DRL > Requests For Features

Difficulty Increases Equate To Greater Challenges

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OldSpider:
Have you ever wondered just how stupid your average baron of Hell is?  He just keeps walking up to your corner to face another blow from your focused double barrels of death like they won't be there next time.  I can understand there's a bit of pride leading up to the ultimate loss of control; when that bullet grazed his skull tattoo he knew it was you and that's was all he could stand.  As we have seen with pinkies, some monsters are really quite mindless, but does this always have to be so?

This is DoomRL.  This is the future.

If I'm playing on ITYTD I expect the monsters to be reasonably stupid and there not to be very many of them.  It's like I woke up in a broom closet to find them all partying and not paying much attention through the haze of liquor.  This level is acceptable as is.

Okay, here comes HNTR, which looks like some cheesy 80s crime show.  I can understand it if the barons are getting a bit wobbly and it's like they didn't quite see you walk in there, so I'm okay with this level.

But now we're playing on HMP.  Knights, barons, archviles, and any supposedly smarterer demon isn't acting like it at all; rather, what I'm confronted with is more targets and the same old lazy AI.  UV suggests lots of spam bots sent to get in my way, which soon covers the floor in blood.  N! and holy crap I've been caught in the middle of the initial waves of the invasion... but no AI in sight.  Increasing difficulty levels shouldn't necessarily equate to more targets, but to more challenging situations.

HMP: there are the same amount of demons as HNTR, but smarter demons will actually wait at choke points to surprise you and every now and then will walk through short stretches of acid or lava to get to you.  Some of the smarter demons who have hands will actually pick up powerful weapons and use them against you.  Archviles won't just play coward while spamming you with reanimated corpses; rather, they'll direct the attack and attempt to surround and corner you.

UV: not only are hell's forces on the march, but there are still some exhausted humans attempting to fight them.  And there are targets all over the place.  Do you blast your way through or do you wait patiently, dropping needful items to fellow humans in the hope they'll help you get through this nightmare?  Or perhaps you'll just clear a way for them to escape.

N!: did I say nightmare?  You didn't just wake up in the broom closet, you woke up in the middle of the initial invasion.  Not only are your comrades being eaten and blasted to goop all around you, but so will you if you don't get up and boogie.  N! shouldn't just be more monsters teleporting in all the time, but there should be special levels where you have to run or be swamped with waves of those things.  The human forces left on base should be armed to the teeth... which could be too bad if you get in the way.  Places like the Military Base are still under human control when you get there and if you're really lucky you might get some real help if you save them.

Sereg:
I feel like this already exists to some degree, although it could just be that it's less punishing when it happens at lower levels - but it seems like sometimes I'll wait for an obscenely long time, and as soon as I've decided it's safe and whoever's left on the level can't quite get to me for some reason, and I walk out into the open all unsuspecting, something horrible is just chilling there waiting to blow me away.

Again, I can't say if they're actually waiting like that, or if it's just that it hurts more on the harder difficulties, but it sure feels like they're smarter sometimes.

Tavana:
Not to nitpick, but you spoke first of different AI, and then of a completely different story.

I agree that AI could be raised in harder difficulties - it would be a nice change to drop into a group that can pick you apart strategically with only four monsters instead of being dropped into 10+ monsters that cannot help but kill you due to their numbers.

As to the other things - the intro to the game specifically says that you're here some time after the invasion. I suppose that could be changed for different difficulties, but that seems a bit odd. A lot of people skip the intro now-a-days, so...

In the long run, if the AI is changed there will need to be a lot of pre-release testing for balance. I do agree that some of the small changes would be excellent - skipping over one tile of lava if they're smart enough and you're close enough, hanging around choke points for a limited period of time once they're aware of your presence - but I don't really agree with any of the larger changes you describe. They seem more like a module to be written by someone.

Klear:
Hmm.. I'd be all for improved AI, but I'd keep it the same across difficulties. The lower difficulties are there to train for UV and N! anyway, no?

grommile:
The problem with improving DoomRL's AI is that you basically have to rebalance the game from the ground up if you make any significant changes. Also, the difficulty slider being basically a "more and harder-hitting monsters" slider fits the source material quite nicely.

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