Little rant

[scifista42]

^ In case of slaughtermaps, yes. In case of puzzle maps, sometimes.

[Maes]

Even those slaughtermaps that are super-generous with pickups (perhaps even respawning ones), and where the only way to get killed is to get stupidly cornered and finished off by Barons' melee attacks?

[baja blast rd.]

Memfis said:

oops

LOL

[Face23785]

Well when I first started playing Doom it was on consoles and I sucked at games and didn't know about strafing so I always played on ITYTD. Once I got it on pc and started getting better and more familiar with the stock maps I had to bump up the difficulty to keep it interesting. Now I always play them on UV and have for years so it's just become such a habit that when I grab a wad I often don't even think about the lower difficulties. It might be a little ego but I think it's mostly just habitual.

[VGamingJunkie]

Difficulty levels could also be used in more creative ways than just using different monsters/items. For instance, on a lower difficulty, a Chaingun Commando could be in plain sight on the ground whereas a higher difficulty can make the Commando atop a sniper's peak or something where it's harder to hit. You could even map certain keys to different difficulties to force the player through different kinds of environments that scale in difficulty.

[dio]

I thought there were only 2 difficulties. Ultra violence and Nightmare. UVN.

[T-Rex]

From the way I see it with the difficulties, I always considered I'm Too Young to Die to be right for kids getting into Doom, rightfully so, while newbies should start with Hey, Not Too Rough. Being the default (medium) difficulty, Hurt Me Plenty is balanced so most players should play this difficulty. I usually and nowadays start any new wads I'm trying on HMP, and I stick with the difficulty on wads like Plutonia, HR, and AV, cause they're pretty overwhelming on Ultra-Violence. While experienced Doomers make themselves at home with UV, Nightmare is really for the hardcore experts. That's my two cents on the difficulty settings.

ITYTD = Kids
HNTR = Easy
HMP = Medium
UV = Hard
NM = Experts

[VGamingJunkie]

It's funny because the first 4 difficulties don't feel too much harder than another in my opinion, it's probably because the behavior of the monsters is more or less the same (despite later difficulties having more and stronger ones) while Nightmare boosts their speed. I can never play on Nightmare effectively.

[Zulk RS]

Some guys decided to call UV the default difficulty quite some time ago and probably bitched about PWADs made considering HMP as default. So mappers started making their maps with UV as a default and thus lower difficulties became watered down versions of what the mapper had planned for the player. So more guys decided to play on UV as default for any PWAD. But all of us aren't actually good at Doom (like me)and when these guy decided to play PWADs on UV, they got destroyed and bitched about the PWADs being to hard (not all of us).

P.S: I don't know how accurate my explanation was. It was just something I came up with.

[RestlessRodent]

When I was 6 I used ITYTD.

[Azuruish]

In my opinion only UV is acceptable for me as 10 years ago when i had played in PSX Doom... Well... Was so boring to play on lower skill than UV.
Though PSX port is much easier than original port as a lot things were cut out and instead Spider Mastermind in Doom2 MAP06 there a bunch of Hell Knights for example.

[wallabra]

Yeah Doom bosses are actually easy. (except the Cyberdemon)

[Doomkid]

The cybie is easier than the mastermind for me by a mile. Rockets are way easier to dodge than bullets. The IoS is famously difficult. The only easy Doom boss of all is the barons, and even they weren't easy back in the keyboard Dooming era.

[Maes]

Improved control schemes had a lot to do with the perceived lowering of difficulty/improvement of average player performance/needing to ramp up the horde/unfair factor to keep players interested. Other factors which certainly helped improve player performance (I mean real-time gameplay here, not TAS) were uncapped framerates and more powerful CPUs (smoother movement) and higher resolutions (there's only so much you can see and react to with 64000 pixels!)

This is by no means limited to Doom though: many sports have witnessed sudden "perks" in record-setting once improved techniques were discovered/pioneered by some athletes and then becoming mainstream. The High Jumping event is an egregious example of that:

In other sports, e.g. skeet or trap shooting, shooters simply became so good on average that the original 100 targets had to be risen or the number of rounds increased. So why not good old Doom?

And, just like real sports, there's little interest for a "handicapped league" of any sort.

[Shadow Hog]

I just use HMP. Maybe UV if I'm revisiting a WAD I rather liked. In addition, I tend to design my maps around HMP, and raise the stakes for UV instead of designing from UV and watering down for HMP (although I do water down for HNTR).

[Noiser]

^
Yep, this is what I do too when I'm editing. I think this brings better results in terms of skill balance.

[Andrea Rovenski]

UV is standard for me because most wads are balanced around it, and more monsters is generally more interesting. If I want more of a challenge I will play on -fast or nightmare.

[scifista42]

Mappers balance maps around UV because most players play on UV. Players play on UV because most wads are balanced around UV. Logic bomb?

[SavageCorona]

I noticed Doom is the only game that breaks my Goldilocks complex where I play on the middle difficulty because I hate extremes and in-between-medium-and-extremes.

Gustavo6046 said:

(except the Cyberdemon)

you fucking what

[Suitepee]

scifista42 said:

Mappers balance maps around UV because most players play on UV. Players play on UV because most wads are balanced around UV. Logic bomb?

Think I'll mention this the next time someone asks me why I play on UV. That and it's the difficulty I've always played on, even when I was younger on Doom 95.

[Antroid]

scifista42 said:

Mappers balance maps around UV because most players play on UV. Players play on UV because most wads are balanced around UV. Logic bomb?

I think most people just trust that UV is balanced as well as any other difficulty for any level they play.

If you balance around HMP and then just randomly make stuff harder for UV without balancing, that's no good. If you balance around HMP but then actually put some thought and testing into making sure UV is well-balanced too, then technically the level is balanced for UV anyway. So if you want the full challenge you'll still play on UV.

I think there's really no way people will stop playing on UV unless all mappers stop making UV well-balanced on principle and will stick to only balancing HMP (and lower).

[Doomkid]

I can't speak for others, but the easier modes in my wads are never "watered down versions" of the game. There are only a very select few monsters removed, there is simply far more health and ammo the easier you go. The only difference is that less skilled players get to enjoy the experience as well rather then being needlessly excluded. This whole "UV only" mentality while mapping is a little silly and restricts your audience too.

[Noiser]

Doomkid said:

I can't speak for others, but the easier modes in my wads are never "watered down versions" of the game. There are only a very select few monsters removed, there is simply far more health and ammo the easier you go. The only difference is that less skilled players get to enjoy the experience as well rather then being needlessly excluded. This whole "UV only" mentality while mapping is a little silly and restricts your audience too.

Yes, I agree. That's what I mean about better skill balance. All kind of players need to be included, if a modder don't want to balance appropriately, don't make skill options.