Chaosforge Forum

DoomRL => Requests For Features => Topic started by: Icy on August 15, 2023, 18:57

Title: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 15, 2023, 18:57

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

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

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

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

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

Bugs/Exploits/Fixes

[X] Bug: Deimos Lab is considered conquered by only pressing the two levers to open up the middle. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72)

[X] Bug: Containment Area is considered conquered by killing all enemies, and the trap can be skipped. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72)

[X] Bug: Killing the Apostle (at least on Archangel of 666) gives an error message. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72)

[?] Bug: On a flood level on an island map, it's possible to start in the middle of lava (this may have been fixed in a previous version and I have never experienced this). 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72)

[X] Bug: Attacking an item crate with a melee weapon on Angel and Archangel of Pacifism gives an error message. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72)

[X] Bug: Tristar Blaster accepts Firestorm Pack, but it does nothing. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72)

[X] Bug: Error messages occur when wielding Dragonslayer and Berserker Armor, and there are no tiles for Nightmare Demons to spawn on. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72)

[X] Exploit: Nightmare Demons can be trivially farmed for essentially infinite kills when hiding and wielding Dragonslayer and Berserker Armor. A suggest fix is having it spawn special Nightmare Demons which are immune to fluid damage. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72)

[ ] Exploit: Medical Armor in Nanofiber Skin Armor (N) can allow the player to take 1 damage and immediately heal it. Since this can be done infinitely, it may cause an issue if the total damage value reaches the highest possible. A suggested fix is changing the recharge delay of Nanofiber Skin Armor to 6 so that it can never reach 0. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72)

[ ] Exploit: The Spider Mastermind can get stuck when shot across the bottom or top middle pillars, making it only able to go up and down. The AI might need to be adjusted. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72)

[ ] Exploit: Angel of 100 can be used to be considered a conqueror due to 0 generated bonus floors to earn some achievements. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb)

[X] Fix: Grammar for the menu before selecting Archangel challenges says "in it's ultra hard form". 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72)

[ ] Fix: Archangel of 666 shows both in-game and in the high scores that it's Ao100. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72)

[X] Fix: Lightfoot Platinum Badge doesn't say it requires Ultra-Violence difficulty in-game. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72)

[ ] Fix: Charch's Null Pointer shows that its damage is 0d0, when it's actually 10d1. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72)

Changes

[~] Nerf Intuition by marking items as a green X instead of showing what they are, and change monster sense radius from 3 to 2. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/3e3whj5r)

[X] Nerf Scout class bonuses and buff other class bonuses (needs discussion). Current suggestions are Stair Sense doesn't work for stairs to bonus levels, Marines have 10% all resistances inherently, and Technicians have more uniques they can mod. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/3e3whj5r) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/4huckfe3)

[X] Allow assemblies before Whizkid x2 to still get an extra mod pack after later getting Whizkid x2. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/3e3whj5r)

[X] Buff Reloader to 25% speed, possibly 30% speed. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/3e3whj5r) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/2s8ur3m9) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/426e5m79) 5 (https://tinyurl.com/ye225sce)

[X] Remove Gunrunner blocking Whizkid and change it to another trait such as Brute. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/3e3whj5r)

[X] Remove Army of the Dead blocking Finesse and change it to another trait such as Son of a Gun. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/3e3whj5r)

[X] Remove Bullet Dance blocking Eagle Eye and change it to Intuition. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72)

[ ] Buff Entrenchment (needs discussion). Current suggestion is increasing resistances from 30% to 50%. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72)

[ ] Make Phobos Lab more rewarding to enter compared to Military Base (needs discussion). 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/3e3whj5r) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/4huckfe3)

[ ] High scores mostly devolve into playing Archangel of 666 and aren't really used. Perhaps they should be changed (needs discussion). 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72)

[ ] Allow more variety in fluid generation, so there is more water and acid in deeper levels. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb)

[ ] Add Angel of Death as a regular enemy in very deep levels. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/pcund7u) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/49c6fnn2) 5 (https://tinyurl.com/mr3rt8r8) 6 (https://tinyurl.com/2p9fdukf) 7 (https://tinyurl.com/2p82nuyu)

[ ] Allow Juggler to instantly swap across all weapons from inventory, instead of requiring mousewheel. Also allow it to work with swapping ammo boxes. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/pcund7u) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/mr3rt8r8) 5 (https://tinyurl.com/2p9fdukf) 6 (https://tinyurl.com/2p82nuyu)

[ ] Replace Missile Launcher in City of Skulls/Abyssal Plains. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6)

[X] Switch the depths of Unholy Cathedral and The Vaults. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb)

[X] Change The Vaults enemies. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb)

[ ] Prevent softlocking when teleporting into the mountain of Mt. Erebus. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/pcund7u) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/49c6fnn2)

[X] Buff Nightmare Imps. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb)

[X] Change Nightmare Archvile's attack to 20d1 Plasma. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/49c6fnn2)

[X] Buff Lava Elemental. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/49c6fnn2) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/mr3rt8r8)

[X] Increase depth Former Commandos and Pain Elementals can spawn. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb)

[ ] Allow hunting enemies to pick up items and armors (Cyberdemon would need a healing cap for Med Packs). 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/pcund7u) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/49c6fnn2) 5 (https://tinyurl.com/mr3rt8r8) 6 (https://tinyurl.com/2p9fdukf)

[ ] Allow Hell's Arena to have both different rewards and different enemies depending on challenge. Dual challenges would use the harder set. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/49c6fnn2) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/mr3rt8r8) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/2p9fdukf)

[ ] Replace lever with a horizontal coordinate trap in City of Skulls. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/mr3rt8r8) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/2p9fdukf)

[ ] Have The Wall/Containment Area open up after all enemies are dead to prevent softlocks if you use a Phase Device. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/5n7chwca) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/2p8n7kxa)

[X] Increase the danger level in Deimos and Hell (needs discussion). 1 (https://tinyurl.com/5n7tkysu) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/2p9fdukf) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/2p82nuyu)

[X] Decrease the audio volume when a rapid-fire attack hits an enemy multiple times. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2p82nuyu) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/bdeuhtmf)

[ ] Buff the Apostle to 500 HP and always teleporting after being hit (also kill all enemies when it dies like JC). 1 (https://tinyurl.com/chu6nbef) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/384sm8fy) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/yc4vjy9s) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/bddy6tdd)

[ ] Change ammo rooms so they don't only drop Cells late into the game. A suggested change is: 1% 1d2 Cell Boxes, 2% 1d2 Rocket Boxes, 3% 1d2 Shell Boxes, 4% 1d2 Bullet Boxes, 20% 1d3 + 2 Cells, 20% 1d3 + 2 Rockets, 25% 1d3 + 2 Shells, and 25% 1d3 + 2 Bullets. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/3jf5xetz) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/ycyfepcp) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/yc7z9xx2) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/484wc57n) 5 (https://tinyurl.com/y8dfh3xz) 6 (https://tinyurl.com/2bwn94uc)

[X] Change the difficulty suggestion of Archangel of Humanity from "TwoDev" to "Tormuse". 1 (https://tinyurl.com/4huckfe3)

[X] Change Nightmare Demons from giving 95 Experience to 263 Experience. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/mrxsur9b)

[X] Change Elite Former Humans, Elite Former Sergeants, and Elite Former Captains Experience values to 128, 263, 320 respectively. Also increase their weight generation values. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/mrxsur9b) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/4v4r382p)

[ ] Buff all Elite Former enemies to deal 2d5 melee damage (equivalent to a Combat Knife). 1 (https://tinyurl.com/mrxsur9b) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/y6e59p42)

[ ] Change the colour of Sniper Mod Packs so they are distinguishable from Firestorm Mod Packs. Suggested colour is a dark green, but any is fine. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y6e59p42) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/n2u3erd4)

[ ] Buff Survivalist to only require Ironman x2, and to give double healing from Small Med Packs and Small Health Globes. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/3c47w59w) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/279vtt9b)

[ ] Buff Scavenger to work with melee weapons, armors, and boots. Possibly also change and add some guaranteed drops. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/4v4r382p) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/248ym3nx)

[ ] For the dodging bonus value on the stats screen, have it include the bonus value when running. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/3nhj5v7b)

[X] For levers that destroy walls, only make a singular explosion sound instead of one for each wall tile. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/3nhj5v7b)

[ ] If Containment Area is destroyed by a nuke, disable the trap, but still count the level as conquered. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/3nhj5v7b)

[ ] If Abyssal Plains is destroyed by a nuke, disable the wall trap from appearing. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/3nhj5v7b)

[ ] Change bridges that go over rivers to not be blocked off by walls or rooms without doors (this might be too difficult to implement). 1 (https://tinyurl.com/nupmpepb) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/2s8ur3m9)

[X] For postmortem messages for darkness levels, remove the comma after the level number so that it formats correctly when pasted on the forums with mortem tags. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s8ur3m9)

[~] Buff Frag Shotgun by reducing ammo consumed from 4 to 2, and possibly reduce clip size from 16 to 10 or 8 to compensate. Also consider changing damage to 6d3 and change firing speed to 0.5s. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/3e3whj5r) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/4huckfe3)

[ ] Buff Mjollnir damage to 1d25, and consider making its depth level 1 and have a higher generation weight, similar to Butcher's Cleaver. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/3e3whj5r) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/4huckfe3)

[ ] Have Throw from Combat Knife and Mjollnir be improved by Brute's accuracy and Finesse's speed. Also confirm that Son of a Bitch and Brute's damage also affect them. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/nupmpepb) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/2s8ur3m9) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/426e5m79)

[X] Buff Mega Buster from 5 ammo per shot to 3 ammo per shot, to also match the bursts themselves. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72)

[ ] Let Mega Buster use alt fire to switch modes, but you have to collect all the damage types (more similar to Mega Man). 1 (https://tinyurl.com/5n7chwca) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/2p8n7kxa)

[ ] Allow Subtle Knife to count as "knife kills". Remove the HP reduction of Invoke and increase attack speed to 0.8s. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/3e3whj5r) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/4huckfe3)

[ ] Nerf Trigun to not be an instant nuke and require 10s like regular nukes. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72)

[~] Buff Medical Powerarmor from 4 protection to 6 protection, allow healing up to 50%, and increase its weight generation to 3. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/3e3whj5r) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/4huckfe3) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/yscas8wa) 5 (https://tinyurl.com/yvazym2f)

[X] Make Backpack indestructible. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/3e3whj5r) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/4huckfe3)

[X] Increase Chainsaw's generation weight. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/pcund7u)

[X] Buff Micro Launcher by giving it 0.5s firing speed. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/49c6fnn2)

[ ] Buff Double Chainsaw. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/49c6fnn2) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/mr3rt8r8)

[X] Buff Medical Armor to heal up to 50% and switch the resistances to 15% for each of Plasma, Acid, and Fire. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb)

[ ] Change Duelist Armor to only having 60% Melee resistance. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/pcund7u) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/49c6fnn2) 5 (https://tinyurl.com/mr3rt8r8) 6 (https://tinyurl.com/2p9fdukf)

[X] Buff Tower Shield to having 200% durability and -30% movement speed. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/pcund7u)

[X] Buff Ballistic Armor to 40% Melee/Bullet/Shrapnel resistances and -20% Fire resistance. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/49c6fnn2) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/mr3rt8r8) 5 (https://tinyurl.com/2p9fdukf)

[X] Change Cybernetic Armor's resistances to 20% all. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/pcund7u)

[X] Buff Necroarmor to regenerate at 5% durability per action. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb)

[X] Change Gothic Set from +4 Protection to 50% all resistance. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/2p9fdukf)

[ ] Make Dragonslayer's Berserk effect "more permanent". 1 (https://tinyurl.com/5n7chwca) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/2p8n7kxa)

[ ] Change Schematics so that each run is truly independent (probably just have it drop elsewhere separately). 1 (https://tinyurl.com/5n7chwca) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/2p8n7kxa) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/2p9fdukf) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/2p82nuyu)

[ ] Change Technical Packs to increase resistances when used in armors instead of knockback. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/5n7chwca) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/2p8n7kxa) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/2p9fdukf) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/2p82nuyu)

[X] Buff/change BFG9000 Overcharge (needs discussion). 1 (https://tinyurl.com/5n7chwca) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/2p8n7kxa) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/2p9fdukf)

[X] Increase the amount of Rockets in a Rocket Box from 20 to 25. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/5n7tkysu) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/2p9fdukf)

[ ] Buff Bullet-Proof Vest from 80% Bullet resistances to 95% and increase generation weight from 4 to 6. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdeuhtmf) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/ysh7cnh3)

[X] Change Environmental Boots assembly from BPT to BBT, and buff the resistances to 95%. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdeuhtmf) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/4huckfe3) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/cdzv69j9) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/mt7us4vd)

[X] Buff Combat Translocator from 10 Cells per shot to 5. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdeuhtmf)

[~] Let Technicians apply a single mod or basic assembly to Frag Shotgun, Jackhammer, Anti-Freak Jackal, Grammaton Cleric Beretta, Necroarmor, Shielded Armor, and Medical Powerarmor. Let Revenant's Launcher be fully moddable. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/4huckfe3) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/cdzv69j9) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/mt7us4vd) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/y2k79nst)

[X] Buff Speedloader Pistol assembly from 0.6s to 0.4s. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/4huckfe3) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/cdzv69j9) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/mt7us4vd)

[ ] Buff Power Armor assembly by tripling Plasma Resistance and quintupling Bullet/Shrapnel Resistance (and still doubling Fire Resistance). Also buff it by giving +20% movement speed instead of a set value. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/4huckfe3) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/cdzv69j9) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/mt7us4vd) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/y2k79nst) 5 (https://tinyurl.com/4zw3jxdw) 6 (https://tinyurl.com/377u6cbr)

[X] Buff Assault Rifle to have original+3 Accuracy instead of just +2. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/4huckfe3)

[X] Nerf Inquisitor Set pieces to each have +20% movement speed and weight generations of 2. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/yscas8wa) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yvazym2f)

New Features

[ ] Add a toggle for turning off powerup overlays of Berserk, Invulnerability, and Envirosuit. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb)

[~] Allow all difficulties and challenges available from a new file. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb)

[ ] Cycle between Phobos, Deimos, and Hell tilesets for Angel of 100 / Archangel of 666. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb)

[ ] Add more music slots in the musichq.lua file. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6)

[ ] Create locked vaults. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb)

[ ] Add a lever effect that drops ammo. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/pcund7u)

[ ] Add Phobos trees to level generation (but avoid blocking off areas; might require being preset or being fragile). 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/pcund7u) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/mr3rt8r8)

[ ] Have a text colour change before running mode wears out, similar to powerup effects. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/5n7chwca) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/2p8n7kxa)

[ ] Have the trait selection screen be more color-coded (example by Mader Levap): 1 (https://tinyurl.com/5n7chwca) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/2p8n7kxa)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(https://i.imgur.com/gUyYpVB.png)

[ ] Create Archangel of Darkness which would have an even smaller vision (4?), but 2.5x experience. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/5n7chwca) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/2p8n7kxa) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/2p9fdukf) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/2p82nuyu) 5 (https://tinyurl.com/bdeuhtmf)

[ ] Add level feeling messages for Agony Elemental caves and Lava Elemental caves. ("You hear echoing wails of agony!" / "You feel like you stepped into a volcano!" or something) 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bh37snhz) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/3myhf7n9)

[ ] Add trap rooms. These would have a power-up/exotic item inside and when obtained, has a 50% chance of spawning enemies similar to a summon enemies lever, or flooding the room with acid or lava. The weight of the power-ups/exotics would not impact the rest of the floor. The chance of the trap activating could also instead be affected by depth level and/or difficulty. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/mrxsur9b) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/y6e59p42) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/n2u3erd4) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/5mefmdy2) 5 (https://tinyurl.com/42vsnavh)

[X] Remove the out of range limit for firing that was added into the newest version. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/248ym3nx)

[ ] Reveal enemies when there are three or less remaining. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/nupmpepb) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/2s8ur3m9) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/426e5m79) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/ye225sce) 5 (https://tinyurl.com/4zw3jxdw) 6 (https://tinyurl.com/377u6cbr)

[ ] Have the stats screen show number of enemies remaining. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/mspr75t3) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/4vcsdejf)

[ ] Add sounds for all actions for exotics/uniques/artifacts. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/mspr75t3) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/4vcsdejf)

[ ] Add sounds for Nightmare enemies, Lava Elemental, Agony Elemental, Arena Master, and Apostle. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/mspr75t3) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/4vcsdejf)

[ ] Add sounds for enemies spawning, enemies reviving, and Archviles charging. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/cjahmdaw) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/mr2u3nmc)

[ ] Allow a third Sniper Pack to give weapons the auto-hit property. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72)

[ ] New assembly suggestion: Scouting Armor (AS) which is original, +1 Vision, +10% speed. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/3e3whj5r)

[ ] New assembly suggestion: Blastproof Armor (TF) which is original, with half damage to explosions, +30% knockback. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/3e3whj5r)

[ ] New assembly suggestion: Grappling Armor (BA) which is original, +30% Melee Resistance, -50% knockback. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/4huckfe3) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/cdzv69j9) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/mt7us4vd) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/y2k79nst)

[ ] New assembly suggestion: Sniper Rifle (BAS) (Chaingun only) which is original with auto-hit property. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/4huckfe3) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/cdzv69j9)

[ ] New exotic suggestion: Acid-Proof Armor which is 3 Protection, 95% Acid Resistance, -10% movement speed, everything else normal. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/4huckfe3) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/cdzv69j9)

[ ] New exotic suggestion: Glass Shield which is 0 Protection, 50% Durability, 80% all resistances, cannot be repaired, cannot be modded, doesn't degrade. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/4huckfe3) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/cdzv69j9) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/mt7us4vd) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/y2k79nst)

[ ] New exotic suggestion: Glass Armor which is 0 Protection, 50% Durability, 50% all resistances. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/4huckfe3) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/cdzv69j9)

[ ] Add method for guaranteed Berserker Armor and Dragonslayer in Angel of 100 / Archangel of 666. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/pcund7u) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/49c6fnn2)

[ ] Add a new common Pistol type (suggested example is "Magnum" with more power and less accuracy). 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb)

[ ] Create Tactical Set (Tactical Armor + Tactical Boots) which gives Dodgemaster. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/2p9fdukf)

[X] Keep the new assembly, "Mother-In-Law", but change it to PPFN. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/4txwzvvj) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/426e5m79) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/377u6cbr)

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 15, 2023, 18:57

Badges, Medals, and Rankings:

Add colour-coding to medals and badges in mortems at the end of a game. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/chu6nbef) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/384sm8fy)

Medals:

[ ] Make all medals visible in the player status menu, instead of having some bonus ones be hidden until achieved. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/3e3whj5r)

[ ] Adjust the number of medals so there are 50 of them. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] Change the names of Explorer Badge, Conqueror Badge, Untouchable Badge, Grim Reaper's Badge, Angelic Badge, and Hell Armorer Badge so they don't sound like badges. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] Change medal requirements so that if a higher version is earned, you still earn the lower versions too (example: Experience Medal, Hell Armorer Badge, Hell Champion Medal, etc). 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] Clarify that Malicious Knives Cross and Sunrise Fist require all kills with the proper weapons, but don't require 100% kills. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] Iron Skull - Change to 5,000 damage, instead of 10,000. Alternatively, require 2,000 damage but require winning the game. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/2s45cu72) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/3e3whj5r) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/4huckfe3)

[ ] Change "Every Soldier's Medal" to "Invader's Medal - Clear The Wall/Containment Area on any of Angel of Berserk / Angel of Marksmanship / Angel of Shotgunner". (Replacing it with the old Brick Silver Badge) 1 (https://tinyurl.com/3jf5xetz) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/ycyfepcp) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/yc7z9xx2) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/484wc57n) 5 (https://tinyurl.com/2bwn94uc)

[ ] Gambler's Shield - Change to requiring 25 lever pulls instead of 26.1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] Dervis' Medallion - Change to getting 100% kills on Angel of 100 / Archangel of 100. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] Thomas's Medal - Change to completing Angel of Humanity with 100% kills (no Angel of Confidence or Angel of Overconfidence). 1 (https://tinyurl.com/3jf5xetz) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/ycyfepcp) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/yc7z9xx2) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/484wc57n) 5 (https://tinyurl.com/y8dfh3xz) 6 (https://tinyurl.com/2bwn94uc)

[ ] New: Experience Token - Reach experience level 15 in a standard game. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] New: Aurora Star - Find 10 uniques or more (Allow all challenge types). 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] New: Technician Medal - Create 15 or more different assemblies in a single game. (Allow all challenge types) 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/chu6nbef) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/384sm8fy)

[ ] New: UAC Cross - Kill 2,500 or more enemies. (Allow all challenge types) 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/chu6nbef) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/384sm8fy)

[ ] New: Boss Slayer Cross - Clear a boss floor and exit alive. (Boss floors are special floors that have a single enemy being a boss, which are Bruiser Brothers, Shamblers, Agony Elementals, Lava Elementals, or Cyberdemons). 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/chu6nbef) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/384sm8fy) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/yc4vjy9s) 5 (https://tinyurl.com/bddy6tdd) 6 (https://tinyurl.com/3jf5xetz)

[ ] New: Unexplored Star - Visit no generated levels and win the game. (Excludes Angel of Confidence, Angel of Overconfidence, Angel of 100, and Archangel of 666) 1 (https://tinyurl.com/yc4vjy9s) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/bddy6tdd) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/3jf5xetz) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/ycyfepcp) 5 (https://tinyurl.com/yc7z9xx2) 6 (https://tinyurl.com/484wc57n)

[ ] Keep the new medal "Medal of Pacifism". 1 (https://tinyurl.com/4txwzvvj) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/426e5m79)

[ ] Remove the new medals "Shotgunnery Cross", "Marksmanship Cross", "Zen Master's Cross", "Purple Heart", "Gutts' Sorrow", and "Klear Cross". 1 (https://tinyurl.com/4txwzvvj) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/426e5m79)

Badges:

[ ] Allow previously obtained badges to appear in mortems, and keep count of them. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/bdfh5ru6) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc3243nb)

[ ] Adjust the number of badges so there are 25 of each type, including Angelic Badges. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/chu6nbef) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/384sm8fy)

[ ] Have higher rankings require more of the previous tier badges (get to needing 15 Bronze, and then a few rankings later, start requiring them again for 18 Bronze, 21 Bronze, etc). 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] No-Life King ranking should require all badges of every type. Currently it only requires Angelic Badges. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] Change Heroic Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum/Diamond Badges to require 5/15/25/35/45 badges respectively. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/yc4vjy9s)

[ ] Disallow Dual-Angel challenges for all of Berserker Bronze Badge to Pacifist Bronze Badge, Berserker Silver Badge to Pacifist Silver Badge, Berserker Gold Badge to Daredevil Gold Badge, Berserker Platinum Badge to Everyman Platinum Badge, and Berserker Diamond Badge to Daredevil Diamond Badge. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] Veteran Bronze Badge - Change this to requiring a standard game so that it's at least a bit different than Medal of Prejudice. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] Speedrunner Bronze Badge - Change this to 40 minutes so that it's a little different than Compet-n Silver Cross. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] Arena Bronze Badge - Change this to requiring a standard game so that it's at least a bit different than Hell Champion Medal. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] Remove Scavenger Bronze Badge to bring the count to 25. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] Brick Silver Badge - Change this to requiring Angel of Light Travel and no Dual-Angel challenges. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/chu6nbef) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/384sm8fy) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/yc4vjy9s)

[ ] Remove Lava Silver Badge to bring the count to 25. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/chu6nbef)

[ ] Gatekeeper Gold Badge - Change to needing to pass Phobos Anomaly on Hurt Me Plenty difficulty without taking damage. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/chu6nbef) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/384sm8fy)

[ ] Remove Armorer Gold Badge to bring the count to 25. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/chu6nbef)

[ ] Change Armorer Platinum Badge to "Collector Platinum Badge - Find all exotics and uniques". 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/chu6nbef) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/384sm8fy)

[ ] Berserker Platinum Badge - Remove the kill count requirement. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/chu6nbef) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/384sm8fy)

[ ] Hunter Platinum Badge - Change to Ultra-Violence and needing 75% kills. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/chu6nbef) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/384sm8fy) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/yc4vjy9s) 4 (https://tinyurl.com/bddy6tdd)

[ ] Remove Scavenger Platinum Badge to bring the count to 25. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/chu6nbef)

[ ] Change Armorer Diamond Badge's name to "Collector Diamond Badge" 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/chu6nbef) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/384sm8fy)

[ ] Berserker Diamond Badge - Remove the kill count and require the newly suggested medal "Unexplored Star". 1 (https://tinyurl.com/yc4vjy9s) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/bddy6tdd)

[ ] Arena Diamond Badge - Change this to Ultra-Violence (possibly keeping it on Nightmare depending on potential changes to Hell's Arena). 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/chu6nbef) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/384sm8fy)

[ ] Remove Scavenger Diamond Badge to bring the count to 25. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/chu6nbef)

[ ] UAC Angelic Badge - Change to Ultra-Violence. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] Strongman Angelic Badge - Change to 75% kills. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] Speedrunner Angelic Badge - Change to 12 minutes. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/bddy6tdd) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/3jf5xetz)

[ ] Demonic Angelic Badge - Change to winning a standard game on Nightmare with 100% kills and Untouchable Badge. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/chu6nbef) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/384sm8fy)

[ ] Shottyman Angelic Badge - Change to 100% kills. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] Eagerness Angelic Badge - Change to 50% kills. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] Inquisitor Angelic Badge - Change to Ultra-Violence. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] Pacifist Angelic Badge - Change to Nightmare and remove kill count requirement. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] New: Heroic Angelic Badge - Achieve all 50 medals. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/yc4vjy9s) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/bddy6tdd) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/bddy6tdd)

[ ] New: Destroyer Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of Max Carnage + Angel of 100 on Nightmare. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] New: Hunter Angelic Badge - Complete Archangel of Darkness on Nightmare. If this challenge isn't created, instead go with Angel of Darkness on Nightmare as a conqueror. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m) 2 (https://tinyurl.com/chu6nbef) 3 (https://tinyurl.com/384sm8fy)

[ ] New: Daredevil Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of Overconfidence + Angel of Darkness on Nightmare with 100% kills. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] New: Purist Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of Purity + Angel of Light Travel on Nightmare. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] New: Carnage Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of Max Carnage + Angel of Masochism on Nightmare with 100% kills. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] New: Apostle Angelic Badge - Kill the Apostle in a standard game on Nightmare. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

[ ] New: Sunrise Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of 100 on Ultra-Violence with 100% kills using only Fists. 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y3ehau6m)

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 15, 2023, 18:59

My suggestions:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on August 16, 2023, 00:48

Here are my responses to some of the ideas here:

GENERAL FEATURES

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

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

TRAITS

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Buff Ironman to 25% HP."

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

"Buff Reloader to 25% speed."

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

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

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

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

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

WEAPONS AND ARMOR

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

"Nerf Biggest Fucking Gun (needs discussion)."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Make Backpack indestructible."

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

BADGES, MEDALS, AND MISCELLANEOUS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 16, 2023, 04:44

Thanks for sharing Omega Tyrant!

Here are some of my responses:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on August 16, 2023, 05:17

Now to post some of my own ideas.

GENERAL FEATURES

*Add a toggle to turn off the powerup overlays of Berserk, Invulnerability, and Envirosuit

These are just rough to the eyes and make it harder to discern things (particularly with making it hard to see the enemy Xs of Intuition). Keen enough players can pay attention to the powerup indicator in the HUD to know if they still have the powerup, which players have to do anyway to be aware of when the powerup is about to run out.

*Allow already obtained badges to show up in mortems when their conditions are fulfilled again, while keeping count of how many times each badge has been obtained

Medals already do this, so it's weird that badges don't, and it makes the Awards sections of mortems a bit empty after you already got most of the badges. Could also be fun to see how much of each badge you can collect.

*Make all difficulties and challenges available from the start, or at least make it a toggable option

I can see the appeal of gradually unlocking stuff, or otherwise trying to steer newbies away from immediately jumping in on UV because that is what they do in Doom and then getting promptly slaughtered. From what I observed however, locking away the harder difficulties and all the challenges just annoys returning veterans who lost their old DRL installation, who can easily jump back in on UV and want to play some of the funner challenges like A100 or AoMC, but have to grind out several runs first before they're able to. A simple toggle in the config.lua file should suffice, giving returning veterans the option to skip that initial grind, while newbies or people who otherwise preferred unlocking things will have their experience untouched.

*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.

ANGEL OF 100
These are some suggestions to help improve Angel of 100 specifically (and Archangel of 666 by extension):

*Add more medals and/or badges for A100

One disappointment with A100 is how empty the Awards section of your mortems are after completion, when the only medals you can get are the UAC Stars, Medal of Prejudice, the Experience Medal/Cross, Dervis' Medallion, and the Apostle Insignia (well there's a few more you can possibly get like the speedrunning medals, the Untouchable medals, the Icarus Crosses, and the "kill all enemies with knives/your fists" medals, but these aren't realistically obtainable in A100). 43 medals is also a weird amount, so perhaps bump it to an even 50. Not saying add 7 medals just for A100, but a few more you can get in it would be nice; some ideas I have is clearing out a boss-only level (could have a medal for each of them, but one covering them in general would be enough as it could get annoying trying to encounter them all), finding 10 uniques (so an amped up version of Aurora Medallion for A100), nuke 20 floors (so an amped up version of the Fallout Crosses for A100), create 15 different assemblies. This can be discussed farther.

*Cycle between the Phobos, Deimos, and Hell tilesets after floor 25

One issue with A100 is how over 80% of the floors are Hell, so things start to get samey looking. The dream would be to add more unique tilesets for deeper levels (a Thy Flesh Consumed tileset would be amazing), but that understandably would probably be too much for an update to an old free fangame, so just letting the preexisting tilesets cycle instead of being stuck with Hell's for 84 floors would help break up the monotony.

*Modify fluid generation so that water and acid can still spawn in deeper levels

Another part of the aforementioned monotony is how over 90% of fluids you encounter will be lava after past like floor 10, with only occasional level types being able to break the fluid monotony up. More randomization with what fluid type spawns regardless of depth would make floors more varied, and it wouldn't necessarily make things easier, as players can't utilize water to escape or harm enemies, and knocking enemies into acid does a lot less damage than lava does (especially to Hell Nobles). It would also serve as an indirect nerf to the Inquisitor Set, where the fire immunity may as well be fluid immunity when you rarely actually encounter any acid to run through, negating any real need to keep Cerberus Boots or Enviroboots on you once you have the set.

*Add the Angel of Death as a regular enemy in deep floors

I get not having the Arena Master in A100 when he is just a bulkier Archvile with a weaker attack, while the Nightmare Archvile exists for a stronger version, and not having the Spider Master or John Carmack when they're final bosses. But why not the Angel of Death? Having such a strong and fast melee enemy would also help counterbalance being able to near solely rely on a modded out Energy-Shielded Vest or the Inquisitor Set, when you got a melee enemy even stronger than Nightmare Demons. Is not having him appear because he would be too tedious to kill? If so, I don't think he is much worse in that regard than Cyberdemons are, or Agony Elementals for builds with weak crowd control. I would suggest having Angels of Death start spawning at dlevel 80, and hey, maybe allow the single enemy level type to possibly have only Angels of Death too.

*Guaranteed Berserker Armor and Dragonslayer spawns

In order to get a full win in A100/666 (which as I understand will be counted in 0.9.9.8, seeing the GitHub changelog for it), you need these two pieces of equipment by the final floor to spawn the Apostle and then kill it. This however requires a large amount of luck in A100, and even in A666 you're not guaranteed to find both before the final floor. The game ending text for not doing so even says you missed out on the "mystery" behind them... despite it being a low random chance that you could even have the opportunity to. So add a way to guarantee them spawning. What that should be can be debated, perhaps have the Berserker Armor automatically spawn on floor 50 if you've carried a 100% killrate that far, and then have the Dragonslayer automatically spawn on floor 99 if you've carried a 100% killrate to it? I think that would be fair, and on UV and especially Nightmare difficulty, carrying a 100% killrate through all of A100 isn't a small feat, while losing inventory space from carrying around the Berserker Armor for all those floors would be an additional handicap.

*Add more music slots in the musichq.lua file

Something that might only appeal to me, but as someone who likes to mod the music of the game, it disappoints me a bit that there are only 24 level slots to assign music to, and then the game randomly shuffles between them for the rest of A100 after that point. An admittedly minor thing that probably few people care about, but would be neat if I could mod in up to 50 songs or even have unique tracks for every single floor of A100 if I wanted to.

TRAITS
In addition to what Icy covered, I'll add:

*Let Juggler instantly swap weapons from your inventory

As you can already swap instantly with quick keys (which can be modified to be any weapon in keybindings.lua) or with your mouse wheel, the restriction on manually swapping weapons from your inventory is only a senseless inconvenience, particularly only hindering players with no functional mouse wheel and who do not have the tech savviness to modify their keybindings to utilize Juggler with exotic/unique weapons. And otherwise it is annoying to have to save out of the game to modify my keybindings upon finding a good exotic/unique if I want to utilize Juggler with it via quick keys.

*Buff Badass

I'm not sure how to buff Badass exactly, but as it is, it's easily the least impressive advanced trait by far, especially compared to the other two classes' instantly accessible advanced traits, and whenever a mastery requires it, I find it to usually be a dead level. Not having health decay above 100% is just not that big of a boon except for maybe Vampyre; any strategy that relies on retaining boosted health to survive is a flawed one, and you can't even utilize it without finding certain powerups if you're not running Vampyre, not to mention that fast builds can carry boosted health for a long time even with decay, largely negating the need for Badass. Then knockback reduction is also not that useful and can even be counterproductive, when it'll nerf rocket jumping, and knockback from enemies can be useful to escape a bad spot and reposition. Then in scenarios where you do want knockback resistance, it's better to have equipment for that, as you can then take it off when you want higher knockback, which you can't do with Badass' knockback reduction. One idea I can think of is building off what Icy suggested for the Marine and have each level of Badass give 5% or 10% inherent resistance to everything in addition to preventing health decay (whichever is deemed to be better balanced), while then removing the knockback reduction entirely. It could alternatively be that each level grants an additional 10 actions with powerups instead of knockback reduction.

WEAPONS
Some weapon ideas I have that Icy didn't touch on:

*Add a new standard Pistol

Pistol builds are inherently disadvantaged, where they require luck to find anything better than their starting peashooters, unlike other builds that will come across guaranteed upgrades to their weak starting weapons. I'm not sure how to go about this, but one idea I saw someone suggest was adding a Magnum, which would serve as a stronger but more inaccurate Pistol (maybe 3d4 with +2 accuracy?), and also help make Sharpshooter's overkill investment into Eagle Eye do something useful, serving to help their overtly hard early game, while additionally incentivizing other Pistol builds to invest in Eagle Eye or use Agility mods. I'm not too versed in Pistols however, so those that specialize in them should give their input.

*Significantly improve the Chainsaw's generation weight

Currently the Chainsaw has an item generation weight of 3, which makes it as rare or even rarer than some uniques. This makes melee builds, other than Malicious Blades, weak in A100/666, unless they get really lucky early with quickly finding the Chainsaw, Cleaver, or Dragonslayer (it also doesn't help that the two other melee uniques are worse than modded Combat Knives, farther reducing the chance of them finding a good melee weapon). I think it should have a generation weight of at least 6, maybe even higher, and perhaps let it spawn a little earlier than floor 12 too, so that melee builds can more realistically actually find a melee weapon better than the Combat Knife. This change would additionally have virtually no impact in the standard game, when any build that wants a Chainsaw will just get the guaranteed one from the Chained Court earlier than they ever could find it randomly, and finding another randomly generated Chainsaw later would do nothing useful.

*Improve the BFG9000's generation weight*

Similar to the above, where the BFG9000 is a guaranteed weapon you can get without too much hassle in the standard game, but is exceedingly rare to ever find in A100, due to its item generation weight of 2 making it even rarer than the aforementioned Chainsaw. This one isn't a pressing balance issue, I just think it's weird how you can easily go entire A100 runs without ever finding this trademark weapon. This can be argued against, as finding a second randomly generated BFG in a standard game can be huge, though given the BFG's minimum floor depth of 20, bumping its generation weight up to 4 or even 5 would make it very unlikely that the player would find one before the standard game ends. Either way I wouldn't argue too hard for this change however.

*Buff the Micro Launcher?

Even as a guy who likes Rocket Launchers and rocket jumping, I find it hard to find a worthwhile niche for the Micro Launcher. 0.8 second firing speed, 0.8 reloading speed, extra accuracy, and a smaller explosion radius is nice, but you already get the formermost just from applying one of the prerequisites Technical Mods on your Rocket Launcher (and it would be even slower than a Rocket Launcher with two Technical Mods). But the main problem is the substantial downgrade in power to 5d5, which aside from making it weaker for combat, also hurts its utility usages, as it has a much higher chance to fail to blow up a wall in a single rocket (or might even fail after two!), and its rocket jumps would send you a shorter distance (you can argue less self-damaging rocket jumps is a boon, but with just Fireproof Red Armor, you can already reduce 6d6 rocket jump damage down to 1-3, not to mention self-damage won't matter when you're invulnerable, where rocket jumping sees much of its usage). Then there's the Tactical Rocket Launcher that just completely outclasses this weapon, and whose BBB mod cost is arguably a lesser cost than two Technical Mods. It seems to exist as an economical improvement to the Rocket Launcher for builds that aren't investing in Whizkid, but the improvement is minor or even arguably a sidegrade.

I'm unsure how to buff the Micro Launcher to give it a defined niche instead of just buffing its power. At least though its firing speed needs to reflect the Technical Mod investment, so it should be no more than 0.7 seconds firing speed, I would maybe go all the way down to 0.5 seconds firing speed to try giving it a niche as the fastest firing Rocket Launcher. Conversely, as a basic assembly that uses common mods, you can argue a cheap economical option that isn't great is the point, though I would still argue to at least give it the 0.7 seconds firing speed.

*Buff the Double Chainsaw?

The Double Chainsaw's 8d6 power is certainly a big upgrade over a BP Chainsaw's 5d7 power, so this assembly isn't inherently bad. The problem is it's completely outclassed by the Ripper that just requires one more level of Whizkid and an additional Technical mod, while also being completely outclassed by the Longinus Spear and especially Azrael's Scythe. As a result, if you want to maximize your Chainsaw, you won't be making this instead of the Ripper, and otherwise for a weapon you plan to ditch once you get the Spear or Scythe, you probably don't want to expend the extra Power mod on it, if you don't just go for the cheap disposable option of the Piercing Chainsaw instead. The only arguable niche for the Double Chainsaw is for Blademasters in A100, where they can't get the Spear or Scythe, and they could possibly get more use from its stronger single-hit power than the Ripper, as more one-hit kills will make them mow through hordes faster (though I think the Ripper is still better, as it'll activate Berserker quicker, and because of all the boss and nightmare monsters that you aren't killing in one hit even with the Double Chainsaw).

However like the Micro Launcher, there's no clear way to buff it; make it stronger, then what's the point of getting the Spear or Scythe; make it faster, what's the point of the getting the Ripper. You can argue just leaving it as is, as the midway option for people who want to improve their Chainsaw more before the Spear/Scythe but don't want to go all in on the Ripper. Maybe my later suggestion of making the Unholy Cathedral appear a bit later would make the Double Chainsaw a more attractive option as a midgame weapon you'll ultimately dispose of.

*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.

ARMORS
Some ideas on modifying or adding armors not touched on by Icy:

*Change the Medical Armor's resistances from 20% melee/20% bullet/20% shrapnel to 15% fire/15% plasma/15% acid

The Medical Armor currently has no use other than to be a crappy backup armor when you don't have a supply of Blue Armors or better yet, or used as a consolation base to the Cerberus Armor assembly when you couldn't find anything better. This set of resistances would still make it terribly outclassed by the Energy-Shielded Vest and is still gonna be rather mediocre armor, but at least it is being outclassed by only one other exotic armor that's rare to find, rather than being outclassed by most of the other exotic armors, and has reason to be worn over a Blue or sometimes even a Red armor. If these resistances are changed, also apply these new resistances to the Medical Powerarmor as covered prior. The health regeneration gimmick can be buffed too as suggested prior for the Medical Powerarmor, though the healing buff can be kept to only the Medical Powerarmor to make it more special than the more common Medical Armor.

*Change the Duelist Armor's resistances from 50% melee/50% bullet/50% shrapnel to 70%60% melee

The Duelist Armor is great and serves it role well as the armor you use to get in enemies' faces and melee them, or to otherwise be solid movement-boosting armor. The problem is it outclasses a bunch of the other exotic armors, most notably the Ballistic Vest, that has the same exact resistances but one less point of protection and no move speed bonus; it says a lot when the Ballistic Vest's primary perk is being another means to make 50+% resistance to all Cerberus Armor without having to give up your Duelist Armor. These changes will centralize the Duelist Armor around its primary purpose of melee, which can be argued as making it even better, but it leaves the Ballistic Vest a niche to be much more effective against Formers while remaining strong in melee, and it also makes for more deliberation on what base you use for Cerberus Armor; this new Duelist Armor will get you Cerberus Armor with stronger melee resistance than anything else, but you would be left essentially naked against Formers.

*Buff the Tower Shield

For an assembly that requires an Onyx mod, the Tower Shield is very not worth it. The Fireshield isn't particularly worth it either, but the niche of being able to reduce absolutely any fire attack in the game down to 1 damage is a strong niche, while it doesn't kill your mobility and has 200% durability to at least last if you avoid letting Barons and Arachnotrons hit it. The Tower Shield meanwhile has a flat 12 protection, which is very high but isn't completely negating any of the strong enemies, while killing your movement with -50% speed, and its durability is a weird 150%, so it doesn't last that long either, especially with its more generalized defense. The exact stats can be argued, but at minimum, that durability needs to be 200% and the movement penalty needs to be reduced to at least -30% for me to ever consider assembling it over just getting infinite durability Red Armor or a Fireshield.

*Buff the Ballistic Armor assembly, by having it give +40% melee resistance/+40% bullet resistance resistance/+40% shrapnel resistance/-20% fire resistance

This assembly is almost ok, problem is physical hits tend to not be as strong as fire hits, so resistances to them aren't saving you as much damage as the equivalently proportioned resistances of the opposite Fireproof Armor does. As an example, Barons and Mancubi do 9-11 damage with their melee hits, the strongest melee enemies you'll encounter outside of a couple bosses and Nightmare Demons, so this assembly reduces their damage by 3, saving you only one more point of damage than just a Power mod would have (while bullets will never do more than that and shrapnel gets doubly reduced by armor). Then against the weaker melee hits of most enemies, it's reducing damage no more than a Power mod would have, meanwhile the -30% fire resistance is really going to hurt when the powerful fire attacks hit you (an Archvile zap does 6 more damage to you for example). The extra 10% physical resistances would make any armor this assembly applied to clearly better against physical attacks than just applying a Power mod would have made it, while -20% fire resistance isn't quite as crippling a tradeoff. As it currently is, this armor only really has a niche to help non-melee builds try to beat the Unholy Cathedral.

*Change the Cybernetic Armor's resistances to 20% against everything.

This is to both help the monotony of so many armors just having a flat 50% resistance to all physical attacks, and to make the Cybernetic Armor possibly actually worth it; those 50% physical resistances are mostly overkill when you have 7 protection, while no resistances against energy attacks makes this armor not really all that good at actually protecting you from the enemies that largely matter. There's the gimmick that you can't take this armor off and it has no durability regeneration but Technicians can fully mod it, with the idea being that they can use a Onyx mod, the Nanofiber Skin assembly, or Cybernano assembly to get themselves a very strong armor that can't be damaged. As the Cybernetic armor currently is however, doing those would certainly get you some good armor, but not good enough to comfortably commit being stuck with it for your entire run, before even considering the opportunity cost of Nano and Onyx mods (for example, P-modded Cybernano Cybernetic Armor still reduces damage from an Archvile zap less than simple Fireproof Red Armor does, while the latter also won't slow you down as much, is much cheaper to assemble, and can be taken off for armor better suited for other scenarios). With these new resistances, these assemblies will make the Cybernetic Armor truly a contender for best armor in the game and something to seriously consider committing to, without making you completely nigh-invulnerable; Nanofiber Skin would give you 45% resistance against everything alongside 7 protection, or you get 20% resistance to everything alongside 11 protection with Cybernano. However, even after a Power mod, they're not reducing all attacks down to 1 damage without TaN investment, and you're still going to be slow with that severe -30% movement speed penalty, so it's not completely broken. Not to mention the setup to get Nanofiber Skin or especially Cybernano Cybernetic Armor is very rare as is, it should very much be worth it and not clearly outclassed by the Energy-Shielded Vest in those assemblies.

*Buff the Necroarmor to regenerate 5% durability per action, still at the cost of 1 HP per action

The Necroarmor's gimmick is that it drains your health in order to regenerate itself. But it regenerates slower than other regenerating armors, only doing 2% per action instead of the standard 5%, and this effect is obviously counterproductive to the armor's job of actually reducing damage you take. I did some math  (https://drl.chaosforge.org/wiki/Strategy:Necroarmor (https://drl.chaosforge.org/wiki/Strategy:Necroarmor)) and figured out that the you still come out ahead net positive in health after regeneration against hits that deal less than 17 damage. But the armor is still rather crummy, requiring hits to deal 10 or less damage just to match a Red Armor in practical effectiveness, while acid and plasma attacks just completely destroys the armor's effectiveness. This change still wouldn't make this armor that great, but it will help make it not become a net negative against acid, plasma, and stronger attacks (even against a max damage Baron ball, this change would make the armor drain 6 HP to recover after you take 14 damage, thus it's not worse than taking the hit naked), so that you will be incentivized to use it over Red Armor and modded Blue Armor at least.

*Add armor assemblies that utilize the Sniper mod and Firestorm mod

Having armor assemblies for these isn't entirely necessary, but these mods are a lot less desirable than Nano and Onyx mods, and several builds can't utilize them much, if at all. So adding some more ways to utilize them would be appreciated, and I got a couple ideas I think might be good (names are placeholders I haven't put much thought into):

Scouting armor - any armor + AS (or ATS if it would be too good for a basic assembly) = The armor gives +1 vision when worn, could also give +5 or +10% movement speed on the base armor, but could be omitted if deemed too good on top of the vision boost (would definitely be something handy for any build, thematically fits the Sniper mod, and currently the only way to get any vision boost is by Cateye and temporary Light Goggles).

Blastproof armor - any armor + TF (or TPF if too good for a basic assembly) = The armor reduces damage from explosions by half, and adds +30% knockback on the base armor, could be a bit more (or less) for what is deemed best balance wise (there is currently no way to reduce damage from specifically explosions outside of Fireangel, and there's no way to increase knockback on armor, while this would additionally serve clear utility to make ideal rocket jumping armor).

*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.

SPECIAL LEVELS
I already covered Phobos Lab vs. Military Base, so a few more changes for the special levels that I think would improve the game.

*Replace the Missile Launcher in City Of Skulls/Abyssal Plains

This one is obvious, that second Missile Launcher always felt like filler that the devs threw in because they had no idea what to replace the original second BFG that used to be in City Of Skulls. I'm not sure what to replace it with, and I don't think any specific weapon would be fitting. Perhaps it can be a randomized guaranteed non-BFG non-melee exotic weapon? Would give more incentive to visit these two levels that aren't really rewarding outside of possibly making Mortuary/Limbo a bit easier later and potentially giving non-melee builds a Hatred Skull for the Cathedral, especially for pistol and rapid-fire builds that outright struggle in these levels.

*Swap the depth of Unholy Cathedral and The Vaults

An idea I seen someone else suggest long ago that I think is pretty sound. The reasoning being any good unique you find in The Vaults you won't get as much time to use, while lategame melee is very powerful with little effort thanks to the guaranteed artifact weapon from the Cathedral, thus this would serve as a slight nerf to them. It would also give non-melee builds a bit more of a chance to get good melee-resistant armor before the Cathedral, prevent you from being able to cheese Scavenger Platinum and Diamond via Azrael Scythe's altfire (though I don't exactly like purely luck-based badges to begin with, so I wouldn't mind those badges being changed), and you won't have that damn Arena Master Staff clogging your inventory quite as long.

*Modify The Vaults' enemy selection

This is one I made a thread about looooonnnnnngggggg ago, but never got a dev response to (https://forum.chaosforge.org/index.php/topic,7270.msg63862.html#msg63862 (https://forum.chaosforge.org/index.php/topic,7270.msg63862.html#msg63862)). In short, it has its hardest enemy composition on HNTR, when it's difficult to avoid the Aracnotrons in this level, the Barons on that difficulty always steal your armor (while their projectile's big explosion isn't easy to avoid in the crampness of this level either), and having just VMR to deal with makes it easy to just put on strong fire-resistant armor to neuter the threat. Even if you swap the enemy composition around, it still would be a much easier level on UV than other special levels, so I suggest the following changes:

HNTR - Same enemy composition as current HMP, which is Mancubi in the left vault and Revenants in the right vault, with a mix in the center
HMP - Replace the Mancubi with Arachnotrons
UV - Replace Revenants with Barons, add 2 more Arachnotrons in the left vault and 2 more Barons in the right vault, then add 4 Arch-Viles in the center vault without replacing any of the existing enemies.
N! - Replace Arachnotrons with Nightmare Arachnotrons, add Red Armor right next to all the Barons in the right vault to pick up (Phobos Base Entry has a Green Armor that only spawns on UV or N!, so this should be possible right?), and replace the Archviles with Nigntmare Archviles (currently you can't encounter them in the standard game, so you could do so here while making this level much tougher).

*In Mt. Erebus, prevent being able to teleport into the "mountain" with a Phase Device

A minor thing, but I inadvertently discovered this potential softlock when trying to beat Mt. Erebus without a radsuit (luckily I had a Homing Phase to get out). Perhaps have the "mountain" fill in the space where there are no monsters until the mountain is brought down, leaving no space for players to phase into it?

ENEMIES

*Buff Nightmare Imps

Nightmare Imps in their current form are some weird diet Hell Knight, being offensively the same, just marginally faster but with a lot less HP and no ability to use items/armor. This gives them no distinct role among enemies, and makes them laughable by the time you start encountering them, when they're much weaker than this enemy you been fighting since dlevel 3 on UV/N!. My suggestion would be to lean into the speed aspect and make them like their Doom 64 selves by being frail but very fast enemies. The exact stats can be argued, but the idea I have is:

Reduce HP to 18
Increase their speed to 160% (if too high, at least to 140%)
Reduce their projectile's damage to 2d5, but let them shoot two projectiles each time they attack.
Reduce their melee attack to 1d3+4, perhaps add the double attack effect too if possible on a melee attack.

This should give them a more defined spot among the enemy roster and finding a group of them could maybe actually be a threat to the player, or will at least be a big hassle that needs to be dealt with quickly.

*Increase the amount of EXP that Nightmare Demons give

Getting 95 EXP from such a dangerous enemy is a pathetically low amount, this is less than you get from Nightmare Imps, Cacodemons, Hell Knights, and even Elite Former Humans. This is also a big culprit behind Phobos Lab being so unrewarding, especially when the Elite Formers give you such a crazy amount of EXP in comparison. I would say bumping the amount of EXP that Nightmare Demons give to 263 is fair (which is equivalent to an Arachnotron), and see my prior post on even with that massive increase, Phobos Lab still doesn't give you more EXP on UV/N! than Military Base does now.

*Decrease the EXP that Elite Formers give you

Conversely, Elite Formers give you a really high amount of EXP each, despite their threat not really meriting such a high amount of EXP, contributing to the huge disparity in EXP yield between Military Base and Phobos Lab. I would let Elite Former Commandos still give you 608 EXP, but I would nerf the EXP yield of the other Elite Formers by the following:

Elite Former Humans: 167 -> 128
Elite Former Sergeants: 320 -> 263
Elite Former Captains: 452 -> 320

*Buff Elite Formers in melee

A main reason why Military Base is a lot easier than Phobos Base is how you can easily lure the Elite Formers into melee range, where they are all weak except for the Elite Commando, who is instead just mediocre. You could just give them a damage bump of like +3 to +5, though I think it would be neat if you instead let them attack with a Combat Knife, which would fit the theme of them being elite fully-armed soldiers. I do not know if this is programmable however; if it isn't, then just give them a flat damage buff to their current melee attack.

*Revert the Nightmare Archvile's attack to dealing plasma damage

Prior to 0.9.9.7, the Nightmare Archvile's zap used to do 16d1 plasma damage, but in 0.9.9.7, this was changed to 25d1 fire damage. This is a big damage improvement on paper, but we all know how much easier it is to get good defense against fire; as it currently stands, the Nightmare Archvile isn't really that threatening to a lategame A100 player that will certainly have very strong fire-resistant armor like the P-modded Energy-Shielded Vest (reduces it to 9 damage, much more if it was assembled to Nanofiber Skin or Cybernano Armor), Cerberus Armor (reduces it damage to 7, 5 if P-modded), the Lava Armor (reduces its damage to 2), or even the Inquisitor Set that completely neutralizes it. For an enemy that is supposed to invoke a "OH SHIT!" response as its ingame description gives and for being the final enemy that spawns in A100, it really doesn't live up to the hype, Nightmare Arachnotrons elicit a bigger fight or flight response from me. I'll also note its explosion still uses the plasma explosion graphics too, and it would be consistent with other Nightmare enemies who all use plasma attacks (aside from the melee-exclusive Nightmare Demon). That said, 16d1 plasma damage isn't too much of an improvement (the aforementioned armors reduces it damage to 7, 8 or 7, 6, and 10 respectively), so I would bump it up to at least 20d1, or just make it 25d1 plasma damage to really hammer in the threat of the final A100 enemy (and make carrying a Plasma Shield around more enticing).

*Make the Lava Elemental harder?

Despite being the boss of the final special level right before the end of the standard game, the Lava Elemental is quite lackluster. Having fire attacks is already easily defended against, but its attack isn't even as strong as the VMR's. It has very strong armor with 5 protection and health regeneration, but it's nothing outrageous for this point of the game, especially with its low-end HP for a boss. It's strong in melee, but not any stronger than the Barons and Mancubi. Has anyone ever actually had a hard time against the Lava Elemental, let alone die to it?

Now buffing its stats would help, and I do think its projectile and melee attack could use a damage buff. However one unique aspect of its attack is its projectile leaving behind lava. Normally this doesn't matter in The Lava Pits and Mt. Erebus, as you got three spare radsuits to use even if you brought none in. So it's easy to do everything in these levels only expending a single radsuit, and then kill the Lava Elemental while being completely protected from its lava splashing effect with a radsuit on, while typically killing him fast enough to even have a spare radsuit left. My suggestion would be to take away these radsuits on harder difficulties; ITYTD and HNTR have the three as usual, but then HMP has two radsuits, UV has only one radsuit, and N! has no radsuits at all. This would make tackling these levels without bringing radsuits with you (or building lava-immune boots) a lot more difficult, and the Lava Elemental can be actually scary if you have no form of lava immunity. By making it hit a lot harder in melee, you would also discourage players preventing it from leaving behind more lava by getting in melee range.

*Expand the depth Former Commandos can spawn

Former Commandos are a potentially very dangerous enemy, but they have a very narrow depth they can appear, with them no longer appearing individually after dlevel 17. They can also appear a bit longer in a monster group with other formers, but this stops after dlevel 21. After this point, you'll never see this enemy again, outside of The Mortuary and in the rare Archviles + Formers level. I never understood why such a dangerous enemy with a defined role as an extreme glass cannon stops spawning so soon, they should be able to keep spawning throughout the game, or least make their depth range not so ridiculously narrow. Could also add them to Archvile + Formers and Barons + Formers group.

*Expand the depth Pain Elementals can spawn

Pain Elementals also have a rather narrow depth range, with them no longer spawning after dlevel 20, and the only monster group they are a part of stops spawning immediately after at dlevel 21. After this you'll never see them again in normal levels, outside of rare Pain Elemental caves, and then from the Agony Elemental at very deep depths in A100. This is despite them serving a unique role that makes them a serious pain for certain builds (particularly pistol and rapid fire builds). Like with Commandos, they should be able to appear throughout the remaining entirety of the standard game, and perhaps through all of Angel of 100, or at least until dlevel 50 like Cacodemons and Arachnotrons (who can still appear afterward in vaults and monster groups respectively). Could also make a Cacodemons + Pain Elementals group to get cute (Cacodemons currently don't appear in any monster groups, and I think this could be fitting), that spawns throughout the game.

*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.

*Fix hunting enemies ignoring items and armor

When an enemy has the hunting behavior enabled, they'll completely ignore any items and armor along the way, even if they're programmed to use items. This mainly affects the Bruiser Brothers and Cyberdemons, who are programmed to use items but will never use them because they are always hunting the player, but it can extend to Formers and Hell Nobles during the alarm level event and in arenas, where they can be given the hunting behavior. If Cyberdemons using items would be too strong, then that ability can be removed (conversely, medkits can have a 110 HP recovery cap, so that Cyberdemons with them won't be overtly obnoxious, but makes it so even a Marine with 5 levels of Ironman can still fully heal).

MISCELLANEOUS

*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.

*Do locked vaults actually exist, and if so, can they be made less absurdly rare?

According to the wiki (https://drl.chaosforge.org/wiki/Room_Generation), "locked vaults" are a thing, which you cannot open or blow up the walls of, without activating a corresponding lever. I cannot recall ever finding a locked vault once, do they actually exist but are absurdly rare, do they exist but are bugged from spawning, or did they exist in old versions and were removed? I do like the concept of them, so whatever the case, I would like if they could actually spawn at a reasonable rate.

*Make ammo rooms more randomized

Currently there is little-to-no randomization with the ammo you get from ammo rooms; all ammo that spawns in an ammo room is the same instead of being able to be a variety, and the ammo that does spawn is static based on the dlevel. Egregiously, once you reach dlevel 12, ammo rooms will only ever have plasma cells from that point forward, which constitutes half the standard game and near 90% of A100. Aside from making little sense why ammo rooms are this restricted in their randomization, it also makes these rooms less useful than they could be. It's particularly annoying to shotgun and pistol builds, whose primary ammo becomes more scarce later in the game, and so end up often becoming reliant on Formers to maintain their ammo as a result, sometimes even having to farm them near Archviles to not run out of ammo. Ammo rooms being able to have all types of ammo throughout the game will make them useful more often, and will help make the aforementioned shotgun and pistol builds less reliant on the ammo drops of Formers in the lategame.

*Add an ammo-restoring lever

Levers in their current setup are largely more likely to be dangerous. You're not gonna make players without Intuition gamble with them either way unless they're desperate for a heal, but I think adding one more useful effect would make them a bit useful more often for players with Intuition. An ammo-restoring one seems pretty obvious, have it give you ammo equivalent to a small ammo pickup for whatever weapon you're carrying, with a randomized 1-3 uses.

*Add trapped powerups and items

One suggestion I seen when browsing old feature requests that I liked was adding trapped powerups and items, which would summon enemies around the player or flood the room with acid/lava when picked up, or any other adverse effect. This is one trademark mechanic from Doom that currently is sorely missing from DRL, which should fit seamlessly into a roguelike. In order to do it, perhaps you can create designated "trap rooms" in the same vein as ammo rooms, where in the middle there will be a powerup, rarely an exotic, or very rarely a unique, and then there's a random chance it'll spring some trap upon picking it up (though not always, sometimes the "obvious trap" is just a fakeout). Exact percentages for these outcomes can be discussed farther.

*Have trees randomly spawn as part of normal level generation

It's weird that this unique object was added to the game, but is only ever used for the very first level and then never again. Doom uses the same tree object through its Hell levels, so there's already "canonical" precedent to have it at least spawn during the Hell levels if it would be considered too weird to have it in the tech base styled Phobos and Deimos levels. And/or add a new "outside" level type where this tree can spawn. Could be unique strategic applications (or hindrances) for what is effectively a wall that enemies will try to shoot you through, but is unexplored with the trees only being in the first level. Alternatively, add a new "skewered corpse" object that functionally does the same thing, but would be thematically appropriate with any level and adds some prevalent decoration from Doom that was missing before (would require a new sprite however, and I don't know if anything requiring new sprites for Graphics mode is off the table).

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 16, 2023, 18:51

I'll update the main post with all ideas once more players have a chance to throw ideas around and when I have more free time.

One suggestion I forgot to mention:

There is an exploit where Everyman Platinum Badge, Everyman Diamond Badge, and Thomas's Medal require completing Angel of Humanity as a conqueror, but you can combine this with Angel of 100 and earn them by simply beating the game as no bonus levels are generated. While I would argue this can actually be a harder way to earn these achievements, it's still an exploit that I think should be fixed.

My responses to Omega Tyrant:

I can agree with the powerup overlay. You can use the minimap to still see enemies and other things while powered up, but it can be awkward for sure. Note that doing this would also buff power-ups as you can see exactly what some items are if you have a Computer Map as well, such as mod packs across the level.

I agree with showing badges in postmortems that have been previously earned. Alternatively, exclude both badges and medals, but doing one and not the other is a bit odd to me.

I don't totally agree with having unlocked challenges right from the start since it is nice to let newbies progress more naturally, but I do like the toggle suggestion for it. While I do agree that most players are returning veterans, it's always good to be more accessible for new players. That said, starting with challenges unlocked probably isn't that huge of deal in confusing or deterring new players. Perhaps along with the toggle, have some method to direct new players to easier difficulties and standard games, but don't force it.

I like the idea of bumping medal count from 43. 50 is a nice even number, or 52 could also work to be exactly double the 26 of most badge types.

I like the idea of medals pertaining more to Angel of 100 and Archangel of 666, although they might need to be crafted thoughtfully so that they aren't confusing on how to earn, or one-dimensional in the way that Iron Skull is with Vampyre. Perhaps strictly having them say "Do X in Angel of 100" to force the idea would be good. I like your suggested ideas, although nuking 20 floors, like the Fallout medals, mostly devolves to finding Trigun.

Cycling through tilesets for Angel of 100 and Archangel of 666 sounds cool, so long as it doesn't have any other direct effects on gameplay. This might need to be adjusted slightly since lava doesn't really appear in Phobos for example, and certain level structures are also limited to certain tilesets like islands. Alternatively though, leaving it as is could make for more variety when playing through where deep into the game you encounter more large boxy levels like the early Phobos levels. Hell freezes might need to be adjusted as a level type.

I think more variety with fluids would be cool, although I do think too much water would make the game quite a bit easier, especially if you're playing a melee build and dealing with potential respawning. Maybe have them, but have the weights favor lava more, such as a 70% lava, 25% acid, 5% water split or something.

I'd lean against Angel of Death being a random spawn since it's significantly stronger than other "boss enemies" and is more similar to final bosses. It has more health than Cyberdemons, 2.5x the armor, and is quite a lot faster, just that the trade-off is it doesn't have any ranged attacks. It also would be a bit weird fighting it without melee attacks, and forcing that on the player would be pretty unbalanced. Most non-melee attacks would be doing only a few points of damage, meanwhile it has 410 HP on Ultra-Violence.

I disagree with guaranteed Berserker Armor and Dragonslayer spawning on Angel of 100 and Archangel of 666. While they don't always show up, they're not too exceptionally rare to find on a full 666 game, and in my experience I would find the pair more often than not. Granted, that does take some time to go through, but their mystique would be a bit watered down if they were easy access. With the pair of them guaranteed, it would also be easy to farm tons of kills under current circumstances. A 100% kill rate on HNTR is pretty easy too if you're patient.

I have no personal opinion regarding music slots.

I agree with allowing Juggler to easily swap around weapons from the inventory. One could argue that changing it so that it only works with the prepared slot is another good idea, but I don't think the trait is too overly powerful that this needs to be done. There is also an inventory trade-off with carrying extra weapons for instant swapping, particularly a pile of Shotguns on Nightmare difficulty in the early game.

I disagree and think Badass with removing health decay is very powerful. Since boosted health is hard to maintain, especially when using Run->Wait, giving yourself 50% and 100% more health is a huge safety net for making mistakes, receiving unlucky damage rolls, and making aggressive play when necessary. The difference between Badass x2 and Badass x0 can feel almost like immortality, so long as it's not one of the first traits you get. I do agree it's not amazing as a starting trait for Marines though, but if Marines are buffed in other ways, then it would be fine.

I like the idea of more common Pistols. Shotguns and Rapid-Fires both have a few each, but Pistols only have the basic Pistol. Magnum sounds like a cool idea.

I agree with increasing the weight of Chainsaw. I think a weight of 6 is a bit high for being a very strong weapon, especially when Ripper is fairly easy to make, or alternatively loading it up with Agility Packs if you don't have good accuracy. I'd say a weight of 5 and level generation of 9 or so.

I disagree with changing the weight of BFG9000 since when considering both it and Nuclear BFG, the sum of weights is 4 and both are absurdly powerful.

Medical Armor definitely needs some changes, and your suggestion is another possibility. I think like the suggested ideas for Medical Powerarmor that buffing the regeneration value to 50% health is good.

I think your idea for Duelist Armor could be good, but I'd have to spend a bit of time considering all possibilities. Cerberus Armor (P) with your suggestion would be arguably stronger than other current variants since most end-game enemies don't deal much bullet or shrapnel damage, and the extra melee resistance would be more appealing. It would also be a pretty insanely strong armor for early/middle games for melee builds, especially with its movement speed to help with charging enemies. I do agree that more variety for exotic armors would be good.

I think buffing Tower Shield with 200% durability and -30% movement speed could be good. The only hesitation I would have with that is since it can be obtained without Whizkid, it could make you insanely tanky with very little investment. I think it would be fine though.

Like Tower Shield, I think your buff suggestion to Ballistic Armor could be good, but definitely want to avoid making it too good since it's a basic assembly and only requires basic mod packs. Maybe take your suggested changes and also include -15% movement speed?

I like your suggestion for Cybernetic Armor, just keep in mind that it can be somewhat consistently obtained in Hell's Armory, so making it too good might make it broken. The armor being cursed does help balance out giving it a buff, and also indirectly buffs Technicians who can mod it while other classes can't and likely would be interested in it.

I agree with the buff to Necroarmor. Currently, players could use it tactically though by gift dropping it to sap away the health of an enemy, but it's definitely more used for the players themselves.

I like the ideas of your suggested armors with Sniper and Firestorm Packs, but I'm a bit split on if they should be usable for armors. First, what would be their inherent property if you have something like Green Armor (F)? Second, canonically, it seems a little silly to stick Sniper Packs on an armor. It can depend on your perspective though, whether you view it like attaching scopes to your armor, or if it's more like a computer chip or something. I do agree that more assemblies could make use of Sniper Packs and Firestorm Packs.

I'm uncertain what to suggest regarding the Missile Launcher for City of Skulls and Abyssal Plains. Maybe Napalm Launcher, although that might become a bit too strong for that point in the game. Semi-related, but I do think the difficulty between the two also needs to be adjusted.

I like the idea of swapping The Vaults and Unholy Cathedral, but I would need to think about it more.

I like the idea of adjusting enemies for The Vaults. The only thing with your proposal is you would have Barons on HNTR and UV, but not HMP, which would be a bit weird. I think changing it is good, but it'd need more discussion.

I kind of diagree with preventing getting stuck in Mt. Erebus as that's the risk you take from trying to cheese it. However, it should at least have a bit of a lava patch so that you can gracefully end your game and receive a proper ending instead of Ctrl-Qing.

Regarding changes to Nightmare Imps, Former Commandos, and Pain Elementals, I'd have to thoroughly think about them since adjusting enemies is a pretty fundamental part of the game.

I disagree with hunting enemies being able to use items as they would get absurdly powerful, but I do agree with fixing the coding logic for them. Note that a Cyberdemon wielding a Plasma Shield could survive nukes currently, and while you could just buff nuke damage, it's a good demonstration of how insane they would be.

I believe locked vaults is an older version or glitched and never existed as I have never encountered them. It could be an interesting idea.

I like the idea of a lever potentially restoring ammo, but it feels a bit silly as a concept. Maybe more specifically, have it drop a random small ammo pickup, similar to making enemies spawn around you, as opposed to directly reloading your weapon or something.

I sort of agree with your tree idea, just that enemies can get stuck and be dumb around them. For example, Former Humans in Phobos Base Entry will endlessly fire into them, to the point of expending all their ammo. I'm not sure how other AIs would interact with them.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on August 16, 2023, 23:13

Thanks for the feedback!

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

Ah I see, I agree with this change then.

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

I'll note that Hell's Arena does already have different rewards depending on the challenge you're playing (sometimes radically so), so Hell's Arena adapting to the challenge you're on is already a part of it and as such, I think having its depth adapt too for different challenges wouldn't be that inconsistent.

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I like your suggested ideas, although nuking 20 floors, like the Fallout medals, mostly devolves to finding Trigun.

If that number would be too high without the Trigun, it could be reduced to like 15 floors or whatever other high number that requires active effort to achieve but isn't too high without lucky drops.

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I'd lean against Angel of Death being a random spawn since it's significantly stronger than other "boss enemies" and is more similar to final bosses. It has more health than Cyberdemons, 2.5x the armor, and is quite a lot faster, just that the trade-off is it doesn't have any ranged attacks. It also would be a bit weird fighting it without melee attacks, and forcing that on the player would be pretty unbalanced. Most non-melee attacks would be doing only a few points of damage, meanwhile it has 410 HP on Ultra-Violence.

I'll note the Cyberdemon used to be the actual final boss in earlier versions of DRL, and we now got him as a normal ass enemy in A100! I do think being melee-restricted still significantly keeps the AoD in check, as evidenced by the fact the throwing knife strategy is a legit way to cheese him, except in A100 you would have actual guns to use instead of having to plink him with an inaccurate knife for 1 damage at a time. That 10 armor can be a big pain, but at such deep depths, you should certainly have something to handle it with by then; shotgun builds can get Nano-Shrapnel, Plasmatic Shrapnel, and the Plasma Shotgun; pistol builds can get the Energy Pistol or Blaster; rapid-fire builds got their Plasma Rifles and the Laser Rifle (both of which can also be used by other builds with sufficient investment); as long as Brute isn't blocked by their master, most builds can comfortably invest a few points into it and Berserker; and then rocket launchers, the BFG, and other non-build specific weapons like the Railgun can also be used effectively on him. If you want to really make sure that any build will have some reasonable means to kill him, you can have him start spawning at dlevel 80 instead (while bumping the Shambler down to dlevel 70, so you don't got all the bosses suddenly appearing at once at dlevel 74-80). Or even at dlevel 90, so that the Nightmare Archvile isn't the only new enemy that starts spawning in the dlevel 84-90 range.

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Granted, that does take some time to go through, but their mystique would be a bit watered down if they were easy access. With the pair of them guaranteed, it would also be easy to farm tons of kills under current circumstances. A 100% kill rate on HNTR is pretty easy too if you're patient.

Being only able to use the Dragonslayer for a single floor with my suggested idea I think limits losing the mystique of it (in A666, you could bump the guaranteed spawn to floor 665), and you could limit it to requiring UV difficulty at least, or something else besides maintaining 100% kills. In any case, I don't think a full win in A100/666 should be entirely luck-dependent on any difficulty, part of why the Lava Element and guaranteed nuclear weapons were added in the standard game was so that a full win was always obtainable without getting lucky with specific item spawns, as very old versions of DRL required.

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I agree with allowing Juggler to easily swap around weapons from the inventory. One could argue that changing it so that it only works with the prepared slot is another good idea, but I don't think the trait is too overly powerful that this needs to be done. There is also an inventory trade-off with carrying extra weapons for instant swapping, particularly a pile of Shotguns on Nightmare difficulty in the early game.

If Juggler was changed to only work with your prepared slot, that would nerf it to near worthlessness; aside from the limitation of only being able to utilize it with two weapons at a time, it would also prevent utilizing it at all alongside an ammo box. I agree Juggler isn't an overpowered trait; it's very handy for sure and I don't ever mind picking it for a mastery, but it's usually not a trait you'll go out of your way to get before more pressing traits (such as you would with Intuition). And yes, having all those weapons to take advantage of it is a cost in itself with limiting inventory space.

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I disagree and think Badass with removing health decay is very powerful. Since boosted health is hard to maintain, especially when using Run->Wait, giving yourself 50% and 100% more health is a huge safety net for making mistakes, receiving unlucky damage rolls, and making aggressive play when necessary. The difference between Badass x2 and Badass x0 can feel almost like immortality, so long as it's not one of the first traits you get. I do agree it's not amazing as a starting trait for Marines though, but if Marines are buffed in other ways, then it would be fine.

I do disagree with this, finding that I can keep boosted health long enough with fast speed, or can utilize it well enough to go super aggro at the start of the level to kill beginning enemy hordes, as well as finding that relying on randomly spawning powerups to be useful at all to be a limitation. This is certainly a very subjective argument though and so I won't press if people disagree (I'll just continue to grumble having to invest in Badass when a mastery requires it...)

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I agree with increasing the weight of Chainsaw. I think a weight of 6 is a bit high for being a very strong weapon, especially when Ripper is fairly easy to make, or alternatively loading it up with Agility Packs if you don't have good accuracy. I'd say a weight of 5 and level generation of 9 or so.

I don't think a weight of 6 would be too out of whack, considering how you normally get an early guaranteed Chainsaw from a potentially easy special level, while a Ripper would still take a while to make in A100 considering you're missing on the guaranteed mods from special levels (not to mention you need at least Brute 3 to actually hit things with it, and Brute 4 to go over 90% accuracy, which you might not even be able to get until around dlevel 25 on UV, while Agility mods are wasted on it). I'll also note the Assault Shotgun and Combat Pistol each have a weight of 6, so it's not unusual for powerful staple exotics to have that weight. In any case, not much point in arguing over the exact number, as long as we agree that the Chainsaw should be more common.

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I think your idea for Duelist Armor could be good, but I'd have to spend a bit of time considering all possibilities. Cerberus Armor (P) with your suggestion would be arguably stronger than other current variants since most end-game enemies don't deal much bullet or shrapnel damage, and the extra melee resistance would be more appealing. It would also be a pretty insanely strong armor for early/middle games for melee builds, especially with its movement speed to help with charging enemies. I do agree that more variety for exotic armors would be good.

Former Captains and Sergeants can do a nasty amount of damage when you got no armor, and only 2 protection after a Power mod will let them still be able to leave a dent in you, so it would be a fair tradeoff I think for the Cerberus Armor (while Gothic Cerberus and Onyx Cerberus would still be very stiff competition). As for early-mid game melee, it would certainly be very powerful, though losing the bullet and shrapnel resistances is also gonna really hurt at this point of the game too when Formers are still very common, who are also enemies you can't easily rush when you don't got an armor that can just tank them.

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Like Tower Shield, I think your buff suggestion to Ballistic Armor could be good, but definitely want to avoid making it too good since it's a basic assembly and only requires basic mod packs. Maybe take your suggested changes and also include -15% movement speed?

I think the movement speed penalty would be excessive, unless you also got rid of the negative fire resistance that serves as a major tradeoff to it as is.

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I like your suggestion for Cybernetic Armor, just keep in mind that it can be somewhat consistently obtained in Hell's Armory, so making it too good might make it broken. The armor being cursed does help balance out giving it a buff, and also indirectly buffs Technicians who can mod it while other classes can't and likely would be interested in it.

It should be noted that getting the Cybernetic Armor in Hell's Armory/Deimos' Lab also takes up a rare mod slot, while getting a Nano mod or Onyx mod is necessary to actually take advantage of the armor. So the chances of actually getting to utilize Nanofiber Skin or especially Cybernano Cybernetic Armor in a standard game is still exceedingly slim, and thus like with the point about super weapons and Inquisitor Set, it shouldn't factor heavily into balancing it.

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First, what would be their inherent property if you have something like Green Armor (F)? Second, canonically, it seems a little silly to stick Sniper Packs on an armor. It can depend on your perspective though, whether you view it like attaching scopes to your armor, or if it's more like a computer chip or something.

You can still leave Sniper and Firestorm mods unable to be used on armor normally, which wouldn't be unusual, when you can't use Firestorm mods on pistols yet the Demolition Ammo assembly exists. As for how it would make sense, I like to think of it as adding scopes to your helmet that lets you see farther :)

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I'm uncertain what to suggest regarding the Missile Launcher for City of Skulls and Abyssal Plains. Maybe Napalm Launcher, although that might become a bit too strong for that point in the game. Semi-related, but I do think the difficulty between the two also needs to be adjusted.

Would be really interested to hear how you think their difficulty should be adjusted. Abyssal Plains is currently a lot harder for most builds, you do got some more stuff in it but I wouldn't be opposed to tinkering with it a bit to make the risk/reward better balanced.

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I like the idea of adjusting enemies for The Vaults. The only thing with your proposal is you would have Barons on HNTR and UV, but not HMP, which would be a bit weird. I think changing it is good, but it'd need more discussion.

You misread, my suggestion would take the current HMP setup for HNTR, which consists of Mancubi in the left vault and Revenants in the right vault; Barons would only start showing up on UV. I have edited my post to make it more clear.

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I kind of diagree with preventing getting stuck in Mt. Erebus as that's the risk you take from trying to cheese it. However, it should at least have a bit of a lava patch so that you can gracefully end your game and receive a proper ending instead of Ctrl-Qing.

I think softlocks should be avoided as a fundamental part of game design (which should also be addressed with The Wall/Containment Area, where one suggestion I saw that I liked was having the wall collapse after killing all enemies), and I'll note that The Lava Pits has no softlock risk for using a Phase Device despite being much harder to do without a radsuit. If it's deemed too easy to beat Mt. Erebus without a radsuit with just a Phase Device, perhaps add more far out islands that decreases the chance of the Phase Device getting you to the main island.

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I disagree with hunting enemies being able to use items as they would get absurdly powerful, but I do agree with fixing the coding logic for them. Note that a Cyberdemon wielding a Plasma Shield could survive nukes currently, and while you could just buff nuke damage, it's a good demonstration of how insane they would be.

Bruisers being able to use items I don't think would be excessive to deal with, as is they're arguably currently less threatening than Barons in A100, since the latter will eat up all your medkits, armor, phase devices, and ammo (though I guess you can also argue that lets Barons and Bruisers keep separate niches in lategame A100, instead of the latter just being a strictly upgraded version). I remember we discussed the possibility of a Cyber being able to survive a nuke with a Plasma Shield, and it was inconclusive if the armor would only absorb 100 damage or the full theoretical 5700. I do think someone nuking a level and finding a Cyberdemon still alive would make for a hilarious moment though. In any case, I don't think a Cyber with even strong armor would be too unkillable, but medkits would certainly need to have the aforementioned healing cap before letting any Cybers use them.

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I believe locked vaults is an older version or glitched and never existed as I have never encountered them. It could be an interesting idea.

Good to hear I'm not the only one who never seen them. I like the idea of them, so I do hope they're brought back or whatever bug is preventing them from spawning is fixed.

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I like the idea of a lever potentially restoring ammo, but it feels a bit silly as a concept. Maybe more specifically, have it drop a random small ammo pickup, similar to making enemies spawn around you, as opposed to directly reloading your weapon or something.

That sounds better than supplying the ammo into your inventory as I originally suggested, just as long as we get a couple more useful levers.

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I sort of agree with your tree idea, just that enemies can get stuck and be dumb around them. For example, Former Humans in Phobos Base Entry will endlessly fire into them, to the point of expending all their ammo. I'm not sure how other AIs would interact with them.

I think that's part of the strategic applications they could have. Conversely, enemies with explosive projectiles could hit them to still damage you (or you could exploit them for enemies to kill themselves). Lots of potential ways they could be utilized for the player or enemies, which I would like to see experimentation with (as well as just added decoration flavor that DRL currently lacks).

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on August 17, 2023, 07:14

I added a few more things to my original suggestion post, I'll point them out here for ease of convenience to review:

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*Buff the Micro Launcher?

Even as a guy who likes Rocket Launchers and rocket jumping, I find it hard to find a worthwhile niche for the Micro Launcher. 0.8 second firing speed, 0.8 reloading speed, extra accuracy, and a smaller explosion radius is nice, but you already get the formermost just from applying one of the prerequisites Technical Mods on your Rocket Launcher (and it would be even slower than a Rocket Launcher with two Technical Mods). But the main problem is the substantial downgrade in power to 5d5, which aside from making it weaker for combat, also hurts its utility usages, as it has a much higher chance to fail to blow up a wall in a single rocket (or might even fail after two!), and its rocket jumps would send you a shorter distance (you can argue less self-damaging rocket jumps is a boon, but with just Fireproof Red Armor, you can already reduce 6d6 rocket jump damage down to 1-3, not to mention self-damage won't matter when you're invulnerable, where rocket jumping sees much of its usage). Then there's the Tactical Rocket Launcher that just completely outclasses this weapon, and whose BBB mod cost is arguably a lesser cost than two Technical Mods. It seems to exist as an economical improvement to the Rocket Launcher for builds that aren't investing in Whizkid, but the improvement is minor or even arguably a sidegrade.

I'm unsure how to buff the Micro Launcher to give it a defined niche instead of just buffing its power. At least though its firing speed needs to reflect the Technical Mod investment, so it should be no more than 0.7 seconds firing speed, I would maybe go all the way down to 0.5 seconds firing speed to try giving it a niche as the fastest firing Rocket Launcher. Conversely, as a basic assembly that uses common mods, you can argue a cheap economical option that isn't great is the point, though I would still argue to at least give it the 0.7 seconds firing speed.

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*Buff the Double Chainsaw?

The Double Chainsaw's 8d6 power is certainly a big upgrade over a BP Chainsaw's 5d7 power, so this assembly isn't inherently bad. The problem is it's completely outclassed by the Ripper that just requires one more level of Whizkid and an additional Technical mod, while also being completely outclassed by the Longinus Spear and especially Azrael's Scythe. As a result, if you want to maximize your Chainsaw, you won't be making this instead of the Ripper, and otherwise for a weapon you plan to ditch once you get the Spear or Scythe, you probably don't want to expend the extra Power mod on it, if you don't just go for the cheap disposable option of the Piercing Chainsaw instead. The only arguable niche for the Double Chainsaw is for Blademasters in A100, where they can't get the Spear or Scythe, and they could possibly get more use from its stronger single-hit power than the Ripper, as more one-hit kills will make them mow through hordes faster (though I think the Ripper is still better, as it'll activate Berserker quicker, and because of all the boss and nightmare monsters that you aren't killing in one hit even with the Double Chainsaw).

However like the Micro Launcher, there's no clear way to buff it; make it stronger, then what's the point of getting the Spear or Scythe; make it faster, what's the point of the getting the Ripper. You can argue just leaving it as is, as the midway option for people who want to improve their Chainsaw more before the Spear/Scythe but don't want to go all in on the Ripper. Maybe my later suggestion of making the Unholy Cathedral appear a bit later would make the Double Chainsaw a more attractive option as a midgame weapon you'll ultimately dispose of.

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*Revert the Nightmare Archvile's attack to dealing plasma damage

Prior to 0.9.9.7, the Nightmare Archvile's zap used to do 16d1 plasma damage, but in 0.9.9.7, this was changed to 25d1 fire damage. This is a big damage improvement on paper, but we all know how much easier it is to get good defense against fire; as it currently stands, the Nightmare Archvile isn't really that threatening to a lategame A100 player that will certainly have very strong fire-resistant armor like the P-modded Energy-Shielded Vest (reduces it to 9 damage, much more if it was assembled to Nanofiber Skin or Cybernano Armor), Cerberus Armor (reduces it damage to 7, 5 if P-modded), the Lava Armor (reduces its damage to 2), or even the Inquisitor Set that completely neutralizes it. For an enemy that is supposed to invoke a "OH SHIT!" response as its ingame description gives and for being the final enemy that spawns in A100, it really doesn't live up to the hype, Nightmare Arachnotrons elicit a bigger fight or flight response from me. I'll also note its explosion still uses the plasma explosion graphics too, and it would be consistent with other Nightmare enemies who all use plasma attacks (aside from the melee-exclusive Nightmare Demon). That said, 16d1 plasma damage isn't too much of an improvement (the aforementioned armors reduces it damage to 7, 8 or 7, 6, and 10 respectively), so I would bump it up to at least 20d1, or just make it 25d1 plasma damage to really hammer in the threat of the final A100 enemy (and make carrying a Plasma Shield around more enticing).

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*Make the Lava Elemental harder?

Despite being the boss of the final special level right before the end of the standard game, the Lava Elemental is quite lackluster. Having fire attacks is already easily defended against, but its attack isn't even as strong as the VMR's. It has very strong armor with 5 protection and health regeneration, but it's nothing outrageous for this point of the game, especially with its low-end HP for a boss. It's strong in melee, but not any stronger than the Barons and Mancubi. Has anyone ever actually had a hard time against the Lava Elemental, let alone die to it?

Now buffing its stats would help, and I do think its projectile and melee attack could use a damage buff. However one unique aspect of its attack is its projectile leaving behind lava. Normally this doesn't matter in The Lava Pits and Mt. Erebus, as you got three spare radsuits to use even if you brought none in. So it's easy to do everything in these levels only expending a single radsuit, and then kill the Lava Elemental while being completely protected from its lava splashing effect with a radsuit on, while typically killing him fast enough to even have a spare radsuit left. My suggestion would be to take away these radsuits on harder difficulties; ITYTD and HNTR have the three as usual, but then HMP has two radsuits, UV has only one radsuit, and N! has no radsuits at all. This would make tackling these levels without bringing radsuits with you (or building lava-immune boots) a lot more difficult, and the Lava Elemental can be actually scary if you have no form of lava immunity. By making it hit a lot harder in melee, you would also discourage players preventing it from leaving behind more lava by getting in melee range.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 17, 2023, 20:29

My responses:

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.

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.

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.

For the guaranteed Dragonslayer and Berserker Armor, maybe 100% kills UV could be fine so that it still requires some committed effort and skill to get. It would also help dilute farming easy kills. It may be good to have a check to prevent them from spawning if you already found them earlier naturally though.

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?

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.

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.

Regarding Cybernetic Armor, fair point that it spawning in the bonus levels does take up an exotic mod pack slot. It should be fine then.

Regarding Sniper/Firestorm Packs on armors, fair point that Firestorm is used on some weapons for Demolition Ammo that can't normally appear on it. You can also argue that a Sniper Pack used for the only assembly being Shotguns is also already silly. Perhaps call the armor something like "Spelunker Armor". 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.

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. That said, Abyssal Plains does already have quite a bit of extra useful items and ammo. I'm not sure how to fairly balance it since it can be a high variance level.

For avoiding softlocks in Mt. Erebus, another simple solution would be to just have an extra lever within each ring, although it might be a bit silly to have so many in there. Another idea is to just fill in the walls so you can't teleport in there and have enemies on all open tiles. This could technically be countered by spamming Azrael's Scythe with Whisper of Death though.

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.

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.

I agree on buffing Micro Launcher, and my intuitive suggestion would also be increasing firing speed. I think 0.5s would be fine to counteract the natural nerfs of it relative to regular Rocket Launchers.

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?

I like the idea of switching Nightmare Archvile's damage from fire to plasma, just so long as it doesn't get too insane. I wouldn't go higher than 20d1.

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?

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on August 18, 2023, 07:18

Again thanks for the feedback!

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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.

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.

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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.

I see, in any case I'm not strongly for it, just an idea for A100 medals building off of existing medals.

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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.

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.

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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?

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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).

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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.

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.

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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?

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.

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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?

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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 19, 2023, 13:09

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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 19, 2023, 18:23

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)

(https://i.imgur.com/gUyYpVB.png)

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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on August 20, 2023, 01:56

Nice, more suggestions to go through.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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

Agreed, nothing more to say about it.

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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).

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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.

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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?

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Add knockback and dodge modifiers to the stats screen.

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

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on August 20, 2023, 05:49

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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 20, 2023, 10:47

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.

---

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

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on August 20, 2023, 11:55

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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).

__________

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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 20, 2023, 14:57

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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on August 20, 2023, 15:37

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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 20, 2023, 17:58

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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on August 21, 2023, 14:52

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

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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?

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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?

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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.

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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.

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Purity Medal - Kill JC on Angel of Purity.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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

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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".

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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).

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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?

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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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 21, 2023, 18:54

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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on August 22, 2023, 03:49

Looking forward to your second compilation post.

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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 would disagree on it being too easy, since you can still go an entire A100 run on UV without finding any of the boss levels, and you still need to clear them if you do get lucky enough to find one. I would agree with adding special level feeling messages for Agony Elemental and Lava Elemental caves, as well as the proposed name, but maybe "Boss Slayer Cross" instead to make it sound a bit more special?

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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"?

Those sound alright if no better ideas are proposed. One alternative idea I just thought of is a medal for beating the game without entering any of the special levels; considering there should always be at least one special level, if not quite a few, that are easy for your build, not entering any of them is going to make the game harder without that extra EXP and guaranteed loot. Even stair divers would have to miss out on the Chainsaw + berserk stack from The Chained Court and being able to take shortcuts through certain special levels to exit floors faster. If this medal is added, perhaps you could also change Berserker Diamond to beating N! with this medal, as winning without the early guaranteed Chainsaw nor Spear/Scythe would make things a lot harder, but you will no longer need to grind kills (but would it become too hard for a Diamond?).

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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.

If it were to remain a Silver badge, I would be fine with this, but if it's turned into a Gold badge, I would be fine with it remaining as is.

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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.

I agree with this philosophy; true 100% completion should be an extremely lofty goal, but still achievable to anyone that really wants it or after a very long time, rather than being outright impossible as it is now. Also badge collections should definitely be more unique among players as you stated.

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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 overlooked that current Gatekeeper Diamond requires actually clearing Anomaly, while Gatekeeper Platinum doesn't, my mistake. If they were swapped around, then yes the new Gatekeeper Diamond would have to require clearing it in addition to no damage. However, after thinking it through, I would be fine leaving them as is; having a few easier Diamonds isn't necessarily a bad thing, and there should be a decent amount of Diamonds that are obtainable without playing N!, given a lot of players prefer playing UV.

Building off this, perhaps we could make a "Gatekeeper Angelic", that requires clearing all of Anomaly, Babel, and Dis without any damage on N!? While nuking any of them wouldn't count.

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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.

I can see wanting to discourage grinding respawns, mainly suggested it to build of of Hunter Gold that has a kill requirement. I would be fine with a different secondary condition (maybe beating it under 40,000 turns to encourage rushing through a challenge that otherwise encourages slow play, if it's not too hard for a Platinum?), or just leaving it at beating AoD on UV.

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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.

I do get it could be frustrating to die to him, but you do have to go out of your way to encounter him (you certainly have no reason to ever wear Berserker Armor unless you want the Apostle Insignia or a full win in A100/666), and there should be some risk to encountering him. I also don't think camping would be too effective; aside from the fact you'll get gradually worn down by the reviving enemies and eternally spawning Nightmare Demons, his health also regenerates, so wait around too long and he'll just get most or even all of his health back.

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

I also overlooked this one from before, perhaps add Heroic Angelic, and set the split for each of the badges at 5/15/25/35/45/50? Would be a little weird to have the Heroic series skip the Angelic tier, and according to the Badge Hunters thread, Heroic Diamond is currently one of the rarest Diamond badges (with only papilio and Tormuse having it, as well as you I think?), so I don't think it would be out of place in the Angelic tier (you could add a new especially hard medal if you think it would be too easy for an Angelic). With these proposed splits, you would also get Gold at the halfway point, which makes intuitive sense to me, and while you only have five medals left after getting Diamond, those remaining five are also probably going to be the hardest and most annoying to get.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 22, 2023, 17:25

I was doing some thinking and realized my proposed time limit for Speedrunner Angelic Badge of 10 minutes would actually be a lot tighter for the potential new version with Scout's stair sense nerfed and Intuition also nerfed. If these changes go through, I think this badge should be 12 minutes.

Regarding the medal for clearing a boss floor, I think it depends on how well a game is going because generally when you get far enough that boss floors could start appearing, you should be pretty well-equipped. Nonetheless, if you think it would be hard, then I'd agree to have it. For the name, I considered something like "Boss Slayer Cross", but was wondering if it would be silly with the rhyming. I'm fine either or.

I like your medal idea for skipping all bonus floors, but I think it would require restrictions to be Ultra-Violence, and also not allowing Angel of Confidence, Angel of Overconfidence, Angel of 100, or Archangel of 666. How about we scrap my "Gambler's Star" idea (which thinking about it more would probably be pretty trivial), and go with yours with a name like "Unexplored Star"?

I also like your idea of changing Berserker Diamond Badge being Angel of Berserk on Nightmare with 60% kills to Angel of Berserk on Nightmare with the above medal.

Regarding Gatekeeper Badges, we can leave Platinum and Diamond as is and just change Gold. However, I disagree with the idea for Gatekeeper Angelic Badge as that would mostly just be Phobos Anomaly as Tower of Babel and Dis are pretty easy to clear without damage. I also think all Angelics should require winning the game and not just achieving something mid-game.

Regarding Hunter Platinum Badge, I'm still definitely for it. Not all cheese can be avoided, and if a player goes through the game thoroughly, they might not have to grind a respawn anyway.

Regarding the Apostle, I forgot he restores HP over time. I suppose you're right though that there should be some risk involved and also that camping would not be a good strategy most of the time (depending on what kind of a floor you get). I'm for both of your changes after thinking about it more.

I like your idea about Heroic Angelic Badge. Initially, I thought it would be too easy since most medals aren't too hard, but thinking about it more, 50 challenges of varying difficulty is still tough to do them all, and I didn't realize how few players had them all. To fit it into the 25 badge count, how about we scrap "Humanity Angelic Badge"? I think having only one Archangel Angelic Badge is a nicer look and that's the only challenge that has two at the moment.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on August 23, 2023, 07:01

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I was doing some thinking and realized my proposed time limit for Speedrunner Angelic Badge of 10 minutes would actually be a lot tighter for the potential new version with Scout's stair sense nerfed and Intuition also nerfed. If these changes go through, I think this badge should be 12 minutes.

I agree with this, I would rather err on the side of caution with ensuring this badge doesn't remain impossible. If 12 minutes ends up proving too easy, it can always be lowered in a later version.

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Regarding the medal for clearing a boss floor, I think it depends on how well a game is going because generally when you get far enough that boss floors could start appearing, you should be pretty well-equipped. Nonetheless, if you think it would be hard, then I'd agree to have it. For the name, I considered something like "Boss Slayer Cross", but was wondering if it would be silly with the rhyming. I'm fine either or.

I think you will usually be able to handle them by the time they can appear, but having to play on at least UV difficulty for them to even appear, the luck needed to find any of them, and them having the potential to get gnarly if you don't have the right equipment/build, I think makes it plenty hard enough without restricting it to just Cyberdemon levels.

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I like your medal idea for skipping all bonus floors, but I think it would require restrictions to be Ultra-Violence, and also not allowing Angel of Confidence, Angel of Overconfidence, Angel of 100, or Archangel of 666. How about we scrap my "Gambler's Star" idea (which thinking about it more would probably be pretty trivial), and go with yours with a name like "Unexplored Star"?

I don't think restricting it to UV/N! is necessary, but yeah restricting it from those challenges is a must. I also agree with replacing the idea of "Gambler Star" and your proposed name unless someone else has a better name for it.

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Regarding Gatekeeper Badges, we can leave Platinum and Diamond as is and just change Gold. However, I disagree with the idea for Gatekeeper Angelic Badge as that would mostly just be Phobos Anomaly as Tower of Babel and Dis are pretty easy to clear without damage. I also think all Angelics should require winning the game and not just achieving something mid-game.

I don't think Dis would be so simple to no damage if the Mastermind's AI is fixed so you can't get it stuck, as you proposed, and after beating Anomaly damageless, you would then need to not choke the run the rest of the way on Nightmare difficulty. Also beating Dis wins the game, so you would have to win the game to get this badge :p

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I like your idea about Heroic Angelic Badge. Initially, I thought it would be too easy since most medals aren't too hard, but thinking about it more, 50 challenges of varying difficulty is still tough to do them all, and I didn't realize how few players had them all. To fit it into the 25 badge count, how about we scrap "Humanity Angelic Badge"? I think having only one Archangel Angelic Badge is a nicer look and that's the only challenge that has two at the moment.

If Kornel decides to go with 25 badges for each tier, I would agree with scrapping the Humanity Angelic idea for Heroic Angelic

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Got yet another few suggestions I thought about.

*Replace Every Soldier's Medal or change its criteria

Currently, this medal requires beating The Wall in Angel of Humanity, but unless I'm missing some ancient Chaosforge lore behind this medal, I don't get why it exists. Beating The Wall in AoH isn't anything special to begin with, most other special levels are going to be much harder in AoH. There's also already two other medals for AoH, while most other challenges don't have specific medals for them; I would rather have more generically applicable medals, or if one must remain restricted to a challenge, make it an actually special feat (I think Spider's Killer Cross is ok in this regard, because that level does get a lot more imposing when you have so little max HP to work with). If this medal is to remain as is, it at least needs to include Containment Area too, because it makes no sense to exclude what is essentially a harder version of The Wall, and it makes this medal needlessly annoying to get when half your AoH runs won't even have a chance to get it (though I much prefer just removing it or changing its criteria into something completely different).

*Replace Thomas's Medal or change its criteria

Icy's suggestion to remove this medal's redundancy with Humanity Platinum's was to change that badge's criteria, but I would rather that badge remain as is and instead replace or change this medal. Like I said before, I don't like how there are multiple medals for just AoH, and I also don't really understand why AoH gets its own medal for a Conqueror run, when many other challenges are around as hard or even harder to do the same in (like I'll do a Conqueror run in AoH over AoD and AoRA any day). Perhaps change Thomas's Medal to completing a Conqueror run in any of the following challenges: AoH, AoP, AoD, AoMs, AoI, and AoRA (as well as in each of their respective Archangel challenges). I think each of these challenges are especially difficult for Conqueror runs, so completing that feat should be awarded, and it would make this medal not laser-focused to a single challenge.

*Make ammo rooms more randomized

Currently there is little-to-no randomization with the ammo you get from ammo rooms; all ammo that spawns in an ammo room is the same instead of being able to be a variety, and the ammo that does spawn is static based on the dlevel. Egregiously, once you reach dlevel 12, ammo rooms will only ever have plasma cells from that point forward, which constitutes half the standard game and near 90% of A100. Aside from making little sense why ammo rooms are this restricted in their randomization, it also makes these rooms less useful than they could be. It's particularly annoying to shotgun and pistol builds, whose primary ammo becomes more scarce later in the game, and so end up usually becoming reliant on Formers to maintain their ammo as a result, sometimes even having to farm them near Archviles to not run out of ammo. Ammo rooms being able to have all types of ammo throughout the game will make them useful more often, and will help make the aforementioned shotgun and pistol builds less reliant on the ammo drops of Formers in the lategame.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 23, 2023, 17:10

Regarding Unexplored Star, if it didn't have a difficulty restriction, it would be possible to play on ITYTD, and even HTNR is pretty easy. That said, it couldn't hurt to have some easier new medals.

Regarding "Gatekeeper Angelic Badge", the Spider Mastermind is cake by using Intuition and cornershooting it to death. The AI stuck strat is useful when you don't have Intuition, such as for builds with it blocked, or a challenge like Everyman Angelic Badge. I think your suggestion would be way too easy for an Angelic Badge as there are a bunch of players who have done Elite + Veteran Angelic Badge combos without extensive difficulty. Gatekeeper Angelic Badge would really just devolve into finding Invulnerability on floor 7 nearby the exit, having Dodgemaster, and having Intuition.

Regarding Every Soldier's Medal, I can agree it could be replaced with a different idea. Got any good ones?

Regarding Thomas's Medal, I wouldn't be opposed to swapping it out either. Keep in mind though that Everyman Platinum Badge is suggested to be changed to simply completing Angel of Humanity on Ultra-Violence, so they're not the same if that goes through. I believe the medal is also designed after a player, so he might not be thrilled with it getting changed or removed.

Regarding ammo rooms, I agree. There are lots of ways this could be changed and weighted. I think that it should be prevented of giving Rockets or Cells too early though. Perhaps as a rare weight, they could also be mixed, and also include ammo boxes?

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on August 24, 2023, 05:31

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Regarding Unexplored Star, if it didn't have a difficulty restriction, it would be possible to play on ITYTD, and even HTNR is pretty easy. That said, it couldn't hurt to have some easier new medals.

The idea is mainly a reverse-Conqueror, which itself doesn't have any difficulty restrictions; a bonus acknowledgement for doing a particular feat in a run that made it more difficult regardless of difficulty, which then could be similarly tacked on as a secondary requirement for certain badges (as in the proposed Berserker Diamond change, but perhaps a couple other badges could require it too). I suppose you could restrict ITYTD from getting it though, since not all special levels are available there.

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Regarding "Gatekeeper Angelic Badge", the Spider Mastermind is cake by using Intuition and cornershooting it to death. The AI stuck strat is useful when you don't have Intuition, such as for builds with it blocked, or a challenge like Everyman Angelic Badge. I think your suggestion would be way too easy for an Angelic Badge as there are a bunch of players who have done Elite + Veteran Angelic Badge combos without extensive difficulty. Gatekeeper Angelic Badge would really just devolve into finding Invulnerability on floor 7 nearby the exit, having Dodgemaster, and having Intuition.

I'll take your word for it.

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Regarding Every Soldier's Medal, I can agree it could be replaced with a different idea. Got any good ones?

We could just replace it with one of the prior suggested new medals, or if Kornel tells us of any lore reason behind this medal's existence, perhaps we could think up a new one that keeps the spirit but is more special to actually get. Conversely, perhaps we take current Brick Silver and change it into a medal that replaces this, it always seemed more fitting as a medal challenge.

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Regarding Thomas's Medal, I wouldn't be opposed to swapping it out either. Keep in mind though that Everyman Platinum Badge is suggested to be changed to simply completing Angel of Humanity on Ultra-Violence, so they're not the same if that goes through. I believe the medal is also designed after a player, so he might not be thrilled with it getting changed or removed.

I'm aware of your proposal to change Everyman Platinum, I just prefer how it currently is, which I find to be a more unique challenge among Platinums, particularly how it's one of the very few you can still get on HNTR difficulty but isn't unfitting to be available at that difficulty (and either way I would still say Thomas's Medal should get changed). As for who Thomas is and why this medal is named after him, Kornel would need to expound on that as I'm not aware of the lore behind it, though I believe my suggestion of extending the medal to cover other challenges where Conqueror runs are especially difficult would still maintain the spirit of the medal.

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Regarding ammo rooms, I agree. There are lots of ways this could be changed and weighted. I think that it should be prevented of giving Rockets or Cells too early though. Perhaps as a rare weight, they could also be mixed, and also include ammo boxes?

You can keep the current setup where rockets and plasma don't start showing up until a minimum floor, just they won't be the only ammo that shows up once you get deep enough for them to appear. But I also wouldn't mind just letting them be able to appear whenever though, it does suck finding a very early Rocket Launcher in a vault and then having no ammo to actually use it until later Phobos. Ammo boxes being rare drops in them would be neat too I think.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 24, 2023, 17:31

Regarding Unexplored Star, that's a good point that Explorer Badge doesn't have a difficulty restriction. Let's go with no difficulty restriction for Unexplored Star too.

Regarding Every Soldier's Medal, I wouldn't be opposed to making it what Brick Silver Badge currently is. It would need a name change though since "Every Soldier" is used because of Angel of Humanity. How about "Soldier's Medal - Clear The Wall/Containment Area on Angel of Berserk, Angel of Marksmanship, or Angel of Shotgunnery"?

Regarding Thomas's Medal, if you prefer it switched with Everyman Platinum Badge, we can change them so that the proposed Thomas's Medal is completing Angel of Humanity on Ultra-Violence, and have Everyman Platinum Badge be unchanged with completing Angel of Humanity as a conqueror (except for now disallowing Dual-Angel games). My only suggestion is that Thomas's Medal would need to block Angel of Confidence and Angel of Overconfidence. I actually really like the idea of switching them because then Everyman Platinum Badge can block Dual-Angel challenges and be much more appropriately challenging, and it goes more canonically with Everyman Diamond Badge, which is the same but on Ultra-Violence.

Regarding ammo rooms, there are generated by rolling 1d3 + dlevel. 0-4 is Bullets, 5-10 is Shells, 11-12 is Rockets, and 13+ is Cells. What if instead of the dlevel formula, it was something like: 2% 1d2 Cell Boxes, 2% 1d2 Rocket Boxes, 3% 1d2 Shell Boxes, 3% 1d2 Bullet Boxes, 20% 1d3 + 2 Cells, 20% 1d3 + 2 Rockets, 25% 1d3 + 2 Shells, and 25% 1d3 + 2 Bullets? This would have some pretty wild impacts on the game with Cells being a fair bit harder to find with other weights overtaking the current 100% in deep floors, there would be more emphasis on ammo boxes being available (which may be hurting Reloader trait), and the early game could get wild with lucky ammo boxes.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on August 25, 2023, 11:37

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Regarding Every Soldier's Medal, I wouldn't be opposed to making it what Brick Silver Badge currently is. It would need a name change though since "Every Soldier" is used because of Angel of Humanity. How about "Soldier's Medal - Clear The Wall/Containment Area on Angel of Berserk, Angel of Marksmanship, or Angel of Shotgunnery"?

Doesn't sound too fitting of a name but I'm not too plussed about what the name is changed to with this proposal, so I'll go with it if no better suggestion is provided.

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Regarding Thomas's Medal, if you prefer it switched with Everyman Platinum Badge, we can change them so that the proposed Thomas's Medal is completing Angel of Humanity on Ultra-Violence, and have Everyman Platinum Badge be unchanged with completing Angel of Humanity as a conqueror (except for now disallowing Dual-Angel games). My only suggestion is that Thomas's Medal would need to block Angel of Confidence and Angel of Overconfidence. I actually really like the idea of switching them because then Everyman Platinum Badge can block Dual-Angel challenges and be much more appropriately challenging, and it goes more canonically with Everyman Diamond Badge, which is the same but on Ultra-Violence.

I think having it be beating UV in AoH would be too plain, and so prefer my suggestion. But I would like to hear from Kornel or someone else in the know on the reasoning behind the medal's existence and why it's named after Thomas, so we can ensure coming up with something that maintains the spirit of the medal. Either way I agree with having it and the Everyman badges block those Dual-Angel challenges.

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Regarding ammo rooms, there are generated by rolling 1d3 + dlevel. 0-4 is Bullets, 5-10 is Shells, 11-12 is Rockets, and 13+ is Cells. What if instead of the dlevel formula, it was something like: 2% 1d2 Cell Boxes, 2% 1d2 Rocket Boxes, 3% 1d2 Shell Boxes, 3% 1d2 Bullet Boxes, 20% 1d3 + 2 Cells, 20% 1d3 + 2 Rockets, 25% 1d3 + 2 Shells, and 25% 1d3 + 2 Bullets? This would have some pretty wild impacts on the game with Cells being a fair bit harder to find with other weights overtaking the current 100% in deep floors, there would be more emphasis on ammo boxes being available (which may be hurting Reloader trait), and the early game could get wild with lucky ammo boxes.

I would put a Power Battery at 1%, to be consistent with its current rarity compared to other ammo boxes, with that remaining 1% being thrown wherever else. Otherwise I agree with this.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 25, 2023, 18:27

"Soldier's Medal" is not amazing, but I can't really think of something better. I'll set it as "Invader's Medal" for now.

Regarding Thomas's Medal how about beating Angel of Humanity with 100% kills instead? If so, I wouldn't be opposed to letting it be mixed with any Dual-Angel challenge.

Regarding ammo rooms, how about letting Cell Boxes be 1% and Bullet Boxes be 4%?

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I've updated the main posts to this point now.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 26, 2023, 11:04

As suggested by Omega Tyrant in Discord, change the difficulty suggestion of Archangel of Humanity from "TwoDev" to "Tormuse".

Since medals and badges are pretty well wrapped up now, let's do weapons, armors, and assemblies next.

There was some discussion on what uniques a Technican could mod but no depth into it yet. Currently, Cybernetic Armor is fully moddable, while Railgun and BFG 10K can take basic assemblies and an extra mod after. My suggestions are let Frag Shotgun and Jackhammer take a basic assembly too (which is either Plasmatic Shrapnel or a single mod), and let Revenant's Launcher be fully moddable, which probably would be strongest in Nanomanufacture without being broken. Maybe also have Anti-Freak Jackal take a basic assembly too.

Thinking more about Environmental Boots, despite already making them BBT, I still think they wouldn't get used too much. How about buffing the resistances to 95% for both acid and lava, so players may opt for them over Cerberus Boots?

I think Speedloader Pistol is pretty wasteful to only decrease reloading speed from 1.2s to 0.6s with no other changes. What if it were 0.4s instead?

I think Power Armor is expensive for not doing a whole lot overall. What if it tripled the original resistances instead of just double?

Maybe give Assault Rifle a tiny buff with having original+3 Accuracy instead of just +2?

New exotic suggestion: Acid-Proof Armor, which is 3 Protection, 95% Acid Resistance, -10% move speed, and everything else normal. This would be a fairly unique armor that provides a difficult resistance to obtain, and allow for more options beyond Cerberus Armor in everything.

New exotic suggestion: Glass Shield, which is 0 Protection, 75% durability, 80% all resistances, but cannot be repaired or modded. Basically like the other shields, but with less lasting power and more well-roundedness.

New exotic suggestion: Glass Armor, which is 0 Protection, 50% durability, 50% all resistances. It would either become Cybernano Armor, which would require committing to it and being expensive, or otherwise going with AOP/AOT/OPT.

New assembly suggestion: Grappling Armor (BA), which is original +30% melee resistance and knockback -50%. This can be a nice early armor for melee characters, and would make use of a Bulk + Agility assembly, which is the only basic mod pack pair that doesn't exist as an assembly.

New assembly suggestion: Sniper Rifle (BAS) (Chaingun only), which is exactly the same as a Chaingun, but it has the auto-hit property. It'd give Chainguns a better buff for middle and late game, and wouldn't be too insanely overpowered I think.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on August 26, 2023, 12:46

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There was some discussion on what uniques a Technican could mod but no depth into it yet. Currently, Cybernetic Armor is fully moddable, while Railgun and BFG 10K can take basic assemblies and an extra mod after. My suggestions are let Frag Shotgun and Jackhammer take a basic assembly too (which is either Plasmatic Shrapnel or a single mod), and let Revenant's Launcher be fully moddable, which probably would be strongest in Nanomanufacture without being broken. Maybe also have Anti-Freak Jackal take a basic assembly too.

I would agree with these suggestions, perhaps allow the GCB and Medical Powerarmor to take a single mod or basic assembly for Technicians too? Neither sound like they would get crazy, even if the latter gets the proposed buffs. I would maybe throw in the Necroarmor and Shielded Armor for being able to get a single mod/basic assembly as well, though those ones being moddable doesn't sound quite as fitting but would be within reasonable balance.

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Thinking more about Environmental Boots, despite already making them BBT, I still think they wouldn't get used too much. How about buffing the resistances to 95% for both acid and lava, so players may opt for them over Cerberus Boots?

I'm not opposed to this but it wouldn't really change much; every pair of boots except for Steel Boots and Acid-Proof Boots already reduce lava damage to 1 with this assembly (the 75% resistance brings lava damage down to 3, so you just need 2 protection to bring it down to 1, which all the other standard and exotic boots already have). I suppose it would help them protect a bit better if they get damaged (notably yellow-damaged Gothic Boots with 47% fire resistance would still reduce lava damage to 1), but I don't think that is going to make anyone assemble them over Cerberus Boots. Making the assembly no longer require Power mods is the best we can do, so that people in the standard game looking for budget Cerberus Boots have an option without having to expend their precious Power mods.

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I think Speedloader Pistol is pretty wasteful to only decrease reloading speed from 1.2s to 0.6s with no other changes. What if it were 0.4s instead?

I'm not opposed to this as I always found the assembly underwhelming, but I've seen people before swear by making them (particularly at the start of AoMr with a Technician courtesy of their free Technical mod). Would like to see Pistol specialists chime in on this.

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I think Power Armor is expensive for not doing a whole lot overall. What if it tripled the original resistances instead of just double?

I disagree with this, Powered Red Armor is very good; it's really hard to beat an armor with 5 protection, 50% fire resistance, 25% melee resistance, no movement penalty, and regenerating durability (it essentially combines the Fireproof and Ballistic Armor assemblies together on Red Armor without the drawbacks, alongside a bigger speed buff than an Agility mod provides, half a Power mod, and 5% regeneration rate instead of the 2% just a Nano mod would provide). As a basic assembly, It also doesn't require Whizkid nor additional mods, and so is fast to make (if you get a Nano mod from Armory/Deimos Lab, you should be able to make it immediately if you didn't use a non-Power mod on your Red Armor yet or found another one). It's just that having very good armor is rarely going to be more desirable than the infinite ammo weapon or the insane speed boost of Antigrav Boots you can get with a Nano mod, short of the armor giving you literal IDDQD. I'll also note if you tripled the fire resistance to 75%, it would reduce nearly all fire damage to 1, with only very high damage rolls from Rocket Launchers being able to do more than 1 damage to it, which would crib on the Fireshield's niche. The only thing I would change about it is removing the knockback reduction, since Powered Red Armor is great armor for rocket jumping, but the knockback reduction nerfs it.

If you want to make Powered Blue Armor and Powered Green Armor actually possible viable options for this assembly however, perhaps you could make it so Powered Blue Armor gets tripled plasma resistance (60% plasma resistance could merit some consideration for an armor that would otherwise be outclassed by Powered Red Armor), and quintupled resistances for Powered Green Armor (well 75% Bullet and Shrapnel resistance still wouldn't save it, but reducing practically all damage from Formers down to 1 is something). I don't know if you could program it that way though without turning each of them into their own distinct assemblies (which would add unneeded annoyance to the Technician badges).

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New exotic suggestion: Acid-Proof Armor, which is 3 Protection, 95% Acid Resistance, -10% move speed, and everything else normal. This would be a fairly unique armor that provides a difficult resistance to obtain, and allow for more options beyond Cerberus Armor in everything.

I like this idea, I'll note 80% acid resistance with 3 protection is enough to reduce even max damage Baron/Bruiser balls down to 1, so you could go with that to keep the rounding numbers when damaged clean. 95% works however if you want to maximize protection while the armor is damaged.

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New exotic suggestion: Glass Shield, which is 0 Protection, 75% durability, 80% all resistances, but cannot be repaired or modded. Basically like the other shields, but with less lasting power and more well-roundedness.

75% durability is a weird number, and it wouldn't have that much less lasting power than other shields, especially when you won't have to worry about non-resisted hits getting through to take a big chunk out of it. I would go with 50% durability.

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New exotic suggestion: Glass Armor, which is 0 Protection, 50% durability, 50% all resistances. It would either become Cybernano Armor, which would require committing to it and being expensive, or otherwise going with AOP/AOT/OPT.

I'm ok with this.

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New assembly suggestion: Grappling Armor (BA), which is original +30% melee resistance and knockback -50%. This can be a nice early armor for melee characters, and would make use of a Bulk + Agility assembly, which is the only basic mod pack pair that doesn't exist as an assembly.

My concern is how this would largely overlap with Ballistic Armor in functionality, except you trade the less important bullet and shrapnel resistances for a big knockback reduction and no fire weakness. At least if my proposed Ballistic Armor buff goes through, Grappling Armor wouldn't be the clear better choice, so I would be sorta ok with this, though something a bit more unique would be preferred.

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New assembly suggestion: Sniper Rifle (BAS) (Chaingun only), which is exactly the same as a Chaingun, but it has the auto-hit property. It'd give Chainguns a better buff for middle and late game, and wouldn't be too insanely overpowered I think.

Considering how outclassed the Chaingun is by the Plasma Rifle, I think it's ok to give it something, so after the early game it's not just there for rapid fire builds to conserve cells. And I agree a Chaingun with autohit wouldn't be broken, it could be changed to only firing two shots per burst if people think it would be too powerful. It also would be canonical with Doom, where double-tapping the Chaingun is the best sniping weapon :p

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 26, 2023, 14:01

Regarding Technician modability, I think Grammaton Cleric Beretta and Medical Powerarmor taking basic assemblies would be fine. Necroarmor might be a bit odd as it could become indestructible with Onyx Pack, but I think it wouldn't be insane. Shielded Armor feels like it would be powerful, but looking at basic assemblies, it really wouldn't improve that much. I'm for all of them.

I think the proposed Environmental Boots with reducing damage to 1 could still work as a cheap, knock-off Cerberus Boots, allowing players to use Power Mod Packs for other gear, or getting something very resistant before Whizkid x2. Since you believe it would still be weak and unused, would you accept the suggested buffs?

Speedloader Pistols can be nice to avoid dangerous reloads in the early game, but it's definitely a bit underwhelming and very specialized. I think 0.4s reload speed would open it up more. It is still a Pistol that can no longer take Mod Packs like an unmodded Pistol.

Regarding Power Armor, fair points on it being a strong early armor when in Red Armor. One way that you could make it a nice all-in-one assembly is it takes a common armor and double Fire Resistance, triples Plasma Resistance, and quintuples Bullet/Shrapnel Resistance.

Regarding the Glass Shield idea, I initially thought 50% durability, but it would only take one hit before the resistances get shattered. What if it was 95% all resistances and 50% durability?

For the Grappling Armor idea, it would be to help melee characters charge into enemies more, which can often just knock you back. Do you think +50% Melee Resistance would be too much?

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on August 26, 2023, 14:26

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Regarding Technician modability, I think Grammaton Cleric Beretta and Medical Powerarmor taking basic assemblies would be fine. Necroarmor might be a bit odd as it could become indestructible with Onyx Pack, but I think it wouldn't be insane. Shielded Armor feels like it would be powerful, but looking at basic assemblies, it really wouldn't improve that much. I'm for all of them.

Considering Necroarmor has no resistances, its 6 protection isn't defending too well, so an Onyx mod on it definitely wouldn't make it crazy. And yeah a single mod slot can't do that much with Shielded Armor; it already reduces all physical hits to 1 damage and has infinite durability, so you can just make it less slow, or make it protect a bit better against energy attacks, where it would still be easily inferior at it to most other armors. Now if we could make it Cerberus, it would be an entirely different story, but that's obviously too overpowered to allow.

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I think the proposed Environmental Boots with reducing damage to 1 could still work as a cheap, knock-off Cerberus Boots, allowing players to use Power Mod Packs for other gear, or getting something very resistant before Whizkid x2. Since you believe it would still be weak and unused, would you accept the suggested buffs?

I would be ok with it, just pointing out that with most boots, the current +75% resistances already reduces all fluid damage to 1. So it doesn't really change anything other than being able to use Steel Boots to hit the 1 damage from lava mark, and keeping a bit more protection when damaged.

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Speedloader Pistols can be nice to avoid dangerous reloads in the early game, but it's definitely a bit underwhelming and very specialized. I think 0.4s reload speed would open it up more. It is still a Pistol that can no longer take Mod Packs like an unmodded Pistol.

I agree

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Regarding Power Armor, fair points on it being a strong early armor when in Red Armor. One way that you could make it a nice all-in-one assembly is it takes a common armor and double Fire Resistance, triples Plasma Resistance, and quintuples Bullet/Shrapnel Resistance.

Oh yeah that would be a workable solution, lets go with that then.

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Regarding the Glass Shield idea, I initially thought 50% durability, but it would only take one hit before the resistances get shattered. What if it was 95% all resistances and 50% durability?

Shields don't enter a damaged state, they maintain their full protection and resistances until destruction, so the proposed Glass Shield with 50% durability would still get 50 durability points to utilize its full resistances. As such, 50% durability with 80% omni-resistances should work.

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For the Grappling Armor idea, it would be to help melee characters charge into enemies more, which can often just knock you back. Do you think +50% Melee Resistance would be too much?

Yeah +50% melee resistance would be too much for a simple basic assembly and would clearly outclass the Ballistic Armor assembly at that point. I think the +30% melee resistance you initially suggested is best balance wise.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 26, 2023, 16:19

Regarding shields, I actually forgot about that mechanic about IF_NODEGRADE, so 50% durability with 80% all resistance should be fine.

I agree with everything else.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on August 27, 2023, 06:14

A few more suggestions that were touched on earlier that I want to make into formal suggestions to add to the main post, as well as an entirely new suggestion:

*Increase the amount of EXP that Nightmare Demons give

Getting 95 EXP from such a dangerous enemy is a pathetically low amount, this is less than you get from Nightmare Imps, Cacodemons, Hell Knights, and even Elite Former Humans. This is also a big culprit behind Phobos Lab being so unrewarding, especially when the Elite Formers give you such a crazy amount of EXP in comparison. I would say bumping the amount of EXP that Nightmare Demons give to 263 is fair (which is equivalent to an Arachnotron), and see my first post on how even with that massive EXP increase, Phobos Lab still doesn't give you more EXP on UV/N! than Military Base does now.

*Decrease the EXP that Elite Formers give you

Conversely, Elite Formers give you a really high amount of EXP each, despite their threat not really meriting such a high amount of EXP, contributing to the huge disparity in EXP yield between Military Base and Phobos Lab. I would let Elite Former Commandos still give you 608 EXP, but I would nerf the EXP yield of the other Elite Formers by the following:

Elite Former Humans: 167 -> 128
Elite Former Sergeants: 320 -> 263
Elite Former Captains: 452 -> 320

*Buff Elite Formers in melee

A main reason why Military Base is a lot easier than Phobos Base is how you can easily lure the Elite Formers into melee range, where they are all weak except for the Elite Commando, who is instead just mediocre. You could just give them a damage bump of like +3 to +5, though I think it would be neat if you instead let them attack with a Combat Knife, which would fit the theme of them being elite fully-armed soldiers. I do not know if this is programmable however; if it isn't, then just give them a flat damage buff to their current melee attack.

*Add trapped powerups and items

One suggestion I seen when browsing old feature requests that I liked was adding trapped powerups and items, which would summon enemies around the player or flood the room with acid/lava when picked up, or any other adverse effect. This is one trademark mechanic from Doom that currently is sorely missing from DRL, which should fit seamlessly into a roguelike. In order to do it, perhaps you can create designated "trap rooms" in the same vein as ammo rooms, where in the middle there will be a powerup, rarely an exotic, or very rarely a unique, and then there's a random chance it'll spring some trap upon picking it up (though not always, sometimes the "obvious trap" is just a fakeout). Exact percentages for these outcomes can be discussed farther.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 27, 2023, 07:25

One small suggestion I have is changing the colour of Sniper Mod Pack so that it's distinguished from Firestorm Mod Packs. Currently they have identical colours. Maybe make it brown or green?

I can agree with your suggested changes. For Combat Knifes given to the Elite Formers, their damage rolls could simply be changed to 2d5, which I would also agree with. This would balance out Military Base by making it hard, and making them more threatening later in the game. It would also give a tiny nerf to melee builds, which I think is reasonable.

Regarding trap power-ups, I'm leaning more towards disagreement as it would pretty fundamentally change the game where you need to be cautious about every item, as opposed to currently where the only caution is what's around the item. Potentially causing the player to avoid picking up anything, or needing to consider more luck factors in something that is already perceived as earned doesn't sit well with me.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on August 27, 2023, 08:41

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One small suggestion I have is changing the colour of Sniper Mod Pack so that it's distinguished from Firestorm Mod Packs. Currently they have identical colours. Maybe make it brown or green?

I would go with green, but it might get confused with uniques, so I'm not sure. Maybe you can make it a dark green to avoid the confusion.

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Regarding trap power-ups, I'm leaning more towards disagreement as it would pretty fundamentally change the game where you need to be cautious about every item, as opposed to currently where the only caution is what's around the item. Potentially causing the player to avoid picking up anything, or needing to consider more luck factors in something that is already perceived as earned doesn't sit well with me.

I understand the concern, but as long as you keep it restricted to the proposed designated "trap rooms", you won't have to worry about the typical powerup/exotic/unique sprawled around being trapped. You'll just know something is up when you find an empty room with a big powerup or rare equipment in the middle, which any Doom player will be on alert when they see that setup, where it's then your decision to gamble with it.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 27, 2023, 08:47

I think if trap rooms were to be implemented, the items would have to still be obtainable, as opposed to disappearing as you get close, and also not impact the weight of other items generated, similar to how ammo rooms and vaults work. From there, as you suggested, maybe make it a 50% chance or so that you would get the same effect from a monster lever pull? I think it would be fine under these circumstances. It'd be pretty advantageous for a Blademaster build.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on August 27, 2023, 08:58

Oh my intention was for the item to always be obtainable, and the trap wouldn't spring until you picked it up. I think the chance should vary by depth and difficulty, where the deeper you are and the harder the difficulty, the greater chance it will be that a trap is sprung. The trap could have the same effect of the monster summon lever, and could sometimes also have the same effect as a lever flooding the room with acid/lava.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 27, 2023, 16:08

Sounds good.

Updated the main posts with everything.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on August 29, 2023, 07:41

On the talk of nerfing Inquisitor Set, I do stand by what I said earlier about it, but I do think Nyarlaptotep's Boots and Malek's Armor themselves could receive a slight nerf. I would reduce their movement speed from +25% to +20%, as well as decrease their generation weight from 3 to 2.

With Nyarlaptotep's Boots, on their own they clearly outclass all other boots. With +25% speed, they're as fast as A-modded Tactical Boots and A-modded Phaseshift Boots, except while those boots have no protection and average protection respectively, the Laptop Boots have as much protection as you can get without having full fluid immunity (with them reducing acid damage to 1 and lava damage to 2, which then gets reduced to 1 when running or if you have any TaN investment). If you find them and can't or aren't making Antigrav Boots, you have no reason to not wear them unless you can complete the Phaseshift set (which has its own limitations, as you'll have to wear defensively mediocre armor unless you take a big sacrifice in mobility by making Cerberus Phaseshift Armor). If you reduce it to +20%, there would at least be an argument for wearing the other boots without having to make Antigrav Boots, and you would no longer get the absolute best of non-Antigrav movement speed and non-immunity fluid protection in a single pair of boots.

As for Malek's Armor, it doesn't egregiously outclass other armors on its own, with quite a few being better defensively. But still, the only armors that can match or exceed its movement bonus are Phaseshift Armor, Duelist Armor, and A-modded Tactical Armor, none of which come close defensively without using the former two in the very expensive and hard committal Nanofiber Skin and Cybernano Armor assemblies. AP Energy-shielded Vest does boost movement too while outclassing Malek's Armor defensively, but Malek's Armor still beats the Vest's movement bonus by a solid 10% and has inherent regeneration without the need for any rare mods, before even considering the potential of the Inquisitor Set (and that regeneration has no catch, unlike Lava Armor and Necro Armor). As a single piece, it combines mobility and protection in a way that no other armor does without other rare finds and heavy investment. Reducing its movement speed to +20% would keep it inline with the Laptop Boots after its proposed nerf, and make it not as much ahead of other armors without any investment. You could probably justify nerfing the speed of both to +15%, but I do like to be cautious with nerfing, and they are uniques still, so I would be fine with +20%.

As for the generation weight, at 3 each, they're currently among the more common uniques, despite both being clearly among the best uniques and being highly desirable equipment for virtually any build. They do have one of the latest spawn depths (not spawning until floor 15), but that is still overly common for such strong equipment, and so a generation weight of 2 would be more fitting. On another note, I would bump the Medical Powerarmor's generation weight to 3; even with its proposed buffs it still wouldn't be amazing, so it should be one of the more common uniques.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 29, 2023, 17:23

I can agree with all of that.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on August 31, 2023, 10:33

So thinking of buffs for Survivalist, which is widely considered a very underwhelming mastery, and I found myself agreeing with the consensus after finally trying it for myself in a UV run. I find thinking of buffs to try making it competitive while keeping the idea of it intact to be tricky; as is, you could obviously just let it get Hellrunner or Son of a Bitch to make it a lot better, but the idea of the trait is you trade being an absolute tank for terrible offense. One old suggestion I found on this board was to make it guaranteed to reduce damage to 0 when you have strong enough defenses to do so, but I agreed with the replies to that thread that would have the potential to be broken under the right circumstances.

Now the proposed inherent 10% omni resistances for the Marine would definitely help Survivalist more than any of the other Marine masteries, though that on its own won't be enough. So after thinking it through, I propose the following buffs:

Reduce the required levels of Ironman from 3 to 2
Have Survivalist double the health recovery of Small Medkits and Small Health Globes

With the first buff, you will be able to get Survivalist a bit sooner, and can put off that third level of Ironman for getting other, better stuff. Especially helpful when Finesse and Whizkid are essentially a must to succeed with this mastery, which alongside Survivalist will currently take you until level 11 at minimum to get them all, really damn late just to get a build in a functional state. I'll also note the other general masteries (Gunrunner and Scavenger) only require five cumulative traits, so having Survivalist do the same would keep it consistent with them (and it's certainly not better enough than them to be a minimum level 7 mastery).

With the second buff, it'll help Survivalist better do its job of keeping you alive and give it a noticeable benefit in the mid game before you can get good enough armor to take advantage of the 0 damage perk, as well as still let it do something in the late game if you're unable to get good enough armor. This also helps give it an actual healing boon over Vampyre, which otherwise does the extreme damage tanking a whole lot better (and still usually would even with this buff). With all these buffs, Survivalist probably still wouldn't be more than mid at best (offense > pure defense will always be true in DRL after all), but I think it would make it reasonably viable, and give players that like tanking builds a legitimate alternative to Vampyre.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on August 31, 2023, 16:21

I agree with both buffs. It would help make it far more viable, wouldn't be game-breaking at all, would likely still be a mid-tier build as you said, and also isn't a dramatic change.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on September 04, 2023, 06:26

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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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant 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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy 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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy 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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant 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)

(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/623510042808680473/1149280055705485444/2023-09-04_20-22-33_BETA100.png)

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

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/623510042808680473/1149280110126583848/2023-09-04_21-05-09_BETA100.png)

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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy 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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy 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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy 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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on September 11, 2023, 21:34

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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.

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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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy 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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant 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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy 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.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant 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).

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on September 23, 2023, 11:35

I like all of these ideas, great suggestions!

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Icy on January 10, 2024, 19:16

I've added checkboxes for every suggestion now.

[ ] = Not yet implemented.
[X] = Implemented.
[~] = Partially implemented.
[?] = Uncertain if implemented.
Strikethroughs = Suggestion rejected.

Title: Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
Post by: Omega Tyrant on April 06, 2024, 06:47

Been a while, but I thought up of some more changes:

*Change Gunrunner's prerequisite of Juggler to Finesse 2

Gunrunner being allowed Whizkid in the betas has proven to be a big help and it can now be decent with a very high potential ceiling, though it still has the major flaw of requiring so many ancillary traits before it can really get going; for Gunrunner's shooting while running effect to be actually useful, you practically need to get Shottyman, requiring three more levels beyond the six you already need to get Gunrunner. But you also really want Whizkid, but because of the prerequisites and direly needing Shottyman, you can't get WK1 until level 11 at earliest and WK2 not until level 12! By making Fin2 a prerequisite instead of Juggler, it would allow Gunrunner to spec into WK a level earlier, giving it a slight buff to make that heavy investment it requires a bit less painful. I also think firing faster instead of juggling your weapons is a more thematically fitting prerequisite for Gunrunner too.

*Give Fireangel some sort of additional offensive perk, one possible idea being whenever they use a weapon that shoots rockets, give them a +2 dice bonus to such weapons.

The big weakness of Fireangel that holds it back is its terrible offense without it investing in sidearming melee, and while the explosion immunity from indirect hits is a nice defensive bonus, it's not so strong as to be worth having no offensive boon at all. A simple and thematically fitting idea is to simply have them hit harder with rocket launchers, which wouldn't be that significant of a buff but would be something that could help and would farther establish Fireangel as the "rocket launcher build". This would also help the ammo efficiency problem that holds using rocket launchers back as weapons (actually trying to make heavy offensive use of rocket launchers with Fireangel will run into ammo problems without making a Nanomachic Rocket Launcher), and even farther no-damage rocket jumps from these stronger rockets would be a nice bonus too. The bug I noted in the beta thread of direct hit explosions doing less or no damage would need to be fixed though, or else this change could backfire. You could instead give it some offensive bonus to shotguns if you want to emphasize it being a shotgun mastery and make it an actually viable pick for Angel Of Shotgunnery, but I don't know what you could do for it (Shottyhead already has the faster shotguns down and Army Of The Dead has the harder-hitting shotguns down).

*Change Gun Kata to have an instant pistol attack after a successful dodge instead of it being 90% faster, and give it the defensive perk to apply Dodgemaster to all attacks between moves.

I don't ever really recall seeing Gun Kata brought up often among the bad masteries, but I always been very underwhelmed by it, and after farther playing around with it, I'm firmly of the stance now that it's a crappy mastery. One big problem similar to Gunrunner is that it requires so many ancillary traits; it technically only requires SoG2, but in all practicality you need SoG3 or else you're just going to be too slow and too weak when late Phobos and Deimos comes, so it may as well as be a mastery that requires 8 levels. However, unless you're lucky enough to find one of the Unique pistols early, you also really need Whizkid to buff your weakass pistols, which requires two levels of Finesse that you don't really care much for as a Pistol build and then those two levels of Whizkid, at which point that's already 12 levels. But there's still SoG 4 and SoG5 after that! And you would also really like a level of Eagle Eye or two because pistols miss a lot at far range (especially if the proposed Magnum gets added)! And if you want Intuition, you wouldn't even be able to fit all that in on any difficulty below Nightmare outside of A100! You get an early game that is slightly less hard than the other Pistol masteries, but compared to other builds, you're just going to always be behind them at every stage of the game, while Sharpshooter at least offers a very strong midgame and still strong lategame.

But for the actual bonuses Gun Kata grants? Not very good either. The "near instant" attack dodging bonus may as well be worthless; one, you often won't be able to utilize this bonus when against hordes, rapid-firing enemies, and the VMR, and two, pistols will eventually come close to or hit the minimum firing speed, at which point this bonus is completely worthless. The other perk is you automatically reload your pistols when you kill an enemy, which can be very handy when fighting hordes, but still has problems that makes it not all that great compared to what other masteries offer; aside from often ending up in situations where you can't pick off an enemy to get that reload in (I find myself much preferring to have the reliability of one pistol + ammo box instead for this reason), if you get a bulk-modded Combat Pistol, Blaster, and/or Nanomachic Pistols, this bonus ends up pointless. You could very well argue you're better off going masterless for a Scout Pistol build, or using Pistols as Cateye instead!

Now I'm not sure how to buff Gun Kata. Changing the Dodgemaster prerequisite to HR2 + SoG3 would help, though no Dodgemaster wouldn't be thematically fitting. The main idea I have is to try making Gun Kata itself better, and we can focus on making that dodging perk not so worthless. The first change would be to make the attack after a dodge actually instant, like how Blademaster gets instant attacks on kills. This still wouldn't that much of a boon, but would be something so that it doesn't become pointless once you get your pistols' firing speed at or near 0.1 seconds, while you would also get assurance that no enemy will get an attack in immediately after you fire (I recently actually got killed by the Shambler in Hell's Armory with Gun Kata during an AoMr run because I went for a shot after a dodge thinking I would be safe, yet the timing ended up with the Shambler still getting its turn right after I shot), and it would let Gun Kata uniquely get a little more mileage out of action-based powerups, as instant actions don't count towards the action counter (and pistols as is benefit from powerups far less than other weapons because of how many more cumulative actions they use to kill things). The second change would be to give Gun Kata a unique boon of having its Dodgemaster being able to apply to all enemy attacks between moves, instead of just the first attack, as aside from getting a unique defensive boon, Gun Kata would now actually be able to more reliably try utilizing the dodging instant attack perk in scenarios beyond one-on-one encounters with single-projectile shooting enemies. I don't think this idea would be remotely broken either; you still need to be able to move in a way to execute a dodge against all incoming attacks from large hordes, you still have to be mindful of walls and obstacles to avoid getting hit by explosions, and it would still be worthless against the VMR. With these changes I think Gun Kata would still only be better than current Bullet Dance and Entrenchment, but it would be something to try making Gun Kata not so underwhelming.

*Give Bullet Dance the additional perk of being able to reload pistols faster.

Bullet Dance no longer having Eagle Eye blocked and the new Marine inherent resistances in the 0.9.9.8 beta has been a much appreciated buff for Bullet Dance, but the mastery is still really bad and I don't think it's viable at all in Angel Of Marksmanship, as much of the problems with it still remain; has the same "requires way too much investment" problem described prior with Gun Kata, still has to pick up a completely dead level in Triggerhappy that exacerbates its problems in late Phobos and early Deimos, and most crippling, that rapid-firing drains the small clips of pistols so fast, while Bullet Dance can do nothing to mitigate that problem without being lucky enough to build Nanomachic Pistols or finding a Combat Pistol and giving it multiple Bulk mods. The buffed Reloader can really help with this, but fitting in Reloader with all the other ancillary traits you desperately need is too much, while the other two Pistol masteries that don't deplete pistols as fast have something to mitigate reloading issues without needing to invest in Reloader (Gun Kata already been explained, and Sharpshooter can easily utilize ammo boxes). As such, Bullet Dance should get an additional perk to reload pistols at half the time or even faster. If reloading wasn't such a major problem for Bullet Dance, it could be halfway functional without the desperate need for Nanomachic Pistols and bulk-modded Combat Pistols.

*To buff Entrenchment, have it give +20% all resistances just from equipping a chain fire weapon in the primary slot, and give +50% all resistances when chain firing. Additionally, give it a second perk to reduce ammo consumption when chain firing.

We all know the fundamental problems with Entrenchment and some ideas have been floated, but nothing definitive has been formally proposed. Applying both my idea of +20% resistances just when equipping a chain firing weapon and Icy's idea of +50% resistances when chain firing would be a start. Another idea I thought of however, after seeing how Entrenchment works in Jupiter Hell, is to also reduce ammo consumption when chain firing (such as by having all subsequent chain firing bursts take 2/3rd of the ammo while still having the increased shots). A big problem with actually trying to utilize extensive chain firing is that unless you got a Nanomachic weapon or a Minigun, your clip will simply run out of ammo after only a few bursts, at which point you're left very vulnerable as you have to reload and then build up your chain firing all over again. Then extensive chain firing is also very wasteful with ammo too, as many of those extra shots will be overkill, and several shots get wasted when you pan from enemy to enemy, so you'll easily find yourself running out of ammo if you actually try to take advantage of Entrenchment without one of the aforementioned rare weapons. Reduced ammo consumption would help a lot here, letting you utilize Entrenchment's chain firing bonus longer before needing to reload, and making you waste a lot less ammo when doing so. Alternatively, if that cribs too much on Ammochain, Entrenchment could instead instantly reload when your clip runs out of ammo, if it can be programmed in a way to not disrupt your chain firing (though that wouldn't help the ammo wasting problem).

Or Entrenchment could just be thrown out completely for something new; even if it was buffed to be usable, the idea of it is still arguably the least exciting mastery in the game.

*Make Cacodemons and Nightmare Cacodemons attack more frequently.

I always found it weird how Cacodemons and Hell Knights are offensively equivalent, other than the Hell Knight having a slightly higher accuracy bonus. One idea to help differentiate them more is to have the Cacodemon attack substantially more often, perhaps increasing its attack chance to as high as 60%. Not only would this give Cacodemons a bit more distinct offensive behavior as a more aggressive enemy, it would also be more inline with how they actually function in Doom, where Cacodemons are more aggressive than the Hell Nobles (https://youtu.be/1fcqYr1NevE?si=M9FWWzqqDFCl8-Pp&t=389). It would also make Cacodemons over damaging fluids even more of a hassle, when they'll be spending more time shooting at you instead of moving in to make them easier to hit. If this change is implemented, it should naturally be given to Nightmare Cacodemons as well (perhaps increasing their attack frequency all the way to 75%, tying it with the formers and Cyberdemon for most aggressive enemy), especially as Nightmare Cacodemons lost a lot of their uniqueness with all the other nightmare enemies being given fluid immunity. Nightmare Cacodemons could perhaps be made to hit a bit harder too to help better define their role as the single strong projectile enemy of the nightmare ensemble (either increasing their projectile damage to 2d8 or 3d5), as is they hit only slightly harder than regular Cacodemons, Hell Knights, and Nightmare Imps (with their projectile doing only 1 more damage on average and up to 2 more damage max).

*Add Nightmare Demons to Unholy Cathedral on UV and Nightmare difficulties.

Unholy Cathedral is gonna be really easy for melee builds no matter what unless you make it absurd, but it's also really easy for non-melee builds once you learn how to time hits between the Angel Of Death's moves with a fast enough build. So perhaps add a bit more to it by adding the strongest regular melee enemy in the game, that you also won't be able to cheese by luring them into the lava thanks to their newly added fluid immunity (and it's also weird that not even Nightmare has them, when it adds nightmare enemies to many other levels). Now there could be concern that this makes the Cathedral too difficult for builds with no Brute investment, but if you can move and attack fast enough to outspeed the AoD, then you can outspeed Nightmare Demons, so that trick will still work, you just have to be more mindful with your movements with handling a horde of them and avoid getting yourself cornered. Additionally, with Cathedral and Vaults having been swapped, the buffed Ironman giving you inherent melee resistance, and the Ballistic Armor assembly being buffed, you have a much better chance of getting the defenses to reduce all melee hits down to 1 damage before the Cathedral than you did before. Plus, having a horde of Nightmare Demons will dissuade anyone from wasting their time with trying to cheese the AOD on UV and Nightmare with a throwing knife :p

*Allow Firestorm and Sniper mods to be used on melee weapons, with the former changing the weapon's damage type to fire, and the latter giving the weapon autohit. Additionally buff Agility mods to give +2 accuracy to melee weapons.

Currently, Firestorm and Sniper mods can not be used on melee weapons, making getting these rare mods as a melee build particularly frustrating. The two proposed armor assemblies utilizing these mods would help partially alleviate this problem, but you could also make these mods usable on melee weapons. For a Firestorm mod, you can have using it on a melee weapon turn its damage type to fire, which would make it less effective against a few enemies (most notably Revenants and Lost Souls), but in turn would make the weapon much more effective at gibbing, that could make it a particularly attractive option on Nightmare difficulty or in Angel Of Darkness (or otherwise just for dealing with Archviles). Not to mention that this could help give the Double Chainsaw some sort of niche that it currently lacks, as a fire Double Chainsaw would be the most effective melee weapon for gibbing if you can't get Azrael's Scythe (which is especially hard to get on Nightmare difficulty/Angel Of Darkness, where you need the gibbing ability most). For a Sniper mod, simply have it give a melee weapon the autohit property; a melee weapon getting autohit from a single Sniper mod doesn't have the overpowered implications that ranged weapons getting it would, while someone paranoid about the always 2% chance to miss even with maxed out accuracy could appreciate the option to guarantee their hits, and otherwise any build that wants to utilize a melee weapon without investing several levels into Brute nor Eagle Eye have an option to make the weapon fully usable at the expense of making the weapon stronger or faster (especially with the Double Chainsaw and Ripper, which require 2 and 3 cumulative levels of Brute/Eagle Eye respectively just to have an over 50% hitrate). On the topic of accuracy, Agility mods should be buffed to give +2 accuracy to melee weapons; since melee weapons can only have 1 mod of each type and three mods total, a measly +1 accuracy from the lone Agility mod you can apply is pretty worthless, as it will be a complete waste if you are investing in Brute/Eagle Eye and still won't make a melee weapon very usable if you aren't investing in Brute/Eagle Eye (as it only bumps the Chainsaw's hitrate from 50% to 62%), nevermind the opportunity cost when Agility mods are much more coveted on armor, boots, and assemblies. At +2, throwing an Agility mod on a Chainsaw instead of just making it hit faster or harder becomes a more attractive proposition for builds with no Brute/Eagle Eye, when the jump from a 50% hitrate to a 74% hitrate is significant (or if you got one level in Brute/Eagle Eye and don't want to invest farther, going from a 74% hitrate to a 91% hitrate is still a substantial improvement that you could find expending an Agility mod for to be worth it).