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Author Topic: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas  (Read 53615 times)

Omega Tyrant

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Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« Reply #45 on: September 04, 2023, 06:26 »

Quote
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.

So I've been thinking about this, and I don't think I really agree with nerfing the Laser Rifle. For one thing, it is an exotic after all, so it should rightfully be very good to merit the rarity. And mostly outclassing the Plasma Rifle isn't an issue, when that's the normal deal with exotics compared to their standard counterparts; the Assault Shotgun completely outclasses the Combat Shotgun, the Super Shotgun completely outclasses the Double Shotgun, the Combat Pistol completely outclasses the standard Pistol, and the Chainsaw completely outclasses the Combat Knife. But in this case it's not even truly outclassing, as the Plasma Rifle does have higher damage potential with its extra shot, and can be made into a Hyperblaster, that substantially improves DPS, flexibility, and accuracy, which a Laser Rifle won't be able to beat without multiple rare mods. Also yes it is extremely powerful with Nanomanufacture, but that's pretty typical for any build making a Nano assembly with their build's primary weapon, including the Plasma Rifle. Overall I think the Laser Rifle is fine as is, being a very good weapon that doesn't require Eagle Eye like other rapid fire weapons if you're lucky enough to find it, but still has less potential than a Plasma Rifle. If something really has to be done to it, you could make it have the same reloading time as a Plasma Rifle, but I would disagree with any nerfing beyond that.
« Last Edit: September 04, 2023, 06:28 by Omega Tyrant »
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Omega Tyrant

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Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« Reply #46 on: September 05, 2023, 02:33 »

Allow Scavenger to scavenge melee weapons, armors, and boots?

Scavenger is an ok mastery, but moreso because its blocks aren't as major as other masteries' blocks and so it can be played as a pseudo-masterless or pseudo-Sharpshooter build, rather than because the trait itself actually does all that much when it's entirely luck-dependent for it to do anything significant. Being able to "recycle" mods you don't need through cheap assemblies for a chance at a more helpful standard mod is nice to have, but the main appeal of the trait is it's supposed to give you much better odds at getting those highly desirable rare mods. Problem is, the odds still aren't any good; the limitation of being only able to scavenge ranged weapons means more than half of the exotics and uniques you won't be able to scavenge at all, so you could very well go an entire standard game without even getting a single chance to scavenge a unique for a potential nano or onyx mod, and in A100 you still will probably get very few chances at it (in an A100 run I just did with Scavenger, I only found two uniques that I could scavenge, and less than a dozen exotic weapons). Additionally, scavenging an exotic or unique means you can't use it yourself, so you might not get to utilize Scavenger because it would be counterproductive to give up such a good weapon for a random chance at a rare mod that you would have wanted to use on said weapon in the first place. Considering that, I think it would be fair to weigh the odds more in the favor of Scavenger making a difference over just going masterless. If people think this buff would be tilting the odds too much, I would be fine with scavenged armors and boots having lower odds at giving you the good stuff (say exotic armor and boots have a 1/8 chance each of giving you a sniper or firestorm mod while the standard mods each have a 3/16 chance, and unique armor and boots have a 1/3 chance of giving a power mod, a 1/4 chance each of giving a sniper or firestorm mod, and a 1/12 chance each of giving an onyx or nano mod).

If this change is accepted, I would also propose the following guaranteed mod drops: the Mjollnir and Shielded Armor will always produce an onyx mod; Malek's Armor will always produce a nano mod; and the Lava Armor will always produce a firestorm mod (also the Anti-Freak Jackal should always produce a firestorm mod too regardless, as it is practically a beefed up Demolition Pistol and currently nothing produces a guaranteed firestorm mod).

Increase the generation weights of all the Elite Formers and Lava Elemental

Yet for another proposed change for the Elite Formers, I think they should appear more often in the later depths of A100. Currently they all have a generation weight of 1, being as rare as a Cyberdemon and Agony Elemental, despite not posing anywhere near that threat. It would also help to increase the variety in deeper A100 so you're not fighting so many damn Barons and VMR. I would bump their weights by the following; the Elite Former Human up to 8 (as much as a Nightmare Imp), the Elite Former Sergeant up to 6 (as much as a Nightmare Demon and Nightmare Cacodemon), the Elite Former Captain up to 5 (inbetween the aformentioned two Nightmare enemies and Nightmare Arachnotrons), and the Elite Former Commando up to 3 (as much as a Nightmare Archvile and Shambler).

The Lava Elemental similarly has a generation weight of 1 despite being a much lesser threat than a Cyberdemon or Agony Elemental, or even the Shambler that has a weight of 3, unless you for some reason still do not have Cerberus Boots by the time you could even encounter it. I think bumping it up to 3 to match the Shambler is fair, but if you don't want to make it too rough for players with no lava-immune boots, then go with a weight of 2.
« Last Edit: September 05, 2023, 04:30 by Omega Tyrant »
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Icy

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Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« Reply #47 on: September 05, 2023, 16:59 »

I can agree with both suggestions. Scavenger definitely wouldn't be overpowered for standard games, but it would become very strong for Angel of 100 and especially Archangel of 666. However, it wouldn't be broken by any means, and the trait itself becomes irrelevant after completing your equipment anyway, while blocking and not boosting core traits. It'd be a good balance change.

For the newest version, the big change that I think needs to be reverted is not being able to fire out of range. I understand the argument for it in reducing the tactics of cornershooting, radar shooting, and others, but they are pretty fundamental to the game at this point. Even when not trying to take advantage of them, it can be annoying to need to keep my cursor around my character to fire, as I generally have it on the outer edges as I'm usually trying to move at the same time. This restriction can also prevent specific shots being made correctly, such as firing across a map at a tile you can't aim at with only those in your vision, trying to fire a specific location with Revenant's Launcher just slightly out of vision range, and many other situations. This change should go back.
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Icy

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Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« Reply #48 on: September 06, 2023, 19:41 »

Some more suggestions after playing a more thorough game of the new beta version.

For the dodging bonus value on the stats screen, I think it should include the bonus value when running.

For levers that destroy walls, only make a singular explosion sounds, instead of seemingly dozens.

If Containment Area is destroyed by a nuke, disable the trap.

If Abyssal Plains is destroyed by a nuke, disable the wall trap. I'd say still let the Agony Elemental spawn.
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Omega Tyrant

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Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« Reply #49 on: September 07, 2023, 04:02 »

Those all seem pretty nobrainer. A few more things I want to suggest that I have forgotten about until now.

Have Brute increase the accuracy of throwing

Brute not affecting the accuracy of throwing always been a weird unintuitive limitation, and needlessly makes early AoB more annoyingly luck-based than it already is, when you have to rely on throwing knives to limit damage from tough enemies but have a coin flip chance at best to actually hit things with them. Then because of how awfully inaccurate throwing is, it then just gets ignored after you get the Chainsaw because it's not worth bothering with it, other than to blow up barrels. Melee builds will also never want to invest in Eagle Eye, and two of the melee masters block Eagle Eye even if they wanted to, including Malicious Blades, the build that is supposed to specialize in knives. It's not like this change would suddenly make early AoB easy either, as throwing still leaves you empty handed (unless you got the Mjollnir), and without Juggler, it's gonna take time to switch to another weapon, so you can often only safely throw one knife from long distance per enemy, if you got a chance to do so at all (Pinkies close that gap really fast).

Fix bridges being blocked off on floors with rivers

Each floor with a river is supposed to have a bridge over the river to ensure players don't get put in a position where they're forced to walk through acid and lava to reach the rest of the floor. However, these bridges can spawn in a way where they lead to a blocked off room, such as in this screenshot:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Or the bridge just gets walled off completely, such as in this screenshot:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If you don't have some means of fluid immunity, and don't have some means to blow up walls or got a sturdy walls event, then you're just in a screwed position, especially so if it's early in the game where you probably won't have the medkits to burn tanking damage running across acid/lava into potentially a waiting enemy ambush. This seems like a no-brainer fix to me, but I could see it being possibly too complicated to fix level generation to have more reliable bridges.

When there are only three or less enemies left on a floor, reveal their locations

A feature from Jupiter Hell that Svankensen suggested in the Discord server a while ago. I think it would be nice to have in DoomRL too, especially when playing builds without Intuition, where hunting down the last few enemies can get tedious (as anyone trying to get 100% kills in A100 without Intuition can attest to). It should have the limitation though that it doesn't apply in the boss levels, as part of the intended challenge with the Cyberdemon and Mastermind is not knowing where they'll be. Maybe it's too major of a new thing to add, and could be argued that it makes the Quartermaster and other AoRA-related badges easier by too much (though Intuition getting nerfed is going to make them harder too). Another possible complication is how it would work with reviving enemies or any other spontaneously spawning enemies (would it be "turned off" if more enemies spawn after three were left, would it permanently "stay on" once you get to the final three no matter how many more enemies spawn in, or would it only continue to show the original final three enemies but none of the revived/spawned enemies?) I would like to see some discussion on this, if it's even possible to add in the first place.
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Icy

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Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« Reply #50 on: September 07, 2023, 17:25 »

Regarding Throw for Combat Knife and Mjollnir, I agree. I was surprised when I looked up that Eagle Eye improves the accuracy and Brute does not. I would also argue that Finesse should improve the speed, which it currently does not. Furthermore, I haven't tested or checked this, but Brute's damage and Son of a Bitch should also affect Throw if they don't already. This also would indirectly give Mjollnir a nice buff.

Regarding bridges, I agree, but it might be too difficult to implement.

Regarding having enemies become revealed when there are only a few left, I'm leaning towards disagreeing. It would be a pretty fundamental change to the game, would affect a lot of levels and builds, and feels very non-canonical. Angel of Red Alert would become a lot easier, Angel of Darkness with it active would be weird, and almost all bonus levels with it would make them much easier (Hell's Arena, Chained Court, Hell's Armory, Spider's Lair, etc).

Two suggestions I had:

For darkness levels, the special message in the postmortems has a comma after the number, which prevents the forum's mortem tags on colouring the number. For example, change "On level 15, he was stumbling in the dark!" to "On level 15 he was stumbling in the dark!".

We've already discussed buffing Reloader from 20% to 25%, but I'm going to boldly suggest buffing this more to 30%. I feel like 30% would be very fast and truly make players start considering using it over other traits, instead of only picking it when their master trait requires it. I think getting up to 90% would also draw players into getting Reloader x3, which I can't seem to find anyone ever using it. 90% reloading speed would make most reloads close to instant, which is very powerful, but does require investment into it to make use of it. I'm slightly cautious about it possibly making Shotguns overpowered in the early game if you have Reloader x2, leading to a Shotgun having 1.0 firing speed and 0.4 reloading speed, as opposed to Finesse x2 with 0.6 firing speed and 1.0 reloading speed. However, the Finesse branch has arguably better advanced traits, and ammo boxes can nullify Reloader anyway. Shottyman also makes the need for Reloader mostly irrelevant for Shotguns anyway, but Reloader x3 could be useful for Minigun, Plasma Rifle, and others.
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Icy

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Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« Reply #51 on: September 07, 2023, 18:53 »

I noticed that there are 41 assemblies and 50 medals now, which I'm pretty sure all the dummied out ones in the source code. I'd like to discuss them here:

Assembly: Mother-In-Law - Rocket Launcher (PPPFN) becomes 6d9 Rocket Launcher with instant recharge firing, blast radius 6. I think this is completely fine.

Medal: Medal of Pacifism - Win with 10% or less kills. I'd be fine with this and swap out one of our suggestions. Not a huge fan of it overall though.

Medal: Shotgunnery Cross - Win and killed everything (not necessarily 100%) with Shotguns/Fists. I'd say scrap this as it's basically just completing Angel of Shotgunnery.

Medal: Marksmanship Cross - Win and killed everything (not necessarily 100%) with Pistols/Fists. Scrap it, see above.

Medal: Zen Master's Cross - Win and killed everything (not necessarily 100%) without ever using Fists/Knives/Shotguns/Pistols. This is weird, I'd say no.

Medal: Purple Heart - Reach experience level 20+ and die. lolno

Medal: Gutts' Sorrow - Die while wielding Dragonslayer. lolno

Medal: Klear Cross - Nuke at least 12 levels in one game. This is basically the same as the other nuking medals, which revolves around finding Trigun. Granted, using it 12 times would require at least Ironman x2 with all Trigun nukes. I'd say no.
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Omega Tyrant

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Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« Reply #52 on: September 07, 2023, 20:01 »

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Regarding Throw for Combat Knife and Mjollnir, I agree. I was surprised when I looked up that Eagle Eye improves the accuracy and Brute does not. I would also argue that Finesse should improve the speed, which it currently does not. Furthermore, I haven't tested or checked this, but Brute's damage and Son of a Bitch should also affect Throw if they don't already. This also would indirectly give Mjollnir a nice buff.

I'm pretty sure Brute does boost their power, and so SoB should as well, but if they don't already, then yes they, alongside Finesse, absolutely should affect throwing.

Quote
Regarding having enemies become revealed when there are only a few left, I'm leaning towards disagreeing. It would be a pretty fundamental change to the game, would affect a lot of levels and builds, and feels very non-canonical. Angel of Red Alert would become a lot easier, Angel of Darkness with it active would be weird, and almost all bonus levels with it would make them much easier (Hell's Arena, Chained Court, Hell's Armory, Spider's Lair, etc).

With Intuition's proposed nerfing going to make AoRA a bit harder, I think this would help balanced that out. And with AoD, I assume it wouldn't apply, as the effect would work like a Tracking Map, which doesn't work in AoD. As for the special levels, I don't know how it works in Jupiter Hell for sure as I haven't played it yet, but like I suggested with the boss levels, you could have it not work in special levels.

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We've already discussed buffing Reloader from 20% to 25%, but I'm going to boldly suggest buffing this more to 30%.

I think 25% is enough of a buff, and with 30% reduction for each level, after Rel3, you would hit the minimum time of 0.1 seconds for weapons with a reload time of 1 second without even having to use an ammo box. But I don't outwardly oppose this if you really want to make Reloader desirable for any build, like Finesse already is and will remain more desirable even with this Reloader buff.

Quote
Assembly: Mother-In-Law - Rocket Launcher (PPPFN) becomes 6d9 Rocket Launcher with instant recharge firing, blast radius 6. I think this is completely fine.

I like this assembly. Gonna be dangerous for most builds, but it would in particular give Fireangel something really good to abuse their mastery with, a build that otherwise has lackluster endgame potential, particularly in A100.

Quote
Medal: Medal of Pacifism - Win with 10% or less kills. I'd be fine with this and swap out one of our suggestions. Not a huge fan of it overall though.

I think this is ok and was thinking of something like this. I would be ok having int instead of the suggested Vash's Cross, though I'm not particularly keen on either idea.

Quote
Medal: Shotgunnery Cross - Win and killed everything (not necessarily 100%) with Shotguns/Fists. I'd say scrap this as it's basically just completing Angel of Shotgunnery.

Quote
Medal: Marksmanship Cross - Win and killed everything (not necessarily 100%) with Pistols/Fists. Scrap it, see above.

Agreed, these are pretty boring new medals, not to mention that Marksman Platinum already requires 100% kills (on UV, but still too much overlap for my liking).

Quote
Medal: Zen Master's Cross - Win and killed everything (not necessarily 100%) without ever using Fists/Knives/Shotguns/Pistols. This is weird, I'd say no.

So this would basically come down to:

*Stairdive to the Chained Court hoping nothing dies along the way until you get the Chainsaw.

*Stairdive and hope you find a Plasma Rifle before anything dies indirectly (and you can't kill a Commando for one).

*Hope you find an early Rocket Launcher and get enough ammo to actually use it as a primary offensive weapon.

*Hope you find the Cleaver (or the other melee uniques if they get the same early generation floor as proposed) very early.

Yeah this medal is just going to be annoying as hell to get, I'm firmly no as well. Also just how would you get past Phobos Base Entry without anything dying, which would immediately nullify the medal when any kill there will be inevitably attributed to fists, pistols, or shotguns?

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Medal: Purple Heart - Reach experience level 20+ and die. lolno

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Medal: Gutts' Sorrow - Die while wielding Dragonslayer. lolno

I remember hearing about Gutts' Sorrow being dummied out of 0.9.9.7 because Kornel didn't want to award bad play. Getting a medals for these things would be funny, but yeah it's not really an achievement and would be extremely annoying to actually get, as it essentially requires you to throw away a run that is near guaranteed to win and probably also had a ton of time put into it already.

Quote
Medal: Klear Cross - Nuke at least 12 levels in one game. This is basically the same as the other nuking medals, which revolves around finding Trigun. Granted, using it 12 times would require at least Ironman x2 with all Trigun nukes. I'd say no.

Oh funny that a variation of one of my initial new medal ideas is actually already in the game. If this doesn't block A100, I would be ok with having this instead of Vash's Cross, though like Medal of Pacifism, I'm not terribly into any of the ideas. If it does block A100, then absolutely not.
« Last Edit: September 07, 2023, 22:06 by Omega Tyrant »
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Icy

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Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« Reply #53 on: September 08, 2023, 17:28 »

Regarding having enemies revealed, it would have to restrict all bonus levels, all boss levels, and all dark levels, but even then I think it would impact too much. Having that level of intel in a game that is strategic and tactical is extremely powerful. On HNTR where you might get a single group of 6-8 enemies, that also lets you see where a good portion of them are as you clear them out through the floor. I don't think having a few stragglers be annoying to find is enough to justify such a fundamental change.

Regarding Reloader, I think the point of still leaning more towards Finesse even with the buffs is a good point supporting the buff. I do agree it would be good to be cautious about such a large speed boost, but reloading is generally uncommon relative to firing, except Shotguns and Rocket Launchers that benefit from Shottyman anyway. I think if you reach experience level 12, there is a decent chance you may have a weapon that doesn't need as much reloading anyway, further making it difficult to justify Reloader x3. My proposed buff of 30% is to create a justification for it, but I can understand if it seems to be too much.

Just as a comment, I think Mother-In-Law would be pretty insane with Inquisitor Set.

Regarding the medals, I agree that Medal of Pacifism can be okay and the rest are pretty meh.
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Omega Tyrant

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Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« Reply #54 on: September 11, 2023, 21:34 »

Quote
Regarding having enemies revealed, it would have to restrict all bonus levels, all boss levels, and all dark levels, but even then I think it would impact too much. Having that level of intel in a game that is strategic and tactical is extremely powerful. On HNTR where you might get a single group of 6-8 enemies, that also lets you see where a good portion of them are as you clear them out through the floor. I don't think having a few stragglers be annoying to find is enough to justify such a fundamental change.

I don't think it's really that major of a fundamental change, floors are basically cleared once you reach the final three enemies on it, no matter how many were there before (and you could always just find a Tracking Map, or Computer Map with a Technician, rendering it moot). But we seem to be at a stalemate on this one, so this is something that others will need to comment on.

Quote
Just as a comment, I think Mother-In-Law would be pretty insane with Inquisitor Set.

It certainly could be, though that is going to be an exceptionally rate combo to obtain, especially if the proposed generation nerfs to the Inquisitor pieces go through.

_______________

A couple more suggestions I thought about:

*Have Power Armor give +20% movement speed to the base armor, instead of having a set 0% movement speed regardless of the armor used

This change would keep Powered Red Armor the same, but will give an additional bonus to making Powered Blue Armor or especially Powered Green Armor instead, as they'll now have a nice speed bonus over the Powered Red Armor, helping to balance them out having weaker protection (well Powered Red Armor probably still wins, but +10% movement speed with 60% plasma resistance from Powered Blue Armor is something you might want to make instead).

*New assembly: Blood Sword - Combat Knife + BPO = a 5d2 weapon that when used to kill an enemy, will have Vampyre's effect, restoring your health by 10% of the slain enemy's max HP

I mentioned in the Discord I was thinking of ways to use an onyx mod in a melee weapon assembly, but was having difficulty coming up with something that wasn't a boring "really strong weapon". But when thinking about how there is a melee weapon that inherently has the effect of Blademaster (the Butcher's Cleaver), I thought perhaps there should be a weapon with the effect of Vampyre too. Initially I was thinking of having it be a new unique, but then thought back to the lack of onyx weapon assemblies, and how this would be pretty fitting on a Combat Knife, while also giving Blademasters and any build side-arming melee a reason to keep a Combat Knife in their inventory after getting a Chainsaw, Cleaver, or artifact weapon. The power could maybe be buffed to 6d2 or 5d3, but the power is intentionally weak (being explicitly weaker than a Chainsword), as Vampyre is a very powerful effect (so strong it's widely considered one of the best masteries despite having some of the worst blocks among masteries), so the weapon itself needs to be weak to not be broken. The idea is this won't replace your primary stronger melee weapon, but when an enemy is near death and you're in melee range, you can whip this out (preferably by Juggler) to finish them off and get yourself HP back. Giving up the chance at an infinite durability armor is a big opportunity cost, but if I'm a non-Vampyre build utilizing melee and I haven't found a particularly good armor to use an onyx mod on, I would seriously consider making this, especially if I ended up finding more than one onyx mod.
« Last Edit: September 12, 2023, 04:24 by Omega Tyrant »
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Icy

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Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« Reply #55 on: September 12, 2023, 20:43 »

Regarding having enemies revealed, I agree in that it would need more opinions.

Regarding Power Armor, I like the idea. Having a set value is better when the prior value is lower, and it's a clever way to indirectly buff Green Armor and Blue Armor with the assembly.

Regarding your proposed assembly of Blood Sword, I agree that if you are using a melee build, giving up an Onyx Pack is a big cost. An Onyx Pack into a weapon is a bit of a wild idea, but I wouldn't be opposed to it. However, I do think easy access to Vampyre would be overpowered. Any build could use it, assuming they have at least an extra point or two across Brute or even Eagle Eye, or even just finishing it with an Agility Pack. With this, you could take a Cateye build for example, have this as a support weapon, and be able to farm a weak respawning enemy for free recovery, whether it's coming from an Archvile cut off from approaching, Lost Souls from a Pain Elemental, or basically anything on Nightmare. For melee builds, use of Vampyre is to help kill everything and exit the floor with full health. For non-melee builds wielding this, there are various ways to also kill everything and also exit the floor with full health, especially when only the killing blow is required to gain the health, such as weakening enemies, luring them in, and the finishing them off for free health. I think Vampyre is too powerful to be accessible to all.

One suggestion I have is to change Mother-In-Law from PPPFN to PPFN, but maintaining the same effects and everything, just for consistency among assemblies.
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Omega Tyrant

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Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« Reply #56 on: September 14, 2023, 04:59 »

You're probably right about allowing any other build access to Vampyre would be too powerful, even if the weapon was very weak. My suggestion would be perhaps the Blood Sword could be given a nerfed form of Vampyre that doesn't work on enemies that give no EXP (so no being able to farm revived enemies nor spontaneously spawned enemies like Lost Souls from Pain Elementals), but I do not know if that would be easily programmable, and if not, then the idea would have to go.

As for Mother-In-Law, I would agree with changing its assembly to PPFN, unless a couple more assemblies are turned into five mod assemblies so it doesn't stick out (a couple other five mod candidates could be Biggest Fucking Gun becoming BBBFF or BBFFF, and Nano-Shrapnel becoming PPTTN or PPPTN).

_____________

Also for a couple new suggestions:

*Have the character info screen show the amount of remaining enemies on the floor

Currently you can already deduce this by subtracting the total enemies killed count from the total enemies encountered count, so this wouldn't be giving the player any new tactical information, it will only make information already accessible more convenient to immediately see without having to do any math, especially so if you haven't killed every enemy on all prior floors (where you then need to also keep track of how many enemies you failed to kill up to that point, or have to pay attention to how much the total enemies count increases when entering a new floor).

*Fix exotics, uniques, and artifacts not having sounds for all actions, as well as some enemies not having sounds

Currently most exotics/uniques/artifacts lack any sounds for picking them up and switching to them, while most of the melee weapons have no sounds for attacking with them. Players can easily fix this by giving them whatever sounds they desire through editing the sound.lua/soundhq.lua file, but your average player probably lacks the technical knowledge or willingness to do that, and regardless it comes off as unpolished for this to be the default without modding (it certainly was really dissonant for me when I finally picked up the Dragonslayer for the first time and then there was no sounds at all when hitting enemies with it).

I would extend this to mute enemies too (e.g. nightmare enemies, the Arena Master, the Agony Elemental, the Lava Elemental, and the Apostle); it is unclear if their muteness was an intentional design choice to make them "harder" to fight, but regardless of if it's intentional, I would argue it again comes off as the game being unpolished for some enemies to nonsensically be completely mute (the Arena Master even has spoken lines, so why is he mute when you fight him?), while it additionally indirectly gives Intuition a very unneeded buff (by it being necessary to know mute enemies are around without seeing them outright). You can also easily mod in sounds for these mute enemies in the aforementioned sound.lua files to "fix" this, which players such as myself have done just to make the game feel more lively and polished, creating a grey area issue where if doing basic aesthetic modding enabled by the devs is considered "cheating", as it does technically give you a slight gameplay advantage by allowing you to detect these enemies are around without Intuition. Having all enemies make sounds by default would get rid of that ethical greyness around modding these enemies' sounds, and ensures all players are on a more even playing field regardless of if they mod enemy sounds or not.
« Last Edit: September 14, 2023, 14:24 by Omega Tyrant »
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Icy

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Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« Reply #57 on: September 14, 2023, 17:21 »

Both suggestions are great ideas. Having mute enemies is definitely a design to make them stronger, but I can agree that the slight nerf to them with making sounds is a worthwhile trade-off for less "cheating" and more sensical, canonical gameplay.
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Omega Tyrant

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Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« Reply #58 on: September 22, 2023, 18:10 »

Related to sounds, I got three more small suggestions:

*Have a sound cue for when an Archvile initiates its attack

A simple suggestion; aside from making the game feel more lively, it can be confusing at times to know if an Archvile raising its arms is because it's initiating its attack or because it's reviving enemies. Having a sound cue would let you definitively know what it's doing, and will also better alert players who aren't fully paying attention to the game messages. The Archvile already has a fire attack sound set by default in the sound.lua file that goes unused (because the actual attack just uses the explosion sound), which uses the sound of the Archvile's flames when charging its attack; simply have its fire sound play when it initiates its attack. Not to mention that this would be more consistent with actual Doom.

*Have a sound cue for enemies reviving

There is similarly no sounds when an enemies revives, which again adds to the confusion to what an Archvile is actually doing, and just feels unpolished in general. So whether an enemy is revived by an Archvile, or because of Nightmare/Angel of Darkness, a sound should accompany it when the player is in close proximity to the reviving enemy. As for what sound to use, Doom has two different sounds for it depending on the method of revival; enemies revived by Archviles use the gibbing sound, while enemies reviving on Nightmare use the teleporting sound (as they are teleported back to their starting spawn point). Since DRL enemies revive on the spot of their corpse no matter the method with no teleportation involved, the gibbing sound would be more appropriate.

*Have a sound cue for spawned enemies

There is similarly no sounds for enemies being spawned, no matter the method. This one is more complicated, as there is no "one sound fits all" here. I think Pain Elementals summoning Lost Souls could simply use the Lost Souls' attacking sound, enemies spawned by traps (whether by levers, special level scripts, or the proposed trap rooms) can use the teleporting sound, enemies spawned by John Carmack could use the Icon of Sin's spawn cube sound (but if adding a new sound file to the default isn't doable for whatever reason, then they could just use the teleporting sound as well), and I don't know what sound to use for the Nightmare Demons spawned by the Berserker set, but I suppose they could just remain silent for the creepy factor (and hearing the teleporting sound or any other sound constantly from infinitely spawning demons would probably get annoying). As for Agony Elementals spawning Pain Elementals, I'm stumped; using the Lost Soul's attack sound doesn't fit, using the Pain Elemental's alert sound would get confusing, and the Pain Elemental has no attacking sound in Doom (as there it relies on the spat Lost Soul to make the sound).
« Last Edit: September 22, 2023, 18:30 by Omega Tyrant »
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Icy

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Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« Reply #59 on: September 23, 2023, 11:35 »

I like all of these ideas, great suggestions!
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