How would you improve Doom?

[yoni0505]

Anything you'd add, remove or change?

[Andrea Rovenski]

I'd add jumping, that'd be cool.

[DooM_RO]

A less useless pistol. The way the Repeater works in Doom 2016 is just perfect. Normal fire mode, a three burst mode and a magnum mode.

If that's too much then just a faster rate of fire would suffice.

Cyberdemon531 said:

I'd add jumping, that'd be cool.

Why not double jump?

[VGA]

I would change the monster simple x/y coord follow mode to something less predictable and less gamey. Melee monsters should try to block you not just chase. It's very predictable now and monsters clump together, they are susceptible to corner camping etc.

Hitscan enemies should try to avoid firing if allies are in the way. So that a swarm of shotgunners wouldn't be totally useless.

The basic zombiemen should fire 3-4 shots in succession.

I would make the resurrected enemies have different abilities, like they are zombified or something. Moving slowly, slower projectiles that do more damage and a different color pallette. And when they die they turn to ashes and cannot be resurrected any more.

The Pain Elemental should lose a bit of health each time it spawns a soul. When it doesn't have enough health to spawn another, it should suicide-float against the player (like the lost souls do but it would blow up, the explosion would do damage and it would spawn up to 3 lost souls)

[snapshot]

There's nothing wrong with Doom for me, the only thing i may change is to fix bugs and Probably add some Jumping and crouching Sections .

[Maes]

I would have ZDaemon in 1994.

[riki2321]

jetpacks and a e5 for TUD (the ultimate doom)

[yakfak]

A new E2M3
probably add about a hundred obstacles/prop slots - the decorations in Doom are uselessly dominated by corpses and skull fetishes and I hardly ever want to add them to a map. Evil eye rules, though, needs more abstract spooky stuff in that vein

[scifista42]

I'll take the question as "How would I improve vanilla Doom" if I could, while staying reasonably minimalist and realistic for the era when Doom was made:

1. Rebalance default behavior of some weapons/monsters like I did in this wad or similarly.
2. Implement a vanilla-compatible way to change game behaviour with much more flexibility than DEHACKED provides.
3. Flats with greater dimensions than 64x64.
4. Proper vertical tiling of textures which aren't exactly 128 units tall.
5. The following features be available in vanilla compatible mapping:
- a) Generalized linedef actions instead of predefined ones.
- b) Scripting, to be able to perform multiple actions at once or in succession, when the player crosses just 1 line or presses just 1 switch.
- c) Linked sectors ("joined" from the perspective of collision detection, but each of them keeping its own floor/ceiling heights + textures + properties), useful for making multi-sector doors or lifts without breaking when their movement is blocked by the player or a monster.

[Koko Ricky]

Something like a highly stable, less hack-y version of Build would have been neat.

[Darklordrobert]

An inventory like in Heretic and Hexen for items like the rad suit, partial invisibilty and the invulnerability sphere.
I would love being able to save those items up for when I really need them.

[scifista42]

Also being able to toggle Invisibility on and off anytime, because Invisibility is only good when you're fighting hitscanners, but turns into a disadvantage when facing projectile-firing enemies.

[june gloom]

The dreamy side of me says "make it more like Marathon" but that would dilute the magic of Marathon.

The more practical side of me says just improve the pistol. I mean, even the shotgun has its uses over the SSG.

[Reisal]

Implement the minor sprite fix project and Romero's rotations.

[Da Werecat]

I'd redraw some things and fix bugs. The original games need another few months of polishing (like many commercial games, really).

Also, Sandy texturing requires a few small tweaks.

[HavoX]

Add (for the most part) every feature that was implemented in Boom and fix most game-breaking bugs.

[Pedro VC]

Swimmable water

[Noiser]

I don't think that Doom needs any improvement, but I like to play with different settings:

oldschool: vanilla, adlib music, low-resolution, no free-look
middle way: ZDoom, soundfonts, high-resolution, free-look
modern: GZDoom, mp3 music, HQ sfx, super brightmaps, smooth animations

They are all cool.

[june gloom]

Actually, come to think of it, I'd increase the palette by a lot.

[dobu gabu maru]

Shortening the pinkie attack animation and decreasing the health of Lost Souls & Cyberdemon is all it really needs for me.

[The Civ]

dobu gabu maru said:

decreasing the health of Lost Souls & Cyberdemon

Can't really agree on the Cyberdemon, but I wholeheartedly agree on the Lost Souls.
In DOOM you can usually make an estimate on an enemy's health by kind of sizing them up visually. It's something the game was usually very good about in it's designs, but the Lost Soul was always an exception with that, making it much stronger than it looks.

As for changes that I'd make, I'd probably make the city maps in DOOM II resemble actual cities. I'm not talking about changing a ton of architecture, I'm just saying that there shouldn't be cobblestone roads and wooden/brick houses in the distant future's cities.
I'd also lower the Archvile's health, and lower his attack range, so he can't light you on fire from half way across the map.

[HorrorMovieRei]

Gameplay wise, decrease the Lost Soul health and lower the damage of the Revenant missile.
Aesthetically, I think it could be gorier, with gibs flying everywhere when you explode an enemy. Something a bit like ROTT, only not as extreme so it doesn't become too cheesy.

[Technician]

Regenerating health, chest-high walls, long arduous stories and FMVs, memes and a DMC end bosses. Oh, and it also has be be written by Anthony Burch.

[Impie]

I'd change some of the map texture choices to those seen in their SNES, 32x, or Jaguar console port equivalents. Spawning vats looked better with a more minimalist texture scheme, the cross-barrier in Deimos Anomaly looked better as red rock, etc.

That's about it.

[nxGangrel]

I'd make the pistol more useful, and replace a lot of Petersen's levels.

[june gloom]

I'd also move E4M2 further back in the level line-up, or give players more ammo in E4M1.

[Dave The Daring]

The pure gameplay mechanics of Doom incorporated into a Quake-like engine. I'd love to make Doom maps in TrenchBroom.

[joe-ilya]

By extending the deadline.

[Zed]

Making monsters respawn a limited ammount of times in Nightmare. For example, an imp can respawn up to 10 times, a cyberdemon just 2.

[Pencil of Doom]

Reduce the lost soul's health a bit so it can be one-shoted by shotgun while making it more annoying to deal with.
Also fast weapon switch, faster shotgun pumping, faster pistol and a bit more powerful and maybe Doom 2 having less bad maps.