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Good Doom/Heretic/Hexen WADs

Sjukob

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
2,052
I gave DoomRL Arsenal a go, to this day that mod never really caught my attention, but I found it to be pretty alright. The idea of selecting your own equipment, upgrading it how you want, finding new and rare stuff and choosing a class that supports your desired playstyle and arsenal, seemed like a great idea to me, but there's one serious problem about that mod. And I write this not to talk about the said mod, but the issue it has and shares it with a lot of others mods - it's about lack of balancing or making the player overpowered.

Over the years I've tried many different Doom modifications and a lot of them suffer from this, they turn the gameplay into power fantasy, by giving you OP equipment and not bringing enemies to the same or relative level of power, even the monster randomizers, which mostly add demons that are way stronger than the original versions, can't handle the awesomness of the player. It's really sad seeing mods with cool guns or interesting mechanics suffering from this, because gunplay and mechanics have to support the good difficulty to really matter and if there's none the game quickly becomes stale, no matter what you do you would win, no need to improve your skill or knowledge of the game. This might seem ridiculous, when in the post above I complained about enemies being too good, but that was the case of opposite scenario, where enemies were strong and player's tools weren't adequately designed to handle them (if that still doesn't convince you, then I recommend you to download Memoirs of Magic and play it enough to get to the water temple or ifrit boss).

And the same thing happened to DoomRL Arsenal, all of those items, monsters and other shit can go fuck itself, when already at level 7 (or about that) you can craft OP gun that will chew through everything and of course you always have enough ammunition for it, so there's no need to ever switch weapons. The same issue applies to the most other mods created for Doom: everything by pillowblaster (Guncaster Vindicated tried to balance things out, but failed and player still remains incredibly OP, especially with power suit); everything by Combine_Kegan; High Noon Drifter - find basilissa mask, wipe out the whole map with it's altfire; every mod that adds nu-doom stuff, once you get enough upgrades (happens about 10-14 maps in) nothing can stop you; Lithium - cybermage is broken, marine is unplayable; everything about Complex Doom (and it's knock off HXRTC project) is broken OP; Psychic - get enough upgrades and become immortal; Aeons of Death - a huge mess and is completely broken; Magitek Doom is alright until you find ways to oneshot every enemy in the game (use plasma rifle's charged fire, son) etc. I'm just giving you examples and I'm sure you can add many more.

At the same time it's popular among people to hate Brutal Doom for some reason, I have no idea why though, I believe there was a lot of drama during it's development, but I really don't care about that. Anyway, Brutal Doom is one of those rare mods that features pretty decent balance, while the player is way deadlier, but so are the enemies and there's no stuff that makes you OP. I guess purists don't like it, because you can't really run and gun in this mod, but if one of you is reading this, tell me do you not like Blood too ? The problem is that I've been playing Brutal Doom for a long time and I want to try out some other stuff, unfortunately there's almost none and everything new coming out repeats the same mistake I've described here, even the various addons for BD do that, the most infamous one is Project Brutality. The only other mod that I enjoyed, which doesn't turn you into a god is Final Doomer.

You might wonder "Lol fag, y don't u play with vanilla weapons ?! R u gay or something ?!". I have to admit that I've never really liked the classic Doom loadout (so fuck me, I guess), there's quite a lot of reasons for that, but I don't want to talk about it now. So all those Vanilla+ mods are not doing it for me, and even though I like Final Doomer I don't play it much, because it still tries to simulate the feeling of the original weapons.





But you know what's scarier ? The same thing is true for most of FPS games, even the classic ones and those "retro type" of shooters that come out today, they are still too easy: too much health/ammo, not enough enemies and they are not placed tightly enough, OP weapons or items etc. Duke, Blood, Shadow Warrior are all pretty trivial (Blood's first episode is good in terms of difficulty, I'll give it that), I finished Dusk and it was a cakewalk. Recently I started playing beat'em'ups (see my signature) and one of their distinctive features is high overall difficulty, you really have to be on your toes most of the time to not die, there are a lot of things for you to learn and improve upon and high difficulty only simulates the process. So why aren't FPS games the same ? I really don't know guys, am I not getting something ? It's just that I haven't given it a thought until very recently.

So skacky how's your game doing in terms of difficulty ? Is it a complete faceroll up untill very last and gimmicky option, where enemies kill you in one hit or something (see Dusk), so you can tell players to fuck off, if they complain about the game being too easy or is there a plesant surprise awaiting everybody ?
 
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Baron Dupek

Arcane
Joined
Jul 23, 2013
Messages
1,870,765
every mod that adds nu-doom stuff
you mean Doom 2016? Are there any finished (ver. 1.0)? There is so many of them I lost count long ago. Some of them got C&D letters, lost tracks for other ones.

but yeah, I do love some weapons pack mods but for Doom - yeah, a lot of them are OP

Hedon is pretty gud, isn't it?
it is
give it a shot
it claims to be inspired by some classic titles like Arx Fatalis and else but who cares, it's still a good mod on its own
neat exploration btw
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,149
Sjukob Did you play on the added advanced difficulties for DoomRL Arsenal? The higher tier enemies get pretty ridiculous.

That said, I think the biggest problem with all mods is that weapons simply can't be balanced well in terms of ammo consumption without hand-edited levels. Every good, tight FPS limits the usage of the strongest stuff, but with a mod that is slapped on to levels made for vanilla doom they generally just give you way too much ammo for everything so you can use it all and not get stuck without ammo somewhere.
 

Sjukob

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
2,052
you mean Doom 2016? Are there any finished (ver. 1.0)? There is so many of them I lost count long ago. Some of them got C&D letters, lost tracks for other ones.
Yeah, stuff like D4D and Zion have been well past v1 for a while now.

Sjukob Did you play on the added advanced difficulties for DoomRL Arsenal? The higher tier enemies get pretty ridiculous.
Of course, I still found it easy even on armageddon. Enemies are generally strong, yes, but certain stuff you can easily get is outright retarded, the best example of this is demolitionist with "mother in law" launcher. Infinite ammo nuke launcher and you can't even kill yourself with it, because he is immune to AOE damage. But you don't even need this to break the game: you can turn any good shotgun (like super shotgun) into nano enhanced weapon with infinite ammo that doesn't have to reload and win the game, especially if you're playing renegade; marine is broken with any good rapidfire weapon - crazy ammo efficiency, stunlocks everyone, huge damage, I once crafted high power minigun and haven't used anything else afterwards. Some rare weapons are also broken op by themselves, there is a pistol (can't remember it's name) that shoots AOE energy projectiles that do about as much damage as point blank SSG shot and it only consumes 1 rifle ammo per shot, lol, I found it while playing marine and thought it was crazy, can't imagine what scout could've done with this. And on top of it you also have OP armor that not only gives you crazy protection and is indestructible, but also posses various special effects like healing, brief invincibility, projectile attack and other stuff. Oh and there are various backpacks that can literally provide you with infinite ammunition (nuclear bacpack = infinite bfg spam for demolitionist) or increase it to crazy ammounts, so you can collect everything on the level. Combining all of this into one you get a completely op character with infinite ammo and fantastic defense that kills everything in seconds, even armageddon monsters can't handle this unless you are playing some slaughterfest wads.

As for your second point, mappers tend to be overly generous with pick ups anyway, because everything is cattering to a fucking pistol start. But what about people who don't want that and want to see some progression ? They get overfed with pick ups and their game's difficulty nosedives, nobody really cares about that style of play for some reason. And when you apply gameplay mods on top you get x2, x3 or even more items, because authors didn't want you to ever run out of ammo or something. It's just stupid.
 

Baron Dupek

Arcane
Joined
Jul 23, 2013
Messages
1,870,765
Isn't DoomRL Arsenal that mod, where you can find power armor similar to the one from Fallout games?
I failed to use them, some hidden (or badly explained) requirements combined with cluncky interface and control made them impossible to wear.

I remember that from DoomRPG mod before it was abandoned by original creator (what a mess to install).

Speaking about OP stuff - as long as there are other (weaker and decent) guns to use I try to avoid OP stuff.
 

Sjukob

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
2,052
Isn't DoomRL Arsenal that mod, where you can find power armor similar to the one from Fallout games?
I failed to use them, some hidden (or badly explained) requirements combined with cluncky interface and control made them impossible to wear.

I remember that from DoomRPG mod before it was abandoned by original creator (what a mess to install).

Speaking about OP stuff - as long as there are other (weaker and decent) guns to use I try to avoid OP stuff.
I haven't seen everything in the mod and there's a lot of stuff put into it. I've seen Fallout power armor in some videos, but I'm not sure if that was DoomRPG or not, never played that mod. As for controls, I've never had troubles with it, though you have to assign additional buttons to manage the inventory.

About OP stuff, good luck with that, almost everything in DoomRLA is overpowered. Also the game should push you to utilize it's mechanics and items with maximum efficiency, at higher difficulties at least, artificially limiting yourself to not break the game is retarded and horrible design.

And if you speak russian, this guy made a decent video covering the mod
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,149
I must have missed like 90% of those upgrades and higher tier weapons then. I don't recall anything that OP in RLA, and I did a full Plutonia run.
 

DraQ

Arcane
Joined
Oct 24, 2007
Messages
32,828
Location
Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
But you know what's scarier ? The same thing is true for most of FPS games, even the classic ones and those "retro type" of shooters that come out today, they are still too easy: too much health/ammo, not enough enemies and they are not placed tightly enough, OP weapons or items etc. Duke, Blood, Shadow Warrior are all pretty trivial (Blood's first episode is good in terms of difficulty, I'll give it that)
I thought Blood was ok, if uneven.
 

Baron Dupek

Arcane
Joined
Jul 23, 2013
Messages
1,870,765
Works on HellForged started in 2007 but it took 12 years to reach version 1.0
https://uofi.box.com/s/wsj7b93r465yx8cwcnkgpe36xaq3ks39

a0oUbIW.png
 

Baron Dupek

Arcane
Joined
Jul 23, 2013
Messages
1,870,765
Another TC coming - Quake 2 PSX TC on ZDoom
https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=65966


finished Avactor + HighNoon Drifter, oddly fitting combination.
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it won't turn you into 100% Indiana Jones or main character from Montezuma games but still - it fits like a glove

Final battle was optional. All you had to do was to collect 3 keys and 3 skulls and that was it. Or grab items from central pedestal, fire a gun and start the hell. My record was 1282 dead monster before I run out of ammo and meds.

Made quick research out of curiosity and found out that Avactor won Cacowards contest sort of, yet nobody on YT played it. Some guy reached 6th level (out of 12) before abandoning it.
 
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