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 ?
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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