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Regarding number of badges, I wouldn't be opposed to 30 each. 26 is a weird number unless you're thinking of the alphabet. 25 is really nice with out glorious base 10 number system.

I can support keeping JC kill count to 50. Noting that 100 Cyberdemons is harder than 25 JCs if you mostly do full wins on standards games is a good counterpoint. I'd have to think about an Apostle kill count though.

Regarding my proposed Cyberdemon Cross medal, it is a good point that it could be very luck-based since they're very rare and it's common to go through Archangel of 666 without finding any. However, expanding it to various bosses does make it a bit too easy I think. It's also worth noting that there are no special level feeling messages for Agony Elementals and Lava Elementals (although this could be another feature to add). How about instead we have "Boss Slayer Medal - Clear a boss complex on Angel of 100 / Archangel of 666 on Ultra-Violence"?

I can agree with changing "Scavenger Medal" to "Technician Medal" and having it require all different assemblies.

We can scrap Purity Medal and Shottyman Medal as proposed. How about "Gambler's Star - Pull 100 levers or more in Angel of 100 / Archangel of 666", and "Vash's Cross - Kill the Spider Mastermind using Trigun's Angel Arm"?

Regarding UAC Cross, I think decreasing it to 2,500 kills would be fine. A player could get that in a standard game by farming kills, but I think it helps that it's not necessary to do.

For Brick Silver Badge, what if it were instead "Clear The Wall/Containment Area on Angel of Light Travel"? It would make it appropriately challenging by forcing the player to bring a Rocket Launcher and some Rockets, taking up a couple of precious inventory slots, followed by still needing room to clear it after.

Regarding Armorer series, yeah the idea of changing the Platinum and Diamond variants to "Collector" would be so it doesn't weirdly skip Gold.

Regarding Berserker Platinum Badge, I think the design of them for the individual angel challenges is to prevent stair-diving on the harder ones. All of them either require Nightmare, a high kill count, or some other restriction. That said, it would probably be one of the harder challenges to be doing stair-diving. I'd be fine with it simply being completing Angel of Berserk on Ultra-Violence and remove the kill count.

Regarding Scavenger Platinum and Diamond Badge, I forgot to consider the potential change that would prevent the Whisper of Death strategy. That would certainly make them both harder and annoying, so I'd be still on board with removing them to get the count down to 25 as suggested.

For Arena Diamond Badge, proposed changes for Hell's Arena would definitely impact its difficulty. Under v0.9.9.7 status, I think downgrading the difficulty to Ultra-Violence is reasonable, but depending on the changes to Hell's Arena, keeping it at Nightmare could also be fine as you suggested.

Regarding "Hunter Angelic Badge", I think your alternative proposal would be excellent.

Regarding Demonic Angelic Badge, fair point that it breaks the trend of keeping it on Nightmare difficulty. I think changing it to winning a standard game with 100% kills and less than 500 damage (Untouchable Badge) on Nightmare would be exceptionally difficult, but definitely possible, especially as you can skip bonus floors.

Part of my personal vision with Angelic Badges would be that top players should be able to achieve a large number of them if they have enough grit and committment to go for them, but it would most likely be too time-consuming to attempt all 25. It keeps the upper limit of the game open without being impossibly hard as it currently is. It could be really cool to see a dedicated god to the game chip away and get into the 20s. Alongside that, many different players could have different combinations in their collection, instead of right now devolving into getting Shotgunnery, then Lightfoot, then branching off a tiny bit from there, and then getting stuck.

For mortem colouring, I think it could be nice to have badges and medals colour-coded.

I like your suggestion of Gatekeeper Gold Badge. I'd say go with "Pass Phobos Anomaly without damage on HMP", since you wouldn't need to clear it.

Regarding Gatekeeper Platinum and Diamond Badges, I disagree with swapping them. Platinum with passing Phobos Anomaly without damage on Nightmare is basically just finding Invulnerability nearby on floor 7 and zipping through. Diamond with clearing it on Ultra-Violence and then also Tower of Babel is generally harder to do. However, it could be more canonical if Gatekeeper Badges didn't include Tower of Babel. What if Gatekeeper Diamond Badge was clearing Phobos Anomaly on Nightmare without taking damage?

I like your suggestion for Hunter Platinum Badge, although it likely will just turn into cheesing a respawn near the end of the game, but that's on the player if they decide to do that.

Regarding the Apostle, I do agree he's cake, but it would be pretty frustrating to grind through Angel of 100 / Archangel of 666 and then die to him. Especially with the suggested proposal of creating a guaranteed method of getting Dragonslayer and Berserker Armor in those games, players would become even more likely to fight the Apostle in that game type. Additionally, the architecture of the level stays in one piece, so him teleporting around means you can just camp until he finds you again, killing the Nightmare Demons and other enemies while waiting. I'd have to think about this suggestion more.

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After this aspect of the game is figured out regarding new feature ideas, I'll make use of the 2nd post to compile everything, clear out mentions of badges and medals in the 1st post, and add other changes not directly related into the 1st post as well.

Everything I don't address I am in agreement with as you proposed.

I think a nice change could be having 25 of each badge for a nice rounded number, instead of 26. This includes Angelic Badges.

26 is a weird number but I would be fine either way, I certainly won't miss annoying badges like the Scavenger Platinum/Diamond badges if they were removed. Alternatively, we bump them up to 30 if people would rather not see any content removed, shouldn't be too hard to think up of a few more badge ideas for each tier?

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 goal, but I think in terms of grinding for rankings, 25 would be fine. I'm open to this being rejected though.

I don't think this one is bad, having a few more XP rankings to build up more gradually to it would be better I think. I also got stuck before reaching Cyberdemon for a long time because just killing 100 Cyberdemons was a big jump from what Archvile rank required, and I didn't want to go farm Cyberdemons in A666 just to advance the XP rank faster (in fact with your proposal, I would have reached the requirement for Apostle rank faster than I did with the Cyberdemon rank). Also maybe put the JC kill requirements for a different rank and save Apostle rank for actually getting Apostle kills?

Cyberdemon Cross - Enter and exit a Cyberdemon complex alive.

First thing, I would extend this to covering any boss-only level (maybe including Agony Elemental and Lava Elemental caves if it's possible to program it that way, as well as an Angel of Death complex if that gets added alongside the AoD getting added to A100/666). Would require less luck than finding a very specific level type that's very rare, and the other boss-only levels could be even harder (for example I think a Shambler level will usually be harder, and Agony Elemental caves are hell for most builds that don't have a Nano Super Shotgun or Biggest Fucking Gun handy). Secondly, it should require the player to clear the level to get this medal, to make it more of an achievement and so you can't just immediately homing phase out to get this medal.

Scavenger Medal - Create 15 or more assemblies (maybe require them to all be different too?).

I would agree with making it require 15 different assemblies. Also name it "Technician Medal", to avoid any confusion with the Scavenger series of badges that have nothing to do with assemblies.

Purity Medal - Kill JC on Angel of Purity.

Shottyman Medal - Win Angel of Shotgunnery with 100% kills.

I would rather have new medals that could be more generically applied instead of being challenge-locked (unless it's for A100 as I mentioned in my initial suggestions post). I also don't like these suggestions; I'm assuming the Lava Element still works in AoP (because otherwise how could you get that medal), in which case it's really not much different from getting a normal full win (you could no longer rely on a random Invuln spawning, but most people going for a full win just get the Lava Element), and with the latter suggestion, there really isn't anything particularly special nor challenging about it, while it would be inconsistent to have that but not an equivalent medal for AoMr.

UAC Cross - Kill 10,000 or more enemies.

I would change this to 2500 kills, so that it's still obtainable in A100 with sufficient reasonable effort (would require some farming on HNTR, killing near 100% on HMP, and still killing most things on UV and N!, bump it to 3000 kills to keep it more exclusive to UV/N!). I'm not keen on a medal that is essentially A666-exclusive.

Brick Silver Badge - This challenge is fairly annoying, but I personally like it and wanted to mention not changing it.

I'm fine with it staying, but would rather it become a Gold badge, since it requires a lot more concentrated effort to get than other Silvers and most Golds. You could have it swap places with Scavenger Gold (which is ridiculously trivial for a Gold), and in effect remove current Scavenger Silver (why does this one even exist).

I would say for going from 26 to 25, remove Armorer Gold Badge (other associated changes below).

Change Armorer Platinum Badge to requiring finding all exotics/uniques. Finding 1,000 either devolves into spamming Angel of Overconfidence games where you drop your starting gear, pick them up, then repeat, or alternatively with playing properly, finding duplicates of exotics and uniques within the same game still only counts as 1, so this is a massive grind of games to get to 1,000. Both methods are pretty unappealing. If for canonical reasons that having "Armorer X Badge" for each type except for Gold, we could change "Armorer Platinum/Diamond Badge" to something like Collector Platinum Badge and Collector Diamond Badge.

I think it would be weird for the Armorer series to skip having a Gold badge and think they're mostly fine as is, with maybe bumping down what Armorer Platinum requires. However, there wouldn't really be a better candidate among the current Golds to remove if my proposal of swapping the tier of Brick Silver and Scavenger Gold is done (maybe Longinus Gold, because that's trivial unless you change it to require no Brute), so I would be ok with cutting Armorer Gold and going with your rename idea of "Collector Platinum/Diamond".

Berserker Platinum Badge - This badge is fairly similar to Gargulec Cross. Maybe change it to no kill count required, but on Nightmare difficulty?

I rather remove the kill requirement and keep it on UV difficulty to differentiate it more from Gargulec Cross. The Berserker series shouldn't skip UV difficulty, and changing Berserker Platinum to require Nightmare would also make the Gargulec Cross essentially require its own dedicated run to get (can't get it alongside the lower tier Berserker badges, and trying to get it on Nightmare is lunacy).

For going from 26 to 25, I would say remove Scavenger Platinum Badge since it's a bit silly and the optimal way to earn this is not so much by "luck", but by spamming Azrael's Scythe's Whisper of Death.

For going from 26 to 25, I would say remove Scavenger Diamond Badge for the same reasons as mentioned above.

I alluded to earlier that I would like these badges be changed even if my proposal of swapping Cathedral and Vaults goes through (which would invalidate the Whisper of Death cheese), so these would definitely be my pick to go if we're rounding out the badges to 25 each. Purely luck-based badges are very annoying, and their presence just encourages people to save scum to get them out of the way (though if my proposal to make Vaults harder on harder difficulties also goes through, getting Scavenger Diamond could be tricky to get even if you do get the luck to phase into the central vault, and it we're keeping Brick Silver, Scavenger Platinum/Diamond isn't out of place).

Arena Diamond Badge - Change this to Ultra-Violence as this badge is significantly harder than every other Diamond Badge. This is the only one Papilio never earned and he seemingly gave up on it, despite earning most if not all of the other purely.

My stance on this hinges on the proposal to give Hell's Arena different enemy loadouts based on the challenge. If that proposal goes through and AoB appropriately gets an easier Hell's Arena, then this badge can stay as is. If that proposal cannot be done however, then yes bump it down to UV.

Hunter Angelic Badge - Complete Archangel of Darkness on Nightmare (assuming this gets added).

Agree with this, but in the event that Archangel of Darkness isn't added but this badge is, it could alternatively be beating Angel of Darkness on Nightmare as a Conqueror?

Demonic Angelic Badge - This is basically an open slot for a new idea lol. Maybe Archangel of 666 on Ultra-Violence with 100% kills?

I would like the idea to reward people crazy enough to get 100% kills in A666 on UV, but I also don't want to have to force such a massive grind requirement on anyone. That would also not adhere to the theme of the Demonic series all requiring N! difficulty. Maybe build off of Demonic Diamond and have it be 100% kills with Untouchable Medal in a standard N! game? Or if that's still unobtainable, 100% kills + Untouchable Badge in standard N!?

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I also got some more suggestions of my own:

*In mortems, highlight badges with colors of their respective tiers

Just a nice QoL thing to make the badges pop out more when looking over your mortem at the end and to give that extra dopamine rush when getting the harder badges. Could also have obtained badges highlighted in their respective colors in the Player Info's badge collection screens. Could give medals their own unique highlight too, but I don't know what coloring for them.

*Change Gatekeeper Gold to getting past Anomaly without damage on at least HNTR or HMP. Additionally swap Gatekeeper Platinum and Diamond

Current Gatekeeper Gold is very trivial, with only Scavenger and Longinus being able to compete with being the easiest Gold, while it is also basically redundant with Cyberdemon's Head (the only way you won't always get both simultaneously is if you play ITYTD). My suggestion to keep it focused on Anomaly with a harder difficulty would be a much more appropriate Gold-level challenge and a more natural progression from Gatekeeper Silver, while the fact Anomaly completely lacks the ambush on ITYTD makes avoiding damage a much different challenge on harder difficulties. As for my second suggestion, I would say current Gatekeeper Platinum is more imposing than Gatekeeper Diamond, when the Cyber is still practically free to no damage on UV as long as you got Dodgemaster, leaving getting past Anomaly as the main stumbling block (and then just not dying until you reach Cybie, which isn't going to be that much harder if you're good enough to get to Deimos on UV). Anomaly also becomes much harder on N! with the addition of nightmare enemies. If you think it would be weird to go from having the additional damageless Babel requirement to not having it, then just have both Gatekeeper Platinum and Diamond require it on their respective difficulties.

*Change Hunter Platinum to completing Angel of Darkness on UV with 75% kills (or any other reasonable kill percent)

I mentioned before that I don't like the idea of a badge series skipping UV, and currently the Hunter series does that. It additionally doesn't make much sense, as going from HMP to UV in AoD would be a big jump in difficulty, whereas current Hunter Diamond isn't really that much more difficult than Hunter Platinum. I haven't looked through the mortems, but I would assume the vast majority of players who got both Hunter Platinum and Diamond knocked both of them out at once (all Hunter Diamond really requires beyond Hunter Platinum is saving a Homing Phase for Mortuary/Limbo, and maybe having one for Phobos Lab/Military Base and Halls of Carnage). This change should be a more natural progression of the Hunter badges.

*Make the Apostle possibly challenging?

For a super secret final boss, the Apostle is a huge disappointment. Ignoring that he is just a super Archvile, he does have some qualities that could be threatening; a 40 damage plasma attack with a huge explosion radius is actually pretty damn scary even if you're berserked, when you're stuck in the horribly slow Berserker Armor that has no plasma resistance. He also teleports around and regenerates. But you get in once, you just hit him two-four times and then he dies possibly before he could even retaliate. I have a couple suggestions that could make the Apostle possibly come somewhat close to living up to its status:

1: Increase the Apostle's HP to 500
2: Have the Apostle immediately teleport whenever it is hit

He has 30 armor sure, but when you're berserked with the Dragonslayer and likely have several levels of Brute, that 30 protection ain't making that much of a difference in surviving longer than Carmack and the Mastermind (in fact on average, they are surviving one to two more hits than the Apostle does against a berserked Dragonslayer even with no Brute). Additionally, have him immediately teleport away when hit, so that the player can't just get in once and mash click to win. This would make his health regeneration matter, and the enemies he revive will become a bigger problem with wearing you down as you chase him around the map. These changes could admittedly make him annoying and drawn out, but an annoying drawn out fight is much more climatic than the complete disappointment he is now.

Below is a number of suggestions regarding badges, medals, and rankings:

General:

I think a nice change could be having 25 of each badge for a nice rounded number, instead of 26. This includes Angelic Badges.

Likewise, I think it'd be nicer if there were 50 medals instead of 25.

Rankings:

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 goal, but I think in terms of grinding for rankings, 25 would be fine. I'm open to this being rejected though.

More intermediate rankings could be made to shrink the gaps and add more fun, but I'm personally indifferent.

Badge Rankings:

For each badge type, you only need 15 and can disregard the rest. I think requiring more of the previous badge types for further rankings would be a good change to encourage getting more of them. For example, have 1st Lieutenant require 18 Bronze badges, 12 Silver badges, and 3 Gold badges, have Captain require 21 Bronze Badges, 15 Silver badges, and 6 Gold badges, have Lieutenant General require 21 Gold Badges, 9 Platinum Badges, and 3 Diamond Badges, and so on.

If additional Angelic Badges are created, more rankings should be created for different amounts of those.

No-Life King should require all badges of all types. Technically right now, you can skip 11 of each type except Angelic.

Medals:

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.

I think medals could be allowed to be earned using dual challenges and restrict dual challenges for a lot of badges instead. This can help keep them being different. I wouldn't be opposed to being more or being less strict on dual challenges for achievements though.

Many Medals are not earned if a higher version of them are earned, including Experience Medal, Hell Armorer Badge, Hell Champion Medal, and Grim Reaper's Badge. I think these should still be earned even if a harder medal type is earned.

Clarify that Malicious Knives Cross and Sunrise Fist require all kills to use the required restriction on weaponry, but don't require 100% kills.

Change Iron Skull to either 5,000 damage, or 2,000 damage but needing to win the game, as discussed previously.

Change Gambler's Shield to requiring 25 lever pulls, since 26 is a weird number.

Change Dervis' Medallion to getting 100% kills on Angel of 100 / Archangel of 100 so it's different than Centural Diamond Badge.

Thomas's Medal can be earned by being a "conqueror" on Angel of 100, which despite likely being harder, should be changed to restrict it.

New Medal Ideas:

Experience Token - Reach experience level 15 in a standard game.

Cyberdemon Cross - Enter and exit a Cyberdemon complex alive.

Aurora Star - Find 10 uniques or more (no game mode restrictions; mostly requires Angel of 100 or Archangel of 666 anyway).

Scavenger Medal - Create 15 or more assemblies (maybe require them to all be different too?).

Purity Medal - Kill JC on Angel of Purity.

Shottyman Medal - Win Angel of Shotgunnery with 100% kills.

UAC Cross - Kill 10,000 or more enemies.

This would bring everything to an even 50, and we can swap ideas around until we're happy with everything.

Badges:

Heroic Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum/Diamond Badges - Change these values to 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, if we change the medal count to 50.

Bronze Badges:

Berserker Bronze Badge to Pacifist Bronze Badge - Disallow dual challenges.

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

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

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

If we want to go from 26 to 25, I'd say remove Scavenger Bronze Badge since it's extremely trivial.

Silver Badges:

Berserker Silver Badge to Pacifist Silver Badge - Disallow dual challenges.

Brick Silver Badge - This challenge is fairly annoying, but I personally like it and wanted to mention not changing it.

Lava Silver Badge - This challenge is also fairly annoying, and I personally don't like it. I'd say make this the Silver Badge to get scrapped to reduce the number to 25.

Gold Badges:

Berserker Gold Badge to Daredevil Gold Badge - Disallow dual challenges.

I would say for going from 26 to 25, remove Armorer Gold Badge (other associated changes below).

Platinum Badges:

Change Armorer Platinum Badge to requiring finding all exotics/uniques. Finding 1,000 either devolves into spamming Angel of Overconfidence games where you drop your starting gear, pick them up, then repeat, or alternatively with playing properly, finding duplicates of exotics and uniques within the same game still only counts as 1, so this is a massive grind of games to get to 1,000. Both methods are pretty unappealing. If for canonical reasons that having "Armorer X Badge" for each type except for Gold, we could change "Armorer Platinum/Diamond Badge" to something like Collector Platinum Badge and Collector Diamond Badge.

Berserker Platinum Badge to Everyman Platinum Badge - Disallow dual challenges.

Berserker Platinum Badge - This badge is fairly similar to Gargulec Cross. Maybe change it to no kill count required, but on Nightmare difficulty?

Lightfoot Platinum Badge - Change the in-game description to saying it requires Ultra-Violence.

Everyman Platinum Badge - Change this to complete Angel of Humanity on Ultra-Violence so that it's different than Thomas's Medal.

For going from 26 to 25, I would say remove Scavenger Platinum Badge since it's a bit silly and the optimal way to earn this is not so much by "luck", but by spamming Azrael's Scythe's Whisper of Death.

Diamond Badges:

Berserker Diamond Badge to Daredevil Diamond Badge - Disallow dual challenges.

Arena Diamond Badge - Change this to Ultra-Violence as this badge is significantly harder than every other Diamond Badge. This is the only one Papilio never earned and he seemingly gave up on it, despite earning most if not all of the other purely.

For going from 26 to 25, I would say remove Scavenger Diamond Badge for the same reasons as mentioned above.

Angelic Badges:

UAC Angelic Badge - I'd say change this to Ultra-Violence, maybe even Hurt Me Plenty, but keep it as a standard game and requiring damageless.

Strongman Angelic Badge - Change this to like, 75% kills. Nobody is actually killing nearly everything with just their Fists and are instead getting to the end and farming an enemy for kills. When doing so, I think the point is made at 75% instead of 90%, and can also open up a somewhat more realistic possibility of doing it without cheesing.

Speedrun Angelic Badge - Change this to 10 minutes to keep it really hard, or 12 to be a bit more obtainable. An excellent but realistic run could get to around 8:30-8:00, and faster than that starts to require miracles.

Demonic Angelic Badge - This is basically an open slot for a new idea lol. Maybe Archangel of 666 on Ultra-Violence with 100% kills?

Shottyman Angelic Badge - Change this to requiring 100% kills as it's by far the easiest Angelic Badge.

Eagerness Angelic Badge - Change this to 50% kills as there is no where close to enough time to getting 90% kills.

Inquisitor Angelic Badge - Change this to Ultra-Violence.

Pacifist Angelic Badge - Change this to Nightmare and remove the kill count requirement.

New Angelic Badge Ideas:

Destroyer Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of Max Carnage + Angel of 100 on Nightmare.

Hunter Angelic Badge - Complete Archangel of Darkness on Nightmare (assuming this gets added).

Daredevil Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of Overconfidence + Angel of Darkness on Nightmare with 100% kills.

(I realize we need to invent new prefixes at this point)

Humanity Angelic Badge - Complete Archangel of Humanity on Ultra-Violence with 100% kills.

Purist Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of Purity + Angel of Light Travel on Nightmare.

Carnage Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of Max Carnage + Angel of Masochism on Nightmare with 100% kills.

Apostle Angelic Badge - Kill the Apostle in a standard game on Nightmare.

Sunrise Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of 100 on Ultra-Violence with 100% kills using only Fists.

This list would bring the total Angelic Badge count to 25, but we can still make lots of changes if there are other ideas.

I'll note the Bullet-Proof Vest already reduces all possible bullet damage from enemies in the game down to 1 (max damage Combat Pistol does 9, which 80% resistance brings down to 2 and then the point of protection reduces to 1). But maintaining higher resistances when damaged is something to buff it at least, for an armor whose inherent idea is just not going to have a real niche unless a much more damaging enemy bullet attack is introduced into the game. I will say it definitely need its generation weight significantly increased; it currently has a weight of 4, being less common than most of the exotic armors that are much better than it (is the rarity to prevent people from getting disappointed when they find it?). Its weight should be at least 6 to tie it with the most common non-item exotics, but you could make it even higher if it's ok to go higher than 6 for non-item exotics. Maybe you could give it a slight move speed bonus too if you really want to try making it viable beyond being a Green Armor alternative in Phobos, but a Bullet-Proof Vest making you faster wouldn't really make any sense.

I agree with the rest of your suggestions and have nothing more to add to them.

My responses:

Regarding the idea of Archangel of Darkness, I agree that 2.5x experience might be better since it is intended to be an ultra hard challenge. I think vision of 4 would be fitting.

I can agree with decreasing the volume on multi-hitting the same enemy.

Some more suggestions:

I think Bullet-Proof Vest should be buffed from 80% Bullet Resistance to 95%. This will make it a lot more truly "bullet-proof". It would help a bit for the highest rolls that you can get hit by and also give higher resistance when the armor gets damaged.

I think Environmental Boots should be changed from BPT to BBT. Because players will tend to gravitate to fluid immunity instead of fluid resistance, Environmental Boots harder ever get used. By making them BBB, they could be made separately from Cerberus Boots as an alternative, and create more use of Bulk Packs.

I think Combat Translocator being buffed from 10 Cells per shot to only 5 would help make it a lot more usable. It tends not to see a lot of use because if there are only a few enemies, they're probably avoidable and not very strong. If there are a lot of enemies, then you can't practically teleport them all away. I think allowing for more shots would help balance it on both ends.

Regarding different challenges affecting Hell's Arena and dual-challenges, a simple solution would be letting the "harder" challenge take priority, instead of planning out every combination of challenge possible.

I would figure that would be the case, as yes planning out for every Dual-Angel combination is impractical.

Regarding Angel of Death, alright I can lean into it, but definitely make it not possible to respawn, similar to Pain Elementals, Lava Elementals, and Cyberdemons.

I'm assuming the AoD wouldn't leave a respawnable corpse (I'm pretty sure he doesn't already, but I would need to verify it). If he does, then that would definitely need to be fixed to not be respawnable like most other bosses.

Regarding Juggler and ammo boxes in case you misinterpreted, I mean to say that should it be possible to juggle ammo boxes in and out from inventory to the prepared slot as well?

Ah I see, my mistake. In that case, it would be a neat addition, though I wouldn't be bothered if that wasn't implemented.

I like the idea of Tactical Set giving Dodgemaster since it would still not be overpowered, is easily outclassed by builds having Dodgemaster, and builds that have it blocked could then access Dodgemaster. The only concerns though is that it does heavily devolve the Cyberdemon fight to whether or not you have Dodgemaster, even if it already basically is.

The Cyberdemon being so easily trivialized by Dodgemaster is a bit lame, maybe that strat could be nerfed in some way? Perhaps the Cyberdemon's AI has a random chance to aim at a tile to the side of you (like a 25% or 30% chance), and if the player moves towards the direction of that tile, it makes that dodge attempt fail? Not sure if that's programmable though.

I'm not a fan of the toggle idea for Schematics as it seems slightly silly. Could it be possible to just simply let it be an additional item in the locked room that doesn't show up if you already have all the assemblies?

Having Schematics be a separate drop that doesn't take up the spot of a rare mod is also a good idea, as losing out on the rare mod are players' gripe with the Schematics mechanic.

Regarding an in-game rankings, the two main things I'm hesistant about it are that the implementation of it may require some sort of login system so that the leaderboard isn't accidentally filled with multiple entries of the same player, and also so you can update yourself. The other thing is that it only takes 1 cheater to spoil the whole thing and it would likely devolve into a lot of headaches and drama. I thought I would bring it up for some extra opinions, but I'd actually lean against it. I think a simple forum thread might be better.

I do agree with these points and am not enthused by the idea, while I imagine the community around DRL would want to avoid said drama (e.g. why no one ever called out 2dev or VANDAM about their impossibly grandiose claims when they were around). Would certainly like to hear what others think about it.

Regarding Technical Packs in armors, being limited to only one per armor is a good point that the values should be higher. 20% Melee/Bullet/Shrapnel and 10% Plasma/Acid/Fire would be a lot, but I suppose in the lens of Power Packs reducing 2 damage from each type, it doesn't seem as insane. Looking through the possible armors it could be applied to, I think it wouldn't lead to anything broken. We would just need to be sure that as a part of an assembly, it doesn't apply its resistances on top of the assembly itself, like how the other Mod Packs currently work.

It would also be balanced by the fact applying both a Power and Technical mod would mean you have to give up a mod slot for a big speed boost from an Agility mod or boosted/infinite durability from a Bulk/Onyx mod (and there would be more interesting choices to make with what mods to apply as PAO would no longer be the only optimal mod loadout for all armors).

For the idea of Archangel of Darkness, perhaps 3x experience is too much. Comparing to a standard game to Angel of Darkness, you get less vision, have to deal with respawns, and get 2x experience, and comparing Angel of Darkness to the suggested Archangel of Darkness, you would have a bit less vision. Triple experience is 1.5x relative to double, as opposed to double experience being 2x relative to single. Maybe if triple is too much, go with 2.5x experience? I think it could be a fun and interesting challenge, but it would definitely be very hard. Perhaps it would devolve a bit too far into needing luck to survive though.

When Archangel of Masochism and Archangel of Humanity are a thing, Archangel of Darkness certainly sounds playable in comparison. Exact amount of exp to gain is something that would have have to be playtested for sure, but I would lean with starting out at 2.5x EXP; it is an Archangel challenge after all and so you don't want to give the player too much of a bonus that would counteract the challenge.

I personally disagree with the difficulty balancing. I think in terms of quality of life, having the hard part be early on is much better so that as you said, you don't lose a couple hours of player because of difficulty scaling. It also requires the player after succeeding through Phobos to not get nervous and choke, which can indirectly make Deimos and Hell a bit harder. That said though, it depends on the direction of where DoomRL should go. Being unrelentingly difficult can be appealing, and being harder towards the end is more progressive with difficulty. If the direction of the game were to go this way, I do agree that increasing the danger value would be the way to go.

I do agree about the consideration of time investment as part of the balancing, but there could be more thrills to have if the later Deimos and Hell levels posed a greater threat, which is why I'm personally torn on the idea. This is another thing I would really like to hear the input of others on.

I disagree with the idea of alternative reloads for rapid-fire weapons to preserve ammo. They are generally very strong weapons towards the end of the game, and ammo expenditure is a good balance for that. As mentioned, many also already have alternative reloads. Overcharging Plasma Rifles can be useful for situations on Nightmare where you can farm Former Commandos and burn through a collection of Plasma Rifles for tough enemies.

I'll take your word for it, rapid fire weapons are my area of least expertise as mentioned (which is why I didn't comment on the proposed Laser Rifle nerf).

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Related to rapid fire weapons, one more suggested change; when a weapon with several shots is fired and when an enemy is hit by several attacks simultaneously (such as from rapid fire weapons), can the sound not increase in volume with each fire/hit? It's part of why I don't use rapid fire builds much, an Archvile's screech after being hit with a Plasma Rifle is ear shattering.

My responses to your last 2 posts:

Regarding different challenges affecting Hell's Arena and dual-challenges, a simple solution would be letting the "harder" challenge take priority, instead of planning out every combination of challenge possible.

Regarding Angel of Death, alright I can lean into it, but definitely make it not possible to respawn, similar to Pain Elementals, Lava Elementals, and Cyberdemons.

Regarding Juggler and ammo boxes in case you misinterpreted, I mean to say that should it be possible to juggle ammo boxes in and out from inventory to the prepared slot as well?

Fair points regarding Ballistic Armor, and I'd be good with Duelist Armor only giving 60% Melee resistance.

The trap solution for City of Skulls would be a great change over having a lever. It would definitely balance it relative to Abyssal Plains by making it a fair bit harder.

I think I would be fine overall with Cyberdemons and Bruisers using items I suppose, but there definitely needs to be a healing cap with Med Packs for Cybedemons as you mentioned.

I like the idea of Tactical Set giving Dodgemaster since it would still not be overpowered, is easily outclassed by builds having Dodgemaster, and builds that have it blocked could then access Dodgemaster. The only concerns though is that it does heavily devolve the Cyberdemon fight to whether or not you have Dodgemaster, even if it already basically is.

Regarding the Gothic Set suggestion, I do think that Cerberus Gothic Armor and Cerberus Gothic Boots together could get to be a bit insanely powerful with +50% all resistances. Generally speaking once you're in position for a fight, you're not moving much anyway, and you become mostly invulnerable to everything. That said though, you wouldn't be able to stair dive with it, it does help add extra top tier items, and indirectly it would help some traits a lot, such as Entrenchment. Having to constantly cycle through inventory could ward off some excessive use of it, but might also just end up annoying players who want to play optimally. I'd lean towards yes with a bit of caution.

I'm not a fan of the toggle idea for Schematics as it seems slightly silly. Could it be possible to just simply let it be an additional item in the locked room that doesn't show up if you already have all the assemblies?

Regarding an in-game rankings, the two main things I'm hesistant about it are that the implementation of it may require some sort of login system so that the leaderboard isn't accidentally filled with multiple entries of the same player, and also so you can update yourself. The other thing is that it only takes 1 cheater to spoil the whole thing and it would likely devolve into a lot of headaches and drama. I thought I would bring it up for some extra opinions, but I'd actually lean against it. I think a simple forum thread might be better.

Regarding Technical Packs in armors, being limited to only one per armor is a good point that the values should be higher. 20% Melee/Bullet/Shrapnel and 10% Plasma/Acid/Fire would be a lot, but I suppose in the lens of Power Packs reducing 2 damage from each type, it doesn't seem as insane. Looking through the possible armors it could be applied to, I think it wouldn't lead to anything broken. We would just need to be sure that as a part of an assembly, it doesn't apply its resistances on top of the assembly itself, like how the other Mod Packs currently work.

For the idea of Archangel of Darkness, perhaps 3x experience is too much. Comparing to a standard game to Angel of Darkness, you get less vision, have to deal with respawns, and get 2x experience, and comparing Angel of Darkness to the suggested Archangel of Darkness, you would have a bit less vision. Triple experience is 1.5x relative to double, as opposed to double experience being 2x relative to single. Maybe if triple is too much, go with 2.5x experience? I think it could be a fun and interesting challenge, but it would definitely be very hard. Perhaps it would devolve a bit too far into needing luck to survive though.

For BFG9000, it naturally does 10d6, and Overcharge right now does 12d6 with double the radius. I think 10d12 with an average damage of 65 is not significant enough for killing Spider Mastermind or JC and shouldn't need a restriction. It also forces the player to bring it with them for about half the game. VBFG9000 would get to 10d16 with an average damage of 85, and Biggest Fucking Gun would get to 20d24 with an average damage of 250 (assuming that Overcharge doubles the damage dice). As you suggested in your previous post though, assembling Biggest Fucking Gun would be very rare, while VBFG9000 isn't too significantly stronger, so both should be fine for the final fights.

I personally disagree with the difficulty balancing. I think in terms of quality of life, having the hard part be early on is much better so that as you said, you don't lose a couple hours of player because of difficulty scaling. It also requires the player after succeeding through Phobos to not get nervous and choke, which can indirectly make Deimos and Hell a bit harder. That said though, it depends on the direction of where DoomRL should go. Being unrelentingly difficult can be appealing, and being harder towards the end is more progressive with difficulty. If the direction of the game were to go this way, I do agree that increasing the danger value would be the way to go.

I disagree with the idea of alternative reloads for rapid-fire weapons to preserve ammo. They are generally very strong weapons towards the end of the game, and ammo expenditure is a good balance for that. As mentioned, many also already have alternative reloads. Overcharging Plasma Rifles can be useful for situations on Nightmare where you can farm Former Commandos and burn through a collection of Plasma Rifles for tough enemies.

I agree with buffing the ammo count for Rocket Boxes.

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I'll update the first post with this response and your most recent one sometime later.

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.

Nice, more suggestions to go through.

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.

Seems nobrainer to me.

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.

Agreed, any weapon you can't control what it actually does is already an inherently flawed one, even if you buffed it immensely.

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.

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.

The Wall/Containment Area should open up after all enemies dead to prevent softlocking if you use a Phase Device.

Seeing how I mentioned this and made my anti-softlock stance clear, I'm obviously for this.

Have a text colour change just before running mode wears off like power-up effects.

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.

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.

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).

Colour-coded trait screen as seen here by Mader Levap:

Agreed, nothing more to say about it.

Have Technical Mod Packs increase Melee/Bullet/Shrapnel resistance when used in armor (5%? 10%?) instead of knockback.

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).

Create Archangel of Darkness which has even smaller vision, but triple experience.

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.

Change BFG Overcharge since it's currently pretty useless and wasteful (needs discussion).

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?

Add knockback and dodge modifiers to the stats screen.

Strongly agree, the less hidden information there is the better.

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.