How important are difficulty settings?

as a player, I don't care because I will always choose ultra violence

as a mapper however I find implementing difficulty settings a lot of fun, along with monster spam for multiplayer and deathmatch starts. makes the map feel more complete I guess

I personally find it a chore to do difficulty settings, and occasionally struggle to work out if the changes I made actually made the difficulty easier, but it is definitely an important feature to try and implement. I find it really annoying that people would play your WAD on UV and complain that it's too hard or 'slaughtery'. Dudeeees, I implemented difficulty settings for a reason, there are numerous invulnerability spheres scattered around just begging to be consumed!

Difficulty settings are an interesting way of making your map replayable by changing where keys, blockable decorations, and teleport destinations appear. :)

EarthQuake said:

Difficulty settings are an interesting way of making your map replayable by changing where keys, blockable decorations, and teleport destinations appear. :)

I always thought it would be interesting to make a level that was shorter or longer depending on skill level, like the way a golf course has different starting locations. So, for example, on UV you play the entire level, but on HMP the player start is moved, say, 1/3 of the way down the line and everything before that gets walled off. On HNTR you likewise have access to only the last third of the map. (Monsters etc. still get flagged properly so you can get 100% at each skill, of course.)

They are important to me. I mostly play Doom on HMP and a lot of wads seem to assume you play on UV, which I guess is true in most cases. But it can make it almost overwhelmingly difficult for me depending on the wad.

Linguica said:

by definition, a player is only ever going to see one of the three levels while playing through the level, and most people are never going to go back and replay it on a different skill level and notice any changes, so why put in the effort?

Because it is implied that your level will be played by more than one player.

I usually feel that playing at a lower setting sort of diminishes the map. Valiant, which I adore as a great project, however, is unplayable for me at all even on a standard setting, so I have to play on easier levels. So I am thankful when that is there.

In my maps I do not do this and consider difficulty as part of the map. I might be missing an interesting dimension here, but currently this is how it is.

Louigi Verona said:

I usually feel that playing at a lower setting sort of diminishes the map. Valiant, which I adore as a great project, however, is unplayable for me at all even on a standard setting, so I have to play on easier levels. So I am thankful when that is there.

In my maps I do not do this and consider difficulty as part of the map. I might be missing an interesting dimension here, but currently this is how it is.

Yeah you're missing a huge dimension. Not everyone is as good/shitty at Doom as you. That's why HMP is "normal," so people better than you can have fun, people like you can make it, and people who suck or don't mouse-aim can still have fun with it too.

You just said valiant was too hard on "hard" mode so you turned down the difficulty... Well, imagine that valiant didn't have multiple difficulty settings.

One of the beauties of Doom is that the difficulty settings affect thing placement instead of some damage/health multiplier. You could make all difficulties the same monster-wise and just make health/ammo different if you feel that UV is the "one, true setting." Hell, you could even make everything the same except for teleport destinations. You could have a teleporter take you to 3 different maps that all look the same or similar. So the difficulty level could only make the landscape different.

So in Doom, as compared to other games, the difficulty settings have the potential to literally change everything. Aside from the obvious reasons that difficulty settings were put into place, they are important for replay value, variations and such.

Fonze said:

..if you feel that UV is the "one, true setting."

Loads of people seem to have that attitude and it's never made sense to me. Perhaps, maybe, I can just about see it from the perspective of playing something like the original IWADs but as soon as you have custom content, it stops making sense because the mapper could have set difficulties up however they wanted to.

I know that I tend to try and make HMP the default "with a bit of skill, you should be OK and this should suit most players" setting and UV "this is really pretty tough, you'll need to be pretty good or already know the map" setting. So, diving straight in at UV doesn't necessarily make sense. I'm sure much of the "I only play on UV" thing is just dickish macho e-peen posturing anyway. "Look at me I am teh gamer god coz I only play on teh hard settings".

I swear, one day I am going to release a WAD where the first option on the skill menu is the hardest and the last one is the easiest.

Enjay said:

Loads of people seem to have that attitude and it's never made sense to me. Perhaps, maybe, I can just about see it from the perspective of playing something like the original IWADs but as soon as you have custom content, it stops making sense because the mapper could have set difficulties up however they wanted to.

Thy Flesh Consumed is no picnic on HMP for me. Playing it again recently, on the 2nd level a few Barons of Hell and imps spawn and start throwing things at me, and I died. I find these creatures succeed at killing me not too infrequently. I generally don't feel the need to press the UV button myself.

If a new level is well designed and clever, might as well include difficulty settings where a less seasoned Doom maniac can see what you did.

To me difficulty settings have little importance as I only play on UV. Aside from reasons already mentioned that many WADs have UV as the difficulty it is designed for and that some do not have difficulty settings at all, UV makes the most sense because most speedrun categories are on UV. Thus, playing on UV gives me the best sense of how a map will play as a speedrun.

However, when I map I try to incorporate difficulty settings anyway (although I don't map often).

Enjay said:

Loads of people seem to have that attitude and it's never made sense to me. Perhaps, maybe, I can just about see it from the perspective of playing something like the original IWADs but as soon as you have custom content, it stops making sense because the mapper could have set difficulties up however they wanted to.

I know that I tend to try and make HMP the default "with a bit of skill, you should be OK and this should suit most players" setting and UV "this is really pretty tough, you'll need to be pretty good or already know the map" setting. So, diving straight in at UV doesn't necessarily make sense. I'm sure much of the "I only play on UV" thing is just dickish macho e-peen posturing anyway. "Look at me I am teh gamer god coz I only play on teh hard settings".

I swear, one day I am going to release a WAD where the first option on the skill menu is the hardest and the last one is the easiest.

Hahaha that's a funny idea.

I guess for me, personally, when I make a wad I tend to make HNTR like a modern "normal" mode, HMP like a modern "hard" mode, and UV like a modern "insane" mode. Newer games almost always have a really tough difficulty that can only be accessed through completing the game at least once. Aka replay value. I suppose that I feel that anything that is a good game should have replay value. Maybe it's from my childhood of playing short Nintendo games and such, but games without replay value kill me when it turns out that it's over and I also really enjoyed it.

As for only playing on UV, I think it's directly related to the iWads, mixed in with the fact that most people that come here love Doom and have prolly played the Hell out of at least one of the iWads. The way the difficulty settings were structured in the iWads doesn't help with that outlook because only monsters were made to be different, despite the capabilities for SO much more.

I'm one of those people that typically only play on the hardest setting, but for me it's because I find the satisfaction of overcoming challenges to be more fun when the challenges are actually challenging. Unfortunately, most games have few differences between the difficulty settings. One day, I will make a map where literally everything is different on each difficulty setting. I've come close a few times, but never took the plunge to also make the landscapes different. At that point you must debate with yourself how different the landscapes will be. The more different, the less it makes sense to put it all in one map, but a good middle ground might be to just move some vertices around to change stuff like cover options and the general layout, while keeping texturing and detailing the same or similar.

Fonze said:

and UV like a modern "insane" mode.

there is already an insane mode in the game. it's called Nightmare!

Doomhuntress said:

there is already an insane mode in the game. it's called Nightmare!

Hehe true, but I've always been more slow and conservative when playing Doom; I like to get all 3 100% and to find all secrets, so the -respawn feature always turned me off.

@Fonze: No, no, Valiant is difficult for me on normal setting. I seldom play on UV at all. But I get your point, yes.

I'll be honest, in first person shooters I usually default to the Hard difficulty rather then Insane, so going for UV in Doom is consistent with that, as Nightmare is always an option.

Between people not implementing difficulties and the id method of reducing enemy numbers on lower difficulties (frequently aped by mappers still), UV often is the "true" experience. I often map this way myself, so UV is "difficult for me" and the lower difficulties are less so. It's only on maps with a set monster count (Escalation series) or "Scars of the Wounded Prey" and "Claws of the Enraged Beast" where each difficulty is a completely different experience. With the latter two I've used ZDoom to implement only two difficulties, giving the player a "normal" choice and something nearer a slaughter map to pick between.

Judging from this thread, most of us do indeed assume Ultra-Violence is the intended experience, but there's a fair-sized contingent who use other difficulty settings. I'd say this backs the opinion that they're not essential, but worth having.

It seems people have forgotten the most basic principles of difficulty settings.

UV is Hard. HMP is Medium/Normal/Default. HNTR is Easy. The whole purpose of difficulty levels is this: you play on the default, if it's too hard, you turn it down to Easy, if it's too easy, you turn it up to Hard. As such, Hard setting has MORE enemies than INTENDED just for the sake of challenge.

UV-Only mentality exposes the bloated egos of people who will never lower the difficulty as if someone (aka themselves) is going to think the less of them. Like they're 'missing out' on something. On what exactly? Frustration? That's fine by me.

You want to trudge through insanity telling yourself you're having fun, fine. But my take is this: if it's too hard for me, I'd rather lower the difficulty and actually enjoy myself. I used to play everything on the hardest mode from the beginning. One day I've had this experience: I was playing a shooter and I kept dying and I was pissed and angry and I hated everything. Then one second I thought to myself: "Why the fuck am I even doing this?". Then I turned down the difficulty and had a good time.

Bottom line is this. You want to brag about your UV-only superiority, whatever. But for all the rest of us who maybe don't want to spend 10h playing one map or savescumming through it and actually prefer an experience over challenge, DO include difficulty settings, at least HMP.

Props to Ribbiks and dannebubinga for doing it with Sunlust and Crumpets.

Just a little reminder: to make a map in Doom Builder where HMP is presumed the default setting means the need to click on a ton of checkboxes which means lots of additional work that hardly correlates with the "HMP is the default" and "UV has more monsters than intended" paradigm. It's much more convenient to just consider the original placement with all the checkboxes that are there from the start to be the default one, and all the alterations are... well, alterations of the intended experience.
And one more thing which arguably makes even more sense - in speedruns UV is considered the default difficulty. Above that are some categories on NM that can't physically be as varied as UV ones thanks to the nature of this skill setting, and everything below UV is "Other" category which is of course unconventional and just houses all the "rare" stuff.

Does it help some people get better understanding of what's the deal? No? Well, at least I tried.

Touchdown said:

It seems people have forgotten the most basic principles of difficulty settings.

UV is Hard. HMP is Medium/Normal/Default. HNTR is Easy. The whole purpose of difficulty levels is this: you play on the default, if it's too hard, you turn it down to Easy, if it's too easy, you turn it up to Hard. As such, Hard setting has MORE enemies than INTENDED just for the sake of challenge.

and more stuff...

I agree entirely.

If UV is assumed to be the default by certain people, they have nowhere to go if the map is too easy for them and, yes, easier settings are pointless because they will never play them. If HMP is set up to be tough but UV is there to crank things up for a real challenge and the easier settings are there for people who don't want the toughness of HMP, then everyone has somewhere to go if HMP doesn't suit them. Also, if maps are set up like that, then the people who dive in to UV are simply getting it wrong much of the time.

Demonologist said:

DB Stuff

I think identifying the editing tool (and one that was invented many years after Doom mapping was a thing) as the determining factor here is a case of saying that the tail wags the dog.

As a default, it makes sense to have newly placed items tagged to appear on all difficulty levels because when you place an item, more often than not, you want it to appear on all settings. Decorations are usually like that, pickups often are and even a significant number of the monster population is (especially bosses and trap-critical enemies).

Demonologist said:

Just a little reminder: to make a map in Doom Builder where HMP is presumed the default setting means the need to click on a ton of checkboxes which means lots of additional work that hardly correlates with the "HMP is the default" and "UV has more monsters than intended" paradigm. It's much more convenient to just consider the original placement with all the checkboxes that are there from the start to be the default one, and all the alterations are... well, alterations of the intended experience.

Enjay said:

As a default, it makes sense to have newly placed items tagged to appear on all difficulty levels because when you place an item, more often than not, you want it to appear on all settings. Decorations are usually like that, pickups often are and even a significant number of the monster population is (especially bosses and trap-critical enemies).

DB2 does default to all 3 difficulty boxes being checked, at least for me. Never mind the fact that once you place an object, the flags are defaulted to those of the just-placed object for the next one. Which is completely necessary for most people to not lose their minds while trying to map out different difficulty settings and possibly multiplayer options, which is what every wad worth its e-weight in salt has.

I don't see how it is so hard to do difficulty settings when mapping. Can't you just place all of your desired things into the map first and then set the difficulty settings accordingly? at least that's what I do.

Important enough, I'd say, and not just in the obvious sense of throwing more supplies at the player or reducing the number or monsters.

The differences don't have to be huge between skills; just simplify a few fights here, swap one ammotype for another there, and change the location of (some or all) keys/weapons. Even if it's only a key shifted 256 units further back, that can potentially make the difference between an easily-avoided crusher and a sequence of crushers that require a bit more timing and patience to get by.

Also, barrels.

Also, with ports such as ZDoom, the supplies, monsters, etc can be exactly the same between the difficulty settings but you can change factors such as monster aggressiveness.