Marrub wrote:Spaceman333 wrote:From moment to moment gameplay, certain weapons are simply far more superior than others, rendering some weapons pointless unless I'm intentionally handicapping myself to play with those underwhelming weapons exclusively.
I dunno, I feel like I'm satisfied with the current balance, since everyone keeps giving me entirely conflicting reports on what weapon is the best, heh.
I would still like to know what changes you might have in mind, though. I can always use the feedback.
Hmm, I think thats due to everyone having a different idea what the mod means to them. Many parts of the mod represent different things, whether you intended it or not.
Things like the CBI, movement, upgrades, gauss shotgun and plasma rifle sort of "communicate" implicitly that the mod is about "super powered cybercorp merc, to whom killing demons is a fun field day and he does so with badass style".
Things like revolver, sniper, modal rifle, super shotgun represent that the mod is more about "Default doom marine trying to survive hell's forces with effective, but limited/balanced equipment" experience.
Things like the Magical BFG cannon pull the mod toward the "We Hexen/Heretic now" experience.
This is what I meant when I say the mod is pulling itself into various different directions at once, trying to be everything at once, which results in a wierd mixed bag effect. Which ever direction someone wants the mod to be, the rest of the content will feel out of place.
This is how I envision Lithium:
To me, this mod is about the first option, the "super cybermerc" one. The fast movement combined with infinte ammo, powerful weapons, special abilities and multiple modes/boosters is how I see this mod. As a comparison, it see this as a different take on Project MSX, if you're familiar with that mod. Fast paced action geared towards slaughtermaps and being a fast badass, yet as durable as the regular doomguy in regards how much damage I can tank. Not overpowered by much, but definitely stronger than regular doomguy.
Weapons center around the mod's regular magnetic shotgun as the standard from which everything else draws its sense of balance. All weapons are equally useful and fun to use, come with infinite ammo, in one way or another. Some are more situational, some are general, some excel at certain situations but may be less useful in other situations. Some weapons are keyed to a hotkey as an on-demand action, rather than seperate standalone weapon due to their situational nature, kind of like the melee attack in Halo games, mighty foot in Duke Nukem 3D or a grenade hotkey from modern warfare.
Meanwhile, the CBI provides access to toggle suit systems on and off, an orbital delivery service for consumable boosters to keep me in the fight and to spend points to activate temporary enhancement modes.
To get specific on the weapons to elaborate what I mean... it does sort of mean that I'd be asking for an overhaul of the entire roster. So this is akward and not convenient of me to ask about it, given how much work I imagine it would take and how much stuff would need to be canned or replaced all together to fit my idea of what I'd want to see Lithium as. I'll list them anyway, but I do recognize that my ask is ridiculously demanding.
Charge Fist (Hotkey)
*Requires minimum 1 second of holding the hotkey to charge up a basic punch. A basic punch hits like a shotgun blast and pushes the target away by a few meters.
*If charged for more than 3 seconds, the fully powered punch will hit as hard as a direct hit from a rocketlauncher and send the victim flying several dozen meters away from you.
Cyber Knife (Hotkey) (2 modes of use, toggled in CBI)
*Shock Mode. Pressing the hotkey will let loose a quick knife swipe with a half second cooldown. Hitting an enemy will stun them for 1 second.
*Plasma Mode. Pressing the hotkey will do a quick damaging slash with no cooldown, causing damage to anything in melee range, anytime.
Magnetic Shotgun (Same as original)
*Primary fire = Regular blast. Infinite ammo. The regular, dependable blam-click gun. Can switch to gauss projectiles as usual.
*Alt fire = Zoom
Plasmatic Lance
*Primary fire = Red Plasma Beam
*Alt fire = Green Plasma Rapidfire
(New ammo system: The gun has two capacitors that recharge fully and switch every 30 seconds. Now the gun has infinite ammo, yet is still balanced and can retain its power without needing for limited ammo. Large ammo capacity.)
Rocket/Grenade Gun
*Primary fire = Rocket
*Alt fire = Bouncing Grenade
(New ammo system: The gun has two capacitors that recharge fully and switch every 30 seconds. Now the gun has infinite ammo, yet is still balanced and can retain its power without needing for limited ammo. Medium ammo capacity. Can be switched to fire micro rockets, instead of needing a seperate weapon)
Mag Auto Pistol (Same as original, except 24 ammo instead of 15)
*Primary fire = Fire bullet
*Alt fire = Zoom
Multivulcan
*Primary fire = Poison Bullet Spam
*Alt fire = Freeze/Cryo Bullet Spam
(Since Mag Shotgun can zoom, and Mag Auto Pistol has rapid fire bullet firing, modal rifle is obsolete as fuck. Replace it entirely with an elemental vulcan. Make it be primary focus for the new poison element and also add in cryo/freezing with a very wide spread, super high rate of fire, low damage per shot and a large capacity for ammo. Same ammo system as plasmatic lance or rocket/grenade gun)
Positron Mega Cannon
*Primary fire = Chargeable Focus Beam, penetrates enemies, tons of damage in a straight line.
*Alt fire = Chargeable Blaster Shot, ground shaking explosive shot. tons of damage with a large area of effect.
(New ammo system: The gun has two capacitors that recharge fully and switch every 60 seconds. Now the gun has infinite ammo, yet is still balanced and can retain its power without needing for limited ammo. Small ammo capacity.)
These are just my ideas for weapons that I gave some thought and wrote with rough values. I hope they give an idea of what I think of. Revolver, sniper and laser shotgun... everything they do is already done by other weapons to great extent. Either remove or radically retool them along the lines of the rest of the weapons. Maybe plasma clusterbomb revolver, microwave emitter instead of laser shotty and railgun sniper with a mild BFG-like tracer effect. Just some ideas.
For upgrades, instead of unlocking them, have them available for free from the start. Most activity done in CBI is done deactivating or activating certain modes to adapt to whatever playstyle or abilities I want to focus on. Defence vs agility, flight vs staying grounded, tactical vs general. Meanwhile, earned score is used for temporary boosters or consumable items, like damage overdrive, extra shields, speed boosters, damaging auras, area maps, remote bombs, mines, turrets, radsuits, timestop charges, teleporter to start of level, enhanced ammo recharge speed, extended jet fuel and power, super jump charges and anything else that might sound cool, yet somewhat balanced.
While the vision might not matter, I think the purpose of the project does matter. Anything we humans do is to meet fundamental human needs, so we seek out creative works, hoping to use them as a strategy/method/tool to meet these fundamental human needs. I've found that the best, most satisfying experiences that I keep coming back to are the ones that have a very clear, laser focused purpose for what needs they're trying to cater to. To me, Lithium as I described in the suggestion above, is about my need to feel empowered, to feel mildly challenged, to feel freedom, to have fast action that makes me feel alive and engaged, all the while enjoying the future cybercorp theme/aesthetic of the experience.
Currently, it shows promise of doing it, but the mixed-bag design and the fluxtuating balance of the content kinda goes against it, making it harder to enjoy it in the way I want. It shows promise of meeting fundamental human needs in various ways, but ends up not really delivering on any front properly, resulting in an overall "meh ok" experience. Its the "jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none" effect. The whole project ends up being purposeless and pointless, unless it was supposed to be just a creative outlet with no intention to make anything greater out of it, but just to enjoy the process of creation.
Marrub wrote:Spaceman334 wrote:Then some elements try to mix magic and nonsense, such as the BFG replacement, or the silly upgrades and extra modes/settings that are mostly a joke, which I think hurt the overall experience more than they add to it.
Maybe I'll add a setting to disable the more silly stuff when I get done externalizing the upgrades code. Currently it's not possible to add or remove upgrades at runtime, because the info is rather hard-coded.
I don't feel like there's a problem with having silly things in a serious thing, but maybe that's just me. The extras are just stuff my friends suggested that I thought was funny.
The secret settings and joke modes were funny and I appreciated them too. I browse 4chan too, so some of the references had me laughing. I don't mind those as extras. Assuming the mod would be about the "super cybermerc" primarily, the magical bfg is the only real culprit that would harm the experience of the "super cybermerc", since it feels out of place.
Marrub wrote:Spaceman336 wrote:I think the CBI would work better if worked akin to Super Metroid's suit screen, where I can toggle on or off abilities and occasionally trigger some special systems with the SCR that I earn.
Isn't that essentially what you can do with autogroups + autobuy?
I haven't ever used autobuy, but doesn't autobuy just buy things? Does it also activate/deactivate the upgrades? If so, then my bad.
