Doom vs Heretic

[Cruduxy Pegg]

I disagree with everyone saying the heretic weapons are weak. Everything from slot 4 up is too ammo efficient and can shred 90% of the monsters in a second, This is without empowering them! Empowering them and you add bosses to that list (Except D'sparil because he is hard coded to run the fuck away from your deadly toys).

[Arctangent]

I think the assessment about their power stems from the fact that they really don't feel all that good. The Hellstaff is the worst offender - it is the ultimate in pew-pew unsatisfying, at least from every pew-pew unsatisfying I've ever seen.

[SOSU]

8 minutes ago, Arctangent said:

I think the assessment about their power stems from the fact that they really don't feel all that good. The Hellstaff is the worst offender - it is the ultimate in pew-pew unsatisfying, at least from every pew-pew unsatisfying I've ever seen.

Well that could have been easily fixed if they used a more satisfying sound effect but the gauntlets sound more powerful and satisfying than any of the Doom weapons

[printz]

1 hour ago, Arctangent said:

I think the assessment about their power stems from the fact that they really don't feel all that good. The Hellstaff is the worst offender - it is the ultimate in pew-pew unsatisfying, at least from every pew-pew unsatisfying I've ever seen.

Then use the dragon claw if you find the hell staff too wimpy. I think it's the best general-use weapon in Heretic.

[Da Werecat]

Dragon claw is weird. It feels laggy - the delay before things start happening is a few tics too long to be pleasant. And the sprite obstructs the view too much when attacking.

[SFoZ911]

I absolutely love Heretic. I think some of the levels blow doom out of the water and I actually think the Crossbow is the most fun to use weapon in both games combined. Some of the monsters feel lazy and poor(weredragon) while others feels great and unique(ironlich) and I think the artwork is cool. Heretic just need more love in the texture department and in general.

[riderr3]

Heretic makes me yawn. But I like some map design parts.

[NecrumWarrior]

I think Heretic has some really good gameplay elements in it that have potential to be interesting. The enemies and weapons all balance in a different fashion than you would find in Doom, and Powerups give for a unique way to strategize. The problem is with the mapping. While there are some really well made maps in Heretic, I think that they are for the most part way too easy. Heretic on UV equivalent feels, at best, like Doom on HMP. I am breezing through it right now without any real threat of dying most of the time. Mind you, I have never played the Serpent Riders expansions so I can't speak to their difficulty, but even the Black Plague mode removes monster respawning which to me is a baffling choice since it still gives double ammo. I love Heretic dearly for its different style and more colorful aestetics, but Doom is definitely better. I do think that great maps can be made from Heretic, though, if people just gave it some more attention. The pieces are there for something great.

[savagegrant]

17 hours ago, Gez said:

On the monster roster, it needs something like the arch-vile or pain elemental to revive old monsters or summon new ones, at least one other boss monster (it's a bit awkward to reuse D'Sparil; whereas you can use spider masterminds as much as you want in Doom/Doom II), and a continuous fire monster like the arachnotron.

You gotta admit that D'Sparil is the best of the Doom/Doom II/Heretic bosses though. Some people may even consider the Maulotaur better than the Cyberdemon (or the Spiderdemon at least). I also consider Iron Liches to be better than Baron of Hells as boss enemies.

 

How about Quake vs. Hexen II? I prefer Hexen II if we're talking strictly the single player mode. I loved that game.

 

[Da Werecat]

For me, Hexen 2 is a flawed gem. Unfortunately, in this case the key word is "flawed". There are so many things that are subtly screwed up in this game that I simply can't prefer it over Quake, which is pretty elegant in its simplicity.

 

Then again, these games are so different that you could pretty much say they don't belong in the same genre. Hard to compare.

[42PercentHealth]

20 hours ago, Not Jabba said:

I'm not really talking about creating it all as one giant megawad, because that doesn't seem very practical to me. My goal is 7 new monsters, 4 new artifacts, a replacement for the Firemace, additional keys, a larger base of decorations and textures, and various gameplay tweaks, all of which I'm planning to implement in stages through smaller projects as I create it, so that I can work with community feedback as I go (for instance, Wayfarer has two of the monsters, two of the artifacts, the weapon replacement, and most or all of the gameplay changes). Obviously I'm not claiming that my vision of Heretic is the definitive one and that everyone has to use my content expansion instead of making their own. But I do think all of this is work that needs to be done in order to make Heretic as moddable as Doom.

Cool! Interested in seeing what you come up with...

[NecrumWarrior]

3 hours ago, savagegrant said:

You gotta admit that D'Sparil is the best of the Doom/Doom II/Heretic bosses though. Some people may even consider the Maulotaur better than the Cyberdemon (or the Spiderdemon at least). I also consider Iron Liches to be better than Baron of Hells as boss enemies.

 

How about Quake vs. Hexen II? I prefer Hexen II if we're talking strictly the single player mode. I loved that game.

 

Yeah, all of the boss monsters are better in Heretic. They just aren't really put into arenas that play to their strengths in the Iwad. The Maulotaur boss fight is way too open. In Templum whatever it's called you fight one in pretty tight quarters and that alone was more interesting than fighting 3 in an open space.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Corvus is just freakishly overpowered in his game compared to doomguy in Doom 2. You can beat heretic without breaking a sweat and don't even need to use inventory items to beat UV (Except on first map of e4 and e5, damn ammo starvation maps!).

 

The default monsters are good but they need increased stats (And lowered pain chance, you can stun the fuck out of everything with any weapon). Tbh the crossbow is the weapon to blame. Corvus' other weapons are powerful but they'll run out of ammo without planning, Then he goes to using a still decent weapon that is almost impossible to run out of ammo! -That and other things like eagle armor blocking 75% damage and iddqd+tome to cheese any remotely challenging situation-

[NecrumWarrior]

20 hours ago, Not Jabba said:

Everybody says this because it feels so instictively true, but it's the one aspect of the whole improve-Heretic-by-making-it-more-like-Doom idea that I really disagree with. Having an SSG and BFG equivalent would make all the combat-related items, especially the Tome, pointless. If anything, the BFG equivalent should be a Tomed weapon (conveniently, the Lightbringer used in Elf Gets Pissed provides exactly that). The stock Heretic weapons are mostly too weak, but adding a couple of individual weapons that can easily carry the gameplay on their own would really detract from what makes Heretic unique.

Eh, I don't know if I agree with the stock weapons being weak. One thing I really like in Heretic over Doom is that the Wand is never truly useless. In Doom the Pistol becomes obsolete the moment you get the Chaingun because of their shared ammo. But the Wand seems to fire a little quicker and has a separate ammo pool. If ever I find myself low on other ammo, it always seems to get the job done so long as my aim is good. And it's one of the most useful weapons with the Tome.

[Ichor]

8 minutes ago, Pegg said:

Corvus is just freakishly overpowered in his game compared to doomguy in Doom 2. You can beat heretic without breaking a sweat and don't even need to use inventory items to beat UV (Except on first map of e4 and e5, damn ammo starvation maps!).

 

The default monsters are good but they need increased stats (And lowered pain chance, you can stun the fuck out of everything with any weapon). Tbh the crossbow is the weapon to blame. Corvus' other weapons are powerful but they'll run out of ammo without planning, Then he goes to using a still decent weapon that is almost impossible to run out of ammo! -That and other things like eagle armor blocking 75% damage and iddqd+tome to cheese any remotely challenging situation-

I'd love to see you try using IDDQD in Heretic.

 

As for E4M1, the crusher is your friend, though it's still a little annoying trying to get some of those enemies to get caught in there. The rest of the maps are fun though, even at pistol (wand?) start, though mausoleum can be a headache at times.

 

E5M1 is a royal pain though. I'd have to run to the gauntlets and zap through the crowds in that first area. Then there's the fun task of clearing out those undeads, unless you can sneak in, get the crossbow, and sneak out before getting swamped. And who can forget that maulotaur in the tightest of spaces? That's the map where I discovered that maulotaurs can walk right off of high places, because there's a real good chance that he would end up in lava instead of teleporting like he's supposed to. The other maps aren't quite as fun as the E4 maps, and whoever made courtyard can just go telefrag themselves with the firemace.

[42PercentHealth]

IMO, Doom is better in every respect except for level design. The first Doom was just corridors, monster closets, keys & doors, rinse & repeat. Heretic was too close to being a genuwyne Doom-clone for me to have a lot of respect for it, but at least it varied up the types of encounters. I didn't appreciate the copied-but-nerfed weapons, and the inventory system was a "nice try," but made the player vastly OP.

 

Hexen was a far more respectable distance from Doom. Hexen 2 had it's good points and bad points, but overall I'd call it an improvement on its predecessor. At least in Hexen 2, if you got lost or confused, it's because you missed a well-concealed clue, and not because the game simply gave no clues.

[NecrumWarrior]

9 minutes ago, 42PercentHealth said:

IMO, Doom is better in every respect except for level design. The first Doom was just corridors, monster closets, keys & doors, rinse & repeat. Heretic was too close to being a genuwyne Doom-clone for me to have a lot of respect for it, but at least it varied up the types of encounters. I didn't appreciate the copied-but-nerfed weapons, and the inventory system was a "nice try," but made the player vastly OP.

 

Hexen was a far more respectable distance from Doom. Hexen 2 had it's good points and bad points, but overall I'd call it an improvement on its predecessor. At least in Hexen 2, if you got lost or confused, it's because you missed a well-concealed clue, and not because the game simply gave no clues.

I really need to play Hexen...

[Cruduxy Pegg]

By iddqd I meant the ring of Invulnerability :P.

[Pencil of Doom]

None, each game has it's good things and bad things, though i don't agree with this thing of Heretic's weapons being weak, because they are not, the elven wand in particular which is the equivalent of Doom's pistol remains useful when you get other weapons, it has it's own ammo pool and when empowered by the tome of power can easily take down enemies in seconds.

 

[fraggle]

23 hours ago, Combinebobnt said:

heretic is like raven's chinese bootleg of all the doom1 stuff before they actually decided to try and make something: hexen

Harsh but this mostly matches my opinion of Heretic too. It feels too much like a "Dungeons and Dragons reskin of Doom". I know that's not entirely fair and there are a bunch of extra gameplay elements in Heretic that aren't present in Doom. However, it's always felt to me like Heretic is something of an "incoherent" game that doesn't have any clear idea of what it is or is trying to be. For example: is Heretic an FPS or a Dungeon Crawler? It seems to exist in some kind of strange halfway house where it can't decide which. But that's just one element - the game as a whole seems rushed and thrown together.

 

With both Doom and Hexen, there's a far more definite feeling that someone had a clear idea of the game they wanted to make. With Heretic it feels a lot more like they were experimenting with the engine they'd been given, trying to see what they could make of it. Hexen is a far more mature work from a team that's had that opportunity to experiment and figure things out.

[42PercentHealth]

21 minutes ago, NecrumWarrior said:

I really need to play Hexen...

You do! It used to be my favorite game, but after playing it about 20 times and figuring out all the puzzles, it becomes clear that Doom 2 has better replay value. Still, I will always have a warm spot in my heart for it to live.

[Graf Zahl]

21 hours ago, Not Jabba said:

Having an SSG and BFG equivalent would make all the combat-related items, especially the Tome, pointless.

One thing about Heretic that just seems wrong is that nearly all the powerful weapons have been coded to be useless against bosses when tomed.

Which forces the player to endlessly unload ammo onto them - and they have the same health as Doom's bosses but fighting them feels like it's taking forever.

 

All things considered what people are bothered about is that Heretic's weapons are weaker than Doom's but the monsters are stronger so the game simply doesn't allow to blissfully blast away. A somewhat stronger general purpose weapn wouldn't have been that bad.

 

[Not Jabba]

 

1 hour ago, NecrumWarrior said:

Eh, I don't know if I agree with the stock weapons being weak. One thing I really like in Heretic over Doom is that the Wand is never truly useless. In Doom the Pistol becomes obsolete the moment you get the Chaingun because of their shared ammo. But the Wand seems to fire a little quicker and has a separate ammo pool. If ever I find myself low on other ammo, it always seems to get the job done so long as my aim is good. And it's one of the most useful weapons with the Tome.

 

I think this disagreement may be because you're thinking more of the original game, which is all about light incidental combat, and I'm thinking more about modding and trying to create more varied combat setups and more challenge. Heretic is a nice casual game, but if you want to push the player more, you need to have more monsters in the fray at once (especially since Heretic's monsters dish out about 1/3 to 1/2 of the damage of their Doom counterparts), and as soon as you add more monsters, it becomes painfully clear that half of Heretic's weapons are not at all equipped to deal with those situations. I don't think it's just my level design style, because I have this problem with just about every Heretic wad, even though it's not so bad with the base game -- basically any modder is going to up the ante this way, and having a game that *only* works with light incidental combat is kind of a problem; it's just not versatile enough. The Tome is an important part of gameplay, but it's the opposite extreme -- it makes things *too* easy for a mapper to use it regularly, so I don't think you can just say that having Tomed weapons + un-Tomed weapons evens things out to create balanced gameplay. 

 

Good point about the Wand -- I've always treated it like the pistol, but once I got people beta testing my maps, I found that Heretic players actually like it, so I'm trying to treat it more as an actual weapon rather than a temporary starter.

 

 

9 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

One thing about Heretic that just seems wrong is that nearly all the powerful weapons have been coded to be useless against bosses when tomed.

Which forces the player to endlessly unload ammo onto them - and they have the same health as Doom's bosses but fighting them feels like it's taking forever.

 

All things considered what people are bothered about is that Heretic's weapons are weaker than Doom's but the monsters are stronger so the game simply doesn't allow to blissfully blast away. A somewhat stronger general purpose weapn wouldn't have been that bad.

 

 

Fair point, but I feel like adding that new weapon as a solution wouldn't have addressed the issues with the weaker weapons, and conversely, addressing the problems with the weaker weapons eliminates the need for a new weapon. At least, that's how it feels to me, and I've experimented quite a bit with Heretic weapon tweaks at this point.

[NecrumWarrior]

1 hour ago, Not Jabba said:

I think this disagreement may be because you're thinking more of the original game, which is all about light incidental combat, and I'm thinking more about modding and trying to create more varied combat setups and more challenge. Heretic is a nice casual game, but if you want to push the player more, you need to have more monsters in the fray at once (especially since Heretic's monsters dish out about 1/3 to 1/2 of the damage of their Doom counterparts), and as soon as you add more monsters, it becomes painfully clear that half of Heretic's weapons are not at all equipped to deal with those situations. I don't think it's just my level design style, because I have this problem with just about every Heretic wad, even though it's not so bad with the base game -- basically any modder is going to up the ante this way, and having a game that *only* works with light incidental combat is kind of a problem; it's just not versatile enough. The Tome is an important part of gameplay, but it's the opposite extreme -- it makes things *too* easy for a mapper to use it regularly, so I don't think you can just say that having Tomed weapons + un-Tomed weapons evens things out to create balanced gameplay. 

 

Good point about the Wand -- I've always treated it like the pistol, but once I got people beta testing my maps, I found that Heretic players actually like it, so I'm trying to treat it more as an actual weapon rather than a temporary starter.

This is probably the best explanation of why the weapons are underpowered I've seen. But there is a tradeoff with the weapons compared to Doom that they are quicker. The Plasma Rifle has a delay if ever you stop firing, but the Hellstaff lacks that delay so you can quickly change targets without waiting for the cooldown. I already explained about the Wand. The Crossbow doesn't have to be cocked, but it also is a projectile now instead of a hitscan weapon, so the delay is moved from cooldown to when it connects.The tradeoff here though is that the Crossbow has a powerful bolt in the middle that can do a fair amount of damage. And the Phoenix Rod is where things get kind of ridiculous. I can kill a fair amount of the bestiary with just one shot from it, and its rate of fire makes it really OP in my opinion. Obviously you can't plan your gameplay around this one weapon though, so I get that another high damage weapon would probably benefit Heretic more than hurt it. I don't think a BFG equivelant is neccesary but I could definitely see a Super Shotgun of some sort being a great addition to the arsenal.

 

I think a lot of Heretic's balance issues are actually in the lack of hitscanners. Because everything is either Melee or Projectile in Heretic, it's very possible to go through an entire level without ever taking damage, unless it has damaging floors which are pretty brutal in Heretic. In Doom the hitscanners are a very clear threat, even if they can be dispatched quite quickly and easily. It's like Heretic is a game that only has mid-tier and boss enemies except none of them have the damage output to go with it. Golems and Gargoyles are the only low-tier enemies in the game and they are both enemies that behave like the least threatening enemies in Doom, the former being like a Pinky and the latter being like a Lost Soul with way less health.

 

There is no way that I would ever say that Heretic is better than Doom except in its execution of boss monsters, but for me there's just something very charming about it. It's not that the game is even that good, it's just fascinating in how it behaves differently and presents a very different setting to that of Doom. Yeah, it probably sucks for mapping. But it's a nice cooldown for when Doom has you all wound up. Taking things a bit calmer can be just as fun as going into Doom all guns blazing.

 

But seriously, what the fuck is up with Heretic's Black Plague not having respawning monsters!?! UV is not hard enough I need it!

Edited April 18, 2017 by NecrumWarrior

[scifista42]

Doom, for 1) a sci-fi rather than a fantasy theme, 2) being more supportive of making efficiently challenge oriented fast paced maps, 3) ports having better modding support for it.

[DAZZER]

I love Heretic for the Setting,Music and the Item Inventory. Also with the first Elder Scrolls: Arena (released in 1994 too) it sure was an inspiration for further Role Playing games. But without Doom it wouldn't exist. Doom had weaker Level Design but better Weapon feeling and better Monsters. Also it was the real beginning of the Shooter Genre. So yeah for me Doom is clearly better.

[CapnClever]

3 hours ago, NecrumWarrior said:

But seriously, what the fuck is up with Heretic's Black Plague not having respawning monsters!?! UV is not hard enough I need it!

The -respawn parameter still works in Chocolate Heretic if you want it.

 

I've looked into what makes Heretic inferior to Doom when it comes to gameplay, and the biggest problem is the overall lack of threat. Disciples can hurt, Undead Warrior Ghosts can hurt, and bosses can hurt if they use a good attack, but everything else is simply impotent in the damage compartment. Gargoyles deal 1-8 with their fireball. Even the plinking of zombiemen is stronger, and they're hitscan! And keep in mind that the armor for Heretic is stronger than Doom's, with the silver shield absorbing 50% and the enchanted shield absorbing 75%. Factor in that you pick up medikits to use on command, and it's way too easy to survive compared to Doom.

 

Other significant factors include:

• Monster weight is much lower in Heretic, causing enemies to be knocked back with ease (speedruns use crossbow predominantly for this reason)
• Too many similar weapons (dragon claw, hell staff, and firemace are all useful in the same situations); crossbow's damage is far too variable (10-80 on the primary bolt!)
• Enemy HP for mid-tier enemies is incredibly similar across the board, ranging between 150 and 300: on the other hand, phoenix rod's damage is identical to Doom's rocket launcher (~148-288), making just about everything trivial to kill
• Iron Liches and Maulotaurs are too random in their attacks to be interesting when mixed with other enemies; enemies refuse to attack Maulotaurs and D'sparil; certain player attacks are hardcoded to be less useful against boss monsters (e.g., powered dragon claw's damage is effectively zero on Iron Liches); D'sparil is hardcoded as an enemy (not just being in E3M8) to kill all other enemies upon death, including other D'sparils. It really makes using them in custom maps exceedingly difficult.

To most, I imagine Heretic is "that game with the Tome of Power" and lacks any other redeeming features. It looks pretty cool, but it really suffers from static gameplay. A Doom2-ization would have certainly helped: by comparison, Doom1 lacks the dynamics that Doom2 has, though at least you can still die easily if you're not careful.

[Graf Zahl]

12 minutes ago, CapnClever said:

To most, I imagine Heretic is "that game with the Tome of Power" and lacks any other redeeming features. It looks pretty cool, but it really suffers from static gameplay. A Doom2-ization would have certainly helped: by comparison, Doom1 lacks the dynamics that Doom2 has, though at least you can still die easily if you're not careful.

In that case, may I recommend Hordes of Chaos? It's a 5 episode Heretic mod for ZDoom that brings Doom and Hexen enemies into the mix. Overall, due to the higher monster variation it plays quite differently from the original game. Especially having the Doom Imp as a common monster really makes a difference and Hexen's Bishop is also a welcome addition. (On the other hand, the Cyberdemon is not really, because Heretic's weapon arsenal is just lacking some punch - but at least the Cyberdemon has far less crippling effect on the tomed weapons.)

 

 

[42PercentHealth]

3 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

In that case, may I recommend Hordes of Chaos? It's a 5 episode Heretic mod for ZDoom that brings Doom and Hexen enemies into the mix.

That sounds like it might be interesting...

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Both Raven's original games have strange as shit balancing. At least in hexen case it just goes in hand with many things in the game feeling unfinished. Sadly Heretic got a shittier deal where everything feels too easy (Hexen can fuck your shit in 2 seconds on 5th skill), I swear the guy playing the demos was drunk doing them, Can't forget him dying to afrits on e3m9.. Maybe they should add that you must completely wasted\noobish to play Heretic as intended :P.

 

I replay the Iwad all the time with harder patches (On Zdoom with all compat stuff on). Was fun (But masochistic at times) to beat it with the attached pwad. Warning : The wad is completely ruthless. I beat the original 3 episodes with it so they should be doable. It doesn't add anything new, Just buffs\nerfs things. I recommend starting with E2 instead of E1 (E1 is extremely tight on how you use ammo\inventory), Don't try E3 unless you can beat the other two!

Heretic+++.zip