How would you change the Doom's difficulties if you could?

[Master O]

6th difficulty: Fists Only and you can only take 1 hit from any monster.  You lose all your weapons if you die and you have to regain them all.

[Can't play on Nightmare]

6 hours ago, Master O said:

6th difficulty: Fists Only and you can only take 1 hit from any monster.  You lose all your weapons if you die and you have to regain them all.

 

So you finished all 4 episodes of Doom and Doom 2 on Nightmare?

[Gokuma]

Vanilla doom.exe also already has skill 0.

 

Anyway, I'd make it so the multi-only berserk in E1M1 appears on all difficulties, but that's just a map edit.   It's annoying that you have to play on Hurt Me Plenty for it to be there.

 

"I'm too young to have nightmares" is brilliant!

[Master O]

1 hour ago, Can't play on Nightmare said:

 

So you finished all 4 episodes of Doom and Doom 2 on Nightmare?

 

Nope. I just think there should be an obnoxiously difficult version of the game.

[Pegleg]

Personally, I like the difficulties, including ITYTD, so I wouldn't change them.

 

But, if I was going to adjust the difficulties, I would add these two:

 

• Ultra Nightmare
  • This would just be UV -FAST -RESPAWN, for those who want the Nightmare experience without the "pesky" feature of double ammo

• Reality
  • Without armor, 1 hit, from anything, kills you, for the masochists who like that sort of thing
    • There is only 1 type of armor, and it may allow you to survive 1 hit, depending on what it was
    • No health (because health is useless anyway)
    • You could still cross damaging floors with a rad suit
  • Switching to a chainsaw would alert nearby monsters, just as if you had used it
  • To accommodate different skills, reality would probably have to access a sub-menu where you could select from the other difficulties
    • For example, Reality-ITYTD, Reality-Ultra Nightmare

 

If you really wanted to be sadistic, you could disable saves for these two difficulty settings, except for an auto save at the beginning of a map.

[Can't play on Nightmare]

35 minutes ago, Pegleg said:

Personally, I like the difficulties, including ITYTD, so I wouldn't change them.

 

But, if I was going to adjust the difficulties, I would add these two:

 

• Ultra Nightmare
  • This would just be UV -FAST -RESPAWN, for those who want the Nightmare experience without the "pesky" feature of double ammo

• Reality
  • Without armor, 1 hit, from anything, kills you, for the masochists who like that sort of thing
    • There is only 1 type of armor, and it may allow you to survive 1 hit, depending on what it was
    • No health (because health is useless anyway)
    • You could still cross damaging floors with a rad suit
  • Switching to a chainsaw would alert nearby monsters, just as if you had used it
  • To accommodate different skills, reality would probably have to access a sub-menu where you could select from the other difficulties
    • For example, Reality-ITYTD, Reality-Ultra Nightmare

 

If you really wanted to be sadistic, you could disable saves for these two difficulty settings, except for an auto save at the beginning of a map.

 

Aside from Doom engine games, I dont recall seeing any fps games with 5 difficulties. I strongly believe 4 difficulties would be enough.

[Graf Zahl]

You are repeating yourself. Doom only had 4 difficulties in the beginning and the one not there was Nightmare!

ITYTD is for beginners to get acquainted with the engine without getting overwhelmed, so it is definitely more useful than Nightmare.

 

But hey, GZDoom allows to fine tune the skill levels in nearly every way that got suggested here so why not make a skill mod with some of these settings and see how they play? ;)

 

[silentzorah]

I wouldn't change the difficulties themselves.  I'd just add UV-Fast as an intermediate difficulty between UV and Nightmare.

[Master O]

New Difficulty:

 

SNK Syndrome - All enemies reflect your rockets, bullets, and projectiles back at you, with the exception of the pistol's. 

 

Additionally, if Doom 1, the Cyber Demon and Spider Masterminds can only defeated by using nothing but your fist.

 

I can't think of something for Doom 2, though.

Edited June 3, 2020 by Master O

[Arbys550]

Honestly, I would just remove nightmare. I know a lot of speedrunners like it, but in my opinion it changes the gameplay too much. Speedrunners could just play UV with fast monsters and respawn if they miss nightmare, plus I can't think of any high profile wad which balances for nightmare.

[Manapro]

Honestly, I would add Ultra Violence Plus as an official difficulty, somewhere between Nightmare and Ultra Violence.

(we all know what ultra violence plus is don't ask me what that means)

[Fonze]

I'd remove ultra violence in the vain hopes that things would change, but we all know they wouldn't, so I guess I'd just add different variants of itytd for each difficulty level and place "things" to accommodate 3 different styles of play.

[Pegleg]

34 minutes ago, Fonze said:

I'd remove ultra violence in the vain hopes that things would change, but we all know they wouldn't, so I guess I'd just add different variants of itytd for each difficulty level and place "things" to accommodate 3 different styles of play.

 

You mean not having people say things like, "Ultra-violence is the correct way to play Doom!" ? Unfortunately, if you eliminated UV, people would probably just start saying, "Nightmare is the correct way to play Doom! Git gud scrub."

[Fonze]

33 minutes ago, Pegleg said:

 

You mean not having people say things like, "Ultra-violence is the correct way to play Doom!" ? Unfortunately, if you eliminated UV, people would probably just start saying, "Nightmare is the correct way to play Doom! Git gud scrub."

 

That's all exactly what I was saying/hinting at, or HMP if not nightmare. I mean luckily not many long-term doomers say those types of things, especially the latter (referring to the git gud part), but at the same time the UV-or-bust mindset (even among long-term doomers) is crippling at worst or white noise at best to authors who make challenge maps. So it's as much what you said as it is the effect from the flip-side of the same coin.

[Rare Hatchiama]

"Gun Free Zone"  

 

Easier than ITYTD!  Fist start, all weapons pickups disabled.  You walk in a room and the enemies go, "Oh, I see you are unarmed.  Nevermind, bro." And just leave you alone!  Everyone's a winner!

[GarrettChan]

Nightmare! is pretty fun from time to time. There's no point removing it. Even though it was a joke difficulty back then, I don't see there's a problem right now.

[Nine Inch Heels]

On 5/29/2020 at 8:15 PM, Can't play on Nightmare said:

First of all, 5 difficulties are too many. 4 difficulties would be enough.

In reality, when you make a map, and you assume to build it with the original distribution of difficulties in mind, you'd only have 3 difficulties to work with. That's because ITYTD and nightmare pull data from the thingplacement made on easy (HNTR) and on hard (UV) respectively. So while the player has 5 settings to choose from, in reality it's three settings in their own right plus 2 "bonus settings" which merely modify game behaviour instead of being their very own, distinct difficulty with regards to thingplacement.

 

This creates a situation in which mappers are unable to address players who would like to play on nightmare, if said mappers want UV for example to be really difficult, because changes made to UV also affect NM. Beating any "hard" map on NM is more often than not an "emergent possibility" rather than something a mapper could work towards (assuming UV is the "intended experience"), which has kept the difficulty we know as nightmare today in a bracket for weirdos, masochists and speedrunners - if it is even possible to make a distinction between these 3 groups of people in the context of classic doom. That being said, I don't mind the settings we have available a great deal, in large part they're fine, but I would have liked to have nightmare with its own set of thingplacement right off the bat, instead of having to rely on advanced source ports, because not only did these advanced ports show up much too late for people to rally around the idea that nightmare was something that could be fun to look into (meaning the idea of balancing for NM never was "cultivated"), but it also severely limits the map-formats people can choose to use, if they wanted for nightmare to come with its own thingplacement (which means that mappers and players need to fall back on ports which aren't particularly "true" to the OG game logic, and also ill equipped for the purposes of demo recording).

 

I'm not saying that if NM had its own set of things it would have been a difficulty that would have gotten a lot more "love" from players and mappers alike, but I am saying that the lack of the option in and of itself might have prevented what could have been a great thing. On that note, I wouldn't mind a NM variant that has slower respawn rates than the default.

 

If there's anything I would "axe", it would be ITYTD, probably.

[Archanhell]

I'm too young to die: Enemies have less health, player's walkspeed is higher, powerups last more and some enemies attack less/damage less (Enemies like Chaingunners and Revenants would be less lethal.)

There should be a downside to this though, for example, less maximum ammo (200-50-50-300 to 180-40-40-260, for example) or perhaps the health and armor powerups give less. (Megaspheres give 150-150 instead of 200-200, for example.)

If the player dies, there is a low chance they can "revive" with 25% health and armor, done via an in-game setting.
 

Hey, not too rough: Similar to ITYTD but powerups/maximum ammo is the same as the middle difficulty, as well, enemies damage and attacks is an in between of HMP and ITYTD, being practically the "normal difficulty" of those three.

 

Hurt me Plenty: No changes, everything stays the same as the "normal" difficulty of DooM, that's all.

 

Ultra-Violence: Enemies do more damage and are faster, the player's walkspeed is slightly increased to compensate but every enemy is still a big threat to take care of, Zombiemen can fire two shots and Chaingunners' ROF is much higher, Green Armor and Soulsphere give 125% of their stats, powerups such as Invulnerability Sphere or Blur Sphere last a bit less.

 

Nightmare!: Similar to Ultra-Violence, health and armor powerups give slightly more than the first three difficulties, enemies are fast and deal more damage, however the gimmick of this difficulty is that every enemy gains a new attack.

For example, Zombiemen shoot a burst of three shots, Pain Elementals can kamikaze when in low health, Imps shoot a new projectile, Pinky Demons can leap towards the player, Spider Mastermind can do an AOE plasma attack, and Cyberdemon can stomp.

Rewards here are a bit higher in order to compensate, and some enemies can drop stuff. (SMM and Arachnotrons can drop Cell Packs and small Cells, respectively), the higher rewards include more ammo. (Clip Box > 40 to 60 - Shell Boxes > 24 to 36 - Basically 50% more.)

[Doomkid]

Just an observation, I'm blown away by how few people realize that I'm Too Young to Die allows the player to take twice as much damage and doubles the ammo. I guess it isn't made very clear, but it's such a useful setting for uber-tough WADs.

 

EDIT: On the topic of how I'd change them, honestly I'd just get rid of them in favor for something like a damage slider which sets how vulnerable the player is, as well as optional double, triple or even quadruple ammo.

 

I understand that the way Doom's difficulties work by default is awesome, especially in deathmatch where you can have different weapons placed in different spots depending on the difficulty chosen, but implementing difficulty settings is just such a pain in the ass for mappers. I feel that any wad is incomplete without them though, especially for the sake of accessibility at no expense - after all, the thrill-seekers can still pick the hardest option even if easier difficulties are implemented, so it's just a win-win.

 

Difficulty settings widen the potential appeal/audience of any set.. but sliders like I mentioned would get rid of the ultra-snoozefest that is implementing them.

Edited June 3, 2020 by Doomkid

[ReaperAA]

7 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

Just an observation, I'm blown away by how few people realize that I'm Too Young to Die allows the player to take twice as much damage and doubles the ammo. I guess it isn't made very clear, but it's such a useful setting for uber-tough WADs.

 

Exactly. For maps which are challenging AND the mappers didn't bother implementing difficulty settings, ITYTD is very useful. Sunder is the first example that came to my mind.

[Can't play on Nightmare]

2 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

 

Exactly. For maps which are challenging AND the mappers didn't bother implementing difficulty settings, ITYTD is very useful. Sunder is the first example that came to my mind.

 

When you are a 8 year old, of course it is useful but 8 year olds wouldnt care to play it according to rules of the game either.  I would just write IDDQD, IDKFA when I was 8.

 

Edit:

 

Or, you could combine first 2 difficulties with each other. Like removing the double ammo but keeping the half damage. Then you would make 1 difficulty out of 2. 

 

What is the double ammo for that difficulty for?

 

4 difficulties are ideal for fps games. I dont recall seeing any fps game with 5 difficulties except for doom engine games.

Edited June 3, 2020 by Can't play on Nightmare

[Maes]

On 5/30/2020 at 4:40 AM, Aaron Blain said:

I like fastmonsters for older maps, but hard modern maps generally aren't balanced for it (or maybe people are just way better than I realize).

 

Well, take the infamous Chillax mapset for example. Originally it was a mindless slaughter mapset with maps ripped from all over the place, designed to be used with the Super Weapons dehacked patch. Even that way, it was still far from trivial to complete on every map, yet that didn't stop people from playing it "normally", and on Survival mode without (or very few) BFG pickups, for that matter. I am not aware of any masochists' servers "offering" it on -fast, hard & fast or Nightmare!, but I'm pretty sure that there are  some hardcore players who would take a stab at it.

[Pseudonaut]

6 minutes ago, Can't play on Nightmare said:

 

When you are a 8 year old, of course it is useful but 8 year olds wouldnt care to play it according to rules of the game either. 

 

I would just write IDDQD, IDKFA when I was 8.

I get the impression that you haven't played Sunder.

[Maes]

18 hours ago, Master O said:

You lose all your weapons if you die and you have to regain them all.

 

Doesn't this happen already on every difficulty?

 

Also, playing with fast & tough monsters is already a good approximation of a "sudden death" mode. Even if you can nominally take more than 1 hit, the chances of surviving once an attack from even the weakest monster connects are virtually nil, especially unarmored. With 200% health and 200% ammo you might survive 3-4 hits from an imp or zombieman, but everything else will tear you a new one in less than a second.

[ReaperAA]

45 minutes ago, Can't play on Nightmare said:

When you are a 8 year old, of course it is useful but 8 year olds wouldnt care to play it according to rules of the game either.  I would just write IDDQD, IDKFA when I was 8.

 

Oh you haven't played Sunder (video here). Believe me, ITYTD is very useful for this wad if the player isn't skilled enough. It is still better than using cheat code which trivialize even the hardest wads.

 

EDIT: Just saw this now

Quote

Or, you could combine first 2 difficulties with each other. Like removing the double ammo but keeping the half damage. Then you would make 1 difficulty out of 2. 

 

Well personally speaking, I actually like that there are more difficulties. More skill levels allow finer control over the mapset's difficulty. Heck, I wouldn't even mind seeing a 6th difficulty that is precisely what you mentioned (Between ITYTD and HNTR, that removes double ammo but keeps half damage).

 

45 minutes ago, Can't play on Nightmare said:

I dont recall seeing any fps game with 5 difficulties except for doom engine games.

 

Blood has 5 difficulties. And unlike Doom, it has 5 "proper" difficulties (by proper, I mean each difficulty having it's unique monster/item counts)

Edited June 3, 2020 by ReaperAA

[Impie]

Voyeur
Softcore
Hardcore
Double Penetration
Alligator Fuckhouse

[Maes]

20 minutes ago, Impie said:

Voyeur
Softcore
Hardcore
Double Penetration
Ultimate Rectal Sodomist of DOOM!

 

FTFY

[depr4vity]

using UV as a base (turned into HMP)

 

 

have ITYTD heavily reduce enemy attack frequency, but HMP monster amounts, exclusively reduce enemy damage by 50%, self damage increased to normal

have HNTR also keep HMP monster amounts, exclusively reduce enemy damage by 25%, reduce attack frequency

 

have HMP become current UV

 

have UV increase enemy damage and attack frequency by 50%, same monster count as current "hard"

have NM increase monster count (new difficulty), disable respawning, double enemy damage, attack frequency, AND health amounts, keep doubled ammo from current NM, add reaction time minimum to monsters to give a chance to react, all enemies have 50% increased movement speed other than pinkies which remain at current NM speed

Edited June 3, 2020 by depr4vity

[Cruduxy Pegg]

People already played Chillax with complex doom and hard doom. Both are harder to survive in than -fast for most of these maps since monsters have spread attacks and screen-wide nukes. 

[Can't play on Nightmare]

1 hour ago, ReaperAA said:

 

Oh you haven't played Sunder (video here). Believe me, ITYTD is very useful for this wad if the player isn't skilled enough. It is still better than using cheat code which trivialize even the hardest wads.

 

EDIT: Just saw this now

 

Well personally speaking, I actually like that there are more difficulties. More skill levels allow finer control over the mapset's difficulty. Heck, I wouldn't even mind seeing a 6th difficulty that is precisely what you mentioned (Between ITYTD and HNTR, that removes double ammo but keeps half damage).

 

 

Blood has 5 difficulties. And unlike Doom, it has 5 "proper" difficulties (by proper, I mean each difficulty having it's unique monster/item counts)

 

Ah, there was also Serious Sam. I forgot that game but 4 difficulties would be enough for that game as well.