Hideous Destructor 4.10.0b

[Burktross]

EDIT: Burktross: Not ignoring you, just letting anyone else comment before I say or do anything!

I feel you, don't worry

Edit: I've been testing changing spirit armor by dropping it down to as low as 48 as I mentioned, but I'm finding that I can still tank a lot of damage without losing spirit armor-- even a grenade exploding in my hand! I suspect line 353 of /zscript/player/damage.zs might have something to do with it.

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if(inpain>0)inpain=max(inpain,3);

Because removal of spiritual armor occurs as an "else if" to this block, if we're in pain, we cannot lose a spirit armor pip. Is my understanding correct?

[ZikShadow]

I personally feel that the spiritual armor and blues in HDest is fine for the moment.

Sure, the spiritual armor may seem overpowered allowing you to waltz through high amounts of damages you probably shouldn't have, but here's the thing, you're also still susceptible to being incapped even with the spirit armor on. You could easily hit a point where you're downed without any way to get back up before the enemy kicks your spirit armor off and you finally die. Not to mention relying on RNG to protect you constantly is also not healthy, it won't save players from playing terribly, especially on maps where you can take an hour or two to finish, that armor will not last very long. It's a minor stress relieve in runs where I don't do midlevel saves (NFRs), but tension remains in the air. You still won't survive dancing in front of a cybie or mastermind just because you got spirit armor on. Plus, it's rare! Even in a map filled to the brim with bonuses in vanilla, you could very much find absolutely nothing anyways, so the protection layer is appropriate for the amount of armor you could get.

Blues completely skips regular healing procedure, that is correct, but it also balances it out by completely halting you from using stims. Stimpacks straight up does not work if you're infused with blues. That means if you're really badly hurt, you're not gonna be able to restore your base HP as fast, which could very much lead to your demise in the middle of combat where keeping your base HP is critical to staying alive outside of wounds or burns. Random heals are also RNG-based, so relying on them to keep yourself topped up is also not recommended. It very much acts more like a sidegrade than an absolute upgrade for this reason.

[whateve]

Am I the only one that feels that blue magic and spirit armor are kind of OP? Once I get either it kind of just trivializes the game from there on out-- and if I have both at the same time? Forget it!

I wouldn't go so far to say it trvializes encounters, but I tend to agree. I use an addon where it replaces soulspheres and megas with potions and I reduce the number it would originally drop. The UaS addon adds a trauma pack and wound care, but with blues the medical systems becomes far less interesting. The potion text says something along the lines "Not made by human hands, beware" but as far as I can tell you could chug a dozen bottles with no real consequences. Stims becoming less effective or useless is a cost for sure, but most every time I get downed by a surprise jackboot who then rolls up to kick me to death, neither blues nor stims are quick enough to save me.

I don't dislike it, I just wish it was more interesting, with more reasons to not use it.

[Burktross]

I personally feel that the spiritual armor and blues in HDest is fine for the moment.

Sure, the spiritual armor may seem overpowered allowing you to waltz through high amounts of damages you probably shouldn't have, but here's the thing, you're also still susceptible to being incapped even with the spirit armor on. You could easily hit a point where you're downed without any way to get back up before the enemy kicks your spirit armor off and you finally die. Not to mention relying on RNG to protect you constantly is also not healthy, it won't save players from playing terribly, especially on maps where you can take an hour or two to finish, that armor will not last very long. It's a minor stress relieve in runs where I don't do midlevel saves (NFRs), but tension remains in the air. You still won't survive dancing in front of a cybie or mastermind just because you got spirit armor on. Plus, it's rare! Even in a map filled to the brim with bonuses in vanilla, you could very much find absolutely nothing anyways, so the protection layer is appropriate for the amount of armor you could get.

Blues completely skips regular healing procedure, that is correct, but it also balances it out by completely halting you from using stims. Stimpacks straight up does not work if you're infused with blues. That means if you're really badly hurt, you're not gonna be able to restore your base HP as fast, which could very much lead to your demise in the middle of combat where keeping your base HP is critical to staying alive outside of wounds or burns. Random heals are also RNG-based, so relying on them to keep yourself topped up is also not recommended. It very much acts more like a sidegrade than an absolute upgrade for this reason.

You are not able to tank things that would one-tap you normally, sure, but encounters falling short of this-- much of Doom I for example-- are made much easier by never having to drop your guard to bandage up mid-combat (which replaces the other aspect of stims' utility). You cannot play HD like it's classic Doom with blues and spirit armor, but the punishment for poor aim, reaction time, and positioning are all decreased severely. Blues-- especially the 777 from a soulsphere-- will without question last you until you are able to get the next one; the same for spirit armor, which is scarcely removed by anything less damaging than a single attack that would insta-incap you. In short, blues and spirit armor remove the potential for you to die via "death by a thousand cuts," both during single encounters and over the course of campaigns; I feel the game really suffers without the long term tension and suspense around maintaining health as a resource.

In addition to trivializing the implications of taking damage mid-combat, it also trivializes resource management. Removing the need for maintaining adequate medical and stim provisions for emergencies is a large weight off your shoulders, both physically and mentally. With how long either buff lasts, the medkit will hardly ever be as important again.

[ZikShadow]

You cannot play HD like it's classic Doom with blues and spirit armor, but the punishment for poor aim, reaction time, and positioning are all decreased severely. Blues-- especially the 777 from a soulsphere-- will without question last you until you are able to get the next one; the same for spirit armor, which is scarcely removed by anything less damaging than a single attack that would insta-incap you. In short, blues and spirit armor remove the potential for you to die via "death by a thousand cuts," both during single encounters and over the course of campaigns; I feel the game really suffers without the long term tension and suspense around maintaining health as a resource.

In addition to trivializing the implications of taking damage mid-combat, it also trivializes resource management. Removing the need for maintaining adequate medical and stim provisions for emergencies is a large weight off your shoulders, both physically and mentally. With how long either buff lasts, the medkit will hardly ever be as important again.

Spirit armor's durability is a random roll. "Scarcely removed" is easily subjective experience in this regard, 'cause you can lose it not 5 minutes from acquiring one if you're unlucky and that one guy's shot breaks the thing. Also, you can still die from "thousand cuts", in a way. Not having stims will kill you if the enemy keeps up their attack and you're not taking cover as much to compensate for the slower regeneration.

This is, of course, not counting the blursphere, which sets you on fire if you got blues on. Players here are put in an alignment choice of sort with the artifacts, with neutral giving you full stim benefit, blues having long lasting healing, and blurs being The Precious. The blursphere is one of the most powerful items in HDest, allowing you to kill entire maps just by waltzing around (theoretically, though it's still faster to shoot). Using blues would completely deny you from this awesome power. Naturally, holy power having incredible long lasting appeal is done to counterbalance the blur's sheer catastrophe potential.

[Matt]

In short, blues and spirit armor remove the potential for you to die via "death by a thousand cuts," both during single encounters and over the course of campaigns; I feel the game really suffers without the long term tension and suspense around maintaining health as a resource.

Ironically this description reminds me of HD way back before the bleeding system was introduced - it had similar hitpoint regeneration as now but you could always eventually passively get back to perfect health, and damage was just regular damage. Changing the focus to fresh starts and higher-stakes but more localized risks (basically the slower precursor to the sort of health regen we see in 2010s-era CoD-likes) was actually a design goal back then.

Of course, the player was a lot less mobile then than now...

Anyway, I think the supernatural stuff should be fairly wildly supernaturally game-changing, though that's not a promise I won't change anything in the near future. (Another irony: the discussions since the original comment have so far resulted in a *buff* to spiritual armour, causing bleeding to attackers and preventing babuins from painlocking isolated players indefinitely. This might need some tweaking so shotgun guys don't just drop after a few shots.)

[Burktross]

Spirit armor's durability is a random roll. "Scarcely removed" is easily subjective experience in this regard, 'cause you can lose it not 5 minutes from acquiring one if you're unlucky and that one guy's shot breaks the thing.

It's not pure, circumstance-agnostic RNG. Your potential to lose spirit armor is based on whether damage received in a single attack (after armor reduction) is greater than a random number from 7 to 148 and only if you are not currently in pain. Even with green armor, this means a lot of standard, non-incapacitating attacks have a fat chance of actually breaking spirit armor. I encourage you to download HD Debug Counters (attached), enable the magic display to view your spirit armor, and summon imps and zombiemen just to see how long it takes them to remove a pip without outright killing you.

As for the blursphere, I won't argue with that. Frankly I think all of the supernatural elements need to have more salient drawbacks or at the very least shorter windows in which they provide advantage. As I speak I have just shot an invuln sphere in e2m7 and I am now letting the arch vile complete the map for me.

(Another irony: the discussions since the original comment have so far resulted in a *buff* to spiritual armour, causing bleeding to attackers and preventing babuins from painlocking isolated players indefinitely. This might need some tweaking so shotgun guys don't just drop after a few shots.)

Lovely, now I can realize my dreams of being a walking trigger_hurt in both blursphere and blue runs :^)

[ZikShadow]

I encourage you to download HD Debug Counters (attached), enable the magic display to view your spirit armor, and summon imps and zombiemen just to see how long it takes them to remove a pip without outright killing you.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... -40-01.mp4
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... -21-17.mp4

2 seconds for zombiemans, 8 for imps. Like I said, you may get hours of protection all the way down to seconds depending on the random roll. It can go either way.

[Matt]

I was just trying out how the new bleeding effect nerfs shotgunguys and had them shoot me unarmoured except for a single spiritualarmour.

First one killed me in like 5 shots.

Second took... it felt like a couple dozen hits (and about thrice as many shots total) before it died and I was able to get up and recover.

[ZikShadow]

As I speak I have just shot an invuln sphere in e2m7 and I am now letting the arch vile complete the map for me.

Archangels are very powerful in that you could turn the table on the enemy and have your own army at your side, but at the same time these "allies" have no sense of friendly fire restraint and would be more than happy to block your path (which can be deadly in combat encounters if you need to run from cover to cover). A Krang/Arachnotron as your ally sounds good on paper until the thing thunderbusts an enemy sitting in front of you and end up busting your caboose as well. I've spoken with many that would consider them to be a liability instead and even made addons to make invulspheres unbreakable because of how self deadly their friendship can be on maps with hundreds to thousands of enemies.

Unrelated to gameplay balance, I have my own reasons to not use the invulsphere as an army recruitment powerup as often. Maps with hundreds of enemies could easily lag because of all the smoke effects, and I usually only really need the army for one or two particularly hard sections.

Perhaps it's my perspective on the problem being blurred from playing mapsets like Plutonia, Disjunction, or Valiant over lighter sets like Doom 1, but it does feel like the balance is good enough for me currently. Making the supernatural stuff not as powerful or with even more drawbacks would pretty much kill runs in these tougher mapsets.

[ValeriePalerie]

I enjoy the 'ecosystem' of supernatural artifacts a lot, and how it dovetails into creating your own difficulty via conducts. I still want to beat all of Doom 1 without magicks, and that sort of ratcheting, self-induced challenge is part of what I love about this mod and how that runs through every system from weapons to settings to artifacts and even the classic difficulty selection. Basically, I find complaints about certain objects being overpowered similar to complaints about classes/weapons in Souls games being such, in that the short answer I tend to give is "then don't use them", though I understand that's a very flippant response

[Burktross]

I encourage you to download HD Debug Counters (attached), enable the magic display to view your spirit armor, and summon imps and zombiemen just to see how long it takes them to remove a pip without outright killing you.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... -40-01.mp4
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... -21-17.mp4

2 seconds for zombiemans, 8 for imps. Like I said, you may get hours of protection all the way down to seconds depending on the random roll. It can go either way.

Yeah, you can get one-tapped for absurd damage, but that is not the norm and I don't think balancing had ought to be done around edge cases (otherwise zombiemen themselves would be extremely op!! ) Damage exceeding 20 is highly unlikely for a zm66 against green armor. I added logging to see damage received versus the rng threshold for spirit armor breakage. If I had retained one iota of information from my probability and stats courses I would run more tests and calculate the odds, but unfortunately that's not happening tonight.

Here are two sessions of me waiting for a zombieman to mow me down with a zm66
https://pastebin.com/XGV2qpna

Basically, I find complaints about certain objects being overpowered similar to complaints about classes/weapons in Souls games being such, in that the short answer I tend to give is "then don't use them", though I understand that's a very flippant response

I understand the feeling, and I do do this with most supernatural objects, but to be honest I don't like situations in which I intentionally must gimp myself to have a challenge. Call it poor self control :^). I've modified my local version of the pk7 to nerf blues and spirit armor, as both changes are trivial; if I knew where to begin I'd do the same for blurspheres, summoning talismans, and archangels.

Archangels are very powerful in that you could turn the table on the enemy and have your own army at your side, but at the same time these "allies" have no sense of friendly fire restraint and would be more than happy to block your path

I understand where you're coming from, but an army of monsters that may accidentally kill you (at least while enemies remain; and in the presence of resurrected hordes of allies, that would not be long, I'd think) is still less dangerous than an army of monsters that are trying their damnedest to kill you.

I was just trying out how the new bleeding effect nerfs shotgunguys and had them shoot me unarmoured except for a single spiritualarmour.
First one killed me in like 5 shots.
Second took... it felt like a couple dozen hits (and about thrice as many shots total) before it died and I was able to get up and recover.

What do you think about the bleeding effect consuming blues in order to function?

[ZikShadow]

I feel like this discussion is running in circles. We could compare notes until the cows comes home, but at the end of the day we're arguing on an item whose whole property is inherently random in nature. The edge case of getting one tapped could also be countered with an edge case where it just refuses to break no matter what. Like I said, it's random!

One solution is to completely overhaul the spirit armor's properties so it'll be more consistent and less chance-based everytime you take a hit, but I don't really see that happening any time soon. Reducing the random roll chance could work to make the spirit armor more vulnerable, but there's also a risk of turning an already rare drop (of which is also random, you may or may not find it at all in a row of bonuses) into a much less useful item. I personally prefer the spiritual armor the way it is, but if you disagree, then so be it so, I've got nothing else.

Invulsphere's usability depends on the situation. You could break it and letting an archangel out, or you could just use it normally. Both have their ups and downs. It is indeed a positive to have an army by your side, but like I said, you do need to account for their move with yours. If you're not careful, you can get blasted by your resurrected allies. I fail to see how this is overpowered when you get a positive and a negative.

[Burktross]

I feel like this discussion is running in circles. We could compare notes until the cows comes home, but at the end of the day we're arguing on an item whose whole property is inherently random in nature. The edge case of getting one tapped could also be countered with an edge case where it just refuses to break no matter what. Like I said, it's random!

As someone who has put a lot of time into TTRPGs, war games, and X-COM, I don't think that the presence of RNG precludes reasonable balancing decisions, but I agree that we're going in circles.

One solution is to completely overhaul the spirit armor's properties so it'll be more consistent and less chance-based everytime you take a hit, but I don't really see that happening any time soon.

I can dig it. It being a usable inventory item that provides a tactically deployable, strictly temporary (and appropriately buffed, perhaps more than Matt is doing as we speak) boon would be nice.

[Matt]

Balancing decisions in HD usually come about on a "without this correction a patently absurd gameplay-breaking scenario that cannot be excused by any diegetic explanation is demonstrated to happen" basis, not a "reasonable" one. :V

So far the spiritual armour problem has been the only one that has met that high standard in this discussion.