How many guns is to many?

[MrGlide]

    There are quite a few mods that add guns to doom, Some of of them bringing over bearing numbers of weaponry into the game. Some people like it, some don't. What I would like to know is, how many guns do you feel is too many? What pros and cons do you see in extra weapons. if a stronger similar weapon, replaced a weaker counterpart, would that upset you (ie: Chaingun would replace pistol)?

 

    I'm looking into making a ZDoom mod, and the idea I would like to do has many guns represented in it's gameverse, I'm just worried because I often feel too many gun options tend to throw balance, playability, and readability out the window. Anyway, what are your thoughts on mods that add such arsenals.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Doesn't matter how many of them exist. Once there is a ton of overlapping or stupid ones that perform everything the others can do it is time to delete the useless or game breaking ones.

[Deleted_Account]

All you need is nine weapon selections.

 

'nuff said.

[Remilia Scarlet]

I think 7-8, including one melee weapon, is just about right for something like Doom, assuming they don't overlap function.

[geo]

More guns than numeric keys? Too many. Do you really need that many? What about making gun mods instead? Wider firing spread vs more accuracy. More damage vs higher firing rate.

[Arctangent]

General rule of thumb is two to a key at maximum. This'll allow each weapon is accessible by a double tap, or a single tap if you're already on that slot, without having to deal with weapon order on a key that comes with having three or more.

 

Though as Pegg said, if you've got two assault rifles that function similarly, two shotguns but one fires two more pellets, and two rocket launchers with one having a slight amount of homing for the sake of slightly lower blast radius and damage, then you have too many guns.

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

Others probably said it better already, but from a key-binding perspective, two weapons on a single key is rather bad but still acceptable, more than that becomes a real hassle.  And I doubt there's much likelihood of 20 useful non-redundant weapons appearing at once, anyway.  Despite that I generally dislike the idea of altfires, they're better than shuffling through ridiculous amounts of discrete weapons.

[Lila Feuer]

My personal gameplay mod respects the double tap as @Arctangent said, providing a secondary option for the pistol (rifle), chaingun (minigun), rocket launcher (grenade launcher), plasma rifle (railgun), and BFG9000 (BFG10k). Although I did include another melee option on 1 (super chainsaw) and a special 'super weapon' on 8 (called the unmaker in name only), for a total of 15 weapons options tops with fist excluded. I think that's fair amount then.

[AdirBlaz]

I generally would say, like many others, 1 or 2 weapons per number. If you were to push over 2, I myself can live with that. Though it would be best to keep to a sort of "Theme per number" deal. i.e.; "Shotgun-esque weapons on 3" or "Auto-firing weapons on 4". If you're gonna basically clone weapons or go past 3 or something, then it's getting a bit pointless and/or ridiculous.

[Voros]

1 basic melee weapon (fists)

1 basic short range weapon (shotguns)

1 basic medium/long range weapon (assault rifle, miniguns)

1 basic explosive range weapon (rocket launchers, grenade launchers)

1 basic ultimate-and-does-not-suffer-from-the-too-awesome-to-use-disease weapon (BFG9000, Unmaker)

Fuck snipers. But this is basically what I consider to be the minimum selection of weapons. Adding an extra few won't hurt, but they need to have a significant purpose eg chainsaw always inflicts damage at a very high rate, while the fists need a few tics to wind up for anaother punch again.

[Zanieon]

You can have so many weapons as you wish if they do not repeat itself in functionality completely.

Well i mean that having like an Assault Rifle and a Chaingun is fine because AR is a machinegun with a single repetition barrel and Chaingun generally does more damage and also functions with spinning barrels for faster fire rate.

My mod currently have like 15 weapons, the only one which i can say it is redundant is Heavy Machine Gun with Machine Gun which is really meant to one replace the other after it picking it up, all other guns may have similar functionality like Shotgun and Nailgun, but one shots pellets and they travels very fast plus the addition of extra-damage for firing at pointblank and the other shots Nine Inch Nails that travels slowly with highter damage but with wider spread and no addition of pointblank damage, the mod featured more redundant weapons in the past and i removed them exactly because of this problem, Trakion Cannon also had a rework right after the release it first appeared due to function as an weaker BFG10k.

[Endless]

Well I think It depends on the game itself.

 

If it was like Doom, 9 guns is perfect.

 

But games where the gameplay and tactis are more crucial there could be some more, like in Dead Space.

 

And then, theres rpg-fps like Borderlands, thousands of guns but they actually are necessary.

[FantasmeDel'Esprit54]

If it's more then 10, its excessive. Especially for doom. 

[Major Arlene]

I tend to like the simplistic weapon schemas better (think Hexen simplicity). A melee, a light, a medium, a heavy, then a boss weapon. While I did enjoy Complex Doom's wide variety of weapons, it got to the point where it would get to be ridiculous. Cycling through a zillion weapons is fun when you don't have a billon enemies shooting at you (I played survival multiplayer and I would die before I could get to the weapon I needed).

[RedDash16]

When it comes to a game like DOOM I think 10 is definitely a "soft cap" before things start getting a bit much.

[Erick]

My cap is around two weapons per slot usually, and if the weapons act more or less the same, then I would say too many. Having more weapons is nice, but when some weapons are just better versions of your previous weapons, I can't find myself wanting to play longer.

[Lizardcommando]

For most weapon mods, I'd say having two weapons per slot (7 slots total) is a decent size, maybe consider that the max number of weapons. Not completely ideal, I suppose, but I guess what would help out with having way too many guns is only being able to carry, let's say, 2 primary guns and 1 secondary weapon, and then being able to pick up/drop any guns that are on the ground and replace whichever weapon you are currently holding. 

[mrthejoshmon]

I like the idea of multiple weapons but only if they are each unique and not 50 different energy cell reliant über weapons.

[EmotionalFelineinaMadstate]

1993 weapons.

[TootsyBowl]

Two weapons per slot, 10 slots total (1-0). Weapons conforming to the original Doom niches should be put into the relevant slots.

 

Also make sure that every weapon has a unique role to play. Keep joke weapons to a minimum, because the eventually only serve to clog up the slots.

 

Another modding sin IMO is making each weapon use their own unique ammo type (eg. Brutal Doom Black Edition, which had different ammo types for the pistol, rifle, and minigun). This can result in the player running around with no ammo and only picking up types he doesn't have the weapon for.

[Avoozl]

I wonder if anyone has made a Borderlands type mod for Doom with many variations of weapons.

[Arctangent]

28 minutes ago, Avoozl said:

I wonder if anyone has made a Borderlands type mod for Doom with many variations of weapons.

 

Never got too far with it, but

[GarrettChan]

To be honest, Doom has a very good balance of number of guns. I would like no more than Doom and no less than Doom. SSG is not overpowered as I played more Doom and understand more.

[Lila Feuer]

1 hour ago, Avoozl said:

I wonder if anyone has made a Borderlands type mod for Doom with many variations of weapons.

There's LegenDoom, which has support for things like Colorful Hell and Omni Shields. I've yet to play with these though.

[Arctangent]

LegenDoom is pretty great, though it's not really Borderlands-style. Instead, you can pick up special versions of the vanilla guns from randomly chosen superpowered enemies, which basically work via attaching special "perks" to the normal gun.

 

So you won't get a bunch of different shotguns with randomly generated fire rate or accuracy or pellet count, but you can get a shotgun that deals extra damage to zombies, or one you can fire without ammo for lower damage, or one that doubles the values of health and armor bonuses while you lug it around - you don't even have to have it out!

[Avoozl]

Sounds a bit more like Diablo.

[scifista42]

Whenever the number of weapons gets in the way of quickly finding and selecting the one you want to use at the moment - that said, it helps when it only takes a single key press to select any weapon, and when the HUD displays which weapons that aren't out of ammo you have available. Also, if a weapon doesn't have any trait that would make it advantageous over any other weapon in some way and in some types of situations that happen reasonably often in gameplay, that weapon is probably redundant.

[Memfis]

I think even 100 weapons can be fine if the player is allowed to hold only 5 at the same time, for example. Like in Contra you lose your old weapons as you get new ones.

[scifista42]

^ Good point. If that's an option, consider my previous post to speak about weapons carry-able at the same time rather than all weapons in the game, and I guess the same would apply to many other people's previous posts. The issue of too many weapons can still be present if there are places where the player gets to choose one/few of many new weapons in exchange for ones he already has, the issue would just become more about long term strategy than about immediate choices at any time during combat. On the other hand, if it's implemented more like weapon upgrades, where each "new weapon" just improves stats of already carried one, there would be entirely different pros and cons than that of too many weapons.

[Deleted_Account]

But you gotta have your chaingun and minigun! I think you should be able dual wield both. Brutal Doom? Pffffft. More like spineless Doom.