hardcore_gamer Posted August 31, 2017 I have often wondered this. What does it do that health doesn't? Why give the player armor when you can just give him more medkits or health potions/powerups? 0 Share this post Link to post
esselfortium Posted August 31, 2017 2 minutes ago, hardcore_gamer said: Is armor pointless? No. 45 Share this post Link to post
Edward850 Posted August 31, 2017 (edited) 4 minutes ago, hardcore_gamer said: I have often wondered this. What does it do that health doesn't? Why give the player armor when you can just give him more medkits or health potions/powerups? 15 Share this post Link to post
Memfis Posted August 31, 2017 Armor allows you to survive more attacks. With 100 hp you don't feel that safe yet (one revenant can almost kill you in one shot), but 100 hp + 100 armor gives a lot more confidence, even if it's of the green variety. I guess you could achieve a similar effect by giving soulspheres all the time (or stacking health potions), but that would be kind of silly and\or less flexible. 5 Share this post Link to post
galileo31dos01 Posted August 31, 2017 I need to get more clever in order to avoid these clickbait threads. 20 Share this post Link to post
GarrettChan Posted August 31, 2017 Oh god, greatest comment ever on Armors. 0 Share this post Link to post
dew Posted August 31, 2017 I sometimes wonder if you even play this goddamn game, or you just smoke too much pot (or not enough?) and recall tidbits from when your room-mate was playing it 15 years ago and you watched over his shoulder. 19 Share this post Link to post
GarrettChan Posted August 31, 2017 Just now, dew said: I sometimes wonder if you even play this goddamn game Well, the most precise description of my mind. 1 Share this post Link to post
an_mutt Posted August 31, 2017 > named hardcore_gamer > doesn't understand something as basic as armour letting you take less damage you are an exceptional individual 13 Share this post Link to post
BigDickBzzrak Posted August 31, 2017 (edited) set of quotes 11 minutes ago, esselfortium said: No. 9 minutes ago, Edward850 said: stopquotingimagesdumbass.jpg 6 minutes ago, galileo31dos01 said: I need to get more clever in order to avoid these clickbait threads. 6 minutes ago, dew said: I sometimes wonder if you even play this goddamn game, ... 6 minutes ago, GarrettChan said: Oh god, greatest comment ever on Armors. 4 minutes ago, an_mutt said: ... you are an exceptional individual Have y'all thought of actually providing some arguments to prove your point, or do you consider saying just "omg your so exceptionally stupid" to be enough? Yeah, thought so. :] 5 Share this post Link to post
Ichor Posted August 31, 2017 Run up to a wall and shoot it with a rocket. You die. Now, pick up some armor and do it again. See what happens. Armor isn't pointless. 12 Share this post Link to post
Jaws In Space Posted August 31, 2017 Yes technically armor is pointless. 100% health plus a Soul Sphere will keep you alive longer than 100% health plus a Green armor. 0 Share this post Link to post
baja blast rd. Posted August 31, 2017 (edited) One big difference between health and armor is that armor attenuates the RNG range. Take a revenant fireball for example, which does as little as 10 or as much as 80 damage raw. With blue armor, that becomes 5 and 40 respectively. While there isn't much of a practical difference between 5 and 10 damage, there is between 40 and 80. This attenuation matters in maps that use both armor and soulspheres... ...which is a good thing. The interplay of health pickups and armor pickups has a variety of strategic implications. Compare a soulsphere to a blue armor. At 20 HP (+ 0 A) with little health lying around? You want a soulsphere. At 100 HP (+ 0 A) with lots of stimpacks and medkits you can freely return to? A blue armor will suit you better. Armor pickups aren't a thing anymore? Well you lose this dimension. The mapper's ability to control both resources separately also leads to more interesting gameplay. For example, stimpacks and medkits can be given liberally, but green armors more scarcely -- about as much as you need with 'decent' play. The penalty for losing your armor in that case becomes having your effective HP capped at 100 (sans bonuses/spheres/etc.), as opposed to 150. You can imagine there being three separate 'states' in a map like this: (1) subsisting on almost nothing because you've lost your armor and gone though lots of health pickups; (2) you have little armor left but you still have lots of health pickups, be careful not to die quickly; (3) living large, with both health and armor. Without armor, the mapper would only be able to control health pickups, and the H/A dynamic in this map would only have two meaningful states. There are many ways health and armor can interact like this; with only health you have fewer of those. (Edit: and as GarrettChan mentions a few posts from now, there's also the very meaningful difference between GA and BA.) Also armor is great because full red screens for any projectiles other than a cyb rocket are dumb lol. Edited August 31, 2017 by rdwpa 35 Share this post Link to post
Da Werecat Posted August 31, 2017 Someone said that we should appreciate these kinds of questions. Let's play along. Imagine that instead of having armor, we can have 300-400 HP. Wouldn't that be about the same? What are the benefits of distributing damage between two different counters, other than an obvious aesthetic one? I've seen this conversation outside of Doom community, but I don't remember where it went. 0 Share this post Link to post
Ichor Posted August 31, 2017 1 minute ago, Jaws In Space said: Yes technically armor is pointless. 100% health plus a Soul Sphere will keep you alive longer than 100% health plus a Green armor. But 200% health with no armor is the same as 100% health and 200% blue armor. 1 Share this post Link to post
Archvile Hunter Posted August 31, 2017 (edited) Armor allows you to stay in the fight longer and make more mistakes before running for a health kit. Without armor, any mistake can be deady, and you have to play much more carefully. If you wanted to provide a player with the same "tankiness" armor provides without placing any on the map, you have to litter the floor with health kits, just so the player can stay alive. 0 Share this post Link to post
leodoom85 Posted August 31, 2017 Geez.....having armor saved my life many times... isn't that reason enough for not being pointless ladies and gentleman???? 2 Share this post Link to post
GarrettChan Posted August 31, 2017 (edited) 3 minutes ago, Da Werecat said: Imagine that instead of having armor, we can have 300-400 HP. Wouldn't that be about the same? What are the benefits of distributing damage between two different counters, other than an obvious aesthetic one? I've seen this conversation outside of Doom community, but I don't remember where it went. I was thinking this is his point, just like Megasphere having 400 HP instead of 200 HP / 200 Armor, but still, we now have two separate counter for the designers to control difficulty, and to be honest, there are a third factor, which is absorption rate (33%/50%) in this control. BTW, I'm really interested in the conversation outside Doom on this topic although you couldn't find it. 2 Share this post Link to post
galileo31dos01 Posted August 31, 2017 5 minutes ago, bzzrak said: set of quotes Reveal hidden contents Have y'all thought of actually providing some arguments to prove your point, or do you consider saying just "omg your so exceptionally stupid" to be enough? Yeah, thought so. :] For someone who claimed to have been playing Doom for such long time, it's seems odd to me how's that they still don't know the value of armor. 0 Share this post Link to post
Philnemba Posted August 31, 2017 34 minutes ago, hardcore_gamer said: I have often wondered this. What does it do that health doesn't? Why give the player armor when you can just give him more medkits or health potions/powerups? Here's a quote from Doom Wiki to answer your question. Quote The armor will absorb one third (1/3) of all damage received, rounded down, until it is fully depleted. 0 Share this post Link to post
Edward850 Posted August 31, 2017 (edited) 24 minutes ago, Archvile Hunter said: Armor allows you to stay in the fight longer and make more mistakes before running for a health kit. Without armor, any mistake can be deady, and you have to play much more carefully. If you wanted to provide a player with the same "tankiness" armor provides without placing any on the map, you have to litter the floor with health kits, just so the player can stay alive. The opposite should also be important, if not the defining point: You can have all the armour you want, but having 1% health still makes any damage (within unmodded Doom) instant death. The point of armour is therefor not to be more health, but to be the RPG-equivalent "defense points". It makes you resistant to damage, but not impervious to it. In deathmatch, this actually creates a weird meta strategy. Maps that have Blue armour (50% resist) can allow you to run around a map tanking hits while also allowing you to hoover up all the health, denying it to opponents. Thus it's typically why duel maps don't have blue armour, as it can make you insanely deadly. Edited September 1, 2017 by Edward850 4 Share this post Link to post
Benjogami Posted August 31, 2017 There are some games built entirely around resource management. It can be fun. Having health plus two different types of armor, with only some varieties than can take the values above 100, gives players and map designers a little bit more space to play around with resource management than health would on its own. Finding the sweet spot of complexity, where things are simple and intuitive but still interesting, is what good game design is all about, and I think Doom's health+armor system is pretty great in this regard. 0 Share this post Link to post
Voros Posted September 1, 2017 Why don't you play a game without armor and find out? Write up some DECORATE that'll make armor not appear on maps at all, such as using RandomSpawner. 0 Share this post Link to post
superchargecacodemons800 Posted September 1, 2017 How is armor pointless? It is useful in maps that don't have megaarmors! 1 Share this post Link to post
leodoom85 Posted September 1, 2017 6 minutes ago, Voros said: Why don't you play a game without armor and find out? Write up some DECORATE that'll make armor not appear on maps at all, such as using RandomSpawner. Let's make a map without having armor bonuses or proper armor... 0 Share this post Link to post
RjY Posted September 1, 2017 20 minutes ago, Ichor said: But 200% health with no armor is the same as 100% health and 200% blue armor. In terms of pure numbers this is precisely correct at the time either the soulsphere or the blue armour is picked up. However: 200% health is just that, 200 hit points. You can't heal again until you've lost at least 100 of them, or find another "magic" health powerup that still works when you have more than the non-demonic health maximum. 200% blue armour on the other hand is effectively half damage / double health while the armour lasts, so if you keep your health topped up, which can be done with common health items, you still can take up to 400 damage before the armour runs out. The difference is probably psychological, but I distinctly prefer having 100 / 200 blue over 200 / 0. Also as @rdwpa points out blue armour is a huge reduction in redscreen which means you are much less likely to become disoriented after a high damage. 3 Share this post Link to post
GarrettChan Posted September 1, 2017 Just now, leodoom85 said: Let's make a map without having armor bonuses or proper armor... I guess Scythe Map21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27 and 28 fit the bill, IRC? 2 Share this post Link to post
leodoom85 Posted September 1, 2017 Just now, GarrettChan said: I guess Scythe Map21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27 and 28 fit the bill, IRC? Oh....good point 0 Share this post Link to post
Scotty Posted September 1, 2017 1 minute ago, GarrettChan said: I guess Scythe Map21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27 and 28 fit the bill, IRC? Yeah and if anything they prove the benefit of armour? Especially the early E3 maps. 3 Share this post Link to post