What are your difficulty setting techniques?

[glenzinho]

As the subject says, I'm wondering how people go about balancing things for different difficulty settings.
Is there a "scientific" method you use?
Would you place a Hell Knight in lower setting where it would be a Revenant in higher setting?
Do you just add more monsters (and ammo to compensate)?

I'm curious to know as my last map contained no difficulty settings and I'm thinking of revising it.

Your thoughts?

[Leon]

I do it how Doom II tends to do it. If you're only using zombie men and seargents in an easy setting, then in a difficult setting I would introduce Chaingunners and maybe a revenan. In the middle setting I would add a few chaingunners with a lot more seargents.

I would add some more ammo and health packs in middle or hard settings

[Scypek2]

Adding health to harder levels would be quite pointless, since they're supposed to be harder, but more ammo on medium/hard is a good choice, since double pickups on ITYTD changes stuff dramatically.

[schwerpunk]

Elsewhere on this forum, someone mentioned that they get their map to a reasonable challenge and set that as HMP. Then they go over the map once more and think 'what would be the last thing I'd want to see here,' then add that, for UV.

I've been trying to copy this methodology (sorry, can't remember who said it, or where).

[esselfortium]

A good piece of advice I saw in a thread like this at some point is to generally not bother toning down basic encounters for easier skills, but to focus on the scenes that are going to pose a real threat. For instance, there's a tendency when setting up easy skill to be like "okay, four imps in this corner on hard? I'll cut it down to two for the easy mode", but taking out an extra imp or two isn't really going to be making the encounter notably easier, it's just going to give you less cannon fodder to have fun blasting through. Maybe for that trap with the revenants, though...

[Nomad]

I tend to focus on HMP and adjust health/ammo/monsters for the other difficulties. That said, itsdifficult or me to judge what worksfor UV/NM because i kind of suck at games, so i just figure if its just a little too hard for me, its probably ok :P

[Vorpal]

Hey Not Too Rough - calibrate difficulty by playing like grandma (arrow keys and shoot button only, strafe not allowed!)

Hurt Me Plenty - calibrate by playing normally, if you get pissed off at something, it's too hard. Items/enemies need not have any relation to the other skill modes.

Ultra Violence - calibrate by playing in Serious Mode, should provide some stress and possibly even savegame usage (not slaughter though, unless that's your bag). Also does not need to have any relation to other skill modes.

[schwerpunk]

I suck, too, Nomad. Makes it hard for me to test other Doomers' WADs sometimes. :/

I was under the impression that only weirdos played on NM. Or that if someone plays on NM, it's because your WAD is way too easy, as UV ought to be challenge enough.

[purist]

I must admit I'm pretty lazy at this. I used to be more thoughtful and stat with HMP, adjusting for UV and HNTR accordingly but since I got the impression most people play UV (despite that thread) I've focused less on difficulty settings.

My method is to thin out groups of monsters on lower skills if the threat comes from a horde or to substitute monsters if the threat is caused by the monster type. I sometimes add extra health for HNTR/HMP but usually keep ammo consistant sinse the reduction in monsters often is enough to allow lower skilled players more leniency in resource management.

[SFoZ911]

Actually, it can be quite cool to switch an entire set of monsters between difficulty levels in different scenarios.
(not that iv'e done that before)

[schwerpunk]

Because I don't think many Doomers play on NM, I tend to make a ridiculous amount of monsters in the beginning for them, as a kind of reward for being awesome, then the rest of the map plays out like UV, aside from the respawns, ofc.