What goes into balancing a drastically altering mod?

[random_soldier1337]

The kind of alterations I'm referring to might be a gameplay mod or a monster mod or weapon mod with very exotic options.

 

This question is motivated by the fact that a while back on one of my threads a comment said that maps should be played vanilla or with the gameplay mod they are designed with in mind for proper balancing. What if its gameplay mod that can be run with any map? How do the designers for the mod balance it? Is it with the original Doom (2) maps or some other way? Because you see plenty of people play custom mods with custom maps. And it's not like all maps explicitly state that their design philosophies follow that of the original Doom maps.

[JadingTsunami]

Like many things, it will typically come down to lots (and lots) of playtesting. It's a continuous cycle of observe, adjust, test.

 

There's no firm science of how to modify the elements of Doom's gameplay without causing harmful effects to certain levels or mods. In fact, it probably can not be done across the vast expanse of levels and mods that exist. However, mod authors can maximize the breadth of the usefulness of their mod by studying things like the Damage charts for each weapon, and the "shots needed" data tables and attempting to strike a similar balance with their mod across the various weapons and power-ups that are available in the mod.

 

But, of course, any significant change is going to alter the balance of gameplay in some way. Whether or not the effect is severe, or problematic, will depend on the exact mod and what it tries to accomplish.

[D4NUK1]

Mostly playtesting and player's responses.

In the discord of D4T o D4D i don't remeber well, a suggestions of the wad was to play to play on one or some .wads on the list, and people tell in their sugestions some changes of the specific type of matchup with a set of enemies.

Perfect balance can't be done unless the mappack creator want to be indeed use his .wad map with the gamplay mod. But that don't stop people of having fun or use the gameplay mods with super extreme power with normals wads.

I played TNT Revilution with D4T and im sure it was not balanced with that .wad but it was fun.