DoomRL > Requests For Features
Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Omega Tyrant:
Again thanks for the feedback!
--- Quote ---While Hell's Arena does give different rewards, I do think it would be out of place if it appeared on different floors just based on the challenge. Perhaps a better alternative would just be having different rewards and different enemies based on challenge? Planning out how Dual-Angel games work would be important though.
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Changing the enemy composition based on challenge is a unique idea, while aside from making it easier for challenges with especially hard early games like AoB and AoMr, you could also make it harder for challenges like AoMC and AoLT that otherwise trivialize it. I'm not sure if that would be possible, but if so, I do think that's a better idea than moving Hell Arena's spawn point around.
--- Quote ---Regarding nuke floor counts, the number isn't really what impacts it, it's just simply the existence of the Trigun, whether the count is high or low. Nuking 15 in an Angel of 100 game could definitely be done without it, but it still definitely be easiest by waiting on finding a Trigun. However, the HP depletion would require finding many natural nukes, and then ideally spamming Angel Arm after to get the remaining count. I'm not opposed to the idea of making a medal regarding nuking a ton of floors on Angel of 100, just that the same strategy will be significantly more optimal than any other.
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I see, in any case I'm not strongly for it, just an idea for A100 medals building off of existing medals.
--- Quote ---While the Cyberdemon was the final enemy before, the Angel of Death is still stronger than he is, and the big issue is the 10 armor, which does funnel builds towards needing something that can handle high armor, which is mostly plasma damage or piercing damage. I'd say if it were to be a reasonable enemy for those game, it would need something like 95 depth, 1 weight, and 40 danger. I'm not 100% opposed to it, but it would have to be done carefully so that it doesn't become too overpowering or forcing certain playstyles.
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I see the concern, but I think by lategame A100, players should always have the weapons to break through that armor regardless of build, and so the AoD wouldn't make any build unviable. Like shotgun builds will very likely have Nano-Shrapnel or some form of plasma shotgun, and in the very unlikely case they never find a Nano mod, Sniper mod, nor Plasma Shotgun, they will certainly at least have some rocket launcher on them (or if someone actually plays MAD in A100, then it's not a worry at all). Then Pistol builds will always have an Energy Pistol for Revenants and to utilize the plethora of plasma cells you'll find, or a Blaster for the same Revenant-killing ability and infinite ammo. It's also not like this isn't encouraged by other high armor enemies; the 4 armor of the Cyberdemon and Agony Elemental, as well as the 5 armor of the Lava Elemental, are hard to punch through with weak hits that aren't plasma or piercing. In the absolute worst case scenario where you somehow don't have any decent plasma or piercing weapon to use nor any other means of high damage-per-hit, you could just run away, aided by the inability for the AoD to open doors (if someone is too slow to run away from the AoD and they can't kill him, then how did they even make it that far in A100?). I also wouldn't say he is necessarily more generally threatening than a Cyberdemon, whose rockets can do way more damage per hit than any other enemy before armor aside from the Elite Former Commando (fire resistance is very easy to get but melee resistance isn't much harder), you'll likely be encountering him in much more cramped levels than Tower of Babel (so Dodgemaster can't reliably save you), he hits you just as hard in melee as the AoD does, and the fact he'll blow through walls to reach you also allows him to destroy your cover and expose you to other enemies.
--- Quote ---I agree Juggler would lose a lot of power if it only worked with the prepared slot. I think easily allowing it to work with any weapon in your inventory would be nice for quality of life. What is your opinion on it functioning for ammo boxes?
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If Juggler couldn't work with ammo boxes, it would be a senseless limitation and I would probably never invest in it if it's not a mandatory prerequisite. The only reason to not have a relevant ammo box prepared at all times is to preserve its ammo for more dangerous fights.
--- Quote ---Regarding your suggestion for Duelist Armor with making it have lots of melee resistance and no bullet or shrapnel resistance, I don't think it would be broken in Cerberus Armor (P), but I'd strongly argue that the trade-off for more melee resistance is far more valuable than bullet and shrapnel. Bullets generally don't do a whole lot of damage, even in the end-game, and with 2 protection and possibly some points in Tough as Nails, a lot of the damage can be reduced to 1 without any resistances. Shrapnel can be dangerous up close though, but it gets heavily reduced from decent range. With the melee resistance though, you can happily camp out enemies and not worry if they get adjacent to you. Overall, I'd be for the change to Duelist Armor and hope that nothing is being overlooked. It could also be pretty insane in just Ballistic Armor for a very low cost, but it could be argued that it'd be a waste.
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I do think needing a P-mod and all that investment in TaN to cover that lack of bullet and shrapnel resistances is a cost in itself (not to mention that over half the masteries block TaN). Related, maybe the bullet enemies can be made more dangerous, like Elite Former Humans can carry the suggested Magnum and maybe Elite Former Captains could use some nerfed Railgun? Or add some new bullet enemy entirely that can do more damage-per-hit. Something to help make bullet resistance more valuable and so maybe the Bullet Proof Vest could have some worthwhile niche beyond being a Green Armor alternative in the early game.
Also yeah Ballistic Armor would be wasted on this suggested Duelist Armor; it would already reduce melee hits from Barons and Mancubi down to 1 (so all common enemies can't hit you for more than 1 damage), and a Power mod would let it reduce any Nightmare Demon bite down to 1. The only practical usage would be to get you armor that reduces the AoD's damage down to 1 for non-melee builds trying to beat Unholy Cathedral, but doing that would sacrifice the armor's general usage as VMR would now destroy you in it. Actually, seeing how it reduces Baron and Mancubi down to 1 damage before even a Power Mod is added, maybe do 60% melee resistance instead.
--- Quote ---Regarding your suggested buffs to Ballistic Armor, the main thing is it's super cheap and accessible to make, and while the fire resistance penalty is the trade-off for it, fire damage isn't as common in Phobos and even somewhat uncommon in Deimos except on the harder difficulties. I think raising all of melee, bullet, shrapnel, and fire resistances on it by 10% is too much without some other kind of cost to it.
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But like I said before, currently it doesn't increase your defense against physical attacks all that meaningfully. With the current +30% resistance, a melee hit needs to do more than 8 damage for this assembly to reduce it by more than 2 damage (which a Power mod would do without making the armor worse against the most dangerous enemies), and even against Barons and Mancubi it's only reducing their melee hits by 3 damage. Then only a max damage roll from a Elite Former Human's Combat Pistol can reach 9 damage for a bullet hit, and considering shrapnel is double affected by shrapnel, it would take a Sergeant's shotgun blast doing 16 damage for the assembly to do better than a Power mod, which is very uncommon. So overall, the assembly in its current state barely helps in its primary use, while that tradeoff is very harsh. The only real reason to build it is to help with Phobos Lab on UV/N! (where it can reduce Nightmare Demons' bites by 4) and for non-melee builds with Unholy Cathedral, but sacrificing an Agility mod, Technical mod, and an armor's general usage to help with a couple special levels is a pretty heavy cost.
--- Quote ---I do like the concepts of your suggested assembly outputs, but I'd want to avoid it becoming a slippery slope where all mod packs work on all items.
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I will say I don't have much interest in doing that. You could maybe make some weapon assembly that uses an Onyx mod, or a melee weapon assembly that uses a Nano mod, but what could you do with them that both makes sense and would offer a unique gameplay role? The main idea with the suggested Sniper and Firestorm armor assemblies was to help make those mods be a waste less often and cover some gameplay roles currently offered by no other armors.
--- Quote ---For difficulty between City of Skulls and Abyssal Plains, the big thing is that you can enter and exit City of Skulls with no worry of anything if you want to. Abyssal Plains also starts you off surrounded by strong enemies that you can't really hide from. City of Skulls is dangerous as you flip the switch, but you can often use various weapons to kill groups of Lost Souls and then chip away at whatever remains in your vision.
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I see, I agree City of Skulls shouldn't be free to stair dive through. I think a simple solution here is instead of unleashing enemies with the lever, you simply have the pillars come down once you pass the hallfway point of the level (while also expanding the middle pillars so that you can't run through the top or bottom of them), much like how the Phobos Anomaly's trap works.
--- Quote ---Regarding hunting enemies picking up items, there are a few situations that can become silly to deal with, such as Cyberdemons picking up Shielded Armor, Phaseshift Armor, and others that we're currently theorycrafting making. It could also be abused with giftdropping Necroarmor, Fireproof Armor, or Gothic Armor for the Tower of Babel fight. I'm still personally leaning on no overall, but not 100% against it.
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If the player could take advantage of it to weaken the Cyber, I think that's ingenuity that should be rewarded, and it would probably be tricky to pull off, as he should still prioritize attacking you as long as you're in his massive vision radius. All that said, I'm not terribly for letting Cyberdemons and Bruisers use items, and so would be fine with them just losing the ability if hunting AI ignoring items could be fixed (while Cybers would absolutely have to if no healing cap can be programmed to medkits).
--- Quote ---Regarding trees, the only other thing that's important to consider is they can't be randomly generated or they might block important pathways. They would have to be preset in some way.
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That is certainly an important consideration I overlooked, and I imagine it would be a pain to program in a way to prevent them from blocking off stuff. You could give them the fragile flag so they're destructible by any weapon like barrels and ammo/armor crates (these decrepit-looking trees shouldn't be that sturdy anyway). Or they're just kept to specific level types where they can be easily programmed to not spawn in ways that would block off areas.
--- Quote ---For an idea for Double Chainsaw, what if the doubling of Chainsaw's 4d6 instead of 8d6 was 4d12? This would give it a very different damage output, and a Bulk Pack to finish the assembly would give it a pretty nice boost in power with 5d12?
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This would make it more unique, it still wouldn't do much for the problem of it being outclassed but any functional uniqueness is good.
--- Quote ---I agree Lava Elemental is quite weak and increasing melee damage is a good way to counter it by avoiding the lava splashes. Perhaps just give it a higher teleportation chance? Or what if its splash radius was bumped up to 3 or even 4 instead?
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I would like the higher teleportation chance, if only because sometimes it gets annoying waiting for it to teleport to me. As for the splash radius, I wouldn't mind keeping it as is nor oppose it becoming 3. Could get nasty dealing with an increased splash radius without any radsuits though, if my suggestion of removing them from The Lava Pits/Mt. Erebus on higher difficulties is done (and otherwise as long as the radsuits are kept as is, the increased splash radius won't make it that much more dangerous).
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I've also got two more suggestions I added to my post, I'll point them out here for convenience to review:
*Add the "Tactical Set" - Wearing Tactical Armor with Tactical Boots completes this set, which grants the player with the effect of Dodgemaster
I think the game could use a couple more sets, with an obvious equipment set being the Tactical Armor and Tactical Boots. Aside from being thematically fitting, Tactical Armor is also an underused assembly, as the risk of running around essentially naked is too high, and the cost of two Agility Mods is a bit high for players, especially when they've likely already spent two Agility Mods on Tactical Boots. The Tactical Armor probably still wouldn't be used much, but having this set could get some players to assemble it in more scenarios, such as an out to the Cyberdemon for low-DPS builds with no Dodgemaster. There's also already precedent of equipment granting players the abilities from traits, with the Butcher's Cleaver having inherent Blademaster.
*Change the Gothic Set from giving +4 protection to +50% resistances against everything
There are two glaring problems with the Gothic Set; one, +4 protection on an armor with no energy resistances is not enough of a tradeoff for becoming completely immobilized, and two, the Angelic Set exists, which also grants +4 protection but without any sacrifices to mobility. So not only is the Gothic Set incredibly niche in practicality, it's also completely outclassed by another set that does the same thing without any drawbacks. This change could make it become actually viable in situations where out-DPSing a bunch of baddies is imperative; currently the Archvile does 10 damage to you in the Gothic Set, 8 if the Gothic Armor was P-modded, and high damage rolls from Mancubi and Revenants could do even more, while plasma enemies are of course hardly fazed. With you still taking decent damage, the Gothic Set is just making you a sitting duck that would get promptly slaughtered. With this change, the aforementioned Archvile zap now does only 4 damage, 2 if P-modded, and you'll be often be reducing hits from common plasma enemies down to 1, while Hell Knights and Cacodemons do no more than 3 or 2 (whereas before their max damage rolls would do 7 or 6). There's farther synergy with the Gothic Cerberus Armor, where this set would give you 95% resistance against everything, and so reduce practically any hit down to 1 damage; this might sound too strong, but given you're completely immobile for the Gothic Set (while rapid-fire enemies can still rack up damage quickly in big hordes), and that the Gothic Boots themselves aren't much useful (so carrying them around is often a waste of inventory space), I think this is still reasonably balanced.
Icy:
I've updated the original post now to include all new ideas discussed and links to posts that are relevant to discussion for each of the suggestions.
Icy:
Three more suggestions of mine:
Make Berserk truly permanent when wielding Dragonslayer. It currently is "permanent" by giving 10 million actions, but it could be possible to remove the effect by using enough Run->Wait. For the most part, you would need to intentionally do this to make it happen, but if you found it early in Archangel of 666 and play defensively, I could see it being possible. My suggestion is that in the code after the Berserk effect ends, check to see if the player is wielding Dragonslayer, and if so, add another 10 million actions. Granted, this is very nitpicky.
As a suggestion for overhauling Mega Buster, perhaps have it start in Bullet mode, allow alt fire to switch modes, and you have to collect and get to keep the other modes as you kill enemies. It would resemble Mega Man a lot more and could make it useful by being multi-purpose with damage types.
Maybe do something with Schematics? To be nitpicky, runs are not truly independent unless you have all assemblies unlocked from a previous game because otherwise, a Mod Pack may be replaced by Schematics instead. It's not at all a large deal, but does impact the spirit of run independence.
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I spent some time looking through this sub-forum for other ideas from the past and found some good ones to share and discuss:
The Wall/Containment Area should open up after all enemies dead to prevent softlocking if you use a Phase Device.
Have a text colour change just before running mode wears off like power-up effects.
Creating a rankings ladder for all the various achievements. This might just be better as a community Google Sheet though and not everyone might care to be competitive in a single-player game. It would also take a lot of work to implement I would imagine. I myself am not a huge fan of it, but maybe other players would like it.
Colour-coded trait screen as seen here by Mader Levap:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Have Technical Mod Packs increase Melee/Bullet/Shrapnel resistance when used in armor (5%? 10%?) instead of knockback.
Create Archangel of Darkness which has even smaller vision, but triple experience.
Change BFG Overcharge since it's currently pretty useless and wasteful (needs discussion).
Add knockback and dodge modifiers to the stats screen.
Omega Tyrant:
Nice, more suggestions to go through.
--- Quote ---Make Berserk truly permanent when wielding Dragonslayer. It currently is "permanent" by giving 10 million actions, but it could be possible to remove the effect by using enough Run->Wait. For the most part, you would need to intentionally do this to make it happen, but if you found it early in Archangel of 666 and play defensively, I could see it being possible. My suggestion is that in the code after the Berserk effect ends, check to see if the player is wielding Dragonslayer, and if so, add another 10 million actions. Granted, this is very nitpicky.
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Seems nobrainer to me.
--- Quote ---As a suggestion for overhauling Mega Buster, perhaps have it start in Bullet mode, allow alt fire to switch modes, and you have to collect and get to keep the other modes as you kill enemies. It would resemble Mega Man a lot more and could make it useful by being multi-purpose with damage types.
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Agreed, any weapon you can't control what it actually does is already an inherently flawed one, even if you buffed it immensely.
--- Quote ---Maybe do something with Schematics? To be nitpicky, runs are not truly independent unless you have all assemblies unlocked from a previous game because otherwise, a Mod Pack may be replaced by Schematics instead. It's not at all a large deal, but does impact the spirit of run independence.
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I know people have often complained about Schematics before, and missing out on a rare mod because of them is a big blow to your run. But I also understand not wanting to require people to have to look up the assemblies on outside sources to make them, and Schematics are helpful for the Technician badges, as it lets you avoid having to build some of the crappier assemblies and those requiring rare mods (though you could counterargue that you should actually have to make the assemblies for the Technician badges instead of just finding their Schematics). I think this should be another thing that is toggable, so those that want to find out the assemblies through purely ingame means are still able to (or who otherwise want to keep the Schematics so they don't need to make a VBFG9000 or Cybernano Armor for the Technician badges), while returning veterans that already know all the assemblies, and those who will just look up the wiki, will have the option to disable them spawning without having to play a bunch of runs and assembling everything to force them to go away.
--- Quote ---The Wall/Containment Area should open up after all enemies dead to prevent softlocking if you use a Phase Device.
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Seeing how I mentioned this and made my anti-softlock stance clear, I'm obviously for this.
--- Quote ---Have a text colour change just before running mode wears off like power-up effects.
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Strongly agree, I'm always unsure of when running is about to wear out, and it'll help inform decisions on if I should stop and shoot this enemy or keep booking it to gain more ground on whatever I was running from.
--- Quote ---Creating a rankings ladder for all the various achievements. This might just be better as a community Google Sheet though and not everyone might care to be competitive in a single-player game. It would also take a lot of work to implement I would imagine. I myself am not a huge fan of it, but maybe other players would like it.
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This isn't necessary and I'm ambivalent to it, but if it would get more people to play the game, then I see no problem with it as long as it's kept adequately up-to-date (and maybe do something to vet fraudulent runs to prevent another 2dev situation, though that could be a drama minefield if you don't require video evidence of Diamond and Angelic badges, which would also make it less accessible to those who lack the means or technical knowledge to record gameplay).
--- Quote ---Colour-coded trait screen as seen here by Mader Levap:
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Agreed, nothing more to say about it.
--- Quote ---Have Technical Mod Packs increase Melee/Bullet/Shrapnel resistance when used in armor (5%? 10%?) instead of knockback.
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Strongly agree with changing this, I never use Technical mods on armor unless I'm prepping it for an assembly, when I find having more knockback to be better, and otherwise decreasing knockback is largely a sidegrade at best. Since you can only apply one Technical mod though, 5% would be worthless (especially for physical attacks), and you would have to apply the energy resistances too, because only having minor physical resistances is still just clearly outclassed by adding a Power mod. Maybe make it +20% physical resistances and +10% energy resistances? At that point, it can be equivalent to or better than a Power mod against very strong hits, but worse against more common weak hits, and it shouldn't make stacking a Power + Technical mod too good (e.g. a PT Red Armor with this setup would reduce an Archvile zap down to 7 damage, which is a lot but far from damage you can keep tanking, while it is still outdone by unmodded Fireproof Red Armor that reduces it to 5 damage).
--- Quote ---Create Archangel of Darkness which has even smaller vision, but triple experience.
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Doesn't sound particularly fun, but it is a sensible extension off the current challenges for a new Archangel challenge. Triple experience sounds a bit overkill though.
--- Quote ---Change BFG Overcharge since it's currently pretty useless and wasteful (needs discussion).
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Strongly agree, it should be dealing double damage at minimum, nothing should be left alive on the screen after destroying your BFG. If there's the concern that it could be too easily abused against the Mastermind and Carmack (because losing your BFG at that point doesn't matter), you could maybe make it so that it fails if used in Dis and Hell Fortress?
--- Quote ---Add knockback and dodge modifiers to the stats screen.
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Strongly agree, the less hidden information there is the better.
Omega Tyrant:
I've got a few more suggestions to possibly add, I've added them to my main post but will point them out here separately for convenience of reviewing:
*Modify danger level to increase more sharply after Phobos?
A common criticism of DRL is that the difficulty is largely front-loaded even when you're not playing challenges that exacerbate early game difficulty, where the vast majority of runs end in Phobos, and making it to Hell can often near-guarantee victory, with only the optional Mortuary/Limbo being any threat to kill you at that point. This is primarily caused by how powerful the player becomes in the lategame, and it would take a complete rebalancing of the game to fully address it, which isn't feasible, but you could maybe help the lategame keep up with the player if the danger level was substantially higher; indeed Hell levels can feel a bit empty even on harder difficulties. Conversely, you can argue the current difficulty balance is fine, as an easier lategame is countered by the fact you have much more to lose if you die at that point and so you have to be extra careful to not make mistakes; you die in Phobos, you just lose like 15-30 minutes, maybe an hour, but you die in Hell, that could be your entire evening going down the drain. I think the later game having harder Hell levels could be interesting, but I am also fine with the current level balance, and messing with the danger level climb could be too much of a balancing change. If this were to be done, you would also probably need to keep the danger level formula used in A100/666 as is, as a more sharply rising danger level could make lategame A100/666 have absurd enemy density.
*Add an alternative reload to rapid fire weapons that give them an "ammo conservation mode", which has them ignore Triggerhappy and Firestorm mods?
Currently investing in Triggerhappy and applying Firestorm mods to your rapid fire weapons is a double-edged sword unless you're running Ammochain or made your weapon Nanomachic; they provide a nice boost to your DPS for sure, but firing those extra shots can often be overkill and will invariably lead you to burn through much more ammo. As a result, players not using Ammochain may avoid investing in Triggerhappy beyond the one level required for other rapid fire masteries (and Bullet Dance) unless they find a Nano mod, and may similarly avoid using Firestorm mods. Allowing players to avoid firing extra shots from Triggerhappy and Firestorm mods when they don't need the extra shots would make them unquestionably beneficial, though you can argue the extra ammo burning is part of their balancing and that it would indirectly nerf Ammochain (while rapid fire weapons are the weapon type I'm least familiar with as I don't much like rapid fire builds, so people more versed in them will need to discuss the merit of this idea). I'll also note the Plasma Rifle has both its altfire and altreload slots already taken up, though you could just replace Overcharge with this idea; no one overcharges their Plasma Rifle anyway. The same is also true for the Nuclear Plasma Rifle, though its altreload, Nuclear Overcharge, is not so easily replaceable; you could instead just exempt the Nuclear Plasma Rifle from having this new firing mode, under the justification that a nuclear weapon can't control the amount of shots it fires (and you don't need to be much concerned about conserving ammo with a weapon that recharges its own ammo).
*Increase the amount of rockets in Rocket Boxes from 20 to 25
Rocket Boxes carrying only 20 rockets is too low; proportionally, a 10mm Ammo Chain and Power Battery hold over twice as much ammo as their respective inventory stacks, and while a Shell Box also holds exactly twice as much as a shell stack does, shotgun shells are much more efficient relative to the amount of them you get and it's a much larger quantity. Once you get the Backpack, Rocket Boxes carry only six more rockets than an inventory stack can, making them not much practical for holding extra rockets in your inventory (and ten more rockets without a Backpack isn't much better). You could also argue to increase the amount of rockets you can hold in your inventory and the amount of rockets you get from ammo pickups, though for what is intended to be a secondary weapon, I don't think that's really needed, just make Rocket Boxes more valuable.
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