Megawad difficulty?

myk said:

Can't say I agree, being throttled in there by swarms of fireballs coming from different sides, especially those trailing missiles. Had there been less monsters and an easier way to advance without exposing myself, it would have mattered less. If anything, it increases the task of clearing your way, especially if you're maxing or something like that, exposing you for more time to more attacks. Even if you're just running the mass guarantees more chances of being blocked or nailed by something.

But, for example in Scythe 2 map28's outside area, the revenants are neatly placed on higher platforms while you are given plenty of open space to run around in. All you need to do is run around that area in big uniform circles and the monsters will never hit you, whether they are hell knights, revenants or arachs. Mancs and cybers' splash damage could make a little different, but for the other three monsters mentioned their numbers make very little difference...yeah, you do need to put more effort to dispatching bigger groups, you do need more ammo and there's, theoretically, more chances for mistakes, but since the easiest tactic for dispatching them is so simple making mistakes is actually very difficult.

Thanks to sloppy monster placement in a lot of slaughter maps it's possible to find such "safe routes" that if you move along them in the fight, the monsters will never, or very rarely, hit you. In those cases the monster counts hardly serve to actually increase the difficulty (assuming you're being given enough ammo, of course). It just makes it more boring when you have to run around in circles for so much longer until you may move on to the next area.

Jodwin said:

It just makes it more boring when you have to run around in circles for so much longer until you may move on to the next area.

But that's if you don't add time to the equation (going as fast as possible). A fast route is to bfg blast straight up through them to the single manc platform instead of methodologically bfging from below (quicker/less tedious/lots die from infighting later anyway).

I voted for the second option, Erik, although I disagree that Scythe best represents that progression. I felt that the difficulty was fairly easy through the first two episodes (with the exception of MAP11), and then took a sudden jump for the final ten maps.

myk said:

And true, kristus, although what Erik argues has a lot to do with WAD documentation being uninformative. Players not knowing what's to expect of a WAD may become frustrated. Continuing that habit just to "meet realities" just makes shitty WADs and playing habits. Popular releases like the Scythes can start to change that and can certainly do something for themselves.

This is very important to keep in mind for everyone, I think. I used to play only on UV and it was Scythe II that finally broke me of that habit.

WOS will be "easy at first then gradually harder all the way".

Phml said:

As long as the difficulty doesn't rely on low health/ammo (and as long as it is actually difficult on UV), anything is fine with me.

i agree with that. i find it very irritating if ammo is very scarce so you end up up hitting monsters with fist eventually. if on top of that the level is very cramped (which imo is bad itself in most cases) and has loads of monsters, there is no other way to proceed.

Difficulty settings for me in the past has always involved a compromise between 3-4 regular testers and myself. Because the testers over time grows accustomed to the fight dynamics of a given level, I raise the difficulty upon their requests to challenge them. They grow accustomed to that, and ask the difficulty to be raised a bit more, then a bit more... This model in practice raises the challenge so high that even if a player knows the level very well, he will still have to fight hard for the exit.

That was the process of laying out the fights in DVII-1. And in hindsight, I shouldn't have made even UV that punishing.

I don't play Doom as much as I used to anymore (because of school and work, not because I love the game any less), this has resulted in a decline in my ability to handle (and enjoy) the higher difficulties presented in some of the more "extreme" maps of HR/Scythe1&2/AV/KS. I also generally like slaughtermaps less than I did in the past. I'm currently exploring the more subtle gameplay elements that would've otherwise been garbled in the ruckus of the roaring monster count.

My new experimental model for implementing the difficulty settings in DVII-2 is to purposely degrade my Dooming ability (school and work already does this well). Occasionally give new builds to testers, but to keep in perspective the difficulty of the new levels compared to stuff like Scythe or AV.

Then at the very end, when all levels are completed, introduce a fresh new wave of testers who has never seen the new levels before, and hear their feedback. You're probably wondering where you fit into this, myk. I'll give DVII-2 to you when it has enough levels.

My target difficulty (speaking for UV) is to have the beginning start out about Scythe/E1's difficulty, and ramping it up to no higher than AV's third episode's difficulty in the end.

cybdmn said:

I go with kristus. I had a run of Scythe 2 in Coop with friends, and all loved it, until map 23. From then they left the server one after another.
And everybody, including myself hated the turbo plasma marine. That bastard came out of nowhere, and instantly killed the whole team.

So use the skill levels, and tell the people about that in the textfile. This way you can make it beatable for beginners, and please the masochists on UV.

Well of course I would want there to be difficulty levels. I figured that option meant that each difficulty level would be about medium difficulty for that skill set, and then hard at the end (again for that skill set).

My vote goes for AV style difficulty. I love hard maps as long as there is enough ammo to put up a good fight. What I hate is being stuck using the pistol for a while. Also, I always play on UV and that's mostly because I want the maximum amount of enemies an the map. Not sure why but I guess the more the merrier :)

I'm a new mapper so some of the posts in this thread help a bit for determining how to develop new maps. But anyways, I like a megawad to start somewhat easy and get gradually harder, but at all times, avoiding what I call "BS design"...situations where the enemies are too numerous, health is nowhere to be found, and ammo is a myth. A huge, mostly empty room with 60 or more Revenants is a good example of this kind of design. That's not a challenge, it's a BS festival.

gggmork said:

I guess it makes most sense to design levels however YOU want. Trying to mold it to fit with the desires of the greatest majority is more about gaining recognition than doing something you want to do?

I like this guys advice. Erik, you're already a pretty well known mapper, If people want to play your awesome maps, they will have to get used to the way YOU play doom.

40oz said:

I like this guys advice. Erik, you're already a pretty well known mapper, If people want to play your awesome maps, they will have to get used to the way YOU play doom.

Exactly :)

While I suspect a gradual difficulty curve would be the most popular, go with what you enjoy making the most.

Krispavera said:

Well of course I would want there to be difficulty levels. I figured that option meant that each difficulty level would be about medium difficulty for that skill set, and then hard at the end (again for that skill set).

I am fine with that. A good chellenge, fitting to what a player can expect from a skill level, plus a progression of the difficulty from map to map is a good choice, i would say.

Start out relatively easy and get harder, but keep the player on their toes by having the odd unexpected spike or dip in difficulty.

Like a slightly more unpredictable Scythe 2, which I might add is one of the best things I have ever played. There aren't many megawads interesting enough for me to play through 16 of their levels in one sitting. And it looks absolutely fantastic; I eagerly await the sequel!

I like the difficulty progression from DVII: Medium-ish at first, then gradually harder, then for the last few levels crank the difficulty up to brutal bloodfest.

I say easy be a modest challenge, but not so easy that it plays itself; medium should be tough, but easy enough that the average DOOMer can make it through with only a few tough scrapes; UV needs to be so damned difficult that only a hardened veteran can mount such a tough endeavor. Easy = plenty of health/ammo and a fair number of monsters, medium = enough health/ammo and plenty of monsters, UV = enough H/A that if you conserve it, you'll make it to the end of the level just about empty, and tons and tons of strategically-placed monsters.

I vote Easy to Hard. Though I do believe Doom has a different progression based on episodes. This dodgy graph will explain :P



Simply put, the difficulty rises for each episode, the start of each episode goes down a little but not to the bottom the previous episode difficulty.

I personally love difficulty progressions like that - I plan something similar for Blocks of Doom II.

Start out on the easy side and progressively get difficult by the midway point but still getting harder with each map.

Jimmy91 said...
I plan something similar for Blocks of Doom II.

I hope so. By level 255 you want the player to be sweating blood :P