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What are the most common abuses of DoomRL?

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Kornel Kisielewicz:
I'm preparing some plans for the future of DoomRL and I noticed that some recent topics about strategies include a lot of what would be considered abuses of DoomRL's mechanics. There's a soft border between what would be considered abuse and what would be considered tactics. If you can imagine such a tactic working in real life then it would be considered fair (corner-opening doors is surprisingly one such example), but if not, then it's abuse (gift-dropping).

I'd like to make this topic serve as a list for me of abuses that shall be removed some day from DoomRL.

I understand that some of the abuses may be life saving, but still, please report them truthfully -- we'll work on returning the balance from the lack of them. Hence, please report how the difficulty would change if such an abuse were removed, and what ideas you have to counter them.

thelaptop:
Hm.  Does that mean that Rocket Jumping counts as abuse since it cannot be conceivably achieved in real life?  =P

But I suppose what you mean would be bugs in game mechanics as opposed to bugs in the program code itself.

Fanta Hege:
I'm not really sure if this counts as abuse but;

The enemies that do not know your presence always move to the middle point of the map. Always. This alone allows me to easily clear rooms with just knowing the fact they are moving to middle.

Game Hunter:
Honestly, I don't see why any Barons or Hell Knights (and probably Bruiser Brothers, thank god that isn't often) would ever pick up items like the formers do. I can understand that, even with their zombie-like intelligence, that type of enemy would be genetically and perhaps intuitively aware of the mechanics of med-packs and phase devices, not to mention that they're the correct size to wear the armor correctly. Barons and Hell Knights wouldn't be disposed to such equipment, so why they would ever carry it around, let alone understand how to take advantage of it (let alone be physically capable of wearing the armor). At best, let them carry the items but don't let them use any.

As for gift-dropping in general, I don't think it's too much of a problem to let it go. Alternatively, however, you may want to introduce a sound mechanic that alerts enemies of your general whereabouts based on the noise coming off your gun (depends on the weapon, too: rockets would really only make noise at the source of the explosion, fists would be almost mute). This way, in AoB you could potentially lure enemies by throwing knives onto the floor or into a wall...not a loud noise, of course, but enough to catch the attention of anything pretty close. (Or just give the chainsaw an alt fire of revving the engine, heh.)

Other abuses I can think of:

- The AI pathing found in Barons and HKs will end up really predictable from the other side of a wall. Same goes for Bruisers, perhaps even to a greater extreme. AoD should be a LITTLE more aware that he's entering lava, too...I wouldn't remove the lathbath exploit entirely, but if he can move away from the lava and still be on target toward the player, let him do that.
- There are a few "one-way safe" shots that allow the attacker to cause harm without the victim getting sight the attacker. I see it most commonly along diagonals between rooms.
- Shotgun bullet pathing sucks half of the time, perhaps literally. As I mentioned in another thread, you're fine shooting down a hallway in some directions but not in others.  At the same time, however, you might want to cap how far you can actually shoot down a hallway, maybe drastically reduce damage for shotguns (in the same way that accuracy is drastically reduced for normal weapons). Right now, corner-shooting down a hallway some ten tiles seems a LITTLE extreme.
- Using knockback with pistols to repeatedly shoot enemies out of your vision makes you essentially immune to them, as they always simply come back into view, only to be knocked away again. Though, I can't really think of a fix, except that the enemy stop chasing you after a few attempts or something.
- I know that in Hell's Arena N!, if I am zerked going into the level, I usually kill a few enemies close to each other, then lure a Cacodemon and stand in the middle of the corpses. Cacodemon hits me with a plasma ball, corpses are gone. This (almost) always gets rid of corpses, but I don't know if it should be as reliable. At the same time, however, I kinda wish there was a more reliable way of gibbing and corpse-removal in general...you'd think a double shotgun to a former's face would do the trick.
- There are some killing strategies that remove corpses unconventionally, namely stacking enemy deaths on the same tile or killing them while on a door. If you lower the respawn rate a little to compensate, consider fixing these.
- Most enemies don't know how to remove themselves from acid/lava. Barons/HKs/formers/Arachs all will continue to stand in hazards as long as you remain in their vision to fire, and basically everything will stay it if they're also surrounded on all tiles.
- Lost Souls + Vampyre = instant 200% health. Reduce the health gain for Lost Souls to 1 HP per kill and this should make it so you actually have to think about it, rather than running into the room gung-ho.
- Ammochain is an abuse in general, and alternatives should be considering during a beta test (there's a thread for it if you want some ideas). In my honest opinion, MAc can be appropriately nerfed as long as you remove the 100% chance of getting agility mods in the Chained Court.
- Juggler, according to the game, works with both the prepared slot and quick keys...excluding exotics/uniques (but including chainsaw and BFG), this lets you insta-swap any weapon you own. If you happen to need two of the same weapon (usually shotgun-type), that's all the prepared slot needs to be used for.
- Revs, Mancubi and Viles need better melee, considering I've NEVER been attacked by one up close in all the time I've been playing. If I recall the original game, Revenants are really nasty punchers...the other two either need to know how to run away better or have an attack they feel like using (maybe Mancubi can have a low damage but knockback hit).
- I'm fairly certain nuking JC gives you a full win, even if you aren't invulnerable (and hence die with him). Might want to consider reducing it to a standard victory, considering you didn't really defeat the true evil. At the same time, however, anything short of killing him conventionally should ALSO grant a standard victory (though I think this part is already a known bug).

That's all I can think of right now. Thankfully, there aren't a lot and, if anything, the game needs a few saving graces to make it a little easier (cross-monster infighting?).

rchandra:
I think the best way to stop giftdropping would be to have enemies no longer pick up / care about items at all.  it always feels like such a kick when an enemy uses your medpack/homing phase or you pick up armor at 14% from all the filth that has worn it first.  That would maintain some balance as well, removing a trick and a hindrance.

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