Real Talk: Do people use difficulty settings?

[Spectre01]

So I've noticed this quite a few times recently, especially during Doom streams and whatnot. Person A complains that X wad is too hard so they quit playing it. Someone asks them if they tried lowering the difficulty instead of missing out on the wad completely and the response is usually about how they only play on UV or they think the wad is "balanced" for UV only. X wad in this example was Ancient Aliens.

As a mapper, difficulty settings can be hard to get right and take a decent amount of time to balance and implement. Question is, especially if you're making a challenging wad, is how many people will take advantage of those rather than dying repeatedly in the first room on UV and then rage-quitting?

[Jaws In Space]

I only play on UV to test my own maps, or the maps of a project I'm managing. Otherwise I just default to HMP for pretty much everything.

[Tristan]

Default HMP, sometimes HNTR. Though I'm still managing to get through Revilution on UV without much hassle.

[Voros]

I personally have started playing Doom maps on UV, rather than HMP. It's actually more fun than I thought.

I use the other difficulties for testing purposes really.

[Bashe]

In the past I'd always play on UV just out of habit, but now I will be fine with playing on a lower difficulty if I find UV too hard, or if I know ahead of time that the wad I'm about to play is pretty tough. Sometimes it's not worth trying to soldier on on UV if it means I'm not having fun anymore.

[Fonze]

I'm beginning to be of the mindset that HNTR should be the "sthuper sthecret" hard mode, but truthfully I do most prefer to use HNTR for the rare D-Touch runs, when life comes to that. For normal play, I start with UV then tone down if needed or if time gets tight. The UV-or-bust mindset is too engrained within most doomers' minds to be expected to change; time to work around it.

[Outrageous Videos]

I only play on ultra violence and if I can't beat it
I practice until I can (unless it's chillax or very boring)
I find it improves my dooming skills loads

[Turbo Saber]

I only save at the start of each map so I kinda have to choose lower difficulties if I want to keep progression fast on harder wads. If I'm playing something that starts off easy on UV and gets really hard later then I'll choose UV and change the difficulty once it gets to that point (don't mind losing my weapons for that).

[Combinebobnt]

my only difficulty level is the wad im playing!!!

new game + down arrow + enter for life

[Aquanet]

As someone pretty new to playing pwads, I select HMP keep rolling and don't look back. I can generally do UV, but I'd rather cram more levels into the time I have to play.

[Job]

Y'know, I've given this topic some reflection and I keep reaching the same conclusion. I think the reason Doomers are hesitant to deviate from "Ultra Violence" is because of the names of the difficulty settings. "Hurt Me Plenty" carries a tone implying a lack of confidence in one's skill or an unwillingness to embrace the frenetic nature of Doom. While "Nightmare" is a bit over the top for most people, UV is still approachable enough for most players and has a strong, satisfying name. If the skill levels were instead numbers 1-5, I would bet we would have fewer discussions like this or people rage-quitting PWADs.

[Doomkid]

I can usually beat wads on UV but if I can't I'll roll back to HMP rather than declaring "UV is unbalanced" just because I'm not good enough to beat it!

[dt_]

I play wads on hmp, it's usually a smoother and less frustrating ride, and if I've enjoyed the wad I'll play it later on down the line on uv, so I don't have complete foreknowledge and can fully 're-enjoy' the wad, if you know what I mean

[Spocks_Beard]

I been playing on Ultra Violence since I started playing Doom again last November.

[roadworx]

i default play on hmp...which s usually still incredibly difficult for me, because i play as well as a 90 y/o in a coma

sometimes, i'll go down to hntr, but usually i just try to tough through it. or stop playing cuz i suck at life.

[Bauul]

I also wonder if people naturally gravitate to UV because they worry if they pick something lower they are essentially missing out on content.

Generally the difference between easy, medium and hard is more enemies, so if you don't pick UV you're basically skipping stuff in the level. You're not seeing the "full experience" as it were.

I've a playthrough of my last map on YouTube on HMP (which I consider "normal"), and I had more than one comment around asking to see it on UV. People clearly felt they weren't seeing the true level somehow.

[alfasketer]

ITYTD only
even then i suck

[AD_79]

I'll use whatever difficulty setting I feel comfortable on for the map I'm playing. Most of the time that ends up being UV, but if it's, say, an average Sunlust map, I'll drop it down to HMP (or in a few instances, HNTR).

There are also times where I want to relax, so I'll select an easier mapset (BTSX E1+E2 are my go-to wads for this) and play some maps on HMP.

[LordShadowZ]

If I'm trying to play a WAD legit, I'll play it on HMP just because of how bad I am. I'll only attempt UV if I know the maps decent enough and it's not an overly difficult WAD.

If I'm just playing through the WAD for the purpose of analyzing the levels to learn something from it or to get inspiration, I'll play on UV with god mode on, so I can better focus on the level itself and not on dodging the fireballs.

[Memfis]

Only UV, and if I fail in a particularly painful way I bash the wad.

[baja blast rd.]

Recently, I played these maps &/or wads on a difficulty setting lower than UV: dobu gabu maru's "Saturnine"; Ribbiks's "SD20x7", Benjogami's "Brown and Red", Benjogami's "Toilet of the Gods", Spectre01's "Buttprobe Adventures" Sunder-y map for DMP2016.

Memfis said:

Only UV, and if I fail in a particularly painful way I bash the wad.

You poopiehead.

[Empyre]

Bauul said:

I also wonder if people naturally gravitate to UV because they worry if they pick something lower they are essentially missing out on content.

Generally the difference between easy, medium and hard is more enemies, so if you don't pick UV you're basically skipping stuff in the level. You're not seeing the "full experience" as it were.

I've a playthrough of my last map on YouTube on HMP (which I consider "normal"), and I had more than one comment around asking to see it on UV. People clearly felt they weren't seeing the true level somehow.

That's insightful. I hadn't thought of it that way, but I think you're on the right track.

[cannonball]

I usually play on UV, I don't mind having my ass kicked if the gameplay is fun, but I will call out map design which is complete B/S and not remotely fair on the player.

[Zulk RS]

I usually play on HMP. However, I've recently got into UV.
Right now, I'll play something on HMP and change it to UV later if I think it's too easy.

[Killer5]

UV. Unless there is an oddball difficulty setting such as hntr changing all monsters into PEs in Fonze's joy of mapping 2 map =x.

[Battle_Korbi]

Much like other people say, I play exclusively on UV just because I constantly think if I play on any lower difficulties I would constantly complain about enemy placement, like "Yo, this would have been a nice spot to put a small imp squad", or "Instead of packing that closet with pinkies, why not mix it with some zombies in front so the pinkies leak forward once you finish a zeddite or two?"

I cannot be persuaded that diffrent difficulties on the most popular megawads would offer me the challenge the map maker intended me to complete.

However, to counter this problem, whenever I make my own maps, I place various sorts of enemies based on difficulty alone. So I spend major amounts of time just placing enemies for each difficulty. On the easiest setting, the "end of hallway boss" would be a chaingunner. Pick the UV, and you have a Archvile standing there and waiting, along with some extra mooks to work as body shields.

However, I am experimenting currently on making a map in which if you pick the N! setting, there would only be zeddies and pinkies on it. No other major enemy. Nor archviles to resurrect, nor Pain Elementals to spam. Just a funny little slaughtermap on a otherwise serious progressive (and looking more linear) map. I wonder if anyone tought the same aswell and did a map or two with such elements.

And again, thanks for tolerating my unusually long reply (I like to write).

[Suitepee]

Sunlust (and a long post by Alfonzo) taught me to try HMP on the most difficult wads.

UV is still my standard difficulty of choice though, but I'll certainly drop down to HMP nowadays if a wad is too hard on UV over a consistent period of time.

[scifista42]

Playing on UV by default, switching to lower setting if the wad is too hard for me.

[Memfis]

Dunno, it feels like usually when a wad seems too hard it's because the author made some bullshit design choices like forcing the player to hide from hitscanners every 5 seconds due to insufficient health items or whatever. In which case perhaps complaining makes sense. An exception is maps by people like TimeOfDeath or Ribbiks. I trust that these guys probably know what they are doing and can beat their maps without saves with a reasonable effort, so I won't rate them 0 stars just because I'm getting owned.

[TheOrganGrinder]

I'll play most WADs on HMP first time through, or on HNTR if the WAD is one that's noted as being challenge-oriented or difficult; when the DWMC played Sunlust, for example, I was playing it on HNTR right from the start.