Chaosforge Forum
DoomRL => Requests For Features => Topic started by: Potman on October 01, 2007, 05:03
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I've dished out this suggestion at least once before, but figured that we'd need an own thread for it, to prevent off-topic and such. So yeah, I reckon shotguns are kinda weak in the current version, and I used to be a fan of them in the original, so here's what I suggest:
a) Reduce the spread of combat shotgun. Currently, when you use Shottyman - and you should, if you plan on wielding shotguns - shotgun and combat shotgun don't have any differences. So I reckon that while the plain shotty should stay as it is, the combat shotgun's spread should be reduced quite dramatically. I remember how I could always take down an imp with a single shot of this in the original Doom, even from afar. This won't be possible anymore. Hell, I can't even kill a former human from farther than four spaces. So the change would make sense for not only the game balance, but also in keeping the RL version more faithful to the original.
b) More, for the lack of better word, pellets, to double shotgun. Right now it's only kinda faster version of regular shotgun, firing two shots at once instead of one. It's not really nearly as effective as it should be. Like, in the original, this could do damage comparable to rocket launcher on close distance. The Doom wiki tells that the double shotgun fires in fact as much as three times the pellets the normal shotty fires - 20 versus 7. So one shot of double shotgun is comparable to nearly three shots of the regular. Spread could be increased as well.
So to what will this bring us? Firstly, the combat shotgun will maintain its power quite better to the later stages of the game, being able to snipe even stronger enemies from afar. Secondly, the double shotgun could now be used to take down many, many weak enemies at once with the massive spread, or to deal out quite humongous damage from up close. The players could have both at the same time, using combat shotgun to single targets, and switching to double shotgun for weak masses and close combat.
Your thoughts?
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Great! That's all i want.)
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Oh and one other thing: How hard would it be to switch the double shotgun firing sound with the original one? Because that one was among the manliest weapon sounds I've ever heard.
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Yes ! Yes ! Yes !
Any comments needed there ? :)
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Oh and one other thing: How hard would it be to switch the double shotgun firing sound with the original one? Because that one was among the manliest weapon sounds I've ever heard.
Imho that is very easy. Also in topic Fixed Sound? (http://forum.chaosforge.org/index.php?topic=446.0) there are Sounds.rar that i attached to my post that contains double shotty sound.
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It won't go... It just stops the download.
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Works fine to me. I attached it to this message, can you download it?
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Yeah, now it worked. Thanks.
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Hmm, Blade? After some testing, it'd seem that your voice pack didn't change the shotgun voice at all. But it did bring back the old lost soul voices that had been changed already by the official version.
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Hmm, Blade? After some testing, it'd seem that your voice pack didn't change the shotgun voice at all. But it did bring back the old lost soul voices that had been changed already by the official version.
Now game is using same bind for shotty, combat shotty and double shotty, there are no separation for them, so you can set double shotty sound if you'd like it for all shotties. But imho it's not so hard to change for Kornel that shotty and double shotty would use different bindings.
List of what this bindings does:
1) Former sergeant, former captain, and former commando are now using sounds different from former human sounds. Now it's possible to determine, who is behind the door, former human, or someone of human kind, but more dangerous.
2) Lost soul is using it's sound from original DooM. It's could be easily switched back if you think it's annoying.
3) General change - Arachnotron is now using his proper sounds. Sounds much better, imho.))
Sounds.rar also contains double shotty sound and BoH sounds that are not used right now, but it would be nice to use them in next version, when double shotty binding would be separated from shotty and HK sounds would be separated from BoH's.
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I just reworked the shotguns a little --
1) now separate bindings for shotgun sounds are possible. (double shotty has proper sound now)
2) combat shotgun now has a smaller spread, but lower range penalty - 50% damage at 10 squares, as opposed to the shotguns 30%)
3) double shotgun has max range 8, with 50% at 5 squares, but damage is x3 and not x2. Also it's spread is higher now.
How does that sound? (no pun intended)
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That sounds cool!))
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Sounds cool. Do shotguns only do 30% outside the sight range? Didn't know that. Or am I just misunderstanding something?
Regardless, now I'm really waiting for the new patch.
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Once again :
"Long live the God Hand !"
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Well, it seems like you want to represent the doublegun as a sawed-off. If so, rather than making it x3, I would've made it 8d3x2. A smaller, but still significant increase that doesn't have the weird suggestion that maybe you are using a triple-barreled shotgun.
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Look. How can it be a "triple-barreled shotgun" (I want one of those !), when it's still loaded with two shells ? :)
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9d3x2 would be nice. 8d3 sounds kinda too little. It's supposed to have a ton of firepower, after all.
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And a regular shotgun is dealing 6d3. Where are those three (or two) dices ?
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9d3x2 would be nice. 8d3 sounds kinda too little. It's supposed to have a ton of firepower, after all.
Hmm... Since the damage is scaling so sharply with distance, I guess that's reasonable.
And yeah, I know it's not triple-barreled. That's why making it x3 is weird.
As for the regular shotgun, it hasn't really been established what type of weapon it is. Also sawed-off? Don't know. Either way, I think we should get rid of it, honestly. It's just junk compared to the other two, and it doesn't even make sense for it to be there. A single-barreled, break-open shotgun barely qualifies as decent hunting equipment, let alone something you'd find in a military base.
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The regular shotgun is probably a sawed-off. Combat shotgun is one of those pump-action thingies we all saw in the original Doom. Double shotgun is a two-(not three-)barreled sawed-off.
Also we can't get rid of the regular. Y'know why? Because then we'd have to arm all those former sergeants with combat shotguns. And that will probably make the game just a tad too difficult to handle.
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You could always just have them reload instead of pump every time. Then it wouldn't be any different at all.
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It'd require a lot more workout than it's worth, because the enemies use all the weapons the same way the player uses them. You'd have to reprogram the entire enemy AI or something.
Besides, you're only remembering the least of all problems that'd cause. You're compeletely forgetting the new reduced spread, that'd be quaranteed to keep you low health all the time: That guy in the end of the first floor will probably force you to use all or at least most of those four med-packs in the beginning. Not to mention that finding the combat shotgun would be too easy then as well: Right now their spawn is pretty much right. Remove the shotguns and they become too common for their power.
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If Kornel really managed to program them such that they "use them the same way the player does," then he's some kind of godlike AI programmer and should be a professor at MIT. Somehow I really doubt it would be all that difficult to tell an enemy holding a shotgun to reload after each shot.
The new spread could make things kind of difficult yes, but remember that you'd have one, too, right out of the first level. It wasn't a problem in the original DOOM that all the sergeants had shotguns the same as yours, so it shouldn't be a problem here. If it is, they need a tweak anyway.
Finally, I don't think it really matters how common they are, since the only breakpoint it factors into at all is whether or not you're going to pass Hell's Arena. If you somehow still don't have one by the time you're done with it, you don't care, because you have a chaingun. I just don't think that making the first two-three levels of the game less of a meat grinder would throw off the overall balance much. If anything, it would be somewhat improved, since making combat shotguns a guaranteed drop opens up more build choices in the early game: trying to go straight to Shottyman isn't a big diceroll anymore, so deciding between it and the chaingun path is more a matter of personal choice, rather than going Int or TH with a chaingun just being The Right Way.
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It's not that difficult. It just goes "Fire, fire, reload". Now, I think it's fairly difficult to tell them to reload after each shot while using combat shotguns, without making them to reload after each shot while using things like chainguns or plasma rifle. Why'd they even reload after each shot if they could just pump you full of shells instead? It goes against the common sense of demonic zombified creatures, I'd imagine.
We'd have one right out of the first level, yes, but the power difference is still against you. Remember that there're loads of former sergeants out there, who have the same small spread you do. It's one against million, like it's supposed to be in Doom. And what if you don't plan to use shotgun at all? If you wish to use chaingun or something else, the game's suddenly become way too difficult for you.
In the original game, the player could take much more damage compared to the enemies, and the sergeants didn't use shotgun in its full power, unless maybe if you played on more higher difficulty levels. It didn't do much damage to you, but you could still rip things with the same weapon. If you wanted sergeants to wield combat shotguns like in the original, you'd also have to make it do less damage in their hands, which is once again much too difficult for its worth.
You make a good point with Hell's Arena, but remember that the former sergeants don't just suddenly become extinct after that. They're still out there, ripping your armor and hit points apart with their much too powerful combat shotguns.
Here's a compromise, though: Let's make it possible for them to pick up a combat shotgun and use it instead.
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007: What Potman is basically saying is the enemy reloads when empty (which incidentally means it's doing the equivalent of 'r') and fires when it has the means and opportunity (i.e. you're in sight and the gun's loaded). He's *not* saying that the enemy mimics player activity precisely. The complication being noted is that either enemies are going to have to learn to act differently with different weapons (here, learning to press 'R' [to reload a shell instead of pump a new one in with the combat shotgun] instead of just 'r') or that different enemies are going to have to use different attack coding when it comes to guns. Basically, enemies all use guns the same way right now.
I think that while the lowly shotgun doesn't have a lot going for it, it still has it's uses. What other weapon could save you from a roomful of souls right where you spawned on level 2? As for the "why's it on a military base?" reason, I think realism went out the window when the soldiers went crazy and demons showed up. :)
EDIT: Enemies being able to switch to better weapons sounds good to me.
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EDIT: Enemies being able to switch to better weapons sounds good to me.
When I coded in free weapon switching I got fried with a puny former human with a RL, and in another game even a BFG. Bad idea.
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EDIT: Enemies being able to switch to better weapons sounds good to me.
When I coded in free weapon switching I got fried with a puny former human with a RL, and in another game even a BFG. Bad idea.
Awww, that sounds like fun.
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I think I'd like that anyway, but then again, I've played Nethack for six years and got used to weak monsters carrying Wand of Death.
Edit: Besides, a former human with a BFG sounds a lot less deadly than, say, Baron of Hell with a BFG.
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By the time rocket launchers and BFGs show up, it shouldn't be *that* difficult to take out things like former humans within one or two rounds (especially now that lower difficulties have been given the experience boost making it possible to hit clvl 7 by level 11 on ITYTD). Granted, a baron with a BFG would probably be tough even for a god like Blade (and impossible for us mere mortals). Perhaps this weapon switching should be restricted to the former foos? I somewhat recall at least the hell knights being notably not-so-smart in the original Doom, and this intelligence would grant former foos a measure of respect they'd not normally get in later levels.
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But what about an Excited Room (or whatever) on level 2 with a rocket launcher and former humans? That's happened to me at least once.
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Well, then the question is "Do you feel lucky?" :P
If it's a room that you can choose to enter (or not, since you found the exit already) I don't see the problem; it's a risk you can learn about (listen for the monsters) and decide to take or not. If it's the only place you can go to find the exit to a level (and get asploded on the way), then I'm willing to chalk it up to bad, bad luck.
What, you don't like that? If something like this (http://forum.chaosforge.org/index.php?topic=649.msg6181#msg6181) doesn't garner much sympathy (which is a nearly definite death sentence unlike the former human + rocket launcher who can be baited to appear at least close enough to you to blow himself apart if you know he's coming), I don't see why this should.
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Here's a compromise, though: Let's make it possible for them to pick up a combat shotgun and use it instead.
That's... not a compromise. I don't want to do this because I want sergeants to all have combat shotguns. I want to do it because I want the plain shotguns to go away because they are dumb.
As for the "why's it on a military base?" reason, I think realism went out the window when the soldiers went crazy and demons showed up. :)
What, you're suggesting the demons brought the shotguns with them? I guess that makes some kind of sense, I mean with it being Hell and all. Using one of those when you could have something better is fairly effective torture, I suppose.
As for the people saying "yeah, whatever" to getting blown up with rocket launchers and BFGs, the thing I don't think you guys are accounting for is the fact that you don't have to just survive that encounter, which is already hard enough. You have to be okay enough afterwards to keep slogging through all the Barons and Arachnotrons and crap like usual. The game in its present form is basically a war of attrition. Giving the enemy more ways to do HUEG DAMAJ means it's completely impossible without every single character period taking full TaN and Ironman.
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007: My feel on a former human with a rocket launcher is that first, the AI is easy to exploit, and so *if* I know this is a possibility I will know also to be careful with lures instead of jumping into rooms and blasting away; second, IME the chance of finding a rocket launcher on level 2 is just as good as the chance of finding rockets on level 2, which is not high on the lower difficulty levels and there's an even lower chance of finding both launcher and extra rockets (meaning that, in the majority of cases where this happens either the rockets are useless or there is only *one* rocket and after that the former foo has to go back to their pitiful weapon); third, when you reach, oh, let's say level 10, yeah there will regularly be rocket launchers and rockets, but by then you will almost certainly have gotten ahold of something that makes the former foos cannon fodder (chaingun or rocket launcher should do the trick, and neither are hard to get by then). So, no, it's not likely to be a problem, because when you're too young to handle several rockets in the face, you're very unlikely to get hit with them anyway, and by the time you get several rockets from the likes of Cacos, Barons, and Mancubi anyway, former foos are *very* easy to kill if you keep your eyes peeled for trouble. I would seriously recommend donating and trying out the experience boost given for the lower difficulties in the new beta; I had clvl 7 by level 11 and things were going nicely on my Son of a Bitch boosted, chaingun toting marine (only reason I died was from my frustrating "Nah, I just need to plug it one more time and everything will be fine" logic which always fails at the wrong time, and that's just a bad habit, not anything critical in terms of strategy).
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I oppose that on the basis that AI exploitation is a boring way to play. :|
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I want to do it because I want the plain shotguns to go away because they are dumb.
Plain shotgun no dumb. First of all, as I just explained to you, it prevents former sergeants from becoming too much pwnage, as well as preventing the combat shotgun spawn becoming too big. Secondly, it still has one use at least: Right now, as the combat shotgun's spread has been reduced, the plain ol' shotgun is the only available early level mob weapon, being still able to beat down several enemies at once - even if it's not very effective on that area either.
And I just, I dunno, don't like the idea of finding the combat shotgun right off the bat on the first level. I'd much rather be stuck with this "dumb" shotgun for a while, trying to find my way around on an unknown area, until I find the combat shotgun on the second level and go "Yay a combat shotgun!". Sometimes I'dn't find it, and I'd have to survive with a lowly regular shotgun, until I eventually find one. Don't ask why I want it that way, because I can't explain it. I guess it's about the game balance, and keeping the weapon that's going to be awesome of not detoriating to plain cool.
Seriously, giving all former sergeants combat shotguns is like making a quaranteed plasma rifle appear on level 2. Not because of the effectiveness, and that it breaks the game balance, but because it makes an awesome weapon look plain and everyday-like. I'm against it.
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But the combat shotgun is only "awesome" because of the risk you described. It's wholly artificial. If you want that risk to remain, then the shotgun should be replaced with something else that is also weak but which makes more sense, or at the very least make shotguns themselves not merely a completely gimped version of another weapon. This screwed up inconvenience to the player just seems like a fundamentally sloppy fix to the "problems" caused by giving sergeants the weapon they're truly supposed to have.
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There is a solution to the issue that's not being described at all here: Son of a Shotgun.
AKA a trait to make shotguns worth using; who would want to use a pistol without Son of a Gun to strengthen it?
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Well, if shotgun is going to have wider spread than combat shotgun now, then I suppose Shottyman already kind of does, until you can find a double. SoaB, when it works, will also be good for this. Either way though, I think it might be nice if Reloader were a bit stronger.
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We could also add a second level on Shottyman, that'd allow you to fire right after reloading, without wasting any more turn. Then you could either move-reload or reload-fire, but not both.
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I'm pretty sure that would send the DPS through the roof. Not wise.
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Son of a Bitch does make shotguns considerably stronger; I found it quite useful for a game I played last night (though lost due to not pulling out the BFG I had fast enough).
As for Reloader being stronger, I have to disagree. It's already possible to make an advanced weapon reload in a single turn; all you need are three reload mods and three levels of reloader. Normal weapons can be made to do this as well with two levels of Whizkid (though by the time you get that you'll probably already have found a better shotgun).
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I don't believe that traits should be balanced for what you can do with rare items. Yeah, you can stack stuff up pretty high, but my thinking is that if you want to spend that much on one thing, you earned it. Traits need to give make things good and playable for what you know people are going to have.
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why not make all shotguns have shottyman ability from the beginning?? it will be more doomish, and it would make them more usefull than before, and i dont think it will unbalance the game since its allready penalized for the range.
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That's too good of an idea - it'll never be put in
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I think you mean 'powerful', not 'good'. It's also rather drastic, as it removes one talent, makes another meaningless for a class of items, makes one extremely common item much better, makes two existing items nearly identical, and probably requires rebalancing the whole system.