How would you, if you would, rebalance the pistol?

How would you, if you would, rebalance the pistol? I would be interested in seeing the pistol do 10-30dmg at half the rpm, or in some way boost the damage while cutting the fire rate to make it more of a corner strafe weapon. What do you think?

In this DEHACKED mod, I made the pistol fire 4 bullets at once, as well as improving its fire rate and giving it perfect accuracy. It became quite fun to use, IMO, although other weapons were also improved/rebalanced in this mod. If it fired only 3 bullets instead of 4 and if the fire rate was only slightly worse, it would equally balance up with normal unmodded chaingun, which I think would be good.

scifista42 said:

In this DEHACKED mod, I made the pistol fire 4 bullets at once, as well as improving its fire rate and giving it perfect accuracy.

That pistol is quite impressive and can now be used perfectly in custom made wads. Can I use that in a survival wad that I'm workin' on?

Also speaking of the first slot pistol, the rifle used in 'Coopbuild' wad is something nice, but would be good if someone tweaked up the damage to make it a bit usable during fights too!

I once made a fairly simple vanilla-compatible patch that replaced the pistol with the chaingun, and the chaingun with Skulltag's minigun (a 2x speed chaingun.)

I wouldn't use this for IWADs or older custom maps, but I find that for WADs that are just too damn hard even on easier skill settings, this is a great way to improve the balance without using some over the top gun/gameplay modifier, keeping it more in line with how it was intended to be experienced.

Xtercomp said:

That pistol is quite impressive and can now be used perfectly in custom made wads. Can I use that in a survival wad that I'm workin' on?

Sure you can, but keep in mind that it's a DEHACKED-based work, which means that separating the pistol alone from other gameplay modification in the wad will be slightly convoluted, and implies other restrictions hardcoded to the game engine. If your wad is for Zandronum (or ZDoom/GZDoom), you'd better recreate the behavior via DECORATE. If your wad is supposed to be compatible with other ports than Zandronum/ZDoom/GZDoom, you'll have no choice than keep it DEHACKED-based, though.

I play with a small dehacked patch I made that makes the pistol fire a bit faster and with 100% accuracy. I think it inspired scifista42's mod, IIRC? It makes it less useless at the start while still being obsoleted by the chaingun, which is fine with me. I think it's OK for your starting weapon to be worse than all the others, but the normal Doom pistol is a little too terrible for my tastes.

edit - link: https://www.mediafire.com/?1uckr539beforo5

scifista42 said:

Sure you can, but keep in mind that it's a DEHACKED-based work, which means that separating the pistol alone from other gameplay modification in the wad will be slightly convoluted, and implies other restrictions hardcoded to the game engine. If your wad is for Zandronum (or ZDoom/GZDoom), you'd better recreate the behavior via DECORATE. If your wad is supposed to be compatible with other ports than Zandronum/ZDoom/GZDoom, you'll have no choice than keep it DEHACKED-based, though.

I'm sort of noob at modding right now, so I just use the works done by other modders in this community. My survival wad is purely to be played in ZDaemon, so copy-pasting stuff from the DEHACKED.lmp file to my wad's DEHACKED using XWE won't work?

I would make it like the Rifle from Smooth Doom.

plums said:

I play with a small dehacked patch I made that makes the pistol fire a bit faster and with 100% accuracy. I think it inspired scifista42's mod, IIRC?

I was inspired by Phmlwep, actually. And I already knew the 100% accuracy trick before you made your wad. :)

Xtercomp said:

I'm sort of noob at modding right now, so I just use the works done by other modders in this community. My survival wad is purely to be played in ZDaemon, so copy-pasting stuff from the DEHACKED.lmp file to my wad's DEHACKED using XWE won't work?

It will work, but you will have to find and copy-paste only the content related to the pistol, which isn't even clearly marked and is scattered around the whole DEHACKED lump among content related to other weapons/monsters/changes in the mod, because that's how DEHACKED works. Or you will have to open the lump in a DEHACKED editor, and either somehow select everything except modifications related to the pistol and revert them to default, or look how the pistol works and then make a new DEHACKED and recreate the properties/animation/behavior on your own.

I would give it more frames and make the ammo clips fall down, then the doomguy gets his hand and puts another clip in. (after 10 shots)

I always liked the pistol from Duke3D so I would make it more like that.
Or replace it outright with something like a hunting rifle that fires slow, but does good damage and can be used at long ranges.

scifista42 said:

It will work, but you will have to find and copy-paste only the content related to the pistol, which isn't even clearly marked and is scattered around the whole DEHACKED lump among content related to other weapons/monsters/changes in the mod, because that's how DEHACKED works. Or you will have to open the lump in a DEHACKED editor, and either somehow select everything except modifications related to the pistol and revert them to default, or look how the pistol works and then make a new DEHACKED and recreate the properties/animation/behavior on your own.

Oki, I'll try using WhackEd then.

I would make it fire 2.5x faster and do slightly more damage.

I would make it so it has an uncapped fire rate by making it one shot per click. No damage modifiers necessary. The faster you spam, the more your damage output.

This way it is more useful in panic moments early on in various levels, such as an early Cacodemon / Pinky, or hordes of zombie-type monsters.

Not modifying damage will allow the level maintain the ammo balance it was designed with, assuming you use this pistol on any other mods & maps.

To prevent the chaingun feeling somewhat inadequate (assuming the player is capable of a decent click-speed), I would increase the fire rate slightly so that it is just 'too fast' to keep up with when using the pistol. perhaps 1.2x speed or so.

Dragonfly said:

I would make it so it has an uncapped fire rate by making it one shot per click. No damage modifiers necessary. The faster you spam, the more your damage output.

Someone made a mod that did this and it was absolutely horrible to use. Also, incentivizing carpal tunnel syndrome is probably not the best type of gameplay balancing. ;)

Spamming a button (or multiple buttons alternately) is the most annoying kind of control setup I know. Please, no.

Do you suffer from something like Carpal Tunnel? :P
I like one-click, one-bullet setups, personally. They allow the player absolute freedom in the way they use the weapon.

To combat irritation and/or injury, if the player was to press and hold the shoot button, the pistol would fire exactly as it does now; but spamming it would reset the animation and fire instantly per click. Best of both worlds.

I'll put it differently then: There should be no control setups that would give advantage to players who spam a button. :)

I'd give it a faster firing rate (e.g. S.T.R.A.I.N.). I wouldn't make it stronger though, since that defeats the purpose of making it a starting weapon.

Games such as Doom are all about the player's capabilities in a huge array of categories - to name a few: reaction time, situational awareness, spacial awareness, reflexes, stamina, puzzle-solving, patience, strategy and so on and so forth.

I don't think giving the players with "quick fingers" and a bit of stamina an advantage is even remotely unfair in the grand scheme of things.

But regardless, we have differing opinions, wouldn't be human if we all agreed now, would we? :)

You could have the pistol fire repeatedly when holding down the fire button, but only fire one shot when pressing alt-fire. Or have different types of handguns. A pistol which is more like Doom's, and a revolver which does more damage but can only fire one shot at a time and is slower.
Actually, why do FPSes make revolvers (especially magnums) so powerful? I remember in Half Life 2 the magnum would be better than a high-powered rifle.

"I wouldn't make it stronger though"-HavoX
When you say stronger, are you meaning that you wouldn't buff it at all or just that you wouldn't buff the per shot damage? and if that is toward the per shot damage then why if you don't mind? By the way, I'm not saying the pistol should be buffed as a whole (but I like thinking about it theoretically) But I'm thinking of the possibility of a power up specified for the pistol. Thank you everyone for your replies.

MrGlide said:

When you say stronger, are you meaning that you wouldn't buff it at all or just that you wouldn't buff the per shot damage?

The latter, in most cases. See, the point of a starting weapon is that you can take down weak enemies such as zombiemen and shotgun guys, but for stronger groups of enemies such as imps and pinkies, you'd require more firepower.

HavoX said:

the point of a starting weapon

I completely understand that, and as you know when you get the chain gun the pistol becomes a dead slot, there are no advantages to using the pistol whatsoever once you've the chain gun. I think it would be fascinating to have the pistol start as normal but have a way to beef it up into a long range burst damage weapon (kinda like the berzerk pack) but obviously with lower DPS then pretty much everything else or it would make the shot gun obsolete.

I just got up this morning because I was thinking about this subject.

You shouldn't make the pistol one-hit kill the zombieman and shotgun guy every time.
I suppose it would make sense to buff it up just a teeny tad, but no more.

That was my reasoning for a slight buff (very slight), so as to keep it a viable weapon in some circumstances, especially when you're running low on shotgun ammo in a map which is sparse with it.

If the weapon was balanced in that way, I would switch to it and use it rather than completely ignore it for the rest of the game.

I watched j4rio UV-Tyson max level 28 of TNT and came to the conclusion that the pistol is OP already

I gave mine a higher rate of fire, a 12 round clip and new sounds. Now it's fun and actually effective even on later stages.

Double its damage (might be too high) so it is cost efficient compared to the chaingun. No point in using the pistol when the chaingun is a full upgrade.

My views on this are changing.

The top end of the escalation spectrum has been explored enthusiastically for years now, reaching new heights with things like Italo-Doom.

The bottom end of the spectrum hasn't been explored very much, however. When the player has only the shotgun, the pistol and the fist, and is fighting only zombiemen, shotgunners, imps and demons, and is given little or no armor, we have a completely different sort of Doom that I think can be very interesting.

In these situations, when ammo is fairly scarce, you need to save as many shells as possible for imps and demons. Using a shell on a zombieman is a painful waste, and taking down shotgunners with the pistol feels like a coup. Especially when the player has no armor and even the zombiemen start to be reasonably threatening.

So, on the one hand, while I do think the game could be more interesting if the pistol remained useful after the chaingun is obtained, as the shotgun still has significant usefulness when we have the ssg, I think the supposed uselessness of the pistol points to untapped regions of map design.

I miss the sensation I had as a kid when bullets seemed dangerous (having years of wolf3d lingering on my palate) imps were genuinely menacing, demons felt powerful and scary, and cacodemons were positively terrifying. I still remember that cacodemon hiss striking terror in my young mind!

And then to take this further, if a map could dwell in this vulnerable duck-and-cover military-feeling gameplay before gradually escalating to a multi-cyberdemon-smiting climax, how glorious! Eternal does this to some degree, and I always love it, but I still think the pistol/shotgun/unarmored phase could be explored very much more.