Gameplay Mods • Re: DOOMablo: a looter-shooter DOOM (v0.10a - Oh, yes)

Spoiler: Long read about me being a newbie game designer

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So I agree that damage affixes are the best ones in the current build. This needs to be changed. I want to make the weapons varied, not damage-centric.
The problem itself is that the monsters' health is scaled with their level, but weapons' damage is not. The damage affix is the only thing that allows you to catch up with them. I initially made it so that only the affixed monstrocities are scaled, but it's not a solution anyway.
So... I think the suggestion about general damage scaling for the weapons is good. I did it, along with the general scaling of all the monsters' HP values according to their level.

Spoiler: How does it look like: comparing lvl 1 shotgun with lvl 100 one

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The scaling itself works the following way: the health of a monster roughly doubles each 20 levels. That means that lvl20 zombie has 40 HP, lvl 40 has 80, and so on. The same applies to weapon damage. The monster's health rarity increase is applied after the scaling. Moreover, the values are slightly (really slightly) randomized now, so you may find e.g. a plasma rifle with 38-115 damage and another plasma gun with 43-108 damage, both on the same level and without damage affixes taken into account.
Speaking of that, the damage affixes got reworked, too:

• There are no +min and +max affixes anymore, only a single +dmg one which affects both the min and max damage. The reason behind it is that you most probably don't care about min/max in particular, but do care about general damage. In that sense old +min and +max system is the same. Moreover, +min may be worse, as it is more restricted.
• Old damage affixes added plain values, like +2 min damage. The new +dmg affix affects the percentage of the damage in general, and looks like "+3.5% damage".
• Old damage affixes could increase the damage up to x2 (+100%). The new ones start from +0.5% and are restricted to +20% (exact value may be changed though).
• The base chaingun deals 4-7 damage. With the new damage affix it may be made, like, 4.2-7.35 damage (with +5% affix). The DOOM damage model relies on whole values only, so it's not possible to deal "4.2 of damage" - but I managed to circumvent that with a new damage calculation and 4.2 is really different from 4 now (the damage is still whole numbered). Even +0.5% dmg will have gameplay effect (albeit minor one).
• The damage affix (and only itself, for now) is no more bound to the item level. That means that you may now find both lvl1 item with +20% damage, and lvl 100 item with +0.5%. It was not the case before. I think that will allow for interesting choices, as max level weapons' dmg affixes are not better per se from now on.
• Since there were two +dmg affixes before, they took 2 affix slots if you rolled both. Current affix consumes only one, so you can have one more affix for the same rarity. I don't know yet if it is good, but it sounds as if it is.

But... The more I do, the more I see that it causes a domino effect. All of my changes break existing systems. Here's what is broken by this:

• Current leveling system is trash with those changes. If you can receive lvl 10-15 items, lvl15 ones WILL be better than lvl10 ones because of the scaling. That means I should rework the leveling system. Maybe I should just stick with good ol' experience levels. And I thought that my "level artifacts" were interesting and original...
• Current drops are trash, mostly because of this "min/max item level" thing. I think it should be removed, and you should have only one item level.
• Moreover, the drops are too abundant now. This is because they're tied to the monster's health. I can't do it any other way, because I don't know which monster packs are you using it with.
• Current map-placed items are always more rare and have higher level than the average drop. It was made like that so that you still wanted to explore the secrets and search for weapons even if any enemy can still drop any weapon. I think the rarity thing is OK as it is for that matter, but the level one is not.
• The damage changes have COMPLETELY broken the "full random" mode, because if you find even a lvl80 pistol at the start, you'll be in the candyland of one-shotting, like, 40% of the threats in the game. I think the full random mode should be cut from the game altogether.
• Self damage is amazing, because receiving 10k damage from your own rocket launcher is fun. Well, it can be circumvented by "un-scaling" the self damage, so that your shiny lvl100 legendary RL will deal damage to you as if it was lvl1 one.
• Poison affix (and similar ones) needs to be scaled, but I'm yet to figure out how.
• I don't like that I had to remove two affixes, even if they're "merged" into one. I think I need to add some new mechanic which will take the place of the old affixes. Current;y I'm considering critical damage mechanic, along with the affixes for increasing the chance and the critical damage percentage itself.

The list is possibly not complete.
I'm kinda afraid of simply changing it and releasing it as it is, so I need someone helping me with playtesting the current in-dev builds when it will be ready.
Thanks for your attention, I hope the read was interesting.

Statistics: Posted by sidav — Sat Dec 07, 2024 7:04 pm