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[McD] James

What difficulty do you play Quake on?

What difficulty setting do you play Quake on?  

67 members have voted

  1. 1. What difficulty setting do you play Quake on?

    • Easy
      2
    • Normal
      23
    • Hard
      20
    • Nightmare
      22


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Much like how I consider Ultra Violence to be the definitive difficulty setting for Doom, I regard Hard mode as the proper difficulty setting for Quake. Not because it's easier than Nightmare mode, but because it feels a lot more balanced and I prefer the AI's behaviour.

Many people consider Hard mode to be more difficult than Nightmare mode, and I'm not sure if I agree or disagree with that. There are certainly instances where one mode will be harder than the other. For example, ogres don't move towards you in Nightmare mode, which can make picking them off from a distance a non challenge. On the other hand, Shamblers feel a bit cheap given their high attack rate on Nightmare.

Having revisited the original campaign not too long ago (I'm currently playing a user map called Day of the Lords), I played the first two episodes on Hard and the second two on Nightmare. To me, the difficulty seemed roughly equal between the two difficulty settings, but I thought that Hard mode was better designed.

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I always pick the highest difficulty in most Quake's except for Quake III Arena where I will at least pick the 4/5 difficulty, and more likely even less with the Team Arena mission pack where I will pick the 3/5 difficulty most of the time as TA can be much harder.

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Definitive and proper? You might as well have called the topic "I like hard difficulty, and want people to know". Just roasting you a bit. =P

I like normal difficulty. For Doom I think the maps feel overcrowded on UV, as for Quake I don't replay it too often, though I like it, but normal is fine for me. Actually I've only played it through once, and the cool first expansion once.

I did just replay Doom 2016 on UV, but that doesn't up the enemy count like classic Doom does.

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For Quake, Nightmare is a bit easier than Doom on it´s highest setting. Once you know the enemies it´s quite easy to avoid them.

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Hard cuz' "Here at id, we play hard skill, and we think you should too, when you're ready.", as for Nightmare, i feel that difficulty is best suited to speedrunners.

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This thread is interesting to me. I usually play Quake on Nightmare, and I didn't realize there was a difference in monster behavior between Nightmare and Hard. Namely; Ogres. So apparently on Nightmare they stand still and spam grenades, whereas from what I gather on Hard, or lower difficulties they move around before firing grenades.

I started playing Quake on normal, then went to nightmare, skipping hard completely. So I noticed on normal that they would move before firing grenades, and on nightmare they would stand still and fire grenades. That's interesting... it completely changes the dynamic of the enemy, instead of a mobile, albeit slow grenade launcher, you have an immobile constant grenade launcher, much like a sentry gun.

This is neat, I need to go back to Quake mapping again. I always made my levels to be played on Nightmare, never gave a second thought to hard. Never publicly released a map either.

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I find Nightmare easier due to the monster's more aggressive behavior which is more exploitable, so I stick with hard.

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Last time I went through Quake on Nightmare it had been a while since I last went through it and it was probably on Hard then and I had no deaths until episode 4, mainly due to the stupid Spawn. I also found Nightmare easier since like CARRiON said monsters are overly aggressive to the point they lose their mobility.

Hexen II on its nightmare equivalent actually breaks the Werejaguar/panther monster to where it won't use its shield to deflect your projectiles ever and instead will crouch and be a sitting duck every time you fire a projectile at it, removing most of its mobility. Hard on the other hand...

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Usually Hard, same reason.. Ogres become lazy on Nightmare. Quake2 has better Hard+ the enemies have faster attack rates, but can also move. Quake3 I played on Nightmare, except for that last level I had to drop it to Hardcore. Sometimes I fill an arena full with second easiest bots for fun.

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Whatever is the hardest difficulty available. I've only beaten about half the Q3 on Nightmare though, but this game is not about playing against bots anyway.

Jimi said:

Quake2 has better Hard+


I didn't know Q2 had a difficulty harder than Hard. Is that a mod or something?

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You have to use console commands to activate Hard+ mode in Quake 2. I haven't played it myself, but I found the standard Hard mode to be far too easy.

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Quake's nightmare mode is not just like adding -fast to ultra violence in Doom. It also greatly reduces monsters' pain chance (i.e. it takes about 5 seconds during which they never enter pain) and some monsters just do more damage (e.g. shamblers do 40 instead of 30). It has similar drawbacks to Doom's -fast (even Doom 2 archviles are easier with -fast than without).

I usually play Quake on hard, not nightmare, which is very unlike my choice in Heretic and Hexen (games with a very similar ultimate skill level). I just don't find the game very enjoyable when I have to shoot and hide, and Quake's monsters aren't really pushovers even on hard (unlike Heretic/Hexen's). They seem more aggressive than in Doom.

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Voted "hard", but I actually play on both "Hard" and "Nightmare".

Except for Quake 3, I think high difficulties such as ultra hardcore or nightmare does not only make the bots aim better, but their attacks seems to do more damage too.

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Hard usually, but last time I broke it out I decided to try Nightmare because I didn't think I'd ever gone through a full run on that mode.

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Jimi said:

Quake3 I played on Nightmare, except for that last level I had to drop it to Hardcore. Sometimes I fill an arena full with second easiest bots for fun.


Xaero is an aimbotting bastard, I don't feel bad that I put the difficulty on I Can Win just to get it over with after many numerous tries.

I went Nightmare up until Hunter, then I had to restart on Hardcore and even then she's still one of the toughest bots in the game (I also am clueless as to how you're suppose to use the lightning gun efficiently as it seems to do far too little damage but when Hunter uses it she fucking annihilates 10/10).

I do feel proud about my Anarki Hardcore fight though, 10 to 0. I know he can be a prick with the railgun, but nowhere near as bad as Xaero.

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Normal mode, but I didn't know there was altered AI on Hard mode. Are the monsters sped up or do they have more complex behavior?

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I play on Normal most of the time for the vanilla maps and either Normal or Easy on custom maps depending on the map difficulty.

VonHootie02 said:

Normal mode, but I didn't know there was altered AI on Hard mode. Are the monsters sped up or do they have more complex behavior?

I'm almost certain it's not. Only Nightmare alters monster AI.

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Piper Maru said:

Easy difficulty is the way to go.


That it is.

Now I feel less like a scrub. Yay!

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I always do Normal on my first playthrough, but I've played on Hard ever since I beat it.

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