LEGACY OF RUST - overall thoughts?

[Canjul]

21 hours ago, Lyn said:

Also story wise I do have one question: Are you Doomguy in this? I'm just a bit confused about where this fits in the timeline if it's canon at all

 

Ngl, at this point I have no idea that there even is a timeline. Doomguy is an idea now, like Superman. No matter how many sequels and WADs fly by, there will always be a big angry man in green armour nuking Hell.

[PsychEyeball]

My opinions on the new chapter are a little mixed; some good, some bad, but in overall it was a good experience.

 

Personally, I would have prefered they keep the plasma rifle over the incinerator. I wasn't a big fan of the flamethrower in Heartland and the one in LoR did nothing to sway me and make me believe it is a crucial piece of the chapter. Its range feels very short, you can easily hurt yourself with it and it doesn't deal anywhere near enough damage to deserve all these drawbacks.

 

The calamity blade, though? It fucking rips. While not as versatile as the BFG, it is infinitely much more deadly and surprisingly ammo efficient for being the ultimate weapon. I'm glad the endgame of Episode 2 lets you go nuts with it because it's super fun to use.

 

Level design was mostly pretty consistent, but man did E1M6 feel like a ball buster. I did not enjoy being forced to use the incinerator because it was the only weapon in the whole map while providing many encounters where shooting said weapon will just hurt you. E2M1 felt like a very sadistic episode opener, barely providing any resources to fight the enemy (with that said i felt oddly satisfied when i dodged a linedef that rendered the super shotgun unaccessible). E1M3 felt a little too big for its own good and the absence of secrets make it so that you don't really have anything to look forward to, so I mostly shut off my brain and played on auto pilot. E2M3 felt a little too confusing, to a point where I found the secret exit before the regular one. And finally, that horde of arch-viles in the last map was not cool.

 

New monster additions were fine, except maybe the banshee whose idle sound I could totally live without.

 

Favorite moments in the new episode would be E1M2 and the last two levels of Episode 2. These were instant classics.

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

I finally got to Coiled City, and it's easily the best map so far. Love it! It's got so much character, and it's doing something a lot more interesting than the maps before.

 

Probably need to play on another port because one of the insta-teleport lines doesn't trigger and the game now freezes when I load a save. But that's on me running ancient port, not a bug report. I just tried it because kex feels like doomguy is ice-skating.

 

edit: started the map over in the ancient dsda, and despite the one line still not triggering, i finished in 16 minutes. i will get back to it at some point to max, and really pick it apart because it's sooo good you guys.

It's just interesting that's the only line that didn't work (from what i can tell anyway)

Edited August 20 by Sneezy McGlassFace

[Salt-Man Z]

Finished the whole thing a little bit ago (HMP/continuous). I feel like the second episode feels a little more IWAD-y than the first, whether it all feels "enough" like Doom is a moot question, IMHO: they're good maps, and they're honest-to-God official Doom maps, which is already super-cool. The "slaughter"-iness of the last couple maps was (as I should have anticipated) wildly overstated. I might call certain fights "slaughter-lite" at the most, but the two new weapons really take most of the sting away.

[famicommander]

Overall I love the expansion, and I really enjoy the 6 new monsters.

 

I would love to see the Nightmare Imp from Doom 64 and the Nightmare Spectre from Doom PS1 integrated into any potential future official episode(s).

[Wavy]

I've just completed it, and it's brilliant. The new enemies are (mostly) fun to fight and the Calamity Blade may be one of the most fun weapons in an FPS game. IMO Episode 1 is definitely stronger than Episode 2 in terms of maps and gameplay, but it was still fun regardless. Also, all the songs are bangers. Nuff said.

 

And holy hell I was NOT expecting slaughter gameplay near the end, but man it was so satisfying. Despite that though, E2M6 did feel a little jarring with its gameplay coming from E2M5, and ammo was strangely scarce.

 

Anyway, here's my favourite maps from the set:

• E1M4
• E1M6 (somewhat annoying but it's still a great map regardless)
• E2M2

Edited August 22 by Wavy

[Jimmy²]

I love this expansion to bits, and the music in particular has been going around my head almost constantly since I got my hands on it. Xaser, ND and MG absolutely crushed it. There's a great amount of variety in gameplay styles and visual themes enough to keep the entire thing crazy-fun and interesting from start to finish. The pacing is wonderful as well, with Scar Gate being an opener packed with style and substance, leading lovingly into the vast and intimidating Sanguine Wastes, and from there things only get more and more intriguing.

 

I considered myself pretty clever for figuring out the secret path to Panopticon, though needed some help in finding Ash Mill's secret entrance. Both great secret levels too, even for how much cyberdemon-anxiety I got from Panopticon. D:

 

All the custom content for this episode is wild, and blends so nicely with the stock textures, monsters and decorations. The arena-style gameplay in maps like Soul Silo and Brink is generally not my cup of tea, but I still had fun calamity-blade'ing through swathes of cybers and tyrants. I do look forward to ID24 allowing for the presence of the plasma and the fuel weapons side-by-side - which I heard on the grapevine was the intent? Hope so - I was aching for a classic BFG by the end of things! (Not that the Calamity Blade was unfun!)

 

I recently streamed the two episodes in one sitting - using GZDoom just due to my familiarity bias - and was very pleased that I got a fantastic, virtually flawless experience, aside from the oddity that explosive damage seemed to be greatly reduced from enemies like Banshees and from the incinerator weapon, making it so I had to be far less careful overall.

 

I intend to play through again on the official port at some point, but consider this me reporting the following bugs on GZ:

• Banshees do not scream on repeat.
• Killing a banshee either causes no explosive damage or reduces it greatly, meaning they don't take each other out, and aren't really a threat at all once they get up close.
• The Incinerator's radius damage seems greatly reduced as well.

Hopefully the implementation of a fix for these things isn't too much work for the GZ devs!

[Euphoricape]

The music in chapter 2 map 3 is so good, I immediately started it again once I'd finished it. Really enjoying LOR, it has its own unique feel to it and deserves its place as an official Doom episode.

[Gez]

3 hours ago, Jimmy² said:

Killing a banshee either causes no explosive damage or reduces it greatly, meaning they don't take each other out, and aren't really a threat at all once they get up close.

This has been fixed in development versions already.

 

The problem, for the curious, was that the parameter for the explosion radius was interpreted as floating point, instead of as integer. Which means that in practice it got divided by 65536. So you would have to noclip to get pretty much exactly in the banshee's hitbox's center to be affected by its damage... Oops!

[PsychEyeball]

6 hours ago, Jimmy² said:

Banshees do not scream on repeat. 

That sounds like a positive for me!

 

But yeah I agree with you the music in this whole expansion is fantastic. I didn't know Xaser had these musical chops until I saw he was solely responsible for the whole OST.

[DoomGuy999]

I'm playing on xbox, I just gotta say I do love scar gate's design. been watching gameplay on YouTube lately and I'm glad I'm not the only realizing the star gate reference. Spirit drains is a bit too much of a switch hunt, and I like the perfect hatred reference in e1m5.

 

I know this is a bit off topic, but do you guys know a way I can get this for free (I legally own it on xbox) on windows 7? I just want to rip the wad files so I can use a source port. If I got a steam account on xbox, and made it somehow realize I own doom + doom ii, could I log on steam on windows 7 and download it, and just not play it due to requiring win10 or higher?

[Doomy__Doom]

8 minutes ago, DoomGuy999 said:

could I log on steam on windows 7

You can't, valve sunset steam client on win 7, I believe since the start of this year.

[Deadwing]

E2M3 and E2M4 were a bit more iwadish maps, I think they don't have any new enemies too if I'm not mistaken. Still enjoyed them a lot, especially for some pacing, although I was expecting to see more visual differences between E1 and E2.

 

E2M5, was fantastic. Got a bit lost with the switches later on the map but quickly found where I had to go. One of my favorites of the set.

 

As for E2M6, still going through it, I'm at the area where you find the yellow key and get teleported with an area with lots of Imps. (but my laptop battery drained out :P) Fantastic visuals but unfortunately I got quite frustrated with the blue key area. First I had to deal with 4 archies with only few shells and bullets which forced me find a way to go through them and reach the fuel ammo + blue armor so I could deal with them. This took around 50 tries to perform it though, which was quite frustrating already, but then after you press the switch and it teleports 20-30 revenants + other baddies. This shouldn't be much a problem, but... Holy shit, that flamethrower weapon does really suck. Like... I kinda hate it and I feel like avoiding to use it now. After 40 tries, I decided to use the BFG replacement since I had it from the previous levels and after a few more tries I was able to overcome the setpiece (while learning how to use the bfg replacement in a more efficient way). Kinda sucks that all you get to deal with this setup is either 3 medkits or how have to get resources from the next area too, which didn't help me much.

 

These 2 setups reminded me again of my struggles with E1M6 and probably I should consider lowering the difficult level that I'm currently playing (UV), but in other hand the difficult spikes are really localized which makes me feel more fustrated tbh lol And both of my main struggles happened when I had to use the flamethrower which, really, I don't see much benefit from the weapon except pain-locking Arch-villes. 

 

After that area, the rocket launcher setpiece and the actual bfg replacement (with tons of cacos + revenants coming at the back) were really fun to deal. Let's see how the rest of the level unfolds.

[DoomGuy999]

6 hours ago, Doomy__Doom said:

You can't, valve sunset steam client on win 7, I believe since the start of this year.

What about Microsoft store or gog?

[KoolKatJake]

Honestly I got confused alot while playing the first few maps but that could just be a skill issue on my part.

[Azure_Horror]

Thoughts about some new additions:

1) Tyrants (less tanky cyberdemon variant from e2m7):

I kinda love the new sounds. And less beefy cyberdemons are very welcome. But not all is good, IMHO.

Firstly, those appear too late in the wad. And their bald heads and symmetrical legs look janky...

Frankly, I much prefer the pWAD approach: Just add a recolored Cyberdemon. What's good for a Baron is good for a Cyber too.

(The fact that different colors of cybers infight is not a problem - it helps to demonstrate that cybers are the meanest demons in Doom Hell.)

2) Banshees (explody wee-woo ghosts)

Those look atmospheric. And make for nasty ambushes. However, banshees feel more like decorations rather than the real threats.

Kamikaze zombies (Valiant, Purple Mayhem 2018), and proper Kamikaze Lost Souls (Doom Negative One) felt more convinving to me.

3) Chaingun Spiders (mini-masterminds?)

Those fiends felt very threatenning. Spiders are a considerable upgrade over the chaingunners:

- Spiders don't die to a single rocket exploding somewhere nearby. You need to focus them!

- Those demons are not clunky, unlike the big Mastermind, so hiding from the small hitscan spiders is non-trivial.

- On top of that, the chaingun spiders seem to use a deadlier version of the chaingun - their damage always felt deadlier, than the damage of Chaingun Zombies...

Overall - this is my favorite new monster in the expansion.

 

4) Incinerator (new flame-shooting gun)

On the first glance, Incinerator looks and plays like the flamethrower from Heartland pWAD.

Yet somehow in Legacy of Rust the gun feels much, much more handy. When I was playing Heartland, the Flamethrower felt more or less like a de-graded rocket launcher. But in Legacy of Rust Incinerator is a convincing and reliable type of weapon, despite all the self-damage risks... Maybe the levels are better suited for this type of the gun? Or maybe there are some improvemnts under the hood?

In any case, the Incinerator is an absolute beast at hit-stunning enemies. Better than even the plasma rifle! This alone counts for something... And its damage is also quite impressive.

 

5) Calamity Blade (the heat-wave Super-Ballista)

This thing appears to be overtuned:

- It oneshots archviles with just one tap of the trigger. (More efficiently than BFG!)

- It is very good for fighting cyberdemons at range (about 5 1-charge shots bring the cyber down)

- It has unlimted damage potential against monster groups and monster hordes.

- I think that even cyberdemon one shotting strats are possible with this beast (for 50 fuel - definitely possible. But maybe even 40 fule would suffice, if the Blade is aimed correctly).

- And its aoe is very convinient in any case of flat and relaitevly open setting.

IMHO, of course, but the Calamity Blade seems too OP compared to the good old BFG 9000: it is both stronger and easier to use.

[Deadwing]

Just finished the whole mapset, the rest of E2M6 was difficult but not nearly compared with the blue key parts. You will definitely die in some of these setpieces but after you realize what's happening (ex: 5-6 archies being instantly released) you are already prepared and the rest is much more handable. Another thing that I also didn't like was the ammount of instant-death pits, which was a tad bit more annoying than I wanted (ex: in the final battle against the cybers, especially the inner pits)

 

E2M7 was a bit more trial & error, but not much problem. The last battle has a really annoying beginning due to all the rockets flying around, but once the enemies are all centered in one area, it becomes much more handlable. A similar feeling for the setpiece with 10-20 arch-villes: You'll die a lot at the beginning until you figure out a way to survive for a bit longer, find all the ammo stashes and once you control the caos in the first 10-20 seconds you're also safe. I'm not so much a big fan of this approach but I still had lots of fun in this map.

 

The Calamity blade is a great weapon to use, it's really fun to kill 50+ Imps in one shot haha, so while I did die a lot on the final encounters in e2m6 and e2m7, I was still learning to use the weapon and the process was enjoyable. The flamethrower in other hand could definitely use some buff, like 50~100% more damage. At this stage I prefer that the weapon gets too strong than the current state that is just a source of 100% frustration.

As for the new enemies, I honestly enjoyed all of them. I guess the worst would be the hitscan spider which is a stronger chaingunner and it can kill you really, really fast and they were obnoxius several times. The bald cyberdemons were also okay-ish, but it's nice that they in-fight with regular cybers, which creates some nice dynamics. At last, the plasma marine is kinda annoying to deal, although I can't say much because people complained a lot about the Hellions in Ozonia lmao

Edited August 22 by Deadwing

[J83]

On 8/10/2024 at 9:06 PM, bobbie424242 said:

Played with gzdoom (current nightly as it fixes a banshee bug).

wdym current nightly? is there a banshee bug fix already for GZDoom pls? thanks

[TMMMS]

they mean the dev build

 

https://devbuilds.drdteam.org/gzdoom/

[DreadWanderer]

1 hour ago, Deadwing said:

Just finished the whole mapset, the rest of E2M6 was difficult but not nearly compared with the blue key parts. You will definitely die in some of these setpieces but after you realize what's happening (ex: 5-6 archies being instantly released) you are already prepared and the rest is much more handable. Another thing that I also didn't like was the ammount of instant-death pits, which was a tad bit more annoying than I wanted (ex: in the final battle against the cybers, especially the inner pits)

 

E2M7 was a bit more trial & error, but not much problem. The last battle has a really annoying beginning due to all the rockets flying around, but once the enemies are all centered in one area, it becomes much more handlable. A similar feeling for the setpiece with 10-20 arch-villes: You'll die a lot at the beginning until you figure out a way to survive for a bit longer, find all the ammo stashes and once you control the caos in the first 10-20 seconds you're also safe. I'm not so much a big fan of this approach but I still had lots of fun in this map.

 

The Calamity blade is a great weapon to use, it's really fun to kill 50+ Imps in one shot haha, so while I did die a lot on the final encounters in e2m6 and e2m7, I was still learning to use the weapon and the process was enjoyable. The flamethrower in other hand could definitely use some buff, like 50~100% more damage. At this stage I prefer that the weapon gets too strong than the current state that is just a source of 100% frustration.

As for the new enemies, I honestly enjoyed all of them. I guess the worst would be the hitscan spider which is a stronger chaingunner and it can kill you really, really fast and they were obnoxius several times. The bald cyberdemons were also okay-ish, but it's nice that they in-fight with regular cybers, which creates some nice dynamics. At last, the plasma marine is kinda annoying to deal, although I can't say much because people complained a lot about the Hellions in Ozonia lmao

 

I'm pretty sure I was one of the ones to repeatedly complain about the Hellions in my playthrough while occassionally throwing some words about the Hierophants too. Even when I got decent results against them consistently I still feared that combination of agility and energy bolts to the face.

[Captain red pants]

12 minutes ago, TMMMS said:

they mean the dev build

 

https://devbuilds.drdteam.org/gzdoom/

Is the Aug 21st release supposed to have solved the banshee bug? Because I'm still getting it.

[Majin]

No thoughts on it because I couldn't play it for more than a minute. WTF is with the re-release? My PC is having trouble running it at a stable and high framerate. This is Doom, its just a bunch of crunchy .pngs, I have no idea how they managed to optimize it so poorly. 

[TMMMS]

21 minutes ago, Captain red pants said:

Is the Aug 21st release supposed to have solved the banshee bug? Because I'm still getting it.

i dunno i got the aug 12 build

 

according to the github log xaser acheron himself the banshee bug was fixed on aug 9

 

https://github.com/ZDoom/gzdoom/commit/01e7859e1f5224d0c9abbc179d2c87bee060aa3f

 

[Gothic]

1 hour ago, Majin said:

This is Doom, its just a bunch of crunchy .pngs, I have no idea how they managed to optimize it so poorly. 

-Randy Scott, CEO of Art Data Interactive

[Azure_Horror]

4 hours ago, Deadwing said:

At last, the plasma marine is kinda annoying to deal, although I can't say much because people complained a lot about the Hellions in Ozonia lmao

I would argue that Legacy of Rust Plasma Marines are more annoying than Ozonia Hellions...

 

Plasma Marines seem to have an especially short delay before firing... And their 3-plasma salvos also have an uncannily fast firing rate.

Catching a sudden plasma ball or two is easy, when those Plasma Marines are around. Ad there is a lot of plasma balls!

Hellions are very scary too, with their erratic movement patterns. But they have a notably bigger delay between shots - this helps a lot at longer ranges.

 

In the end, those Plasma Soldiers feel like one of the most dangerous non-boss* plasma-shooters: lots of chip damage, and this chip damage adds up kinda fast.

An uplesant factor in almost any situation!

(*if we are talking boss tier - than Scythe 2 Marauders Traitor Doomguys are the worst, of course.)

Edited August 22 by Azure_Horror

[Agent Strange]

Need to go through it again on UV but I really enjoyed it. Great environmental design and I really liked the new weapons monsters. The OST was great too. 

[Redneckerz]

8 hours ago, Majin said:

No thoughts on it because I couldn't play it for more than a minute. WTF is with the re-release? My PC is having trouble running it at a stable and high framerate. This is Doom, its just a bunch of crunchy .pngs, I have no idea how they managed to optimize it so poorly. 

So you have no real impression but you wanted to piss on it anyway?

 

By comparison, my stonehenge mini PC (Core I5-4590T, 16 GB DDR3, Intel HD4600) runs this at 1080p60, stable. So instead of blaming the works, perhaps look at your own hardware first.

 

I have no idea how you managed to optimize your post so poorly.

[PrinceOfBrains]

7 hours ago, Gothic said:

-Randy Scott, CEO of Art Data Interactive

 

"NOW WHERE THE F*** IS THAT RUBBER BARON OF HELL COSTUME"

[mito551]

man, I really enjoyed e1m1, and then e1m2 hit me hard 😅

also having timed secrets sucks :/ I don't enjoy those. I can respect secrets that get locked out when you trigger it, but from the start of the level? ugh.

honestly, I wonder how someone in my position is supposed to play the new content.

the new music is also really cool! more midi metal, I'm here for it! 🤘

also new weapons and enemies makes me feel mixed feelings because on one hand, that's really cool, and I'm happy to see the universe expand, but it's not like those become a part of the canon now, so it just ends up taking the same position as a mod, which is... eh! 😅

grinding achievements hell yeahhhh!

Edited August 22 by mito551 : can I delete a post?

[mito551]

On 8/18/2024 at 9:39 PM, Lyn said:

Also story wise I do have one question: Are you Doomguy in this? I'm just a bit confused about where this fits in the timeline if it's canon at all

 

I think any WAD can be interpreted to have taken place between Doom 64 and Doom 2016, where the doomguy is left to go through eternity of hell fighting and then eventually being captured