Make your own difficulty!

[Cruduxy Pegg]

I've made a ton of them over the years for my own use (usually deleting them or forgetting they exist the moment I make the next one). The most obnoxious\rage inducing ones (without making new attacks/monsters) were any of these modifiers:

• Smaller sized cyberdemons/masterminds/viles/pain elementals, especially when they can start going up/down stairs and breaking free out of any map that locks them using a door.
• Monsters can start attacks even if you leave their sight ( But only for a few seconds after you break LOS ).
• No revenant dead zone.
• Make aerial monsters keep their height instead of descending down to doom guy when they are close to him.
• Any messing with the angle monsters fire projectiles at. Bonus point if it involves calculations based on the player's movement and randomization.
• Fully remove stims and blue armor. (Well this one is removing items but the game is a whole lot harder when you can't tank anything)
• BFG projectiles fizzle if they hit a wall.
• Increase projectile speeds to be faster than Doomguy.

[Kinsie]

oh okay

 

[Codename_Delta]

1 minute ago, Kinsie said:

oh okay

 

Metadoom Moment.

[LuciferSam86]

Metadoom is really good , one of the finest doom mods out there. 

Going back in topic : I think some of those ideas would be interesting for a gzdoom mod. Zscript should be perfect for some of those ideas. 

[kwc]

Spoiler

 

 

 

Someone was gonna do it

[Melter]

 

Demons cursed your precious boomstick. Whenever you pickup shells with super shotgun in your inventory it costs you as much health. Collecting armor bonuses (spiritual armor) weakens this effect (so picking 100 of them removes the curse, armor and megaarmor doesn't count), megasphere also dispels the curse.

[TheFocus]

8 hours ago, pcorf said:

SEMI NIGHTMARE = no cheats, no respawn, double damage, standard ammo

STANDARD NIGHTMARE = no cheats, respawn, fast monsters, normal damage, double ammo (like the original nightmare)

VLADMARE (named after Vlad the Impaler) = no cheats, respawn, fast monsters, double damage, no infighting, standard ammo, timed exit 10 minutes (if you can survive for 10 minutes all monsters are killed and the level ends)

that sounds awesome. great idea!

[Mr. Freeze]

 

You move 10% slower, enemies move and act 10% faster.

You gain less ammunition from pickups and health from Medkits.

Medkit health is applied over time. 

The Shotgun and Super Shotgun cycle 5% slower. To compensate their spread has been reduced. 

Rockets can veer off course over long distances. 

Monsters do not infight.

Cheats are disabled and entering them will kill you. 

You can only save at designated Save Stations within a level. Attempting to quicksave or quickload will kill you. 

 

 

Edited May 2, 2022 by Mr. Freeze

[gwain]

58 minutes ago, kwc said:

  Hide contents

 

Someone was gonna do it

why stop there

Spoiler

 

on topic:

jokes aside how about a difficulty that has normal monster placement fast monsters it would replace all former humans with shotgunners and imps shoot hellknight projectiles 10 percent less Armour pickups (excluding Armour bonus) and and chaingunners have a random chance of shooting shotgun projectiles

 (with pistol start of course)

 

it would be called :

 

(yes stolen from the cannibal corpse song)

 

 

 

 

Edited May 2, 2022 by gwain

[Drywtler]

Everything shoots plasma balls (including yourself, you only weapon is a Plasma Gun). All monsters fire rate is the same and shoot one plasma ball per shot but the following:

• Shotgunners shoot two plasma balls at once
• Hell Knights and Barons shoot two consecutive plasma balls
• Cacodemons shoot 4 plasma balls at once
• Lost Souls are sentient BFG balls (no tracers involved)
• Pain Elementals spawns BFG balls (no tracers involved)
• Mancubi shoot 3 volleys of three plasma balls, the fire rate is the same as the Plasma Gun
• Arachnotrons fire rate is the same as the Plasma Gun
• Revenants normal shot is 4 plasma balls, homing shot is BFG ball (no tracers involved)
• Archviles shoot 10 plasma balls at once
• Cyberdemons shoot 3 volleys of six plasma balls, fire rate is double the Plasma Gun
• Spider Mastermind has a BFG now, fire rate is the same... as the Spider Mastermind

Edited May 2, 2022 by Drywtler

[kwc]

14 minutes ago, gwain said:

why stop there

...

I think it is best if we call it here.

[Sena]

 

All RNG values are twice as long.

[Zulk RS]

1 hour ago, kwc said:

 

Someone was gonna do it

 

This... has got to be the most cursed Difficulty menu ever made. Of all time.

[kwc]

34 minutes ago, Mr. Freeze said:

 

...

 

Cheats are disabled and entering them will kill you. 

You can only save at designated Save Stations within a level. Attempting to quicksave or quickload will kill you. 

The fact that you chose to actively punish the player for using these functions instead of simply removing them is hilariously cruel, I love it.

[7Mahonin]

Nightmare mode, except with these changes:

-randomizes the enemy speed, attack rate, damage, and pain tolerance between UV and NM, with a higher chance for NM behavior than UV, to make things slightly less predictable. 

-gibbed or crushed enemies do not respawn.

-Null’s the kill ratio. 

[Lewonx]

5 hours ago, Hitboi said:

Basically NM-Reality (I don't know if somebody actually did that. lol)

I did that.

[Metal_Slayer]

7 hours ago, purist said:

How about health degeneration? So your health drops by 1% per second on top of any other damage being taken. You would have to play fast but balance speed with avoiding damage and topping up health. If it proves too difficult a compromise could be to eat any armour before health.

 

Another tweak could be that it stops at 1% so it you wouldn't die outright by the health degeneration but it could put you in a one-hit kill situation.

Doom 3 has something like that, but it only drops down to 25% and healing items are removed so you are forced to use the Soul Cube and health stations, I think Quake with Copper also has something similar, but without removing healing items.

5 hours ago, cannonball said:

I guess you could extend this to a situation where you lose health continuously and get health back from killing enemies. A sort of vampire mode. This was used in one of Timesplitters games from the PS2 era I believe.

This also makes sense.
 

7 hours ago, gwain said:

alright here me out it has the "easy tagged" things with tipple ammo pickups but normal heath pickups and fast monsters 

and monsters have 10 percent more heath excluding boss monsters (but still including barons)

 

it would be called:

 

or mabey even:

 

something like that

also I made the text using this

Something that's easier but harder than easy also is interesting.

 

12 hours ago, pcorf said:

SEMI NIGHTMARE = no cheats, no respawn, double damage, standard ammo

STANDARD NIGHTMARE = no cheats, respawn, fast monsters, normal damage, double ammo (like the original nightmare)

VLADMARE (named after Vlad the Impaler) = no cheats, respawn, fast monsters, double damage, no infighting, standard ammo, timed exit 10 minutes (if you can survive for 10 minutes all monsters are killed and the level ends)

The last one is kind of like a Horde Mode, but what would prevent the player from camping on a place with no monsters?

 

12 hours ago, Roofi said:

I would like to see something like "Licence to Kill" and "Dark Licence to kill" difficulties from Goldeneye 64 in Doom

 

So,

 

LTK : Enemies with low health, deals 10x damage and fast

DLTK : Enemies  10x more resistant, deals 10x damage and fast

For Doom standards 10x damage kind of is too much, I've seen Doom and Doom II beaten with no hits, but nothing on Final Doom, probably because the huge amount of Hitscanners, for this(and for all of the other rules that people suggested that make you die with a few hits) there should be some kind counter balance like the armor tanking all the hits before it starts lowering the health and the hitscan being substituted by a very fast projectile.

 

11 hours ago, Zulk RS said:

Oh God No: Same items as UV but handful of monsters on every map has been replaced with stronger "upgrades." Also Demons, Specters and Lost Souls act like Fast Monsters.

That would work better if it just changed the ways enemies attack, like Revenants launching 2 projects at once and Chaingunners having the Super Chaingun from the Spider Demon.

11 hours ago, Zulk RS said:

Iron Maiden: Standard UV but you keep health, armor and weapons from the previous map (No Pistol Starts). If you die, your save is deleted and you have to start over again. Your game is automatically saved at the start of every map and you can't save manually.

Isn't this just Ironman/Mein Leben from Wolfenstein or Ultra-Nightmare?
 

10 hours ago, mrthejoshmon said:

Melee only, start with berserk

Having only one weapon isn't something that isn't too much of a new difficulty, besides, what about shootable switches, enemies far away that you need to kill and The Icon Of Sin?
 

9 hours ago, DynamiteKaitorn said:

 

As the name suggests:

All enemies fire an extra projectile or fire multiple at once.

Upside is, the player also fires more than 1 shot at a time and all health items reward double HP so you can survive a bit easier. :3

Interesting.

[sandwedge]

Some interesting ideas in the thread (and some absolutely cursed ones of course).  Not sure I'd like it, but you could try and go all modern shooter and have health recharge to 100 after some time, and remove all health packs.  supercharge still available to go over 100.  this would make a lot of busy encounters way harder though as they often rely on running over health and instantly getting replenished, however slaughter type encounters with lots of soulspheres/ megaspheres would remain doable.  Again, not sure if I'd actually LIKE this but it might please the modern shooter crowd and could be legitimately interesting.  I assume this has been done in mods but I haven't played them.

 

edit: Don't know a clever name for it but how about these lol: "post-Halo mode"; "I'm too young to pickup health"; "Heal me plenty";"Sub-violence".

Edited May 2, 2022 by sandwedge

[xdarkmasterx]

Terry: All enemy projectiles replaced with homing BFG balls

[Metal_Slayer]

9 hours ago, shark man said:

 

I think it's fair to consider this impossible.
 

8 hours ago, DevilMyEyes said:

UV in terms of difficulty and you die after 30 secs.

Why not use the patched PAR times instead? The expansions of Doom II and some wads would be unbeatable tough. 
 

8 hours ago, Hitboi said:

 (reference to the alpha versions of Doom)
- Basically ITYTD, but it's alpha Doom-themed
- 4 bot/real players start with you
- The weapons are replaced with their alpha alternatives
- Lost souls are replaced with their alpha alternative



- Basically NM-Reality (I don't know if somebody actually did that. lol) but with three extra things
- Taking damage from enemies or any hurting entity instantly kills you
- There is no Plasma-Rifle, no BFG-9000 and no cell pickups
- There's a countdown timer based on the par time of the level, if it reaches to zero, you instantly die
- Weapon fire speed is slowed down by 25%
- Pistol start is forced in every level

I think the Doom Delta mod already changes the name of ITYTD, but I'm not sure about removing the plasma weapons from a run that needs to be under PAR and with no hits would work on that second one.

[Mr. Freeze]

1 hour ago, sandwedge said:

Not sure I'd like it, but you could try and go all modern shooter and have health recharge to 100 after some time, and remove all health packs. 

 

I've actually thought about some kind of hybrid of this, where you could do:

 

1. Medkits are still in the game, but apply their health over time. Health potions have been cut out. 

2. Health regenerates slowly to a maximum of 25, if you want more health you have to find it. 

3. Medkits are stored in your inventory (with a set maximum) and can be used at anytime. 

 

This is to prevent the biggest failing of old school shooters, the item hunting and tedium that brings down otherwise good levels. 

[Metal_Slayer]

6 hours ago, Melter said:

 

Demons cursed your precious boomstick. Whenever you pickup shells with super shotgun in your inventory it costs you as much health. Collecting armor bonuses (spiritual armor) weakens this effect (so picking 100 of them removes the curse, armor and megaarmor doesn't count), megasphere also dispels the curse.

The SSG isn't the only weapon out there.

 

5 hours ago, Drywtler said:

Everything shoots plasma balls (including yourself, you only weapon is a Plasma Gun). All monsters fire rate is the same and shoot one plasma ball per shot but the following:

• Shotgunners shoot two plasma balls at once
• Hell Knights and Barons shoot two consecutive plasma balls
• Cacodemons shoot 4 plasma balls at once
• Lost Souls are sentient BFG balls (no tracers involved)
• Pain Elementals spawns BFG balls (no tracers involved)
• Mancubi shoot 3 volleys of three plasma balls, the fire rate is the same as the Plasma Gun
• Arachnotrons fire rate is the same as the Plasma Gun
• Revenants normal shot is 4 plasma balls, homing shot is BFG ball (no tracers involved)
• Archviles shoot 10 plasma balls at once
• Cyberdemons shoot 3 volleys of six plasma balls, fire rate is double the Plasma Gun
• Spider Mastermind has a BFG now, fire rate is the same... as the Spider Mastermind

That is enough to be it's own mod instead of a skill level.

 

5 hours ago, Sena said:

 

All RNG values are twice as long.

Simple but effective.

[Dubbag]

My difficulty is called "My Ass Hurts"

Any Revenant punch from behind is insta-death

Edited May 3, 2022 by Dub Bag

[bofu]

UV Spawns, but ITYTD double ammo and damage calculations. For players who want to take on an increased enemy count over HNTR or HMP, but don't want to deal with the increased damage that monsters bring as a result.

 

Nightmare, except all Zombiemen, Shotgunners, Imps, Demons, and Spectres are replaced with Chaingunners, and all Hell Knights or Barons of Hell are replaced with Revenants. Archviles, flying enemies, Cyberdemons, and Spider Masterminds are unchanged.

 

Ultra-Violence, except with respawning monsters and ammunition.

 

Ultra-Violence, but all health spawns are removed. Instead, all enemies drop a health item upon death based on their tier (Zombiemen, Imps, etc. drop health bonuses; Chaingunners, Cacodemons, etc. drop stimpacks; Hell Knights, Barons, Archviles, etc. drop medkits; Cyberdemons and Spider Masterminds drop soulspheres). Megaspheres are unchanged.

 

Ultra-Violence with a focus on melee. Player melee attacks do double damage, incoming damage is reduced by half while the player is using a melee weapon, and upon killing an enemy with a melee attack, player movement speed temporarily increases. On the flip side, ammunition picked up from large ammo items is halved. 

Edited May 3, 2022 by bofu

[Maribo]

9 minutes ago, bofu said:

On the flip side, ammunition picked up from large ammo items is halved. 

Just commit to the Tyson theme and convert them all to bullets instead. These rules don't mention whether you'd be given Berserk damage values by default, and not having them would still make punching basically non-viable. I imagine you'd see a lot more people running through hitscanner areas with fists, and that's about it. :P

[bofu]

5 minutes ago, Maribo said:

Just commit to the Tyson theme and convert them all to bullets instead. These rules don't mention whether you'd be given Berserk damage values by default, and not having them would still make punching basically non-viable. I imagine you'd see a lot more people running through hitscanner areas with fists, and that's about it. :P

 

I still want the player to be able to use their full arsenal, particularly for large groups and boss monsters, but also give them an incentive to kill things with the chainsaw (and use the berserk when they have it). Doubling the damage of the base fist also makes it pretty good at taking out low tier enemies in small numbers (though I think perhaps the attack speed also would need to be adjusted to make it practical).

[FEDEX]

@Dub BagThose f*cking revenants, of course 

@bofu i like your "Kill or be killed" difficult , sounds very interesting

[shark man]

redneck themed difficulties:

 

Spoiler

 

easy mode placement revananants are replaced with hell knights (forced pistol start) 

 

normal mode placement, double ammo ,monsters have 10 percent more heath (forced pistol start) 

 

hard mode placement, former humans are replaced with shot-gunners, monsters have a lower painchance, (forced pistol start)

 

hard mode placement, former humans are replaced with shot-gunners, monsters have a lower painchance, fast monsters, player's max heath is 70 (forced pistol start)

 

 

Edited May 3, 2022 by shark man

[raymoohawk]

i don't know what to call it, but a difficulty in which all monsters are invisible as in no sprites are drawn for the enemies, but you still get to see projectiles

[Doomkid]

This thread has made me SO glad id were the ones crafting the difficulty settings (and their names), rather than you guys :^)

 

14 minutes ago, raymoohawk said:

i don't know what to call it, but a difficulty in which all monsters are invisible as in no sprites are drawn for the enemies, but you still get to see projectiles

This is super similar to how "stealth enemies" work, the big difference being that they're invisible the whole time, other than their attack frames and their death animation. So maybe it could be called "stealth mode"!