DoomRPG Rebalance [DoomRPG + DoomRL Arsenal Extended build]

[lucker42]

Hello! First of all, I'm really really impressed at how far this pack has come in the last 2 months alone. The update rhythm is insane and so many things have been ironed out, from the formerly kinda confusing difficulty choices which are now clear as day, the compatibility additions and all these interactions fixed, to the launcher automatically helping with the load order, these are all those things i appreciate a LOT. This is a very impressive project and I'm digging it.

Now I have two questions before I update my game:

1) Is map difficulty tied to the Character or save file? When I load a saved character into a new game, will the maps start at Level one, or adapt accordingly to the character level?

2) Can I save my character, then update the game through launcher, and then reload the character into the updated game?

Thank you for your time and for this TC!

Thanks for the feedback. And I apologize for the long response.

1) The difficulty of the game consists of several things, next in order:
- map level (this parameter increases as you pass, but is not saved in the character save file, it must be adjusted when you start a new game (Starting Map Level) the same character. This is found in: DoomRPG Options -> Difficulty or DoomRPG Options -> DoomRL Monsters Options. This indicator is displayed in the Teleport in Outpost. You can check it there;
- Dangel Level (similar to the above, but this option applies only to modify DoomRL Monsters and Adaptive difficulty);
- Character Level (this option is tied to the character's save)
- The number of WADs that you want to pass (this affects the difficulty curve during the passage), adjustable in: DoomRPG Options -> Misc or DoomRPG Options -> DoomRL Monsters Options.

2) Yes.

[TristanH]

This is a great mod. But I do have a problem... When I exit E1M8 my credits and modules are very low and I'm fatally injured. Is there a way to fix it?

[lucker42]

Update 1.30f:

- balance fixes for DoomRL Monsters - now the monsters from Armageddon will not appear until the middle stage of the game (for Adaptive difficulty);
- update compatibility patch for Corruption Cards v4.3;
- minor balance changes;
- bug fixes (from the "issues" tab of GitHub).

The last buld can be downloading from the link in the top thread.

This is a great mod. But I do have a problem... When I exit E1M8 my credits and modules are very low and I'm fatally injured. Is there a way to fix it?

So the character dies after e1m8?

[dinopoke]

Just signed up to say that this modpack is amazing. Really having a lot of fun with it. I was wondering if it was possible to add compatibility with Shades of Doom? I was hoping to play it with LegenDoom as well. There is compatibility with it and the base DoomRL Arsenal. I find that DoomRL Arsenal Monster Pack doesn't seem to have a lot of enemies unless you play on the higher difficulties.

[lucker42]

Update 1.30g:

- added Arena Transport;
- added new arena map (thanks to Demiosis);
- Increased starting cap for Rocket Ammo;
- Increased Rocket Ammo capacity for Demolitionist;
- minor bugs fixes.

The last buld can be downloading from the link in the top thread.

Just signed up to say that this modpack is amazing. Really having a lot of fun with it. I was wondering if it was possible to add compatibility with Shades of Doom? I was hoping to play it with LegenDoom as well. There is compatibility with it and the base DoomRL Arsenal. I find that DoomRL Arsenal Monster Pack doesn't seem to have a lot of enemies unless you play on the higher difficulties.

Perhaps in the future, when I have more free time.

[clumsyd]

Hello. This modpack is amazing, been playing for >100 hours and counting.
Here's some observations, potentially obsolete. I prefer playing conservatively, with all settings on default, adaptive difficulty. No natural stat leveling.
- harder wads get easier, and the start is always the hardest. It was especially evident in earlier versions when monsters barely dropped any ammo. Now the ammo drops are way more generous, but when you kill hordes of monsters like in slaughterfest, you just get way overpowered quickly. Tons of cheesy boss enemies that can't even reach you can get you dozens of aug items and modules. Large piles of ammo and items, like in slaughterfest yet again, can get you more turret parts and modpacks, even though you might not even need them anymore. The mod kind of falls apart in slaughter-type wads, and works best in more modest mapsets.
- (seeming?) lack of build diversity. It seems that the mathematically best option is to equalize every stat, and it's just the class that makes a difference. I never used the summons, used the attack skills just a few times, and my most used skills were Magnetize and Enviro-shield. Sometimes Heal and Recall* in the beginning. Perhaps the skills themselves should be buffed, but at a larger module cost and with level / Energy stat requirement? Maybe add a difference in starting stats for each class, or add a "sub-class" selection for that in the beginning, like the races in TES? If there's a way to get a solid "summoner build" for example, let me know. And the turret... I found it useful back when the ammo was super scarce, but now after a 10 hour long playthrough I can't get anything at all out of it. I end up stockpiling just about 100-150 turret parts in a single megawad (with Luck constantly upped), that's not enough, and I tend to reset my character every time because...
- ...the time it takes to save the game get ridiculous over time. It gets unbearable after 5-15 hours of "total time", depending on the wad, and getting a ~5x more powerful PC didn't solve it. Preserving the character is all cool but it would be LOVELY to preserve the map completion state as well. Has it been implemented? I started a lengthy playthrough after updating a month ago and still haven't finished the wad, so not planning to update for now.
- is it just me or the stims got really rare, and less useful too? Things used to be way more difficult a couple years ago, the stims were pretty much essential and all over the place.
- thank god the modpack limit bug was fixed, it was a huge game changer.
- there were some texture bugs, even in IWADs. It was most evident on plutonia map08. Maybe caused by Lexicon, maybe caused by wrong load order.

[dinopoke]

Just signed up to say that this modpack is amazing. Really having a lot of fun with it. I was wondering if it was possible to add compatibility with Shades of Doom? I was hoping to play it with LegenDoom as well. There is compatibility with it and the base DoomRL Arsenal. I find that DoomRL Arsenal Monster Pack doesn't seem to have a lot of enemies unless you play on the higher difficulties.

Perhaps in the future, when I have more free time.

Looking into it, it seems like Shades of Doom is just a cosmetic mod. I hoped for something that added new mechanics. You can ignore my request.

VDP-MonsterRandomizer adds a lot of new stuff but apparently, it's quite unstable with DoomRL Arsenal. I'll try out Pandemonia Monsters and DeHacked Attack instead.

[Imp Hunter]

I think there's a sprite conflit on the Harvester on Pandemonium. His fireballs show some shield pickup sprites.

EDIT: Nevermind, seems like the issue was solved in the latest build.

EDIT 2: The harder monsters from Pandemonia might need some rebalancing (Chaotic monsters and stuff), they seem to be dropping the same money and xp as the regular ones. The pursuers are kinda annoying, but fair imo.

[TurboBabyShakes5000]

I am a huge fan of this mod and very grateful for your continued work on it. There is an UNHOLY amount of variables at play here and it cant be easy. That being said, I hope that with my hundreds of hours of playtesting and desire to help I could make a few suggestions without offending. Please append a very much implied 'IMO' to the end of each item. I have been quietly playing this mod since 2015, so excuse the wall of text. It kinda like a crimp in a hose suddenly coming undone and all the back water coming out at once.
1) Leveling is too frequent and the rewards per level are somewhat underwhelming. A steeper level curve with more tangible increases per may make leveling up more exciting. The curve of the point cost is also a bit arcane and disappointing to spend. You should be able to increase a stat more than once every few levels. One point should be one point an not a variable fraction of a point, the scarcity should not come from the ability to increase them per level, but in the frequency of levels themselves. Becoming level 20 is a thing that should have some more weight to it.
2) There is a perfect storm of weedy starting weapons and sharp monster HP scaling curve that overrides the wad author's intended ammunition availability very quickly, and if one doesn't dump everything they have into capacity, maps become a Tyson playthrough in very short order. Monsters can become more challenging alongside player growth without rendering a double barreled shotgun blast to the face meaningless and taking away from the overall Dakka of the weaponry.
3) How does strength make your pistol/plasma gun more deadly? Why does it not effect capacity/melee damage and equippable weapon/armors instead? It could also effect how much one is encumbered by their equipment/loadout and result in a slight speed boost with investment. The amount of weapons you could carry at the start alone would be an incentive to invest, even subtracting global damage. 6 weapons being the your start and end capacity irrespective of strength seems odd. Starting with 3 and increasing from there seems more of game changer. You could get rid of the capacity stat altogether that way. Projectile weapons are largely more effective due to one's hand-eye co-ordination and would be better represented by agility. Speaking of agility, you already start out really darned fast, lowering the player speed curve in deference to ones ability to aim effectively could be two birds with one stone and incentivize agility investment . Defense is not a quality inherent to an individual marine, but a function of the armor they have equipped (although they could have higher stamina/constitution [vitality]). By the same token luck is not a measurable or quantifiable quality that a person can have, so a global drop rate effected by overall difficulty, monster difficulty and maybe a percentage increase every ten levels eliminates another unnecessary stat. Regen seems already adequately modified by vitality and energy and its variables could be covered by both. This is not an attempt at irritating nit pickery, but to simplify something that has grown burdensome in complexity over the years. I feel like this would make the game simpler, deadlier and a bit more stramlined.
4) Natural stat leveling and point buy leveling should be either/or. Skills could be awarded at static levels and/or the capacity to use them could be mediated by energy level, incentivizing energy investment and rewarding specialization. This also makes leveling up more of an event. This would call for some fine tuning of the nat stat curvature rates. Players should be able to prioritize the curvature of preferred stats as is but have a limited amount of total increases to nat stat curvature in total that they could make.
5) Why are demons from the pit of Tataurus dropping filthy human dollar monies? The automatic deposits into your account from a grateful UAC is a more elegant and less cluttered solution. Credits or (Merits?) could be the measurement of UAC's confidence in your being something other than a loot drop for the next marine/demon and worthy the added ammo/equipment. In other words a measure of your worth as an operator and not a credit score. Are you trying to fight the forces of hell or attempting to shore up your credit score to secure a business loan? The alternative is they are selling weapons/ammunition to their own soldiers at a profit during a time where humanity's very existence is at stake, which is even more insane than we are today.
6) The risk/reward ratio of missions, especially early rank is skewed. They dont become worthwhile until much higher ranks. Ammunition payouts alongside the common loot would alleviate this. I know you can spend credits on ammo, but if you have it set to shop on base only to maintain a balance, you get stuck in this out of ammo, return to base, reset map, out of ammo loop that significantly slows progression.
7) No marine's toe tag should ever read "Blinded by HUD rank up notification, then several fireballs to what remains of face'.

[baphometdoomer]

This might be a stupid question, but does the HUD in this mod only work for 16:9 resolutions? It works flawlessly on my laptop in 1920x1080, but on my 5:4 monitor and on my laptop, when I set it to 1280x1024 I'm missing a lot of the HUD and some overlapping of HUD items. I like to use my 5:4 monitor because I've always played DOOM on a square monitor. If anyone knows the answer to this I'd greatly appreciate it.

[lucker42]

Update 1.30h:

- balance changes: on highly populated maps now reduced drop from monsters and bosses (for maps with more than 250 monsters and 4 bosses).

The last buld can be downloading from the link in the top thread.

This might be a stupid question, but does the HUD in this mod only work for 16:9 resolutions? It works flawlessly on my laptop in 1920x1080, but on my 5:4 monitor and on my laptop, when I set it to 1280x1024 I'm missing a lot of the HUD and some overlapping of HUD items. I like to use my 5:4 monitor because I've always played DOOM on a square monitor. If anyone knows the answer to this I'd greatly appreciate it.

You can adjust the HUD for a 5:4 monitor. In the DoomRPG Options -> HUD settings. However, you will have to configure each item manually.

I am a huge fan of this mod and very grateful for your continued work on it. There is an UNHOLY amount of variables at play here and it cant be easy. That being said, I hope that with my hundreds of hours of playtesting and desire to help I could make a few suggestions without offending. Please append a very much implied 'IMO' to the end of each item. I have been quietly playing this mod since 2015, so excuse the wall of text. It kinda like a crimp in a hose suddenly coming undone and all the back water coming out at once.
..........................................................

Hello. This modpack is amazing, been playing for >100 hours and counting.
Here's some observations, potentially obsolete. I prefer playing conservatively, with all settings on default, adaptive difficulty. No natural stat leveling.
..........................................................

Thanks for the feedback. But I can't promise the realization of all these things. However, perhaps some of it can be considered in the future.

[Bobby]

How do I play with custom maps? Also, can the version of Wadsmoosh here combine any custom maps?

[PurpleRhino83]

This looks like a sweet modpack kinda deal with a maintained DoomRPG. Wish I found this sooner. Will give a try soon and might post some feedback too. Thanks

[aGuyNamedKeith]

This mod is absolutely brilliant, but there's a bug, or at least, what I think is a bug, that has annoyed me to no end. Basically, while I was playing the mod (with Doom RLA and Monster Pack added, alongside Graveyard, War Trophies, and a Floppy Disk Full of Midis), I would find that I was unable to pick up stimpacks, even with under 100 health. I decided to start a new game with a new character (Marine class), with Knee-Deep In The Dead. Initially, I could pick up stimpacks again just fine. But while playing Toxic Refinery, I suddenly couldn't pick up any again, yes, even when I was under 100 health. I still love playing this mod, but that has been a thorn in my side from a while. Please look into it, and good luck on the update.

[lucker42]

How do I play with custom maps? Also, can the version of Wadsmoosh here combine any custom maps?

Yes, you can. Connect custom WAD after WadSmoosh and it will replace MAP01-MAP32 (as usual).

This mod is absolutely brilliant, but there's a bug, or at least, what I think is a bug, that has annoyed me to no end. Basically, while I was playing the mod (with Doom RLA and Monster Pack added, alongside Graveyard, War Trophies, and a Floppy Disk Full of Midis), I would find that I was unable to pick up stimpacks, even with under 100 health. I decided to start a new game with a new character (Marine class), with Knee-Deep In The Dead. Initially, I could pick up stimpacks again just fine. But while playing Toxic Refinery, I suddenly couldn't pick up any again, yes, even when I was under 100 health. I still love playing this mod, but that has been a thorn in my side from a while. Please look into it, and good luck on the update.

Thanks for feedback! In this mod, when you pick up first aid kits - they are taken with you. In the character menu you can see the maximum number of portable first-aid kits, and they are also displayed on the HUD. To use them, you must use the "Quick Heal" button (the "H" button is the default).