Plasma gun's purpose when having a BFG

[Kinetic]

i love each and every one of these threads

[LoatharMDPhD]

// For those times when you need to shake a bad case of fleas...

[banjiepixel]

1 hour ago, Daerik said:

You could shoot the plasma for 10 seconds and still not do as much damage as a single bfg shot, which definitely doesn't take 10 seconds. But sure, lets pretend that how long it takes to "recover" from shooting one shot is ever the determining factor in what weapon you want to use.

 

It does seem to me that people include too little weapon switching in their playing style for the BFG cooldown to matter for them. But thing is, you are often not shooting primarily to deal damage. That's very common thing with Chaingun and also as it's bigger brother Plasmagun has usually very similar role in combat. They're great crowd control weapons and using that to open opportunities to use SSG or Rocket Launcher.

 

1 hour ago, SoBad said:

If your concern is multiple monsters attacking you, then the logical counterplay is to delete an enormous amount of them right now with one bfg shot instead of continuing to have to worry about dodging the majority of them while you kill them one at a time with plasma. Death is better crowd control than pain chance.

 

Sure, if the encounter threat level justifies that, there are limits what plasmagun can reasonably do. But there is a window where choice between Plasmagun and BFG matters rather little and just requires more footwork from the player. I am usually not in hurry and love to challenge myself so there are alot of reasons for me to use Plasmagun in situations where many other people would use BFG.

 

1 hour ago, SoBad said:

 Waxing on about the flexibility of the plasma rifle is confusing and nonsensical. It sounds like you haven't really played much Doom.

 

Then maybe you should give examples of situations that would debunk plasmagun being actually more flexible. Plasmagun will be useful not matter your skill level, even if BFG goes past it in uselfulness at some point. You can use it more ways than just to deal a big blast and function like screen clearing bombs do in bullet hell shooters. There are situations where plasmagun can work as more precise rocket launcher replacement with much more ammo to use. It can also function as more powerful chaingun in many situations. How is that not being more versatile?

 

1 hour ago, SoBad said:

If you're mostly only familiar with the iwads, then you've only experienced extremely easy gameplay scenarios that just won't ever punish you for poor play/planning. You can play terribly to great success and never have the opportunity to find out what you're doing wrong. Same goes for save/rewind abuse.

 

Why exactly are we analyzing the balance of vanilla weapons by using modern levels as the standard= The weapons were balanced for the IWAD levels so changes in weapon meta caused by PWADs should be taken as its own separate thing. The weapons themselves need to be rebalanced too if we want stay close as possible to the original intended balance that exists when playing IWAD levels. If PWAD makes Plasmagun underpowered and lose its purpose, that is a flaw in the PWAD and it would be then great idea to fix that weapon balancing issue.

 

This is where community's unwillingness to actually fix issues in the game causes alot of problems, but honestly alot of it can probably also be because many people just don't know how something like that could be potentially done. This subject probably should be actually researched by people in this community instead of being ignored.

 

1 hour ago, SoBad said:

Wildly talented players are trying to explain to you why you're thinking the wrong way about these things. It's okay to take their word for it. Or go play some pwads that will actually test your Doom knowhow and execution and watch your opinions turn on half a dime.

 

I don't want to step on the toes of talented players but there seems to be alot of layers to things the they really seem to be missing, including the fact that user made levels should have no relevance when talking about weapon balance of vanilla game and that it's actually the job of user made content to fix those balancing issues if they become relevant in a harder mapset. More tightly designed levels need also more tightly balanced weapons.

[Maribo]

17 minutes ago, banjiepixel said:

I don't want to step on the toes of talented players but there seems to be alot of layers to things the they really seem to be missing, including the fact that user made levels should have no relevance when talking about weapon balance of vanilla game and that it's actually the job of user made content to fix those balancing issues if they become relevant in a harder mapset. More tightly designed levels need also more tightly balanced weapons.

You're on a forum primarily dedicated to making new maps and mods for Doom, it really shouldn't be such a logic leap that people will be discussing the balance of the weapons as they are in WADs that are made today as well as WADs that were made decades ago. None of the threads people make here about balancing ever ask about their context within the IWADs, they are open-ended questions and people respond as such. The truth is that all of the tenants for using the shotgun vs the SSG and the plasma rifle vs the BFG in modern maps will hold true in older maps.

 

24 minutes ago, banjiepixel said:

Why exactly are we analyzing the balance of vanilla weapons by using modern levels as the standard= The weapons were balanced for the IWAD levels so changes in weapon meta caused by PWADs should be taken as its own separate thing. The weapons themselves need to be rebalanced too if we want stay close as possible to the original intended balance that exists when playing IWAD levels. If PWAD makes Plasmagun underpowered and lose its purpose, that is a flaw in the PWAD and it would be then great idea to fix that weapon balancing issue. 

 

This is where community's unwillingness to actually fix issues in the game causes alot of problems, but honestly alot of it can probably also be because many people just don't know how something like that could be potentially done. This subject probably should be actually researched by people in this community instead of being ignored.

I get that you're passionate about your stance, but you're just posting weird statements now. Have you not seen projects that play around with vanilla weapon balancing like speeding up the chaingun or shotgun's rate of fire, altering ammo balancing like making BFG shots require double the amount of cells, or even replacing weapons with entirely new ones?

[Shepardus]

If you only look at the original games, then every weapon other than the pistol is overpowered.

[plums]

Just now, Shepardus said:

If you only look at the original games, then every weapon other than the pistol is overpowered.

Next thread: what's the pistol's purpose when you have the chaingun?

[SoBad]

17 minutes ago, banjiepixel said:

Then maybe you should give examples of situations that would debunk plasmagun being actually more flexible. Plasmagun will be useful not matter your skill level, even if BFG goes past it in uselfulness at some point. You can use it more ways than just to deal a big blast and function like screen clearing bombs do in bullet hell shooters. There are situations where plasmagun can work as more precise rocket launcher replacement with much more ammo to use. It can also function as more powerful chaingun in many situations. How is that not being more versatile?

 

I didn't deny that you could describe the plasma gun as more flexible. I denied that that's a meaningful trait to have in a Doom weapon. If you had infinite cells, you would run around with the bfg out and essentially never swap to the plasma gun (or really any other gun)—except in contrived, highly hypothetical situations, or situations that don't matter (like sniping one gunner on a pillar in the distance—who cares if you do that less efficiently?). At no point is anyone thinking, "The bfg's no good in this fight because it's not flexible enough." Dealing damage quickly to eliminate threats and clear space matters more than absolutely anything else in this game. It's you who needs to give examples of when "flexibility" is a core concern. 

 

Quote

Sure, if the encounter threat level justifies that, there are limits what plasmagun can reasonably do. But there is a window where choice between Plasmagun and BFG matters rather little and just requires more footwork from the player. I am usually not in hurry and love to challenge myself so there are alot of reasons for me to use Plasmagun in situations where many other people would use BFG.

 

Here you're admitting that you're challenging yourself by using the plasma gun, implying that it's worse. Which it is.

 

Quote

Why exactly are we analyzing the balance of vanilla weapons by using modern levels as the standard

 

For the reason previously stated: The iwads are in no way testing or challenging. They're terrible for analyzing weapon balance because you can get away with almost anything, as you have—with the plasma gun. If you had enough bullets, you could beat every map in Doom 2 with just the chaingun. I wonder if that makes the chaingun overpowered. 

 

Doom 2 is one of the earliest attempts in its genre. It's riddled with level design oddities and small balance issues. It's okay to admit that. They probably messed up with the division of utility/power between the plasma gun and bfg and we found out about it only years later by practicing with the weapons and learning to use them more effectively. Id Software made one of the greatest games ever, but it isn't perfect, and they aren't infallible. 

 

If the plasma gun is worse than the bfg in modern, harder maps, then it was worse than the bfg in the iwads. It was just harder to notice. This is all that's being said to you. OP asked when they should be using the plasma gun over the bfg, without specifying if they were only ever going to play the iwads, so you shouldn't give an answer that's only applicable (and still probably wrong) for the iwads. A better answer would've been: "The iwads are so easy that it doesn't matter. In modern maps, you'll almost never prefer the plasma gun over the bfg, if you have enough ammo for the latter."

[Shepardus]

Even only looking at the IWADs, someone who knows what they're doing would use BFG far more than plasma, and the situations where plasma is better than BFG simply don't come up (or one of the other weapons is preferable to both).

Edited August 26, 2023 by Shepardus

[Lucius Wooding]

Let me start by saying I don't like to target the user behind the keyboard, I argue with the statements made in their posts only. So don't feel personally attacked or targeted. I was perfectly willing to let my first short post (in both threads, actually) suffice and let them fizzle out in favor of something more interesting. But the mental gymnastics and misinformation from various users are too much and I'm bored.

 

For one thing, why would you be shooting if not to deal damage? That is literally the purpose of the weapons and the main aspect of gameplay in an FPS. Stunlocking does not get you anywhere compared to killing things. It's a mechanic to be aware of but not a matter to make 10 times the DPS pale in comparison.

 

I'll also quickly point out that the scenario where the BFG becomes better than the plasma is if there are 2 or more Hell Knights or equivalent HP. You'll be using ~45 cells with the plasma on average which wastes a BFG shot worth of cells and will eventually throw off your cell total possibly costing a second. On the other hand, a BFG shot would kill 5-6 Hell Knights. Two HKs is not very much in the grand scheme of things. That's all it takes to make the plasma an inferior choice to the BFG and it's a throwaway fight in most moderately hard WADs.

 

If someone makes a WAD where they want to feature plasma, then don't place the BFG. I've personally done this to make rockets and plasma the de facto main weapons and it works great for the fights I designed around that. Same as if I wanted to feature the regular shotgun and not place an SSG. But if both weapons are available, then the vast majority of the time the stronger will be favored over the weaker options. That's just common sense. 

 

No, the community is unwilling to fix issues in the game because they like it the way it is (and some creators do, in fact change the weapons and monsters); don't presume that things which may stick out like a sore thumb to you are bothering anyone else from having fun. Remember that you're in an enthusiast forum for this game that's been around forever, and is literally built around modding and mapping. So saying people don't know the game can be modded is ludicrous in this context. You're surrounded by mappers and modders, many of whom are far more experienced and accomplished than you who are disagreeing with you. And when your claims get pushback you start insulting everyone including the literal founding fathers of the game. Make mods and maps how you see fit, that's your prerogative. But quit acting like we're all a bunch of baboons except you.

 

We've long exhausted all but the most degenerate of challenge runs in the original games (I saw Zero Master recently got 100% kills on E1M8 for example) and find the PWADs much more relevant and interesting than the original levels we've all played to death. PWADs and the harder situations in the IWADs are mainly what we're all talking about here. And the meta of weapon usage in this game has long been written in blood. Unless you want to talk about what applies to nightmare, there's no reason to fight over Doom 1+2 at all as others have said because it can be beaten any way you choose. Plenty of others have expanded on this as well so I don't need to go further.

 

There's flexibility in weapon usage in a lot of situations but better players do things for a reason. I suggest you watch videos or demos of good players and take note of their choices and tactics. Looking at frame data doesn't really teach you much about the gameplay in practice. There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

 

11 minutes ago, plums said:

Next thread: what's the pistol's purpose when you have the chaingun?

 

Pretty sure we've had that one in the last month or so. Don't make it a cycle please.

 

Spoiler

Next 10 thread ideas:

 

-Why use chainsaw if you already have berserk? (I actually know, I’m just seeing if you all know)

-If you have 0 armor, which is better: 1 green armor or 100 armor bonuses?

-Which is the better enemy: Barons, or Hell Knights with double the health?

-Do you prefer picking up shell pickups or dropped shotguns if you already have the shotgun?

-Which is better: Invuln pickups that don’t run out or the IDDQD cheat?

-Why doesn’t the invuln just make the game black and white without inverting colors?

-Which is scarier in a completely dark room, a pinky or a spectre?

-Which is better, 2 medikits or 5 stimpacks?

-What if Lost Souls spat out Pain Elementals instead of the other way around?

-What if Archviles got revived by other monsters instead of the other way around?

-What if all the Doom 1 maps were played backwards? Then the goal would be to drop off items like Santa Claus and get shot while reviving every monster.

-Why isn’t the blur sphere itself invisible?

 

[G19Doom]

For singleplayer, I just use the weapons I want to use and don’t give it any extra thought, it just comes naturally. For deathmatch, the plasma rifle can practically blind people, and is fun to use when you are chasing down people with it almost as if it were the chainsaw, hearing the death screams of your opponents as they try to evade your psycho plasma rain. 

[baja blast rd.]

33 minutes ago, Shepardus said:

Even only looking at the IWADs, someone who knows what they're doing would use BFG far more than plasma ...

 

Here's another. The maxruns of e4m2 use skip tricks to get the BFG and thus pretty much answer the question, "What if the map gave you the BFG early, instead of the plasma rifle which you normally get?" And it's basically not even a map anymore. 

 

 

[riktoi]

The plasma gun is absolutely a crutch weapon. You may end up pulling it out just because you quickly want space even if the BFG could do the same in less time. I find that even in ideal conditions the BFG is just a better choice. Not counting single low health enemies.

 

The plasma gun is also very noisy and that's really not cool

[Xaser]

2 hours ago, banjiepixel said:

This is where community's unwillingness to actually fix issues in the game causes alot of problems, but honestly alot of it can probably also be because many people just don't know how something like that could be potentially done. This subject probably should be actually researched by people in this community instead of being ignored.

 

People have been researching, tweaking, remixing, and overhauling Doom's gameplay balance since the dawn of DEHACKED, and many of these mods were borne from an explicit desire to improve the base balance of the game. I've been doing it myself for twenty years, and I'm just one guy out of literally hundreds who make this sort of stuff. Gameplay modding is a massive scene. Hell, the longest-running champ for most popular Doom mod of all time (rivaled only by myhouse.wad in recent months) is Brutal Doom, a gameplay mod that completely changes how Doom's combat works.

Whether or not you agree or disagree with the changes in any particular mod, many of them are products of extensive research, crafted with great care. It simply isn't possible to make the claim that the community has "ignored" the topic without denying a reality that plainly exists before one's own eyes.

Edited August 26, 2023 by Xaser

[GarrettChan]

1 hour ago, plums said:

Next thread: what's the pistol's purpose when you have the chaingun?

Tyson runs obviously :p

[LoatharMDPhD]

// Some times you just have to style on a fool... UAC Plazmer gun works fine for that purpose, or as a quick leaf blower to get out of a backed in corner...

[Ash4ash]

23 minutes ago, GarrettChan said:

Tyson runs obviously :p

But...

Tyson is fist only...

Edited August 26, 2023 by Ash4ash

[LoatharMDPhD]

1 minute ago, Ash4ash said:

But...

Tyson is first only...

shootable switch triggers...

[Ash4ash]

But, you can still use the chaingun for that

Just now, LoatharMDPhD said:

shootable switch triggers...

Or the shotgun.

[riktoi]

3 minutes ago, Ash4ash said:

But...

Tyson is fist only...

Straight from the Wiki:
 

Quote

UV Tyson is a Compet-n speedrunning category and a Doom Honorific Title. The objective is to finish the level as quickly as possible in Ultra-Violence, killing every monster at least once, except lost souls, with the following restrictions: no weapons other than the fist, berserk fist, chainsaw, and pistol may be used. Picking up other weapons is permitted, but they may not be fired.

 

[LoatharMDPhD]

7 minutes ago, riktoi said:

Straight from the Wiki:
 

 

// Airbody knows Iron Mike's got at least one handgun lying around somewhere...

[GarrettChan]

38 minutes ago, Ash4ash said:

But...

Tyson is fist only...

Damn! I don't know my recent run wasn't actually Tyson and none of my friends actually told me this!

Edited August 26, 2023 by GarrettChan

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

I'll give a more shallow answer. I use it instead of the BFG a lot of times, mainly because the vanilla BFG feels like a weak shart. It's a cool weapon, but the animation and sound effects make it the least satisfying weapon in the game for me, except maybe The Hairy Wrist. With mods to improve the look and feel of the weapon, the BFG can feel great. The Plasma Gun is the most satisfying vanilla weapon to me. Blue balls>>>Green balls.

Edited August 26, 2023 by TheMagicMushroomMan

[Akagi666]

Great thread, laughed a lot.

[taufan99]

5 minutes ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

Blue balls>>>Green balls.

I guess sexual abstain really pays off most of the time.

[banjiepixel]

1 hour ago, Shepardus said:

If you only look at the original games, then every weapon other than the pistol is overpowered.

 

That only means that everything except pistol is balanced in the original games.

 

1 hour ago, SoBad said:

Here you're admitting that you're challenging yourself by using the plasma gun, implying that it's worse. Which it is.

 

There is a difference between plasma gun being worse and plasma gun being useless. There are plenty of valid reasons for not using bfg in situations where the generally accepted meta is that using BFG is optimal thing to do. We are talking about purpose of plasma gun in presence of bfg and plasma gun can fill still many purposes at that point instead of using BFG always when it has the advantage being always the correct answer for everybody. Plasma gun is more versatile because how the functions less strict way than BFG and it also feels often more fair to me so it has important purpose in my way to play the game.   

 

Also, funny how you completely ignored my suggestion that we should really just fix the balancing issue. 

 

1 hour ago, Lucius Wooding said:

For one thing, why would you be shooting if not to deal damage? That is literally the purpose of the weapons and the main aspect of gameplay in an FPS. Stunlocking does not get you anywhere compared to killing things. It's a mechanic to be aware of but not a matter to make 10 times the DPS pale in comparison.

 

There are situations where getting to certain location is more important than killing. I used rather liberally when playing Sigil. Controlling space can be extremely satisfying and why use 40 cells if you can microdose your ammo to exactly where it is needed, even combining use of plasmagun and cells with other weapons and ammo types.

 

1 hour ago, Lucius Wooding said:

No, the community is unwilling to fix issues in the game because they like it the way it is (and some creators do, in fact change the weapons and monsters)

 

People like the fact that BFG makes plasmagun mostly useless? That sounds way more like just accepting the issues and not bothering to attempt fixing them. And most modification to weapons and monsters seem to usually be more based personal preference and needs of the specific mapping project instead of a serious attempt to actually create unoffcial "1.9.1" patch that could have more universal purpose. I think we really would need actual "Doom 2 Minor Balance Fixing Project".

 

2 minutes ago, Xaser said:

Whether or not you agree or disagree with the changes in any particular mod, many of them are products of extensive research, crafted with great care. It simply isn't possible to make the claim that the community has "ignored" the topic without denying a reality that plainly exists before one's own eyes.

 

Universal vanilla rebalance patch isn't something that seems to exist currently, especially since standalone vanilla gameplay mods are not much of thing anyway. While there are probably tons of stuff that are just buried somewhere in the forums, vanilla stuff I have seen generally seems to lack some of the imagination that exists in my own rebalancing ideas and tweaks. Yes, people have made stuff but usually it seems like they're either being too conservative with changes or go overboard with the changes to their creation be seen as a direct update to Doom.

 

Nerfing SSG or BFG seem to be also especially rare changes even when from the pure game theory perspective it would be extremely logical when trying to rebalance the game more to the skill level of modern Doom/FPS player.

 

And in the end, situation feels to me alot like what happened with Doom Eternal. People being too stuck with this idea of Doom being just a basic FPS game when it could have the quality level of a great arcade game. I would like to work with people that have done more research than I have and know their stuff better but at the same time, the direction I want take Doom gameplay to does seem to be something no one else is interested in.

[riktoi]

6 minutes ago, banjiepixel said:

Universal vanilla rebalance patch

https://xkcd.com/927/

[banjiepixel]

4 minutes ago, riktoi said:

https://xkcd.com/927/

 

rebalance patch designed for universal use so basically working with every source port and with any PWAD that is designed for the original vanilla balance, not universal as something meant to be the any kind of standard.

Edited August 26, 2023 by banjiepixel

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

Hey, balancing weapons is something that's easy to do on a technical level. Be the change you want to see, but I can tell you it won't get much notice, because in the end nobody really wants it. And if they do want it, they can easily make it themselves better than anyone else can, because the optimal balance is going to be a matter of opinion anyway.

[riktoi]

1 minute ago, banjiepixel said:

 

rebalance patch designed for universal use so basically working with every source port and with any PWAD that is designed for the original vanilla balance, not universal as something meant to be the any kind of standard.

Okay.

I am actually interested in how you would end up rebalancing the weapons, so I want to at least see where you go with it. You clearly have a lot of ideas on what to do, so all that is left is to go and do it!

[baja blast rd.]

PR and BFG are redundant so their defining characteristics should be combined into one weapon.