Does anyone else kinda hate RNG in Doom?

[Logamuffin]

Ok, so let’s be honest: I feel like we all hate dying to 80 damage revenant missiles. It feels unfair to be killed by something so random and out of your control. I understand why random damage is in the game. It adds variation to the combat, without making the game that much more complex. Plus the boys at Id were DnD nerds so it only makes sense. And I have played a mod that removes the randomness from damage rolls and it feels like it’s missing something. So some randomness is good, but the ranges are so crazy. 20-200 damage for a berserk punch? 20-80 damage for a revenant missile? And don’t even get me started on BFG tracers… that’s a whole separate rant. I feel like the damage ranges should be more close together since this amount of randomness feels out of place in an FPS. 

 

Oh yeah, another point. Highly random damage rolls encourage save-scumming since you can do the same thing and get different results due to the RNG being different. I speak from personal experience with this one.

 

This is a minor issue for me, it’s not something I super hate every time I play Doom but it’s just something I’ve been thinking about a whole heck of a lot. I feel like I could write an entire paper on it. But that would be too long and no one would read it so I’ll just post here :)

 

What do y’all think about the RNG and specifically the damage rolls?

[RataUnderground]

I personally like it as it is and would not change anything, but you might find it interesting to know that the probability curve is different in GzDoom, more "balanced" if you prefer.

[Doomy__Doom]

Doom rng is pretty nice - it sometimes reduces those nasty 80 damage missiles to something less  hurty! So even if you failed to dodge like you should have, the game occasionally spares you :)

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

It's funny, I never hear people complain they they took five rev rockets to the face, and lived. 

[baja blast rd.]

Damage RNG (outside of the berserk) is not a very prominent form of RNG to me. Monster behavior RNG is a lot more impactful, one of the biggest examples being whether a cyberdemon fires and neutralizes major threats with infighting or tries to play pacifist instead. But even under normal circumstances, monster behavior will play a much bigger role in how easy/hard something feels than damage RNG. A good example with revenants is how aggressive they are, and whether you get a lot of one type of projectile or a mix of both (the most dangerous is a mix of both). 

 

Even when maxrunning, I don't mind weapon RNG (...outside of the berserk) because all the ways monster behavior can make or break a run are much more significant, and you can start to hedge for weapon/damage RNG. 

 

1 hour ago, Logamuffin said:

And don’t even get me started on BFG tracers… that’s a whole separate rant.

 

BFG tracers are incredibly consistent. A full set will do ~2700 give or take in classic ports, because you're going through a very cyclical pseudo-RNG. If I'm remembering correctly, this is for vanilla.

 

 

(And ports with independent calls still have the law of large numbers to contend with.) You might be missing some tracers more often than you're realizing. 

 

[Shepardus]

6 minutes ago, Logamuffin said:

And don’t even get me started on BFG tracers… that’s a whole separate rant.

I don't feel like BFG tracers are so bad; because there are so many of them per shot, and each tracer itself has multiple damage rolls, it smooths out to a somewhat consistent damage range. Shotgun and SSG are similar; the number of shots it takes to kill enemies is at least somewhat consistent within a reasonable range, compared to, say, Heretic's ethereal crossbow. The BFG ball, on the other hand, can either one-shot an arch-vile or fail to kill a pinky...

 

I don't think the massive range for most of Doom's damage rolls does the game any favors. There's enough randomness in the way monsters move and decide to attack to provide plenty of variation in the gameplay, and that RNG is more interesting because it's something you can react and adapt to rather than simply determining the outcome of something that's already happened. It just feels to me like id couldn't make up their mind on how dangerous they wanted the monsters to be and left it up to chance.

 

Maybe it's the shmup player in me speaking, but I miss from Doom the really tightly balanced battles of attrition where you have to manage your resources through the whole level or game. I don't really get that from most Doom WADs. There's multiple reasons for that (saves are another, probably more significant factor), but I think it's in part due to RNG handicapping people's ability to tune and balance encounters. Maybe you can take a dozen hits in a fight and still squeeze through, maybe you'll die in two, who knows? It impresses me that map makers have managed to create any semblance of balance from that. Some interesting special cases are "reality" maps, which make every hit equally important by making you have only 1HP to begin with. Kind of like an arcade shmup in that sense, but without any sort of lives system it tends to be too inflexible for my taste. Lengthy maps can also balance things out by law of large numbers; better yet if resources are limited but carried throughout the map. Long Road, No Turns is the example I always turn to. That map is long enough (even the individual sections) that the RNG of individual damage rolls fade away, and what matters is the rate at which you consume megaspheres versus the number of enemies you have killed. That's the sort of thing I'd like to see more of.

[yakfak]

the berserk punches make sense to me even if they're unsatisfying. its like those terrible highlight reels from UFC or whatever, with guys trading punches, landing and shrugging off blows which looked vicious... and then a glancing blow one makes while sidestepping knocks the other out for no feasible reason

 

(dont actually watch that garbage, lol, im pretty sure it hurt me permanently in a hard to describe way)

 

also in general, blue armour soaks up the most offensive damage rolls so if yr playing a level with hundreds of rev rockets flying about then there's probably gonna be megaspheres to make you feel better, and if yr playing more of a trad difficulty adventure map its all about not rushing towards known deadly enemies with volatile damage. tom hall wanted you to play slower imo

[slowfade]

It's kind of useful in speedrunning. Most of the time you get killed, sure, but sometimes you lose hardly any health and something that seemed impossible becomes viable.

[Li'l devil]

Just don't get damaged! Real pros avoid all damage, even hitscan.

[idbeholdME]

Some randomness is good, but the ranges for most things are a bit too much for my taste. Like a rocket dealing 20-160 damage.

 

A range squish would do wonders for consistency. Average the current min and max values and add a +-20% deviation to it.

 

Revenant 10-80 becomes 45 +-20% = 36-54. That way, you could at least somewhat account for the damage, rather than praying to RNG you don't get screwed. And same in the opposite situation. I roll my eyes the same way, no matter if I get instagibbed by a rev missile or just tickled.

 

Also, in GZDoom, the RNG tables get saved so reloading doesn't produce a different result.

Edited February 14 by idbeholdME : Wrong numbers

[RHhe82]

I honestly don’t mind the RNG. Of course it smarts when the boney bastards deal 80 damage, but such is life, it’s on me to have got hit. On another attempt it works in my favor.

[Wahrnehmungskrieg]

Randomness is good for a game like Doom, and it cancels itself out over a long enough time. Put enough monsters in a room and their (movement) behaviour is roughly predictable, it's like brownian motion in a fluid, or an amoeba. Randomness is most noticeable when there's only one of a certain type of enemy in a fight because the way it moves through and fights with the group can be good or bad depending on how it's feeling that day. This is really noticeable with viles simply because you don't usually tend to encounter viles in packs of one hundred.

 

if I luck out in a fight by eg getting good pain rolls on viles in open spaces, or the mass of projectiles heading my way just so happens to have a me-sized shape in it like I'm playing Brain Wall, then I feel like I never actually did the fight properly, because ideally, (thinking in casual play here) a good strategy never needs to rely on luck and has built in contingency-plans, but that's my problem, and a win is a win is a win is a win.

 

In any case we should be glad that id randomised the parts that made the game interesting (uncertainty of damage output makes being on low health more tense because you are not sure exactly how much risk you are in of being one-shot -- you have a vague idea, but not a complete one; without any randomness in the AI functions all non-trivial combat would be about exploiting the routines) and didn't randomise stuff like how much health a medikit gave you or how much ammo was in a box, or the colour a key revealed itself to actually be when you picked it up -- any variation would result in a game with vastly different feel than what it's remembered for.

[Astar]

Um, no?

 

Like...  Why should RNG be such a big concern? This is still not an online shooter like TF2, where RNG randomly gives you random crits....for some reason much more often when you are at the top of the scoreboard

[zokum]

In my opinion it is a tad too random for some weapons and monsters. It makes it hard to balance out the amount of ammo and other resources on a map, especially in the beginning of a map. When you add in blockmap issues, you can end up with two fairly identical runs, where you run out of ammo on one of them and got a slight surplus on the other one. You often end up adding a small safety margin, but that margin can make it feel overly generous if you have a bit of luck on your side.

 

I usually play test with invulnerability when I assess ammo needs. Then most of my shots will land since I am closer up and do not have to dodge. Add in a bit of safety margin and you're usually good. You can balance it quite tightly on shotgun shells using SSG and add bullets or a berserk for the safety margin. That way you will still have a decent chance, but bad rng only leads to things going slower, not having to resort to punching arch-viles with a regular fist.

Another factor that can weigh in quite heavily RNG-wise is in-fighting. Sometimes you're luck and monsters are near dead when a winner is declared, and at other times, one is a clear winner and then heading for you.

In a role playing game, the DM can adjust here and there to compensate for bad luck. This doesn't happen in Doom, so the game should be a bit more forgiving than what a typical RPG is.

There are tools for computing how much ammo you have VS amount of monster HP. That is a nice start, but it is very hard to compensate for in-fighting. I am sure that Doom 2 map08 on paper has too little ammo, but in reality, you have enough to kill everything.

Give the player a minor surplus in the start, then be fairly tight and in the long run it will work out. If a player screws up a bit much or has really bad RNG, have it be possible to use in-fights to conserve ammo. It might not even take that much longer and it can often feel very satisfactory to outsmart the monsters.

Edited February 12 by zokum

[dpJudas]

I generally quit (or ammo cheat) any map that forces me into saving all my ammo and carefully consider on each encounter how I kill the monsters with as few bullets as theoretically possible. That's just not why I play this kind of shooter.

 

About RNG in general, I think it great. It also makes you really respect the high damage weapons and enemies in a way you wouldn't do if you always knew exactly what damage it produce. For multiplayer, it makes the less good player sometimes win. Predictable gets boring very fast. Having always the best win is also boring.

[SilentD00mer]

RNG brings some magical moments like that fireball that would have killed you but ends up being just a scratch :P So, RNG can be one of the most funny things in Doom and I kinda love it.

[Logamuffin]

6 hours ago, baja blast rd. said:

BFG tracers are incredibly consistent. A full set will do ~2700 give or take in classic ports, because you're going through a very cyclical pseudo-RNG. If I'm remembering correctly, this is for vanilla.

Yeah, truth be told, that was a bad example because I more have an issue with the BFG ball and how it can feel random rather than the actual randomness itself. But that’s a whole separate can of worms I’d like to not open at the moment…

 

5 hours ago, Li'l devil said:

Just don't get damaged! Real pros avoid all damage, even hitscan.

How did I not think of this?! ;)

[Gifty]

Chance is the spice of life and it saves us from all becoming min-maxing number-crunching instrumental-play boneheads.

[Treehouseminis]

Rng is fun and interesting imo.  It never bothers me too much.  Except the berzerk range is kinda bonkers.  Like when you have berzerk and it still took 2 punches to kill a shotgunner.  But then you gib a bunch in a row and it's super satisfying, if it was always gibbing hit scanners it wouldn't be as impactful. 

[Noiser]

On 2/12/2024 at 5:59 AM, Logamuffin said:

Ok, so let’s be honest: I feel like we all hate dying to 80 damage revenant missiles. It feels unfair to be killed by something so random and out of your control. 

1. Nah, I don't hate it. RNG for me is what makes the game fun (unpredictability adds replayability).
2. It's not "unfair" at all. If the projectile is avoidable, you always have the chance to survive.
3. It's not out of control. You can say it's harsh, but you lose health for failing in-game. It's not like an RPG where you are forced to take a hit regardless of any action.

Edited February 24 by Noiser

[GibFrag]

It’s more realistic for RNG to be in place than for the guns to do the same damage each time. 

[DrRock]

I like how it keeps me on my toes and be more attentive to make sure that the amount of shots with a weapon I've dealt to an enemy actually did the monster in or not. The occasional deviations in damage dealt/taken liven the game up yet it's usually still consistent enough that you don't have to stress out too much over it.

 

Keep in mind this is coming from a ZDoom only player's perspective. As to what vanilla, Boom and the others do for their calculations, I have no idea. Let alone if there is any notable difference.

[Xaser]

Doom's RNG falls into the "meh, it's fine" range for me. The occasional 80-damage-tracer surprise isn't too much of a showstopper, just a funny moment that sometimes happens. I'm much more likely to die to my own rocket blast, which is 100% in my own hands. :P

 

Heretic, though? Oh, boy. Balancing a map's ammo usage around vanilla Heretic's randomized enemy drops is basically impossible to do well -- the player often ends up with a glut of ammo, since you have to add enough to the map to make sure the player can't get stuck if their luck is bad. Either that or lean very heavily on inventory items, turning the game into Timebomb Simulator. :P

Just as an experiment, when I revived Sacrilege* a couple years back, I ripped out all the randomized enemy drops completely. Since I'm touching all the maps already, I figured I could just up the ammo count in any maps that needed it, but turns out the game's balance felt way better in general, even on most unchanged vanilla maps. Weird, but convenient.

Back to Doom? Never felt the need to do anything of the sort. It works.

(*it's not dead, just sleeping -- I got busy :P)

[Lucius Wooding]

This problematic design choice could be easily fixed with modding. Simply make every weapon and enemy attack deal a set amount of damage. Then you can make health pickups and monster health random instead.

[Mr. Alexander]

When I take an 80 damage rev rocket, I dislike the RNG, but when I play Paradise or Godless Night, which run on a mod that makes weapon damage fully consistent, I miss it a little.

[BoxY]

I mald over it constantly when I'm speedrunning but I also appreciate the liveliness and unpredictability it brings to the game. It makes the game kind of feel like real life, in the sense that it's a constant stream of total bullshit outside of your control but occasionally you get lucky and something cool happens.

[kinker31]

I personally much prefer an RNG system where the smallest value(s) are the baseline damage values of the weapon, with a small chance to do 2x damage, or 3x damage, somethin' like that. Vanilla/Boom's RNG system feels a bit too much like a diceroll for me.

[galileo31dos01]

I think the 80 dmg of the revenant missile is only ever a deep concern if you are recording demos saveless or when you aren't carrying armor in most casual situations, otherwise I don't really pay attention to that, because I'm always gonna assume a hit will be max damage if I take it and that's some incentive to try my best to dodge it when the window is open. In that sense, you start considering availability, so what are the monsters in X context and resources around and such factors, then puzzle out what damage you can trade for playing more recklessly, or what goes down first, and etc. It becomes automatic with time.

 

How monsters behave is more important: I often realize, if X monster(s) did Y thing (move more erratically than usual, shoot, get hanged on geometry, etc), at Z exact point (where I was at my most vulnerable and/or had the fight on my hands), I could have been screwed, completely or not, or benefited in unique ways that would probably not repeat ever again. So if I added damage to the equation, I would expect the worst damage value possible any time, and be surprised when it's not. Of course with inescapable damage like hitscan you add another factor: how shitty it is to take instant 35+ shotgunner shots just for existing.

 

On the other hand, am I fan of RNG?... No. Do I hate it?... Sometimes. I hate more often the blockmap bug and that's not related to RNG. Some range of randomness had to exist and all I can say is, I don't know if damage in particular needed to be so wide and extreme, like with the nonsense that is the berserk fist, but at the same time that's one of the things that makes every playthrough somewhat different from each other. I'm pretty sure you develop more from working with a certain degree of unpredictability most of the time, which this game has at its base. 

[Crazy_Deer]

I usually don't mind it, but whenever the shotgun deals 55 damage and doesn't kill an imp in a single shot I die a little inside.

[ReaperAA]

I too wish the damage variation was less pronounced. Instead of 10-80 damage from a revenant rocket, I would have preferred something like 35-55 damage and similar for other weapons/projectiles.

 

But as rd mentioned. RNG is much more than just damage variation. Just making the damage values more consistent is one part of the picture. How often do enemies attack, their movement pattern, pain chance are also RNG based. Say you are fighting an archvile with SSG and no cover and thus the only way to avoid damage is getting lucky with stunlocking it.

 

On the other hand, as Xaser mentioned, it could've been worse. It could've been like Heretic where RNG is even more prominent (enemies have a chance of dropping ammo and inventory items).