Doom 2 Tweaked - Rebalancing Doom 2 [V1.0]

[ChaingunChaCha]

Hello. This is my first mod for Doom and my first post to the forum here.



Intro:

This mod tweaks the intensity and balance of Doom 2 by subtly changing enemy properties and weapons. I created this as I love revisiting Doom 2 but after playing many other wads it can feel a little easy. This mod aims to up the intensity/difficulty in general and also make you play slightly differently and not rely on the usual tactics for encounters. It's tougher, but fair. And it doesnt stray too far away from vanilla.

Although there are plenty of tweaks, overall there are:

-Tougher/faster monsters
- Better weapons for you
- Quicker weapon switching to cope with the more intense combat.

Full details further down.

Download:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TcwmUs ... sp=sharing

Run the PK3 file with Doom 2.

Credits

A special thanks to "Keklipse" who pointed me in the right direction to start modding Doom. And for code help, feedback and testing.

Feedback

I really enjoyed my runthroughs of Doom 2 maps with this mod but I would be happy to receive any feedback here. It looks like a great community.

Full details of mod changes:

---

// ENEMIES //

- Zombieman: Faster pace. More likely to fire. Less health. More accurate firing but slightly less damage. They are
still fodder but slightly better.

- Shotgunner: More likely to fire. Quicker aim. Tighter shotgun blast. Can be pretty tough in groups.

- Imp: Slightly faster pace. More health. Faster fireball. They keep you on your toes.

- Chaingunner: Faster pace. More health. Takes slightly longer to aim but their chaingun is more lethal.

- Pinky/Spectre: Faster pace. Now these are actually a threat, especially when blocking your movement in packs.

- Cacodemon: Faster at flying. More likely to fire. Quicker aim and faster fireball. Fine on their own but
dangerous in groups.

- Lost Soul: Quicker flight and faster attack. Less health. Don't let these swarm you.

- Hell Knight: Slightly faster walking pace. More lethal projectile. Nothing too difficult.

- Baron of Hell: Faster than Hell Knight. Even more lethal projectile and it is faster.

- Arch Vile: Oh dear. Faster running pace. No chance of pain. Quicker healing of enemies. Quicker flame attack.
Bigger blast of attack. Really, these are how I remember them playing as a kid. They're now probably the biggest
challenge in this mod pack.

- Arachnotron: Faster walking pace. More rapid plasma attack. Enjoy Map 07.

- Mancubus: Tankier. Quicker fireball attack. Much slower too.

- Revenant: Faster running pace. More likely to shoot. Rockets are now faster. Not just a comical spookyboi anymore.
Excellent reactions needed to dodge their homing missiles.

- Pain Elemental: Now explodes when dying as death animation suggests. No more running up close to block the 3
lost souls.

- Cyberdemon: Tankier. Faster walking pace. More aggressive. (It can even shoot 3 missiles and then 3 more.) Less
time between each missile launch. These now feel more like a real boss, although the only real encounter imho is
end of Map 29 or Map 32.

- Spider Mastermind: Much tankier. Much faster walk. More aggressive and likely to shoot. Faster chaingun. This now
feels like a tough boss enemy. Again, imho, the only real encouner with it is on Barrels of Fun.

- Wolfenstein SS: So fast!


// WEAPONS //

- Switching: In general, all weapons now switch faster allowing you to pick your weapon for the enemy/encounter.
Weapons 1-2 are really fast, 3-4 are still fast, 5-6 are slower but still quicker than default. 7 is very slow
for balance. (See BFG notes later.)

- Fist/Chainsaw/Pistol: Unchanged except for faster raise/lower speed.

- Shotgun: Tighter spread.

- Super Shotgun: Slightly tighter spread. Fires 22 "bullets" (default is 20) for extra power. Reloads a tiny bit
quicker.

- Chaingun: Higher rate of fire. Same spread but higher chance of bullets being nearer the center.

- Rocket Launcher: Slightly increased rate of fire. Rockets travel faster. (Does not affect Cyberdemon rockets.)

- Plasma Rifle: Slightly faster plasma projectiles.

- BFG9000: The only weapon that has changed a lot. It now DOES NOT use the player direction/position in the
calculations. It works like the modern Doom BFG where the BFG Ball hurts any demon nearby as it travels. The
explosion also causes damage. So my tip is to shoot not directly at a nearby demon, but past a group of
demons to cause maximum damage. Automaim is turned off to allow fopr this. It can wipe out entire rooms of demons
if done right. The ball is much slower to further cause damage over time. To counter this overpowered BFG, each
time you fire takes 300 cells of ammo. So you only have 2 shots max at a time. Try it out with cheats on Map 7
or 32 to practice.

Thanks for taking time out to check it out.

[PatCatz2004]

will this mod work with other gameplay mods?

[MaxRideWizardLord]

Why make super shotgun even more brokely overpowered? It already was meta that you'd use for 90% of time. I can already see to never ever use chaingun and normal shotgun after that. If anything it'd make it use same amount of pellets as shotgun does, which is 14, that would be a proper balance. Or SSG shoot 16 pellets and make normal shotgun shoot one extra pellet in exchange.

[ChaingunChaCha]

will this mod work with other gameplay mods?

This should work with any vanilla wads. I've tested a few. It may throw the balance of other wads though as this was designed for Doom 2's campaign. It will likely make easy wads into a good challenge but harder wads might end up too tough. If used with other mods that change weapons or enemies then it may conflict. I'll aim to test it with some popular ones. I usually play pretty vanilla so I'll look up what mods get used often and try it out.

Why make super shotgun even more brokely overpowered?

Thanks for the feedback on the Super Shotgun. Appreciated. It is more powerful but with upgraded enemies and other weapons being quickswith and buffed, bizarrely I used it less than on vanilla on my test plays. That said I'll look into tweaking this weapon and testing to see if is too OP. I could make this weapon one of the slower switching ones to compensate for its power or nerf it a little as you suggested. Thanks again for the feedback as it is really useful to a new modder.

[MaxRideWizardLord]

[

Why make super shotgun even more brokely overpowered?

Thanks for the feedback on the Super Shotgun. Appreciated. It is more powerful but with upgraded enemies and other weapons being quickswith and buffed, bizarrely I used it less than on vanilla on my test plays. That said I'll look into tweaking this weapon and testing to see if is too OP. I could make this weapon one of the slower switching ones to compensate for its power or nerf it a little as you suggested. Thanks again for the feedback as it is really useful to a new modder.

The balance between weapons is an important task too, otherwise one weapon will be too biased or overempathized, which is no good. Given that SSG already have FASTER reload speed and tighter cone of fire, which completely negates it's primary penalties\weakness, giving it even MORE pullets on top of it just makes the weapon completely broken and unfairly advantageous in comparison to both shotgun, chaingun and some even rocket launcher. Given the fact that SSG is already a powerful single blast burst damage weapon, it's already have it's niche of purpose where i'd be more advantageous to use it over shotgun, since it can be exploited to shoot once up close and then take a cover for reload and come back for the second blast, something that you can't do with shotgun and chaingun because these two require an constant concentration aiming than mere peak-shot-hide-peak-shot-hide-repeat.

The BFG also consume way too much ammo. It got powerful but that doesn't make it that much of a fun weapon knowing that you can only use it like once or twice in the whole game. A shot that completely wastes your ammo, or in two shot if you have backpack, isn't really worth it since there hardly ever a room in vanile Doom 2 that have too many monsters tightly placed in one area, they are mostly spread throughout whole map. You might as well just use plasmagun for the rest of time. Imho 60 of ammo would work just as good, a bit of seeking tracers that hit enemies as the ball flies and "explosion" damage on impact is not a good enough reason to make the gun consume 300 ammo per shot. Actually, I think it should consume 50 ammo instead, just like BFG10000 from Quake 2, which behave exactly as you describe - a slow moving ball that damage anyone as it flies and does aoe impact damage, while still save it's invisible tracers of vanila BFG9000 of doom.

[ChaingunChaCha]

The balance between weapons is an important task too...

Thank you for the constructive feedback @MaxRideWizardLord - I'll look to play around with the Super Shotgun and the BFG some more. I appreciate it that you have gone in depth with your feedback.

[FGsouL]

Hey CCC! You are the first modder who made bfg work as modern bfg I guess so thank you so much for that! Im mostly using beautiful doom but your mod downt work with it any idea how to work this with beautiful doom? I really needed modern bfg for classic doom for years!

[LossForWords]

The balance between weapons is an important task too...

Thank you for the constructive feedback @MaxRideWizardLord - I'll look to play around with the Super Shotgun and the BFG some more. I appreciate it that you have gone in depth with your feedback.

IMO the BFG deals a shit ton of damage, and with it's slower speed, and high tracer-spewing, is fantastic for clearing rooms without entering them.
50 cells is too generous.
So if you ask me, you should cut it down to 200, so it's three shots.

And make the fist silent.

EDIT: My bad, i didn't notice this thread was old before bumping it again.