Underused Doom stuff
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What are some things that are underused?
I think the linedef action "W1 Door close wait open" is underused, and mappers much more prefer to make players find a switch to open the way back, even if the encounter is not that big.
I think arachnotrons are underused, a lot more often I see mancubi, and while mancubi are more versatile for sure, arachnotrons are much more threatening as long-range enemies in wide open spaces, the way they fire forces the player to continuously move compared to the mancubus where you can stay in one place to dodge his fire.
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I find the Zimmer textures to be underused. personally i think they look good for forest settings in levels (you can take a look at map 6 in my megawad Abaddons Grasp for example)
They would only look good in a forest setting though imo, but i still think people should use these textures more. (and more fireblu please, i cant get enough of that lovely texture) -
Backpack is underused. Why are mappers very shy to use them more often? I don't want to leave a box of shells in a room I don't want to revisit; I want to grab it right now.
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@dmslr To balance the amount of ammo pickups less (exploration factor expendable) and balance the amount of ammo you can have at any one time because otherwise you'd be using your favorite weapon too long and you need to switch for engaging gameplay! That or the backpack is just simply neglected
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The backpack tends to be relegated to a sometimes thing because having a halved ammo count means that the player must move around more; they can't stockpile ammo and sit behind a door to cheese encounters as easily.
Personally I think the pump-action shotgun doesn't really get the attention it deserves. The super shotgun supercedes it in a lot of wads and its practically a necessity against all the higher-tier, more interesting enemies like mancubi, arachnotrons, etc. However, the pump-action feels particularly nice to use against lower-tier enemies (zombies, imps, lost souls, pinkies, revenants are at the upper limit here); it has a nice rhythm to it especially when you're progressing down a path. The problem is that once you have higher-tier weapons, players will invariably use those weapons against lower-tier enemies. Lining up multikills on imps and zombies with the super shotgun is fun (and in Doom Retro if you hit a zombie or imp at point-blank with the super shotgun they gib), though it's not the same as the simple rhythmic blam-kachk of the pump-action.
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Clips. I’ve found that on more modern wads that ammo clips aren’t used a lot. Usually it is relied on for zombie men to drop them or for a large ammo pack or chaingun pickup to bring up your pistol ammo.
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I've seen like 2 wads do this outside of GZDoom stuff (Batman Doom and kinda Jenesis), but I really wanna see more wads balanced around continuous play. Although people always balance their maps around pistol starting, I love the feeling of immersion and building up your inventory it gives for certain wads like Epic 2. Still wanna make a couple of wads that center around that. Granted, testing them around that might be kinda hard, but if I can pull it off right, I think it would make for a really cool experience.
~Christophine Place
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@ChrisJEPlace Eviternity does that pretty well i think (though it does reset your inventory at the end of each episode, kinda like doom 1 does)
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Eviternity's balanced pretty well along both the pistol-start and the continuous-play angles, and I think having the wad split up into small episodes really helps with that
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I'm not sure if modifications would count here, but I really wish more WADs tried to make the pistol a viable weapon instead of making it the gun you use once and never again. Besides, I think this would also help encourage pistol starts when you're not just stuck with a pea shooter every map start.
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TANROCKx textures are pretty underused imo
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Strife midis are underused, come to think of it, I've never heard anyone use them besides DWANGO.
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Map 33, 34 and 35 to hold overflow maps for all ports, and xINFO to provide access to them in modern day ports
