A look at Doom's "hard" difficulty 

Nothing really jumped out as enticing. I couldn't tell that was "hard" mods either. 

https://www.twitch.tv/kingdime

<@onetruepurple> there is not a single redeemable feature of this game apparently 

That's an exceptionally good track record given the only other games that have got me on triple figure hours have been Guild Wars and Skyrim. And given I don't even like multiplayer the fact I got into SC2s at all says a lot about the quality of the game. 

That's an exceptionally good track record given the only other games that have got me on triple figure hours have been Guild Wars and Skyrim. And given I don't even like multiplayer the fact I got into SC2s at all says a lot about the quality of the game. 

is hard skill at the beginning of the game, or there is a harder skill. Taking into account it looks to be played with a pad, the only parts that felt around Quake skill 2 in difficulty were between the first use of the grenade launcher and the discovery of the saw. Looks like the main problem is too much room to move and too 2D combats, coupled with the before mentioned case of the monster relying too much on melee attacks while being almost as slow as Quake's zombies most of the time, but its also true that the player knows too well where the barrels are are what is to be expected.
Well, we should be happy that is not an unfair thing like videogames with lots of hitscan weapons, which is something that should concern us much more than most things that have been complained in the thread about. I prefer higher difficulties being easier, than them being done hard by being stupidly unfair.

Overall, the campaign looks that is going to be decent while not being awesome, with no big flaws till now (i consider reliance on DMSP like combats and pi�ata loot medium sized issues and 2D combats a necessary evil for console users). Time will tell. 

That's the second level, so yeah, beginning of the game. But it looks like the difficulty is just some sort of damage scalar, as you can change the difficulty mid gameplay, and those fights really didn't look any different than the ones I saw in the same area which weren't played on Hard. The only real difference is he died at the end... And considering he had a direct bead at close range on the imp that killed him, with no immediate threats, and didn't fire... I'd wager he was trying to die to make it look tougher.

Or maybe the player is just really bad... He used a burst fire with the shotgun on a bottom tier enemy at range, and later on repeatedly used the explosive shot attack on single enemies, and the main attack on groups which were practically setup for the explosive shot...

It might be a tough game, I can't tell. Some of the fights in Hell (sorry, "Titan's Realm") looked a little more involved, but, having seen multiple playthroughs of that fight as well, no one ever touched the quad in the arena. They kept looking at it, and saving it for later.

And yeah, I'm yet to see anything that doesn't flow like an arena. That clip itself has the computer system locking down the area because of elevated "demonic presence", and it unlocks the area when there is no longer a demonic presence. Which goes back to normalizing the demons and making them a normal thing to the UAC, rather than a force of evil. 

Arenas a la painkiller would be occasionally acceptable if they were a question of getting to a well guarded switch or key in the room to open to the next step - giving speedrunners and 0% runs a chance of bypassing the monsters if desired.

Reeeaaally fucking stupid and needless to have clearing a room a condition for progressing in the level. 

I'm okay with it once in a while, but it seems like it is their primary method of delivering encounters. 

It certainly wasn't in the first E3 demo, or at least it didn't seem that way. (The second one was one big arena.) 

Moreso interesting in hindsight 

We didn't really see the end of those though. The base area was just going forward and shooting at 2-5 enemies as they climbed over the edge into the gameplay space. It ended iirc with a Revenant killing the player. The second portion was dropping down into a circular area where monsters climbed down to you, and then a Cyberdemon spawned and it ended.

The first was a winding hallway, with a brief interruption for some pickup canned animations and Tom Hall's finding the body to open the door note from the original design doc. The second was almost literally an arena.

I honestly wonder if the first section was actually made for that demo, it has setpiece presentation of weapon pickups that doesn't jive with their introductions in what we are seeing now. 

I will be very disappointed. The overuse of arenas in HL2 is what keeps it from being a great game in my eyes.

Another thing I dislike are enemy bullet sponges. Shoot an imp three times to kill it? Fuck that. Shoot once and take out three imps, that's Doom! 

As I am currently playing Doom, an imp usually takes 1-2 shots. 

I failed to make the distinction between the shotgun and the SSG. 

then fuck it, not gonna bother picking this up. 

I like Arenas. It will be an improvement over the usual [walk through corridor, shoot enemy in front of you, walk into room, shoot 2 enemies in front of you, walk through next corridor...], etc. bollocks surely?? 

 

In Doom, imps are strong enough to survive a winging by the shotgun, but a centered shot will kill them. I don't recall off the top of my head if a centered shot can take down two standing in single file.

"walk through corridor, shoot enemy in front of you, walk into room, shoot 2 enemies in front of you, walk through next corridor"
This describes the spaces between the arenas that I've seen so far in Doom 4. 

#1663

That's the second level, so yeah, beginning of the game. But it looks like the difficulty is just some sort of damage scalar, as you can change the difficulty mid gameplay, and those fights really didn't look any different than the ones I saw in the same area which weren't played on Hard.

Then they took the fastest option for making difficulties. Well at least it isn't the CoD style of making them miss on purpose, which is lame, but its going to end up being similar in higher difficulties (you get shot once or twice, you die) ... but i was expecting them to have some change in behavior, even if it is just changing their speed like in Quake's skill 3. Iwas under the impression that it was actually harder because the enemies seemed to shot more, but looked at the videos again, and unfortunately NO.

By the way, is there any first person shooter that has actual differences in enemy behavior when comparing difficulties? The only similar thing i know is with DM bots, and the best case with UT bots.


#1673

Well, they are an improvement over corridor over corridor gameplay, but not good enough. It's easy to get tired of them.

By the way, is there a game that is like that, without some enemies on your back or side? I knew it was bad with some videogames (i played some of them but no more than a few levels of each), but not that bad ... If it is like that, i understand fully why you prefer arenas. 

CoD difficulty is so boring, though as for the "intentionally missing", they don't really do correction on their shots, and more importantly, the player character has a bone in front of them by a few feet that the AI prioritizes - it means that as you're sprinting toward an objective and you get flanked, you get cinematic looking bullet fire impacting in your field of view. But yeah, Veteran just isn't fun to play (I usually do Normal or Hardened, Recruit just feels silly).

As for other first person shooters... erm, Quake? Doom/2? Blood? Probably Duke 3d and Shadow Warrior... It used to be pretty common. I always tried to play on the higher difficulties because it meant more enemies and more devious combinations.

Case in point, Quake. e1m2 introduces you to the Fiend. On Easy and Normal, you fight one Fiend who is revealed in front of you. On Hard, after killing him, two more spawn at the flanks. On Easy and Normal, the first Shambler is in e1m5, guarding the gold key. e1m3 on Easy and Normal has ogres on the platform leading to the gold door. On Hard, a Shambler in the shadows, who on death spawns another shambler. The level also opens with the corner Ogre just past the zombies on Normal, but on Hard you get two fiends.

Doom e1m1 has on the easier difficulties no monsters until you open a door, but on Ultraviolence, you get several shotgun sergeants, including two ambushing ones, on the armor path to the left. 

Is like Doom UV. 

They should make a "Master Race" difficulty for PC gamers.

I wonder if the Nightmare (non-Ultra) difficulty will have enemies respawning like in classic Doom. If not, that's what most PC gamers will end up playing on.

On a side note, Shadow Warrior 2 is looking really impressive. The 2013 game was really fun in the hardest difficulty (minus the cheap boss battles), and this one has mantling and double jumping like Doom 4, but is definitely faster.

However, the biggest difference between Shadow Warrior 2 and Doom 4, technologically wise, seems to be the social networking infrastructure for content creation. The real game in Doom 4 seems to be the SnapMap mode, with its online collaboration & sharing aspects helping to build communities to explore the game's possibilities. 

From what I gathered during the SP stream, Nightmare is essentially Ultra-Violence, and Ultra-Nightmare is just Nightmare + permadeath.

I really hope they give us more enemies on Nightmare instead of just buffing the existing ones. 

I don't know what they're doing for Nightmare, but they have Ultra Nightmare (really guys?) which is basically Hardcore mode, it wipes your save when you die.

SW2 looks like Borderlands 2 meets Advanced Warfare (the movement is nigh identical, there is just a slight more swoop in Lo Wang's movement, and it makes a wind rushing sound instead of jet bursts). Grinding monsters for better loot before proceeding on the next fetch quest issued by the NPC in the safe haven.