What do the difficulties mean to you?

[MrGlide]

if you were to give prerequisites to doom difficulty levels, What would they be in your opinion? as the community has grown, some have pushed mainly "Ultra Violence" to a new level. would you say the new "Hurt Me Plenty" would be the old UV? then there is hey not so rough, what is that easy as "I'm To Young To Die" is just browsing the level or childs play? at what point do you see techniques are required or perfered for a difficulty level. Tell me how you see it If you would please, thank you in advance.

[Spectre01]

Doom doesn't have difficulty settings. UV is the only correct way to play and get the full experience. And as far as the competitive side goes, even if the author pushes HMP as the default and says UV is unbalanced, nobody is going to do HMP-max demos and still go UV.

[VGamingJunkie]

The first 2 are for people who just started playing. HMP is for intermediate players, UV is to get the full Doom experience with their hell forces at their highest. Nightmare mode is if you're a masochist and enjoy mentally torturing yourself.

[Blastfrog]

Nightmare is literally a joke, and anything lower than UV is watered down.

[VGamingJunkie]

You typically go below UV if you aren't skilled enough for it. Or you're playing a mod that makes the game drastically harder than it needs to be. -cough-PokeDoom-cough-

[Doomkid]

I think difficulty modes are a fantastic part of Doom. Each pwad released (those that actually implement difficulties, anyway) will interpret difficulty differently, but not alienating people just because they aren't "uber pros" is a overall good thing, in my opinion. You've gotta crawl before you can walk.

[40oz]

I dont believe UV should ever be considered the "full" experience. All skill levels should be considered full. Easier skill levels should be just as fun as the above skill levels, just more respectful to players who are playing casually or not focusing very hard.

[MrGlide]

40oz said:

I dont believe UV should ever be considered the "full" experience. All skill levels should be considered full. Easier skill levels should be just as fun as the above skill levels, just more respectful to players who are playing casually or not focusing very hard.

I agree, I'm starting to see this is something I'll have to try and measure on my own.

[VGamingJunkie]

I meant "full" in the sense that it's the full roster, this is as packed as it gets. Lower difficulties are artificially made easier for players who aren't up to the UV level just yet.

[Li'l devil]

No, at least in original Dooms, HMP was always standard difficulty setting (it's even selected by default when you start the game). HNTR is for unexperienced players, ITYTD is for 5 year olds, and UV is for those who want extra challenge. NM didn't even exist in the beginning and it's officially (that is, by me) deemed heretical. (because I hate respawning enemies).

But now, since the standards got higher, UV is considered by many default difficulty and NM is for extra challenge. I, myself, play on UV all the time, and never play on lower difficulties.

[Lila Feuer]

ITYTD - Baby mode, for little kids and grandmas.

HNTR - Easy mode, for when you're ready to tolerate the default damage values but you don't want to be swarmed by foes.

HMP - Normal mode, for most players or those who were good at Wolf3D beforehand should start here.

UV - Hard mode, preferable for players who have a high skill ceiling like most of us today, more monsters means more fun.

NM - Evil mode, if killing a bad guy once wasn't good enough and you thought their reflexes were pathetic, have a go at this one asshole.

[dobu gabu maru]

ChekaAgent said:

I, myself, play on UV all the time, and never play on lower difficulties.

Sodaholic said:

anything lower than UV is watered down.

MetroidJunkie said:

UV is to get the full Doom experience

rileymartin said:

UV is the only correct way to play

This line of thinking is personally vexing to me. Numerous times I've had to hamstring my design and had people tell me they dislike my style of mapping because of my difficulty, which is easily solved by playing on lower skill levels. The problem with believing that UV is the "standard" difficulty is that it doesn't allow me to design for a skill harder than that, so if anything I have to make UV less difficult than I'd prefer for it to be. This is largely in reference to community contributions rather than solo stuff, but I just really wish playing on HMP was more of a common experience, especially because I think my stuff plays best (ie it's the most fun) on skill 3 than 4.

[Spectre01]

The respawning enemies on Nightmare just make it annoying for anything other than speedrunning. Might as well just play UV-fast, but that also makes the gameplay less fun tbh.

[Technician]

UV defines my penis size.

[plums]

dobu gabu maru said:

This line of thinking is personally vexing to me. Numerous times I've had to hamstring my design and had people tell me they dislike my style of mapping because of my difficulty, which is easily solved by playing on lower skill levels.

Agreed 100%. I have no problems playing on HMP, or even HNTR occasionally, if that's what the difficulty of the map calls for.

This ties into the original question: I don't think there is a standard difficulty that should be associated with each skill level. Some maps are harder than others and that's fine. UV should probably be at least sort-of hard though, otherwise you're going to bore those players who are quite skilled at Doom, of which there are many.

[VGamingJunkie]

I didn't mean you'd get a lesser Doom experience on lower difficulty settings, I mean you're getting the full force of the maps on UV since the lower settings cause inserted enemies to be gone. Unless the map designers made them with HMP in mind and just slapped in more enemies for UV. That UV is the ultimate Doom experience, bar none, and the only thing you can do from there is to just make the enemies stupidly faster and respawning.

[Face23785]

dobu gabu maru said:

This line of thinking is personally vexing to me. Numerous times I've had to hamstring my design and had people tell me they dislike my style of mapping because of my difficulty, which is easily solved by playing on lower skill levels. The problem with believing that UV is the "standard" difficulty is that it doesn't allow me to design for a skill harder than that, so if anything I have to make UV less difficult than I'd prefer for it to be. This is largely in reference to community contributions rather than solo stuff, but I just really wish playing on HMP was more of a common experience, especially because I think my stuff plays best (ie it's the most fun) on skill 3 than 4.

I very much have to agree with this. Although I've never released a map, I've seen this kind of thing said about other people's maps and thought how frustrating that must be for the mapper. I think some of it is ego. Just like everybody thinks they're a good driver, most people probably overestimate their skill at games. If they can't beat your map on UV, it MUST be because you suck at mapping, set up "unfair" traps and ambushes, don't understand monster placement or their definition of "balance", or whatever other lame excuse they can make so they don't have to lower themselves to skill 3 and just quit instead.

[VGamingJunkie]

If I lose on UV, I'll assume it's a harder than Vanilla standards map and adjust the difficulty accordingly, I won't just blame the mapper. Some people make maps that are more difficult than Vanilla and that's more than fair. Ultimate Doom II gave me quite a hard time as I was going through it but I eventually got through all 11 maps that it had at the time. If you're that kind of gamer, you don't blame other people, you just keep trying until you've beaten it.

[glenzinho]

I think skill settings are vastly under-utilised in relation to their potential. Think about it, you could have 3 completely different gameplay types in one map alone. A high HP marauding hordes style on UV could be transformed to hitscan hell on HMP, while skills 1+2 could be a Tyson map for example.

[VGamingJunkie]

Here's a thought, you could have differing levels of puzzles simply by placing keys in different spots based on the difficulty. Then you wouldn't just have harder brawls. Now if only you could have difficulty based linedefs.

[glenzinho]

MetroidJunkie said:

Now if only you could have difficulty based linedefs.

Even in vanilla you could work around that. Imagine for instance starting a map in a room separate from the next area so you have to progress by teleport. You could have 3 of these rooms identically designed but the player will start in a different one depending on skill setting. On the way to the teleport you could be crossing lines that are doing things in other parts of the map, and voila you have a method of doing difficulty based linedefs.

[[McD] James]

In my mind Ultra Violence will always be the definitive difficulty setting.

[VGamingJunkie]

glenzinho said:

Even in vanilla you could work around that. Imagine for instance starting a map in a room separate from the next area so you have to progress by teleport. You could have 3 of these rooms identically designed but the player will start in a different one depending on skill setting. On the way to the teleport you could be crossing lines that are doing things in other parts of the map, and voila you have a method of doing difficulty based linedefs.

Good point. Heck, you could even use that to teleport the player to different areas, each one entirely based on the skill level. The harder the difficulty setting, the more difficult the area's puzzles.

[Lila Feuer]

glenzinho said:

I think skill settings are vastly under-utilised in relation to their potential. Think about it, you could have 3 completely different gameplay types in one map alone. A high HP marauding hordes style on UV could be transformed to hitscan hell on HMP, while skills 1+2 could be a Tyson map for example.

That's a great idea actually and would increase replay value by a lot.

MetroidJunkie said:

Here's a thought, you could have differing levels of puzzles simply by placing keys in different spots based on the difficulty. Then you wouldn't just have harder brawls.

I forget the key placements were different in the original IWADs, such a small but interesting detail.

[kuchitsu]

prboom-plus -skill 4, pistol start, no saves
aaand nothing else matteeers

[SFoZ911]

kuchitsu said:

prboom-plus -skill 4, pistol start, no saves
aaand nothing else matteeers

Pretty much this except zdoom instead of prboom(since I'm using a custom weapon mod).

[vadrig4r]

I think Doomkid and 40oz nailed it. Particularly in light of UV difficulty continually being pushed (as it should be, for the best players the hardest difficulty should be a challenge). Thinking UV in pwads translates to UV in the base games is a mistake, it's very often nowhere near the case.

[Avoozl]

I loved playing on UV with -fast, it's fun having to keep on your toes.

[40oz]

I prefer to think of UV as "I liked this map so much I want to play it again, except I already know how the map operates and where the monsters are" so the difficulty is tailored towards that circumstance.

[Azuruish]

MrGlide said:

What do the difficulties mean to you?

Difficulties mean to me as how i want suffer in game. Usually use highest difficulty but for wads as Chillax i choose ITYTD as i want get second chance...