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octosquidfunni

How would you fix the Blur Sphere?

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A common consensus among the Doom community is that the Blur Sphere is a power down due to causing projectiles to go crazy.

How would you alter it to be better?

 

 

 

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It's a fun, underrated power-up as is honestly. Making projectiles go every which way can be useful for getting unlikely infighting started in projectile hell scenarios. I also enjoy when maps use it as an intentional debuff, like making you fight dangerous projectile monsters after being forcefed one. >:-D

 

Just hypothetically though, the simplest good buff would be making it last shorter -- 30 seconds like the invul, instead of 60. That way you use it (and the map can provide it) when it's relevant and needed. You don't have to deal with the effects long past that relevance. It's not fun to have to sit around waiting for it to wear off, or having to choose between that and its unwanted presence against projectile enemies. I think that constrains its usage a lot. 

 

Another simple buff would be to increase the angle offset it adds, which is currently an increase of +/- 22.5 degrees for projectile attacks and an increase of 45 degrees for hitscan attacks. Maybe 50% more. An even wider spread makes it more likely that a projectile is shot at an angle the player can't accidentally dodge into. It also further debuffs hitscan attacks. It would look silly when a monster opens fire into a wall beside them...which is a plus.

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Remove everything around the blur sphere's current functionality; instead, have all the demons target where you were just a second before, so that you can just strafe run and very likely not suffer a single hit, even from the hitscanners

 

Might still mess you up in certain situations but I think it would be generally much more useful

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I wouldn’t touch it - the only problem with blur sphere it’s placed in spots where it’s not useful in some older wads. Player has to understand it’s a trade-off: you can’t approach projectile-throwing enemies the same way, but you gain protection from hitscanners.

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Maybe if it reduced total possible damage it would be less frowned upon, though where this power up truly shines the most is in multiplayer.

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Change it from 'blur' to 'ghost', and alter projectiles to pass through ghosts. Now you have a poor man's invulnerability sphere.

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It's fine, people just have trouble switching to reactionary dodging. You should mostly be standing still and only dodge when necessary while invisible, which clashes with the most frequent playstyle of "never stop moving". Annihilates hitscanners and basically guarantees infighting to start. It's not a power down, just difficult for most to squeeze value out of.

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I think it was very useful in Doom 1 where the ratio of projectile to hitscan attacking monsters is not so steep.

 

For Doom 2, outside of chaingunner packs, it's mostly a risk. Disabling homing attacks from revenants would have been an obvious improvement.

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3 minutes ago, holaareola said:

Disabling homing attacks from revenants would have been an obvious improvement.

The one suggestion in this thread so far, that I can agree with.

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I'd yoink the behavior from Descent's cloaking device: have enemies direct their attacks at the last place your fired your weapon. Might not be necessarily realistic in any sense (unless the demons are just dumb ;), but it works amazingly from a gameplay perspective. Might be a bit OP in Doom's context unless fights are designed around it, of course. :P

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A slight (couple of degrees) minimum deviation so standard projectile enemies can't just RNG their way into flinging their attacks right at you (but you still won't be invulnerable because of spread attacks, rev rockets and needing to move away from melee attackers and the two aforementioned)

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I don't know whether this is current GZDoom behaviour as I don't use the port, but I used to think that OG ZDoom's way of treating the blursphere (whilst blurred, stationary enemies won't be alerted by seeing you, only sound) was great and could've had a lot of potential for designing stealth sections in maps were it the default.

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I wouldn't fix it, it's not broken just situational imo.

Going up against lots of projectiles you'd normally be able to predict and dodge? Power down.

Going up against a bunch of hitscan you can normally only take cover from? More or less a powerup.

For melee stuff, it's a null pickup.

 

Now the chainsaw... that could probably use a tweak since one will almost never pick it in preference to a berserk pack should one be available. Better to do higher damage than get an inconsistent stunlock, especially when the chaingun does the stunlock better and from further away.

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37 minutes ago, Zerofuchs said:

Now the chainsaw... that could probably use a tweak since one will almost never pick it in preference to a berserk pack should one be available. Better to do higher damage than get an inconsistent stunlock, especially when the chaingun does the stunlock better and from further away.

It's just a melee, ammo-less chaingun. Rate of fire is the same, so no, Chaingun does not pain lock better than the Chainsaw, but exactly the same.

 

Very useful for lone enemies to conserve Chaingun ammo if needed and if playing with fixed blockmap bug I find myself using it way more often than the wildly inconsistent Berserk damage. Even more so when playing with -fast, where interrupting enemies is all the more valuable. I'd pick Berserk only for stuff that can't be pain locked, which is mostly just Hell Knights and Barons.

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Because Doom's AI is too simplistic to facilitate any truly complex emergent stealth/detection gameplay, the blur sphere has always depended the most on map creators to really design around it in a fun way. So to me the trick is really how the blur sphere can give mappers the most possible flexibility or inspiration to create weird bespoke scenarios. Probably the most interesting thing about it is the way it can be a benefit or a hazard depending on the situation and the enemies being fought.

 

Having enemies re-target to the last place you fired your weapon is a really neat idea! I can imagine a huge mob scenario where you're pushed to dart around a large arena, carefully whittling down the crowd while being careful not to attack from the same place for too long.

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The single biggest thing that would make the blur sphere infinitely more useful whilst still maintaining the current design ethos is making the projectile be thrown the same way the monster is facing when it throws it. Instead of the monster randomly dancing and then throwing a fireball in a random direction that doesn’t correlate to the direction the monster is facing, it picks one direction, faces it the whole time, and then throws the projectile that direction. Chaingunners and Arachnotrons would still be as chaotic as ever as they would face a different direction with each Refire call, but all other projectile monsters become way more predictable.

 

I’d love to implement this in a GZDoom wad, but don’t know enough about scripting to put it together.

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On 9/29/2024 at 6:21 PM, baja blast rd. said:

Just hypothetically though, the simplest good buff would be making it last shorter -- 30 seconds like the invul, instead of 60. That way you use it (and the map can provide it) when it's relevant and needed. You don't have to deal with the effects long past that relevance. It's not fun to have to sit around waiting for it to wear off, or having to choose between that and its unwanted presence against projectile enemies. I think that constrains its usage a lot.

that's actually a really great idea; in addition to what you mentioned, doing that could also open a lot of opportunities regarding how it's used, because then the player would have much more of a time limit than they do with how it currently is. it could make certain encounters much more exciting and tense :)

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Posted (edited)

My suggestion isn't related to how it affects the player (I honestly avoid it, and therefore, aren't too familiar with it).

 

However, I think it would be cool if enemies could pick it up. Spectres are cool and I always liked how the Williams team expanded on it with Nightmare Pinkies and Imps. Giving any enemy the potential to go invisible would add a small amount of scares and unpredictability to a map (especially one with roaming monsters). Of course, the AI would have to be programmed to seek it in some fashion, but still.

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throw the whole "partial invis" thing out and instead have it silence the player's shots and melee hits

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On 9/30/2024 at 10:30 AM, idbeholdME said:

It's fine, people just have trouble switching to reactionary dodging. You should mostly be standing still and only dodge when necessary while invisible, which clashes with the most frequent playstyle of "never stop moving". Annihilates hitscanners and basically guarantees infighting to start. It's not a power down, just difficult for most to squeeze value out of.

 

Now that's a map idea - have a conveyor feed the player invisispheres for eternity and name the map "stormtrooper base assault".

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