a question for "serious" doom players

[dremor8484]

what do you think about the +COUNTITEM, i mean the % completion of items... isn't it a bit overkill ?
there is already "kill all monsters" also "find all secrets"... i have no ocd, but i think people with ocd could see this as a nightmare.

Weapons, ammo, armors don't count
but medpack, health and armor bonus do count... does that mean that to get a 100% a player should resort to self harm ? :/

on the other hand: spheres, lightamps, computer map, and Berserk Pack are rare enough that doesn't feel a drag to me.
do you feel drained "having" to hunt for health and armor bonuses and also medpacks ?

[Enjay]

I'm almost certain that medpacks do not count. Basically, the things that do count should always be collectible, even if you don't need them (like health bonuses). Medpacks/stim packs cannot be picked up if you are at 100+ health but do not have the COUNTITEM flag.

I *think* the only exception might be the computer map which can only be picked up once, but counts as an item. I think.

If you don't like the default behaviour, it's pretty easy to make a mod that removes COUNTITEM from items that you don't want to be part of the item counting tally.


For what it's worth, I find chasing around a map trying to find every last health or armour bonus a bit tedious and either ignore that as a map-play goal or sometimes make a mod that stops them counting as items.

[dremor8484]

you are correct, medpack do not count, also radsuit do not count...
i wrote this topic because i could not figure out the "meaning" of the item%, when there is already the kill and secret (i think quake 1 has no item%)

i already changed my mod to count only items that can always be picked up and go into inventory, while also including the computer map
considering that i made the armor bonus and health potion no longer always being able to be picked up, i excluded those from the count.

[Rachael]

I think the idea with item% was to make a real goal for players to go after in order to fully clear a map, as an exploration task. It's kind of moot, obviously, if you can't actually pick up the item, so it's assigned only to items that you will unconditionally pickup - which mostly applies to powerups and bonuses. So things like health/armor boni, berserk, the various different spheres, etc, those would count. You obviously would not pick up a box of 20 shells if you were already maxed out at 50 shells, so making that a real completionist goal doesn't make much sense unless you want the player to waste their ammo. With medkits/stimpacks it makes even more sense not to count them because the player only picks those up when they are below 100% health, and they do not always have a means to push their health below that value (nor is it desirable, especially if they recently found a soulsphere that puts them at 200%).

[RKD]

I've played quite a handful of wads and map packs for both Doom games and Heretic and I've never bothered with the item%. For me, only kills and secrets are what I'm after. Collecting items as a way of "completion" is totally skipped in my mind.

Maybe I'm not too "serious" of a player then, lol

[Enjay]

Yes, I rarely bother with Items% either. That's why I like to keep COUNTITEM to the big items.

The big items tend to be rare-ish in a map and often well hidden/difficult to reach/in a secret* which, as well as their intrinsic value, tends to make them worth seeking out and it's nice to know you got all of them. If the max item% for a map largely consists of loads of easily missable health/armour bonuses scattered around the map with no real logic to their placement, and no real value in and of themselves, then it just becomes tedious to me. I get Rachael's point that the idea might have been meant to ensure that you have actively scoured every corner of the map but failing to get 100% simply because you ran past a single armour helmet placed awkwardly on a step isn't fun by my standard. And I always forget that armour bonus in the corner at the start of Entryway.

*I acknowledge that finding such an item results in a double-whammy of giving both a secret and item credit, but then it would with the default behaviour too.

[dremor8484]

Maybe I'm not too "serious" of a player then, lol

hum, honestly that was the first word my brain came up with ^^

i play this game from 1993 (at that time: floppy disks, 486dx2 66mhz with no soundblaster so... no sound :'( and of course dos and no mouse, no strafing O_o)
and only recently i started paying attention to item% and i was "flabbergasted"

still confused, i managed to crawl here looking for opinions on something that i did not understand

[RKD]

I also played Doom back in a 486, but I did have a soundblaster card (sb16 I think). You could strafe in DOS ver using Alt + directional keys. What is practically impossible without mouse is to circle-strafe, I believe.

Somewhat related to the main topic, decino made a video not too long ago where he discusses a little about his personal opinion regarding the % count after having done so many blind playthroughs. Maybe worth checking it out, it's a short less-than-5-min video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Gem4_Tnpk