DoomRL > Discussion

Nightmare requires a tedious, boring play style

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iainuki:
I know I'm not treading new ground here, I'm sure these observations have been made before, but I wanted to note that as a relatively new player of this game, I don't find Nightmare fun.

The primary challenge on Nightmare is the respawning monsters.  The only way to prevent respawning, without some late game weapons that take luck to obtain, is making sure monsters die on the right tile (another corpse, a door, or fluids).  This in turn means that actually shooting the monsters takes a back seat to manipulating their movement, which takes a fiddly combination of dancing around, positioning guess-work, dealing damage carefully calibrated not to kill something, gift-dropping, and waiting.  I'd guess the amount of time spent waiting (measured by in-game turns) by a typical good player on Nightmare is a majority or at least plurality of their game actions.  In real time, I've watched good players take 15 minutes on a single Nightmare level.

Meanwhile, the respawning also exacerbates some of the more frustrating aspects of the randomness of the game.  Knockback is not consistent because damage rolls aren't consistent, which cuts down on the number of circumstances where it's possible to reliably position monsters so they don't leave a corpse.  Some levels are much, much easier to prevent respawning on than others, and if you generate a level with lot of big rooms with awkwardly placed doors preventing repawning can verge on impossible.  If you end up in a situation where you have to kill something where it will respawn, it can stay dead long enough for you to clear the rest of the level or immediately resurrect the moment you kill it, which is particularly brutal when a high-HP enemy gets a full refill rather than dying.

Maybe there's a play style that mitigates these issues, but if it exists, I haven't found it.

ih8regin:
There are two ways of going through N! without tedium. One is stairdiving, doable should you not care about 100%/90%/whatever% badges, or if you're AoPc - but, AoPc on N!? The other is rocketing stuff around, gibbing corpses as they are made. Berserking with a Longinus Spear or maybe with a double chainsaw also often does not leave a corpse, also with meleeing you more often have an opportunity to fight an enemy over an open door. There may be other ways to tackle N! without this issue, but I'm not a serious N! player (or AoD if this matters, AoD also involves respawning monsters).

Kornel Kisielewicz:
I actually fully agree with you. Nightmare gameplay in DoomRL was designed somehow accidentally. The monsters were not supposed to be prevented from reviving, people found out engine limitations that would indeed prevent that, and started "clearing" levels on Nightmare. As it seemed to be something the high-level players did often I added some badges that required that.

At this moment, changing any behaviour related to Nightmare clears would require a serious rebalance of the challenges, and is definitely not something I have time to do.

Yet lessons were learned, and my major goal when designing Jupiter Hell is removing any tedious and boring tactic from the game as soon as I identify it. To do this retroactively for DoomRL would be much harder, especially not breaking other stuff and strategies along the way.

iainuki:

--- Quote from: Kornel Kisielewicz on March 23, 2020, 04:05 ---I actually fully agree with you. Nightmare gameplay in DoomRL was designed somehow accidentally. The monsters were not supposed to be prevented from reviving, people found out engine limitations that would indeed prevent that, and started "clearing" levels on Nightmare. As it seemed to be something the high-level players did often I added some badges that required that.

At this moment, changing any behaviour related to Nightmare clears would require a serious rebalance of the challenges, and is definitely not something I have time to do.

Yet lessons were learned, and my major goal when designing Jupiter Hell is removing any tedious and boring tactic from the game as soon as I identify it. To do this retroactively for DoomRL would be much harder, especially not breaking other stuff and strategies along the way.

--- End quote ---

Yeah, I figured as much.  I'm just venting that progressing as a DoomRL player requires taking doing so many tedious and boring things.

Sylph:
I know this is an old topic, but since it's near the top of the list of threads, I figured you might like a little input!
I've found that most of the corpse disposal in the difficult part of a nightmare run involves doors, and this in turn kinda boosts rapid fire or pistol weapons since they finish a monster without knocking its corpse out of the door!
I totally get what you're saying. I guess after a while I got used to enjoying the nightmare 100% play style, but it's very different from the core gameplay!
I guess a part of me likes how corpse disposal nerfs shotguns a little. I will add, though, that waiting on the spot consumes the vast majority of turns on any difficulty in ideal play, and by vast I mean vast: 95%+.

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