Do you think the BFG could be improved?

[ReaperAA]

To be fair, I don't think the problem is with BFG itself, but rather the BFG vs plasma gun balance. Since they both share same ammo pool and BFG not only has more DPS but is also more ammo efficient most of the times. The only scenario I can think where plasma is better is if you are dealing with scattered zombie tier enemies (where BFG would be overkill) or say fighting a SMM on a far away platform that you can reach to it and thus using BFG would be waste of ammo.

 

This is also similar to pistol vs chaingun issue. Whatever the pistol can do, the chaingun does it straight out better. Even sniping enemies with chaingun is better by tap-firing.

 

[Ravendesk]

That thread got me thinking - what are some interesting bossfights against a single cyber (maybe with a tiny bit of help from lesser monsters) that you can think of?

 

One fight that was very memorable to me is the secret fight from 30 Monsters Challenge map 64. Pretty clever setup, that requires additional precision in both forwards and backwards movement when dealing with the cyber. Video of the fight (with timecode):

 

 

Feels like I have definitely seen more but cannot name them off the top of my head.

[banjiepixel]

7 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

This is also similar to pistol vs chaingun issue. Whatever the pistol can do, the chaingun does it straight out better. Even sniping enemies with chaingun is better by tap-firing.

 

Almost all weapons in Doom exist in pairs and I am pretty sure all of those pairs could be tweaked to make them more balanced. Chaingun kinda needs a delay after tapfiring to make pistol more usable, SSG probably should be little bit slower to give more reason to use shotgun and BFG might need some extra delay before firing to increase risks of using it over plasmagun.

[St. Mildly Annoyed]

16 hours ago, Dimon12321 said:

B

When you did the first BFG shot, what did you expect from it? That's, what I think, is a point for improvement.

I personally expected it to be a more powerful rocket launcher, judging by the size of the ball/projectile coming out of it. Brutal Doom, btw, takes this into account by giving a BFG ball splash damage. It's a trap for vanilla Doom players, who prefer doing point blank shots to get maximum impact, but according to common sense, a giant energy ball can definitely do some backfire at a close range.

 

I kind of expected it to function like a cross between the plasma gun and the rocket launcher when I first found it. Also, I now just considered how bad 3000 damage would be for a crowd control type weapon and dealing with the spider mastermind. Also, the 360-degree tracer damage is one of the best ideas in this thread so far.

[St. Mildly Annoyed]

Now that we're starting to delve into the topic of bosses, what are some of the best non vanilla bosses you've seen implemented in game? This can range from fast glass cannons to ones with a health pool a couple times that of a cyberdemon. Has anyone ever seen any multistage monsters implemented as well?

[Shepardus]

40 minutes ago, St. Mildly Annoyed said:

Has anyone ever seen any multistage monsters implemented as well?

Eviternity's boss comes to mind.

[Klear]

1 hour ago, St. Mildly Annoyed said:

Now that we're starting to delve into the topic of bosses, what are some of the best non vanilla bosses you've seen implemented in game? This can range from fast glass cannons to ones with a health pool a couple times that of a cyberdemon. Has anyone ever seen any multistage monsters implemented as well?

 

Going down has a two-stage Spider Mastermind.

[St. Mildly Annoyed]

Just now, Klear said:

 

Going down has a two-stage Spider Mastermind.

 

22 minutes ago, Shepardus said:

Eviternity's boss comes to mind.

Cool, I'll check these to out latter after I figure out how to make a wad run in GZDoom. I'm running into a few issues learning how to work with slade.

[den killen]

17 hours ago, Dimon12321 said:

BFG is a peculiar weapon with a unique set of rules. I don't recall similar weapons in more modern games

 

When you did the first BFG shot, what did you expect from it? That's, what I think, is a point for improvement.

I personally expected it to be a more powerful rocket launcher, judging by the size of the ball/projectile coming out of it. Brutal Doom, btw, takes this into account by giving a BFG ball splash damage. It's a trap for vanilla Doom players, who prefer doing point blank shots to get maximum impact, but according to common sense, a giant energy ball can definitely do some backfire at a close range.

 

Now, to the rays which kill enemies. 

As we know, when a BFG ball comes out, the game records the direction you are facing, and when it hits something, 40 rays are generated from the position of the shooter in a 22.5-degree spectre to the left and to the right from the direction recorded by the game. That's a cool feature. It makes you stay close to the crowd, so all the rays would do damage. But it also contradicts the common sense, because if you hide behind the wall, rays don't do anything.

It would be good to attach the rays to the ball itself. Say, these 40 rays would spread in a 360-degree spectre around the hit spot, ignoring the shooter, of course. Or let the spectre be 180-degree to keep the weapon more crowd-cleaning.

That's basically what we got from Quake 2 onwards. I'll always enjoy the catharsis of a pure splash-based BFG, especially with how Doom 2016 did it, but I also like the OG version. It is very powerful, but requires some level of strategy to use most effectively, which balances it fairly well in my opinion. Wasting the ball behind a corner for cover and peeking out to release the rays is one of my favorite methods.

The real issue is that this functionality was never documented anywhere for players to find on their own and is too weird and janky to intuit through gameplay.

[Fiber Wire]

Personally I think the BFG is fine as-is. Nerfing it would only make it useless and it doesn't need to be anymore powerful than it already is either. It's just powerful enough that it takes somewhat of a learning curve to truly understand how to use the BFG effectively. You can easily waste its ammo by using it improperly, especially in Deathmatch.

[Murdoch]

Yes, it's clearly not big and powerful enough. Modders, please make an EBFG - even bigger fucking gun.

[St. Mildly Annoyed]

37 minutes ago, Fiber Wire said:

Personally I think the BFG is fine as-is. Nerfing it would only make it useless and it doesn't need to be anymore powerful than it already is either. It's just powerful enough that it takes somewhat of a learning curve to truly understand how to use the BFG effectively. You can easily waste its ammo by using it improperly, especially in Deathmatch.

Fair point, after rereading this thread, I believe only a minor tone down would be needed in order to make vanilla boss fights less of a massive pushover.

[bofu]

Most of the BFG's "issues" arise from the placement of the boss monsters, not from the weapon design itself. Tired of your players one-shotting your Spider Masterminds or two-shotting your Cyberdemons? Then stop putting them in places where the player can run up to them and hit them with all those tracers at once! Put them above the player, across chasms, whatever.

 

While I'd love to see a DECORATE/ZSCRIPT/MBF21 BFG that uses tracers that emit from the projectile rather than from the player, none of that is a balance thing but is rather an immersion thing. It doesn't take sense that I can fire a BFG down one hallway with no monsters in it, strafe to the opening of a parallel hallway full of monsters, and kill them all because I'm looking down the hallway when the BFG ball hits a wall in the other hallway.

Edited April 10, 2023 by bofu