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TheeXile

If you could have changed ONE thing about Doom, what would it have been?

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(facepalms) damn, I should have posted this in the mouselook thread -_-

To answer your question however, rockets are a particular case where autoaim would better be off all or most of the time (since they can explode on your face if they strafe without you wanting it). For all other weapons that don't have such a penalty however, autoaim helps a lot and when you disable it the difference is pretty obvious. In any case, the gameplay is balanced for the fire & forget "autoaim on" mode most of the time, as this isn't James Bond 007 or any other survival FPS where you must aim carefully and slowly.

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CODOR said:

This. Seeing how Doom has evolved over the last decade-and-a-half makes it a far more compelling game than if it had been released from the start with any of the features that we have now. Plus it makes the achievements of the port authors that much more impressive...

One could argue that we could be seeing more and better innovations today if those petty ones were out of the way up front, though.

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I doubt better or much more, as what you can do depends mainly on technical specs. Maybe some stuff could have been added earlier, but the community would have merited less credit for it. It could even have stifled development had enough people been satisfied with the more capable engine left by id.

I'm quite glad they produced a really bare bones game. Had it been more changeable and option filled the simplicity that is now an option would have been a mere curiosity or occasional accident. It would have diluted the variety we have.

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It would have been nice to see a better variety of plant life other then TRE1A0 and TRE2A0. Sure, brown trees where fine for the original doom, but some more greenery could have livened up Doom 2, which was ment to be set on earth, quite a bit. Heck, you don't even need a large variety to make something compelling; Hexen had very lush looking environments using about 5 different trees.

Could have spared us years of half arsed brown forests.

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I like how dead trees in Doom 2 suggest a badly polluted area.

If Doom were "more complete" by the time it got released (assuming there were more id people at work or were more active somehow), then compare how Doom has been modded, against Heretic, Hexen and Strife. Then Quake has also had its fair share of edits.

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I think that discussing the topic is pointless as in other words it's the well known "what if...?"

If anyone is annoyed by Doom's limits, may he/she look for source port that removes them. Many source ports already took care of many Doom limits and some of them enhanced Doom a lot, in general. The best of them is GZDoom, IMO.

Cheers

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Vitek said:

I think that discussing the topic is pointless as in other words it's the well known "what if...?"

If anyone is annoyed by Doom's limits, may he/she look for source port that removes them. Many source ports already took care of many Doom limits and some of them enhanced Doom a lot, in general. The best of them is GZDoom, IMO.

Cheers



Why it it pointless? Of course Doom's history is what it is and there's nothing we can do retroactively and there's many source port that remedy most of the 'problems'. But I find it interesting what people consider important for the game but was missing initially.

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Vitek said:

I think that discussing the topic is pointless as in other words it's the well known "what if...?"

Playing Doom is also 'pointless', by similar logic.

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Graf Zahl said:

Why it it pointless? Of course Doom's history is what it is and there's nothing we can do retroactively and there's many source port that remedy most of the 'problems'. But I find it interesting what people consider important for the game but was missing initially.


Well, I didn't think of it that way. When I read the posts I asked myself about five times: "did they ever heard of source ports?" And as you wrote yourself: "there's nothing we can do retroactively", I kind of failed to see the point of the topic. But yes, you're right. Now, that I look at it from different angle, I find it a bit interesting myself.

The only thing I trully missed in Doom, back in '96 was the definition of new actors. I tried to use DeHackEd for that, but I've only learned about the strict limit of sprites. In order to create new monster I've had to use sprites of another one, thus not being able to use the latter in the game :(

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1 thing: fans that would complaining about / want to add one thing in doom. That is the thing I would change. :P

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Doom is pretty close to flawless for me, although I have some ideas I wouldn't mind being in the game though.

I would probably get better sounds for the pistol, chaingun and plasma gun. The pistol/chaingun sound just sounds weak and sounds like a toy drum to me, and it ends up sounding weaker than it actually is, although it still weak, and then plasma just sounds weird to me.

The next thing I would do is probably increase the power of the pistol, since it is pathetically weak against anything besides former humans. I would make it to where you would at least have a chance against a middle tier monster like imp, lost soul or a demon and deal damage to higher tier monsters. I would also increase not the firepower of the chaingun, but the fire rate, its way to slow to be considered a chaingun, I'd end up making it a TAD slower than the plasma gun, and make it weaker too of course so the plasma gun would have use. Of course to give different strengths between the bullets, there would specific bullets for the chaingun, probably found in bullet belts.

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To illustrate how it's easy to dream up "cool" suggestions but how they can mess with the game mechanics:

Aldaraia said:
The next thing I would do is probably increase the power of the pistol, since it is pathetically weak against anything besides former humans.

That would require beefing up the zombies. The pistol can already kill them very fast. DOOM is a game like D&D in this sense, the monsters vary a lot in power, like from a 1 HD skeleton to a 20 HD dragon, while its weapons work like spells or "class skills" in such games, again varying greatly and suiting the different monster strengths.

I would make it to where you would at least have a chance against a middle tier monster like imp, lost soul or a demon and deal damage to higher tier monsters.

Right... that sounds like many newer FPS games where weapons are more balanced between each other and they all vary in qualities, with pros and cons. DOOM is a rank-based game, in contrast. Weapons aren't simply "different skills", they're more like the equivalent of "gaining a level" in an RPG.

I would also increase not the firepower of the chaingun, but the fire rate, its way to slow to be considered a chaingun, I'd end up making it a TAD slower than the plasma gun, and make it weaker too of course so the plasma gun would have use.

I can't see how you could manage that (not to mention the chaingun is already "a tad slower" than the plasma gun; 525 instead of 700 shots per minute) except by making pistol bullets more powerful than chaingun bullets, especially considering what you said about the pistol, and with more shots you'd increase the weapon's ability to cause the pain state in monsters, which is already quite potent.

Of course to give different strengths between the bullets, there would specific bullets for the chaingun, probably found in bullet belts.

You'd piss the other developers off because it would imply adding that to the status bar and adding an extra type of ammo item. This line of thought would have also made a different shell type for the SSG "reasonable", complicating things even further or making it harder to add a weapon for the second installment of the game.

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myk said:

DOOM is a rank-based game, in contrast. Weapons aren't simply "different skills" they're more like the equivalent of "gaining a level" in an RPG.

I have always tried to think of a way to grade Doom's weapons, because there is quite a large jump between their capabilities. I've never thought of it this way, but you are so right!

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Nice post myk, now that I think about it, my suggestions did end up sounding half-baked, just a little few ideas off the top of my head and when thought out all the way, I do realize there would have to be lots of changes for those ideas to even work properly, where the end result would cause Doom not to be the classic Doom anymore. Doom does seem quite rank based to me when I think about it. The pistol is pretty much that crappy beginner sword which quickly becomes a throwaway when a better weapon is found. I do wish it had a bit more use in the game, but when I pick up that shotgun from a dead seargant, I quickly forget about it. :)

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Aldaraia said:

The pistol is pretty much that crappy beginner sword which quickly becomes a throwaway when a better weapon is found. I do wish it had a bit more use in the game, but when I pick up that shotgun from a dead seargant, I quickly forget about it. :)

That's something to think about when designing WADs. A bunch of Former Humans and Imps can be a good enough challenge, you don't *have* to put Sargeants in. Or if you do, keep them and shotgun ammo in short supply, and maybe even make the player fight something "higher level" like a Hell Knight or Caco with only the pistol. Mean, but probably a nice challenge if not over-done.

You can even play normally like this to challenge yourself. Say on a fairly tight map, only use the rocket launcher and pistol, so you really have to think about when to shoot.

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I would've added some NCP's to episodes 1&2. Some tranformed and others just placed all around the various levels as corps and some body parts mangled or spackled on the plallete floors and walls.

NCP's
1) lab tech/white coat for Phobos levels & blue coat on Deimos levels
2) matainance engineer
3) toxic waste disposable tech
4) UAC worker/Computer tech
5) VIP/Manager-RARE!!

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To get back to the original topic, the one thing I would change in Doom is change is so the level you go to after the secret level is defined in the WAD for the map, not in the C code for the game. This would have been all of one more byte for each map in the mod: The level a normal exit takes you to (0 for "end the scenario and show the you've-killed-the-boss message").

This would have allowed megawads to have the level which accesses the secret level not be, say E1M3, but be any level in the wad. This would make it so megawad authors (or, for that matter, megawad random map generators) would have more flexibility with secret levels.

Yes, there is a way to do this with zDoom, but the problem is that there is no standard post-ID-Doom format for levels, and like Linux and BSD, a lot of fragmentation. I like Doomsday sometimes and Skulltag sometimes, and I think the only think these two ports agree on is being compatible with ID's WADs.

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myk said:

That would require beefing up the zombies. The pistol can already kill them very fast. DOOM is a game like D&D in this sense, the monsters vary a lot in power, like from a 1 HD skeleton to a 20 HD dragon, while its weapons work like spells or "class skills" in such games, again varying greatly and suiting the different monster strengths.

Right... that sounds like many newer FPS games where weapons are more balanced between each other and they all vary in qualities, with pros and cons. DOOM is a rank-based game, in contrast. Weapons aren't simply "different skills", they're more like the equivalent of "gaining a level" in an RPG.

Except the pistol functionally lasts you no more then 2 minutes of game time before the first zombie sergeant or non-melee weapon pickup comes along and renders it completely obsolete and useless (except in odd cases of running out of shells, which rarely seem to make for good gameplay IMO). It's usually not even in use long enough to make the leveling-up illusion work (though I did make a concerted effort to do just that in the beginning of my MLS map). I don't know what it's supposed to be doing, frankly.


My suggestion for the pistol would be to do what the marine's/former human's sprite graphics already imply: Make it a rifle. The chaingun as a sniper weapon always seemed odd to me, but I guess it works. However a proper sniper weapon wouldn't be horribly out of place IMO, even if it was relatively weak. Something like having the pistol's rifle's firing rate reduced a small amount, its damage doubled or tripled, and it's accuracy brought to max would make make it more appropriate. Not everyone learns or masters the chaingun burst firing trick that lets you 'snipe' with it, so I don't see how providing a rifle to do that formally would constitute a bad design choice to cover that ground (I was never sure if the chaingun burst fire effect was really intentionally coded, even).



Besides. Not every Doom level is a claustrophobic corridor, after all. And a lot of multiplayer, coop, and other game mode wads provide weapons like that anyway (rail guns and whatnot), which to some extent seem to have usefulness.

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Torn said:

1 thing: fans that would complaining about / want to add one thing in doom. That is the thing I would change. :P

1 thing: fans that would complain about other fans that are complaining about / wanting to add change one thing in doom.


Except that's not ID's fault, so it's not a changeable variable within this thread's parameters. :P

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TheeXile said:

Except the pistol functionally lasts you no more then 2 minutes of game time before the first zombie sergeant or non-melee weapon pickup comes along and renders it completely obsolete and useless (except in odd cases of running out of shells, which rarely seem to make for good gameplay IMO).

Depends on the level, really. If the level gives you plenty of shells then there's no point in not using the shotgun, but if you're limited on shells it's often a good idea to use the pistol on zombies and imps to save shells in case you'll suddenly run into bigger monsters. (Of course more daring players will fist imps and demons instead of using the pistol, maybe even zombies and lost souls) The pistol is also just as good a sniper weapon as the chaingun (except a little slower :P), so it fits that role as well.

The only real problem with the pistol is that once you get the chaingun the pistol becomes completely obsolete, unless you're fighting monsters with 10 health left and you want to save that one bullet from a single chaingun burst. If you look at the shotgun and SSG, there are situations where the shotgun is still a better choice over the SSG but the same doesn't happen with the pistol and chaingun. Though I still wouldn't suggest making the pistol better or the chaingun worse or, gasp, making them use different ammo. Those would be likely to hurt the gameplay more, so it's just better to live with the fact that at some point the pistol does become useless. But until you get the chaingun...it really depends on the map.

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Jodwin said:

Depends on the level, really. If the level gives you plenty of shells then there's no point in not using the shotgun, but if you're limited on shells it's often a good idea to use the pistol on zombies and imps to save shells in case you'll suddenly run into bigger monsters. (Of course more daring players will fist imps and demons instead of using the pistol, maybe even zombies and lost souls) The pistol is also just as good a sniper weapon as the chaingun (except a little slower :P), so it fits that role as well.

The only real problem with the pistol is that once you get the chaingun the pistol becomes completely obsolete, unless you're fighting monsters with 10 health left and you want to save that one bullet from a single chaingun burst. If you look at the shotgun and SSG, there are situations where the shotgun is still a better choice over the SSG but the same doesn't happen with the pistol and chaingun. Though I still wouldn't suggest making the pistol better or the chaingun worse or, gasp, making them use different ammo. Those would be likely to hurt the gameplay more, so it's just better to live with the fact that at some point the pistol does become useless. But until you get the chaingun...it really depends on the map.

Well now that you mention the use of the regular shotty over the SSG (which, oddly enough, is actually also usable for medium range sniping), the rifle idea probably doesn't have that much usefulness, really.

I can understand that it's meant to become obsolete, but for most maps (even the vanilla iwads and most major megawads) it becomes obsolete literally right away. Some coop game modes just don't even bother with it and spawn you with a regular shotty by default. In most cases you have to deliberately engineer your map to keep the player using the pistol, and it's hard to make that into fun gameplay, IMO (except maybe to build tension until you can upgrade your weapon).


Maybe if they did something like Serious Sam with an unlimited ammo pistol... naw.

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Keep in mind also that in DOOM, more so than in DOOM II, the chaingun often appears later, giving the pistol a secondary-weapon function for a couple of levels. In deathmatch it is essential as a weak but always-present way to defend yourself when you spawn, except in levels that spawn you on top of a weapon. It even allows levels to easily start in a situation where you have to lunge, seek or run for a weapon or else, even if the monsters around you are relatively weak. Were it more powerful, that possibility would be lessened, or you'd have to use tougher monsters.

As for how long it lasts as the main weapon or secondary weapon, you can pick up more powerful weapons pretty quickly when you are familiar with a level, but not so much when you're new to it. Some weapons may be hidden in secrets or out-of-the-way locations.

Additionally, Ultra-violent play, which the more regular players are into, tends to push the firepower level up quickly. You still have to have modes of play that suit newer or less dedicated players without making the game silly; look at E1M1 in Hurt me plenty and compare it to UV.

Jodwin said:
The only real problem with the pistol is that once you get the chaingun the pistol becomes completely obsolete, unless you're fighting monsters with 10 health left and you want to save that one bullet from a single chaingun burst. If you look at the shotgun and SSG, there are situations where the shotgun is still a better choice over the SSG but the same doesn't happen with the pistol and chaingun.

Yeah, though I sometimes find myself using the pistol even when I have the chaingun in maps I am not familiar with, when saving ammo against smaller opponents, if ammo seems tight. It does become practically obsolete in many situations, but that is balanced by the fact that it's always present. It's like the fist but can hit things at any range, with the drawback that it spends ammo. Even the intro story of the game tells you you have something relatively useless in your hands: Hopefully you can find more substantial firepower somewhere within the station.

TheeXile said:
Some coop game modes just don't even bother with it and spawn you with a regular shotty by default.

If I'm not mistaken ZDaemon introduced that, but as a countermeasure after removing the multiplayer-only weapons. I think they did it because some might argue the placement of multiplayer-only weapons in DOOM II (the IWAD) seems more deathmatch oriented. I'm not fully convinced, as it's still good to have more powerful weapons when those added cyberdemons or spiderdemons show up. Regardless, this isn't the case in many megawads, which are ruined if you take those out. I got really annoyed by this after trying to play Plutonia 2 in coop with my friends... finally we just moved over to Skulltag for this, which optionally allows the multiplayer-only weapons. Placing the shotgun as a starting weapon may "balance things a bit" but is a general measure that is contrary to the thought put into weapon placement by the designers.

In most cases you have to deliberately engineer your map to keep the player using the pistol, and it's hard to make that into fun gameplay, IMO (except maybe to build tension until you can upgrade your weapon).

I wouldn't generally do that except for a short period in a level, maybe up to half its progress unless it's big, but it does work well as a second weapon with the shotgun for longer periods, when the lesser types of zombies are present, as Jodwin noted. The player is encouraged to use the shotgun against tougher enemies or tricky situations, while still pelting enemies with the pistol here and there to make sure the shotgun (maybe even rocket launcher, plasma gun or BFG) is used in those more dire situations.

Maybe if they did something like Serious Sam with an unlimited ammo pistol... naw.

Yeah, that would eliminate the fist, as in Quake 2.

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myk said:

I sometimes find myself using the pistol even when I have the chaingun in maps I am not familiar with, when saving ammo against smaller opponents, if ammo seems tight.

Does the pistol have the first-shot accuracy of the chaingun? It doesn't seem so from gameplay, though I haven't looked at the source code. In maps where I wish to conserve ammo, I'll walk around with the chaingun and snipe, as two shots in the right spot is more efficient than >2 in the wrong spot.

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One change: Make the demon's bite range larger. As it is, you have to be completely cornered or not move at all to get bitten. Even moving away a tiny bit saves you.

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udderdude said:

One change: Make the demon's bite range larger. As it is, you have to be completely cornered or not move at all to get bitten. Even moving away a tiny bit saves you.


Yeah I've always thought of the Demon to be more cannon fodder than anything, simply because of that.

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I've noticed that more in respect to their fighting other monsters than myself. They often follow a monster that hurt them a while till they can deliver a bite unless the monster is moving right in their direction.

It does allow one to place many of them at once, and that enhancement could also make them a nightmare in fast mode, where they run and attack very fast...

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