DoomRL > Requests For Features

Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas

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Icy:
With Kornel's blessing, I'll be compiling all of the feature requests from the community into this thread to help centralize all the suggestions people have brought up. Although I'll be organizing everything and offering quite a number of ideas myself, by all means I don't expect to have all of mine make it into the official future release or dominate over other ideas. I highly encourage everyone to bring discussion to everyone else's ideas, and to be very open with your own. Be creative and even a little outlandish with requests, just be sure to justify them with good reasoning and support. Nobody can get everything they want, and we have to all collectively compromise. At the end of the day, it's also Kornel's call to decide and also the team to put in the work to actually make new changes.

I think it's also important to reflect on the process involved with new changes with future versions. There are functionally infinite ways the game can be changed, functionally creating infinite possible DoomRLs, so having a general sense of direction is good to have. Balance is important, and people will have varying ways on how balance should be created. Some may argue that having clearly identifiable tiers of viability makes for a better game as gimmicky self-handicaps can create interesting experiences. Others may try to equalize everything as best as possible. Another important concept to consider is that people are psychologically loss averse and feel worse from losing something than they do feeling good about gaining something of equal magnitude. It can often be a more exciting and interesting game when new features are created, rather than taking away ones that are too powerful. Despite that though, DoomRL is the player vs the game, and especially with the roguelike genre, there must be a level of challenge and difficulty, which does require some inherent loss of power or gain of opposition to maintain how hard DoomRL is.

Below are three broad categories for ideas: 1) bugs/exploits/fixes where something is broken with the game and needs to be fixed, whether a major glitch or even just a small typo, 2) changes, where something already existed should be modified to make the game better, and 3) new features, which are entirely new and not currently existing in the game. With each individual idea will be a brief explanation of what the idea is and links to the rationale behind the idea and any additional discussion from other posts once discussion picks up a bit. I'll also look into digging through old ideas in this sub-forum to add to this topic over time, as it has been many years since players have brought up new ideas. Depending on the progression of this thread and how the development team goes about it, I'll later start including the expected status of any ideas if they become planned for the release, rejected for the release, or in a pending status for further discussion.

I also do this purely as a passionate player and am not involved with the actual decisions of future requests, nor are my ideas above the ideas that anyone else has to offer. I'm simply helping with organizing everything into one place.

Colour-coding is used to help group a few sections. Badges are coloured coded for each tier, and any suggestions related to weapons, equipment, and assemblies are in lime green.

Bugs/Exploits/Fixes

[X] Bug: Deimos Lab is considered conquered by only pressing the two levers to open up the middle. 1

[X] Bug: Containment Area is considered conquered by killing all enemies, and the trap can be skipped. 1

[X] Bug: Killing the Apostle (at least on Archangel of 666) gives an error message. 1

[?] Bug: On a flood level on an island map, it's possible to start in the middle of lava (this may have been fixed in a previous version and I have never experienced this). 1

[X] Bug: Attacking an item crate with a melee weapon on Angel and Archangel of Pacifism gives an error message. 1

[X] Bug: Tristar Blaster accepts Firestorm Pack, but it does nothing. 1

[X] Bug: Error messages occur when wielding Dragonslayer and Berserker Armor, and there are no tiles for Nightmare Demons to spawn on. 1

[X] Exploit: Nightmare Demons can be trivially farmed for essentially infinite kills when hiding and wielding Dragonslayer and Berserker Armor. A suggest fix is having it spawn special Nightmare Demons which are immune to fluid damage. 1

[ ] Exploit: Medical Armor in Nanofiber Skin Armor (N) can allow the player to take 1 damage and immediately heal it. Since this can be done infinitely, it may cause an issue if the total damage value reaches the highest possible. A suggested fix is changing the recharge delay of Nanofiber Skin Armor to 6 so that it can never reach 0. 1

[ ] Exploit: The Spider Mastermind can get stuck when shot across the bottom or top middle pillars, making it only able to go up and down. The AI might need to be adjusted. 1

[ ] Exploit: Angel of 100 can be used to be considered a conqueror due to 0 generated bonus floors to earn some achievements. 1

[X] Fix: Grammar for the menu before selecting Archangel challenges says "in it's ultra hard form". 1

[ ] Fix: Archangel of 666 shows both in-game and in the high scores that it's Ao100. 1

[ ] Fix: Lightfoot Platinum Badge doesn't say it requires Ultra-Violence difficulty in-game. 1

[ ] Fix: Charch's Null Pointer shows that its damage is 0d0, when it's actually 10d1. 1

Changes

[~] Nerf Intuition by marking items as a green X instead of showing what they are, and change monster sense radius from 3 to 2. 1 2

[X] Nerf Scout class bonuses and buff other class bonuses (needs discussion). Current suggestions are Stair Sense doesn't work for stairs to bonus levels, Marines have 10% all resistances inherently, and Technicians have more uniques they can mod. 1 2 3

[X] Allow assemblies before Whizkid x2 to still get an extra mod pack after later getting Whizkid x2. 1 2

[X] Buff Reloader to 25% speed, possibly 30% speed. 1 2 3 4 5

[X] Remove Gunrunner blocking Whizkid and change it to another trait such as Brute. 1 2

[X] Remove Army of the Dead blocking Finesse and change it to another trait such as Son of a Gun. 1 2

[X] Remove Bullet Dance blocking Eagle Eye and change it to Intuition. 1

[ ] Buff Entrenchment (needs discussion). Current suggestion is increasing resistances from 30% to 50%. 1

[ ] Make Phobos Lab more rewarding to enter compared to Military Base (needs discussion). 1 2 3

[ ] High scores mostly devolve into playing Archangel of 666 and aren't really used. Perhaps they should be changed (needs discussion). 1

[ ] Allow more variety in fluid generation, so there is more water and acid in deeper levels. 1 2

[ ] Add Angel of Death as a regular enemy in very deep levels. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

[ ] Allow Juggler to instantly swap across all weapons from inventory, instead of requiring mousewheel. Also allow it to work with swapping ammo boxes. 1 2 3 4 5 6

[ ] Replace Missile Launcher in City of Skulls/Abyssal Plains. 1

[X] Switch the depths of Unholy Cathedral and The Vaults. 1 2

[X] Change The Vaults enemies. 1 2

[ ] Prevent softlocking when teleporting into the mountain of Mt. Erebus. 1 2 3 4

[X] Buff Nightmare Imps. 1 2

[X] Change Nightmare Archvile's attack to 20d1 Plasma. 1 2

[X] Buff Lava Elemental. 1 2 3

[X] Increase depth Former Commandos and Pain Elementals can spawn. 1 2

[ ] Allow hunting enemies to pick up items and armors (Cyberdemon would need a healing cap for Med Packs). 1 2 3 4 5 6

[ ] Allow Hell's Arena to have both different rewards and different enemies depending on challenge. Dual challenges would use the harder set. 1 2 3

[ ] Replace lever with a horizontal coordinate trap in City of Skulls. 1 2

[ ] Have The Wall/Containment Area open up after all enemies are dead to prevent softlocks if you use a Phase Device. 1 2

[X] Increase the danger level in Deimos and Hell (needs discussion). 1 2 3

[X] Decrease the audio volume when a rapid-fire attack hits an enemy multiple times. 1 2

[ ] Buff the Apostle to 500 HP and always teleporting after being hit (also kill all enemies when it dies like JC). 1 2 3 4

[ ] Change ammo rooms so they don't only drop Cells late into the game. A suggested change is: 1% 1d2 Cell Boxes, 2% 1d2 Rocket Boxes, 3% 1d2 Shell Boxes, 4% 1d2 Bullet Boxes, 20% 1d3 + 2 Cells, 20% 1d3 + 2 Rockets, 25% 1d3 + 2 Shells, and 25% 1d3 + 2 Bullets. 1 2 3 4 5 6

[X] Change the difficulty suggestion of Archangel of Humanity from "TwoDev" to "Tormuse". 1

[X] Change Nightmare Demons from giving 95 Experience to 263 Experience. 1

[X] Change Elite Former Humans, Elite Former Sergeants, and Elite Former Captains Experience values to 128, 263, 320 respectively. Also increase their weight generation values. 1 2

[ ] Buff all Elite Former enemies to deal 2d5 melee damage (equivalent to a Combat Knife). 1 2

[ ] Change the colour of Sniper Mod Packs so they are distinguishable from Firestorm Mod Packs. Suggested colour is a dark green, but any is fine. 1 2

[ ] Buff Survivalist to only require Ironman x2, and to give double healing from Small Med Packs and Small Health Globes. 1 2

[ ] Buff Scavenger to work with melee weapons, armors, and boots. Possibly also change and add some guaranteed drops. 1 2

[ ] For the dodging bonus value on the stats screen, have it include the bonus value when running. 1

[X] For levers that destroy walls, only make a singular explosion sound instead of one for each wall tile. 1

[ ] If Containment Area is destroyed by a nuke, disable the trap, but still count the level as conquered. 1

[ ] If Abyssal Plains is destroyed by a nuke, disable the wall trap from appearing. 1

[ ] Change bridges that go over rivers to not be blocked off by walls or rooms without doors (this might be too difficult to implement). 1 2

[ ] For postmortem messages for darkness levels, remove the comma after the level number so that it formats correctly when pasted on the forums with mortem tags. 1

[~] Buff Frag Shotgun by reducing ammo consumed from 4 to 2, and possibly reduce clip size from 16 to 10 or 8 to compensate. Also consider changing damage to 6d3 and change firing speed to 0.5s. 1 2 3

[ ] Buff Mjollnir damage to 1d25, and consider making its depth level 1 and have a higher generation weight, similar to Butcher's Cleaver. 1 2 3

[ ] Have Throw from Combat Knife and Mjollnir be improved by Brute's accuracy and Finesse's speed. Also confirm that Son of a Bitch and Brute's damage also affect them. 1 2 3

[X] Buff Mega Buster from 5 ammo per shot to 3 ammo per shot, to also match the bursts themselves. 1

[ ] Let Mega Buster use alt fire to switch modes, but you have to collect all the damage types (more similar to Mega Man). 1 2

[ ] Allow Subtle Knife to count as "knife kills". Remove the HP reduction of Invoke and increase attack speed to 0.8s. 1 2 3

[ ] Nerf Trigun to not be an instant nuke and require 10s like regular nukes. 1

[~] Buff Medical Powerarmor from 4 protection to 6 protection, allow healing up to 50%, and increase its weight generation to 3. 1 2 3 4 5

[X] Make Backpack indestructible. 1 2 3

[X] Increase Chainsaw's generation weight. 1 2 3

[X] Buff Micro Launcher by giving it 0.5s firing speed. 1 2

[ ] Buff Double Chainsaw. 1 2 3

[X] Buff Medical Armor to heal up to 50% and switch the resistances to 15% for each of Plasma, Acid, and Fire. 1 2

[ ] Change Duelist Armor to only having 60% Melee resistance. 1 2 3 4 5 6

[X] Buff Tower Shield to having 200% durability and -30% movement speed. 1 2 3

[X] Buff Ballistic Armor to 40% Melee/Bullet/Shrapnel resistances and -20% Fire resistance. 1 2 3 4 5

[X] Change Cybernetic Armor's resistances to 20% all. 1 2 3

[X] Buff Necroarmor to regenerate at 5% durability per action. 1 2

[X] Change Gothic Set from +4 Protection to 50% all resistance. 1 2

[ ] Make Dragonslayer's Berserk effect "more permanent". 1 2

[ ] Change Schematics so that each run is truly independent (probably just have it drop elsewhere separately). 1 2 3 4

[ ] Change Technical Packs to increase resistances when used in armors instead of knockback. 1 2 3 4

[X] Buff/change BFG9000 Overcharge (needs discussion). 1 2 3

[X] Increase the amount of Rockets in a Rocket Box from 20 to 25. 1 2

[ ] Buff Bullet-Proof Vest from 80% Bullet resistances to 95% and increase generation weight from 4 to 6. 1 2

[X] Change Environmental Boots assembly from BPT to BBT, and buff the resistances to 95%. 1 2 3 4

[X] Buff Combat Translocator from 10 Cells per shot to 5. 1

[~] Let Technicians apply a single mod or basic assembly to Frag Shotgun, Jackhammer, Anti-Freak Jackal, Grammaton Cleric Beretta, Necroarmor, Shielded Armor, and Medical Powerarmor. Let Revenant's Launcher be fully moddable. 1 2 3 4

[X] Buff Speedloader Pistol assembly from 0.6s to 0.4s. 1 2 3

[ ] Buff Power Armor assembly by tripling Plasma Resistance and quintupling Bullet/Shrapnel Resistance (and still doubling Fire Resistance). Also buff it by giving +20% movement speed instead of a set value. 1 2 3 4 5 6

[X] Buff Assault Rifle to have original+3 Accuracy instead of just +2. 1

[X] Nerf Inquisitor Set pieces to each have +20% movement speed and weight generations of 2. 1 2

New Features

[ ] Add a toggle for turning off powerup overlays of Berserk, Invulnerability, and Envirosuit. 1 2

[~] Allow all difficulties and challenges available from a new file. 1 2

[ ] Cycle between Phobos, Deimos, and Hell tilesets for Angel of 100 / Archangel of 666. 1 2

[ ] Add more music slots in the musichq.lua file. 1

[ ] Create locked vaults. 1 2

[ ] Add a lever effect that drops ammo. 1 2 3

[ ] Add Phobos trees to level generation (but avoid blocking off areas; might require being preset or being fragile). 1 2 3 4

[ ] Have a text colour change before running mode wears out, similar to powerup effects. 1 2

[ ] Have the trait selection screen be more color-coded (example by Mader Levap): 1 2 Spoiler (click to show/hide)
[ ] Create Archangel of Darkness which would have an even smaller vision (4?), but 2.5x experience. 1 2 3 4 5

[ ] Add level feeling messages for Agony Elemental caves and Lava Elemental caves. ("You hear echoing wails of agony!" / "You feel like you stepped into a volcano!" or something) 1 2

[ ] Add trap rooms. These would have a power-up/exotic item inside and when obtained, has a 50% chance of spawning enemies similar to a summon enemies lever, or flooding the room with acid or lava. The weight of the power-ups/exotics would not impact the rest of the floor. The chance of the trap activating could also instead be affected by depth level and/or difficulty. 1 2 3 4 5

[X] Remove the out of range limit for firing that was added into the newest version. 1

[ ] Reveal enemies when there are three or less remaining. 1 2 3 4 5 6

[ ] Have the stats screen show number of enemies remaining. 1 2

[ ] Add sounds for all actions for exotics/uniques/artifacts. 1 2

[ ] Add sounds for Nightmare enemies, Lava Elemental, Agony Elemental, Arena Master, and Apostle. 1 2

[ ] Add sounds for enemies spawning, enemies reviving, and Archviles charging. 1 2

[ ] Allow a third Sniper Pack to give weapons the auto-hit property. 1

[ ] New assembly suggestion: Scouting Armor (AS) which is original, +1 Vision, +10% speed. 1

[ ] New assembly suggestion: Blastproof Armor (TF) which is original, with half damage to explosions, +30% knockback. 1

[ ] New assembly suggestion: Grappling Armor (BA) which is original, +30% Melee Resistance, -50% knockback. 1 2 3 4

[ ] New assembly suggestion: Sniper Rifle (BAS) (Chaingun only) which is original with auto-hit property. 1 2

[ ] New exotic suggestion: Acid-Proof Armor which is 3 Protection, 95% Acid Resistance, -10% movement speed, everything else normal. 1 2

[ ] New exotic suggestion: Glass Shield which is 0 Protection, 50% Durability, 80% all resistances, cannot be repaired, cannot be modded, doesn't degrade. 1 2 3 4

[ ] New exotic suggestion: Glass Armor which is 0 Protection, 50% Durability, 50% all resistances. 1 2

[ ] Add method for guaranteed Berserker Armor and Dragonslayer in Angel of 100 / Archangel of 666. 1 2 3 4

[ ] Add a new common Pistol type (suggested example is "Magnum" with more power and less accuracy). 1 2

[ ] Create Tactical Set (Tactical Armor + Tactical Boots) which gives Dodgemaster. 1 2

[X] Keep the new assembly, "Mother-In-Law", but change it to PPFN. 1 2 3

Icy:
Badges, Medals, and Rankings:

Add colour-coding to medals and badges in mortems at the end of a game. 1 2

Medals:

[ ] Make all medals visible in the player status menu, instead of having some bonus ones be hidden until achieved. 1 2

[ ] Adjust the number of medals so there are 50 of them. 1

[ ] Change the names of Explorer Badge, Conqueror Badge, Untouchable Badge, Grim Reaper's Badge, Angelic Badge, and Hell Armorer Badge so they don't sound like badges. 1

[ ] Change medal requirements so that if a higher version is earned, you still earn the lower versions too (example: Experience Medal, Hell Armorer Badge, Hell Champion Medal, etc). 1

[ ] Clarify that Malicious Knives Cross and Sunrise Fist require all kills with the proper weapons, but don't require 100% kills. 1

[ ] Iron Skull - Change to 5,000 damage, instead of 10,000. Alternatively, require 2,000 damage but require winning the game. 1 2 3

[ ] Change "Every Soldier's Medal" to "Invader's Medal - Clear The Wall/Containment Area on any of Angel of Berserk / Angel of Marksmanship / Angel of Shotgunner". (Replacing it with the old Brick Silver Badge) 1 2 3 4 5

[ ] Gambler's Shield - Change to requiring 25 lever pulls instead of 26.1

[ ] Dervis' Medallion - Change to getting 100% kills on Angel of 100 / Archangel of 100. 1

[ ] Thomas's Medal - Change to completing Angel of Humanity with 100% kills (no Angel of Confidence or Angel of Overconfidence). 1 2 3 4 5 6

[ ] New: Experience Token - Reach experience level 15 in a standard game. 1

[ ] New: Aurora Star - Find 10 uniques or more (Allow all challenge types). 1

[ ] New: Technician Medal - Create 15 or more different assemblies in a single game. (Allow all challenge types) 1 2 3

[ ] New: UAC Cross - Kill 2,500 or more enemies. (Allow all challenge types) 1 2 3

[ ] New: Boss Slayer Cross - Clear a boss floor and exit alive. (Boss floors are special floors that have a single enemy being a boss, which are Bruiser Brothers, Shamblers, Agony Elementals, Lava Elementals, or Cyberdemons). 1 2 3 4 5 6

[ ] New: Unexplored Star - Visit no generated levels and win the game. (Excludes Angel of Confidence, Angel of Overconfidence, Angel of 100, and Archangel of 666) 1 2 3 4 5 6

[ ] Keep the new medal "Medal of Pacifism". 1 2

[ ] Remove the new medals "Shotgunnery Cross", "Marksmanship Cross", "Zen Master's Cross", "Purple Heart", "Gutts' Sorrow", and "Klear Cross". 1 2

Badges:

[ ] Allow previously obtained badges to appear in mortems, and keep count of them. 1 2

[ ] Adjust the number of badges so there are 25 of each type, including Angelic Badges. 1 2 3

[ ] Have higher rankings require more of the previous tier badges (get to needing 15 Bronze, and then a few rankings later, start requiring them again for 18 Bronze, 21 Bronze, etc). 1

[ ] No-Life King ranking should require all badges of every type. Currently it only requires Angelic Badges. 1

[ ] Change Heroic Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum/Diamond Badges to require 5/15/25/35/45 badges respectively. 1 2

[ ] Disallow Dual-Angel challenges for all of Berserker Bronze Badge to Pacifist Bronze Badge, Berserker Silver Badge to Pacifist Silver Badge, Berserker Gold Badge to Daredevil Gold Badge, Berserker Platinum Badge to Everyman Platinum Badge, and Berserker Diamond Badge to Daredevil Diamond Badge. 1

[ ] Veteran Bronze Badge - Change this to requiring a standard game so that it's at least a bit different than Medal of Prejudice. 1

[ ] Speedrunner Bronze Badge - Change this to 40 minutes so that it's a little different than Compet-n Silver Cross. 1

[ ] Arena Bronze Badge - Change this to requiring a standard game so that it's at least a bit different than Hell Champion Medal. 1

[ ] Remove Scavenger Bronze Badge to bring the count to 25. 1

[ ] Brick Silver Badge - Change this to requiring Angel of Light Travel and no Dual-Angel challenges. 1 2 3 4

[ ] Remove Lava Silver Badge to bring the count to 25. 1 2

[ ] Gatekeeper Gold Badge - Change to needing to pass Phobos Anomaly on Hurt Me Plenty difficulty without taking damage. 1 2

[ ] Remove Armorer Gold Badge to bring the count to 25. 1 2

[ ] Change Armorer Platinum Badge to "Collector Platinum Badge - Find all exotics and uniques". 1 2 3

[ ] Berserker Platinum Badge - Remove the kill count requirement. 1 2 3

[ ] Hunter Platinum Badge - Change to Ultra-Violence and needing 75% kills. 1 2 3 4

[ ] Remove Scavenger Platinum Badge to bring the count to 25. 1 2

[ ] Change Armorer Diamond Badge's name to "Collector Diamond Badge" 1 2 3

[ ] Berserker Diamond Badge - Remove the kill count and require the newly suggested medal "Unexplored Star". 1 2

[ ] Arena Diamond Badge - Change this to Ultra-Violence (possibly keeping it on Nightmare depending on potential changes to Hell's Arena). 1 2 3

[ ] Remove Scavenger Diamond Badge to bring the count to 25. 1 2

[ ] UAC Angelic Badge - Change to Ultra-Violence. 1

[ ] Strongman Angelic Badge - Change to 75% kills. 1

[ ] Speedrunner Angelic Badge - Change to 12 minutes. 1 2 3

[ ] Demonic Angelic Badge - Change to winning a standard game on Nightmare with 100% kills and Untouchable Badge. 1 2 3

[ ] Shottyman Angelic Badge - Change to 100% kills. 1

[ ] Eagerness Angelic Badge - Change to 50% kills. 1

[ ] Inquisitor Angelic Badge - Change to Ultra-Violence. 1

[ ] Pacifist Angelic Badge - Change to Nightmare and remove kill count requirement. 1

[ ] New: Heroic Angelic Badge - Achieve all 50 medals. 1 2 3

[ ] New: Destroyer Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of Max Carnage + Angel of 100 on Nightmare. 1

[ ] New: Hunter Angelic Badge - Complete Archangel of Darkness on Nightmare. If this challenge isn't created, instead go with Angel of Darkness on Nightmare as a conqueror. 1 2 3

[ ] New: Daredevil Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of Overconfidence + Angel of Darkness on Nightmare with 100% kills. 1

[ ] New: Purist Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of Purity + Angel of Light Travel on Nightmare. 1

[ ] New: Carnage Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of Max Carnage + Angel of Masochism on Nightmare with 100% kills. 1

[ ] New: Apostle Angelic Badge - Kill the Apostle in a standard game on Nightmare. 1

[ ] New: Sunrise Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of 100 on Ultra-Violence with 100% kills using only Fists. 1

Icy:
My suggestions:

On Angel of Pacifism and Archangel of Pacifism, when you attack item crates with melee weapons, you recieve an error message. I assume this just needs a quick fix.

Tristar Blaster can take Firestorm Packs, even though they don't do anything. I'd say either prevent it, or make it add to the splash damage (which shouldn't get to be overpowered, even with three of them, as the ammo consumption is a lot).

Deimos Lab is considered conquered by just pressing the two levers to open the middle and leaving, not needing to press the other levers or killing the Shamblers. This is just a small fix of where in the code it checks when the level is conquered.

Containment Area is considered conquered by killing all the enemies, but the game doesn't check that the trap has been activated, allowing the player to possibly skip it. This could be changed by just adjusting the code.

Killing the Apostle (at least in my experience) has always given me an error message. It hasn't done anything negative, but it looks a bit bad and can be worrying. It should be looked into and fixed.

Apparently, on floors that are both an island and a level flood, it's possible to start in the middle of the lava. I've never personally experienced this, but it might be worth looking into.

When wielding Dragonslayer and Berserker Armor, if there are no tiles for Nightmare Demons to spawn on, you receive an error message. This is common with flood levels where only the stair tiles remain. I assume this just requires a check of some kind.

When wielding Dragonslayer and Berserker Armor, it's possible to hide in an inaccessible area for Nightmare Demons, and then have them roaming around into lava or acid and dying. With Run->Wait, you can essentially farm infinite kills at no risk and doing so very quickly, even over a thousand per minute. I'm not sure what the best solution for this is as a limit or spawns could defeat the purpose of the Berserker Armor's curse. Perhaps have it spawn a special type of Nightmare Demon that is immune to fluids?

Medical Armor heals 1% at the cost of 1 durability. With Nanofiber Skin Armor assembly, this allows the armor to self-repair after 5 actions of not taking damage. This delay can be reduced to 0 with a Nano Pack. With Nanofiber Skin Medical Armor (N), the player can essentially take 1 damage, heal 1 damage, the armor repairs 1 damage, and this can be done infinitely. The damage taken value could have adverse effects if it reaches the maximum value possible, such as rolling over to 0, which could be exploited to complete "damageless" challenges. This doesn't work with Onyx Packs, which simply hide durability, although it's still there. This should be tested first if any negative effects can actually occur, or otherwise change how the assembly works with Medical Armor, such as making the recharge delay higher and impossible to reach 0.

When you are near the top corners of the top middle pillar, or the bottom corners of the bottom middle pillar, and hit the Spider Mastermind from the other side, its AI makes it get stuck and can only go up an down a few tiles, making it trivial to kill. Something in its AI is buggy and should be fixed.

Charch's Null Pointer reads as doing 0d0 damage, but actually does 10d1. This is mostly just a typo to fix.

The grammar when menuing for Archangel challenges says "in it's ultra hard form", which should be "its".

Lightfoot Platinum Badge doesn't say it requires Ultra-Violence difficulty in-game. This just needs to include that it has to be on UV.

Archangel of 666 games display as Ao100 for in-game menus and the high scores, which I think should be adjusted to Ao666 if possible.

I personally think Intuition is extremely overpowered and could use some nerfing. First, instead of showing the powerups, instead mark them with a green X. This also will make it fair for both ASCII and graphics players as ASCII players don't see exactly what each powerup is. Second, nerf the monster sense radius down from 3 to 2 so it's a little bit weaker, but still a good trait to invest in. I think as it stands that Intuition is way too good as just an advanced trait, especially as a starting trait for Scouts.

Nano-Shrapnel Super Shotgun is an absurdly strong weapon that trivializes most of the game, being that it's double shot, it multi-hits, it has piercing damage, is quite strong, and can be used infinitely at no cost. I think removing the piercing aspect of it could be one way to tone down the assembly, and would indirectly give Army of the Dead a much needed buff, but I think simply not allowing Super Shotgun to work with it can be fine. Regular Shotgun and Double Shotgun would be the two next best alternatives, with regular Shotgun being much weaker and more balanced, and Double Shotgun having poor depth and high damage reduction is mostly only usable at closer ranges.

Laser Rifle is extremely powerful and its huge accuracy boost counters the biggest probably with rapid-fires. Compared to a Plasma Rifle, it also reloads a bit faster and only shoots one less in its burst. Keeping the high accuracy can help it continue being unique, but perhaps decrease the burst to 4 or even 3. Nanomanufacture Laser Rifle basically melts everything in the game and doesn't even require many traits to be useful. I'm open to other discussion about other nerf ideas.

Biggest Fucking Gun is another overly powerful weapon. It does require two Firestorm Packs, and BFGs are quite rare, so it can still be a bit hard to obtain, but when you can right-click and destroy half of any level without any trait investment besides Whizkid x2, it's way too good. The guaranteed BFG from Halls of Carnage/Spider's Lair is pretty easy to obtain, but would still require some ammo to use, and the Nuclear BFG from Limbo/The Mortuary is generally obtained near the end of the game anyway. My suggestion is changing it to BNFF, but I'm open to discussion.

Frag Shotgun consumes bullets, but because it takes 4 to fire, you only get 25 shots out of a full stack, of 66 shots out of an ammo box, as opposed to 50 shots out of a shell stack, and 100 from an ammo box like for other Shotguns. This somewhat defeats the purpose of Frag Shotgun since it's less ammo efficient, and I'd say let it fire while only consuming 2 bullets, and maybe adjust the clip size appropriately to 8 or 10.

Mjollnir is pretty weak, is extremely rare, and most other melee weapons are way better, even a Chainsword. Having some range doesn't really make up for it all that much, so I'd suggest buffing the damage a fair bit, to something like 1d25 if we want to maintain its high damage variance.

Inquisitor Set is extremely strong, giving immunity to the most prevalent damage type, some solid resistance to the other dangerous types, and giving huge movement speed bonuses. On top, the two pieces are two of the more common uniques to appear. I'd say changing the movement speed to 0% could be a good nerf, but this needs discussion.

Mega Buster is a goofy weapon, but it's also a huge ammo sink to use. I'd say reduce its ammo consumption from 5 per burst to 3 per burst, which also matches how many shots are actually coming out of it.

Subtle Knife doesn't count as "knife kills" for a few badges and medals. I think allowing it would be a very small and fair change, and also would slightly buff the weapon which is currently pretty bad.

Trigun is a pretty powerful weapon that allows instant nukes at the cost of permanent health, but I still think it's a bit too powerful. A simple change of allowing 10 seconds before explosions, instead of instant could be a good change. This might need to be handled differently that regular nukes, which can still be made instant while standing over acid or lava.

Medical Powerarmor is pretty much a worse Red Armor, and the self-healing isn't really all that great. I think making it have 6 protection could be a good buff for it, while keeping it still pretty plain.

I think class bonuses tend to strongly favor Scouts, and with the power of Intuition and stair sense, tend to gravitate viable gameplay to simply skipping as much of the game as possible. Some of my suggestions for this is to nerf stair sense so that it doesn't work with bonus floors, buff Technicians by having more uniques that can be modded, and buff Marine with some extra bonus, perhaps inherent 10% all resistances to make them meatier. This definitely needs discussion though, but I strongly believe Scouts are way overpowered compared to the other classes.

When making an assembly before Whizkid x2 is unlocked, it can't later be given a mod pack after getting Whizkid x2. I think this could be a good change to make so that earlier assemblies aren't as punished. However, it could be an argument to putting more focus on Whizkid x2 sooner. I'm open to not changing it if desired.

Ironman is pretty generic and filler. Maybe buffing it to 25% could be good?

Reloader is also fairly weak and not as helpful as other speed traits since it's not as commonly used, and Shotguns benefit from Shottyman anyway. Perhaps buffing its speed to 25% would be a good balance.

Gunrunner blocking Whizkid is pretty harmful to the master trait since it severely limits what weapons can be effectively used with it. That said, running around with Nano-Shrapnel auto-firing as you dive to stairs might be a bit too powerful, but I think Gunrunner is a pretty weak trait currently. Perhaps swap the Whizkid block for Brute.

Army of the Dead has the most and worst blocks in the game, and isn't all that much more powerful, especially with being so slow and clumsy. I think allowing Whizkid would help it a lot, although with this and my suggestion for Gunrunner, every master trait would then allow access to Whizkid, which may also not be desired. Still, I would recommend swapping the block on Finesse for something else, such as Son of a Gun.

Bullet Dance is a pretty counter-intuitive master trait with basically turning Pistols into a wimpy Chaingun that has no accuracy with lack of Eagle Eye. I think a simple change that would greatly improve the viability of the trait is to change the block of Eagle Eye to Intuition, so that it maintains the same blocking tree, while allowing access to accuracy.

Entrenchment sucks because Chain Fire is bad and the incentive to use it is just some extra resistances, which is also counter-intuitive to using it. A few ideas to change it could be allowing the resistances to stay up for 1 action after Chain Fire ends, such as when you need to reload, adjust movement, or other actions. Another idea is to allow the resistances to always be active when wielding a rapid-fire, similar to how Ammochain works, although this does not incentivize using Chain Fire. Yet another idea is to simply buff the 30% resistances to 50%, which gets into some very serious defensive territory. This needs some discussion.

I think that having the Backpack be indestructible would be a good change. It can be a bit easy to accidentally blow it up if you run for it, especially by Baron of Hell splash damage. The only issue is that nuking The Wall/Containment Area would allow for easy access to it, but I think it would still be a good change.

Having some hidden medals is a bit silly since everyone reads the wiki anyway, and the chances of players accidentally discovering them is close to 0% when some of them are extremely arbitrary. I'd say just make them visible like the other medals.

Phobos Lab is significantly harder than Military Base, while also being far less rewarding. It could be argued that the lopsidedness can be a fun part of the game, but I'd be for some sort of change for the level. Even deleting the effect of removing Envirosuit when you cross back left could be a nice change. Perhaps throw in an Assault Shotgun instead of a Combat Shotgun at the end? This could use some discussion.

Apostle in-game ranking requires 50 JC kills, which is fairly tedious and the point tends to get made fairly early on. It could be left as is to encourage it as a long-term goals, but I think in terms of grinding for rankings, 25 would be fine. I'm open to this being rejected though.

Iron Skull medal isn't hard to earn and it just requires a niche setup (usually involving Vampyre), and I think 10,000 is way too high. Under normal circumstances, players likely will never take more than around 1500 damage, and when grinding for 10,000, the point has been made by like 5,000 damage. I think lowering the value to 5,000 maintains the requirement without opening it up in non-Vampyre games, and also not dragging out the idea of it for excessively long.

Some badges and medals are 100% identical such as Thomas's Medal and Everyman Platinum Badge, which should be changed into something different.

For Armorer Platinum Badge, cheesing this with Angel of Overconfidence by dropping the starting exotics and picking them up makes this just grindy. Under normal play, I believe also that it only counts each item once, that is, if you find 3 Missile Launchers in the same game, it only counts as 1. This badge should be changed since both methods of play are not great.

For Arena Diamond Badge, this mostly just requires gross amounts of luck to complete. I'd say either change it to Angelic tier, or bump the difficulty down to Ultra-Violence.

For UAC Angelic Badge, this is not realistically possible. I'd say either change this to 50 damage, set the difficulty to Ultra-Violence (possibly even lower), or otherwise make this Angel of Overconfidence + Angel of Max Carnage.

For Strongman Angelic Badge, like some other challenges, nobody is killing 90% of enemies raw on Nightmare with just fists, and are rushing to the end and farming a respawn. I'd suggest bumping this down to like 75% to where the point is already made and nothing is gained from further grinding.

For Speedrun Angelic Badge, 4 minutes is not at all possible. I think a godly realistic run could get to around 8:30 or so, which would involve stair-diving and having a huge stack of Invulnerability. This is also advantaged for graphics players. I'd suggest a time limit of 12 minutes, or if you want to keep it hard, 10 minutes.

Demonic Angelic Badge is several realms beyond possibility and needs to be changed.

For Shottyman Angelic Badge, this badge is cake compared to all other Angelic Badges, and even easier than some Platinum Badges. I'd say change it to 100% kills to be comparable with other Angelic Badges.

For Eagerness Angelic Badge, 90% kills is way too insane for a game mode where you can't heal and monsters can respawn. I'd say bump the kill count way down or otherwise change the difficulty to Ultra-Violence.

Inquisitor Angelic Badge is way too insane where you're stumbling around without power-ups, but also need to exit each level very quickly. I think changing it to Ultra-Violence would be fine.

For Pacifist Angelic Badge, the luck required for this is unrealistic. I'd say change it to allowing any number of kills and require Nightmare difficulty. This makes the badge aligned with all the other Archangel on Nightmare challenges, and being actually possible to earn.

High scores in general are hardly used and mostly involve playing Archangel of 666 games. It might be outlandish to suggest removing them, but they don't really do a whole lot for the game in my opinion.

Many of the badges and medals in the game can be trivialized by using Dual-Angel challenges to cheese them. In particular, Angel of Overconfidence skips most of the game, Angel of Max Carnage makes kills significantly easier with careful play, and Angel of Lightfoot makes the player way faster. Some challenges could still be fine with mixing things, but others should definitely be more restrictive. Exact details and discussion could be provided if desired.

Perhaps one of the most polarizing and controversial suggested changes is to allow saving on Nightmare difficulty. Because the gameplay is very slow in nature as you need to be very careful and planned with playing, even a standard game can run for several hours and not everyone can leave their computers running over long periods of time. As it stands, it's highly incentivizing to just rush through Nightmare games. However, the biggest reason against this is savescumming, which players of various skill levels have admitted to doing, and it gives cheaters a very easy tool to use. Even if players generally play with integrity and dignity, it can be easy to justify savescumming to themselves at an accidental error such as using a Nano Pack on a Green Armor by mistake, all the way to outright restarting everything until they get the desired luck. We've seen all kind of highly questionable claims from some players, and allowing saving and potentially savescumming for Nightmare difficulty is a huge can of worms, that unfortunately does punish honest players. Cheating and anti-cheating is always an arms race, and even with full video proof of playing, there has been a lot of media about players cheating in video games by splicing videos or editing the game. I'm personally for allowing saving in Nightmare, but I'm open to the idea of continuing to not allow this.

Currently, Sniper Packs first remove accuracy penalties due to distance, and a second one removes accuracy penalties due to darknesss. I think creating an effect for having a third pack could be interesting, which currently does nothing. I think having a third Sniper Pack give the weapon the auto-hit property could make for some fun and interesting weapons, and shouldn't make anything game-breaking. Triple Sniper Packs would be extremely rare except for Angel of 100 and Archangel of 666 games. I think weapons using Ammochain might get a bit too strong, such as Plasma Rifle (SSSFF), but assemblies not being accessible should help keeping it balanced.

I think many of the exotic armors are too similar, and having some more variety would be good. Ballistic Vest, Duelist Armor, Bullet-Proof Vest, and some others are pretty much the same with small differences. A fun idea could be something like "Acid-Proof Armor" that gives 95%, or perhaps even 100% resistance to acid damage, which is fairly uncommon enough to not be broken. Maybe some other armors that are like Energy-Shielded Vest could also be good, such as one that gives only 20% to each of those resistances, but has 3 Protection instead, or maybe some movement speed. Another idea could be something like "Glass Armor", which only has 50% durability and has a bunch of resistances, although any hit would severely weaken it without an Onyx Pack. There are lots of possibilities here, but the current set of exotic armors are kind of bland.

Have there be 26 Angelic Badges so that it's consistent with the other badge types. Lots of creative ideas could be thought up for these.

Currently for in-game rankings, you only need 15 of 26 of each badge type, and then you don't need any more. I think adding some more mixed requirements, such as 20 Bronze Badges with some Silver, Gold, and Platinum would encourage more players to try to get more of them.

Omega Tyrant:
Here are my responses to some of the ideas here:

GENERAL FEATURES

"Allow saving on Nightmare difficulty (needs discussion)."

Absolutely, I said it in the Discord server and I'll say it again; trying to prevent some players from cheating shouldn't come at the expense of accessibility and convenience for everyone else. If I or anyone else wants to play Nightmare difficulty, we shouldn't have to commit to being able to set aside several consecutive hours to play it or leave the game running on our computer, where a myriad of obvious issues happen (hardware or software errors ruining your progress, being unable to play other games or do anything else intensive on your computer until you finish that Nightmare run, increased energy bills from leaving a game running on your computer over night, etc.). And this is before getting into the absurdity of playing Nightmare on A100 or even worse A666. Not to mention that anyone that really wants to cheat can circumvent this anyway, as TwoDev clearly demonstrated over a decade ago. Plus ultimately if some more players do start reporting getting Diamond and Angelic badges if this change was made because they're now able to savescum Nightmare difficulty, who really cares? Require stream proof if you really want to maintain the integrity of the Badge Hunters thread, as speedrunning boards already do for especially fast runs to be accepted.

TRAITS

"Nerf Scout class bonuses and buff other class bonuses (needs discussion)."

Blocking stair sense in special levels wouldn't do much since their location is static, maybe you could have certain level events block it, like armed nukes and floods. I do agree with giving the Marine something extra, 10 more base HP is a very minor bonus compared to what the Scouts and Technician get, I think inherent 10% resistance to everything sounds good and I had similar ideas to giving them inherently more defense. Technicians being able to mod more uniques also sounds good as that ability seems mostly negligible as is.

"Nerf Intuition by marking items as a green X instead of showing what they are, and change monster sense radius from 3 to 2."

I would miss being able to instantly discern powerups, but this is understandable to maintain parity with ASCII players (conversely, maybe give the powerups their own ASCII character for ASCII players to discern them?). Nerfing the monster sense radius to 2 is completely justified, even nerfing it to 1 would still make it very powerful (would still be able to know an enemy is about to pop into view without needing to radar shoot, and it doesn't affect knowing nearby enemies are around when your view is obstructed.

"Allow assemblies before Whizkid x2 to still get an extra mod pack after later getting Whizkid x2."

Strongly agree with this, always been a weird and unintuitive limitation, especially when equipment made after WK2 are indistinguishable ingame from equipment made before WK2. The argument against is the current setup gives players some opportunity cost consideration, with delaying certain assemblies until after WK2 for more power later, or making them and getting immediately utility from them now, but I don't think it's a worthwhile one; players will usually delay advanced assemblies until WK2 anyway when it requires just one more level to get, and basic assemblies are still usually made immediately because they're needed ASAP. As such, I don't think there is much intriguing opportunity cost consideration happening here, and so all it does is make advanced assemblies essentially require WK2 anyway, while players have the inconvenience of having to recreate basic assemblies after WK2 to mod them later.

"Buff Ironman to 25% HP."

I think Ironman would still be filler with this change, don't think you can really do much to make it a priority trait without making it ridiculous, as purely defensive traits are inherently disadvantaged. Not to mention that buffing it makes the trait even less incentivized for those running Berserker that want to maintain easy Berserker procs. I would leave Ironman as is; it can still be universally useful as it currently is, just increasing your offense and speed will nearly always be more valuable than only increasing your defense.

"Buff Reloader to 25% speed."

Agreed, players usually only begrudgingly pick Reloader when they're running a shotgun build to get to Shottyman or Ammochain users as part of its prerequisites. Even with this buff it'll probably remain that way, but maybe pistol and rapid-fire builds might pick it later in the game for assurance if they're running low on ammo boxes.

"Remove Gunrunner blocking Whizkid and change it to another trait such as Brute."

I've never used Gunrunner before, so I can't speak much on this, but I always did found the Whizkid restriction weird, and it's part of why I never used it, as it looks underwhelming. Is the Whizkid restriction because Kornel thought it would be broken with the Focused Double Shotgun and Tactical Rocket Launcher? Even then, I don't think that particular setup sounds excessively strong compared to other good mastery setups, and Gunrunner is already a late blossoming mastery when you essentially need Shottyman with it to make good use of it, which delays the mastery until level 9 at minimum if you make no detour for anything else.

"Remove Army of the Dead blocking Finesse and change it to another trait such as Son of a Gun."

Strongly agree, Army of the Dead's restrictions are too harsh for what is ultimately one of the weakest mastery effects in the game (so my Shotguns do only 2 or 4 more damage per hit before dropoff, but I'm slow as hell, I can't mod my stuff nor assemble more than basic assemblies, and I've got possibly the worst DPS of any build if I don't become a melee hybrid build?!). I think you can allow both Finesse and Hellrunner for MAD and it still would be a tier worse than the other shotgun masteries, but it desperately needs to be allowed at least one of them. Otherwise MAD itself needs to do a lot more than just give piercing shotguns.

WEAPONS AND ARMOR

"Disallow the Nano-Shrapnel assembly working with Super Shotgun."

"Nerf Biggest Fucking Gun (needs discussion)."

I strongly disagree with these; as I mentioned in the Discord, players will rarely ever actually obtain these and so their power is justified. In few standard games will you find both a Super Shotgun and Nano mod, and even in A100 you can't bet on ever finding both. Then the Biggest Fucking Gun is even less likely, very few standard games will ever find two Firestorm mods unless they run Scavenger (in over 100 games I've only once been able to make a Biggest Fucking Gun in a standard game), and it's not even likely you'll ever be able to make it in A100 when the BFGs are even rarer than half the uniques. You mentioned in the Discord how you're primarily an A100/A666 player and how that might affect your biases, and I think this is an example of such, overly focusing on the endgame potential of these weapons that are only realistically reliable to obtain deep into A666 runs.

With that said, I'm all for turning Nano Shrapnel into a master assembly that requires PPPN. Not much of a nerf, but an extra power mod isn't that light of a cost, and it makes it consistent with Nanomanufacture ammo being a master assembly. Also if WK2 is changed so you can mod any assembly regardless of when you made it, this change would be felt.

"Frag Shotgun consumes bullets, but because it takes 4 to fire, you only get 25 shots out of a full stack, of 66 shots out of an ammo box, as opposed to 50 shots out of a shell stack, and 100 from an ammo box like for other Shotguns. This somewhat defeats the purpose of Frag Shotgun since it's less ammo efficient, and I'd say let it fire while only consuming 2 bullets, and maybe adjust the clip size appropriately to 8 or 10."

The Frag Shotgun needs way more than this; 7d3 power is already very underwhelming for a shotgun you can't mod, but 1.5 second firing speed makes the weapon near-unusable. That sort of atrocious firing speed is appropriate for an extremely powerful weapon like the Railgun, not a shotgun only as strong as a vanilla Combat Shotgun. And this horrible weapon is also one of the rarest weapons in the game, not spawning until floor 15 and having a generation weight of 1? This weapon needs a complete rebalancing, or some new crazy gimmick to justify the terrible stats and rarity.

My suggestion is reduce the firing speed to the standard 1.0 seconds and buff the power to 10d3, while letting it start spawning a lot earlier and increase its generation weight to 3; this is about as good as it'll need to be for me to consider carrying it + bullets rather than just two more stacks of shells, though it is quite boring and still eventually gets outclassed by modded out shotguns. Conversely you keep the 1.5 second firing speed but give it absurd power like 15d3, which additionally really hammers in its ammo efficiency. Or you do the opposite and give it 0.5 second firing speed but with 6d3 power, which is probably more fitting for a weapon that uses bullets. Either of these two options would make it more distinct gameplay-wise than other shotguns to fit its unique designation and make it viable to use, while it won't get easily outclassed by modded shotguns.

"Mjollnir is pretty weak, is extremely rare, and most other melee weapons are way better, even a Chainsword. Having some range doesn't really make up for it all that much, so I'd suggest buffing the damage a fair bit, to something like 1d25 if we want to maintain its high damage variance."

I agree, though it should also be able to spawn starting on floor 1 like the Cleaver and have its generation weight increased to 3. Even with its power buffed, it's still clearly outclassed by the Chainsaw and its gimmick is primarily only going to be useful in the early game for melee builds and the Unholy Cathedral, so you gotta give it a chance to be obtainable when its niche is still useful.

"Subtle Knife doesn't count as "knife kills" for a few badges and medals. I think allowing it would be a very small and fair change, and also would slightly buff the weapon which is currently pretty bad."

Agreed, and like the Mjollnir, it needs a big power buff (why is it only as strong as a bulk-modded Combat Knife?) or needs to be given an attack speed buff to justify the weak power, needs to be able to spawn much earlier, and needs its generation weight increased. Also remove the max HP cost of Invoke, it still wouldn't be great but at least it might get usage occasionally, either way its effect is not remotely worth the max HP cost. Alternatively, make Invoke much stronger, like instantly killing all non-boss enemies in view.

"Nerf Inquisitor Set pieces movement speed from +25% to 0% (needs discussion)."

The point I said before rare broken weapons applies here; even with individually being among the more common uniques, you are almost never finding both in a standard game (especially when they don't start spawning until floor 15, and even if you do find both, you probably have very few floors left anyway), while you aren't too likely to find both in A100 either, at least not until it's very late. Maybe a slight nerf to the movement speed of the individual pieces could be ok (like -5% speed each), as individually Nyarlaptotep's Boots and Malek's Armor are still extremely powerful compared to other armors and boots (there is really no reason to not primarily wear those boots over anything else unless you make Antigrav boots, when they have the same speed as A-modded Tactical Boots and Phaseshift Boots while carrying much better protection), or reduce their item generation weight to 2 to make them less common. Inquisitor Set could also be indirectly nerfed by making acid generation a lot more common in A100 (something I'll cover in my own suggestions later).

"Medical Powerarmor is pretty much a worse Red Armor, and the self-healing isn't really all that great. I think making it have 6 protection could be a good buff for it, while keeping it still pretty plain."

Agreed, though I think it also at least needs the resistances of the Medical Armor (always been weird how the "upgraded" armor doesn't have any resistances), and I would say buff their healing ability too (let it heal up to 50%, might get some actual use at that point).

"More exotic armors. Some suggestions: "Acid-Proof Armor" which has 95% Acid Resistance, or "Glass Armor", which has 50% durability."

Agreed, and I mentioned in the Discord server how it's weird all of the non-shield exotic armors have physical resistances aside from the Energy-Shielded Vest. I think some of the current exotic armors can have their resistances modified to be more unique too, though I'll cover that later in my own suggested changes.

"Make Backpack indestructible."

Strongly agree, and the concern about being able to get it easily via nuking shouldn't matter, when you can still get the artifact from the Unholy Cathedral, Angelic Armor from The Mortuary/Limbo, or any other unique from other special levels after nuking. The Backpack being the sole exception doesn't make sense.

BADGES, MEDALS, AND MISCELLANEOUS

"Disallow many badges to be earned by abusing Dual-Angel challenges."

I strongly agree with disallowing badges through Dual-Angel challenges that don't explicitly require a specific combination. Seeing the majority of mortems getting many Diamond and Angelic badges by combining them with AoMC or AoOC really did make them feel cheaper, which is why I went for Quartermaster Diamond the "pure" way recently, when all but one of the mortems recorded with it in the Badge Hunters thread did it by combining AoRA with AoMC.

"Create more in-game rankings to require more of each badge type, instead of just 15."

Also agree; as is, getting every badge of each tier has no incentive, and even if you do want to let players avoid some annoying badges per their choice, avoiding 11 of them is a huge chunk to have to never get to increase in rank. Maybe increase it to at least 20 required before higher ranks stop considering badges of that tier?

"Having some hidden medals is a bit silly since everyone reads the wiki anyway, and the chances of players accidentally discovering them is close to 0% when some of them are extremely arbitrary. I'd say just make them visible like the other medals."

Agreed, never really understood why this was a thing in the first place.

"Iron Skull medal isn't hard to earn and it just requires a niche setup (usually involving Vampyre), and I think 10,000 is way too high. Under normal circumstances, players likely will never take more than around 1500 damage, and when grinding for 10,000, the point has been made by like 5,000 damage. I think lowering the value to 5,000 maintains the requirement without opening it up in non-Vampyre games, and also not dragging out the idea of it for excessively long."

Strongly agree, this medal is just tedium. I think completely redoing it would be better so it's a real challenge to get and not just a measure of how patient you are farming Pain Elementals with Vampyre. Maybe change it to like taking 2000 damage in a game and winning (or any other high but still realistically obtainable number), while disqualifying players with Vampyre from getting it? Either way, the 10,000 number is ludicrous.

"For Arena Diamond Badge, this mostly just requires gross amounts of luck to complete. I'd say either change it to Angelic tier, or bump the difficulty down to Ultra-Violence."

Agreed, it really says something that after a decade, this is the only Diamond badge with still no verified run of anyone obtaining it in 0.9.9.7, after Hell's Arena was hardlocked to spawning on floor 2, instead of being able to spawn on floor 3 as it could in prior versions. Having Hell's Arena only spawn on floor 3 instead would be an alternative and could make the badge doable again, while I know people argued before to make that change regardless because they felt Hell's Arena was too luck based to beat when you only have one real floor of preparation before entering it (though I also understand the devs' view on it that each special level should be a serious risk/reward consideration to enter, with Hell's Arena being arguably too easy for general play when it spawned on floor 3). Alternatively if it's possible, Hell's Arena can be kept on floor 2, but in challenges with especially hard early games (such as Angel of Berserk and arguably Angel of Marksmanship), Hell's Arena can be programmed to spawn on floor 3, which I think would be a nice compromise between the two viewpoints.

I also agree with the rest regarding badges/medals that are virtually impossible or essentially duplicates.

"Make Phobos Lab more rewarding to enter compared to Military Base (needs discussion)."

Obviously agree, but I got some numbers on this. Here is the amount of EXP you currently get from killing everything in each level on each difficulty, with the EXP multiplier factored (may be slightly off as I'm not sure how rounding is handled but is close enough regardless to get the point across):

ITYTD: Phobos Lab = 1688; Military Base = 2726
HNTR: Phobos Lab = 1588; Military Base = 3424
HMP: Phobos Lab = 2662; Military Base = 4557
UV: Phobos Lab = 3055; Military Base = 7302
N!: Phobos Lab = 4044; Military Base = 9698

This is an absurd EXP disparity, with Military Base having over twice as much EXP on the hardest difficulties. The big culprit for this is the pitiful amount of EXP that Nightmare Demons give (why do they only give 95, even Nightmare Imps give more at 128), as well as the ridiculous EXP the Elite Formers give (even the Elite Former Human that's hardly more threatening than the normal Former Human gives 167 EXP, while they increase drastically from there, with the Elite Former Commando giving as much as the earlier bosses and Archviles). Right away, Nightmare Demons should give a lot more EXP, I say giving as much as an Arachnotron at 263 would be fair. If you did this, the amount of EXP you get from Phobos Lab on UV and N! would become:

UV: 3055 -> 5057
N!: 4044 -> 9084

Conversely, if you slightly bump down the amount of EXP given by the Elite Formers (Elite Former Humans down to 128, Elite Former Sergeants down to 263, Elite Former Captains down to 320, we can keep Elite Former Commandos the same), the EXP yield of Military Base would become:

HNTR: 3424 -> 3053
HMP: 4557 -> 3813
UV: 7302 -> 6084
N!: 9698 -> 9028

This change would make their EXP yield a lot closer, and even nearly identical on Nightmare (with Phobos Lab coming up slightly ahead). The exact EXP numbers for each enemy can be debated, but this idea should be agreeable. This addresses the massive EXP yield disparity between the two levels, but Phobos Lab would still be a lot harder with a lot less material reward than Military Base, so I would farther suggest adding two more random mods, with one each being located in the far left trap rooms that open up upon reaching the shore after hitting the left acid pool's lever. Aside from making this more similar to other special level pairs where one is harder but correspondingly more rewarding (such as Deimos Lab giving you two rare mods instead of one), this could offer a nice dichotomy, where Military Base gives you more resources (ammo and medkits), while Phobos Lab offers better equipment by having two extra mods. The placement of these two extra mods would also incentivize players to actually do all the hard parts of the level, instead of just homing phasing out to run off with the Combat Shotgun and the two mods near the exit.

For one more change, you could also make the Elite Formers stronger in melee, so that they aren't so easy to cheese by just gift dropping them to come into melee range, which in turn would make Military Base a bit less free (maybe they could all use a Combat Knife in melee if that's possible to program? It would fit them being elite fully-armed soldiers).

Icy:
Thanks for sharing Omega Tyrant!

Here are some of my responses:

Regarding my Stair Sense change with bonus floors, I meant the red stairs leading to the bonus levels. Having those not be stair sensed would be a slight nerf to Scout to help balance it a bit more compared to other classes.

I can agree that Ironman might still be filler at 25%, and you make a good point that it would be hurting Berserker. Perhaps keeping it at 20% is fine then.

I can see your perspective with not nerfing the super weapons of Nano-Shrapnel and Biggest Fucking Gun since they're hard to acquire in standard games, alongside with your thoughts on Inquisitor Set. I'd love more opinions on them.

Perhaps for Frag Shotgun keep the damage and firing speed as is, and give it a massive clip like 50? I like the 0.5 firing speed and 6d3 idea too and feels more canonical. Something has to definitely change with it though, and I think making it feel more "bullety" would be the best approach.

I can agree Mjollnir would be handier at the start of the game where you're a lot slower and the range can be handy, such as vs Demons. I think making its availability similar to Butcher's Cleaver could be a good idea, and keeping it high variance and unreliable in that way would keep it from being overpowered.

For your suggestions with Subtle Knife, I think removing the HP cost of Invoke and doing nothing else beside "knife kills" would be fair. Don't want to make it too insane if it were to count for "knife kills" challenges. Maybe a tiny bit more like faster attacking speed could help too, like 0.8s?

Medical Powerarmor with 6 protection and up to 50% healing could be nice and make it more usable without being broken. A player could use it both as a nice early game armor, and as a unique way of healing by essentially converting Armor Shards into Health Globes.

Great point on other uniques surviving nukes when comparing Backpack. Being able to nuke Unholy Cathedral, especially with the ease of quick nuking because of the nearby lava, while still being able to earn the rewards is great to contrast Backpack.

Iron Skull basically needs Vampyre, which itself could be an argument that it should be changed as a concept. I do like your alternative suggestion of only 2,000 damage but requiring you to win, but it would still require Vampyre for sure.

I like your points about Arena Diamond Badge, although I'm not a fan of making Hell's Arena appear on different floors for different challenges, which sounds like a messy inconsistency. Although this is a slightly different topic relative to the badge, perhaps having Hell's Arena appear on floor 3 but be a fair bit harder could be a good change? Depending on how much of a change it would be, it could still keep all the current badges and medals relative for it being fair.

While slightly related to Phobos Lab, I do agree Nightmare Demons could give more experience, but I think Phobos Lab could still use some other kind of change. More mod packs in the left side trap rooms are a neat idea.

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