to a rifle like Doomguy is holding in the sprite, fires faster, first 5 shots are always accurate.

 

To balance this chain gun fires faster but the accuracy is screwed so you can't tap fire.

[Maldito]

It kinda already is. Try playing ammo starved wads or picking off zombies and shotgunners across the map. I was even sniping imps at some point.

[Maes]

Allow using it as a secondary (right-click) weapon in combination with all other weapons. Besides we all know that Doomguy has two right arms (or was it left arms?).

 

[loveless]

On 5/6/2020 at 4:49 PM, 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.

 

I like this with maybe the inclusion of spin up? think q2/q3ta chaingun

[Maldito]

2 hours ago, loveless said:

 

I like this with maybe the inclusion of spin up? think q2/q3ta chaingun 

Just making the first chaingun shot have random accuracy would be enough. Else it would affect its instafire usability for stunning enemies and against fastmonsters hitscanners.

[Bauul]

On 5/7/2020 at 10:38 AM, Gifty said:

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.

 

Just for a bit of primary data, Eviternity introduced a 100%-accurate pistol, and in all the play-throughs I've watched of people playing it I have never once seen anyone frequently revert to the pistol to slowly plink-snipe enemies. 

 

[JadingTsunami]

42 minutes ago, Bauul said:

 

Just for a bit of primary data, Eviternity introduced a 100%-accurate pistol, and in all the play-throughs I've watched of people playing it I have never once seen anyone frequently revert to the pistol to slowly plink-snipe enemies. 

 

 

This is interesting. Do you suppose the improvement wasn't obvious to players, and so they never realized the pistol had changed?

 

I would have expected players to "pistol snipe" if they had known.

[loveless]

2 hours ago, Maldito said:

Just making the first chaingun shot have random accuracy would be enough. Else it would affect its instafire usability for stunning enemies and against fastmonsters hitscanners.

 

i like your train of thought save for the bit about -fast.  that's specific enough that the player should know what they're going to deal with without regard to modification.

[Bridgeburner56]

For the Age of Hell we are making the pistol ultra accurate and beefing up its damage while making things like the shotgun and minigun (chaingun) far less accurate at anything other than short range. It'll be interesting to see how much the pistol gets used. (My ultimate  goal is for every weapon to serve a purpose)

The problem with only increasing the accuracy of the pistol is that it still takes forever to kill anything and the tapping with the chanigun is still very accurate. 

[Mordeth]

5 hours ago, Bridgeburner56 said:

The problem with only increasing the accuracy of the pistol is that it still takes forever to kill anything and the tapping with the chanigun is still very accurate. 

 

I've added a small windup animation to the chaingun to prevent tapping. With an always-accurate first shot and slightly increased accuracy of the normal refire pistol shots, this will make the pistol your go-to 'sniping' tool.

[Tetzlaff]

On 5/7/2020 at 1:00 PM, DynamiteKaitorn said:

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

 

That's exactly what I wanted to suggest as well. Akimbo pistol as an upgrade later in the game. The dual pistols worked great in Doom Obituary (TiC), but they felt a bit redundant with the chaingun. So I would change the chaingun to fire faster, but with cooldown delays like your typical minigun.