The Doom pistol is great, actually

[idbeholdME]

I consider the pistol a utility weapon. Wouldn't normally use it but it can still have a minor role in normal, full arsenal gameplay:

 

Saving a bullet when finishing off enemies or shooting distant switches/triggers to once again, save a bullet. Can be useful in WADs that are very tight on ammo.

[Rudolph]

9 hours ago, Solmyr said:

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

To this day, it still bothers me how the Super Nailgun is the one that uses two nails per shot, not the other way around. Sure, the regular Nailgun looks smaller and sounds weaker, but it literally has two barrels!

Edited August 1, 2022 by Rudolph

[JustAthel]

The pistol is such a classic, nifty little piece to be introduced to the game in general. It's the first weapon you'll ever see in the game, after all -- whether it be you starting up a new game or letting the demos play out, it's immediately recognizable. The appearance and sound just give me the message that it'll get the job done, but it's going to take an awful long time to whittle down your tougher opponents with it. There's mods that replace the pistol with other weapons, and though they feel fine for the context they're in, I still don't feel like anything can replace that dinky little sidepiece you start with.

 

Plus there's personal satisfaction in shooting lost souls from afar with the pistol, but that's just my own method of taking the cheeky bastards out :p

[Ofisil]

I feel the same with enemy usage.

When I start a megawad (my favourite kind of wads) and see Arch-viles, Mancubi, and so on in the first map it takes a lot away from the fun.

[BGreener]

51 minutes ago, Sneezy McGlassFace said:

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. 

 

The "upgrades" are more "sidegrades" than how they are in Doom. The regular shotgun still maintains its use as a snipey pokey weapon, while also being half of the damage of the double barrelled as opposed to a third. Rockets may fly straighter and faster than grenades, but the rocket launcher fires slower than the grenade launcher; you go through levels choosing which way to spend explosives, as the GL can potentially dish out more damage per second. The last big one for me is the super nailgun not sharing an ammo pool with the "super weapon" slot unlike the plasma rifle and BFG, even though the regular nailgun gets mostly invalidated by the super.

 

"How I .deh Doom to be more like it" is me making the shotgun refire faster, it's not to make it more like Quake but just more of a choice when you get the ssg. I first got introduced to that idea through Struggle, it has a lot of simple upgrades to the roster that I agree with. But this is only when the mood suits me, as I otherwise enjoy vanilla Doom's weapon progression through pistol starts as much as much as I enjoy Quake's balanced roster through continuous play.

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

1 hour ago, Rudolph said:

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.

IIRC some wads use the guns akimbo sprite. Good stuff

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

29 minutes ago, BGrieber said:

 

The "upgrades" are more "sidegrades" than how they are in Doom. The regular shotgun still maintains its use as a snipey pokey weapon, while also being half of the damage of the double barrelled as opposed to a third. Rockets may fly straighter and faster than grenades, but the rocket launcher fires slower than the grenade launcher; you go through levels choosing which way to spend explosives, as the GL can potentially dish out more damage per second. The last big one for me is the super nailgun not sharing an ammo pool with the "super weapon" slot unlike the plasma rifle and BFG, even though the regular nailgun gets mostly invalidated by the super.

 

"How I .deh Doom to be more like it" is me making the shotgun refire faster, it's not to make it more like Quake but just more of a choice when you get the ssg. I first got introduced to that idea through Struggle, it has a lot of simple upgrades to the roster that I agree with. But this is only when the mood suits me, as I otherwise enjoy vanilla Doom's weapon progression through pistol starts as much as much as I enjoy Quake's balanced roster through continuous play.

I need to check out Struggle. Sounds fun. It is my favourite passtime, after all.

[Rudolph]

19 minutes ago, Sneezy McGlassFace said:

IIRC some wads use the guns akimbo sprite. Good stuff

True, but the weapon still uses ammo, unlike Rise of the Triad's Pistols.

[sandwedge]

Yeah the way the pistol is just barely functional is what makes pistol starts so fun and rewarding for me.  You get to experience that loop of eking out with the pistol (hopefully not for too long) and you get that dopamine hit when you pick up the shotgun every time.  It's also fun when you have a ton of bullets waiting in the wings and you finally find that chaingun... mmm that's a 10.

 

I can't remember where I heard that same opinion that the pistol is purposely bad to make other weapons feel better, but I've heard that before.  Anchoring is an interesting word to use since I'm familiar with it in the psychology of economics, where companies use a similar technique of presenting you with a bad deal first and then a better deal after, so the first price is anchored in your mind and makes you want the second.  For example, a physical newspaper subscription, and then a cheaper subscription with print and web news.  Dan Ariely talks talks about stuff like that in Predictably Irrational, so its actually kind of funny how we can be manipulated into feeling like a weapon is almost more powerful than it is through the same technique.  Of course, for good this time lol.

 

I still wish it sounded a liiittle better :P

[dasho]

The pistol is a chore to use, and ever since I was young I remember being irritated that you didn't start with the same weapon as the Zombiemen. It seems like the 'anchoring' you describe is only effective the very first time you ever play Doom; after this you know that you can do better than the pea shooter.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

When I think of cool pistols from FPS games the doom pistol is NEVER ever on my mind.

[Solmyr]

3 hours ago, Sneezy McGlassFace said:

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. 

It's not really an actual story, more like an excuse plot, but it's in the manual, and it goes more or less like this: Doomguy punches his CO killing him for having ordered to fire upon protesting civilians, gets transferred to a UAC Mars base as punishment, Doomguy gets bored to death after months of getting stuck there and not having anything better to do than watch old movies. Unbeknownst to him the UAC was experimenting with teleportation between Phobos and Deimos for months, there are reports of test subjects going insane after crossing the portal, and some of them suddenly explode (that explains the gibbed marine remains you see in the starting area of E1M1, a failed attempt at demonic posession). Then the invasion happeens, Deimos gets sucked into Hell, a distress call is sent from Phobos to Mars base, since the only marines outside of Phobos are you and your squadmates, you have to go along with them to Phobos in order to investigate what happened, you are put on sentry duty while your squadmates go inside the base, on your radio you hear them fighting something, dying, and then silence. So you decide to go inside and find out what happened.

 

Edit: Oh i forgot to say that all of this happened in 2019, all according to the manual.

Edited August 1, 2022 by Solmyr

[Solmyr]

3 hours ago, Rudolph said:

To this day, it still bothers me how the Super Nailgun is the one that uses two nails per shot, not the other way around. Sure, the regular Nailgun looks smaller and sounds weaker, but it literally has two barrels!

I forgot about that! And yeah the fact that a two barreled nailgun didn't fire two nails per shot was as annoying as the fact that the weapons have no muzzle flashes.

Edited August 1, 2022 by Solmyr

[Rudolph]

Well, I would not say "annoying" so much as just weird, as Quake's Nailgun is still one of my favorite weapons in a first-person shooter. Some of my early memories of the game were of me firing it for the first time and being amazed by how novel and badass a nail-firing machine gun was. The Super Nailgun, however, is eminently forgettable, as it is essentially a chaingun - and a rather ugly one at that.

Edited August 1, 2022 by Rudolph

[7Mahonin]

Wolfenstein 3D uses an approach where each weapon has a higher rate of fire than the last, but they all deal the same damage (RNG) and use the same ammo. This makes it pretty much unnecessary to switch back to a previous weapon, because tapping fire for the SMG is exactly the same as firing the pistol, and tapping the chaingun gives you a two-round burst. Many people switch weapons in this game but I have found it doesn't really make any difference to switch or to just use the best weapon you have available, and just control your fire by not holding down fire for every encounter and to tap the button for more controlled fire. You get the same result.

 

Doom uses the approach of a "last resort" weapon with its starting gun. They're meant to just barely be enough to help you find another gun or more ammo, and then you will rarely, if ever, need to use it again. The chaingun can be used much the same way as the one in Wolf 3D. If you tap fire, you get a 2-round controlled burst that is a better attack than the pistol. So whenever I have the chaingun, I use it instead of the pistol for whenever I want to use bullet ammo. Also, I do not agree with people who say the SSG makes the regular shotgun redundant. The pump shotgun is faster to fire and is only so much weaker. It is also more accurate at long range, but I do feel the chaingun does make the pistol redundant once it's in your arsenal.

 

Duke Nukem 3D on the other hand, has a pistol that is far more useful throughout the game. With its high ammo capacity that is not shared among other weapons (ex. pistol and chaingun use their own ammo) and fast rate of fire, it is still the weakest weapon in the game but it is not so weak that it just falls into "last resort" category.

 

It seems games today still do either of these approaches from Doom or Duke 3D. You either have a really weak starting weapon that you'll quickly want to replace or the weapon you start with is decent enough to stand on its own while still being the weakest weapon.

Edited August 1, 2022 by 7Mahonin

[magicsofa]

Sounds like you would enjoy Blake Stone

 

WOMP

[azerty]

The pistol basically has no game play porous but it does have it's game design purposes. It's there for the player to learn and like you said very well anchor into your brain how encounters flow. I do understand why it's so hated in the doom community tho. When you normally buy a game you play it once and then your done with it certainly with a game like this where there is nothing more to explore after completing the campaign like in doom. But that's not how it's done in the modding community. We make a uncountable amount of maps and each of them start with the same weapon. Considering the fact that only players who are familiar with the game play mods the pistol loses it's game design purpose we already know how the game and encounters flow which means that it's useless for experienced players. 

[BGreener]

1 hour ago, 7Mahonin said:

Also, I do not agree with people who say the SSG makes the regular shotgun redundant. The pump shotgun is faster to fire and is only so much weaker. It is also more accurate at long range, but I do feel the chaingun does make the pistol redundant once it's in your arsenal.

 

The chaingun has the same spread as the shotgun, but it also just barely wins out over damage/second and can be burst fired for that perfect two-shot . The super shotgun is faster than the "twice as slow" it's claimed to be and can deal nearly three times as much damage. The poor regular little dude will rarely see use over those two in my continuous playthroughs.

 

But I will say, that there will be times I want to plink at some distanced targets and I'm starved on every other ammo except for shells - single shotgun comes to the rescue! A similar scenario will not be happening with the pistol.

[baja blast rd.]

The SSG is a better sniping weapon than even the CG sometimes. ;)

 

 

When I play this map, once I have the SSG, I pretend the SG and CG are simply not weapons.

 

This map exaggerates the dynamic a bit, but imo Doom's long weapon switch time really hurts the pistol, SG, and even the CG. Using the SSG as an "inefficient" sniper is often faster and keeps you safer than toggling between it and other weapons. In 90% of maps you will never run out of shells, and in the rare ammo-deprivation map, pseudo-pacifism is hilariously more effective than trying to use the weaker guns well. One unexpected HK-rev infight saves 8 shells. Bypassing harmless mid-tiers for when you're sure you can kill them is +4 or +6 (and sometimes that opens up an unexpected infight possibility).

[Shanoa]

I love the pistol! I tend to be a bit frugal early on in a mapset and my "rules" goes as follow:

- Imp survive 1 shotgun blast? Finish with pistol.

- Pinky does not go down after 2 shotgun blasts? Pistol time

Applies to caco and occasionally hellknights but with SSG. I suppose I enjoy it less as I progress through a mapset and encounters become trickier, especially if enemies come at you in group I'm not always thinking of switching out to pistol.

Edited August 2, 2022 by Shanoa

[Azure_Horror]

Being a weak starting weapon is a niche indeed, but the standard Doom 1-2 pistol is bad even at that niche.

 

With its pitiful single-shot damage and horrendous rate of fire pistol feels ok for only two things – killing common zombies and stunning lost souls. Killing other, non-zombieman monsters takes too much time or carries too much of a risk (shotgunners).

 

To add insult to injury, the pistol becomes inaccurate, if you fire it too rapidly. Yay, lowering the rate of fire even further! Yay, tapping fire button a lot!

 

Also, bullets are premium ammo in most cases. Chaingun is situational, but very convenient. Saving bullets for chaingun is usually a good idea. And if shells become premium ammo – than we are likely facing a lot of bigger threats. In those situations pistol is so pitiful, that using it transcends common boredom. Pistoling down a caco, or a revenant is some advanced super-boredom type of nonsense.

 

Good example of a puny starting weapon – Doom 2016 pistol.

Does not use ammo at all, finishes weakened earlygame foes. With good player skills, can be effective against some annoying enemies, like imps, soldiers, or lost souls. (Unlike Doom 1-2 imps, Doom 2016 imps are terrifying glass-cannons. Imagine Doom2 imps that throw mancubus fireballs and run around like archviles!).

Upgraded to full, Doom 2016 pistol becomes good-ish even against some big hitters. Pistol full-upgrade challenge can be done very quickly, unlike the grenade-mode shotgun challenge, or optical sights assault rifle challenge.

 

Good reworks of a pistol for a puny starting weapon role

- Pistols from Eviternity and Uprising.

- Slow-firing rifles from Judgment, Bourgeois megawad, Ray Mohawk 1, Jamal Jones*, etc.

Those guns have increased rate of fire and always shoot accurately. High accuracy is very important. It allows for saving ammo without gimmicky tapping of the fire button.

- Valiant pistol is not really impressive. The accuracy problem is still there, the fire rate is insufficient to comfortably oppose valiant Super-Imps, and the existence of super-chaingun makes bullets to be as important as plasma. Valiant weapon selection would be better with Doom 1-2 chaingun, or Rowdy Rudy 2 assault rifle occupying slot 2, and starting bullets reduced to 20-30, IMHO.

 

*I was mistaken about Jamal Jones Rifle. It has small rate of fire, but it shouts 2 bullets per shot, like struggle version of a pistol.

Edited August 2, 2022 by Azure_Horror

[Doomy__Doom]

I'd describe vanilla pistol as "bad where it could/should be good and good where it's meant to be bad".

 

It's barely usable as a starting weapon in most "adventure" wads unless you're a fan of tedium, but conversely makes "difficult content" designers' job easier by not needing to standartise on a nerfed starter weapon, since it's already unable to do much in that environment.

 

Same with the fist, more or less - it's not a decent fallback weapon in any way shape or form, but mappers have the option to turn it good on demand via berserk and make it serve the needs of the level.

 

I'll condede that in context of Doom 1 pistol was a good design - it needed to mostly be good against zombies and shotgunners, and big scary hellspawn would call for better guns. E3M1 throwing Imp/Caco mix at you straight away is a good example - driving home that your situation is grim.

[Azure_Horror]

1 hour ago, Doomy__Doom said:

I'd describe vanilla pistol as "bad where it could/should be good and good where it's meant to be bad".

 

It's barely usable as a starting weapon in most "adventure" wads unless you're a fan of tedium, but conversely makes "difficult content" designers' job easier by not needing to standartise on a nerfed starter weapon, since it's already unable to do much in that environment.

 

Same with the fist, more or less - it's not a decent fallback weapon in any way shape or form, but mappers have the option to turn it good on demand via berserk and make it serve the needs of the level.

 

I'll condede that in context of Doom 1 pistol was a good design - it needed to mostly be good against zombies and shotgunners, and big scary hellspawn would call for better guns. E3M1 throwing Imp/Caco mix at you straight away is a good example - driving home that your situation is grim.

 

For a low-powered starting weapon, I would prefer a stronger pistol, but with less bullets. Still keeps a player mostly helpless for challenge maps, but makes adventure maps less tedious.

[Pechudin]

On 7/31/2022 at 11:35 PM, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

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.

 

Least fun in what way? Chainsawing Cacos/PEs/Pinkies/Spectres/Archviles is fun with the chainsaw, while the Pistol is ... uh.

[Stabbey]

Ehhh... interesting take, but even granting the idea of anchoring and it making other weapons feel better, that still isn't a substitute for what the pistol could be.

 

Here's a couple changes to the bullet weapons which would have given both the pistol and chaingun a useful niche:

- Have the pistol always be 100% accurate even when firing as fast as possible,

- Give the chaingun a spinup time before it fires, followed by a substantially increased fire rate (which ends up with greater ammo consumption)

- The chaingun would also have its accuracy decreased, even for the first couple of shots

 

That would provide a better niche for the pistol as a weak, but always accurate weapon, and the chaingun's niche would be longer to get going, but it would dump more ammo faster, but it would be more inaccurate and consume too much ammo to limit its use. Ar Luminae used the Supercharge mod, and I quite liked the always-accurate pistol and the high-power, ammo-chewing chaingun.

[QuaketallicA]

On 7/31/2022 at 10:31 AM, Sneezy McGlassFace said:

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.

 

Well said. I'd add too that it adds more depth to the monsters. Fighting a pinky with nothing but the pistol in a tight corridor is a lot more frightening than with a SSG, the same way surviving a Baron or Revenant with just the basic shotgun makes those enemies seem tougher and scarier. Then once you get bigger guns, that allows the designer to throw more bigger enemies at you. 

[QuaketallicA]

Then Quake 2 adds back to the pistol, and I only ever use it to illuminate dark corridors lol.

[Sonikkumania]

On 8/1/2022 at 11:21 PM, magicsofa said:

Sounds like you would enjoy Blake Stone

 

WOMP

PEW PEW PEW

MEDIC!

[Azure_Horror]

47 minutes ago, QuaketallicA said:

 

Well said. I'd add too that it adds more depth to the monsters. Fighting a pinky with nothing but the pistol in a tight corridor is a lot more frightening than with a SSG, the same way surviving a Baron or Revenant with just the basic shotgun makes those enemies seem tougher and scarier. Then once you get bigger guns, that allows the designer to throw more bigger enemies at you.  

 

Surviving pinky with a pistol only shows the opposite, IMHO.

It demonstrates, how limited the pinky moveset is. Poor thing runs slowly, always bumps into corners, takes forewer to byte, and gets painstunned like crazy.

 

As for shotgun against barons and revs - it takes a lot of time, yes, but the difficulty depends not on time, but on the room to dodge. If you can run circles around a baron - he is an easy pray. If you can reliably send rev missiles into a wall - he is an easy prey too. Weapon power only regulates time needed to deal with the enemy in those cases.

[Sonikkumania]

Personally, I always thought the sprite work for the pistol was gorgeous. Then again, DSPISTOL in such a lame ass sound, lol. I always aim to replace it with something else.