What small tweaks to Doom's gameplay would you have suggested to id?

A difficulty between UV and NM, which would be just UV with monster speeds from NM. UV+ if you will.

Squeeze the RNG spread. Don't remove it, but make it less spiky. 100-800 or 20-160 is simply nuts.

Make SSG fire 14-15 pellets so it makes sense. Or they should have made the SSG triple barreled and eat 3 shells per shot.

Reduce Box of Shotgun Shells from 20 to 15, Cell Pack from 100 to 80 and increase Box of Bullets from 50 to 60. Also increase bullet capacity from 200 base to 300.

Unlimited Lost Souls.

Clean up the collision and hit detection code. So no blockmap bug and make everything respect its height. No Demons biting you when you are 3 km above them.

GZ Doom Inspired:

1.  Dynamic Lighting.

2.  Can hear footsteps.

3.  Increased Gore.

4. Screen Hud Tracking Kills / Items / Secrets so you don't have to do AutoMAP every time.

5. Infighting between ALL monsters without needing the barrel's help.

6. Eviternity unique monsters Nightmare Demons, Annihilator, and Astral Cacodemon would be perfect especially in Final Doom TNT & Plutonia. 

Well, maybe not towards the original release, but slight changes to DOOM II gameplay wise...hmmm.  I'll try to be "realistic" in terms of Processing power, Time Constraints, etc.

• Zombiemen have a 5-10% chance of dropping a rifle.  Rifle can be toggled like the shotguns, but is paired with the Pistol.  Operates like a burst fire Battle Rifle (4 rapid fire shots with the usual spread).  Sorry speedrunners (I used to be a UV-Max runner long ago).  Maybe add a disable option for this kinda thing.  To offset the pistol have it be 3x more powerful per shot, slower fire rate, and 100% accurate.
• New Computer/Visor/Goggle pickup in most maps that adds Kills/Items/Secrets info to the HUD.
• Baron's of Hell have lowered pain chance, and after every pain state, they fire like the Belphegor from Skulltag (Think of a Cyberdemon volley, but with Baron Plasma.).
• Increased weapon switch speed (this can be done via DEHACKED in two ways, and after implementing it, it kinda spoils you.). Doesn't apply towards BFG9000 or SSG. Questionable decision there.
• 5-10% chance of enemies firing as if player has partial invisibility (I know this is kind of a shaky proposition.).
• Lost Souls have 70HP.
• Archviles now have horns like the Diabolist, 500 more HP, move 2 units faster, and have a 5 point increased chance of flinching.
• Imps have 2 variants and are implemented like a randomizer so no changes have to happen in a Map Editor.  1st variant is the original, and the 2nd is a beefier, slower Imp.  Operates like the -fast parameter is always active.
• Spectre Demons now have no sound, while using the fuzz effect instead of bleed effect when shot.
• Revenants now shoot 2 small Rev Missiles instead of just one.  Missiles have static DMG output, but have an RNG variance on speed.  Basically if both connect they'll do a max of 50 DMG.  100 HP increase, and move 2 units faster.
• Chaingunners......Hmmm...I wanna be evil, and increase their health by 125 points, lowered pain chance, but a longer face target time to offset this.  Yeah, I'ma be evil.
• Gibbing monsters simply requires the player to deal 120 points of overkill damage instead of having to do more damage than their starting HP.
• Armor/HP bonuses grant 2 points
• Chaingun has 2.5x the firing rate, but has "cool down" frames which makes tapping impossible.
• Cacodemons have noticeably reduced pain chance, and after flinching do a charge like a Lost Soul, but inflict more damage.  Something I did in WhackED4 before, but somehow made them home in on you.
• Pain Elementals always attempt to keep a certain distance from the player, and can throw Caco fireballs along with Lost Souls (Yeah, I'm kinda evil).

I think that's more than enough, and reading it back, probably wouldn't have made deadline or could potentially lag older systems?

I just remembered something I came up with a while ago - make Barons (and also both big boss monsters) immune to single shotgun fire, pistol/chaingun fire, non-berserk fist and (maybe) chainsaw. The monsters could still flinch from the shots as normal, but they would be dealt no damage, signified by bullet puffs (like the ones that appear when you shoot at a wall) appearing instead of blood particles.

The reason for this is that shotgunning Barons is as everyone knows extremely unfun, yet also (unlike with the big boss monsters) just viable enough for people to resort to it. So I thought, if we remove the possibility of shotgunning Barons itself, then nothing of value would be lost - and in its place, we would gain the ability to use Barons as an actual, persistent threat that cannot be dealt with until the mapper hands out better guns. In exploration they would be a roaming threat that keeps you on your toes, and in combat they would be a central linchpin that you have to plan your movements around. Plus if anything, this would make their DOOM 1 boss status more... boss-like, if anything. ;)

On the topic of Barons, I must also say I absolutely love the idea of Barons always one-shotting the player in melee. To make it even cooler, it could be presented as a "grab" attack, with the one-shot uniquely displayed in 3rd person perspective as the Baron rips Doomguy apart (ala Brutal Doom finishers, but Doomguy just simply gibs instead of doing an unique animation). Now couple that with the low-tier weapon immunity, and you finally have a boss monster to be reckoned with! >:3

Make everything 3D like that Quake game

Make it less addicting?  I don’t think i found anything I don’t like.  Well.. except to remove nightmare difficulty because I use keyboard only.

I wouldn't actually say anything to them, I'd just secretly corrupt anything code related to the spectre so they're forced to use a better idea in that slot

The ability to talk to the monsters - if only you could talk to these creatures, then perhaps you could try and make friends with them, form alliances... Now that would be interesting.

Ability to change palette at fly, not based on pain level or items collected, but anywhere anytime or at least each level. I got inspired when checking what kind palette Tomb Raider 1 used, and I found a post that said it depends on the level. I think if id Software implemented this, the shiny effect on pistol (the weird green blob) could be changed depends on level, let's say it would be red-orangish on hell levels dominated by red, oranges, and browns. I always felt that greeny blob on pistol feels off when first time I played Doom I's E3M1, like, how tf those green blobs comes from, there is no green lightsource at the start of E3M1. Furthermore, it allows for more elaborated, colorful choice of colors and textures/flats for different levels, without constraining them to have colors that sparsely/never used in the palette for that level.

-Make it so you don't have to hold shift to run.

-Make the pistol less useless by having it do somewhat more damage or have a somewhat faster fire rate.

-Range on fist and chainsaw a bit larger, it's way too short.

-The hell knight is too spongy as an inbetween of the imp and baron, there should be one in the middle.

-Stop giving map slots to Sandy PLEASE.

Nothing. The games are perfect as is. Really, I really mean that. I don't think we'd still be here today if they were any less.

8 hours ago, fishy said:

-Stop giving map slots to Sandy PLEASE.

Sandy is a big part of why Doom is so good tho.

On 5/5/2024 at 6:47 PM, Maximum Matt said:

The ability to talk to the monsters - if only you could talk to these creatures, then perhaps you could try and make friends with them, form alliances... Now that would be interesting.

What are you, Dr. Dolittle? 

@QuaketallicA It's a reference to the infamous Doom review from Edge Magazine.

9 hours ago, fishy said:

-Make it so you don't have to hold shift to run.

-Make the pistol less useless by having it do somewhat more damage or have a somewhat faster fire rate.

-Range on fist and chainsaw a bit larger, it's way too short.

-The hell knight is too spongy as an inbetween of the imp and baron, there should be one in the middle.

-Stop giving map slots to Sandy PLEASE.

• Auto run can be done by setting the joystick button to run to 31 or so. It's a hack, but it works.
• A better pistol would mean you wouldn't want new weapons as badly, but since you still would want them, there wouldn't be much of a change I think.
• I have never felt that the range mattered, but your mileage may vary.
• I agree with there not being any enemies in the range between demon and revenant. Above that there is a nice spread of health. A monster with 200 hp would have been a nice addition. Revenants are nice at 300, but their attacks are fairly brutal compared to some of the sturdier monsters.
• Sandy being given slots is not a problem. The problem was a too tight deadline and him being the only one stepping up to get the job done. A lot of Sandy's maps are rush jobs / Tom Hall maps, he has said so himself. The work load was much better balanced in Quake and it shows as the quality difference is more or less gone. Sandy was the guy filling in the blanks, making sure the projects got finished. The problem is poor project management, not poor mapping skills / too many slots etc.

1. Make the Revenants height match the sprites height

2. Make it a little more obvious on how to kill the Icon Of Sin

3. Maybe not have made Sandy Petterson make so many maps in Doom 2; split up the work a little more (and make the deadline a little less tight)

4. Add a rifle weapon and make zombiemen drop it when dead (also add it to slot 2 or slot 4)

5. (Maybe this one isn't the greatest) Make it so the invisibility power-up makes enemies not notice you until you get too close to them or attack them  

Turn it into a 2-D platformer.  This 3-D stuff is a fad, you did it with Wolfenstein, pat yourself on the back, now just reskin Commander Keen with those demons Adrian is drawing, and don't get Tom upset