What I never understood about most WADS

[ChestedArmor]

Why are there so few lightly modded wads? 

The majority is vanilla (which got pretty stale for my taste) and if I find a modded wad it's almost never something simple like some few new monsters or weapons, but an entire indie game worth of extra code.

Im not saying either is bad, I just wonder where the middle of these 2 extremes are.

[Dusty_Rhodes]

Sometimes new content can stick out awkwardly. Adding more to replace the stock content usually emphasizes the new mobs or weapons better. 

 

That said, pretty much every Doomkid mod I've played has a great balance between vanilla and molded assets. 180 Minutes Pour Vivre by the French Doom Community has a few custom monsters and a solid balance as well. Scythe 2 has a few tasteful additions as well. Of course, there's also the excellent Mordeth Episode 1. Skillsaw's stuff is generally good for this, as is Ribbiks' but I've only played Ancient Aliens and a few Ribbiks wads, so the rest is anecdotal.. I'm sure I can think of more if you're still looking.

 

But yeah, kind of hard to balance stuff, which is the main reason. That, and people just like vanilla Doom. It's more often that if people like it modded, they're gonna want it really modded.

[Antkibo]

What's "lightly" modded for you?

 

DBP and Doomkid (as said above) got some rockin' entries without much mumbo jumbo. Valiant and Lunatic are there also.

 

But, in general, look for limit-removing and/or Boom ones.

Edited December 25, 2022 by Antkibo

[Lucius Wooding]

The original gameplay balance is pretty well entrenched in a 30 year old game. Finding worthwhile additions can be very tricky and divide opinion; for me at least I feel the need to use the new monsters/weapons as cleverly and creatively as the old ones which is a high bar. There's a lot of expertise out there about what makes a good fight for the plasma, or how to place a good archvile because it's been experimented with so much. Making new monsters to me would feel gimmicky and forced unless I had some really cool idea and made great use of it in the WAD. I'd much rather make a very close to vanilla WAD and make the combat stand out than make one with mediocre combat relying on custom monsters. Someone else could make their own better WAD with the latter but with the former it'd be respected and memorable and able to be compared more with some of the better vanillaish WADs out there. It's the same reason why people still use oil paints despite the Renaissance masters arguably representing the peak of the medium and modern artists having access to Photoshop. Even though they've been around for thousands of years, it doesn't mean there are no new works of value to be made. There are so many subtleties and quirks to Doom that mappers take advantage of and I for one appreciate that kind of creativity within the original limitations.

 

Not to mention, it takes a very deft touch not to overdo mods. Sometimes I'll try out a WAD and everything is completely unfamiliar to the point it doesn't play like Doom and I'd have to relearn how to recognize and plan encounters. It only takes one trash alteration to poison the whole thing. 

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

I've seen plenty of "lightly modded" wads. The problem is that I can't recall which ones, probably because they were lightly modded, so the custom content doesn't stick around in my brain.

[LadyMistDragon]

Hear, here!!:d) I think Skillsaw is good at this sort of thing but honestly....that idea's crossed my mind too

[Gregor]

Eviternity, Heartland, 1000 Lines 3, Valiant, Epic 2, Auger;Zenith & Preacher. 

[Ofisil]

Personally I don't like heavy modding. When I play WADs I do so because I want more Doom.

If I want to play another game entirely... I'll play another game entirely.

[mrthejoshmon]

I have found myself recently being tired of straight up vanilla gameplay and have been actively including minor weapon mods myself, I have wanted to remain "vanilla" as possible however and have relied on purely Dehacked edits.

 

Recently however I have warmed up to the idea of using the ZDoom format and including more elements, working alongside Dehacked is actually a really difficult and complicated balancing act and you can only get away with so much (my attempts to modify the chaingun to fire quicker and use an extra firing sprite ended in the chaingun turning into a shotgunner and hard crashing the game).

 

Sometimes, even small edits and mods are actually fairly complicated, maybe that is why.

Another reason is because of mod compatibility, a lot of folks enjoy playing with mods like Smooth Doom, small mods are enough to completely break this.

[ReaperAA]

13 hours ago, Gregor said:

Eviternity, Heartland, 1000 Lines 3, Valiant, Epic 2, Auger;Zenith & Preacher. 

 

^This. Along with Ancient Aliens, Lunatic, Ozonia, Running Late 2, Scythe 2 and some of Doomkid's wads.

Edited December 26, 2022 by ReaperAA

[Doomkid]

Just as a rule of thumb, "lightly modded" would describe most partial conversions:

 

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Category:Partial_conversions

[ReaperAA]

17 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

Just as a rule of thumb, "lightly modded" would describe most partial conversions:

 

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Category:Partial_conversions

 

^This. Also it needs updating since it doesn't include Valiant, Eviternity and Ozonia

[kaleb.]

I think the weapons and enemies are already near perfect. I got no problem with gameplay mods but as Ofisil said, if I wanna play Doom, I'm gonna play Doom.
Just give me new unique levels and I'm more than happy to keep playing for the rest of my life.

[Noiser]

On 12/25/2022 at 4:26 PM, ChestedArmor said:

The majority is vanilla (which got pretty stale for my taste) and if I find a modded wad it's almost never something simple like some few new monsters or weapons, but an entire indie game worth of extra code.

REKKR and Harmony are vanilla and they are entirely new as well.

Edited December 27, 2022 by Noiser