How do you fell about Doom RNG?

[ImproversGaming]

Interesting discussion. Honestly, I like the RNG. I feel this is one of those nebulous areas of Doom where if you get it wrong you could end up with a flat game experience. Sure, they could have made it better but they certainly could have made it a lot worse. I think they did well to have it as good as it is (particularly given it was probably balanced against the original Doom 1 levels and not the new WADs we play today). I get the frustration when dying to a max damage roll but I have always *tried* to look at it as getting a low roll is me getting a break (rather than a max being me getting scammed).

The pistol spread range is interesting for me (as I tend to pistol start levels) but I just keep one-tapping the pistol to get the accuracy and don't hold down fire. Never been too bothered by this as I tend to snipe with the pistol and not spend too much time on it.

In general, I also like the range of variation that RNG brings to playing levels, where you have to adapt to your current status, monsters roam in funny ways and I cannot use the knowledge of the damage of hits to game an monster encounter (how many hits I can tank or how many hits I need to kill the monster). Tuning the ranges is interesting but I think it could be challenging to finding a balance to making it engaging for every player.

[Bauul]

11 hours ago, Shepardus said:

I forgot about leaky radiation suits, that's also awful RNG. Not reliable enough to be useful to level designers, just enough to be annoying and gaslight players into thinking the game glitched or an unseen monster attacked them.

 

11 hours ago, msx2plus said:

leaky suit is definitely the one "remove this completely" RNG call in my books. the concept of forcing a player to do a 20d hurtfloor run (especially one with low heath) with suit can be totally nullified by it.

 

Arguably the leaky radiation suit isn't a property of the RNG at all, it's a design of the radiation suit itself.

 

If you removed the RNG, you'd simply have a radiation suit that always leaked precisely once every X tics. Removing the RNG wouldn't stop it leaking, it would just remove the randomness of when it happened.

 

I agree the leaky radiation suit is an unnecessary inclusion in the game, but it's not a factor of the RNG specifically.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Oh yeah I forgot. I guess one important feature of the RNG is scaring the hell out of players while keeping the game relatively balanced to not destroy them?

A new player to games won't know about RNG and will just think any hit might be the last even if they have a displayed HP bar. Super scary when you have no idea how much the enemy is gonna hit you for ( especially barons ) and the screen turns full red to remind you that you are indeed going to get killed if you don't play better. Then you get the Cyber and oh boy the shift from RNG damage to instakills is horrifying.

 

Well until you learn strafing.. then the game becomes a dozen of times easier.

[Doomkid]

Not knowing whether I'll need 4 or 5 rockets to take down an Arch-Vile is part of what keeps the game fun.

 

The game would still be pretty fun without it but the constant "not knowing exactly how much X is needed for Y" makes the game way, way more thrilling for me personally. Also there was a mod that turned RNG off almost entirely in Zandronum and it turned deathmatch into quite possibly the most boring and predictable piece of shit ever.

 

My conclusion: Don't even mess with the RNG at all. I thought maybe some adjustments could help, but no.. It just turned out I was wrong as fuck. Boom adjusted RNG just slightly and it feels like ass gravy by comparison because damage rolls average lower which sux nutz.

 

80 damage revenant fireballs build character. If you have trouble with 'em, here's a useful tip!

 

22 hours ago, Murdoch said:

Personally if anything, I would add more randomness.

I hate the word "based" because it's so overused, but what else can I say when someone chooses to speak pure wisdom?

[GarrettChan]

45 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

Not knowing whether I'll need 4 or 5 rockets to take down an Arch-Vile is part of what keeps the game fun.

Though you'll get some frustration from 5 rocket AV, sometimes you'll also get the joy of 3 rocket AV, or 2 rocket Arachnotron/HK :P

 

From a speedrunning kinda standpoint, it's somehow annoying because you can't plan precisely for your routing because simply you just can't imply you'll kill a Mancubus with 3 rockets etc., but hey, knowing how to improvise is one type of skill that I don't mind. Even though some of the maps are really frustrating with RNG, good maps are still in the majority and you'll never run out of choices really.

Edited February 2, 2022 by GarrettChan

[msx2plus]

above all the RNG is good because it's funny. if you're not laughing at super high/low damage rolls you're missing out. if you need to be frustrated, at least laugh at your frustration.

[LexiMax]

I think that in general, RNG in a game is bad.  The more predictable your game, the tighter your level and encounter design can be, and players appreciate when they feel the game is being "fair" with them.

 

That said, I don't think that the Doom we all know and love would be improved by removing RNG.  It's fun to think about hypothetically, but in actual fact the game was released and had 20+ years worth of custom content assuming 10-80 damage Revenant rockets.  Replacing it with (for example) a rocket that does a flat 45 takes some of the edge out, since a guaranteed 45 damage feels less threatening than a potential 80 while being nominally the same average damage in the long run.

[Murdoch]

1 hour ago, Doomkid said:

I hate the word "based" because it's so overused, but what else can I say when someone chooses to speak pure wisdom?

 

It just makes sense to me. No randomness makes gameplay even more predictable which, let's face it, is already kind of quite predictable especially after all these years. As I have said before, it's muscle memory. I am so used to it I can often dodge fireballs without even looking. Like I hear a certain noise and some part of my brain goes "Ah so that imp fireball is likely to hit this spot in approximately 1.8 seconds" or something like that and sends the message to my main thought processes "Ok move... now!". The demons are organic creatures, so it stands to reason that even within the same type, some of them would be stronger and/or fitter than the others which would affect their ability to take damage, their speed, and the speed of their projectiles. And also depending on where a given projectile hits you, it's going to do varying degrees of damage to your overall well-being accordingly so to me this being a random effect makes sense.

[Doomkid]

It's funny that one man's source of fun is another man's source of pain.. What you described is exactly why I love "slightly customized" Doom monsters so much. It forces me to change my reactions, having to think a little differently for an episode or 2 is a part of the fun, but even the stock assets still remain enjoyable because of that little element of unpredictability.

 

I like that RNG can throw a wrench in the plans, so to speak.

[Andromeda]

I don't like it, the player should always deal minimum damage and take maximum damage from the enemies to make it balanced.

[Arrowhead]

I don't mind it - I like that it takes imps two shotgun blasts to die sometimes, or that pinkies take 3 blasts sometimes - it keeps things somewhat fresh, and helps a very old game feel less predictable - at least, that's what I think...

 

I could do without the revenant's damage range, though. :P

[BigBoy91]

RNG is probably one of the only things keeping such an old game unpredictable at this point. I dig it. Imagine how optimized speedruns would be if there was no randomness.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Actually I don't think the game has enough randomness. First thing I always do is mod enemies to fire in a random angle just so I can't get lazy and just wait a monster to attack to tap D to dodge over and over. Does nothing in huge fights beside adding more chaos which is always welcome, while making that random baron of hell relive its glory days when I used to dodge using the turn keys to dodge and didn't ever strafe because the default buttons are trash for it lol. 

[Hitboi]

The RNG of the leaking suit effect feels so unnecessary, my view is that it was either implemented to add more realism to the game, or it was just a vile reason to punish the player for being low on health.
I'm adequate with the Revenant but not really with it's missile damage. Fortunately, the Revenant can be killed easily, so I find it funny that you can either kill him quickly or die by his missile easily.

Edited February 3, 2022 by Hitboi

[Edward850]

24 minutes ago, Hitboi said:

The RNG of the leaking suit effect feels so unnecessary, my view is that it was either implemented to add more realism to the game, or it was just a vile reason to punish the player for being low on health.

There's the third option; it's the equivalent of rolling multiple natural 1s in a D&D game. Sometimes you just have bad luck and this is Dooms concept of that.

[Hitboi]

1 minute ago, Edward850 said:

There's the third option; it's the equivalent of rolling multiple natural 1s in a D&D game. Sometimes you just have bad luck and this is Dooms concept of that.

Never played D&D, but that doesn't often happen to me in any luck-based RP game. I feel brave when I'm in the radiation suit.