If you could rebalance Doom 2, what would you change?

[MrGlide]

From Weapons, Items, Power ups and Monsters, What would you change in Doom 2 and why?

[Lila Feuer]

That's difficult, I don't feel anything in D2 needs to be changed. I do think the Lost Soul needs a 40 HP reduction however like the console versions, they don't look like they should be stronger than an Imp and half the strength of a Pinky demon.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

I mean we can already mod it but why not (Lots of changes):

Spoiler

1) Reduce pain chance for all monsters from caco and up.

2) Pinkies move a bit forward when they bite.

3) Cacodemons shoot in a random angle (30 degrees max)

4) Revenants + 20 hp, projectile damage reworked to 2d4.

5) SuperShotGun takes 5 more frames to reload. 

6) Rocket Launcher direct damage - 30.

7) BFG cost doubled.

8) Blue armor reduced to block 30%. 

9) Monsters revived by arch-vile lose half their hp, Archvile heals by that amount. Edit : Monster gibs after they die again, Can't be revived.

10) Arach and Mancubi pain chance lowered to 4.

11) All weapons -33% max ammo, Backpack now gives the player their default ammo limit.

12) All monster actions take 1 less tic.

13) Rad Suit grants +20% damage reduction while it is on.

14) Light Googles tighten hitscan weapons pattern.

15) Spider Mastermind takes -70% damage from BFG, +2000 HP, Starts firing in half the time.

16) Player default hp changed to 125.

17) Baron Of Hell and Pinkies move speed set to 18.

18) All projectiles +3 speed. (Including RL, BFG and Plasma)

19) Chaingun zombie doesn't deal damage on the first second of firing unless the player is very close.

20) Zombieman hp +10. Lost Soul hp +20.

21) Pain Elemental flies up if the player gets close to them. 

22) Stims heal +10 hp over 20 seconds.

23) Berserk gives +2 speed until the end of the map.

24) Chaingun and Plasma rifle raise speed increased.

25) Super Shotgun and BFG lowering speed increased. 

26) Lost Souls immune to knockback while charging. 

 

[RUSH]

I'd make the player wait longer to obtain the super shotgun (spawning it further into the game). This would create more challenge in the early levels, and would let the single barrel shotgun shine for a while. Give things a Doom 1 feel at first, so there's more excitement when you later switch gears into fighting bigger monsters and stumble upon a bigger shotgun. "Woah, nice."

 

It would also make it so that the single barrel shotgun doesn't feel completely obsolete so early into the game... on the second level.

[Lila Feuer]

1 minute ago, RUSH said:

I'd make the player wait longer to obtain the super shotgun (spawning it further into the game). This would create more challenge in the early levels, and would let the single barrel shotgun shine for a while. Give things a Doom 1 feel at first, so there's more excitement when you later switch gears into fighting bigger monsters and stumble upon a bigger shotgun. "Woah, nice."

 

It would also make it so that the single barrel shotgun doesn't feel completely obsolete so early into the game... on the second level.

I oversaw this, yes, this is something that really could've used some changing in D2, you get the SSG way too early.

[Deleted_Account]

Lose D_Runnin and Pain Elemental.

[Cupboard]

Add a pickup that gives you 50% armor and absorbs 50% of damage (same as blue armor protection ability)

Definitely add 1 or 2 weak flying monsters. Maybe the weakest one has a hitscan attack and the other one is a good interchangeable enemy for the lost soul

A flying boss that isn't as powerful as the cyberdemon

Add a few objects/enemies that can be destroyed in order to trigger linedef actions, similar to commander keen

Probably a second pistol pickup so you can dual-wield and shoot 2 bullets at once. Increase the chaingun to 3 bullets per shot and increase rate of fire.

Add a surgeon's kit so you can "throw" down a stimpack/medikit item in front of you in order to heal another player.

 

 

 

[hardcore_gamer]

The Pain Elemental is a poorly designed monster. At best it's not fun to fight and at worst it's an unbalanced if it spews too many monsters. I would also lower the health of the lost soul a bit similar to how the PSX version of Doom did so that they can be taken down with a single shotgun blast.

[Cupboard]

Pain elemental makes for a good miniboss. It's just that now every mapper gives you an SSG before you go to fight one. It is not very dramatic anymore, it is just a chore to kill it with 2 rockets or the SSG. I think it's a good monster that is missing a melee attack or an optional projectile attack (eye laser beam, anyone?) 

[Maes]

50 minutes ago, RUSH said:

It would also make it so that the single barrel shotgun doesn't feel completely obsolete so early into the game... on the second level.

Alternatively, levels and ammo/monster placement could be redesigned in such a way that wasting two shells when one would've sufficed (e.g. single imps or zombies) would result in a real risk of running out of ammo too early in a level. Include more situations where using the shotgun would make more sense (e.g. lone encounters, "sniping" situations etc.) rather than reducing almost every encounter to a "SSG melee".

[Linguica]

* Make the backpack only last as long as the level you're on (if you go into the next level with more than normal ammo you just won't pick any ammo up until you're back under the normal limit)

* Change punch damage from 1d10 * 2 to 5d4 or whatever

* Speed up the chaingun fire rate by about a third

* Make the SSG actually only do twice the damage of the SG

* Remove the Baron entirely and replace it with, I dunno, Magic Baron that actually does something different and interesting (I always wanted to see a monster that randomly spawned gouts of flame around your position to act as area denial).

[Maes]

8 minutes ago, Linguica said:

* Make the backpack only last as long as the level you're on (if you go into the next level with more than normal ammo you just won't pick any ammo up until you're back under the normal limit)

I'm trying to imagine what the explanation for that would be in the manual:

 

Quote

 

The backpack is actually made from the skin of the damned, and is bound to the location you picked it up. When you leave the location (exit the level), it starts shriveling, shrinking and withering away, closing like a vacuum bag on your extra ammo and preventing you from picking any more until you've used it all up. Time to find another tortured soul to exploit, this one is worthless!

 

[bonnie]

9 minutes ago, Maes said:

The backpack is actually made from the skin of the damned, and is bound to the location you picked it up. When you leave the location (exit the level), it starts shriveling, shrinking and withering away, closing like a vacuum bag on your extra ammo and preventing you from picking any more until you've used it all up. Time to find another tortured soul to exploit, this one is worthless!

or maybe the backpack just wears down and quickly becomes unusable after violently shoving 600 rounds of ammunition, 100 shotgun shells, 100 rockets, and 6 giant battery packs but i dunno

[Maes]

42 minutes ago, bonnie said:

or maybe the backpack just wears down and quickly becomes unusable after violently shoving 600 rounds of ammunition, 100 shotgun shells, 100 rockets, and 6 giant battery packs but i dunno

That'd make sense if it withered during the same level (e.g. could only withstand a certain amount of pickups) or its maximum capacity also was reduced by timer, with the HUD numbers constantly changing and the maximum capacity slowly withering.

 

I can imagine the backpack withering down to the size of a mummified scrotum, holding the last few shells, and Doomguy holding and looking at it as it pitifully hangs from a string.

[Linguica]

Thanks Maes you can stop derailing the thread now

[Cruduxy Pegg]

that sounds extremely complicated and annoying at the same time tbh :P.

[Rosh Fragger]

I would make map01 upto 4 minutes long to complete, as I absolutely love D_Runnin track and players are not supposed to speedrun through the map w/o listening to that masterpiece till the end lol.

 

I <3 Running From Evil!

[hardcore_gamer]

1 hour ago, Linguica said:

* Make the SSG actually only do twice the damage of the SG

This would completely ruin the SSG. And the normal shotgun is still useful on maps that don't give you an endless supply of shells as a means to save ammo.

[Maisth]

I Actually would like to see different type of health and armor packs since there are too few compared to other games

[dew]

50 minutes ago, hardcore_gamer said:

This would completely ruin the SSG.

Nonsense. Even a nerfed SSG would outperform single shotgun's DPS, making it preferable for any larger fights or heavier enemies.

 

56 minutes ago, hardcore_gamer said:

And the normal shotgun is still useful on maps that don't give you an endless supply of shells as a means to save ammo.

Debatable. Killing an imp with one SG shell is not guaranteed even in lab conditions, much less ingame with distractions and imperfect aim. Using SG against demons (and above) will always be lossy. With the SSG around the single barrel gets mostly relegated to niche tasks like mid-distance sniping when chaingun cannot be used for whatever reason.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

yea I suggested nerfing SSG reload speed so it is very risky against revs\viles\chaingunners.

[Marcaek]

There are instances where the single shotgun's higher ROF is actually beneficial over the SSG, like with arachnotrons.

The SSG reload speed is already a considerable disadvantage vs those monsters.

[GarrettChan]

9 minutes ago, dew said:

Debatable. Killing an imp with one SG shell is not guaranteed even in lab conditions, much less ingame with distractions and imperfect aim. Using SG against demons (and above) will always be lossy. With the SSG around the single barrel gets mostly relegated to niche tasks like mid-distance sniping when chaingun cannot be used for whatever reason.

Although the reload time is long, I think in Speedrunning, runners would prefer SSG for a guaranteed kill on 1 Imp, 1 Chaingunner or something like that. I guess that's why I don't like maps force you to kill a Chaingunner with a normal Shotgun.

 

Could you raise an example using Shotgun rather than Chaingun? Just curious.

 

For the post: In my opinion, the only thing in my mind is that picking up Armor when you have not enough 100 Megaarmor should give a compensation of some sort, rather than just downgrading the absorb rate from 50% to 33%.

[dew]

1 minute ago, GarrettChan said:

Could you raise an example using Shotgun rather than Chaingun? Just curious.

No bullets.

[Remilia Scarlet]

• Remove revenants, or make them look and act more like Doom 3's revenant.
• Remove the megasphere, which I always felt unbalanced the game and felt gimmicky.
• Make most enemies (minus former humans/sergeants) slightly tougher, slightly faster, and deal slightly more damage so that fewer of them can be used at once in most situations.
• More varieties of flying monsters so that there are both weak and very tough ones, matching what's on the ground.
• Add a grenade launcher and a grenade launching enemy.

 

These are just based on my personal preferences, though.

[galileo31dos01]

Am I the only one who uses the shotgun more than the SSG in Doom 2? 

 

Anyway, I would change some specific things like making the Spider Mastermind's sprite smaller, not her body but her umm, rectangular target, so she can have more mobility, never get stuck when infighting, and never dies with a single BFG shot. Other than this, there's an "untaggable" secret in map 27 that needs to be fixed. Umm... oh reduce lost soul's HP so it's possible to kill it in one shot. 

 

[MrGlide]

3 hours ago, Linguica said:

* Speed up the chaingun fire rate by about a third

Why?

 

[GarrettChan]

1 minute ago, galileo31dos01 said:

Am I the only one who uses the shotgun more than the SSG in Doom 2? 

 

Other than this, there's an "untaggable" secret in map 27 that needs to be fixed. Umm... oh reduce lost soul's HP so it's possible to kill it in one shot. 

There are other "untaggable" secrets, in E4M3 (2 troll secrets), E4M7 (Dr. Sleep's classic mistake, also happened on Nessus.wad), D2 Map15 and Pl Map26, but I think you may already know these.

 

To be honest, even I don't like Lost Souls, having 100 HP gives players a very difficult decision between SSG and Rocket Launcher, which is strangely fun to me... I guess I'm crazy.

[baja blast rd.]

19 minutes ago, GarrettChan said:

Could you raise an example using Shotgun rather than Chaingun? Just curious.

(Even with unlimited ammo), scenarios where you want to maximize time spent in cover. My FDA for SUDTIC e2m1 has a couple of light examples -- I think I have more illustrative ones in some Double Impact FDAs but they aren't in video form. This is a diminutive form of the SSG-PR dynamic against things like cyberdemons in the sort of tight spaces where maintaining a steady plasma stream isn't viable but you can essentially fight at full speed with the SSG. 

 

[Erick]

One thing that always come to me is remaking MAP13-MAP16 as their level names don't really imply what they should be, MAP13: Downtown being the one that comes to my mind the most. I know Doom is abstract in level design but I still help myself to see the flaws of the maps popping out at times, then again I look at the level names too much.

 

Still like the levels though.