Topic: HOT TOPIC : New Rank requirements! (Read 10777 times)

Kornel Kisielewicz · « **on:** August 02, 2009, 16:24 »

As player data is already broken, it's a good idea to revisit rank requirements. We all agree that higher level experience ranks are insane, time to come up with more sane ideas about them :).

Post your ideas! Post how you would like the rank system to look like, or even better, come up with your own version!

Although Skill rank requirements are fairly sane, it would still be good to discuss them, especially in the face of new possibilities that happened with the player data breakage. I'd especially like to hear Blade's, Dervis', Zi's opion on which of the later challenges are harder, and which easier than their respective level.

For reference, the current skill/exp ranks are in the wiki : http://doom.chaosforge.org/wiki/index.php?title=Ranks

Here are the previous topics on this issue, please read them!

http://forum.chaosforge.org/index.php?topic=1278.0
http://forum.chaosforge.org/index.php?topic=1466.0
http://forum.chaosforge.org/index.php?topic=1583.0
http://forum.chaosforge.org/index.php?topic=1730.0

If you remember any other topic relevant to the discussion please post it!

Zi · « **Reply #1 on:** August 02, 2009, 17:21 »

Regarding skill ranks and unlocking, would you consider a nonlinear tree-like unlocking system? This way players who like a particular aspect of the game don't necessarily need to slog through things less enjoyable to them.

For example: (Assuming vanilla up to HMP starts unlocked)
Beating HMP vanilla unlocks UV vanilla, which when beaten unlocks N! vanilla

Beating HNTR (or harder) vanilla unlocks Angel of Berserk, Marksmanship, Darkness, Light Travel, Haste, and most others (on HNTR difficulty)

Beating Light Travel (any difficulty) unlocks HNTR Purity and Impatience
Beating both Impatience and Purity (any difficulty) unlocks HNTR Masochism
etc

Beating any challenge on a certain difficulty unlocks the next one (e.g. beating AoMr on HNTR unlocks HMP AoMr)

I don't focus too much on xp ranks as they don't actually affect how the game plays, but with that said I don't mind the system in place now, with less inflated numbers.

One possible alternative is to have (material) (monster) ranks, where you start at a less-prestigious material, and go up the monster ranks the same way it's done now, with much lower numbers. Then, once Cyberdemon is reached, raise the numbers, and move onto the next material.

For example: (each rank requires fulfilling all the requirements of all previous ranks)

Bronze Former Human
- kill 50 former humans
Bronze Imp
- kill 50 imps
- kill 10 enemies melee

...

Bronze Cyberdemon
- kill 3 Cyberdemons

Silver Former Human
- kill 200 former humans

and so on.

So a player cycles through all of the monster ranks at lower quantities, then advances to a more precious metal/stone/whatever, then cycles through all the monsters again at higher quantities.

Blade · « **Reply #2 on:** August 02, 2009, 17:27 »

Here is my vision of experience ranks:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The point is to make player use all the weapons in the game. They are "experience" ranks, after all.

For challenges - i'd place them in such order, by ascension of difficulty:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Dervis · « **Reply #3 on:** August 02, 2009, 17:43 »

I tried to rank difficulties as i see them on the current system. Then i deleted some things i think are ok to clean up the post a bit. Then i just reformatted the whole thing :P. This considers SoL with NO armour bonus.

Getting Captain rank is too hard for its level in my opinion. Swap its challenges with Major.
Overlord / Blade / Legend: AoMr and AoLt are the easiest, then AoI / Ao100, hardest are AoMs / AoB.
- Angel of Purity on Nightmare! is one of the hardest challenges in the game, possibly around AoMs difficulty.
- Angel of Max Carnage is very fun, it should be implemented around mid rank.
- Angel of Pacifism deserves some love too.
Edit: Decided to move Nightmare! down one rank. Changed Overlord a bit.
Edit2: Blade rank was too easy so swapped it with Legend.

As I would change it (if it's coloured it's a change/addition):

Corporal (unchanged)
* Get to at least level 10 in any difficulty.
* Unlocks Angel of Berserk, Angel of Marksmanship, Angel of Darkness

Sergeant (almost unchanged, setup AoLT for next rank)
* Get to level 15 in any difficulty.
* Get to level 10 in Angel of Marksmanship.
* Get to level 5 in Angel of Berserk.

* Unlocks Ultra-Violence
* Unlocks Angel of Light Travel

Lieutenant
* Win on any difficulty.
* Get to level 15 in Angel of Marksmanship.
* Get to level 15 in Angel of Light Travel.

* Unlocks Angel of Impatience.

Captain
* Get to Level 15 in Angel of Impatience.
* Complete the Angel of Light Travel challenge.
* Complete the Angel of Marksmanship challenge.

* Unlocks Angel of Haste, Angel of Purity, Angel of D&D, Angel of Red Alert.
* Unlocks NIGHTMARE!

Major
* Win on Hurt Me Plenty or harder.
* Complete the Angel of Purity challenge.
* Get to level 15 in Angel of Berserk.

* Unlocks Angel of Masochism, Angel of 100, Angel of Pacifism, Angel of Max Carnage.

Colonel
* Win on Ultra-Violence or harder.
* Complete the Angel of Pacifism challenge.
* Complete the Angel of Max Carnage challenge.

General
* Complete the Angel of Berserk challenge.
* Complete the Angel of Masochism challenge.

Overlord
* Win the game on the Nightmare!
* Complete the Angel of 100 challenge.

Legend
* Complete the Angel of Marksmanship challenge on Nightmare!
* Complete the Angel of Impatience challenge on Nightmare!

Blade
* Complete the Angel of Masochism challenge on Nightmare!
* Complete the Angel of Berserk challenge on Nightmare!

JC
* Complete Angel of Purity on Nightmare! with 100% kills.
* Complete Angel of Haste on Nightmare with 100% kills.(can't think of anything harder yet possible than this last one) :P
* Kill JC using your fists. This one is for Blade :P.

Gargulec · « **Reply #4 on:** August 02, 2009, 18:00 »

Dervis idea is pretty good. But SoL with no armor bonus? What the...?

Dervis · « **Reply #5 on:** August 02, 2009, 18:12 »

SoL lost its armour bonus in 0.9.8.11 beta, which fixed the 'I have a SoL, I can rollover ANYTHING' syndrome. However there are set bonuses now, and with the right armour you can get the +6 again. Ooh and i forgot the amazing Alternate fire for the SoL.

MaiZure · « **Reply #6 on:** August 02, 2009, 19:32 »

I don't have a concrete suggest but...should we incorporate a few of the new dimensions we have such as finding half or all of the uniques to achieve a new rank. Maybe add a few medals or badge requirements?

Aki · « **Reply #7 on:** August 03, 2009, 00:10 »

Angel of Berserk is quite alot harder then Medium, especially with the changes (SoL's Armour nerf, No more insta-berserk on Large Heal, ect.) It should be higher up in the unlock/achieve scale.

Thomas · « **Reply #8 on:** August 03, 2009, 04:11 »

Challenge Difficulty IMO (Ones that are more gimmicky than actually hard left out)

Code: [Select]

Ao100
AoMs
AoB
AoPu
AoPa
AoI
AoLT
AoRA
AoMr

As such, here are my ranks. Spoiled for huge.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Experience Ranks, spoiled for huge.

Each rank takes exactly double the time as the previous, according to my kill list. I pefer melee games more than the average joe, so I've toned down the melee stats.
The starting rank, kill 50 former humans, is a 200th of how much I play (9948 formers and counting). As such, the 8th rank is where someone who's been playing as long as I have (a lot.) will be.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Kornel Kisielewicz · « **Reply #9 on:** August 03, 2009, 04:42 »

Wall of text! Yeah, please keep it comming, reading this motivates me to work on DoomRL now :D

However, another request, please rank the challenges with EASY, MEDIUM, HARD, VERY HARD, BLADE. To easify things here's the list of challenges:

Code: [Select]

AoD
AoMr
AoH
AoRA
AoMC
Ao100
AoPw
AoD&D
AoLT
AoB
AoP
AoI
AoMs

Melon · « **Reply #10 on:** August 03, 2009, 05:01 »

I still think that the "Monster" levels should be based on how many enemies you kill in one run/one level, not the overall (it really just goes down to running the game multiple times, after some time, you will kill the right amount of monsters, although you could play very badly).

Archvile-hatchling:
Kill 5 archvilles in one run

Archvile:
Kill 3 archvilles on one level

Archvile lord"
Kill 3 archvilles on one level using your fists

And so on...

Captain Trek · « **Reply #11 on:** August 03, 2009, 05:07 »

This is how the challenges stand for me:

AoDark: Easy (virtually the same as normal game really)

AoMark: Easy-Medium (somewhat RNG dependant and virtually hopeless against the hordes of demons encountered on UV, but easy enough on lower levels)

AoBer: Hard (spare me...)

AoLT: Medium (plenty doable with an appropriate build)

AoI: Medium (I actually found the health situation to be not nearly as crippling as it could have been)

AoP: Medium (a few extra medpacks in your inventory and you should be OK)

AoD&D: Easy (the steady drip of iornman and eagle eye makes this pretty easy)

AoRA: Very hard (I can't stand being rushed)

AoPac: Bull (a special difficulty I invented to describe a challenge mode almost totally dependant on the RNG)

AoMas: Blade (I found it impossible)

That leaves AoH and Ao100, which I haven't played enough to comment on...

Dervis · « **Reply #12 on:** August 03, 2009, 06:21 »

This is how the challenges stand for me:

AoMark: Easy (the new mod packs fixed most of the RNG issues so the only difficulty is that you can't have a RL / BFG)
AoLT: Easy (just don't use a chaingun build because of the ammo issues)
AoD&D: Easy (the huge health pool makes you very hard to kill)
AoP: Medium / Hard-Very hard on N!
AoH: Medium-Hard (If you try to go for 100% it's possibly a Blade rank)
AoPac: Hard (As soon as you get a couple of points on Hellrunner the difficulty drops a lot)
AoI: Hard
Ao100: Hard-Very Hard (the difficulty doesn't ramp well with difficulty levels past level 25, a lot of people have big trouble completing this in HNTR but N! isn't much harder)
AoMas: Very Hard (You need Cat's Eye or Intuition to beat this)
AoPow: Very Hard-Blade (you just run out of ammo)
AoBer: Blade (needs fixing imo)

Gargulec · « **Reply #13 on:** August 03, 2009, 06:36 »

AoPow? What the...?

Kornel Kisielewicz · « **Reply #14 on:** August 03, 2009, 07:49 »

Dervis, what's the current biggest problem with AoBer? Levels up to Chained court?

Dervis · « **Reply #15 on:** August 03, 2009, 08:55 »

Finding the Chained Court is nasty but that's part of the challenge i think. Taking Hellrunner or Tough as Nails first helps smooth it out a bit, but you'll end up just running for the stairs. This part isn't too bad.

The real problem is the way between Chained Court and Unholy Cathedral. Even with the chainsaw, killing enemies while not berserking is very painful, and even if you evade every shot you'll end up burning 20+ hp just to kill one Caco or HK in melee. Getting a berserker hit with a chainsaw is very rare unless you're berserking to start with so this doesn't help either. If a single Revenant or Vile shows up and you're not berserking you're in trouble.
However once you get the SoL, the berserker hits become relatively common and you might even be able to chain berserker hits for consecutive levels.

Possible solutions:
- Increase the base chance for Berserker to activate (possibly at the expense of part of the damage portion).
- Increase armour / evasion against melee attacks only. If HKs didn't take 10%+ of my hp every melee attack while ripping my armour to shreds, having to swing 6 turns to kill it wouldn't be so bad.

P.S. - I know it's troublesome to fix this because mixed shotgun/melee builds are very good once you master them, and improving the melee portion would make them too powerful. The obvious step would lie in changing the rules of the Challenge. (50% chance to dodge any melee attack is my latest idea)

Zi · « **Reply #16 on:** August 04, 2009, 00:48 »

Quote from: Dervis on August 02, 2009, 17:43

JC
* Complete Angel of Purity on Nightmare! with 100% kills.
* Complete Angel of Haste on Nightmare with 100% kills.(can't think of anything harder yet possible than this last one) :P
* Kill JC using your fists. This one is for Blade :P.

Has anyone ever beaten any form of Nightmare with 100% kills? Don't resurrected enemies count against you? You'd have to nuke/flood at least 24 floors! Or patiently let enemies resurrect, lure them to doors/other corpses/stairs, and delete them that way one by one. And farm enough ammo to sustain this.

AoD - EASY - not hard, just annoying
AoMr - MEDIUM - somewhat more difficult than vanilla - no rapid weapons, no rockets, no bfg
AoH - MEDIUM to VERY HARD - depending on difficulty level
AoRA - EASY/MEDIUM (for a Nightmare player, as they are used to moving fast) - for players at lower difficulty levels, may be a much greater challenge than vanilla because they're used to methodically clearing out areas
AoMC - wouldn't know
Ao100 - VERY HARD/BLADE - while you have chances to recover from mistakes, deeper levels are really dangerous if you're not super-careful - there can be truly ludicrous amounts of monsters on levels 80-100 on Ultra-violent, and even more so on N! - just look at kill counts on the mortems
AoPw - wouldn't know
AoD&D - MEDIUM - basically you are forced into (lots of) eagle eye and ironman (but without unlocking intuition/cat eye), works well with rapid weapons
AoLT - MEDIUM/HARD - safety net is much reduced, can't carry as much of a buffer in ammo or health recovery
AoB - BLADE(?) - I haven't figured out a good way to beat this yet
AoP(urity) - HARD - some recovery removed, durations for berserk and invulnerability are pretty short on non-N!, I don't miss them that much (I miss them on N!, though, miss them very much)
AoPc - VERY HARD - I haven't mastered this at higher difficulty levels
AoI - MEDIUM/HARD - can't save health for a rainy day/sticky situation
AoMs - VERY HARD/BLADE - one mistake and you're on thin ice. Another - toast. Can't shrug off minor hits like you can in normal games because there's usually at least some health available on each level to compensate for it. As with Dervis, I can't imagine tackling this on higher difficulty levels without Cat eye (the benefits of Intuition come much later).

Thomas · « **Reply #17 on:** August 04, 2009, 00:51 »

I spose I should explain why I ordered the challenges as I did.

AoB VERY HARD: It used to be relatively simple, but it's gotten harder. If you get some decent RNG love then it isn't so bad, as AoB is very binary. You either find an enemy that you can't kill in melee (Even shotgunners usually fall under this) or you find enemies that are pretty easy melee kills (Like Arachnotrons)
AoMr EASY: Please, this is as easy as a normal game. You fire insanely quickly and are incredibly ammo-efficient, so killing the cyberdemon is no problem with half a stack of ammo. As long as you aren't trying to kill everything, you'll be totally fine.
AoD N/A: I have never played this and it doesn't sound interesting at all. Remove it from the game.
AoI MEDIUM: It's not really that hard, I can beat it on any difficulty aside Nightmare!. The other challenges (barring AoLT) all out-shine it in some way.
AoLT EASY: It's very easy in comparison to the other challenges. If you can beat any other challenge, you can beat this.
AoH MEDIUM: It's basically like shifting the game up a single difficulty. As such, beating it on UV or Nightmare! is a pain, but it's alright on H,NTR.
AoPu HARD: Powerups are your lifeblood, ESPECIALLY in Nightmare!. Taking them away is very very bad.
AoMs VERY HARD: While you can't heal, you can still reduce damage in so many ways that it's not quite BLADE. Doing this and AoPu at the same time is BLADE.
AoDD N/A: Doesn't interest me.
AoRA EASY: This is pretty much standard stuff if you play on Nightmare!. I never take more than 5 minutes to do the important things anyway, like locate the stairs and most powerups.
Ao100 BLADE: I don't like Ao100, tedium is your biggest obstacle to conquer. Don't get me wrong though, it's ludicrously difficult. Just tedious too.
AoPc HARD: Eh, it's not really that difficult. You just need a little luck with not finding too many autohit enemies or lost souls.
AoPw N/A: This mode puts me to sleep every time. Remove it from the game.
AoMC N/A: I haven't really played it that much, and making a decent strategy for it is weird.

Kornel Kisielewicz · « **Reply #18 on:** August 04, 2009, 04:16 »

There are some changes I'm thinking I'd like to do do to challenges -- if anyone would object please post:
AoD - remove, (or additionaly decrease sight range by 2?)
AoDD - remove
AoRA - reduce the time to 3 minutes
AoPw - remove.

Opinions?

Dervis · « **Reply #19 on:** August 04, 2009, 04:20 »

Looks fine to me.

Gargulec · « **Reply #20 on:** August 04, 2009, 04:22 »

Keep AoDD. I did not have an opportunity to play it, and it sounds very interesting.

Malek Deneith · « **Reply #21 on:** August 04, 2009, 04:46 »

Quote from: Kornel Kisielewicz on August 04, 2009, 04:16

There are some changes I'm thinking I'd like to do do to challenges -- if anyone would object please post:
AoD - remove, (or additionaly decrease sight range by 2?)
AoDD - remove
AoRA - reduce the time to 3 minutes
AoPw - remove.

Opinions?

I'm not sure about removing AoPw, considering how only testers have seen it so far, but do as you will. One thing though - if this isn't too much of problem, I'd leave the relevant flags/switches for these three that are to be removed. This way, once the final release hits players whou would want to play those will be able to, assuming that game modability is still in plans, put them back in for own use.

Kornel Kisielewicz · « **Reply #22 on:** August 04, 2009, 04:50 »

I'll leave them as a mod-pack :D

Captain Trek · « **Reply #23 on:** August 04, 2009, 06:32 »

So, since it's apparently now being removed anyway, what exactly is AoPw?

Zi · « **Reply #24 on:** August 04, 2009, 12:45 »

AoD in its current form serves no purpose. No map memory is simply an annoyance for the player.

If player sight range was even reduced to 7 (and could not be boosted with Cat eye) - it'd be an entirely different challenge. I suspect it'd actually be tremendously dangerous.

On that note - bring back Cat eye! (as a master trait if you must)

AoDD - nothing wrong with it - if players don't like it they don't have to play it. It's a different way to play the game.

AoRA - 3 minutes will probably add a tremendous amount of urgency. I probably wouldn't even wear red armor if it was 3 minutes, so it'll probably be a unique challenge

Kornel Kisielewicz · « **Reply #25 on:** August 04, 2009, 16:15 »

Anyway, we're derailing the topic... no one has any creative ideas what to require in the ranks?

Zi · « **Reply #26 on:** August 04, 2009, 16:50 »

I believe my proposal on experience ranks serves the purpose and solves the key problems with the current system, without throwing out what makes the current system nice.

The purpose of the experience rank system in my view is to reflect a player's accumulated progress over multiple games. The problems with the current system is that a lot of players are stuck at a certain rank because the requirements of the next rank are unreasonably demanding. However, it seems that most players don't want the top ranks to be easily achievable. So my proposal extends the current 10 ranks to 1 + N * 9, where N is however many "materials" you decide to use.

One possible arrangement:

(Material) former human
- kill 50 * X former humans

(Material) imp
- kill 50 * X imps
- kill 10 * X enemies in melee

(Material) demon
- kill 50 * X demons
- kill 5 * X demons in melee

(Material) cacodemon
- kill 40 * X cacodemons
- kill 40 * X enemies with pistols
- kill 4 * X cacodemons in melee

(Material) Mancubus
- kill 30 * X mancubi
- kill 8 * X mancubi with pistols
- kill 3 * X mancubi in melee

(Material) Hell Knight
- kill 40 * X hell knights
- kill 10 * X hell knights with pistols
- kill 4 * X hell knights in melee

(Material) Hell Baron
- kill 30 * X hell barons
- kill 8 * X hell barons with pistols
- kill 3 * X hell knights in melee

(Material) Arch-vile
- kill 25 * X arch-viles
- kill 7 * X arch-viles with pistols
- kill 2 * X arch-viles in melee

(Material) Cyberdemon
- kill 3 * X cyberdemons
- kill 150 * X enemies total
- kill 10 * X enemies in melee

Material: X
Bronze: 1
Silver: 3
Gold: 5
Platinum: 8
Opal: 10
Pearl: 15
Emerald: 20
Sapphire: 25
Ruby: 30
Diamond: 40

A player progresses from Human to Bronze Former Human, Bronze Imp, Bronze Demon, and so on until Bronze Cyberdemon, meeting each requirement along the way, then, Silver Former Human, Silver Imp, etc

This way the higher ranks, such as Ruby (whatever) and Diamond (whatever) are still rather hard to obtain, but players will regularly progress through ranks as the required numbers don't jump drastically from rank to rank, and their kills of all of the monster types will come into play.

The specifics can be tweaked of course, and even the 'kills with different weapons' idea can be incorporated.

Captain Trek · « **Reply #27 on:** August 05, 2009, 03:46 »

Zi's system sound pretty good... Maybe beef up some of the requirements for the later ranks a little bit (150 x 40 = 6,000 enemies and 10 x 40 = 400 enemies in melee really isn't all that difficult for the top rank of Diamond Cyberdemon, but on the other hand 3 x 40 = 120 Cyberdemons seems like enough), but it sounds like it'd be a very functional system with a more natural progression than the current one... I'd fully support, in one form or another...

MaiZure · « **Reply #28 on:** August 05, 2009, 05:59 »

Zi's idea seems sound. How about if it were more doom-ish or more military like rather than material based. Same concept and requirements except have it go something like: Green, Rookie, Experienced, Veteran, Elite...etc

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Author Topic: HOT TOPIC : New Rank requirements! (Read 10777 times)