XBox controller: level 3 "Cultist Base"

[Doomed2Die]

[sorry for the long post...]

 

Hi there,

 

When I was 23 y.o. Doom for MS-DOS came out. A new game genre got me really hooked on gaming: the first person shooter. Didn't even require a mouse back then. 

 

After that played a lot of FPS-es on the PC. Now I've got an Xbox One and I have to play FPS-es with a controller. Back in the day I frowned on FPS console players so I should have known better! An FPS without a mouse is still neigh near unplayable in my experience. 

 

Well, you can calculate how old I am. Bought me Doom 2016 a while ago. Loved it but almost rage quit on the Cyber Demon boss and got within an inch of stomping my controller, ha ha. I didn't even know that it re-spawned after killing it once. So I had to fight it a 2nd time with low health, no "special" ammunition etc. Somebody should have told me to spare resources for the re-spawn.

 

After that I made the mistake of playing 'Ace Combat 7' which is known for its difficulty, ha ha. When I got passed dreaded mission 5 of 20 I finished the game and wasn't even impressed by the final level. Tried to re-play mission 5, and what do ya think? Wasn't as difficult as in the beginning, even w/ the "weak" plane you're supposed to use. So I concluded that one has to get used the pace and quirks of certain games so after a while you're fine. 

 

So I thought: well, Doom Eternal is more difficult than Doom 2016 but after beating Ace Combat 7 nothing can impress me, right? Wrong! 

 

I was proud that - half way through level 2 "Exultia" - I got passed the insane battle arena with the lava all around and passed the brutal 2nd part of the platforming at the end. Had to change the default mapping of the Xbox controller because you have to have your thumb on the right stick (RS) all the time and jump in mid air. Per default you have to take your thumb off RS to press button A. I'm convinced this level was only tested with a mouse. I can distinctly remember doing mid-air flip flops like that with the mouse and the mouse button. It's impossible w/ an Xbox controller; got through it by sheer luck.

 

Anyway, I'm stuck at dreaded level 3 "Cultist Base". I'm glad that everybody says that that's the most difficult level apart from the end. I've played it a lot of times so buy now I know the following:

• Wave 1 consists of:

   1 Mancubus (use sniper rifle (heavy cannon with precision bolt) to shoot off its arm cannons)
  - 1 Cacodemon (SG into its mouth)
  - 2 Shield Soldiers (use plasma gun)
  - a lot of fodder (kill before killing the last heavy demon)

• Wave 2:
  - 1 Aracnotron (snipe gun on back, then sticky bombs from SG)
  - 1 Revenant (use rockets or something, it's too fast to snipe off its shoulder canons)
  - some fodder

• Wave 3:
  - 1 Hell Knight (blood punch if you got one and MG)
  - 1 Slither (SG or something, not that bad of a heavy demon)
  - 2 Shield Soldiers (Plasma G.)

• Wave 4:
  - Yet another Mancubus
  - maybe some more fodder

 

I also found that the wave 2 starts after killing the last heavy demon. Then the next wave comes after killing only one heavy demon. So you'd better get rid of all the fodder before killing the last heavy demon, else too many enemies in the next wave. 

 

 

Now I come to the age thingy. I'm 50. Oops: 51 already (must be the age). To me it's like this game was made for 16 year-olds with ADHD and reflexes of a computer. Are there any of the original Doom 1993 players who actually succeed in playing this on the Xbox? I thought my reflexes were kinda okay after finishing Ace Combat 7 but I feel sad now. Are my gaming days over? Even easy mode is too difficult for me.

 

Anyway, anybody got any specific tips for Xbox controller playing and/or the final battle in level 3 "Cultist Base"?

 

Will it help to get the Rune "Air Control"? I've got "Seek and Destroy" (launch glory kill from much further away) and "Chrono Strike" (hold LT/L2 in mid-air to temporarily slow down time). That last one because I thought it'd help me with the platforming. I should get "Saving Throw" (survive one death blow) next shouldn't I?

 

 

P.S. For beginners reading this topic: do NOT buy the "Heat Blast" upgrade for the Palsma Gun like they say on the internet. Buy the "Microwave Beam". See Youtube on what it does: it'll stun a big enemy and kill it!

Edited September 24, 2021 by Doomed2Die

[Doomed2Die]

In the old days one could save between waves of enemies. I think it's a cheap trick from the developers to disable that. Makes you take longer to finish the game. But this is not funny anymore. Who developed this level?

[Doomed2Die]

Got past it. Don't ask me how. Here's how I see it:

1. It's 99% luck.
2. Shoot the arm-cannons off the first Mancubus immediately from the point where you start. You may lose no health (this is difficult).
3. I used the rocket launcher a lot. Even on fodder. Got really fed up with it all and with farming the fodder so out of pure frustration even started to to shoot fodder with the rocket launcher. Fire a bit in front of your target.
4. With your back to a wall (to not get shot in the back) use rockets on heavy demons. I got lucky and killed the arachnotron and the revenant this way when both of 'm stood in front of me. That's pure dumb luck.
5. Replenish ammunition for all your weapons at once by using the chainsaw on fodder. I think it gives some health too. Fodder can harm you big time but they die from only two shots or so. Farming 'm was too difficult: they die too fast.
6. I think I bought the "Belch Armor Boost" because when I throw a hand grenade and burst some fire on a flock of demons some yellow shiney stuff falls out of 'm.
7. It's 99% luck.

The developers should do something about this. Bring the cheat console (press ~ on a keyboard) back or something. Or let us save at any point in the game. I used to save with a lot of health and ammo. And then load and load and load and load and load that difficult point of the game again and again. Or offer to skip a level. This is simply irritating a paying customer.

[KainXavier]

The longer levels can be pretty tedious and stressful to get through, especially on higher difficulties.  Being able to save anywhere would definitely help to mitigate that.  That said, I do believe DOOM Eternal creates an auto-save after every arena battle.  I just wish id would have tied Extra Lives to their checkpoint system.  That would help smooth out some of the rough patches.

 

Also, I found the Saving Throw rune very helpful so my vote would be for that.

 

DOOM Eternal does feature cheats but you can’t progress through the campaign with them enabled.  You can only play levels you’ve already completed, and even then you’re locked out of completing certain challenges.  You can use cheats to complete Weekly Events, though!

 

Lastly, congratulations on beating the Cultist Base!  I would like to say the game gets easier, but that’d be untrue.  You may want to avoid the Slayer’s Gate challenges, the Master Levels, and The Ancient Gods for now or altogether.  

 

You’re also probably going to hate fighting the Doom Hunter for the first time, for reasons you’ll soon discover.  My advice is to dash a lot and maybe focus on attacking the unshielded parts of its body rather than stress yourself out by trying to constantly overload its shields and restore your plasma rifle ammo.

 

Edit: One last thing, I’ve heard the Energy Shield mod for the chaingun helps early on, but I never used it much in my playthrough so I can’t say with certainty.

Edited October 1, 2021 by KainXavier

[Cantleylads]

Interesting post. I hope I can help.

 

* Unlike the CRT days, all modern display panels come with a degree of input lag. TV's are by far worse than monitors. Gaming monitors are your best bet. www.displaylag.com is a good source as manufacturers never disclose how much lag their screens have.

 

* I'd strongly suggest turning off 'Aim Smoothing' in both 2016 and Eternal. It's aim acceleration and the last thing anyone needs who's struggling with a controller is another variable. It's bad for developing muscle memory and feels sluggish IMO

 

* Thumbstick sensitivity. Use something comfortable. If you're light on the sticks, increase the sensitivity, if you're heavy handed, defauly or around there should be fine.

 

* If you haven't already, assign Dash to L1 or something else that you can press without removing your thumb from the stick. It's as important as jump. Enemies in Eternal are tuned in a way that requires the player to dash to avoid their attacks, even on lower difficulties. An Xbox Elite Controller is a good investment for games like Eternal as it has extra buttons on the back to circumvent this very issue.

Edited October 5, 2021 by Cantleylads : Removed a LOT of bloated text

[Doomed2Die]

Haven't played for a month. Thank y'all for the replies.

 

I guess it comes down to a combination of age, playing with a game controller (instead of a mouse) and not being able to save in the middle of a big battle (like in the old days).

[Grimosaur]

It's super annoying that Doom Eternal doesn't have keyboard and mouse support on Xbox One, because other games like CoD and even some non-fps games support it. For a game like Doom Eternal there's no doubt about it that you will have a significant advantage playing with a mouse and keyboard, you can just do everything so much faster and Doom Eternal is ALL about speed. There's still hope though, if someone can somehow get in touch with one of the devs then I'm sure keyboard and mouse support could be added in a patch no problem, it's just not something that's been considered I suppose? It's a shame too, Doom Eternal's got the most PC options menu I've ever seen on console. You can change anything you want, even the controller button mapping, so it's just insane there's no keyboard and mouse support when they've already taken the time out to add that much functionality. Why not go all the way?

 

You know what, I think there are members on Doomworld who are devs for the console port of Doom, so maybe they have some ties to id software and can ask about getting mouse and keyboard support for Eternal?

 

Even the Xbox port for Doom 64 has keyboard and mouse support! *grumble grumble grumble*...

[Quasar]

On 11/2/2021 at 8:04 PM, Grimosaur said:

Even the Xbox port for Doom 64 has keyboard and mouse support! *grumble grumble grumble*...

At Nightdive we do it right ;)

[DuckReconMajor]

A fellow Ace! Mission 19 can die in a fire.

 

Unlike Ace Combat 7, FPS games as you know are decidedly less optimal with a contoller.

I think overall Eternal can be way too damn hard, which is fine if they'd made the easiest skill actually easy. Even with a mouse it's frustrating and in the DLC it's almost unplayable at times.

The best I can give for advice is do what I did: take it slow, take breaks & deep breaths, try not to punch your desk. You'll eventually get lucky as your skills slowly improve.

 

As @Cantleylads stated if you can afford an Elite controller I think that would be a big help.

You can also use a claw grip to access the face buttons

 

+1 for annoyance they didn't include mouse&keyboard support for console Eternal

Idk if you've heard of the XIM, it's a keyboard/mouse adapter that uses AI trained software to convert to controller input. 

I had a XIM3 and it was damn good.

The current version (the 5th iteration) is sold out atm but I see used ones and used XIM4 on ebay, but again means spending $$$

[Grimosaur]

6 hours ago, DuckReconMajor said:

Idk if you've heard of the XIM, it's a keyboard/mouse adapter that uses AI trained software to convert to controller input.

 

If only something like that was built into the console in the first place. Surely the "AI trained" part is only to eliminate any aim acceleration that's hard coded into the game. I don't see why it shouldn't be any simpler than just translating mouse movement into joystick movement, but allowing for values outside of the joysticks normal range. In a perfect world, you could just plug your mouse and keyboard into the console, open up a game, accept the "Would you like to use the recommended control layout for this game?" popup, and the game would detect you're using a mouse and disable any aim acceleration and tweaks intended for controller. Job Done, the only extra work for game devs would be allowing you to disable aim acceleration so it only takes in the raw joystick input which would translate to raw mouse input + sensitivity, and now every console game in existence has full mouse and keyboard support.

 

Uhh.. right?

[Cantleylads]

On 11/4/2021 at 6:27 AM, Quasar said:

At Nightdive we do it right ;)

 

 

This Quake Remastered feedback video may be of interest to you, sir. It brings forth some points which I would consider to be very important with regards to how the game feels on a controller, such as the very sharp diagonals in the current thumbstick calibration: making strafe jumping in this console version of Quake nearly impossible.