Support NeoGAF

[MiyazakiHatesKojima]

Doom Eternal Revising How It Handles Difficulty From First Game

Game director Hugo Martin said Doom 2016 had frustrating difficulty settings, and that Doom Eternal is taking a better approach to challenge players.

www.gamespot.com

Doom Eternal scales the intensity of enemy attacks and damage you take.
As the sequel to 2016's Doom, the upcoming Doom Eternal is looking to change things up by implementing a variety of new mechanics and methods to annihilate the demon horde. We recently got the chance to play Doom Eternal and wrote up some hands-on impressions of the first three hours. But another aspect id Software about has changed that's worth mentioning is the game's approach to how it handles difficulty. In speaking with game director Hugo Martin, he explained that it's a matter of scaling specific elements so that, regardless of difficulty, players still have to engage with all the systems and mechanics necessary to survive.

In relation to how Doom 2016 difficulty settings worked, Martin said, "The way enemies behaved changed kind of dramatically from difficulty to difficulty. They actually got more accurate." He continued, "What was frustrating is that it was kind of like learning a new combat dance… the fireball distance and the way that I learned to dodge it… different rules." Now, the approach in Doom Eternal is to scale existing mechanics. Regardless of whether you play on easy, Hurt Me Plenty, Ultra-violence or Nightmare, what enemies are capable of doing remains consistent.

Essentially, the harder the difficulty, the more frequently demons will come at you with their heavier attacks and the more damage they'll do to you. Martin used boxing as an analogy: "On easy, they're going to throw a lot of jabs and take turns like, 'throw your jab, then I'll throw mine. Now one of us gets to throw a haymaker. On Nightmare, everybody's throwing haymakers nonstop."

It seems as though the main focus is to adjust the amount of room for error the player has. Martin explained, "The question is not knowing what to do, it's just mastering how to do it. As we scale down... the two guiding principles were the number of decisions we ask players to make per minute, and then the number of mistakes they're allowed to make per minute." Doom Eternal tunes its variables (ammo, weapon damage, number of enemies, etc) so that you're pushed toward the flow of managing your resources. He's confident in the approach, saying, "It's going to make all players, skilled and unskilled, play Doom the right way because we're betting that it's going to make for a more engaging experience."

 

[MiguelItUp]

That sounds so good! Ugh. I can't wait!

 

[Grinchy]

One thing I noticed in the 2016 game was that I died in a really hard encounter with like 4 summoners and other big baddies. I started it again and this time there were only 2 summoners and less of the big brute guys as well. It was the only time I noticed, though I can't say it never happened outside of that.

I was kinda let down by the dynamic shift just because I died once. Maybe it was because I didn't do my first playthrough on the hardest available difficulty. I liked how the harder difficulties made the enemies more accurate, but I never wanted it to shift anything to make a section easier.

 

[Bullet Club]

 

[M1chl]

This should be standard, when it comes to difficulties. But sadly it isn't, kudos id soft.