Specific issues you had with Hexen

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The Ultimate DooMer
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Re: Specific issues you had with Hexen

Post by The Ultimate DooMer »

Going round in circles looking for switches that did something, somewhere.
Running round with just 2 main weapons. (half of what a megawad should have)
Killing the same handful of different mobs over and over. (half of what a megawad should have)
Three different classes that had no real difference between them except weapons.
Limited set of environments possible due to the variety of textures/flats.

Hence why I designed Serpent the way I did. (and ported the mechanics to standalone mods, so I never have to play it like that again)
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Marinelol
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Re: Specific issues you had with Hexen

Post by Marinelol »

This will be a long wall of text. Maybe because I played hexen enough to hate replaying it :P.

1) Centaurs. Who thought they were a cool concept? Meatshields that reflect projectiles and are basically on every level beside the first. Good!
2) Monsters deal chip damage. Probably the fault of the armor system and its overpowered block values. And some monsters have very low damage regardless (Bishops.. Heresiarch.. Afrits).
3)Items you never need in the main game. Discs of repulsion being the main offender. They are basically "Use this item to instakill things you want to skip". And the trillion quartz flasks as well.
4)The bosses are glorified tanks. Ok this is a problem for all doom-clones beside d'sparil anyway. (And some strife bosses).

Now for class specific problems..
A)Fighter:
1)The first 2 weapons are basically the same! I don't want to do the maths to see if fists outdamage the axe or not.
2)The hammer is way too overpowered for its mana cost. That pick screen empty ranged skill bar is a lie!
3)Sword is never needed in the game.. You can do the whole game with fists and sometimes use hammer vs bosses.
4)The wyvern boss. Ye this isn't the fighters fault but if you don't have ammo you can't do anything at all!
5)The speed and armor of a values of the fighter kinda make you double guess if the class was even tested before release. They are both too high :P.

B)Cleric:
1)Serious gameflow problems. The difficulty rapidly changes from nightmare to super easy back and fourth. Regardless of the difficulty setting you pick.
2)The mere existance of centaurs and your need to use serpent staff..
3)Wraithverge massacres everything even those behind walls. And bosses get stunlocked to oblivion by it.
4)The poison flachette is way too overpowered compared to the other 2. And has some stupid instakill bugs.
5)Can't run out of ammo unless you use wraithverge 24\7.

C) Mage:
1)4th wep aside. Mage gets his best weapon right at the start of the game! Overpowered wep that also happens to have an irritating sound and being a pain to use.
2)Lightning deals triple damage to certain monsters. At least it instakills those annoying centaurs..
3)Probably the only class who still take damage at full armor value. And his speed value is only one balanced (Monsters have a chance to actually hit you).
4)4th wep is instawin in multiplayer. Now you might say "But its bad in singleplayer!". In mp enemies need extreme luck to dodge it and not get instakilled. Wraithverge is almost useless vs players (Only kills them if you hit them with the ball or they don't bother running away, sword is hardest sg to use..).
5) Seriously needed a spell book mechanic.

Some problems with the monsters in the game :
1)The majority of monsters could use having at least double damage.. especially the melee monsters.
2)Slaughtaurs get the cake for most annoying monster in the universe. If you play cleric.
3)Bishops try to look cool and tough until they hit you for 1 damage. At least heretic wizards were scary with their high damage..
4)Heresiarch is a test in patience. He deals low damage and has a shield to enlong the fight for 10 minutes. Probably made everyone waste their ammo on first fight and then instakilled them with his cubes after he died.
5)Korax fight feels like its lacking something. D'sparil's fight was way better.
6)The evil bosses can be cheesed hard with discs of replusion.
7)Ice guys are very annoying in that one trap in steel world.. Probably only annoying trap in the whole game. And you basically never see them anywhere else. (You can use discs of replusion to instantly win though)

And yea I wouldn't count anything in the game a serious puzzle. Just extra annoying switch hunts. Especially if the needed switch is hidden behind a tree in the middle of the screen. There is also that elevator puzzle in steel world. Seeing how people play it in multiplayer.. I sometimes wonder if more than 10 persons thought it out.
D2JK
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Re: Specific issues you had with Hexen

Post by D2JK »

Ice guys are very annoying in that one trap in steel world
Oh man, that one.

And yeah, the switch hunt crap really makes you wonder if they even played their own game. And if they did, how on earth did they find it enjoyable.
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Graf Zahl
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Re: Specific issues you had with Hexen

Post by Graf Zahl »

D2JK wrote: how on earth did they find it enjoyable.

That one's easy: Once you know the levels inside out the switch hunt will go a lot faster so they probably never realized how it must feel for actual first time players of their levels.
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Athel
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Re: Specific issues you had with Hexen

Post by Athel »

Played it once, gave up after half of the first hub. It was too much for me - Me going in circles and whatnot. After noclipping I said "Screw this!" and exited out.

Kinda wish there was a Hint key that told you where to go.
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SamVision
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Re: Specific issues you had with Hexen

Post by SamVision »

Exploration should spice up the experience and be spread across the game world, the world should be visually interesting, the story should be told through the environment, just play any of the Metroid Prime games to understand how these mechanics should work.
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Re: Specific issues you had with Hexen

Post by Gez »

  • Chainmailpants Bulletspongebob enemies. It takes too long to kill the basic cannon fodder enemies (affrits, ettins, centaurs) with weapon 1.
  • Bullshit invulnerable enemies. The Heresiarch is the worst offender, but the centaur is very annoying too. If it had been damage reduction instead of invulnerability it would have been much better.
  • Not enough mana. Weapons 2 and 3 are cool and all, but they deplete far too soon; monsters don't drop more mana; and weapon 4 uses all your ammo types at once. So eventually the game ends up being use weapon 4 until no ammo anymore => use weapon 1 which takes forever to kill enemies => find more mana => use weapon 4, repeat. I think Hexen at least could have used a bag of holding.
  • Drab colors. The quintessential Hexen action consists of fighting brown monsters that are coming out of a brown wooden doors in a brown stone building, hiding behind brown trees while brown leaves are flying into the wind, on a brown dirt floor and with brown rock cliffs in the background. I know I'm in the minority here, but I much prefer Heretic's colorfulness, even if everybody else says "lol colorz r dumb n gay".
  • I guess I'm also in the minority on the puzzle point because they don't annoy me that much.
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Re: Specific issues you had with Hexen

Post by NeuralStunner »

Gez wrote:Drab colors. [...] I know I'm in the minority here, but I much prefer Heretic's colorfulness, even if everybody else says "lol colorz r dumb n gay".
It's not just you. One of the more interesting aspects of the colorful design is how it makes items distinguishable (rather than a brown box on a brown floor). Hexen really does have a lot of color available, but doesn't use it much.
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Graf Zahl
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Re: Specific issues you had with Hexen

Post by Graf Zahl »

Heretic's colorfulness gives me eyesores. It looks like a comic book.

And Hexen isn't all brown, there's also a lot of grey and green in there
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Re: Specific issues you had with Hexen

Post by wildweasel »

Hexen's wide palette range seems to be mostly wasted on the spell effects. Shame, really.
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Re: Specific issues you had with Hexen

Post by Seidolon »

I really liked Hexen. It is my favorite game to use the doom engine. I only hated a few things though.

-The cleric's 3rd weapon sucks really badly. It takes about 5 shots to kill a centaur with it, provided you hit it every time. It also uses 4 green mana. If it would've used half of that, I'd be pretty ok with it.
-I also was disappointed by korax. He has no original attacks, except maybe summoning ghosts.

I really love the game otherwise. I don't mind strolling through the beautiful levels for a bit to look for a switch. Hexen was probably the first video game I ever played, considering I have memories of playing it when I was about 4 years old. I doubt I'm being blinded by nostalgia, since the game has been fun every time I have played it. Recently, I even found a secret area in the caves of circe that I never knew existed (the room with the rotating doors).
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0bsidian
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Re: Specific issues you had with Hexen

Post by 0bsidian »

Seven Portals.

That is all.
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Viscra Maelstrom
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Re: Specific issues you had with Hexen

Post by Viscra Maelstrom »

it really needed some kind of level-up and stat-mechanic, i feel. killing enemies serves basically the only purpose of removing obstacles in your path, and sometimes they just take more effort to take down that is needed. i remember using TUD's Serpent gameplay mod for Hexen and it made the gameplay more rewarding and engaging... then i got stuck in the 4th hub or so.
getting stuck is probably the biggest problem i had with the game. it's way too easy to get lost because it's not at all clear what to do in some cases, and it starts you out with the more confusing hub, the Seven Portals, first. it's got some really good atmosphere, the music helps set the mood and it looks good for such an old game. but the flaws makes me just go "ugh" whenever i try playing it again. at least Strife has clear objectives you can view at any time, and gives you upgrades you can buy to make you even more powerful.
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SamVision
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Re: Specific issues you had with Hexen

Post by SamVision »

Maybe an objective hint like in Strife could have helped.
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zrrion the insect
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Re: Specific issues you had with Hexen

Post by zrrion the insect »

wildweasel wrote:Hexen's wide palette range seems to be mostly wasted on the spell effects. Shame, really.
That could be fixed by making textures that actually use the colourful sections of the palette. I've got some banners and flags, as well as some carpet textures I've been saving that do a pretty good job of making the environments colourful. Liberal use of the included stained glass textures alongside some coloured lighting also does wonders.

I am liking the ideas/concerns that this thread is raising. I'll go ahead and edit the first post to say that I don't care about the maps, since that's just bad level design and altering levels is outside the scope of a gameplay mod. Things like a bag of holding, a rework of the armor system, or something like that is a thing that could be done though.

I'll have to make some rough mock-ups to test the ideas, but it is sounding like making monsters drop loot and/or making monsters give XP would go a long way towards improving the combat.
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