The Doom pistol is great, actually

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

Yes, I do mean that piece of crap plinker that takes like five shots to down even the weakest enemy in the game. Imagine trying to get a cyber with the pistol, it would take you like a hundred million years. You play MAP01 of any megawad and pray the mapper won't make you go through the entire level with just the pistol. So why do I think it's great? Because of what I just said. It's essential that the pistol is crap because of something called "anchoring." Now, what does that mean:

When you play Doom the first time, you shoot a few zombies and that seals what encounters feel like in your mind. I have this weapon, against this enemy, and it takes this much effort. Your brain logs that somewhere deep, and every following encounter will be compared to it. You go on, shooting your pistol, until you get a shotgun. You press the trigger, and kill like three zombies at once! BOOM! How awesome is that? Because you know what a hassle it is with the pistol. Now the shotgun feels all the cooler! You get way better weapon, but still encounter zombies and imps so you feel like a badass. Until you get the SSG. Oh yeah, that's when the real fun begins. And you know how satisfying it is because you know what the pistol feels like. Your mind is still anchored to it, that's the baseline for combat. The pistol is still an adequate solution when dealing with low-tier enemies. It's not completely crap. But it gets outperformed very fast. And the shift from the base pistol to literally anything else is what makes the other weapons feel so damn satisfying.

And if you play "the Sandy Petersen way," you're starting with the pistol every time.

 

Let's compare that to Quake, id's next game. They got rid of the weakass pistol altogether, and start you with a shotgun. Great, right? No. They also beefed up the enemies quite a bit. You shotgun a few soldiers, get a double barrel shotgun and ... it's better but not that much better. The shotgun is weaker but faster, and the double barrel is stronger but slower. The regular shotgun remains a viable option throughout many Quake levels for mid-range sniping. The step up from shotgun to double barrel is not a huge deal. The step up from Doom pistol to a shotgun is massive.

 

And that's why the Doom pistol is great, actually.

[Ludi]

I love your thought process! I personally like to make the pistol a tad better with DeHackEd, but this post definitely makes me appreciate the default pistol more.

[Stupid Bunny]

Ooooh another one for the unpopular opinions thread for sure

 

This is an interesting take—if I’ve got you right, you’re saying the pistol is great, not on its own level, but as an essential part of the progression of arms you get, that pistol-starting a level and collecting new weapons wouldn’t have the satisfaction it does if your starting weapon was something super or even moderately badass.

 

If that’s the case, then I’m with you on that. There’s something exciting about starting every map with a little pop gun, one that can get you by until you get something heftier, and which allows the mapper a lot more flexibility to build out a specialized arsenal for the map. It even gives the berserk and chainsaw ample opportunity to shine in maps where no weapons/ammo are offered. I mean as I run with this it drives home that the pistol itself is pretty wimpy and not that effective but as a starting weapon I wouldn’t swap it out with anything else (I will gladly play and enjoy a WAD where someone has swapped it out with something else.)

 

Now offer me a similar hot take for the unberserked fist!

[Maribo]

Also worth considering is the pistol's usefulness in the context of Tyson or Tyson-adjacent maps. It becomes an invaluable tool for dealing with hitscanners, rather than waltzing up to them and taking 45 damage because they decided to shoot right when you walked up.

[Doomkid]

When another player complains about the pistol, I modify it in DeHackEd to be more powerful then shoot them with it.

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

30 minutes ago, Stupid Bunny said:

the pistol is great, not on its own level, but as an essential part of the progression of arms you get

Yup, exactly

 

30 minutes ago, Stupid Bunny said:

Now offer me a similar hot take for the unberserked fist!

Alright, let's see..

I'm going to assume you have played Amnesia: the Dark Descent. A great horror game, Doom was also made as a horror game so there's the parallel. It was the first big, successful horror game that gave you no weapons, and made you deal with scary monsters. Your only way is hiding in a cupboard, sucking your thumb and waiting for the eldritch abomination to get bored and leave. You have no direct way of defending yourself, there are no weapons. But there is a physics system. So you can grab things, and throw them. "Cool," you may say, "Imma throw a chair at this ugly motherfucker" the first time you see it. So you do. Either you miss, or watch the chair bounce off it with no effect what so ever. So you run screaming, and knowing how utterly effed you are, as it begins charging at you. You can say that makes it even more scary - because you do have the option to fight but that option is absolutely not viable.

Quote

So your options are either stealth, or extra stealth with bells on. Very quiet bells, obviously.

With unberserked fist, you have an option when you run out of bullets. But you won't make it far trying that. It's there to show you how much you must rely on your gear. You're just not gonna punch a demon to death, and live long enough to tell the story.

Edited July 31, 2022 by Sneezy McGlassFace
grammar

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

The only thing I don't like about the pistol/chaingun is the sfx. I always expect popcorn to come flying out when I use them. The least fun weapon for me is the chainsaw.

[TheLippyServer]

2 hours ago, Stupid Bunny said:

Now offer me a similar hot take for the unberserked fist!

I actually find myself using the unberserked fist regularly on pinkies to save ammo. It's still terrible, but it's not useless.

[Naarok0fkor]

I never liked the pistol. I prefer Brutal Doom's rifle & higher ROF gatling (without the recoiling up action in some versions). Her's something nice I found on DA recently.

https://www.deviantart.com/xxheavy-swagxx/art/Desert-eagle-shotgun-doom-custom-weapon-924196263

[BigBoy91]

I don't mind it. The Valiant pistol is damn near perfect though.

[out_of_service]

Hopefully you can find more substantial firepower somewhere within the station.

[Lila Feuer]

Preferable to your fist, that's for certain. It's still useful for conserving shotgun shells when you don't have a chaingun yet and shells are in limited supply. Finishes off weakened enemies nicely too.

[heliumlamb]

it does more damage based on what its sound has been replaced with, as far as i can tell

Edited August 1, 2022 by heliumlamb

[nolongeramnion]

[blanked]

Edited November 29, 2023 by amnion

[DannyMan]

Don't forget about the pistol from HacX that shoots two bullets at once per shot.

[kwc]

The pistol is good because its bad, huh?
This is an interesting position to hold because one can file pretty much any complaint about the pistol as evidence to it's effectiveness. Nice grift ;)

[Shepardus]

I think Doom has plenty of weapon progression even without the pistol.

[Egregor]

Pistol start is great cuz I ain't got time to play a megawad, I just want to beat map17 tonight, wait where the hell are all the weapons? I haven't even seen a sargent yet, ah shit, don't tell me they didn't design for pistol start!

[Solmyr]

Interesting analysis, while i don't mind the pistol being lame as it's natural for the starting ranged weapon, it also makes sense in the backstory, as when Doomguy arrived with his squadmates to investigate what happened on Phobos he was relegated to sentry duty outside the base and left with the bare minimum for self defence (as if they drew straws and Doomguy took the short one) while the rest of his buddies took the big guns and got inside only to find an untimely end there, then it's up to Doomguy to find out what happened and also in the mean time look for a better weapon and quickly, lest he finds death much sooner than his buddies did.

 

12 hours ago, Sneezy McGlassFace said:

Let's compare that to Quake, id's next game. They got rid of the weakass pistol altogether, and start you with a shotgun. Great, right? No. They also beefed up the enemies quite a bit. You shotgun a few soldiers, get a double barrel shotgun and ... it's better but not that much better. The shotgun is weaker but faster, and the double barrel is stronger but slower. The regular shotgun remains a viable option throughout many Quake levels for mid-range sniping. The step up from shotgun to double barrel is not a huge deal. The step up from Doom pistol to a shotgun is massive.

Agreed, in Quake things really felt better when you find the Super Nailgun, the weapon progression doesn't feel as good as Doom's.

Edited August 1, 2022 by Solmyr

[TARDIS32]

Never thought of it that way, but it's a good point. Probably because I'm not typically a pistol starter. I do pistol starts more as a challenge than the standard way I play. 

[Jayextee]

This is exactly why I map with a fair amount of pistol play as a 'tease' before giving the shotgun; as most of us will agree, DOOM's shotgun is one of the best in any FPS. I'd go as far as saying that's because the pistol contextualises it as the satisfying and rewarding weapon it is.

[OniriA]

This is where pistols are actually awesome. 

 

 

However, the most deadliest and effective pistol has to be the loverboy from Ion Fury.

Edited August 1, 2022 by OniriA

[BGreener]

21 hours ago, Sneezy McGlassFace said:

Let's compare that to Quake, id's next game. They got rid of the weakass pistol altogether, and start you with a shotgun. Great, right? No. They also beefed up the enemies quite a bit. You shotgun a few soldiers, get a double barrel shotgun and ... it's better but not that much better. The shotgun is weaker but faster, and the double barrel is stronger but slower. The regular shotgun remains a viable option throughout many Quake levels for mid-range sniping. The step up from shotgun to double barrel is not a huge deal. The step up from Doom pistol to a shotgun is massive.

 

I can respect the progression of Doom's pistol-to-shotgun as much as I respect Quake's practicality of saying "here you go, now go get 'em". I also admire Quake's weapon balance in general, I wish Doom's shotguns were similarly balanced though that's where .deh patches come to the rescue.

[Rudolph]

In hindsight, I think Doom 2016 has the best Pistol, i.e. weak but with unlimited ammo and the ability to fire a charged shot. I guess Quake IV did it first, but it is not a Doom game, so I guess it does not really count.

Edited August 1, 2022 by Rudolph

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

19 minutes ago, BGrieber said:

 

I can respect the progression of Doom's pistol-to-shotgun as much as I respect Quake's practicality of saying "here you go, now go get 'em". I also admire Quake's weapon balance in general, I wish Doom's shotguns were similarly balanced though that's where .deh patches come to the rescue.

Would you mind elaborating on the quake weapon balance a bit? I'm not sure what in particular you like about it. And how you .deh doom to be more like it. 

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

17 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

In hindsight, I think Doom 2016 has the best Pistol, i.e. weak but with unlimited ammo and the ability to fire a charged shot. I guess Quake IV did it first, but it is not a Doom game, so I guess it does not really count.

There's a few games that have infinite ammo side arm but I never really thought about it in depth. I'm sure it has impact on the gameplay too. 

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

33 minutes ago, OniriA said:

This is where pistols are actually awesome. 

 

 

However, the most deadliest and effective pistol has to be the loverboy from Ion Fury.

Loverboy is my favourite pistol of any game. 

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

1 hour ago, Jayextee said:

This is exactly why I map with a fair amount of pistol play as a 'tease' before giving the shotgun; as most of us will agree, DOOM's shotgun is one of the best in any FPS. I'd go as far as saying that's because the pistol contextualises it as the satisfying and rewarding weapon it is.

I used to be annoyed by it, and when I started mapping, I always placed a shotgunner near the starting point. But I think I'll change that in my future maps. 

[Rudolph]

7 minutes ago, Sneezy McGlassFace said:

There's a few games that have infinite ammo side arm but I never really thought about it in depth. I'm sure it has impact on the gameplay too. 

Right, like Rise of the Triad. I really do not like that game, but that is one thing it does better than Doom in my opinion.

 

Plus you get to upgrade it into holding two pistols akimbo, which always looks so cool.

Edited August 1, 2022 by Rudolph

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

9 hours ago, Solmyr said:

Interesting analysis, while i don't mind the pistol being lame as it's natural for the starting ranged weapon, it also makes sense in the backstory, as when Doomguy arrived with his squadmates to investigate what happened on Phobos he was relegated to sentry duty outside the base and left with the bare minimum for self defence (as if they drew straws and Doomguy took the short one) while the rest of his buddies took the big guns and got inside only to find an untimely end there, then it's up to Doomguy to find out what happened and also in the mean time look for a better weapon and quickly, lest he finds death much sooner than his buddies did.

 

Agreed, in Quake things really felt better when you find the Super Nailgun, the weapon progression doesn't feel as good as Doom's.

I didn't even know there was an actual story. I thought it's just the setting. Evil corporation technology research goes wrong, a good guy with gun is sent in to save the day.